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By Root 1070 0

and British behaviour. It remains highly doubtful that the United States would have entered the war against Germany within a useful time frame had not the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and had not Hitler thereafter declared war upon America. By 1945 relations between Britain and America had become profoundly strained. While Britain had bankrupted itself to play its part in the defeat of Hitler, the United States emerged from the war richer than it had ever been. There was deep resentment among Churchill’s people of American wealth and British poverty, matched by American exasperation about Britain’s residual pretensions to influence, and to empire. All those holding power in the United States and its armies recognized that only two powers would count in the post-war world, and Britain would not be one of them. It is against this background that Eisenhower’s great achievement should be measured. He sustained the military partnership between allies who were weary to death of each other, and led them to share in victory with the façade of unity unbroken.

The battle for Germany began as the largest single military event of the twentieth century, and ended as its greatest human tragedy. More than half a century later, we may be profoundly grateful that its worst consequences have been undone without another war. The men who fought and died for the freedom of Europe received their final reward with the collapse of the Soviet tyranny, two generations after the destruction of its Nazi counterpart.

ENDNOTES

* 1Some modern estimates now place this figure as high as forty million, and it is unlikely that any conclusive total will be agreed.

* 2All military ranks given in the text are those held at the time of the events described.

* 3Patton had been dismissed from command of the U.S. Seventh Army after two episodes in which he lost patience with combat-fatigue cases whom he encountered in field hospitals. He slapped the men and abused them as cowards. The story eventually broke in the U.S. press, provoking outrage. Months later, when it was decided that Patton was indispensable for the north-west Europe campaign and re-employed, he became the subordinate of his former junior, Omar Bradley.

* 4One Arnhem wireless-operator suggested afterwards that the disastrous communications failure stemmed not from poor radio terrain, as apologists suggested, but laziness about recharging radio batteries after the many “stand-tos” for airborne operations that were subsequently aborted. This could not be a complete explanation for the disaster—it is known that many wireless sets were sent with the wrong crystals—but may have been a contributory factor.

* 5All times relating to military operations in the text are given in accordance with the twenty-four-hour clock, while those concerning civilian life are given on the twelve-hour clock—that is, 2 a.m. rather than 0200.

* 6G-1 is a U.S. Army staff designation. It signifies the staff officer responsible for operations at a divisional or corps headquarters (at regimental level he was known as S-1). Likewise a G-2 was responsible for intelligence, a G-3 for supply. British and German staff organization was similar.

* 7On 20 July 1944, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in a briefcase during a meeting at Hitler’s headquarters, before returning to Berlin to participate in a poorly organized military coup. Hitler suffered severe shock but only superficial injuries when the bomb exploded, while the coup was quickly and ruthlessly suppressed. Investigations, purges, trials and executions of actual and supposed plotters continued until the end of the war.

* 8General Andrei Vlassov was a very able and experienced Soviet officer prominent in the defence of Moscow, before being captured by the Germans in July 1942. Vlassov, embittered by what he saw as Moscow’s betrayal of his army in the field, and seduced by the Germans’ judiciously humane treatment, agreed to raise an anti-Stalinist force from Russian PoWs. He was successful in recruiting several infantry divisions, whose members