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by no such diplomatic problems and the Japanese fought hard to hold on; most of the city was in ruins by the time it was cleared. The last fighting was around the University of the Philippines and the old walled city called the Intramuros; it was necessary to breach the ancient Spanish walls with point-blank artillery fire, and then the infantry went in and rooted the Japanese out one by one. By mid-March central Luzon was under American control, and Yamashita’s forces pushed back into the extremities and the mountains of northern Luzon. Krueger’s 6th Army handed over to 8th Army, and went off to train for the invasion of Japan. Eighth Army spent the rest of the war whittling down the enemy, but by the time the Japanese surrendered in August, there were still 50,000 troops at large in Luzon, so to the very end they were doing their best to tie down and kill Americans, a thankless, unrewarding battle for both sides.

The same kind of deadly game went on in the southern Philippines. The 100,000 ill-equipped Japanese troops there had hoped to be left alone, but MacArthur needed the southern islands for air bases to support the projected Australian invasion of Borneo, and to operate against the East Indies shipping lanes. He therefore directed 8th Army to send some of its units from Luzon south. Only on the large island of Mindanao were the Japanese able to put up an effective resistance. In the other islands they faded into the backlands as the American forces landed, and hung on until mobile columns of Americans and Filipino guerrillas finally ran them down, or starvation reduced them to collapse. In Mindanao they were strong enough to retain the eastern part of the island until the general Japanese surrender, by which time, subjected to constant ground pressure and relentless air attack, they were here too in a state of near-starvation and semi-collapse.

In all, the Philippine campaign cost the Japanese the entire 350,000 men they had garrisoning the islands. The Americans themselves suffered 62,000 casualties, including almost 14,000 killed. As the war flowed by to the northward several things were obvious. The Japanese Empire was doomed; by the end of 1944 their fleet and air forces were both mere shadows of what they had been. But it was equally apparent that they were not yet ready to admit defeat. If victory consists, as Clausewitz said, of making the enemy accept your will rather than his own, the Allies had not yet achieved victory. The home islands of the empire lay ahead, and no one in his right mind could possibly relish the task of taking on the Japanese on their own territory. But the prison camps on Luzon had hardened any Allied hearts that yet needed to be hardened. It might be that the Japanese would insist on dying as a people before they would concede defeat. If that was what they wanted, so be it. The Americans had the matériel, the manpower, and the expertise to do it, and by 1945, after the long road from Pearl Harbor to Manila, they were as determined as their enemies on a fight to the finish.

26. The Collapse of Germany

THERE HAD BEEN THOSE who hoped the war with Germany would be over by the end of 1944. They were doomed to disappointment. Festung Europa, Fortress Europe, had been cracked wide open, but the German war machine was still not destroyed; there seemed no real diminution of German fighting spirit. Though the air forces of the Western Allies ranged at will over the skies of the Reich, the supplies still poured forth; the guns still fired, the troops were still clothed, fed, and armed. Victory for the Allies lay at the end of the road, but it was farther off than they hoped. Goaded by Hitler’s will and the great momentum of the Nazi state, the beast fought blindly on.

Mid-December saw the Russians cross for the first time onto native German territory. In the south they and the Yugoslavs had cleared Belgrade, half of Hungary was theirs, and they were into eastern Czechoslovakia. In unhappy Poland they had closed up to the Vistula, and in the north, parts of East Prussia itself were