DiNardo, Richard L. Germany and the Axis Powers, Book Review

[Dénes]

DiNardo, Richard L. Germany and the Axis Powers: From Coalition to Collapse. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2005
ISBN 070061412-5
xiv + 282 pages

Foreword; Acknowledgments; Introduction; photos; maps; Notes; Bibliography; Index

It's easy to fall into the habit of referring to "the war against Germany" when in fact, excluding the Far East and the Pacific entirely, the Third Reich's Wehrmacht was only one among a wide array of national forces conducting warfare against the Allies.
Nevertheless, Germany was undeniably at the center of the web of anti-Allied states, so DiNardo focuses his book on military relations between (not among) Germany and individual countries which fought against the Allies. The author further reduces the scope of his book by limiting his purview to Axis nations, which excludes some governments which fought against the Allies, such as Vichy France, Iraq, and Iran. Because he focuses on military operations, DiNardo doesn't include Axis states which failed to field armies, such as Bulgaria or the corpse of dismembered Yugoslavia. Furthermore, this narrow focus excludes the military contributions of small states (such as Slovakia, Slovenia, and Croatia) and contingents from occupied and neutral countries (notably Waffen-SS volunteers from Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, and so on).
When all is said and done, the author includes Finland, Hungary, Rumania, and Italy as the nations with which Germany maintained important military relations, and this survey of Germany and the Axis Powers is about how those relationships came about, how they evolved, and how they all ultimately ended in utter failure.

Here's part of DiNardo's Introduction:
Since Germany was of course the senior partner in the Axis, the focus of this study will be on Germany and its conduct of World War II as a coalition war. As such, I will focus on a number of issues. The first of these is presented as a question. Was Germany inept at conducting coalition warfare? At first glance, this might seem to be a question that should not even be asked, since the answer should be obvious, given the outcome of the war. To simply leave it at that, however, would be insufficient, because it begs a whole number of questions. Was Germany better at conducting coalition warfare at some levels of war than others? Were some services better at working with their allies than others? Were the problems confronting Germany and its Axis allies similar to those faced by the Allies, or were they different? Did the German military learn anything in this regard from the experience of the First World War? To what degree did Nazi ideology and the Holocaust play a role m Germany's conduct of coalition warfare?
Another element that comes into question here is the performance of the Axis allied forces. Over the past few years, the common perception of the Romanian forces in World War II has been changed, at least in the English-speaking world, by the work of Mark Axworthy and his associates. Likewise, the common perception of the Italian armed forces has been subject to a wide spectrum of revision, ranging from the rather radical views of James Sadkovich to the more balanced judgments of Brian Sullivan, MacGregor Knox, and Lucio Ceva.
Another issue that requires examination is the opinion the Germans held of their allies. Traditional scholarship has generally treated this question in a rather facile manner, simply saying that the Germans regarded their allies, especially the Italians, Hungarians, and Romanians, with disgust. More recent scholarship, however, has shown that this issue is somewhat more complex. In this respect a comparison must be made of how well the Germans were able to work with their allies in North Africa as opposed to the eastern front. Was Axis coalition warfare more effective in one theater, and if so, why?

This study seeks to be a work of military history. Although the diplomatic history of the period has been covered brilliantly by the likes of Gerhard Weinberg and others, it is necessary to delve once again into the depths of Adolf Hitler's diplomacy. German foreign policy, however, will be peripheral to the core of the book. It will be dealt with only in cases where it clearly influenced Germany's conduct of coalition warfare.

The first chapter of Germany and the Axis Powers begins with a review of the Prussian experience of coalition warfare and continues through Germany's less than stellar military cooperation and coordination with its allies in the First World War. Interestingly, while German performance in that area during WWI left much to be desired, no one in the Wehrmacht seemed to notice or, if they did, made much of an effort during the inter-war years to prepare for a better performance in any future conflict.

Chapter two carries the story from Hitler's assumption of power through the Battle of Britain. Up to that stage Germany essentially fought a solitary war. Italy, of course, was late in joining the campaign against France and Mussolini was committed to fighting a parallel war which minimized the need for military coordination with the Germans. In one of the lesser known aspects of the war, DiNardo devotes a few pages to the way the two nations handled the Regia Aeronautica's contribution to the Battle of Britain. Although Italian participation did little to assist the German air effort, DiNardo notes that the experience gave the Luftwaffe some worthwhile practice working with allies.

In some ways, however, the Luftwaffe benefited from the experience with the CAI. First, it allowed the Luftwaffe to develop some officers with experience in coalition operations. In fact, some members of the liaison staff who worked with the CAI would later figure with varying degrees of prominence in the Mediterranean. Also, the scale of the effort did not overtax the Luftwaffe's ability to conduct such operations. The number of interpreters, for example, was kept to a minimum. In addition, the Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica learned enough that given the vast technological, logistical, and organizational differences between them, the creation of mixed German-Italian air units was out of the question, at least for the immediate future. Finally, some progress was made in the realm of exchanging intelligence and information on aircraft technology.

The level of German involvement in coalition warfare was about to change, however, in a drastic way. Germany's participation in coalition warfare would expand into two theaters and would set the stage for the appearance of one of the most captivating personalities of World War II.

The author next relates in "Desert Sands I" the first half of the campaign in North Africa. As always, the text only sketches the outlines of the ebb and flow of operations ("This work also proceeds from the assumption that the reader knows a great deal about the Second World War") while emphasizing the nature of the military relationship between Germany and Italy. Much has been written elsewhere about Rommel's dissatisfaction with his allies (and nominal superiors), but DiNardo looks deeper into the situation.

In terms of land warfare, Rommel probably got more out of the Italian units under his command than he expected, certainly more than the British would care to admit. Certainly there were cultural and linguistic problems that had to be overcome. This started with the commanders themselves who did not speak Italian or German, including Rommel, who did not speak Italian. One of the more important people in Rommel's headquarters was his interpreter, Wilifried Armbruster, who was able to convey not only Rommel's thoughts precisely in Italian but also the tone in which they were delivered.
Although liaison staffs were posted with every major Italian formation, communication remained a problem. Most German army officers could not speak Italian. Occasionally a unit such as the Fifteenth Panzer Division might boast of several interpreters on its staff, but this was rare. Graduates of the Kriegsakademie generally preferred English or French. The German army drew the majority of its Italian interpreters from the southern Tyrol. Aside from climatic problems, many of the interpreters were unfamiliar with military terminology. Given that the nature of the campaign did produce lulls in the action, the Italo-German forces were able to come up with a dictionary that contained the most important military terms in both German and Italian, thus making everybody essentially play on the same sheet of music.

During the hard Crusader battles, generally the performance of the Italian units was good, albeit somewhat uneven. Some of this was certainly due to a lack of modern equipment, especially antitank guns. This particularly affected the Italian infantry divisions holding the perimeter around Tobruk. On the other hand, Italian artillery and antiaircraft units provided good support to the German Twelfth Oasis Company in its defense of Sidi Omar. One of Rommel's officers gave much of the credit for the successful defense of Halfaya Pass in June 1941 to the Italian infantry. Likewise, Italian armored units, especially the Ariete Armored Division, did well during the Crusader battles, and during the retreat to Agedabia, the rear guards of the Italian infantry divisions, aided by German mobile units and favorable terrain, executed a number of excellent delaying actions to successfully stymie the pursuit of the victorious but badly battered British Eighth Army.
This chapter further discusses in considerable depth relations between the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica and the Kriegsmarine and Regia Marina. While Rommel essentially imposed his personality and his views on ground operations, and the air forces cooperated about as well as could be expected given their divergent organizations, aircraft, and doctrines, the Axis naval forces were "least prepared to conduct coalition warfare in the Mediterranean."

A short chapter addresses the Axis conquest of the Balkans. DiNardo then turns his attention to preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union and Operation Barbarossa. As he reiterates throughout the book, one of the hallmarks of Hitler's conduct of coalition warfare was his insistence that Germany's relationships with its allies take the form of a series of bilateral agreements rather than a grand alliance. There was, he notes, no Axis equivalent of the Combined Chiefs of Staff and nothing resembling the series of Allied summit conferences. Instead, Germany dealt separately and individually with Finland, Hungary, Rumania, and Italy regarding participation in the campaign against the Soviets.

The Finns, as Mussolini originally intended for Italy in the Med, essentially managed to wage a parallel war. Hungary and Rumania to a large extent contributed armies to the Russian Front because they wanted to curry favor with Hitler for preferential treatment in post-war territorial settlements, especially over disputed Transylvania. Italy took part for reasons of prestige and ideology. DiNardo discusses how Hitler dealt with each nation's entry into the war, the command arrangements and liaison issues facing each national force at the front, and details such as availability of interpreters. For example, most Hungarian officers spoke German, making communications relatively easy. Of course, the ill-will between Hungary and Rumania meant the Germans had to keep those contingents separated, and in fact on at least one occasion the two armies, operating in close proximity, almost opened fire on each other. As with the chapter on the war in the desert, DiNardo includes air cooperation as well as naval cooperation. In this case, it appears the Axis naval forces in the Black Sea performed together quite smoothly. In a sublime case of Teutonic thoroughness and unwarranted optimism, in July 1942 the Italian Navy was even asked to prepare torpedo boats and submarines for operations in the Caspian Sea.
Nevertheless, even a coordinated performance at sea could not stave off the inevitable. Although it's true that the Soviet Operation Uranus offensive broke through Rumanian armies on the way to surrounding Stalingrad and changing the complexion of the war in the east, DiNardo makes it clear that Hitler and OKH were thoroughly aware of the weakness and vulnerability of the forces of their allies. More than that, such vulnerability was in large measure the result of Germany's inability or unwillingness to provide the armies of their partners with the weapons, equipment, and supplies promised to them.

By the end of January 1943, the Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian forces on the eastern front were in tatters. The Italian Eighth Army had suffered anywhere from 75,000 to 80,000 dead and missing, but these figures do not reveal the full extent of the disaster. According to an Italian officer in the Pasubio Division, of the 30,000 Italian troops in the XXXV Corps at the start of the Soviet offensive, only 4,000 were able to make it back to the German lines by 15 January 1943. Of the 4,000 survivors, more than 3,000 were afflicted with frostbite and other injuries.
Much the same could be said for the Romanian and Hungarian forces. The most recent estimate of Romanian casualties holds that of the 150,000 men Antonescu committed to the campaign, some 140,000 were killed, wounded, or captured. Total Hungarian casualties from the end of April 1941 until the beginning of March 1943 were a staggering 176,971. The winter battles alone cost the Hungarians close to 100,000 casualties. Naturally, just about all the vehicles and equipment with the Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian forces were lost as well.
Given the circumstances, and with the German lines now very much shorter than they had been, the Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian forces were mostly sent home. The Romanians were the first to go. Hauffe and Antonescu had an extended discussion on the state of affairs on 28 December 1941. Antonescu clearly indicated that any attempt to refit the Romanian Third and Fourth Armies near the front was out of the question. Thus, 17 January 1943 Hauffe informed Steflea that the remnants of the Romanian Third and Fourth Armies would be withdrawn to Transnistria. Their transportation and resupply would be arranged by Army Group Don and the German military authorities in Ukrainian territory. The Italians had initially hoped to maintain a corps-sized formation on the eastern front, but this proved impossible. Consequently, all the Italian forces were withdrawn in the spring of 1943. The Hungarian presence on the eastern front would continue in a limited sense until the summer of 1943.

Not surprisingly, during the crisis, relations between the Germans and their allies were severely strained at every level. At the lower levels, this strain was exacerbated by the Germans' habit of stealing equipment from their allies. Although German liaison officers tried to stop this practice, their efforts were largely ignored. German soldiers often regarded their Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian allies as "too soft" for the eastern front, while the Romanians, Hungarians, and Italians considered German soldiers of all ranks to be selfish and arrogant.
The farther one went up the chain of command, the more bitter the recriminations became. Romanian, Italian, and Hungarian commanders pointed to factors such as overextended frontages and the lack of equipment, especially antitank guns, and were resentful of German criticism. German officers considered these explanations nothing more than excuses. Liaison officer reports invariably pointed out examples where Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian soldiers fled from Soviet tanks, even when they had the means to fight. Generals such as Hoth and Richthofen considered their allies as lacking the needed ideological commitment and will to successfully withstand Soviet attacks.

Chapter Eight turns back to Africa for "Desert Sands II" and the remainder of the war there, covering the period February 1942 through May 1943. Amongst all the failures of German coalition warfare, DiNardo points to the final stages in Tunisia as one of the best examples of appropriate Axis cooperation. Although German and Italian forces were incapable of halting the Allied offensive, at least their organizational structure aided rather than hindered the effort. Overall command was vested in Army Group Africa with a German commander and an Italian chief of staff with the latter also reporting directly to Comando Supremo in Rome. "Like a German chief of staff, he had the duty to express his views to the army group commander and was responsible for liaison between the commander and his subordinate armies. In addition, the chief of staff had to transmit orders to all subordinate Italian units." Meanwhile, Panzer Army Africa was transformed into Italian First Army with an Italian commander and a German chief of staff, the latter entrusted with duties equivalent to the army group chief of staff.
In the same chapter, DiNardo makes his only misstep of the book when he launches into a what-if scenario in which he hypothesizes that a successful Axis conquest of Malta would have been useless because "...Malta's Axis garrison would be effectively isolated, and could thus be bypassed, much like the Japanese garrison at Rabaul in the southwest Pacific." In a book otherwise devoted to crisp, factual discussions of what actually transpired between Germany and its allies, these paragraphs seem jarring, all the more so since some of the author's premises and conclusions in the fantasy scenario seem a little off kilter.
In any event, following the chapter on the end of the war in Africa, DiNardo shines the spotlight back on Europe for the final collapse of Axis forces. Quite understandably, during the days of their doom, relations between Germany and its Finnish, Italian, Rumanian, and Hungarian partners unraveled completely. Mussolini was deposed and shortly afterwards Italy surrendered to the Allies (although DiNardo goes on the write a few pages about Il Duce's rump administration in northern Italy and its grandiose plans). Finland managed to disengage itself from its parallel war and help chase German forces back across the northern border into Norway. The threat of armed conflict between Hungary and Rumanian waned as both came to realize they had more to fear from the advancing Red Army than from each other, and both nations suffered their inevitable fates.

The period between May 1943 and November 1944 exposed all the flaws inherent in Germany's conduct of coalition warfare. Hitler's decision to reinforce the Tunisian bridgehead in North Africa served ultimately to deprive the Axis of both German and Italian assets that would have been much better employed in the defense of Sicily and the Italian mainland. Germany also suffered the long consequences of Mussolini's disastrous invasion of Greece, as the Italian collapse forced Germany to devote scarce resources to replace Italian forces in the Balkans.

Germany's failure in regard to Italy, Romania, and Hungary in this period was largely technological and economic. The service ministries, the controlling agencies regarding manufacturing patents, would only part with patents that would allow Italian, Romanian, and Hungarian plants to make German equipment at prices they could not afford. This proved a critical waste of productive capacity and served only to increase the strain on German industry, already incapable of meeting the needs of the Wehrmacht.

Strategically, all of Hitler's allies saw the situation more clearly than Hitler did, but at the same time many of them also misjudged the situation. Only Finland was able to come close to getting out of the war on terms that could be described as relatively benign. The Ryti government's earlier ability to evade full membership in the Axis allowed Mannerheim the maneuvering room to withdraw from the war without any major reactions from the Germans, who lacked the ability to undertake retaliatory measures anyway.

The Italians, Romanians, and Hungarians did not have that same luxury. The Hungarians were caught in a particularly unfortunate situation. Of all the participants on the Axis side, the Hungarians were the most unwilling. Consistent Hungarian opposition to German barbarity in the Soviet Union and the Balkans only earned German suspicion, and at the instant of Italy's defection, German planning began almost immediately for an occupation of Hungary.
Although both Mussolini and Antonescu urged Hitler to make peace, their urging was for a peace that would be only to their benefit. Mussolini urged a separate peace with Stalin, which would allow Germany to concentrate against the Anglo-Americans, while Antonescu wanted a peace with the Anglo-Americans, thus freeing up German resources against the Soviets. These pleas by both Antonescu and Mussolini, however, had a degree of naivete about them. Both seemed oblivious to the Allied policy of unconditional surrender, announced at the Casablanca meeting of January 1943. In addition, both ought to have realized that a separate peace would be unlikely, given the catalog of barbarity compiled by the Germans (and the Romanians), especially in the Soviet Union during their occupation of Soviet territory. Finally, Mussolini and Antonescu generally thought more in terms of standard international power politics rather than the kind of nihilistic ideological and racial struggle envisioned and practiced by Hitler.
Benjamin Franklin once cautioned his fellow leaders during the American Revolution that if they did not hang together, surely they would all hang separately. Militarily, the Axis was in effect hanged together during the period from November 1942 to May 1943. After that, politically they all hung separately (in one case literally), one dictator at a time. The Axis was dead.

In his final chapter DiNardo reviews some of the important lessons of German coalition war. Of the German services, he rates the Navy as the most successful in that regard. Indicative of the overall failure of the German army's dealings with its partners in military operations, DiNardo goes so far as to say "Perhaps the only bright spot in the German army's conduct of coalition warfare was Rommel's campaigns in North Africa." He further enumerates factors contributing to the dismal performance of the Axis alliance, such as divergent and incompatible national goals, failure to implement political summit meetings, failure to establish a unified high command, ineffective chains of command, lack of standardization of weapons and logistics, inability to deliver materiel as promised, and so on.
Another important aspect of this question revolves around Hitler and the German military leadership. One thing that Hitler and his principal military advisers shared was that they were all veterans of the western front in World War I. Hitler spent his entire service in the war in France, as did Keitel. Alfred Jodl and Halder did do short tours in the east but served the rest of the time on the western front. Only Jodl worked with any of Germany's allies in World War I, and that was only for a short time. In short, none of these men had much experience in having to deal with allies.

Germany's failure to deal successfully with its allies was also reflective of another defect, namely, the inability of the services to deal with each other. In both world wars the German record in being able to mount successful joint operations could only be described as abysmal. The individual services were often at odds with each other, in both peace and war. The kind of strategic culture within the Wehrmacht may well have promoted Germany's failure in coalition warfare.
Ultimately, the German failure in coalition warfare in World War II was illustrative of Germany's conduct of the war in general. At the lower levels of warfare, the German military continued to perform with skill throughout the war. At the higher levels of war, however, especially strategy, where coalition warfare can play such an important part, Germany's military and political leadership failed utterly. In World War II Hitler and his military leaders were able to repeat almost every mistake made by their Wilhelmine predecessors, in some cases for the same reasons. For that, we should be grateful.

It's unlikely that Germany and the Axis Powers will become a runaway best seller or be acknowledged as the unerring and undying masterpiece in its field. Nevertheless, the author has produced a serious, well-documented volume of considerable importance and interest to anyone studying the military cooperation of Germany and its European allies. He tends to be very exact about all the events he describes and often offers further details in his endnotes, and—with the possible exception of his foray into speculation about an Axis conquest of Malta—remains well-grounded in explaining what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. The book wears a very academic air without becoming stuffy or lifeless.

For anyone who still thinks the campaign in Europe was truly "the war against Germany," or for anyone who realizes it was something quite different and wants to learn more about the manner in which the Third Reich and its allies conducted their war, University Press of Kansas has scored another big success.

Recommended.

[Found on roncskutatas.hu]

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on May 24, 2006 03:39 pm

[sid guttridge]

Hi Denes,

If all reviews are that long, nobody is going to need to buy the books!

I am ordering it.

Cheers,

Sid.

[D13-th_Mytzu]

How much does it cost - and can it be ought from a book-store or one must order it ?