War and Game

In the 8th century BC regional entities began to assert their independence from the Zhou state, fighting among themselves for dominance as well as fending off attacks from barbarian neighbours. By the late 5th century power was concentrated in seven principal states - Han, Wei, Zhao, din, Chu, Van and Qi. They all built enormous walls to protect their borders, fortified their cities and even their villages, and constructed roads and canals to expedite the movement of troops and supplies. As military technology and the science of warfare flourished, the organization, weaponry and ferocity of the Qin army combined to give them superiority over the other Warring States, and in 221 BC the Qin united the whole area to form the first Chinese empire.

By the sixth century, the Zhou dynasty was beginning to falter. According to traditional sources, its beginning was glorious, starting about 1045 when King Wu (Woo) claimed the Mandate of Heaven, ousted the wicked last king of the Shang dynasty, and established a new regime. Finding that his kingdom was too large to govern by himself, he divided it into smaller territories and appointed local rulers whom he allowed to run their own lands as they saw fit, so long as they provided him with military and financial assistance on request. Of course, the people he trusted enough to make dukes (basically junior kings) were his relatives, and he had a lot of them. In addition, as new territories were brought into the Chinese cultural sphere, new states were created, and the kings of Zhou made sure the rulers of those regions were bound to the royal house by marriage ties and ritual oaths of allegiance. By the beginning of the eighth century, there were some two hundred states, most fairly small.

This system, similar to the feudalism of medieval Europe, worked well enough for several centuries, but as kingdoms were passed from generation to generation, the ties of kinship weakened, the kings of Zhou were no longer able to enforce order, and states began to compete with one another for resources and for territory. “Compete” is actually a euphemism for warfare, and the later Zhou dynasty was characterized by incessant, bloody fighting as states attempted to destroy or annex each other. At the beginning of the Spring and Autumn Era (722–481; named for a history of the state of Lu that organized events by seasons and years), there were still some one hundred and seventy states, but by the fifth century, unrelenting warfare had reduced their number to about forty. The aptly named Warring States Era (403–221) started with seven major states and ended with one, when the state of Qin finally brought all of China under its control. Over the last five centuries of the Zhou dynasty, four out of every five years saw warfare between major states.

As competition became more intense, the old patterns of aristocratic interactions were shattered. There were assassinations, murders, coups, and even patricides, as over-eager princes killed their fathers. Noble warriors who used to regard battle as an elegant game, an opportunity to show off their valor and virtue (sometimes by granting concessions to their distinguished opponents), now slaughtered each other mercilessly, and they could even be killed by peasants armed with newly invented crossbows.

Treaties could not be relied on without an exchange of hostages, and sometimes not even then. The old ceremonies were still used—for instance, treaties were still sealed by rulers killing a bull and smearing its blood on their lips while swearing to the gods that they would uphold its provisions—but no one cared for the old gods anymore (they were, after all, the patron gods and ancestors of the very much weakened royal house of Zhou), and people began to speak of “breaking an oath while the blood is still wet on the lips.” States lied to each other, double-crossed each other, negotiated secret treaties, and made and dissolved alliances with dizzying speed.

Rulers who worried about preserving their states, the sacrifices to their ancestors, and even their own lives started looking around for help. In this way, the breakdown of the old feudal order brought a surprising degree of social mobility as clever, eloquent men wandered from state to state, looking for a ruler who would put their ideas into practice, and rulers welcomed anyone who could promise them some advantage over their foes. The search for political, social, and economic stability fueled the creation of the “hundred schools of philosophy,” and there was no end to the proposals that these wandering debaters put forward. Some were agriculturalists, who claimed new techniques for increasing the farm yields crucial to supporting large armies in the field; others knew how to construct canals; and still others were military strategists (the most famous of these was Sunzi [or Sun Tzu, Swun-zuh], whose Art of War can still be found today in most American bookstores). There were cosmologists who promised to reveal how to harness the forces of nature, logicians who analyzed argumentation itself, and even some who suggested that what the world really needed was more love (they did not last very long).

The conquests in Central Asia of the Han emperor Wu Di and his embassies to the west opened up a major trade route linking East and West. Merchant caravans took Chinese goods (especially silk) as far as the Roman Empire in exchange for Western luxury goods. Well-preserved documents from northwestern China and along this "Silk Road" record the everyday life in garrison towns.

On February 28, 202 b.c.e., over three hundred nobles and generals gathered on the north bank of the Fan River to proclaim Liu Bang (pronounced Leo Bahng) the first emperor of the Han (Hahn) dynasty. They had little idea of what the future might bring, but they certainly hoped that a new dynasty would mean the end of war. For five years China had been torn apart by civil war between the forces of Liu Bang and Xiang Yu (Shee-ong You). This struggle had followed the collapse of the repressive Qin (Cheen) dynasty, which itself had only offered fourteen years of respite from five centuries of nearly constant warfare. Tens of thousands of men had died in battle, traditional Chinese culture had been turned upside down, and the people were exhausted. Perhaps stability had finally come.

In fact, the Han dynasty would last for over four hundred years, easily rivaling its contemporary on the other side of Eurasia—the Roman Empire—in terms of territory, military might, cultural sophistication, and population (both had about 60 million people). (See the volumes in the Greenwood Guides to Historic Events on the rise of the Roman Empire and the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.) Equally important, the methods of government developed at that time would serve as the basis for Imperial China—the sequence of dynasties that would carry China into the twentieth century, when the last emperor of China lost his throne in 1911 c.e. Although there were many changes over the two thousand years of Imperial China, there were remarkable continuities as well, and Chinese civilization ranks as one of the most successful social systems in human history.

As Liu Bang took the title of emperor on that chilly February day, everyone in attendance must have thought about the history of that office, and what accepting it might mean. The Chinese had long believed in an impersonal, moral force they called Heaven. With the approval, or mandate, of Heaven, a king could gain power and rule, but when his descendants became corrupt and oblivious to the suffering of the common people, Heaven would withdraw its mandate and bestow it upon another family who were thereby authorized to lead a revolt. The last time Heaven had unambiguously chosen a ruler was nearly eight hundred years earlier, with the founding of the Zhou (Joe) dynasty. But the last ruler of that line had been overthrown some fifty-four years earlier in 256, and there had been chaos ever since. The First Emperor of the Qin dynasty had unified China in 221, but he had done so through sheer military force and had not justified his actions by claiming the Mandate. In fact, his scholars had advocated an entirely different model of political change based on Five Phases—Earth, Wood, Metal, Fire, and Water—that naturally overcame one another in turn. He claimed that his armies had conquered the Zhou dynasty, associated with Fire, by the awesome power of Water, and he invented the new title of “Emperor” to reflect his unprecedented power as the solitary ruler sitting at the apex of a centralized, bureaucratic empire. But his presumption now looked laughable in light of his short-lived reign.

Could Liu Bang, who had begun his life as a peasant, be the next recipient of Heaven’s mandate? Would he too rule by the power of Water or would he adopt his own patron phase? Could he even claim the title of “Emperor”? Within weeks of the death of his rival Xiang Yu, Liu’s advisors were urging him to make himself an emperor. In good Chinese fashion, he refused three times, saying, “I have heard that the title of emperor can only be held by those who are worthy. It is not something that can be maintained by empty words and vain speeches. I dare not accept the position of emperor.” In the end, however, he sat on the throne (as he had wanted all along) with the excuse that he was doing so “for the good of the country.”

Liu’s first act as emperor was to appoint seven of his followers as deputy kings (this formal recognition of their local authority was probably one reason they encouraged him to become emperor), and then, as the great historian Sima Qian (Sue-ma Chyen) noted in a particularly resonant phrase, “All under Heaven was at peace.” But this was not the end of the story; indeed, it was not really the beginning either. The Han represented a continuation of many earlier practices—especially those of the Qin dynasty, which it simultaneously imitated and reviled—and there were also innovations over the next century that made the Han dynasty the model of imperial rule throughout Chinese history.

Plenty of new images and more information on the latest installment to the Panzer Command series
Matrix Games and Black Hand Studios are please to release a dozen new images and some more information for Panzer Command: Ostfront, the third installment to the hailed World War II turn-based tactical series, Panzer Command. Apart from showing off some beautiful Panzers in the trees or some Russian armor rolling across the steppes there are also a few key announcements:

1. Panzer Command: Ostfront is officially slated for release on May 9th, 2011.
2. There will be a full color printed manual available with the physical version.
3. The game will sell for $34.99 Download / $44.99 Physical.
4. The download version will be available free for owners of Panzer Command: Kharkov.
5. There will be a demo available before the release, so stay tuned to Matrix Games to give Panzer Command: Ostfront a spin before it’s out!

Erik Rutins, Director of Product Development at Matrix Games, said “We think newcomers to the Panzer Command engine and veterans from Operation Winter Storm or Kharkov will have a lot to be happy about with Ostfront. If the screenshots aren’t enough to whet some armchair generals’ appetites, the playable demo will truly show the excellence of Panzer Command: Ostfront.”

Experience the Panzer Command series of tactical wargames. In the new Panzer Command: Ostfront, you are a company-level commander on either the Soviet or German side, fighting on the Eastern Front. Preserve your men and defeat the enemy, there is no other way! Panzer Command: Ostfront is the latest in a new series of 3D turn-based tactical wargames which include single battles, multi-battle operations and full war campaigns with realistic units, tactics and terrain and an informative and practical interface.

Each decision you make as a commander must be weighed carefully. You will find that the gameplay is balanced to reward historically successful tactics while the AI will punish rash choices. The victory system for scenarios and campaigns rewards multiple strategies and evaluates your performance and rank after each battle.

After you have played through the 70+ included scenarios and 10 campaigns (including updated versions of all of the previous Winterstorm and Kharkov content), the Random Battle and Random Campaign generators allow you create new content with just a few clicks using the provided presets for nearly infinite replayability.

For scenario designers and modders, an innovative new Map Maker allows you to create your own realistic 3D maps from 500m to 2km scale based on actual historical locations with auto-generation features that help you create natural 3D landscapes quickly and easily. In conjunction with the powerful Scenario and Campaign Editors and the fully open unit data and models, this means that you have unprecedented access to modify the existing campaigns, maps, units and scenarios or create your own. There has never been a more open 3D tactical WWII wargame.

The list of improvements is too long for this release, but please check the Panzer Command: Ostfront product page for the full list and more information and be sure to check out the new screenshots!

Join Chris “Steelgrave” Mohon as he kicks the treads on World of Tanks and goes out for a spin.

Nice Paint Job!

World of Tanks is a massive multiplayer online game, a next generation gem which has already attracted almost two million players worldwide. At its basic level, World of Tanks is a 15 vs. 15 team shooter that puts you behind the turret of a Tiger I searching for a target or in a Wespe self-propelled gun tracking enemy movements as reported to you by the Stuart scouting the ridge ahead. Or you might be in the T-34/85 angling to get a shot in at the side of an advancing Pershing, while behind you; a SU-85 hidden behind bushes tracks your every move, hand steadying for the kill. World of Tanks has dozens of beautifully modeled units representing Russian, German and American war machines, with tanks, tank destroyers and self-propelled artillery filling your garage. The tanks look amazing…they are beautiful beasts, represented in fine detail. I guarantee that you’re going to want to drive one home from the showroom!

The graphics are easily one of the biggest draws of the game. The tanks look like their historical counterparts and the terrain you drive and fight over seems real. Trees sway softly in the breeze, dust flies up from behind your tank as you travel down dirt roads, and smoke belches from behind your iron beast as it moves along. On the battlefield, the terrain is destructible, which can be useful in itself...if you are setting up an ambush in a tank destroyer, you can knock over a tree that blocks your line of sight, then scurry back behind the bushes and wait for your target to approach. Seasoned players learn to search the terrain for clues as to where their enemy might be advancing...rash tankers in a hurry will knock over trees and walls, providing visual clues to their approach. A bright artilleryman will watch for exactly that kind of movement and may well send a shell your way, just to say hello. Adding to the immersive feel of the tank you are driving and the terrain you are crushing beneath your treads is the sound. Tanks are loud, and guns going off are noisy. Often you will hear an approaching tank before you see it. Shells banging off you armor are real attention getters and the sound effects of this game add to the rich battlefield feel that you will experience.
One area where World of Tanks truly shines is in vehicle characteristics. The designers have gone to great lengths to recreate the feel and abilities of the tanks involved. Yet World of Tanks is not intended to be a true tank simulation. While the tank exteriors are accurately modeled, there are no complicated interior controls to learn. You won’t be jumping from the commander’s hatch to the driver’s seat to the gunner’s position.  In many ways, you are the tank, not the crew. The designers have captured that elusive balance between realism and playability, and done it well. Driving a new tank is more of a process of learning its capabilities and limitations, rather than worrying where the starter switch is.  A light tank zipping along at 60 mph drives differently than a heavy tank churning its way up a hillside, as does a medium tank which you have overburdened with upgrades but failed to put a new suspension in. When you are chugging up a hill at 6 mph with artillery shells starting to fall around you and you feel like you might as well have a neon bull’s-eye painted on your tank, believe me…your next purchase will be an upgraded engine or suspension, and that new gun will wait.

Let’s pop the hood…

There are roughly a hundred basic models available at this time, divided into American, German and Russian units.  Some Japanese, British and French lines will supposedly be joining the battle in the future, as will American tank destroyers. Keep in mind that this is a game about tanks...period! There are no pesky infantry to avoid (or conversely, to overrun), no anti-tank guns hidden in farmyards, no fighter-bombers patrolling the skies just waiting to turn your tank into a burning hulk.  This is strictly tank vs. tank dueling, with glory going to the survivors and the losers slinking back to their garages to hammer the dings out.
You start off with three very basic light tanks, a Russian MS-1, an American T-1 Cunningham, and a German Leichtetraktor. Don’t worry; you won’t spend much time in these relics. Each vehicle in the game has a tech tree which it follows in order to gain access to higher tier equipment and units. From each of these starter tanks, you can research other tank lines, moving up the tech tree into light tanks, medium tanks, and heavy, but you also can branch off into tank destroyers and self-propelled artillery from here. Each vehicle can be individually upgraded, with a better suspension, a more powerful engine, upgraded turrets, heavier guns, a longer ranged radio and a more experienced crew, so that the M-4 Sherman you are facing might have almost a dozen different configurations, not to mention special equipment that can be purchased, such as faster gun loaders or better ventilation systems that give bonuses. The units are very customizable, and while some might rush through the tech tree to get to the monsters at the top, there is a lot of satisfaction to be had in driving a maxed-out lower tier tank with an elite crew and a long range optic system and making kills well above your pay grade. Many players have expressed the opinion that the game is just as much fun at the lower tier levels as higher, an opinion which I share.

Your tanks are stored in a garage which has a capacity for up to six vehicles. This can be expanded by the expenditure of gold, the in-game currency (more on gold later). The garage is where upgrades take place and where you can rearm and refit your tanks. Your garage has a barracks attached, so if you have a veteran crew, you don’t have to lose them when you purchase a new tank. You can just upgrade their training, hand them the keys to their new Panther, and point them in the direction of the battle.

C’mon, let’s go for a test drive!

On the battlefield, you are going to be teamed up with 14 other players and will be facing an opposing team of equal numbers. Each team will be roughly equivalent in strength. World of Tanks utilizes a 10 tier system, which ranks a unit before assigning it to a battle. Tiers are based on your tank type, with a Tiger I being a tier VII and an M3 Lee being a tier IV, but you can inadvertently raise your tier by upgrading your iron ride with a higher tier gun…so that your nominally tier III tank destroyer might be rated a tier IV. Got all that? If not, don’t worry….just get in your tank and go shoot something. It’s a great stress reliever!
Many battles will have a tier difference of as much as three steps, so if you are in a tier IV tank, you might be top dog with many of your comrades and opponents being lower tiers or you might end up at the bottom of the pile on your side, facing higher tier opponents. But that is far from an automatic death sentence! There is great satisfaction to be found in being the weakest unit on your side, then killing some steel cowboy who goes racing past your ambush spot, allowing you to put a shell into the weaker flank armor of his now burning tank. Being a kamikaze driver on treads results in a short match for you and a kill painted on the side of  my Jagdpanther. In every match there is always a bozo or two who will go charging towards the enemy on his own, then berate his teammates for not supporting him. I call this “dinner”.
The rest of your “dinner” will likely be harder earned. World of Tanks enjoyed a long beta period, and many of your teammates and opponents are veterans who know how to scout, how to use terrain, know when to defend and when to go for the kill. The matches are 15 minute timed periods, with very few matches ending in a draw. Battles are usually bloody and more often than not come down to a small pocket of survivors on each side angling for the win. There are no bots in this game, no AI to fool. Every kill you rack up is against a living opponent, and every time you go up in smoke, a real person is doing a silly victory dance behind their monitor.

World of Tanks does not divide teams based on the nationality of the units.  Each side may have a combination of German, American and Soviet units working side by side, stalking the opposing team. This is slightly disconcerting at first, but WoT is not intended to be a replay of WWII battlefields. World of Tanks is a game which matches the hardware against the hardware, not nation against nation. In battle each unit has a red or a green icon over it designating friend or foe.
While most of the matches in World of Tanks are random affairs, you can also create a platoon with a couple of your friends and join into battle together. Taking this one step further, if you can gather at least 15 players, you can create a clan and with this comes new maps and longer term strategies as you battle other clans over the spoils of Europe. I haven’t gotten to test drive a clan battle yet, but a Wargamer.com clan has just started up and I’m looking forward to reporting from the front soon.

Okay, time to look at the sticker price…

In what has to be my favorite new trend in MMO’s, World of Tanks is free to download and play. Seriously. Now, I know your daddy told you that nothing was free in this world, and I’m not here to call him a liar. He’s bigger than I am, and I tend to bruise easily.  But if World of Tanks is not on your hard drive right now, go to their website, download it for free, and play. It’s just that simple.
Now, there are two types of in-game currency found in World of Tanks, gold and credits. Credits, like experience, are given at the end of each battle, with the winning team receiving about double that of the losing team. Credits are used to fund your basic expenditures: repairs, replacements, and upgrades to equipment. Gold may be purchased via real money, with the current rate being 3,000 gold for $14.95. This is enough gold to upgrade your account to Premium status for 30 days, with 500 gold left over to spend as you wish. Premium status grants more experience and credits per battle, which translates into faster upgrades and puts your seat in the higher tier tanks sooner. With gold, you can accelerate training for your crew, or even buy tank bling, such as better ammo. Yet it is entirely possible to have a great time with World of Tanks and never, ever buy gold. While, as in real life, rewards come much quicker with a little gold to grease things along, gold alone won’t buy you victory.

Okay, okay, I’m sold! Wait...is that a dent in the side?

World of Tanks does what it intended to do very well. It’s a load of fun, and the hard work and attention to detail which the designers have put into their product is very evident. Even so, there are some things that I would change about the game if I could.
First and foremost, I’m big on customizable interfaces. World of Tanks allows me to tinker with the keyboard and assign the basic functions to whichever keys I like. That ability is a must have for me, so they have that base covered. But not in the actual battles unfortunately. There is a very small map at the bottom right hand side of the screen which shows all units, both allied and enemy, which you are aware of. I would like nothing better than to move that mini-map elsewhere, but no dice. The lack of customization available on the battle screen is a frustration which I hope they will address in the future.
Perceived tier problems are a constant gripe. I think that a lot of that is because many players don’t understand how tiers work, or how upgrading your tank can bump you up a tier. But it could definitely be improved. Three or even sometimes four tier differences are frustrating if you are on the wrong end of the stick and should happen far less often. Nonetheless, to gamers unhappy with this aspect of the game, I would simply point out that the first US Sherman tanker who encountered a German Tiger I on the battlefield probably wasn’t overjoyed either. Sometimes you eat the Tiger, sometimes the Tiger eats you.

A big, big player complaint revolves around artillery in the game. The argument rages back and forth over whether or not artillery is overpowered. Artillery is the proverbial hammer wielded by an eggshell. Artillery has a powerful punch, but one light tank that slips behind the lines often means game over for artillery units. The very best suggestion that I have heard would be to limit artillery units to 2 or 3 per side per battle. The occasional match which spits out 5 or 6 artillery units apiece isn’t all that much fun, even for the artillery.

Clank, clank, I’m a tank!

Yes, yes I am, and my heartfelt thanks go to the designers at Wargaming.net for that! They have created an outstanding game which will suck hours of my life away for some time to come. This is a game which rewards team play and good decisions, a game easy to play but not so easy to master, lovingly built from the chassis up, a tank buff’s delight and a game which often favors the bold but just as often drops them in their...tracks. Clank, clank, I’m a tank...yes, I am…and I’m hull down over that hill, just waiting for you to show!

Review written by: Chris "Steelgrave" Mohon, Staff Writer 

 

Protesters of EAM on 3rd of December of 1944 lying dead or wounded in front of the Greek Parliament's building, while others running for their lives, moments after the first shootings that left at least 28 dead and signaled the beginning of the "Dekemvriana" events.

When World War II broke out Metaxas worked hard to keep Greece out of the conflict without jeopardizing good relations with Great Britain. Benito Mussolini, however, wanted to demonstrate to Hitler that Italy was an equal and victorious Axis partner and picked Greece as an easy target. Italy attacked Greece in October 1940 but the Italian offensive was checked by the Greek army and the Italian troops retreated to Albania. In April 1941 Germany intervened and invaded Greece. The government and the king fled to the Middle East, and the country was ultimately divided by the three occupying forces (Germany, Italy, and Bulgaria), and a collaborationist government was installed in Athens. The economic dislocation of the country due to the war and the severity of the German occupation created serious food shortages in the urban centers. In the winter of 1941–1942 the population of Athens faced a terrible famine that caused the death of more than thirty thousand people.

The dire living conditions drove many people to form committees to address the food shortage problems, which often became the nuclei of the Resistance in the urban centers. In 1942 the Resistance spread to the countryside and grew to become one of the largest resistance movements in occupied Europe. The Communist Party together with other small socialist parties founded the National Liberation Front (EAM) and its military wing, the National People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), which were by far the strongest resistance organizations in occupied Greece. The Resistance was, however, intertwined with a civil war between rival resistance organizations (leftist and rightist), but mostly between ELAS and the Security Battalions, Greek armed units that collaborated with the Germans in campaigns against the guerrillas. The brutality of the German occupation reached its climax in 1943–1944: sixty thousand Greek Jews (mostly from Salonika) were deported to be exterminated in concentration camps; hundreds of civilians were executed on the spot in mass executions in places such as Kalavryta, Kommeno, and Distomo; villages were razed to the ground in retaliation for guerrilla attacks; and hostages were taken and later executed after roundups in Athens neighborhoods.

LIBERATION AND CIVIL WAR
Greece was liberated in October 1944. When the government-in-exile and prime minister George Papandreou arrived in Athens the country was controlled by EAM. The civil war during the occupation had heightened political tensions. The government and the British feared that the communists might attempt a coup and sought to disarm ELAS. A new bloody conflict broke out in Athens in December 1944. The government with the support of British troops forced ELAS to evacuate the capital and after the Varkiza Agreement (February 1945) the guerrillas surrendered their arms. After the disarmament of the ELAS a period of ‘‘white terror’’ followed during which the ultra-royalist armed bands unleashed a campaign of violence against the leftists in the countryside. The Communist Party abstained from the elections of 1946 and in a climate of disorder and terror the royalists won the absolute majority. The polarization was further aggravated when the royalist government held a rigged plebiscite in September 1946, in which 68 percent voted for the return of the king to Greece.

The armed groups formed by leftists who took to the mountains to escape from right-wing violence began to swell in 1946 and a full-scale civil war between the army and the communist guerrillas of the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) broke out (1946–1949). The failure of the army to defeat the guerrillas alarmed the United States, which viewed the Greek civil war as another instance of a Soviet-inspired communist expansionism. The declaration of the Truman Doctrine (March 1947) outlined the U.S. foreign policy of ‘‘containment’’ vis-a`-vis the Soviet Union, and it was accompanied by generous economic aid to Greece and Turkey, which proved to be crucial for the military victory. On the other hand, the DSE, despite its initial success, faced insurmountable problems, such as few reserves, inferior weapons, and the limited support of the neighboring socialist countries, while the shift from partisan to regular army tactics increased its casualties. The Greek Civil War took a heavy toll: thirty-eight thousand soldiers and guerrillas were killed, seven hundred thousand peasants became war-stricken refugees, and twenty-five thousand boys and girls were evacuated by guerrillas from the war zones to the socialist countries, while in the final stages of the war about fifty-eight thousand people fled the country and became political refugees.

The civil war had a major impact on political developments in Greece. In the following decades political discrimination against the Left became an integral part of the state policy, a combination of anticommunism and nationalism characterized the official ideology, and the army gained considerable political power. Marshal Alexander Papagos, commander-in-chief of the army during the civil war, and Constantine Karamanlis were leaders from the Right who became prime ministers successively (1952–1955 and 1956–1963) and laid the foundations for the economic reconstruction and development.

LINK

Aerial bombardment of Kiev began on 22 June 1941, the very first day of Adolf Hitler’s monumental assault on the Soviet Union code-named Operation Barbarossa. The Nazi armies advanced quickly. In the first three weeks of fighting alone, the Soviet Army lost two million men, 3,500 tanks, and 6,000 aircraft. On June 27 machinery and inventories began to be evacuated from Kiev’s arsenal, which required 1,100 railway cars. Over the next two months, 197 enterprises were dismantled and sent eastward. Kiev’s ‘‘Bolshevik’’ plant, for example, was reassembled near Sverdlovsk, in the Urals. In early July, some two hundred thousand Kievans began to construct antitank and anti-infantry fortifications around the city.

Stalin had initially refused Ukrainian Communist Party boss Nikita Khrushchev’s recommendation to abandon Kiev, but given the hopelessness of the military situation, relented on 17 September. On 21 September, the battle for Kiev ended. The Germans captured some 665,000 Soviet troops in the encirclement of Kiev, which Hitler called ‘‘the greatest battle in world history,’’ but in reality the victory gave the Germans no strategic advantage. By October, half of Kiev’s 850,000 residents had been evacuated, mobilized into the Red Army, or killed.

The German occupation of Kiev lasted for two years. Policies designed to starve the remaining population were put into place; already in November 1941 one onlooker described Kiev ‘‘as a city of beggars.’’ Epidemics swept the city; murder for bread became an everyday occurrence. Kievans were not allowed to enter many shops, trams, and theaters, and curfew was set at 6:00 P.M. Streets and buildings were given German names, and at least twenty-three German industrial enterprises were established in the city. By mid- 1943, however, about eighty partisan and sabotage units were operating in or near the city. Perhaps twenty thousand people were involved in the Resistance, which carried out some nine hundred operations, mostly against railway lines and roadways, supply depots, and police facilities.

Although Hitler’s goal of reducing Kiev to rubble was averted because of a shortage of bombs, by the time the Nazi occupation was broken, on 6 November 1943, eight hundred industrial enterprises and six thousand buildings (about one-sixth of the total number of structures in Kiev) had been destroyed. Soviet sources estimate that two hundred thousand Kievans were killed during the war and another hundred thousand were sent into Germany as conscript laborers. Valuable books, archives, and records had been looted from libraries, museums, and various institutes. The Khreshchatyk and the central district lay in ruins, and an estimated two hundred thousand Kievans were left without housing. Rationing of basic goods continued until December 1947. Kiev was declared a ‘‘Hero City’’ by the Soviet government, but the human tragedy of the battle for Kiev was not discussed openly until the Soviet political climate thawed briefly under Khrushchev (now Soviet premier) in 1962–1963. In January 1963, Leonid Volynsky published a short story in the journal Novy Mir (New World) about the battle, calling it ‘‘a vast and inexplicable tragedy.’’

The US-trained Iranian Imperial Air Force was widely regarded as second only to Israel's in the Middle East — more than a match for Iraq and a serious adversary for even the Soviet Union. At its peak the Imperial Iranian Air Force, that of the Shah, had more than 450 modern combat aircraft, including then state of the art F-14A Tomcat fighters and about 5,000 well-trained pilots. On the eve of the Iranian Revolution in 1979 the Air Force, numbering close to 100,000 personnel, was by far the most advanced of the three Iranian military services and among the most impressive air forces in the developing world. Reliable information on the Air Force after the Revolution was difficult to obtain, but it seemed clear that by 1987 a fairly large number of the existing fleet had been cannibalized for spare parts.

A total of 14 air bases were operational: Ahvaz, Bandar Abbas, Bushehr, Chan Bahar, Dezful, Doshan Tapeh (Tehran), Ghaleh Morghi (Tehran), Hamadan, Isfahan, Mashhad, Mehrabad (Tehran), Shiraz, Tabriz and Zahedan. Soviet and Chinese-made aircraft, obtained following the Iranian Revolution were distributed throughout the country to fufill mission roles of ground attack, transport, training and interception. Bandar Abbas, Bushehr, Dezful, Hamadan, Tabriz and Mehrabad became the centers for ground attack squadrons. Shiraz was the home of the interceptor squadron. It also provided training along with, Mehrabad, Doshan Tapeh and Isfahan. Shiraz also housed the transport squadron.

Air Force headquarters was located at Doshan Tapeh Air Base, near Tehran. Iran's largest air base, Mehrabad, outside Tehran, was also the country's major civil airport. Other major operational air bases were at Tabriz, Bandar-e Abbas, Hamadan (Shahroki Air Base), Dezful (Vahdati Air Base), Shiraz, and Bushehr. Since 1980 air bases at Ahvaz, Esfahan (Khatami Air Base), and Bandar Beheshti had also become operational. The Air Force's primary maintenance facility was located at Mehrabad Air Base. The nearby Iran Aircraft Industries, in addition to providing main overhaul backup for the maintenance unit, was active in manufacturing spare parts.

Before the Revolution, the Air Force was organized into 15 squadrons with fighter and fighter-bomber capabilities and a single reconnaissance squadron. In addition, 1 tanker squadron, and 4 medium and 1 light transport squadron provided impressive logistical support. By 1986 desertions and depletions led to a reorganization of the Air Force into 8 squadrons again with fighter and fighter-bomber capabilities and 1 reconnaissance squadron. This reduced force was supported by 2 joint tanker-transport squadrons and 5 light transport squadrons. Some 76 helicopters and 5 surface-to-air missile (SAM) squadrons supplemented this capability.

From its inception, the Air Force also assumed responsibility for air defense. The existing early warning systems, built in the 1950s under the auspices of Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), were upgraded in the 1970s with a modern air defense radar network. To complement the ground radar component and provide a blanket coverage of the Gulf region, the United States also agreed to sell Iran 7 Boeing 707 airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft in late 1977.

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With the creation of the Qin and Han empires came the rise of the Xiongnu nomads. These people were considered barbarians by the Chinese because they did not farm or dwell in cities. Instead they lived off of their livestock—mainly horses, cows, and sheep—which they herded from pasture to pasture depending on the season. They were highly mobile, living in tents, and were expert horsemen and warriors. Their ability to strike hard and then disappear made them fearsome enemies, though the real threat came when various Xiongnu groups united in 209 under the leadership of Maodun (Mau-dwun; r. 209–174). This new confederation came in response to the First Emperor sending a general north with one hundred thousand men and successfully pushing the Xiongnu out of border regions. The Qin then established commanderies in these new regions and sent in settlers who built roads, garrisons, and walls. Realizing that the Xiongnu needed to reorganize in order to deal with this unprecedented threat to their way of life, Maodun assassinated his father, took over his position as Shanyu (Shawn-you, “leader”), and established a stronger, more cohesive federation of Xiongnu clans.

For seven years Maodun prepared his forces, and then in 200 Liu Bang led troops north to try to regain control over a region whose king had just revolted and to expand his territory. This time the Chinese were three hundred thousand strong, but the Xiongnu had even more men, and they defeated the Han army handily (this was the time when Liu Bang was nearly captured). Realizing that his empire had expanded to its practical limits, Liu withdrew and signed a peace treaty with the Xiongnu, establishing a clear border and sending gifts of rice, silk, wine, and a Chinese princess. Maodun thought he was getting the daughter of Liu Bang and Empress Lü as his bride, but the empress protested, and at the last minute another young woman was substituted.

This “peace and friendship” policy proved effective, and relations between the Han and the Xiongnu were fairly stable for the next half century. In fact, after the death of Liu Bang, Maodun wrote to Empress Lü and proposed marriage: “I am a lonely widowed ruler, born amidst the marshes and brought up on the wild steppes in the land of cattle and horses. I have often come to the border of China wishing to travel in China. Your Majesty is also a widowed ruler living in a life of solitude. Both of us are without pleasures and lack any way to amuse ourselves. It is my hope that we can exchange that which we have for that which we are lacking.”4 The empress felt insulted and wanted to launch an attack in response, but her advisers reminded her that the Han was not in a position to take on the Xiongnu again.

Despite occasional Xiongnu attacks, this same relatively passive approach to foreign relations characterized the quiet reigns of Emperors Jing and Wen—perhaps due in part to the influence of Dowager Empress Dou and her Daoist sympathies. However, in 133, three years after the death of Empress Dou and in the eighth year of his reign, Emperor Wu ordered the first of seven major campaigns against the Xiongnu, several of which mobilized more that one hundred thousand soldiers. The Xiongnu lacked strong leadership at the time, and when a key Xiongnu leader switched sides, the Chinese were able to expand their empire significantly into the west. In fact, in an effort to control the trade route known today as the Silk Road, Chinese armies were sent past the Pamir Mountains to the edges of the Greco-Roman world, some two thousand miles west of the capital.

China’s interest in Central Asia was spurred by the remarkable journey of Zhang Qian (Johng Chyen), an official who volunteered around 139 to undertake a diplomatic mission to the Yuezhi (You-eh jer) people living to the west of the Xiongnu to enlist them as military allies. Zhang was captured by the Xiongnu and held as a prisoner for ten years. Eventually, however, he escaped and continued on his mission, traveling all the way to Bactria (in northwest Afghanistan). The Yuezhi were not willing to come to China’s aid, so Zhang turned east to head home. He was captured again by the Xiongnu and again somehow escaped, finally making his way back to the court around 126. He brought information about the western regions, including the fact that Chinese trade goods were already in demand there.

In 120 Chinese forces began pushing southwest into Yunnan (near present-day Burma), and over the next two decades, massive invasions were launched in the northeast (Korean peninsula), the south (Vietnam), and the west (Central Asia). Enormous armies set out nearly every other year to conquer new territories. They established new commanderies where they could, and they made treaties with tributary states when their hold was weaker. Through a combination of diplomacy, gift giving, trade, hostage exchanges, and, of course, military force, the imperial government was successful in dealing with the many non-Chinese peoples on its borders (Emperor Wu’s name, given as a posthumous title, means “the Military Emperor”). But as the Daoists well knew, aggressive action in one area might throw off the harmony of the whole, and indeed the balance of power was threatened by two related developments.

The first was that these military campaigns were enormously expensive. Soldiers were not farming when they were fighting or training, and they needed adequate supplies of food, clothing, and equipment in order to perform well. In order to meet these needs, the government had to develop new sources of income. New taxes were introduced, the minting of coins was nationalized, and offices and titles were sold. The government also took over the production of salt and iron—two of the most important and profitable businesses of the day—and tried to stabilize prices by buying grain at harvest time when it was cheap and selling it later when the price had increased (this assistance to farmers netted the authorities a handsome profit). These monopolies were highly controversial, raising serious debate after Emperor Wu’s death about the wisdom of having the government interfere so directly in the economy. In any case, it was difficult to sustain such a high level of military expenditures.

The second problem was more personal. Armies must have leaders, and the more successful the general, the more popular he becomes with his troops. It sometimes happens that soldiers become more loyal to their commanders than they are to the government, and Han officials were very wary of this. As a result, talented generals were both valued and feared at court. Perhaps this is one reason that the position of supreme commander—the head of the military branch of the government—often went unfilled after 177. Instead, generals were appointed by the civil authorities for specific campaigns.
One example of such a leader was Li Guang (Lee Gwong). Li became a famous general through his unconventional tactics, his cool demeanor under fire, and his amazing ability with a bow. On several occasions his men were vastly outnumbered by the Xiongnu, and he led them to safety. Once, as a wounded prisoner of the Xiongnu, he pretended to be dead and then jumped on a nearby horse, pushing the young rider off and grabbing his bow. He rode some ten miles toward his army at full gallop while shooting several of his pursuers with the bow he had stolen from the Xiongnu boy.

Li was easygoing and generous with his men, and he hated pointless routine and paperwork. The soldiers, not surprisingly, loved him. Court officials and his politically well-connected superiors, however, were not as enthusiastic, and he was never awarded great rank or lavish rewards. In the end, he was kept out of the action in an important battle and then accused of negligence for not showing up on time. Rather than face a court-martial, he committed suicide. Sima Qian reported: “All the officers and men in his army wept at the news of his death, and when word reached the common people, those who had known him and those who had not, old men and young boys alike, were all moved to tears by his fate.” Such popularity could make a successful general seem dangerous indeed to the central government.

An Honorable German: Captain Hans Langsdorff in Montevideo after the battle of the Rio Plata.

Knowing from the reports of his damage control parties that her oil purification plant had been ruined and the hole in her bows needed patching up before any sustained attempt was made to cross the Atlantic and return to German waters, Langsdorff suspected that he would need at least a fortnight in port to make good these defects. Even if the Uruguayan president Alfredo Baldomir could be persuaded to interpret his nation’s neutral status in a novel way so as to grant him such a respite, Langsdorff realised that the British would use the interval to bring up a host of naval reinforcements that would be waiting offshore for him once he emerged from the harbour once again. Entering the port of Montevideo at 2350 hours on 13 December, therefore, Langsdorff left himself with only two options: one was to remain there indefinitely – interned for the duration of the war – the other was to leave port after his ship had been patched up and fight his way out probably against overwhelming odds. Neither option looked particularly desirable, but he was soon left with yet a third that was easily the worst of them all. Assailed diplomatically on all sides, President Baldomir chose ultimately to grant the Graf Spee only a 72-hour stay in Uruguayan waters. As this wasn’t nearly long enough for her to be made seaworthy again, what would Langsdorff do to resolve his dilemma?

Matters were simplified somewhat by the diplomatic exchanges that took place over the next three days and by the fact that neither Hitler nor Raeder wished to see their pocket battleship permanently marooned in Uruguayan or Argentinean waters. Langsdorff was no fool. He recognised that he was in a trap of his own making. While he was prepared to pay the ultimate price for committing that cardinal error, he saw no earthly reason why others who were not responsible for making this mistake, namely, his ship’s company and their prisoners, should be forced to do the same. After deciding that the Allies should not have the satisfaction of sinking or capturing the Graf Spee, Langsdorff made meticulous preparations to ensure that his officers and men would have the final word in deciding the fate of their own boat. In a final defiant gesture, the pocket battleship that had caused the Allies so much agitation sailed out from Montevideo harbour in the early evening of 17 December with a skeleton crew on board. While four miles offshore, those aboard left her for the last time and at 2200 hours the scuttling charges they had laid now did their work and she was blown apart. Accepting the ultimate blame for the loss of his own ship, Kapitän zur See Hans Langsdorff committed suicide in Buenos Aires two days later by shooting himself in the temple with his own revolver. When told of Langsdorff death, Hitler is cruelly reputed to have observed: ‘He should have sunk the Exeter.’

As the Graf Spee ploughed her way through the waters of the South Atlantic, Harwood was busy thrashing out the battle tactics he wanted his three captains to orchestrate should they come across the German raider. In essence his ships would be split into two divisions so that ideally his two light cruisers could engage the Graf Spee from one wing of the pocket battleship, while his heavy cruiser Exeter would weigh in from the other wing. These tactics made very good sense since Langsdorff would be unable to concentrate all of his fire in one direction and it might give Force G the chance of hitting her and causing some damage, possibly slowing her down and forcing her to use up a good deal of her ammunition into the bargain. If Harwood’s cruisers couldn’t finish her off on their own, they might make her more vulnerable and set her up for destruction at the hands of one of the other Allied hunting groups that were scouring the Atlantic for the armed raider. His tactics would come to naught, however, if the Graf Spee’s 60cm Seetakt radar alerted her to Force G’s presence before the Allied warships could spot her on the horizon. In that case Langsdorff could choose to avoid an engagement with a numerically superior set of enemy warships (as his standing orders indicated) or risk doing battle with them. If he chose the latter option he would have to determine quickly what these blips on the radar screen actually represented. If they were three modest warships, he could use his superior armament to keep out of their range while using his big guns to pound them into submission, picking them off one by one. If any of them was a fast, heavy ship, however, his tactics were likely to be profoundly different. Such a ship would pose the gravest threat to the Graf Spee and would have to be dealt with first of all. In this case he would expect to rely upon his own ship’s excellent range finding and fire control to account for the heaviest enemy warship in the group. Once he had either disabled or destroyed the heavy ship, Langsdorff could then attempt to take on the rest of the group and seek to defeat them in detail.

At 0500 hours on 13 December – some twenty-two hours after Force G had rendezvoused well out to sea off the mouth of the River Plate – the Seetakt radar set aboard the Graf Spee performed admirably once again detecting three ships sailing southwest of her. Ignoring his standing orders not to engage even an inferior set of enemy warships, a confident Langsdorff opted to close the ships and see what type they were. Even when his lookout crew spotted one large warship and two smaller ones (type unknown) sailing as a group at a distance of 17nm (31.5km) less than an hour later, he was inclined to think that they might be a light cruiser and two destroyers possibly out on convoy duty. Despite the fact that his radar hadn’t picked up a trace of any convoy formation in the vicinity, Langsdorff changed course at 0600 hours and increased his speed to 24 knots in a deliberate move to close the three warships and engage them in gunfire with his superior armament. Fourteen minutes later a lookout on Harwood’s light cruiser Ajax spotted a smudge of smoke on the horizon and Exeter was instructed to go and investigate what type of vessel had left this sign of her presence in the area. Within a couple of minutes Harwood received word from Captain Bell of the Exeter indicating that it was likely to be a pocket battleship.

By this time Langsdorff had also discovered the nature of Force G. It was a good deal more formidable than he had previously imagined, but since he couldn’t outrun the much faster cruisers, there was little he could do but to engage them at distance and hope he could knock them out before they had a chance to respond with concentrated fire or get close enough to his ship to use their torpedoes against the Graf Spee. As Exeter swiftly executed a turn to the westward and reached top speed once Bell realised who was in the offing, Langsdorff swung his own ship to port and unfurled his 6 x 280mm (11-inch) guns in an effort to pick off the heavy cruiser at a distance of 18,700 yards (17.1km), while training his secondary armament of 8 x 150mm (5.9-inch) guns on the two light cruisers on his other wing. Opening fire at 0618 hours, the gun crews of the Graf Spee swiftly found their range and within five minutes had begun straddling Exeter with only their third salvo of High Explosive shells.

Although a number of casualties and some structural damage were sustained on board Exeter, her plight could have been far worse had all of the German shells actually exploded on impact. As it was, those that did in the early exchanges took out her ‘B’ turret, made a mess of the bridge and primary conning position and penetrated the forward part of the deck in a number of places. Just when it seemed that she might well have succumbed totally if the Graf Spee had continued her assault on her, Langsdorff broke off the engagement at 0630 hours and concentrated his full attention on the two light cruisers who had already shown considerable enthusiasm for the fight. Harwood’s tactical ploy of dividing his force into two polarised fronts had indeed been sufficient to give Langsdorff pause for thought, not least because of the hits his own ship had been taking and the fact that the British light cruisers posed a torpedo threat as they churned closer to his warship. Weaving their way out of trouble with masterly precision, both Achilles and Ajax proved to be far more difficult to hit than Langsdorff would have hoped. Worse was to follow for him almost immediately when the pugnacious Exeter, momentarily freed from sustaining constant punishment at the hands of the Graf Spee, fired off the first salvo of torpedoes from her starboard tubes at the pocket battleship at 0632 hours. Langsdorff now found himself rapidly getting into an unenviable position. With the light cruisers only 13,000 yards (11.9km) away and spoiling for a fight on one wing and Exeter refusing to play dead on the other, Langsdorff reacted by making a 150º turn away to port in a bid to avoid the torpedoes and put some distance between him and the light cruisers. As he did so, he resumed his shelling of the heavy cruiser knocking out her ‘A’ turret, setting off a major fire amidships and driving a hole in the front part of the ship. Despite listing 7°, Exeter was not finished yet and with her speed remarkably unimpaired, Bell was able to turn his vessel so that she could fire her port side torpedoes at the Graf Spee. Langsdorff was forced to alter course yet again – this time 120º away from his enemies – but without having the speed to outrun them, he was left with few alternatives other than to try to destroy Exeter before coping with Achilles and Ajax.

Sensing that his adversary was about to do just that, Harwood decided to intervene by turning westward and shortening the distance between his light cruisers and the Graf Spee. Once Langsdorff made yet another turn to port (0716 hours) so that he could bring his guns to bear on Exeter, Harwood ordered Ajax to turn to starboard so that his own guns could resume firing at the pocket battleship. After one of these shells had hit the Graf Spee amidships, Langsdorff was forced to turn once again to starboard to try to silence the impertinent light cruisers once and for all. Thereafter the duel continued with Langsdorff directing a withering amount of fire at Ajax – some of which struck home knocking out her after turrets – but Harwood’s ship survived and was not cajoled into silence. In the jostling for position that continued apace, Ajax responded by turning to starboard once again and firing a volley of four torpedoes at the Graf Spee from a distance of 9,000 yards (8.23km). Langsdorff combed their tracks and avoided them with ease, responding with his own spread of torpedoes all of which received the same fate. At 0730 hours Exeter’s guns at last fell silent. Although she was something of a floating wreck by this time and had lost sixty-one dead and twenty-three wounded in these exchanges, she had at least survived the pummelling the pocket battleship had given her. Ten minutes later Harwood, believing that Ajax had already used 80% of her 6-inch (152mm) AP shells, ordered his light cruisers to stop firing and turned east to put some extra distance between them and the westward fleeing Graf Spee. Learning that his ship had already expended 60% of her ammunition on this redoubtable trio of enemy ships, and having taken twenty assorted hits from them – some of which needed urgent attention before a homeward passage could be contemplated – Langsdorff opted not to continue pressing home the attack but struck west towards the estuary of the River Plate and the neutral port of Montevideo making smoke and firing her guns as she did so.

Thereafter Harwood’s light cruisers, operating without the benefit of radar, were forced to shadow the Graf Spee as she made for the Uruguayan coast throughout the daylight hours. For the most part they were able to stay out of harm’s way, but they were soon alone in their quest to do so as Exeter’s plight got worse as the morning wore on and Harwood was left with little alternative but to order her south to Port Stanley in the early afternoon for major repairs. As Exeter bore away and laboured south towards the Falklands, Harwood’s other heavy cruiser Cumberland was proceeding north in the opposite direction on the long slog to join Force G. Whether she would arrive in time was an open question for much, if not everything, now depended upon what Langsdorff might decide to do in the next few hours. If he opted to enter the estuary of the River Plate as a ploy or feint to throw Harwood off the scent before stealing away northward again under cover of darkness, Force G would be hard pressed to counter the manoeuvre. If he decided to enter the harbour at Montevideo in order to make some running repairs to the Graf Spee, the critical factor would be the time he would have to spend in port to repair the damage inflicted upon her by the British ships. Obviously the more serious the damage his ship had sustained, the longer he would need to stay in port to remedy the problem and the greater the difficulty he would have in escaping from the River Plate.

October was not a good month for the Allies. Quite apart from Prien’s stunning escapade at Scapa and the steady drip of mercantile victims succumbing to U-boat attacks along the trade routes, two of the German pocket battleships – the Admiral Graf Spee and the Deutschland – were out on the loose in the vastness of the Atlantic and threatening to create mayhem wherever they went. Churchill and the Admiralty wasted little time in forming hunting groups to tackle both menaces, but neither naval force remotely succeeded in homing in on their quarry or preventing them from doing what they wanted with whoever they pleased. While the Deutschland’s foray promised far more than it actually achieved, the same could not be said for the Graf Spee. Here was a commerce raider worthy of the name. Under her wily captain Hans Langsdorff, the Graf Spee adopted the classic technique of hitting and running and was highly effective in both phases of the game. Langsdorff revelled in his elusiveness and unpredictability. In order to achieve the element of surprise that he enjoyed so much, he was willing to cover vast tracts of the ocean, backtracking when necessary and lying low for long spells to refuel as well, so as to throw his pursuers off the scent. While he understood that his primary task was to destroy as much mercantile shipping as he could, he was under strict instructions not to get into a firestorm with heavier units of the Royal Navy that were vainly searching for him. If there was any danger of such a set-piece battle taking place, Langsdorff was supposed to employ ‘cut and run’ tactics, leaving the scene as quickly as he could so as to ensure that his ship could live to fight another day. These orders became chafing for a dashing man of adventure such as himself. Inspired by his own success, Langsdorff felt his ship had the firepower, speed and manoeuvrability to cope with anything the Allies might throw at him. A mixture of hubris and overconfidence has undermined many warriors in the past and Langsdorff was the latest to fall victim to it a few weeks later in the South Atlantic.

As the Allies cast around in growing agitation and frustration for either of the pocket battleships, the Germans stirred the mix by sending two of their battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau out into the Faroes–Iceland passage of the North Atlantic in late November to meddle with the Northern Patrol and complicate the search for the Graf Spee. They did both. Scharnhorst swiftly dispatched the auxiliary cruiser Rawalpindi in a hail of gunfire on 23 November and lured the Home Fleet into another vexatious search that was only finally abandoned several days later long after the ‘two sisters’ had used a spell of atrocious weather to make good their escape back into the North Sea and had regained the safety of their home base of Wilhelmshaven.

Germany’s commerce raiders.
Although Deutschland had escaped back to Germany and been renamed Lützow, the Graf Spee was still thought to be hiding somewhere in the South Atlantic or the Indian Ocean and the vast Allied naval dragnet – consisting of no less than five aircraft carriers, four battleships, a battlecruiser, twenty cruisers, nine destroyers, a sloop and a submarine – was no closer to finding and destroying her at the end of November than it had been at the beginning of the month. Spread as they were across two oceans, the various Allied hunting groups desperately needed any shred of evidence that could help to pinpoint where Langsdorff and his pocket battleship might be or give them a semblance of a clue as to where he might strike next. A breakthrough was finally made when reports came in of attacks by an enemy warship on the Blue Star liner Doric Star and the British freighter Tairoa on 2–3 December in the South Atlantic between St. Helena and Cape Town. Both ships were sunk in these exchanges but not before they had sent out distress calls indicating that they were under attack from a large enemy warship. This looked like the handiwork of the Graf Spee and a hunting group was sent off to check on whether she was still at large off the west coast of southern Africa. What these reports did was to scotch any rumours that the Graf Spee had somehow managed to evade all of the search groups that were out looking for her and had left the region to return to her German base.

One of these groups – the depleted cruiser Force G under the command of Commodore Henry Harwood – was monitoring developments all the way down the South American coastline from Brazil to the Falkland Islands. In early December 1939 Harwood had only the heavy cruiser Exeter and the two light cruisers Achilles and Ajax at his disposal. His other heavy cruiser Cumberland was being repaired in Port Stanley. Knowing that he couldn’t afford to engage the Graf Spee on a one-to-one basis, Harwood decided to consolidate his group 150nm (278km) off the coast of Uruguay at 0700 hours on 12 December and wait to see whether Langsdorff would be attracted to the busy mercantile shipping routes extending north from the Argentinean capital Buenos Aires to the Brazilian coastline. It was an inspired decision.

After making good his escape from African waters, Langsdorff was intent on crossing the South Atlantic so that he could raid exactly the same trade routes that Harwood had identified. It was an option he liked even before he recovered some documents thrown overboard from the cargo ship Streonshahl which he had attacked and sunk on 7 December. These papers indicated that a convoy of four ships with few escorts worthy of the name was due to sail from the Uruguayan port of Montevideo on 10 December. In his eyes, it was too good an opportunity to miss even though he knew from the intelligence reports he had been receiving from the B-Dienst roughly where the Allied hunting groups were in their pursuit of him.

A TANK-INFANTRY TEAM entering Rome on 4 June. The burning vehicle is a German Tiger tank. The enemy had been evacuating the city for several days, but had left a strong rear guard equipped with tanks and artillery to hold the Allies in and below the city as long as possible. Since the streets of Rome were not suitable for conventional infantry attacks, small tank-infantry teams entered the city from several directions and by early morning of 5 June were in possession of the bridges across the Tiber.

Only with the fourth Battle of Cassino did Alexander and Clark achieve the level of coordination necessary to breach, at long last, the Gustav Line. This resulted in a general breakthrough and a massive offensive beginning on May 11, 1944. Monte Cassino fell, and the forces at Anzio could now commence their breakout as well. All elements were positioned for an attack on Kesselring’s forces at Valmontine. Here was an opportunity to destroy the principal part of the German army in Italy. But on the very verge of victory, Clark decided instead to capture Rome rather than concentrate on destroying the enemy army. It was an all too familiar temptation, especially given the historical and even mythic significance of the Eternal City and the fact that here was an opportunity to retake the first of the Axis capitals. Rome fell on June 4 (ironically, the landings at Normandy on June 6 stole Clark’s headlines as well as his thunder), but by diverting his forces to take Rome, Clark opened up a gap between the Allied armies and took the pressure off the rear of Kesselring’s forces. The Germans were therefore able to withdraw intact, their army preserved. Rome had been gained, but the chance to end the Italian Campaign swiftly had been lost.

The new Fourteenth Army commander could do little to reverse the tide of events. When units of the II and VI Corps began to exploit the gap made by the 36th Division, and when the FEC and Eighth Army renewed their attacks (north of Frosinone), Kesselring was forced on 2 June to order all German units to break off contact and withdraw north. Declaring Rome an open city on 3 June, the Tenth and Fourteenth Armies conducted an orderly retreat through the city. Only the suburbs were contested. On orders from Hitler, the wholesale vandalism and demolitions that had characterized the evacuation of Naples the previous fall were not repeated.

During the night of 4 June elements of the 1st Special Service Force, 1st Armored Division, and the 3d, 34th, 36th, 85th, and 88^th Infantry Divisions entered Rome and quickly moved north. On the following morning large numbers of Romans poured into the streets to give the long columns of American soldiers still passing through Rome a tumultuous welcome. The American troops who actually liberated the city, however, had passed through Rome during the early morning hours in darkness and near silence and were again engaging the Germans along a twenty-mile front on the Tiber River.

The liberation of Rome made headlines around the world and was greeted by the Allies with great joy. Yet the capture of this first Axis capital had a high price. Since the start of DIADEM on 11 May, the Fifth Army had suffered a total of 17,931 American casualties: 3,145 killed, 13,704 wounded, and 1,082 missing 30 percent of the total casualties suffered by the Americans since Salerno in September 1943. French and British Fifth Army casualties numbered 10,635 and 3,355 respectively. The Eighth Army counted casualties of 11,639, bringing total Allied losses during the campaign to over 43,000. German losses were estimated at 38,000, for both Tenth and Fourteenth Armies, not including 15,606 prisoners of war.

There was little doubt now among the Allies that the Germans would be defeated in Italy, but by succumbing to the seduction of Rome, Clark had relinquished the momentum of the campaign. As far as the Allies were concerned, Italy was now very much a secondary front and six entire divisions were withdrawn from the country to participate in landings in the south of France. A plan to supplement the remaining U.S. and British forces with Italian troops enjoyed little success, and the continued Allied advance was greatly impeded by the many rivers that cross the Italian peninsula, especially after abnormally heavy autumn rains caused extensive flooding.

A singularly unfortunate chain of events was taking place in the South Atlantic. Human errors of judgement that end up in costing lives are always to be regretted whether they occur in peace or wartime, and the Laconia affair was one such tragedy that could have been avoided but sadly wasn’t for all the wrong motives. It began some 500nm (926km) northeast of Ascension Island with the torpedoing late at night (2200 hours) of a large Allied transport by the Type IX U-boat U156 on 12 September. Kapitänleutnant Werner Hartenstein, U156’s much decorated commander, had not bargained on the former White Star liner Laconia (19,695 tons) carrying in addition to her crew of 136 a group of eighty women and children, 428 British and Polish troops and some 1,800 Italian POWs at the time of her sinking. Once U156 had surfaced after the attack, Hartenstein was greeted by a quite unforgettable sight of well over two thousand people bobbing around in the water struggling for survival. After informing his superiors in Hamburg, he began picking up as many survivors as possible, stashing them wherever room could be found for them both above and below deck, and helping to cram even more into Laconia’s few usable lifeboats. Helpful though this was, there were still hundreds of others who were clinging to life in the sea and so Hartenstein used his W/T to broadcast in plain language an appeal for help in rescuing these survivors from both friend and foe alike. All sides scrambled to help: Dönitz sent two U-boats (U506 and U507) as well as an Italian submarine (Cappellini) to the scene; the Vichy French agreed to send some vessels from their ports in Senegal and Dahomey; and the British dispatched their auxiliary cruiser Corinthian and merchant ship Empire Haven from Takoradi, but did so with a request for air support from the American base on Ascension Island just in case the German promise not to attack them did not amount to much. After being on the surface for more than two and a half days, U156 was joined on 15 September by the other U-boats that Dönitz had sent to assist in the rescue attempt. All four submarines with Red Cross flags festooned all over their gun decks and their hulls lined with survivors then began the slow process of towing the serviceable lifeboats to a rendezvous with the Vichy French ships that were coming from the West African coast.

On the following day Lieutenant James Harden piloting a US B-24 Liberator bomber from the USAAF 343rd Bombardment Squadron was on his way from Ascension Island to Africa when he chanced upon this strange procession far below him and radioed back to base on Ascension Island informing the American authorities of what seemed to be afoot. It fell to Captain Robert Richardson III, the senior officer on duty that morning, to make the fatal decision of whether to help or hinder the rescue attempt. Richardson decided that U-boats were fair game wherever and whenever they were spotted, regardless of whether they were flying Red Cross flags or not, and ordered Harden to attack the submarines while they remained sitting ducks on the surface and before they had a chance to dive out of sight. It was the wrong move and had tragic consequences. Harden failed to plant a bomb on any of the four submarines, but in straddling U156 he did manage to drop one bomb that landed amongst the lifeboats. Amazed by this turn of events, Hartenstein cast off the remaining lifeboats and promptly submerged, cascading all those survivors that had been living on his hull for several days into the water. In the end, 1,083 managed to survive the entire ordeal, the majority of them being picked up some hours later by three Vichy French warships and taken back to port in West Africa. Although all four U-boats escaped Harden’s bombing and depth charging, Dönitz was so incensed by this example of squalid opportunism on the part of the Allies that he issued the fateful Laconia orders on 17 September. These would be used four years later to convict him of war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials. His orders were quite explicit and indicated that in future no U-boat commanders would trouble themselves attempting to rescue any survivors from enemy vessels other than those drawn from the ranks of captain or chief engineer who were needed for purposes of interrogation. His Laconia orders exposed a deep vein of ruthlessness in Dönitz, but Richardson’s crass error of judgement in the first place in seeking to take advantage of the situation was surely no better.

In the Mediterranean Admiral Dönitz’s main source of aggravation centred on the lamentable performance of the Italian military services in failing to eliminate Malta from the war. It was a feeling shared by many of his compatriots who saw the island’s continued existence as an Allied redoubt – in what even the Supermarina acknowledged ought to have been an exclusively Italian domain – as a glaring example of Italian military incompetence. While carriers, submarines and fast minelayers were pressed into service in order to assist the island’s defence, they remained no more than short term expedients resorted to in the absence of large supply convoys. If the Allies were serious about holding onto the island, therefore, they would have to organise something more substantial than a few willing, but limited capacity, submarines to keep the forces and people on Malta going. Acknowledging this and the risks linked to it, the Allies set about establishing a large supply convoy in early August. Operation Pedestal, with thirteen transports and a tanker at its heart, was essentially two missions in one. A force of Spitfires would be flown off to Malta by the carrier Furious while three other carriers (Eagle, Indomitable and Victorious), would be expected to provide fighter protection for the rest of the convoy and its strong warship escorts on their route into Malta. Pedestal’s aims would not be easy to accomplish. For a start, the Allied convoy was expected and the Supermarina, stung by German criticism and its own record of inadequacy, was more determined than ever to take a prominent role in destroying as much of it as possible. In the hope of trapping the convoy, the Italians set out three submarine lairs. In the gap between Algiers and the Balearics they deployed five of their own submarines and two U-boats; another eleven of their own submarines were deployed in a line from the north of Tunisia to Cape Bon, and one more submarine was stationed to the west of Malta. Their surface forces, consisting of six cruisers and eleven destroyers, would be held in reserve and only committed if the convoy broke through and threatened to reach Malta.

Pedestal really got underway when the supply convoy passed through the Strait of Gibraltar on 10 August with its escort of four light cruisers and eleven destroyers, along with the strong covering force of the four carriers mentioned above, the two battleships Nelson and Rodney, three more light cruisers and another fourteen destroyers. Before Furious had even reached her target area south of the Balearics and flown off thirty-seven Spitfires to Malta on 11 August, she and the other carriers were unsuccessfully attacked by the Italian submarine, Uarsciek. It was left to U73 to show the other members of her group how to settle scores with the enemy when she fired four torpedoes into the Eagle sinking her and drowning 260 of her crew. This was an early and profound setback for the Allies, one on which they had not bargained beforehand. Furious, her job done, wasted no time in setting course for Gibraltar. On her way home accompanied by five destroyers she was attacked by the Italian submarine Dagabur – another from the group formed south of the Balearics. In her efforts to take out a second carrier, the submarine was surprised, rammed and sunk by Wolverine, one of the five destroyer escorts given to Furious. Giada, from the same group, fared a little better: although bombed and damaged by a Sunderland flying-boat she was not a total write off. Dive-bomber and torpedo-bomber attacks on the main Pedestal convoy for Malta intensified as the day continued; 199 German and Italian planes were committed to a series of punishing attacks that came in waves that lasted from early morning until midnight on 12–13 August. A total of 122 aircraft (86 Ju-88s, 29 Ju-87s, 7 He-111s) were used by the Luftwaffe on 12 August and the Italians committed a total of 77 (47 S-79s, 20 S-84s, 8 G-42s, 2 Re-2001s) to these attacks. After two Italian Re 2001 fighter-bombers had found and struck the carrier Victorious with armour-piercing bombs that failed to live up to their manufacturers’ hype by rebounding from her flight deck, a smothering group of Ju-87s had more luck in one of the afternoon sessions by wading in with three massive blows on the carrier Indomitable knocking out her air operations capability altogether. Interspersed with this frequent aerial activity came a probing series of submarine raids which, though effectively neutralised early in the day by the destroyer screen, began to get through during the evening as tiredness told and the requisite protective vigilance was not quite what it had been earlier in the day. By midnight these persistent attacks by Axis air and sea forces had inflicted considerable punishment on the Allied convoy. Two transports and one destroyer had been sunk; three cruisers, three transports and a tanker had all been torpedoed; and another destroyer had been badly damaged in a ramming incident with the Italian submarine Cobalto.
It would not get any better on the following day as a number of Italian motor torpedo boats (MAS) took up the early challenge by mounting fifteen attacks in a four-hour period that netted the light cruiser Manchester and four transports (sunk), while another, Rochester Castle, despite also being bombed, eventually reached Malta later that same day. Along with the MAS boats came more aircraft in a virtually ceaseless series of raids that took out two more transports and damaged two others and a tanker. Eventually, only four transports and the sole tanker Ohio from the supply convoy of fourteen vessels were ushered into Maltese waters. A survival rate of only 35.7% for the supply side of the convoy meant that Pedestal had nearly been as costly in percentage terms as that of the infamous PQ.17. What was more worrying was that this convoy, unlike its Arctic comparison, had stuck together as much as it could under the circumstances and not been told to scatter by the Admiralty.

Moreover, it had lost these transports and seen its principal escorts decimated without any intervention from the Italian surface fleet whatsoever. Held in reserve, it hadn’t ventured out because of a lack of suitable air cover. So what was already a bad result might have been much worse. What this operation showed only too clearly was just how dangerous a stretch of sea the Mediterranean could be for the Allies if the Axis forces got their act together and were able to work with one another effectively. If they could exploit the singular advantages they held, such as occupation of the littoral shoreline for much of the length and breadth of the Mediterranean, the Allies would be hard put to resist them. Despite these problems, however, the Mediterranean could not be abandoned. An Allied presence there was essential for the North African theatre, and for exposing what Churchill was apt to call the soft underbelly of the Axis. As such, the Allied high command was prepared to live with the inconvenience and the losses in order to maintain their presence there. Pedestal had barely ended when the next Spitfire supply operation, Baritone, was launched on 16 August. Another thirty-two fighter aircraft were loaded on board Furious and taken south of the Balearics to fly to Malta. All but three of them arrived safely.

Members of the U.S. Army Signal Corps using flags to communicate from an artillery position outside the city of Manila. (Library of Congress)


Last battle fought during the Spanish-American War on August 13, 1898, in Manila. The engagement, which pitted troops of the U.S. Army VIII Corps against Spanish forces, was waged after the Protocol of Peace of August 12 had been signed in Cuba, which ostensibly ended hostilities. At the time, the cable linking Manila with Hong Kong had been cut, so field commanders in the Philippines were unaware of the truce agreement.

Manila, the capital and most important city of the Philippines, is located on the east side of Manila Bay on the island of Luzon. As the capital, Manila was the center of Spanish power in the archipelago and understandably the focal point of Filipino nationalists’ efforts to overthrow Spanish rule. Following his breathtaking defeat of the Spanish naval squadron at Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, Commodore George Dewey realized that Manila could and should be seized; however, he had no available landing force to undertake such a mission and therefore could only remain in place and await the army’s arrival.

The Philippine Expeditionary Force (VIII Corps) reached the Philippines in three contingents, departing from San Francisco as ship availability permitted. The first contingent of 2,500 men, under Brigadier General Thomas Anderson, arrived at the end of June, followed in mid-July by 3,500 additional men under Brigadier General Francis V. Greene. The final contingent, numbering some 4,800 troops and commanded by Brigadier General Arthur MacArthur, reached the islands at the end of July, as did commander of VIII Corps Major General Wesley Merritt.

At the end of July, the Spanish still controlled Manila and much of its environs. The city proper was split by the Pasig River, south of which stood the old walled city of Fort Santiago. The Spanish defensive line, known as the Zapote Line, was located 1.5 miles to the south from where a large blockhouse, Number 14, on the Pasay Road extended west to a stone structure known as Fort San Antonio de Abad, located near the shore of Manila Bay. A line of entrenchments connected these two strong points.

Opposing the Spanish positions were some 10,000 Filipino nationalist troops under the overall command of General Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy, who had formally proclaimed the Republic of the Philippines on June 12. Through the early summer, the nationalists had managed to isolate Manila from its source of supplies, in effect leaving it a city under siege. In Manila, food was scarce and mainly consisted of a little horseflesh and some water buffalo. At night the nationalists and the Spanish defenders maintained lively fire between the two lines but undertook no serious offensive movements.

During the course of the U.S. buildup, Greene’s troops constructed a series of entrenchments and moved into some of the works created by the nationalists, who abandoned these positions only reluctantly when Greene persuaded them to do so. The arrangement was irregular, however. In places the nationalist forces actually occupied trench works in between the Americans and the Spaniards.
During the two weeks preceding the attack on Manila, heavy rains of the monsoon season had drenched the area. The period was also characterized by frequent exchanges of artillery and rifle fire between the Americans and the Spanish, with Greene’s units sustaining a number of casualties. In addition, relations between the Americans and Aguinaldo’s men, at first cordial, began to deteriorate, as the latter had grown increasingly suspicious of U.S. intentions in the islands.

During the latter part of July, Dewey, now a rear admiral, became convinced that the Spanish would surrender Manila through negotiations. Thus, he met first with Captain-General Basilio Augustín y Dávila and later with his successor, Fermín Jáudenes y Alvarez, to explore possible arrangements. Nevertheless, Greene urged naval gunfire on Spanish positions to relieve the pressure on his command. His troops had dug a line of trenches south of Fort Abad and were taking casualties from Spanish fire every day. General Merritt supported Greene in this request. Dewey, however, was reluctant to open fire from his warships, fearing that doing so would destroy any chance of securing the city by negotiation, an arrangement that he still believed to be entirely possible. Dewey suggested that perhaps the troops could be withdrawn from the trenches until a general attack became necessary.

The admiral, however, did agree to support Greene should this prove absolutely necessary. In that eventuality, Greene was to burn a blue light on the beach, and the ships would open fire. Dewey hoped that it would not be necessary. Merritt had arrived in the Philippines under orders from President William McKinley not to involve the nationalists in taking Manila because to do so would mean including them as partners in future treaty negotiations with Spain. Fermin Jáudenes y Alvarez, who had recently replaced Basilio Augustín as Spanish commander in Manila, had taken over with orders to hold the city. Inasmuch as peace negotiations were about to get under way, Spain’s bargaining position would be weakened by a surrender of the city.

On August 9, 1898, Merritt and Dewey sent an ultimatum to Jáudenes demanding that he surrender Manila. They warned that if he did not, U.S. forces would attack. Jáudenes responded by convening a meeting of his subordinate commanders, putting the issue to a vote. Seven voted in favor of immediate negotiations for a surrender, while seven were opposed. Jáudenes broke the tie, with a decision to continue the present delaying tactics. He informed the Americans that he had no authority to surrender and asked to be able to communicate with Madrid through Hong Kong. On August 10, Dewey and Merritt rejected the suggestion.

In the meantime, Dewey pursued separate negotiations with Jáudenes, working through Belgian consul in Manila Edouard André. Jáudenes then agreed to consider surrendering Manila to U.S. forces but insisted that it would have to appear that a genuine effort had been made to defend the city in order to salvage Spanish honor. Perhaps most important, the Filipino nationalists could not be allowed to enter the city, as Jáudenes feared that they would show no mercy to the Spanish defenders. He also did not want to make it appear as if Spain were surrendering to the Filipinos. Thus, Spain and the United States each had its reasons for wanting to keep Aguinaldo’s men from entering Manila.

Finally, the two sides agreed that the Spanish would offer a token defense of their outer works but not of the walled city itself. However, neither of the U.S. commanders who were to lead the attack, Generals Greene and MacArthur, had been made aware of the pact because General Merritt feared that if they had known of the arrangements, their respective attacks would have lacked authenticity.
Following expiration of the 48-hour truce, Merritt’s forces prepared to move. The axis of their attack would be south to north in two essentially parallel columns. Greene’s brigade would advance along the northern flank nearest Manila Bay, while MacArthur’s brigade was to move along the southern flank. By prearrangement, Dewey’s flagship, the Olympia, would fire a few token rounds at the heavy stone walls of Fort San Antonio de Abad before raising the international signal flag calling for Spain’s surrender.

On the morning of August 13 amid a heavy rain, reveille was sounded. Following the naval bombardment, directed against Fort San Antonio de Abad as agreed, the American artillery opened fire, and the assault moved forward, with the troops advancing under what had turned into a drenching deluge. The Spanish resistance turned out to be heavier than Merritt had expected although not sufficient to thwart the advance. The Spanish defenders gradually fell back, and Greene moved into the city unopposed to accept the Spanish surrender.

On the right flank MacArthur found the going much tougher, exacerbated by Filipino nationalists determined to be involved in the capture of the city. As MacArthur’s troops moved north along the Singalong Road, Spanish infantry positioned in a blockhouse inflicted numerous casualties on a regiment of Minnesotans. MacArthur’s biggest challenge, however, was in keeping the nationalists from entering the city.

As his troops moved closer to Manila, their ranks became increasingly intermingled with those of the Filipinos, and MacArthur was compelled to have his commanders hold the nationalists back from the city. By the end of the day, U.S. troops had occupied all of Manila proper, but outside the city, Aguinaldo’s troops, angry at being denied entrance, were in an ugly mood. Fortunately for the Americans, the heavy tropical storm served to help defuse the hostile mob. On August 14, a joint group of American and Spanish officers agreed to a formal capitulation agreement supplementing a preliminary agreement signed by Merritt and Jáudenes the day before.

The U.S. capture of Manila yielded some 13,000 Spanish prisoners. In addition, the United States garnered 22,000 stands of small arms, 10 million rounds of ammunition, and 70 pieces of artillery. Because Manila had been seized after the Protocol of Peace had been signed, Spanish negotiators in Paris during the autumn of 1898 argued that the U.S. capture of Manila was not valid, a point that the U.S. peace commissioners countered successfully.

Further Reading Cosmas, Graham A. An Army for Empire: The United States Army in the Spanish-American War. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1994. Linn, Brian McAllister. The Philippine War, 1899–1902. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000. Musicant, Ivan. Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American Century. New York: Henry Holt, 1998. Wolff, Leon. Little Brown Brother: America’s Forgotten Bid for Empire Which Cost 250,000 Lives. New York: Kraus Reprint, 1970.