Chapter 40 Chapter Thirty-Nine

Global Waterloo - Guadalcanal Island (from Armin Von Roon's "World Massacre") November 1942!No German will hear this month without shuddering. During that ominous month, our brief absolute reign was met with four simultaneous catastrophes: two in North Africa, one in Russia, and one in the South Pacific.The Alamein Offensive, which the British began in late October, pushed Rommel's African Corps out of Egypt on November 2, never to return.On November 8, the British and Americans landed in Morocco and Algeria.From the thirteenth to the sixteenth, the battle for Guadalcanal was reversed.On November 19, a large Soviet force broke through the Stalingrad front and began to cut off our Sixth Army.

Historians have tended to ignore the terrible timing of these four-pronged blows.We German writers talk about Stalingrad, mostly mention the Mediterranean, and keep silent about the Pacific.According to the pseudo-historians of the Communist Party, it seems that only Stalingrad was fighting at that time.winston.Alamein written by Churchill was a small battle in the textbook. The supplies provided by the "Lend-Lease Act" gave the British an overwhelming advantage and determined the outcome of the battlefield.American writers emphasized their light-hearted forays into French North Africa, and inexplicably dismissed Guadalcanal, America's best battle.

Global Waterloo is in fact a thunderous, fiery reversal of our war effort on a global scale—on oceans, in deserts, on beaches, in jungles, on city streets. In the alley, on a tropical island, in the snowstorm.We Germans entrust our souls to their world-conquering adventurer, Hitler, who lost the initiative in November 1942 and has never recovered from it.After that, he was besieged on all sides, no longer fighting for the world empire, but just to keep his head. From a military point of view, even at that time, the situation did not reach the point of no return, as long as we adopted correct military tactics, in fact we also had a group of outstanding tacticians at that time.Manstein's exemplary combat retreat from the Caucasus after Stalingrad will go down in history, comparable to Xenophon's march to the Black Sea.But Hitler, as the head of the military, could only make mistakes like a pig.Since no one could loosen his high-pressure grip on the armed forces, the Germanic nation was dragged by him to a dead end.

The heyday of the Third Reich To understand how arrogant Hitler was before his downfall, it is necessary to sketch the situation in Germany before November 1942. For today's German readers, this is a difficult task.We have become a timid people, ashamed of our powerful, yet Faustian past.Our defeated and greatly reduced homeland was dismembered.Bolshevism hijacked one half of it; the other half bowed to the dollar.Our economic vitality has recovered, but our place in world affairs remains ambiguous.The errors and crimes of the Nazis in just a dozen years have overshadowed centuries of glorious record.

But in the summer of 1942, we were still doing well.The German army on the Eastern Front was like an arrow flying off the string, and the offensive was fierce.We stormed Sevastopol, wiped out the enemy forces on the Kerch Peninsula, and then broke into the southern hinterland of the Soviet Union in two ways: one way across the Don River to the Volga River, and the other way to the Caucasus oil fields in the south.Everywhere in front of us Stalin's troops fell back with heavy losses.Rommel's impressive capture of Tobruk, which opened the way to the Suez Canal, only narrowly missed knocking Churchill to the ground.

Our partner Japan has occupied Southeast Asia and is advancing from Burma to the Indian frontier.The impotent Chinese coastal provinces in its grasp are infallible.Its defeat at Midway was shrouded in the fog of war and kept unrecognized.Wherever its armies went, they hit the ground running.The shift in world power made all Asia shudder.India is torn apart by unrest.Its National Congress party demanded the immediate withdrawal of the British.An Indian government-in-exile is being organized to fight on the side of the Japanese. In the Arctic Sea, the PQ-17 escort fleet suffered a disastrous defeat at the end of June, and we cut off the supply of leased materials to Murmansk, which dealt another serious blow to the already crumbling Red Army.This defeat marked the end of the road for Britain at sea.The covering force of the escort fleet issued a warning that our heavy surface ships were approaching, and ordered the cargo merchant ships to evacuate immediately, and it immediately turned around and fled back to Britain!The heroic spirits of Drake and Nelson must have shed tears in the words of loyalty.The killing that ensued was nothing more than using our air force and submarines to shoot a bunch of rabbits.The ruthless sea swallowed 23 of the 37 merchant ships and 100,000 tons of war materials in one gulp, and also killed a large number of people on the seabed.A brazen telegram from Churchill to Stalin announcing the cancellation of the Murmansk transport line set the Slavs into a rage.The eccentric alliance of capitalism and Bolshevism was thus wounded.

Seeing is believing, in the summer and fall of 1942 we were victorious despite adversity, despite America's turn against us, and despite Hitler's repeated missteps that held us back. Translator's Note: The Murmansk line was shut down during the summer months of the Arctic's long days, and has since been reinstated.In December, British destroyers escorting another convoy repelled a German task force consisting of a pocket battleship and a heavy cruiser.Hitler was furious at this defeat and ordered the dismantling of the German fleet and the transfer of artillery to land warfare.Admiral Raeder resigned.Doenitz took over the navy, but Germany's surface fleet never recovered from Hitler's wrath.

Long's evaluation of the Battle of Guadalcanal is not prejudiced, and it is also credible.There were no Germans in the fighting there. All of Europe in the Pacific Theater, from the Bay of Biscay to the Urals, may be sunk without a trace between Honolulu and Manila, but the Pacific Ocean is fought in a much wider area.Unheard-of areas of operation, unprecedented joint operations of land, sea and air: this is the fascinating part of the chase in the Pacific.The historical moment to complete such a combat operation has come and gone in a hurry.Its climax was a six-month dogfight, a fierce battle from the sky to the sea, from the water to the jungle, for an airfield that could only accommodate sixty planes: Guadalcana Henderson Airport on Illinois.

Guadalcanal was a neglected battle, the ground-breaking little Battle of Stalingrad in the Pacific that revolved around the grounds where the planes rested.If it had been a British victory, Churchill would have written a long book about it.But Americans are insensitive to their war history.They lack the nostalgia of Europe, and they lack writers who have been influenced by a broad culture. My research has been hampered by the fact that I have not been able to adequately describe the two major battles of Stalingrad and Guadalcanal, but it is still possible to think that the Second World War revolved between these poles.We reached the Volga north of Stalingrad in August.The Americans landed on Guadalcanal in August.General Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad on February 2, 1943; the United States held on to Guadalcanal on February 9.Both battles were fought to the death and won defensively on a backwater position: the Russians had the Volga behind them, the Americans were on a beachhead with their backs to the sea.Both battles were a head-on collision of national willpower.The outcome of both campaigns changed the situation in their respective theaters, as has been seen throughout the world.

German readers must remember that this is a global war.There is only one Europe in our minds, and Bolshevik historians also write that way.But in Adolf.Under the amateurish, yet dynamic leadership of Hitler, our nation broke through the entire system of world imperialism.For six years, the five continents were shaken by wind and thunder, and the whole world was full of vicissitudes.Much of our planet's landmass—fifty-eight million square miles of real estate—is precarious.The samurai class in Asia emerged at the historic moment and formed an alliance with the soldiers in Northern Europe, determined to redistribute the inhabitable part of the earth's surface in a fair and reasonable way.It should be said that the reason why two armed fires did not break out on both sides of the earth at the same time is implicit in the nature of this turmoil affecting the whole world.The Japanese's mighty march was blocked at Midway Island after being hit hard, just like our blocking at the city of Moscow in December 1941.Both are chilling warnings.But the fatal contest still awaits the two unique battles in Stalingrad and Guadalcanal in the future.

The difference between the two is of course not to be underestimated.If we had defeated the Red Army at Stalingrad, history would not exist in its present form; however, if the Americans were driven out of Guadalcanal, they would still most likely send in new fleets, air groups and tanks The division made a comeback and defeated the Japanese elsewhere.Stalingrad was a much larger battle, a more veritable decisive battle.Nonetheless, its similarities should be kept in mind. Admiral King There is a witticism circulating in the US Navy about Admiral Ernest.King "shaved with a flamethrower".King was a veteran of the Naval Aviation with numerous feats in his life, including raising a sunken submarine on the high seas.He had been placed in the Council of Arms for the rest of his life, an advisory group for a veteran admiral who had nowhere else to go.He is cruel and aggressive by nature, so he is unpopular.There are many people whose self-esteem is damaged by him, and whose future is ruined by him.Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt appointed him commander in chief of the United States Navy.It is said that King once said something like this, "When things go wrong, they will come to the turtle son." In the German army, it is sad, once "something goes wrong", the Führer looks for some flatterers . In addition to the problem of the rampaging Japanese, King had to contend with the established Roosevelt-Churchill approach of "Germany first."The Joint Chiefs of Staff favored that larger struggle over "his" war.Jin Heng's next plan was to attack Tulagi Island, which evolved into the Battle of Guadalcanal. Japan's war goal Although the Japanese are talking big and aggressive, they do not really want to defeat the United States in a single war.Their goals are limited.They believe that Southeast Asia cannot tolerate the United States.Now that we have conquered Europe, the time is ripe: to drive out the imperialist exploiters, to establish a peaceful Greater East Asia for Asians, including a China that has been appeased; a so-called Co-Prosperity Sphere under Japanese leadership, and Germany, the future master of the world, is on friendly terms. Their operational objective was to quickly capture their coveted territory and then defend the interior of a powerful nation's perimeter.They hoped that the well-to-do Americans across the oceans would get tired of a costly and not very profitable war and would conclude a face-saving peace.This might well have been the case had it not been for the attack on Pearl Harbor, which outraged proud Americans, and especially their excellent Navy, to the rage of irrational cowboys, Thirst for vengeance on the lawless frontier. English translator's note on the third edition in 1973: The experience in Vietnam made me doubt Feng.Long's words are absolutely correct. America's War Goals On the other hand, the U.S. Navy has been deliberating over the past two decades to destroy Japan if the U.S. hegemony is challenged by the "yellow peril".Their battle plan foresees that Japan will fall into the trap and launch the attack first, and has also concocted an outdated counterattack plan.Someone said it, Chester.Feng.Nimitz once claimed after the war that the United States won the war completely according to the route planned by the Naval War College.The content of the plan is: 1. To hold a line of communication leading to the main forward bases of Australia and New Zealand. There are military installations on various islands located in an arc outside the range of Japanese aircraft. 2. Through the islands in the Southwest Pacific Ocean, use artillery fire to open a gap to the north and carry out a flank attack. 3. Advance westward through the atoll group in the Central Pacific Ocean, as the main direction of attack, use the offensive of crossing the island to push towards Luzon Island and Japan. However, King wanted to implement this plan, but suffered from insufficient troops in the theater he was in charge of.U.S. Army Chief of Staff George.General Marshall was a capable planner and organizer. He insisted on "Germany First" and would attack France with great fanfare in 1943 without giving an inch.He will go all out to immediately gather a large number of American manpower and materials in Britain. To Jin's surprise, both the British government Churchill and the people under him were talking about the attack.How could they forget the scenes in the Somme and Dunkirk.In July 1942, Marshall had no choice but to suggest to President Roosevelt that the United States should devote its strength to the war against Japan.Seizing the opportunity, King pressed for a quick and limited Pacific offensive: the capture of tiny Tulagi Island, a Japanese seaplane base in the Solomon Islands.Although approved earlier, Operation Tulagi was stalled by a battle for supremacy between the Army and Navy.Now it was moving, making an intricate deal about command that temporarily bypassed that dead end.American and British planners were busy working on the North African landing operation known as Torch shortly thereafter, but King's operation continued in the meantime.Its name was 'Operation Watchtower'. His numbers were so poor that they were nicknamed "Shoelaces" on the battlefield. English translator's note: I deleted Feng here.Long's lengthy analysis of the struggle for command between the Army and Navy and of Operation Tulagi.MacArthur was eager to try and had a bigger appetite, trying to take down the large Japanese air force base in Rabaul in one fell swoop.Feng.Long’s comment is: “A general’s vanity will influence the situation of the battle, and it will also ruin the situation of the battle. The issue of command power between MacArthur and Nimitz caused repeated disturbances in the Pacific War, and finally led to the battle of Leyte Gulf. "I will include an article on Feng later in this book.Long's controversial article on the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The preparations for the first bloody capture of Tulagi are in progress, and a military intelligence report on coast guard makes this operation worth a lot.Just a few miles from Tulagi, the Japanese were building an airfield on the large island of Guadalcanal. This is explosive news.Pacific operations depend on air superiority, either from aircraft carriers or from airfields within the theater of operations.Aircraft carriers can swim and send air power where it is needed; they can also flee powerful threats.On the other hand, airfields are not in danger of sinking, and land-based planes can carry heavier bombs and fly farther than ship-based planes.A combat airfield is one of the most powerful pieces in the Pacific chess game. Rabaul Air Base, seven hundred miles northeast of Guadalcanal, threatened Australian lines of communication and blocked the advance toward Japan.So MacArthur made a bold plan to attack there, but King rejected it.But an air force base deep in the south like Guadalcanal was a heinous problem that King could not accept.Knock it out of the enemy's hands and he would have air superiority around the Solomon Islands, and USAF could engage Rabaul at long range. After boarding the "shoelace" troops received a supplementary order: to occupy and hold the Guadalcanal airfield. The United States is like this, it can be said that it has entered its Pacific war with a lot of effort. The island of Guadalcanal, shaped like a potato, a hundred miles long and fifty miles wide, was not itself a matter of contention.The ground battle raged for months on a narrow strip of plantation land on the coast north of the airfield.The rest of the mountainous island was home to mosquitoes, jungle beasts, and natives, who might have found both horror and amusement at the rumbling and flashing fireworks off the northern coast. This small and poorly equipped "shoelace" expeditionary force took Tulagi and Guadalcanal airports without any effort, but a fierce counterattack from the Japanese base in Hurricane came quickly.In a night battle known as the Battle of Savo Island, the Japanese warships sank the entire American artillery cover of four cruisers before heading off.They could have sunk all the helpless and half-empty transport ships and wiped out the "shoelace" troops, but they had to estimate that the US aircraft carrier was cruising nearby under the cover of night and would come to attack as soon as dawn kill.So they withdrew from the battle, giving the Americans a brief respite, by which they kept their ground.The two armies meet, the mighty foe has been knocked to the ground, and it is better to cut his throat again.In fact, General Fletcher and all the aircraft carriers under his command were ready to refuel at a distance of combat.Fearing an air attack from Rabaul, he drove away while the transport was still unloading. He missed the fighter plane in the Coral Sea and failed to invest all the planes in Midway Island. Fletcher had already been reprimanded by King for his cowardice earlier, but he also seemed to have had a good luck in his naval battle experience: he gave Spur A signal from Runes, "I will cooperate with you." He left the transport ship at Guadalcanal and left, almost ending the battle from the beginning.The general seemed compelled to fly as far as two hundred miles to refuel whenever danger was imminent.He disappeared after Guadalcanal. English translator's note: here Feng.Long went on to take Frank.Jack.Fletcher wanton coconut elm some.My cruiser HMS Northampton missed the battle of Savo Island, but I know that in this battle, the Japanese command, gunfire and torpedoes were good, and our side was a mess.This is why we lost four cruisers.Fletcher should have responded quickly, and his retreat was indeed conservative. The land operations from August 1942 to February 1943 The Japanese Army suffered as much from their own overconfidence as their Navy; So no lesson learned.After all, the white race has not defeated Japan on land.The army is busy carrying out the plan to attack New Guinea and threaten Australia, and only sporadic troops are sent to Guadalcanal, and the support given is too small; the American troops form a defensive circle around the airport, and the enemy shouts again and again "Long Live"'s charge was unstoppable, with flesh and blood flying all over the place. Although this line of defense was once dangerous, it still failed to break through. For Americans, it has been a shaky front for a long time.They are indeed in a situation of isolation and helplessness.Bombardment by enemy planes, bombardment by enemy ships, and night raids by enemy troops—especially malaria and other tropical diseases—caused them a great deal of casualties.Their navy was decimated, and only a handful of supplies and reinforcements were smuggled in.Hungry, thirsty, and feeling abandoned and neglected, they ate captured Japanese rice and burned Japanese gasoline.The few planes and pilots who sneaked in through the gaps soon couldn't fly, or were shot down.General Halsey's writings confirm that, on one of the bleakest days, there was only one operational plane at Henderson Field.President Roosevelt began to refer to Guadalcanal as a "small operation" in public speeches, which was a most ominous and wimpy signal.But this group of besieged Marines and exhausted airmen vow to stay with the position until the situation improves. The epic defense of Henderson Field is something to write home about when compared with the disgraceful record of American servicemen elsewhere.Those defenders are the Marines, the premier amphibious force in the Navy.American naval historian Cedrell.Elliott.Morrison's words can also be enough to explain everything: the United States is indeed lucky. On this battlefield, at this juncture, it relies not on soldiers who have been conscripted or induced to join the army, but a group of "tough guys" who volunteer to join the army. The greatest wish is to fight to the death with the enemy who sneaked into our country. This enemy has aroused all their primitive instincts. English translator's note: Feng.Long's slander about our Army will not be tolerated.The Germans fought us twice, and never won a single battle, if the Kasserine Pass contact is neglected.We even won the Battle of the Bulge.Our great army reaches the Elbe.We would have taken Berlin, too, had it not been for the prior agreement of the Allies to bring it into the Russian occupation zone. Given our social and political conditions, and America's traditional distaste for war, our soldiers are extraordinary.They are uninhibited, resourceful, and proactive; they fight without hatred.Feng.Long's mind could not tolerate the American war policy, because it was very simple and not European; the loss of life should be as small as possible, and the battle must be won. Morrison was indeed fascinated by Guadalcanal, and the US Marine Corps did fight a beautiful battle there. Battle at sea At sea, this battle presents a magnificent spectacle.Both sides were tasked at sea to support the forces fighting for Henderson Field.With airfields, the Americans were able to control the hours of daylight, and American supply ships could operate under thin air cover.But the Japanese have much stronger sea power and can travel freely in the waters of the Solomon Islands under the cover of night, so that the Americans call it the "Tokyo Express".Although the two navies missed each other due to their criss-crossed day and night operations, there were numerous encounters and the Japanese usually had the upper hand.But the Americans prevailed in the all-out Guadalcanal battle that decided the outcome. This was a big battle at sea, day and night, which lasted for four days.Both sides threw all their strength; the Japanese were finally about to land a large reinforcement, and the Americans were about to stop it.Eyewitnesses described the chilling picturesque scenes of night battles at sea: red tracers rained down like showers in the dark, blue and white searchlight beams pierced the night sky for miles, and ammunition depots on warships exploded with dazzling flames Like day, burning ships drifted on the black water.Both sides suffered heavy losses.In the end there was only one thing worth mentioning: American planes, both carrier-based and land-based, sank seven of the eleven Japanese troop transports, and the rest hit the beach and were bombed to death. A charred shell remained.Thus ended the last Japanese effort to retake the island. Since then, the strength of the Americans has grown stronger and stronger, and the Emperor's army has been desperate.In the end, the "Tokyo Express" carried out a tropical Dunkirk evacuation, transporting out the remnants of the hard-fought troops.But Japan does not have a rich idle power to come to the rescue like England.It has failed to recover since Guadalcanal. Admiral King achieved his purpose.Sweaty Marines who spent nights under Japanese gunfire, cursing, and pilots flying to and fro to their death, the bones of Guadalcanal The sailors of the Outer Sea, no doubt to their deaths, cursed the great men who sent them to such a place where no ghost came to carry out so many different combat missions.Guadalcanal was, and still is, "the fucking island" in the slang of American combatants.However, the battlefield of fighting and killing has its own spontaneous tendency. Once Jin uses Guadalcanal to kill Franklin.Roosevelt was towed to the Pacific Ocean, and he made sure that we had enough men and ships to fight the Japanese when our Third Reich was besieged on all sides and at the end of the day; When the Allies were exhausted again.In this way, Kim could deny the Japanese the opportunity for a negotiated settlement, which was originally their war goal. English translator's note: Feng.Long quoted the above expletive in English.Given the prevailing language in literature today, I suspect that readers of this book will not be overly outraged.By the way, that's exactly what I think about Guadalcanal today. In view of the later criticism of General Halsey in the chapter on Wright Gulf, I use von.It is a pity that Long did not mention his achievements in this chapter.The turning point at the Battle of Guadalcanal coincided with Halsey's removal of Vice Admiral Gormley as South Pacific Commander.Gormley fell into defeatism due to exhaustion, and MacArthur was also depressed at this time.Halsey's tenacity and inspirational leadership spurred the army back into action.