In my reading of Churchill’s Memoirs from World War II, I’m now going through the Blitz of London, or Germany’s indiscriminate bombing of England, during the late 1940.

It’s very interesting reading. For one thing, it seems as though the whole of England was teeming with a spirit of stout defiance. All alone in the war, with no allies to count on, the British still defended their island with gusto against the German Luftwaffe. Fire corps extinguished fires, men trained for only a few weeks disarmed scores of bombs with delayed fuses, people had dinner while long-range bombers dropped bombs in their yards. “Stiff upper lip and all that, old chap.”

But another interesting thing to read about is the signal war (or the “wizard war”) which also took place at the same time. The Luftwaffe navigated over England using a secret system of homing radio beams transmitted over the channel; these beams were such that they would have enabled them to bomb England with very great precision. Such was for instance the X Beam, which worked through two flickering signals, designed to overlap perfectly as the bombers were in correct position. But the British scientists found a way to jam the signal, causing the bombers to miss their position.

Then the Luftwaffe developed the Y Beam, a better solution. Before long, the British found a way to jam that one too. In one amusing tale, Churchill relates the story of an officer who was out in the country with his family, and one night happened to observe scores of large enemy bombers furiously attacking a nearby empty field, for no apparent reason whatsoever. While he was lucky to survive the onslaught himself, the officer was confounded by this; but the secrets of the counter-signal operations were so closely guarded, that it was only some time after the war that information about these operations began to leak out. Obviously, the bombers thought they were attacking, say, Birmingham.

And to top it all off, the German officer in charge of the project with the mysterious radio beams, was named General Martini.

Suddenly, I thought it all sounded rather a lot like the movie Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow — or maybe, the other way around.

Read more about the Wizard War and the British radar developments at this particular link.

For some time, I’ve tried to understand the First World War and how it could break out. WWI rarely gets the attention it deserves because of the much bigger Second World War, but it is fundamentally important to understand it; not only because it shaped the world we live in today, but also because without it, WWII could never have happened.

About ninety years ago, in the city of Sarajevo, several shots suddenly rang out among the crowds. The heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was killed. In a matter of weeks, the repercussions of this fatal shot triggered a war that swept the entire globe for four long years. How was this possible? Was it a mistake? A dramatic and unfortunate turn of events?

To the modern, democratic mind, the outbreak of the war is nearly impossible to comprehend. But Europe as it was in 1914 didn’t know what we know today. It had come a long way from the Medieval Ages; and it had seen the development of industrialism, nationalism and colonialism. The map of Europe had been altered many times by wars between neighboring nations, in instances such as the Thirty Years war, the wars of Napoleon which swept entire Europe, and not forgetting the enmity between the two archrivals Germany and France. Many political, religous and economical factors weighed heavily upon the situation.

The long arms of the European nations reached all the way around the globe. Great Britain, the high seat of the British Empire, had colonies all over Africa and the Middle East, and whose interests stretched as far as China, Canada and Australia – “the sun never sets on the British Empire”. Every corner of the world was dominated in some part, more or less, by the European nations.

Europe itself had been torn apart from the time when Roman legions conquered the barbarians of the North. It withstood bloody wars and battles which raged over the continent. Kingdoms were built, torn down, and rebuilt. When protestantism appeared under Luther, it threatened the old power structures of the catholic church, and once again Europe was torn apart by wars. The crown of European superpower leadership changed many times, and if a nation wasn’t an impressive worldly power at some point, it suffered heavily under the boot of someone else.

Not only was it a battle between the protestant and the catholic churches; there was also the emerging threat from Islam that quickly came into play as the Ottoman Empire grew in power in the 14th and 15th centuries. The front lines of the invading forces ranged all through the Balkan countries, and during the centuries caused untold grief, as the civilian population found themselves living in a warzone that regularly erupted – the last of which occurred just a few years ago.

Nevertheless, the wars hitherto had been smaller and isolated. But as industrialization came along, the awesome power of the industrialized nations also became a factor. Railways were built, massive oceanliners produced, intricate methods of telecommunications were devised. The world became smaller and smaller, and the populations of the nations involved grew massively. It was no longer impossible to raise an army that consisted of millions of men, instead of tens of thousands.

Naturally, the weapons became ever more powerful as well. When the Americans fought their Civil War 1861-1865, they still stood up facing each other in lines on the battlefield and fired into each other – with moderate success. Fifty years later, accurate rifles and machine guns had been developed, although very little thought had been given to defensive measures, such as cover and concealment, prepared positions and so forth. Further, the concept of mobility had not been given much thought – people still walked on foot and moved by horses. The stage was set for battles in which an awesome firepower was introduced, but very little mobility or tactical defense. When the armies would line up to face each other this time, they would be mercilessly torn apart and cut down like grass going through a lawn-mower.

When all of these factors came together, the lines were drawn in the sand, everything was ready. The old rivals of Europe stood facing each other, teetering on the brink of war; but the times and scale of events had changed beyond their comprehension. When she shots finally rang in Sarajevo, old-school doctrine set the snowball in motion, and it rolled ever faster until no-one could comprehend the situation fully, let alone stopping it. Predetermined battle plans rolled into motion and unfolded on a larger scale than anyone had ever believed. The awesome might and thunder of industrialized Europe, fueled by distrust, hatred – in some cases racism – rolled out on the battlefield, and at the end of the war ten million people lay dead on the ground.

Lay me down, in the cold, cold ground
Where before me many men have gone
When they come I will stand my ground
Stand my ground, I’ll not be afraid
Thoughts of home take away my fear
Sweat and blood hide my veil of tears
Once a year say a prayer for me
Close your eyes and remember me
Never more shall I see the sun
For I fell to a German’s gun

/Sgt. Joseph Kilna MacKenzie/

The world would never be the same again. As a direct result of this war, another world war would break out 25 years later – really the continuation of the first – and this time it would be much, much bigger.

So my recent hobby has been the computer game America’s Army, if you’ve ever heard of it. It’s a multiplayer game available free from the official site, and which is developed by the United States Army as a sort of publicity stunt. It’s very good, though.

My favorite mission is FLS Assault: A squad of the 82nd Airborne jumps over an airfield at night, and assaults a team of enemies dug in. The thing is, the assault squad carries only M-16′s and smoke grenades, while the enemies have light machine guns and explosive grenades. Which makes for an interesting fight: A straight-on assault is suicide, and therefore you have to use marksmen crawling forward in the terrain, and assault teams enveloping both south and north. With proper coordination and good team members, it’s absolutely doable; with just nit-picking at skilled enemies, you lose every time.

Which is interesting. My favorite is to crawl along, get into position and start picking off enemies from the front through single M-16 shots. There are only six enemies, and getting one or two per round is customary. You start getting nervous, though, when there’s a huge firefight erupting over there, grenades explode and you hear your own guys screaming for medics.

One such time I was in the middle, scanning for enemies. Most action had died down, and there was about 1:30 left on the clock before we had to take the objective or lose the round. I look at the player status screen, it shows me and another guy is still alive. I report my position, waiting for something to happen. Nothing.

The seconds tick away. I look at the player screen again, and suddenly I’m the only one left alive. 00:30 on the clock. Gulp!

So I decide I have to do something. The entire team is now looking over my shoulder to see what I’m doing (they can watch the remaining players after they die) and I can imagine their comments: “Run! Run!” (which I can’t see since I’m still in the game).

So I stand up and rush forward to the defensive trench, M-16 in hand, and just as I draw near I see an enemy soldier, crouching down in the trench and scanning to my left. I’m in the open and scared as hell since I’m running against machine guns over an open field, but the second I saw him I fired about 10 rounds at him and took him out.

And thus we won the round. With 00:08 seconds left on the clock.

Everybody on my team was shouting “yeah!”, “wonderful!”, “good job!”; and the comments from defense were “aaah!” and “8 secs… lol!”. I felt great.

That’s why I love FLS assault. It takes planning, teamwork, skill, and marksmanship. But when everything comes down to you and the clock, there’s always that “no guts, no glory”, and you rush ahead and win the game. Or, you rush ahead and get pounded by two machine guns. But hey, you would have lost anyway. :)

During the night of May 9th – 10th, 126 German infantry divisions and 10 Panzer divisions began their full attack on the Low Countries and France. It occurred with no previous warning, and the German troops acquired near-total surprise at every point in their attack.

The army plan of the French, called Plan D, consisted of an immediate occupation of Belgium, in the case of a sudden outbreak of war. Belgium had stubbornly refused to take sides in the conflict, believing that their strict neutrality would protect them. Ironically in retrospect, both Germany and France had battle plans prepared that called for an immediate occupation of Belgium as soon as the war broke out.

At 5.30 am, May 10th, Lord Gort recieved a message from General Georges, ordering “Alertes 1, 2 and 3″; instant readiness to move into Belgium. At 6:45 am, General Gamelin ordered the execution of Plan D, to meet the German attack in Belgium.

The move into Belgium quickly took place. On May 13th, the line from Antwerp to Montmédy (the start of the Maginot line), was stretched along the Dyle and Meuse rivers. The 7th French Army held Antwerp; Belgian forces continued south until Louvain, which was held by the British Expeditionary Force; then the 1st French until Namur, the 9th French held the long stretch from Namur-Dinant-Givet-Sedan, where the 2nd French Army took over and began the Maginot line.

The 9th Army was not in good fighting spirits. Consisting of 9 divisions, two of which were cavalry, another two reserve and the rest hardly up to par with French standards, it held a section of the front which was thought impassable: the Ardennes forest. The bulk of the French army held the Maginot line, the rest were in the process of occupying Belgium along with the British Expeditionary Force.

Facing the 9th Army was the German Army Group A, 44 divisions under General von Rundstedt; heavily motorized and capable of quick movement and featuring a heavy thrust of Panzer divisions. Carefully advancing through the forest, finding it not particularly impassable at all to modern transportation and engineering efforts, they quickly emerged at Sedan to begin their onslaught on the wary French.

It didn’t take long before things collapsed. During the 13th of May (four days into war) Lord Gort’s headquarters began to sense the awful thrust of the Germans upon the 9th Army. German forces broke through at Sedan during the 14th and continued to pour en masse over the Meuse, scattering the remnants of the 9th before them. In the north, the Belgians fell back to the Antwerp defenses, the 7th Army recoiled as quickly as it had attacked, and the British were under intense fight, especially the 3rd Division under General Montgomery.

At about 7:30 am in the morning on the 15th of May, Churchill got an urgent telephone call from a distressed M. Reynaud of the French government, saying, “We have been defeated. We are beaten; we have lost the battle.” Churchill initially refused to accept this statement, having seen lots of similar breakthroughs in the lines from the war 1917-1918, and they had always been able to stop the advance, not the least because of the inherent logistics problems of the advance. The situation was still in many ways similar to the fronts of the last war, and he felt that there were many reasons to believe that the situation would play out in similar fashion.

At 3 pm on the day after, the 16th, Churchill flew to Quai d’Orsay in Paris. He met with M. Reynaud, M. Daladier, General Gamelin and other representatives of the French High Command. The French were in a state of panic, he described, with “utter dejection written on their faces”. The Commander-in-Chief explained the sitation, that the Germans had broken through and were instoppable in their onrush towards either Amiens at the coast, or possibly Paris. Churchill replied “But where are the reserves? Oú est la masse de manoeuvre?” He was met with a shrug from General Gamelin. “Aucune.”

There was a long pause in the conversation as the awfulness of the situation sank in. Churchill wrote in his memoirs that he was dumbfounded at first, but that he wanted to do everything possible to counter-attack (and pressed this matter to some extent in the meeting); for which he, however, was in little position to do as the British forces were rather small and, furthermore, directly under the control of the French. Not that it would have mattered much, he realized later during the course of the war, but he sought first and foremost to quench this panic and fear that riddled the French government and military leadership at this moment. Through the windows of Quai d’Orsay he could already see the officials heaping wheelbarrows of documents into large bonfires. They were already burning the archives and preparing for the evacuation of Paris.

The truth is that there were no reserves in position to meet this advance. All the troops were either north or south and could not be redeployed in time. Even if they could, they probably would not have been able to stop the fierce onslaught of the German army, so different in spirit and effect than from the last war 1914-1918, which was still in fresh memory; and from which the lessons learned were applied with vigor. “Inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment, inferiority of method”, as General Gamelin adequately described the situation.

It took one week. The battle for France was over in three.

Is there a point to this? No, no point in particular. I am just amazed that the future of the entire continuation of the war, and the outset of the entire world, all changed in this one fateful week. The long wait of the Sitzkrieg through the winter and spring ended here, suddenly and violently, in utter defeat.