Over three thousand generals fought for the Germans during the Second World War.
Over a thousand American generals also served, as did similar numbers of Japanese,
British, and Soviet generals. A few of these several thousand men well and truly left their
mark on history. These were the men who prosecuted devastating attacks and led
inspiring defences, but not all of their names were remembered. In this video,
we shed light on five of the best, if not quite as well-known, generals of the Second World War.
In early 1941, Soviet high command had so few experienced commanders that they released an
officer imprisoned for treason. By 1945, this officer was a Marshal of the Soviet Union,
and he personally led the victory parade in Moscow. His name was Konstantin Rokossovsky.
Rokossovsky began his career similarly to Zhukov, in that he served with distinction
in the Great War, then in the Civil War on the Bolshevik side. He later became
fascinated by Marshal Tukhachevsky’s visionary ideas on mechanized warfare. But
when the Marshal was purged in the Great Terror, Rokossovsky’s fascination got him imprisoned.
After the disastrous Winter War of 1941, Rokossovsky was reinstated to fill the need
for experienced commanders. He excelled, and his 16th Army bore the brunt of the fighting in
defence of Moscow during Operation Typhoon. Stalin was impressed and gave Rokossovsky
command of the Don Front at Stalingrad. The Don Front helped to encircle the Germans inside the
city and was responsible for crushing all 22 divisions during Operation Ring.
Rokossovsky went on to command the Central Front in the Battle of Kursk, where he defeated
the Germans again. His forces pushed on, and the general played a key role in Operation Bagration.
The Germans soon began to fear Rokossovsky, nicknaming him “General Dagger.”
Opposing Rokossovsky were several German generals, and one of the best was Walther Model.
Model had humbler beginnings than most of the German high command. He wasn’t an aristocrat,
nor did he have Prussian lineage. He was simply very good at his job. Model commanded units during
the invasions of Poland, France, and the Soviet Union, and these campaigns earned him a reputation
as a hard-hitting field commander. His loyalty to the Nazi party propelled him further,
and by 1942, he commanded the battle-hardened 9th Army on the Eastern Front.
A master of defensive warfare, Model became Hitler’s “Fireman.” When others believed a
position was lost, the fireman swooped in to save it. In the Battle of Kursk,
for instance, he salvaged the collapsing German position after Rossokovsky’s victory.
Model became a field marshal in 1944 and fought the Allies in France after the Normandy landings.
He was a skilled commander, but the might of the Allied war machine proved too much.
After the failure of his offensive in the Battle of the Bulge, Model was surrounded.
He ordered his troops to disband and committed suicide.
Before Erwin Rommel was lionized as the “Desert Fox,”
the title belonged to a British commander. This general was every bit Rommel’s equal,
scoring victory after victory in the desert war. His name was Richard O'Connor.
O'Connor took command of the Western Desert Force in June 1940. It was based in Egypt,
a British protectorate, and comprised roughly 35,000 men and 65 tanks.
In September, Mussolini’s best general, Graziani, attacked Egypt with 150,000 soldiers and 600
armoured vehicles. He believed victory was assured, but O’Connor proved him wrong. O’Connor
allowed the Italians to exhaust themselves with their initial thrust, then hit them on their
northern flank. As part of Operation Compass, the Western Desert Force smashed through the
Italian line and knocked out strongpoint after strongpoint via encirclement and isolation.
By mid-December, the Italians had been forced from Egypt, having lost 38,000 of their men as POWs.
O’Connor then pushed into Libya, routing and destroying the Italians as he went. With every
victory, his 36,000-strong force became more comparable to Graziani’s. The overall commander,
General Wavell, thought O’Connor was doing so well that he replaced his most experienced division,
the 4th Indian, with an inexperienced one, the 6th Australian. But it didn’t
matter. O’Connor’s Australian troops surrounded Tobruk and captured it on January 22nd 1941,
alongside another 27,000 POWs. The Italians retreated, but O’Connor gave them no respite.
His armour drove south and outflanked them while his infantry engaged them near the coast.
Within a fortnight, the main Italian base at Benghazi fell.
With just 36,000 men, many of whom were inexperienced and ill-prepared for desert warfare,
O’Connor destroyed an Italian army numbering ten divisions and took 133,000 prisoners.
One British politician commented: “Never has so much been surrendered by so many, to so few.”
When Singapore fell, Winston Churchill described it as “the worst disaster
and largest capitulation in British history.” But for the Japanese,
it was a tremendous victory. A victory that belonged to Tomoyuki Yamashita.
Yamashita served in a number of military and diplomatic positions in the years preceding
the Second World War. One of these was in Germany, where he saw first-hand the devastation Blitzkrieg
tactics could inflict. Inspired, he returned to Japan and tried to implement new ideas
and reorganise the Imperial Japanese Army. He was one of Japan’s strongest proponents of mechanised
warfare and wished to end the long-running war in China. But politics got in the way.
His ideas were seen as a threat by the heavily factional Japanese military establishment.
On November 6th 1941, Yamashita was put in command of the 25th Army.
This 30,000-strong force had high morale but was equipped with obsolete weapons. It
had only one advantage: a large number of planes and skilled pilots. Yamashita knew
that a drawn-out battle in Malaya would place him at a disadvantage, so speed was the key.
He launched his attack from bases in French Indochina.
After rapidly overcoming the Commonwealth garrisons, he mounted his troops on bicycles
and used their speed to outflank the enemy. Commonwealth commanders were consistently
surprised by his resourcefulness, as Yamashita often directed his men down jungle tracks
they believed impassable. When he reached Singapore, he bluffed the British commander,
General Percival, into preparing for an attack on the wrong side of the island.
Yamashita’s men were exhausted and their supply lines were stretched to breaking point,
but a rapid assault won him the battle. Eighty-thousand Commonwealth soldiers
surrendered to just 30,000 Japanese, earning Yamashita the moniker the “Tiger of Malaya.”
But not all great generals began their careers before the war.
Some had a generalship thrust upon them. This happened to one American
officer in the Philippines, the guerilla commander Wendell Fertig.
Fertig wasn’t your average general; he was an engineer. After travelling to the Philippines
in 1941, Fertig had joined the US Army Reserve as part of his military classes at college.
He was on leave in Manilla when the war broke out, and he was sent to Mindanao to take over
engineering activities there. When he arrived, the garrison surrendered to the invading Japanese.
But Fertig—refusing to give in—fled into the jungle.
Army Reserve Colonel Fertig promoted himself to brigadier-general after making contact
with a Filipino guerilla band. He believed a high-ranking officer would hold more sway
over the disparate bands than a mere colonel, and he was right. Fertig was soon running the show.
Using his engineering skills, he brewed high-strength palm wine for use as fuel,
built a jungle telegraph with soda bottles and fencing wire, made 30-cal cartridges
from curtain rods, disassembled Japanese sea mines for gunpowder, made rifle springs from
vehicle suspension, and put together a radio from scrap. He brought the same resourcefulness
to military operations, ordering attacks on Japanese units and critical infrastructure.
Fertig defeated the Japanese using his so-called “pillow effect.”
When a large Japanese unit swept through an area, the guerilla units dissolved without
resisting. The Japanese battalion would break into companies, then platoons, then sections,
then squads to search for the rebels. Meanwhile, the guerillas reformed into company-sized units
and met isolated Japanese squads with superior numbers—guaranteeing them victory.
Fertig eventually commanded 32,000 guerillas, technically making him a lieutenant general,
and played a key role in the liberation of the Philippines.
THOSE were five of the Second World War’s lesser-known yet greatest generals. But what
do YOU think? Could YOU fight for a regime after you were tortured like Rossokovsky?
How different do YOU think the war might have gone if Model held higher command from the start?
Do you think YOU could be as resourceful as Fertig? Let us know in the comments.