The Allies, principally Britain, America, and Russia, achieved the complete defeat of the Axis powers, Germany, Japan, and Italy in 1945. But this victory took almost six years of brutal fighting, and on occasion, the Axis powers inflicted severe defeats on the Allies. In fact, the Allies faced many military disasters during the course of World War II. Here, we take a look at 10 of the most severe catastrophes the Allies faced on their long road to victory.
Related: 10 Forgotten Allies in World War II
10 Fall of France—June 1940
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By June 1940, the German Army had already overrun Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium, while the British Army had been forced from Continental Europe with the evacuation at Dunkirk., just south of the Franco-Belgian border. Next on the menu for the voracious Nazi blitzkrieg was France. The French Army had formed a defensive position in the north of the country known as the Weygand Line. But French forces were already seriously depleted by the fighting in Belgium, where the Nazis had destroyed 30 divisions.
The German Army, on the other hand, had replenished its 10 armored formations and had 130 divisions of infantry at its disposal, plus the Luftwaffe’s dive bombers were ready for more action. The attack on France was launched at 4:00 a.m. on June 5.
French forces held out for a couple of days in the Somme, the former scene of a pitched battle during WWI. But the French defenders soon collapsed here and elsewhere, and the Germans were able to march on Paris. The loss of the capital meant an inevitable French surrender, which came on June 21. French defeat was complete.[1]
9 First Battle of Kiev—September 1941
On June 22, 1941, Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa saw the Wehrmacht pour into Soviet territory across a 1,800-mile (2,897-km) front in a surprise attack intended to conquer and enslave Russia. Three German Army Groups advanced east, with one of them, led by General Paul Ludwig von Kleist, heading through southern Poland into Ukraine with the city of Kiev in its sights. At first, the Germans made lightning progress, but determined Russian defense and poor weather slowed their advance.
Even so, in mid-July, German forces had advanced to within 200 miles of Moscow. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Nazi stormtroopers had reached Kiev and now maneuvered to create a pincer movement that would surround a Soviet force of around half a million strong. Although the great Russian commander, General Georgy Zhukov, warned Stalin that absent decisive action threatened disaster in Ukraine, his words fell on deaf ears.
Completely encircled, the entire Soviet force surrendered. The Nazis claimed to have taken 665,000 prisoners, while the Soviets said it was only 450,000. Either way, it was a military catastrophe of mind-boggling magnitude for Stalin and a stunning success for Hitler.[2]
8 Fall of Hong Kong—December 1941
In 1941, Hong Kong Island was part of the British Empire, and it had been so since the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, which ended the First Opium War. After the Second Opium War of 1856 to 1860, the British also took control of the nearby Kowloon Peninsula on the Chinese mainland. Since 1931, Japan had been seizing various bits of China, including the region of Canton (now Guangzhou) just to the north of Kowloon. This gave Emperor Hirohito’s forces an ideal launch pad for an assault on Hong Kong.
Under the command of Major-General Christopher Maltby, the British garrison had established a 22-mile (35.4-km) long defense line across the Kowloon Peninsula. A 2,000-strong Canadian force was added to the British and Indian troops already stationed in Hong Kong.
The Japanese attacked on December 8, 1941, quickly seizing the Kowloon line, forcing the defenders to retreat to Hong Kong Island. The Japanese landed on the island on December 18. After a week of fierce fighting, the heavily outnumbered British, Indians, and Canadians had no choice but to surrender on Christmas Day. More than 2,000 Allied soldiers were reported killed or missing, and around 10,000 were taken prisoner.[3]
7 Fall of the Philippines—May 1942
The very next day after their devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Imperial Japan wasted no time in launching an attack on the Philippines, at the time a U.S. possession.
The Japanese first attacked the air bases on the main Philippine island of Luzon, destroying or damaging most of the American aircraft while they were on the ground. So American and Filipino infantry now had to face the Japanese landing on Luzon on December 22 without air support. The American and Filipino troops were soon pushed back across Luzon. On Christmas Eve, the American commander General Douglas MacArthur had no choice but to declare the Filipino capital Manila an open city, meaning it would not be defended.
The U.S. forces now pulled back to the Bataan Peninsula and the island of Corregidor on Manila Bay, not far from Manila. Remnants of the American and Filipino forces held out courageously until the inevitable surrender came on May 5, 1942. The defeat resulted in the capture of 12,000 Americans and 63,000 Filipinos.[4]
6 Fall of Tobruk—June 1942
The British captured the Libyan city of Tobruk, a key deep-water port on the southern Mediterranean coast, in 1940 from the Italians. This infuriated Hitler, so he ordered the German Afrika Korps, commanded by General Erwin “Desert Fox” Rommel, to step in. The Nazi troops constantly harassed the British around Tobruk in a series of actions that climaxed at the Battle of Gazala, at a spot some 40 miles inland from the Mediterranean. Rommel’s force pushed the British back, forcing them to retreat eastwards across the Libyan border to El Alamein in Egypt in June 1942
The British retreat left an isolated garrison force in Tobruk, the 2nd South African Infantry Division, under the command of General Henrik Kloppe. In fact, Tobruk withstood a siege that lasted eight months just the year before 1941. But the German attack, which Rommel launched on June 20, 1942, was overwhelming this time. German tanks quickly broke into Tobruk, and General Kloppe decided that further resistance was futile. He surrendered his force, and the Germans took 19,000 prisoners [5]
5 Operation Jubilee—August 1942
Operation Jubilee, also known as the Dieppe Raid, was a disastrous Allied raid on the German-occupied French port of Dieppe on the Normandy coast. On August 19, 1942, some 5,000 Canadians, 1,000 British Commandos, and 50 American rangers set off at dawn from five ports on England’s south coast, heading across the English Channel to northern France. The mission plan called for a frontal assault on Dieppe and other towns along a 10-mile stretch of coast.
Unfortunately, the landing was chaotic with timings and landing spots missed. This meant that the Germans had early warning of the attack, nullifying the essential element of surprise. Intelligence was also faulty—aerial reconnaissance had missed German gun emplacement mounted on the cliffs around Dieppe. These would cause devastating casualties, and at 11:00 a.m., the order came to withdraw.
However, this was too late for something like half the troops involved who were killed, wounded, or captured. The best that can be said about this disastrous mission is that the Allies learned important lessons from the full-scale invasion of France, which was launched in June 1944 on D-Day.[6]
4 The Battle of Kasserine Pass—February 1943
The Battle of Kasserine Pass was the first time American troops came up against German and Italian forces in a full-scale action. The confrontation took place in a ravine running through the Atlas Mountains in Tunisia. In November 1941, the Americans launched Operation Torch, which was an amphibious landing on Morocco’s Atlantic coast and Algeria’s Mediterranean course, where they were accompanied by British troops. The Allied forces advanced eastward until they came up against a determined attack by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps.
Major General Lloyd Fredendall was in command of the Americans, and he was to be heavily criticized for his leadership failures. Faced with a determined German attacking force that launched an all-out assault on Valentine’s Day 1942, the U.S. troops, inexperienced in battle, began to flee. The battle rapidly became a rout.
The German attack, which lasted for 10 days, saw the U.S. force lose 7,000 men, with 300 killed, 3,000 missing, and others taken prisoner. After this debacle, the Americans recovered and later forced the Germans into retreat. But it was the end of the road for Fredendall, who spent the rest of the war as a trainer in America. He was replaced by one of America’s most successful combat commanders, General George S. Patton.[7]
3 Operation Tidal Wave—August 1943
On August 1, 1943, five groups of U.S. Army Air Forces heavy bombers took off on an unusual mission, targeting a complex of oil refineries around the Romanian city of Ploesti. Instead of bombing from high altitudes as was customary, this mission called on the 178 B-24 Liberators to fly at extremely low altitudes. The architect of the mission, Colonel Jacob Smart, believed this was the only way to destroy the refineries. The Allies were desperate to raze these plants, which were major suppliers of the Nazi military machine.
The bombers took off from Libya early in the morning, having spent days rehearsing this unaccustomed low-flying mission. It was crucial that the groups maintain formation on their long flight across the Mediterranean and Europe, but they had to do this by sight alone due to strict radio silence. However, the bombers became separated, and the Germans got wind of their approach to Ploesti.
The result was that German fighters and ground anti-aircraft fire devastated the B-24s. Fifty-three planes were shot down, 440 airmen lost their lives, and many more were wounded or captured. Although the B-24s had significantly damaged the refineries, the Germans were able to repair the facilities quickly. The mission had been a costly failure.[8]
2 Exercise Tiger—April 1944
In April 1944, the south of England appeared as a massive military base with hundreds of thousands of soldiers preparing for the D-Day invasion of France, which was just a couple of months away. Exercise Tiger was part of this process, and it involved 30,000 Americans training for a landing on Utah Beach in Normandy. Slapton Sands on the English coast was physically similar to Utah Beach and was used for rehearsals of the actual landing.
On April 27, thousands of fully equipped American troops boarded eight large Landing Ship Tank (LST) vessels at the port city of Plymouth. From there, the LSTs, laden with tanks, Jeeps, and smaller landing craft, sailed east through the English Channel toward Lyme Bay, the marshaling point for the mock attack on Slapton Sands.
The distance between Lyme and Slapton was close to that between the English coast and Normandy. But the convoy was intercepted by four German E-Boats, small high-speed attack craft, which attacked the LSTs with torpedoes, sinking two of them and seriously damaging a third. This assault resulted in the deaths of 749 American soldiers and sailors.[9]
1 Operation Market Garden—September 1944
By the time Operation Market Garden was launched, the Allies had already successfully landed in northern France and were fighting their way across Europe. The Market Garden operation was an airborne attack on the German-occupied Netherlands, which aimed to seize a series of key river and canal bridges at Eindhoven, Nijmegen, and Arnhem. This would allow the Allies to attack through a second front along Germany’s north-western frontier.
American paratroopers landed at Eindhoven and Nijmegen while British and Polish airborne troops assaulted Arnhem, where a key bridge crossed the River Rhine River. Troops started parachuting into the target areas on September 17, which they believed were weakly defended. But what they didn’t know—and intelligence missions had missed—was that the area had two SS armored divisions.
This stiff opposition, combined with various navigation and timing errors, meant that although the bridges at Eindhoven and Nijmegen were secured, the crucial bridge at Arnhem was not. As a result, the overall mission was a complete failure, with as many as 17,000 Allied troops killed, wounded, or captured.[10]