Category: History

Operation Anthropoid: The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich

Reinhard Heydrich was one of Hitler’s favored young Nazi leaders. In 1942 at the age of 38 he was a picture perfect National Socialist: tall, blond, courageous, arrogant, intelligent, and utterly ruthless. In his youth, he was an uncompromising street thug, and quickly rose through the Nazi ranks. He betrayed the SA during the “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934 when he saw that Himmler and the SS were Hitler’s personal favorites. He personally sent thousands of Jews to concentration camps four years later during Kristallnacht, or “The Night of the Broken Glass”. He masterminded the fake border attack that gave Germany the pretext to invade Poland in 1939 when he was head of the combined SD (Nazi Party Intelligence), Gestapo, and Criminal Police. In 1940, he ordered the SS and occupying troops to collect Jews and other “undesirables” into ghettos in the newly occupied territories to make their eventual extermination easier. Soon after, he formed the first Einsatzgruppen to follow behind the the German invasion of the Soviet Union and massacre “Enemies of the Reich”. He chaired the infamous Wannsee Conference where the logistical and practical details of the Final Solution were worked out in cold detail. In late 1941, Heydrich was made the military governor of Bohemia and Moravia (roughly the modern Czech Republic). Heydrich ensured the brutal and iron grip of National Socialism was absolute.

Details of Heydrich’s inhuman rule made it to London, and the Czech government-in-exile decided to act. They approved Operation Anthropoid, the mission to assassinate Heydrich. In cooperation with Britain’s Special Operation Executive (SOE), the forerunner of MI6 and the organization responsible for wartime espionage and sabotage on the Continent, six Czech agents were parachuted into the Bohemia from an RAF bomber. Over several months, they slowly made their way into Prague. Once there, they were surprised to find that Heydrich’s control of the city was so complete, that he arrogantly rode in the back of an open topped black Mercedes marked by several small Nazi flags from his opulent home to work every morning along the same route.

On the morning of 27 May, 1942, two of the agents ambushed Heydrich at a sharp turn which forced his driver to slow down. One of the agent’s weapons malfunctioned, and a shootout on the street ensued. Heydrich was eventually fatally wounded by a grenade thrown by the other agent. He was rushed to the hospital but would die several days later.

Even before his death, the reprisals began. 21,000 police and soldiers descended upon Prague to search for the agents. A cordon was laid around the city permitting no one to leave. In the next few days, 3000 were arrested and 1357 were summarily executed. 637 more would die under Gestapo interrogation in the coming weeks. When Heydrich died on 2 June, Hitler personally ordered the extermination of an entire Czech village in response. SD agents and German soldiers surrounded the nearby town of Lidice, shot all 172 men and boys over 10, and sent the women and children to Ravensbruck concentration camp. Lidice was then razed to the ground.

Despite the reprisals, it took the Germans three weeks to find the actual killers. They were hiding in the basement of the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius in the city. On 18 June, the SS surrounded the church and attempted to storm it. But the six agents fought for over two hours before they ran out of ammunition. In the exchange, the SS took almost forty casualties. When the SS finally overran the crypt, they found nothing but corpses: the Czech agents used the last remaining bullets to kill themselves rather than be captured.

A Uniquely American Miracle: the USS Yorktown

On 27 May 1942, the battered USS Yorktown limped into Pearl Harbor from the Coral Sea, and Admiral Frank Fletcher did quite the same from the harbor into his boss’s office, the Commander in Chief Pacific Fleet, Admiral Nimitz. Fletcher wanted to ask Nimitz for permission to continue on to the West Coast for much needed repairs.

The Yorktown suffered tremendous damage at the Battle of the Coral Sea. From the executive summary of report sent to Nimitz the day before, “A 551-pound armor-piercing bomb had plunged through the flight deck 15 feet inboard of her island and penetrated fifty feet into the ship before exploding above the forward engine room. Six compartments were destroyed, as were the lighting systems on three decks and across 24 frames. The gears controlling the No. 2 elevator were damaged. She had lost her radar and refrigeration system. Near misses by eight bombs had opened seams in her hull from frames 100 to 130 and ruptured the fuel-oil compartments…”

Fletcher told Nimitz that with the San Diego facilities the Yorktown could be operational in a month but would need three months to do the job right. Admiral Nimitz looked him in the eye and said,

“Frank, you have three days.”

Admiral Spruance, “Bull” Halsey’s replacement (Halsey was in the hospital with a bad skin rash), was due to leave for Midway in two days with the carriers USS Hornet and USS Enterprise to intercept the Japanese. If Fletcher left any later than two days after that, he would miss the upcoming battle.

Nimitz himself was one of the first to wade into the dry dock to inspect the damage, and he personally waived hundreds of safety regulations preventing the timely, albeit slightly more dangerous, repairs. In order to accommodate the massive power needs of the repair parties to work around the clock, the mayor of Honolulu diverted power to Pearl Harbor causing rolling blackouts across the city. Less than a dozen people within a hundred miles of Pearl Harbor knew of the Japanese plan to attack Midway, but Fletcher’s call for help in immediately repairing the Yorktown could only mean one thing: the Japanese were close. In countless feats of ingenuity, initiative, professionalism, competence, and old fashioned hard work, the workmen and maintenance personnel of the island of Oahu surged on the USS Yorktown. Navy, Army, Marine, and civilian mechanics, engineers, electricians, yard workers, pipefitters, welders, sailors, maintenance techs, cabin boys, and deck swabbers from all walks of life worked day and night to get the Yorktown prepared for the coming battle.

72 hours after Nimitz’ challenge, Admiral Fletcher and the Yorktown steamed out of Pearl Harbor to join the Hornet and Enterprise north of Midway Island with a full complement of fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo planes. The people of Oahu came together at a moment’s notice for the Yorktown, not in survival and recovery as they had after Pearl Harbor, but with the can-do attitude that only comes when you’re finally given a chance to strike back. They did three months’ work in as many days.

With the addition of the Yorktown and a report that two Japanese fleet carriers were spotted in Japanese home waters (the Shokaku and Zuiakaku), America now had three carriers to the Japanese four instead of the two to six they were expecting to fight the battle with less than a week before. Furthermore, because the American carriers were larger, they had near parity in planes. The Americans had a fighting chance in what Admiral Nimitz knew, one way or another, would be the most decisive naval battle in American history: The upcoming Battle of Midway.

The Battle of Bir Hacheim

On 26 May 1942 German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel launched his offensive in Libya with the intention of capturing the Allied port of Tobruk and pushing on to Egypt. This would keep the British at bay so the Italian Army and Navy and German Paratroops could capture Malta in Operation Herkules, which was in the final stages of preparation. The PanzerArmee Afrika feinted along the coast road, and sent the Afrika Korps with most of the German and Italian panzer and armored divisions around the south of the British Gazala line.

The Allies fortified the Gazala Line after stopping Rommel’s Riposte in response to their over-extension during Operation Crusader the winter before. After months of digging in and preparing to renew the offensive, the British, Commonwealth, and other Allied troops defended brigade sized defensive boxes or sand forts reinforced by mines and barbed wire along the forward edge of the battlefield. These boxes ran from the coast road along the Mediterranean south into the desert with the areas in between patrolled by the garrisons. The box furthest south was held by the Free French at the oasis near Bir Hacheim.

Up to this point in the war the Free French were still tainted by the surrender of France two years before and the Vichy French collaboration with the Germans. The determined Vichy defense of Syria and Lebanon the previous summer especially stung. Additionally there were few purely ethnic French formations in the Free French units (most surrendered in 1940) and the majority were French colonial troops or Foreign Legionnaires, considered unreliable or freebooters by the other Allies. The Battle of Bir Hacheim would change all that.

The Free French consisted of two battalions of Legionnaires, a colonial battalion from Central Africa, one battalion from Indochina and the French Pacific possessions, and a motley crew of Arabs, Bedouins, and French sailors and marines. The Free French box at Bir Hachiem suffered the brunt of Rommel’s attack. The fort of Bir Hacheim was the only position preventing Rommel from flanking the entire British line. Rommel expected the fort to fall in one day, but General Marie-Pierre Koenig’s Free French brigade at Bir Hacheim disillusioned him of that notion. The British just north fell back, and Rommel ended up sending the bulk of his five best and most powerful German and Italian Divisions at the French. The German attacks repeatedly bogged down in the face of tenacious French resistance and options for maneuver were limited by what Rommel came to call the “mine marsh” of Bir Hacheim. For sixteen days, Koenig’s Frenchmen held off the best Rommel could throw at them and gave the British to the north the needed time to prevent themselves from being encircled and counterattack.

Only overwhelming firepower from German Stuka dive bombers and a lack of ammunition forced the evacuation of the fort on 10 June. During the escape, the only female French Foreign Legionnaire in history, the Englishwoman Susan Travers, was awarded France’s Croix de Guerre and the Legion’s highest honor, the Legion d’Honneur. She reconnoitered a gap in the Axis encirclement which allowed more than 2/3rds of the French strength, including equipment, to escape back to Allied lines to fight another day.

The Battle of Bir Hacheim lessened the stigma of the French defeat in 1940, delegitimized the Vichy French regime, and proved that Free France was a real partner in the Allied fight against the Germans.

Operation MI

On 24 May 1942, Admiral Isokuru Yamamato was a troubled but confident man. He and his staff had just finished up his final wargame for Operation MI, the invasion of the Aleutians and Midway Island. It was a resounding success… but only because his chief of staff declared the results of two Japanese carriers sunk as unrealistic. That was half of his current force of four carriers. He was troubled not because of the result of the game but because he only had four carriers: the Kido Butai should have six. Unfortunately, the Zuiakaku and Shokaku inexplicably returned to Japan after the Battle of the Coral Sea instead of returning to his main base at Truk, the Japanese version of Pearl Harbor in the Central Pacific where they could make repairs and cross level planes. And they could not be called back without delaying the operation. He had lost 1/3 of his main strength before the battle even began.

Yamamoto still had many advantages. His aircrews had infinitely more experience than the green American airmen. Also, even without his two wayward carriers, he still outnumbered the Americans 2 to 1 in that all-important class of ship. But most importantly, he believed he would have the element of surprise in the coming battle. Yamamoto was sure the Americans would react to an invasion of Alaska and he would ambush them at Midway as they did so. Four carriers should be more than enough. On the morning of 25 May, 1942, the various Japanese task forces would begin leaving their home ports for the intricate and complicated Operation MI.

Up to that time, Admiral Yamamoto’s Japanese Combined Imperial Fleet of four fleet carriers, seven battleships, and 174 other ships was the largest and most powerful naval force ever assembled for a single purpose in human history. The vast majority of it was headed directly for the Hawaiian Islands, specifically the tiny island of Midway.

The First Expeditionary Division

On 10 May 1917, President Woodrow Wilson named Major General John J. “Blackjack” Pershing as the commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) to France to fight alongside the Allies in the Great War in Europe. Pershing at the time was the commander of the US Southern Department, and because of his Expedition in Mexico to capture the outlaw Pancho Villa, was the only officer in the US Army that commanded a unit larger than a regiment. That his command was also deep in foreign territory which gave him a unique insight into the political and logistical difficulties of such an endeavor, only convinced President Wilson that Pershing was the right man to select, despite many more senior officers. He was promoted to full general, the first since Phillip Sheridan in 1868, and given wide latitude to organize and train the AEF.
 
At the suggestion of the Marshal Joffre, the victor of the Battle of the Marne and part of a French delegation to assist America’s entry into the war, Pershing was ordered to select four infantry regiments and an artillery regiment to constitute a division for immediate deployment to France. It would take at least a year to raise and train the numbers of American troops needed on the Western Front, but the initial arrival of even a token force would boost the flagging morale of the Allies. (The closest the Allies came to defeat on the Western Front occurred in May of 1917 after the failed Nivelle Offensive. The French Army suffered widespread mutinies, but the Germans failed to take advantage of the situation.) For two weeks, Pershing built his staff, and working with the British and French delegations, reorganized the American formations to better reflect the modern realities of fighting on the Western Front.
 
On 24 May 1917, Pershing chose regiments that he was experienced with from his Southern Department for the new division: the 16th, 18th, 26th, and 28th Infantry Regiments and the 6th Artillery Regiment. The new “First Expeditionary Division” was placed under the command of a well-respected engineer officer (and builder of the Panama Canal) Brigadier General William Sibert. Pershing took a direct hand in choosing most of Sibert’s staff and subordinate commanders, including but definitely not limited to: Colonel Robert Bullard, the commander of the 2nd Brigade, Major Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the commander of the 1st Battalion 26th Infantry and former president’s son; Major Leslie McNair, the Assistant Chief of Staff for Training; Major George C Marshall, the Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations; and Colonel Campbell King, a trusted infantry officer to serve as Sibert’s Chief of Staff. Sibert, to his credit, protested his appointment as division commander because he was not a line infantry officer, but was overruled due to the need for his experience. He was singularly qualified for transporting the division’s units from the American Southwest to New Jersey and eventually France, and the building the facilities and expansion of regiments to transform them into a “Square Division”.
 
Pershing’s “Plans” staff determined that the First Expeditionary Division would consist of two infantry brigades, the 1st and 2nd, which consisted of two infantry regiments apiece, the Square of four regiments, in this case, the 16th and 18th, and 26th and 28th respectively, with an artillery regiment, the 6th in support. However, the largest changes came in the expansion of the infantry battalions that formed the regiments. The Square Division’s table of organization and equipment required infantry companies to expand from 60 to 250 men, and each battalion to raise a fourth company. Furthermore, each battalion would have a machine gun company attached, and to accomplish this required just about every machine gun battalion in the National Army to break up into its component units to be attached, with their staffs and field grade officers augmenting the brigade and division staffs. The Division was also augmented by an engineer, signal, and medical battalions, and a supply train. Finally, it was quickly determined that a single artillery regiment provided insufficient fire power for current operations on the Western Front, so the 5th and 7th Artillery Regiments were also ordered to New Jersey for deployment to France.
 
Despite material shortages of every kind, including rifles, machine guns, tents, gas masks, and artillery pieces etc., the men of the First Expeditionary Division were required to be prepared to board ships at Hoboken, New Jersey, by the second week of June, where transportation to France was being coordinated by Captain George S. Patton. That date was just two weeks after the First Expeditionary Division was constituted.
 
As the US Army quickly expanded in 1917, the First Expeditionary Division’s name eventually changed to the 1st (US) Infantry Division, and came to be known the world over as,
 
The Big Red One.

The Battle of San Carlos

In April 1982, after a failure of American and United Nations’ shuttle diplomacy with Argentina, Great Britain invoked the 1386 Treaty of Windsor with Portugal (the longest lasting mutual defense treaty in existence) for use of airbases in the Azores for a naval task force to assemble at Ascension Island. The dispersed ships of the task force, centered on the two small Harrier jump jet aircraft carriers HMS Invincible and HMS Hermes, and the landing ships carrying the reinforced 3 Commando Brigade, were enroute to recapture the Falkland Islands after an Argentine invasion in early April 1982. They arrived at San Carlos Water, a fjord off of the Falklands Sound, the strait splitting the two major Falkland Islands, on 21 May 1982.
 
By the late Cold War, the Royal Navy was a far cry from the overwhelming force that safeguarded the British Empire for three centuries. With extensive defense expenditure cuts, it devolved into a niche capability anti-submarine and anti-missile force to prevent the penetration of the Greenland-Iceland-Faeroes Gap in the North Atlantic. There the primary threats were Soviet submarines, and missiles launched from long range Soviet bombers, and their capabilities reflected that. They expected to be able to spot incoming air threats on radar at long range and destroy them before they could fire. The Royal Navy was not prepared for the low tech/close in onslaught brought on by the Argentine air force.
 
After the cruiser ARA General Belgrano was sunk by a British submarine, the Argentine Navy withdrew to its ports for the remainder of the conflict. The task of preventing the Royal Navy from landing troops on the Falkland Islands, or failing that, forcing the Royal Navy to withdraw and isolate the landings, fell to the Argentine Air Force. The meagre Argentine response of 81 mm mortars and 105 mm recoilless rifle fire to the initial landings on the morning of 21 May gave way to four days of constant, intense, and effective air attacks by 90 aircraft based on mainland Argentina and ten more operating from grass strips on the islands. San Carlos Water was chosen for the initial landings specifically because the West Falkland Island masked the task force from aircraft armed with the Exocet anti-ship missile, one of which sank the patrolling HMS Sheffield on 10 May (the missile didn’t even explode, but its unexpended fuel caused fires which could not be contained). However, the reverse was also true: the island masked the incoming aircraft from British radar and anti aircraft missiles. Furthermore, with the decommissioning of their last full sized carrier, the HMS Ark Royal, just three years before, the British lacked any ability for combat air patrol or airborne early warning. The V/STOL (Vertical/Short Take Off and Landing) Harriers of the smaller carriers would prove to be adept and agile air superiority fighters against the Argentinians when armed with upgraded Sidewinder missiles, but they lacked the range and stamina to continuously remain on station. The British position in San Carlos Water protected the fleet from the Argentine’s niche capability, the Exocet missile, but played directly into the hands of their adversary’s main ship killing weapon, one that would not be out of place in the Second World War forty years before – the 1000 lb iron bomb.
 
From 21-25 May 1982, the Battle of San Carlos more closely resembled the sea battles off Crete or Okinawa against the Germans and Japanese respectively than anything thought of by NATO planners against the Soviets. The Argentinian pilots approached under cover of the West Falkland Island, and at the last moment popped over the hills, release their dumb i.e. unguided, bombs at the ships sitting in the Water, and climbed desperately away to avoid being destroyed by the shrapnel from their own attacks. The British anti-aircraft missiles were completely useless in San Carlos Water, and the British were forced expose their primary anti-aircraft defense ships outside as decoys to take the brunt of the attacks. This dispersed the Argentine attacks, but did little for ships still in the Water with Argentine planes descending upon them. Only ancient Bofors and Oerlikion anti aircraft guns taken out of storage by forward thinking junior officers and hastily bolted on to the ships provided any defense when the Harriers were otherwise occupied. There are numerous accounts of landing ships whose only air defense were crewmen or soldiers firing small arms at the low flying Argentine planes while they waited to unload. San Carlos Water quickly became known as “Bomb Alley”.
 
On 21 May, the frigate HMS Ardent was struck by several bombs whose fires sank the ship that night; many of the crew only survived because another ship, the HMS Yarmouth, courageously pulled alongside to allow the survivors to jump on board. The HMS Antelope was the next victim to the iron bombs, though in her case one failed to explode, at least until an EOD team accidentally detonated it. The resulting fire cooked off the magazine which broke the back of the ship. On the 25th, the HMS Coventry succumbed to a bomb “skipped” across the water like a rock. The same day, the MV Atlantic Conveyer, a converted container ship carrying the invasion force’s complement of Chinook helicopters and other necessary logistical material sank after being struck by an Exocet missile fired at point blank range. This loss proved devastating to the invasion force, and another such, or the sinking of one of the over worked Harrier carriers, would have doomed the invasion. Virtually all of the ships at the Battle of San Carlos took damage, that more weren’t sunk was due almost as much to faulty Argentine fuses as anything the British did. 13 bombs struck British ships without exploding. At an interview just after the battle, a high ranking retired RAF commentator said, “Six better fuses and we would have lost”.
 
By the 25th, the operations tempo proved too much for the Air Force. Moreover, the Argentinians lost 22 planes and the pilots were beginning to openly complain that they were receiving no assistance from the other services. The air attacks diminished considerably once it was obvious the British troops were firmly lodged on East Falkland Island.
 
However, the Commandos and the attached Paras would have a long way to walk before they reached their objective, the capital at Port Stanley.

WAACs

On 15 May, 1942, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps was created in the United States Army. Initially the WAAC was open to just 10,000 women to serve in jobs to free up men for combat duty. Eventually over 150,000 women would serves as “WAACs” or “WACs” for Women’s Army Corps as it was known in 1943. They were the first women to serve in jobs other than nursing in the US Army. The program was so successful it eventually spread to the other services: the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), the Coast Guard SPARS (Semper Paratus, Always Ready), the Air Corps civil WASPS (Women’s Air Service Pilots) and the Marine Women’s Reserve. Gen MacArthur called the WACs “my best soldiers”, adding that they worked harder, complained less, and were better disciplined than the men.

Objective A-F

In spring of 1942, US cryptanalysts had great success reading the Japanese naval code but so far in the war, the results have been mixed at best. Still, the cryptanalysts continued to decode Japanese radio transmissions and they knew the next Japanese target was “OBJ A-F”. With only two remaining American aircraft carriers operational, the USS Enterprise and the USS Saratoga (the USS Yorktown was still limping back from the debacle in the Coral Sea) Admiral Nimitz had to know where OBJ A-F was so he could ambush the six fleet carriers he expected to participate in the next Japanese operation. The list of possible targets included another raid on Ceylon (Sri Lanka), American Samoa, Hawaii, the Aleutian Islands, and several others.

Cmdr Joseph Rochefort, the senior intelligence officer of the Pacific fleet, thought it might be Midway Island and used a radio deception to confirm. He sent a cable to the garrison to tell them to send a radio transmission in the clear stating that their freshwater distillation system was broken and they needed freshwater as soon as possible. The confused radioman at Midway, who walked past the fully functioning system all the time, initially questioned the order but sent the message anyway. On 15 May 1942, Cmdr Rochefort’s cryptanalysts decoded a Japanese message saying that OBJ A-F requests freshwater. Nimitz immediately began preparing his ambush of the Japanese carriers as they approached Objective A-F, Midway Island.

The Marian Apparitions of Fatima

In the spring and summer of 1916, three children Lucia De Santos (10) and her two cousins, Francisco (9) and Jacinta Marto (7) reported speaking to an The Guardian Angel of Portugal, St Michael, who said the Virgin Mary would appear to the three shepherds when the end of the Great War was near. Lucia’s mother told her to stop “spreading childish nonsense”, her father took a physically violent route to silence the children in the face of scorn of even the faithful in the small town of Fatima, Portugal.
 
Following America’s lead on 21 April 1917, Portugal entered the First World War on the side of the Allies. Two weeks later on 5 May Pope Benedict XV wrote a pastoral letter to the world asking for the veneration of the Virgin Mary to bring an end to the war.
 
On 13 May, 1917, in a small open field known as the Cova de Iria (The Cove of Irene) the three children watched the sheep and sped through their daily Rosary so they could play. The three children said they met “a lady dressed all in white, more brilliant than the sun” who appeared to them above the lone tree in the field. Francisco said he could see her, Jacinto said she could see and hear her, and Lucia said she could, see, hear and speak to the Lady. The apparition told the children to come back to the spot on the 13th of every month.
The children told their parents and soon the town, and increasingly larger and more skeptical crowds accompanied them over the months. On the second visitation in June, the apparition revealed that Francisco and Jacinta would go to Heaven soon (they would both die of the Spanish Flu after the war, but Lucia would stay on Earth for a long time (Lucia would only die in 2005). On July 13th, the apparition, who had finally identified herself as the Virgin Mary to Lucia and Jacinto, revealed the Great Secret (too long to cover in this post), and that she would perform a miracle in October for all the world to see. Growing crowds reported changes in the atmosphere and temperature, and a small cloud over the tree with the children.
 
The popularity of the visions was becoming too much for the secular, if conservative, local government. In August the local mayor kidnapped the children to prevent them from going to the Cova de Iria at the appointed time. Despite, threats of torture and imprisonment, the children wouldn’t recant their story. The justifiably angry parents roused the townspeople. Fearing further incident, the mayor released the children. The Lady appeared to them again on the 19th of that month, this time privately since everyone thought they missed the date. The next month, the crowds grew larger due to the mayor’s actions, and many reported a “pillar of clouds” above the tree, and being showered with “snowflakes” or “rose petals”. To the children, the Lady promised a miracle for “all the world to see”.
 
On the 13th of October, at least 70,000 people, faithful and skeptics alike, flocked to the field in the driving rain. The children reported seeing the Virgin Mary, her husband Joseph, and the Baby Jesus. The people in the crowd reported seeing everything from the rain stopping to seeing the Holy Family.
 
At one end, Francisco and Jacinto’s father, now a firm believer reported, “We looked easily at the sun, which did not blind us. It seemed to flicker on and off, first one way and then another. It shot rays in different directions and painted everything in different colors…What was most extraordinary is that the sun did not hurt our eyes at all. Everything was still and quiet; everyone was looking upwards…”
 
The editor of the secular and vehemently anti Catholic newspaper, O Seculo, wrote, “One could see the immense multitude turn toward the sun, which appeared at its zenith, coming out of the clouds,” he wrote…. Before their dazzled eyes the sun trembled, the sun made unusual and brusque movements, defying all the laws of the cosmos, and according to the typical expression of the peasants, ‘the sun danced’… (the sun seemed) to be a living body…It looked like a glazed wheel made of mother-of-pearl.”
 
Whether it was a miracle or not is open to debate, but one thing everyone that was there agreed on was that something happened in that field. Today, it is known among Catholics as “The Miracle of the Sun”.

The Battles of Mingolsheim and Wimpfen

The Protestant Bohemian Revolt against the Catholic Holy Roman Empire was crushed at the Battle of White Mountain in late 1620. Frederick V of the Palatinate, known contemptuously as the “Winter King” for the brevity of his Protestant reign in Bohemia, fled west to find his lands around Heidelberg under occupation by Spanish forces of the Catholic League. With the disintegration of the Protestant Union, he fled to the only place he could find refuge, the Dutch city of The Hague.
The next year, the Dutch United Provinces were nearing the end of their twelve year truce with Spain after their semi-successful revolt in the first half of the Eighty Years War. Spain had no intention of losing the lucrative Dutch Provinces permanently and planned on continuing the war from Spanish Netherlands (modern Belgium) upon concluding the truce. The Protestant Dutch expected as much, and agreed to fund Frederick V’s attempt to reconquer his lands and hopefully bring about the restoration of the Protestant Union to occupy the Spanish and the Catholic League and divide their forces. Frederick V used the Dutch backing to support three great mercenary armies. Two were already close to the Palatinate, that of Frederich Georg, the Margrave of Baden-Durlach, and the unscrupulous General Ernest Von Mansfeld whose unemployed army was looting and raping its way across Alsace. While the third, led by Christian of Brunswick, was considerably further away in Westphalia.

The two armies of Frederich George and Mansfeld when combined outnumbered the Spanish and made the Palatinate untenable for the Catholics. Catholic League forces under Johan Tzerclaes, Count of Tilly, rushed to the area to reinforce the Spanish because a Protestant victory in the Palatinate would most likely resurrect the Protestant Union, which would seriously diminish the war effort against the Dutch. Mansfeld and Frederich George had a chance to defeat the Catholics in detail before they linked but the two men despised each other and refused to work together.

Without waiting for Frederich Georg to agree, Mansfeld struck at Tilly while he waited for Spanish troops under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba. Frederich Georg had no choice but to follow. They reached the bridge at Mingolsheim on 27 April where Tilly was dug in on the far bank. Mansfeld torched the town to use the smoke to conceal his dispositions but Tilly thought he was just sacking the town (as he was wont to do, whether the town was Catholic or Protestant mattered not to Mansfeld) and withdrawing. So Tilly attacked across the bridge into Mansfeld’s musketeers and cannon preparing to do the same. The attack failed but neither side had the weight of men and arms to force the bridge. Not to be outdone by Mansfeld, Frederich Georg split in search of his own victory. He prepared to defend the crossing over the Neckar River at Wimpfen against the approaching Tilly (who abandoned the Mingolsheim position when Frederich Georg left Mansfeld) while Mansfeld crossed the Neckar farther north.

Frederich Georg couldn’t actually defend the river crossing, but he could establish a strong defensive position on a low hill which would prevent Tilly from advancing on Heidelberg. Córdoba took advantage of the split Protestant army, and immediately marched to Wimpfen to concentrate not on the nearer Mansfeld, but on Frederich Georg, who was then outnumbered by the combined Catholic army.

Frederich George was not worried because he was in a strong position with experienced and zealous troops. Furthermore, his battle wagons served as impromptu fortifications on the low hill, dubbed “The Wagonburg”. The Wagonburg bristled with cannon, guns, and pikes, and was anchored by two thick woods to each flank.

On 5 May 1622, the two sides pounded each other with their cannon most of the morning. About 10 am Tilly and Córdoba’s tercios assaulted the Wagonburg without success and with heavy casualties. In the early afternoon both sides reorganized, but one of Frederich Georg’s units withdrew from a strong position in the woods guarding his right flank, and Córdoba seized the moment and occupied the position. Frederich Georg was now forced to recapture the position as it allowed the Spanish to bypass the Wagonburg. Additionally, to prevent Tilly from exploiting Córdoba’s success, Frederich Georg launched his cavalry around Tilly’s flank. He was gambling that his attacks on the flanks would occupy the Catholics long enough so that the meat grinder in front the Wagonburg would break the assaulting tercios.

For four hours the battle raged with the lines bending on each flank moving clockwise on the Wagonburg in the center. Tilly’s cavalry on the Catholic right bent back, with the energetic and fiery Cordoba advancing on the left. At one point, Córdoba’s exhausted and bloodied cavalry refused to charge the Protestant musketeers and Cordoba didn’t even notice until he found himself inside the Protestant lines alone. He managed to cut his way out, but the incident was indicative of the state of the Catholic troops. A supposed vison of the Virgin Mary rallied the Spaniards of the tercios assaulting the Wagonburg, but passion and inspiration faded quickly in the face of accurate and murderous fire by the defending musketeers and cannon.

Frederich Georg was a hair’s breath away from his victory when an errant cannonball ignited a store of powder in the Wagonburg. The resulting explosion didn’t do much damage, but it shocked the defenders and opened a small hole in the so far impregnable fortifications. One of Tilly’s tercios swarmed into the gap and overwhelmed the dazed defenders. With both flanks engaged in the attacks, Frederich Georg had no reserves left to seal the breach. Once it was obvious Tilly began systematically isolating and clearing portions of the Wagonburg, the Protestant army disintegrated.

After the Battle of Wimpfen, Tilly and Córdoba checked Mansfeld at the Battle of Höchst, who then fell back to protect Heidelberg (much to his distaste, Frederick V accompanied Mansfeld, as he was the least trustworthy and reliable of the three), and instead of pursuing, unexpectedly turned on the approaching Duke of Brunswick. At Sossenheim just west of Franfurt am Main, the Protestants were again defeated. With two of Frederick V’s three armies effectively neutralized, Tilly then besieged his capital of Heidelberg. After a short 11 week siege, the castle of Heidelberg fell on 12 September 1622. The “Bohemian Revolt” phase of the Thirty Years War was over.