World War II (European division) is already more distinct than it was while it was going on. It fell into three stages, each distinguished by the sensations in men's viscera.
Three Stages of Emotion. For the democratic world, Stage I was characterized first by the numb, sinking feeling of shock when a new Nazi invasion began; then by a few days of false hope that the campaign would go well, then by the despairing finality of another decisive defeat, finally by the return to a fool's paradise (e.g., the Phony War) until another Nazi invasion began.
Such was the sequence of sensations which followed—
¶ When, in the darkness before dawn on Sept. 1, 1939, the German divisions entered Poland (four weeks later Warsaw fell).
¶ Again on April 9, 1940, when the invasion of Denmark and Norway began (three weeks later the British were driven from Namsos).
¶ Again on May 10, 1940, when the Germans burst into the Low Countries (people strewed flowers before the British troops advancing into Belgium; three weeks later came Dunkirk; six weeks later, the fall of France; four months later, the blitz of London).
¶ Again on April 6, 1941, when the Panzer divisions pushed into Yugoslavia (Wavell's men, fresh from beating the Italians at El Agheila, made a gallant but hopeless attempt at rescue; three weeks later they were fleeing from the beaches of Greece, seven weeks later half the survivors were exterminated in the island of Crete).
In Stage II, the visceral feeling was quite different. With its emotions benumbed, the democratic world no longer expected anything but the worst. On June 22, 1941, when Hitler invaded Russia, most of the world took it for granted that Russia would crumble within a short time. But the worst never quite happened. The Russians were beaten and beaten and beaten—for 15 months. But the Germans could not crush them.
Stage III, which began with the defense of Stalingrad, was almost Stage I in reverse. The Allied world tingled periodically to the announcement of new campaigns and invasions, even as the Germans had once tingled.
For German was reserved the hollow feeling of shock, when the Allies landed in North Africa, in Sicily, in Italy, in Normandy, in southern France, on the east bank of the Rhine. This time the Germans felt the false hopes of abortive offensives, Atlantic Walls and secret weapons—and still hollower feelings after the fall of Tunis, Sicily, Naples, Rome; Kharkov, Kiev, Odessa, Bucharest; Paris, Marseilles, Antwerp; Riga, Sofia, Warsaw, Budapest; Aachen and Cracow; Frankfurt and Danzig; Essen and Vienna; Magdeburg and Nürenberg; Bremen, Milan, Munich, Berlin—
War Is Not Sporting. These three emotional stages were connected very directly with three stages in the military development of the war.
In Stage I the Wehrmacht was victorious because in every campaign it outclassed its opponent both in quantity and in quality, in manpower and in weapons.