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World War II (1 Viewer)

The Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion Part 9

In January of 1942, as I have related earlier, the Germans at the Gross Wansee Conference had decided, based upon the personal orders of Adolf Hitler, to exterminate the Jews of Europe. By May of 1942, their initial plans for this were complete. One of the first targets was the Warsaw Ghetto, with its 500,000 Jews, then the largest grouping of Jews on the continent. The death camp that would "treat" the Warsaw Jews was Treblinka, only a days' travel by rail.

Thanks to informers among the Big 7 and the Jewish police, the Germans were well aware of the growing Jewish resistance movement and decided to snuff it out before the "resettlement" would begin. (The Germans, in their extermination of the Jews, used all sorts of code words apparently designed to mask what they were doing, perhaps even to themselves. "Final Solution", "Resettlement", "Treatment", etc. were all euphimisms for the genocide that was carried out.) In May, German SS Troops rushed into the Warsaw Ghetto. Hiding places thought to be secret were forced open. The leadership of the Labor Zionists, Revisionists, Bund, and ZOB were located and shot in a single day known to the Jews as "Black Friday". Mordechai Anielewicz survived only because he was outside the Ghetto attempting to purchase guns. But almost all of his top subordinates in the ZOB were killed. So were the heads of the Zionists and Bund. Whatever organized resistance might have been planned was now in shreds, thanks to the Nazis and their informers.

A week after "Black Friday", German officials met with the Judenrat to declare that, in order to lessen the overcrowding that plagued the Ghetto, the Jews of Warsaw would be "resettled to the East". They would find good working conditions in labor camps that were being established for them somewhere in the Ukraine. 6,000 Jews were to reprot to the train station for transport each day. It would be up to the Judenrat to decide which Jews would be chosen for the resettlement. Any disobedience to these commands would be met with instant death.

The Judenrat obeyed. It was not difficult during the first few weeks to find volunteers for the transports. Jews who were starving were hopeful there might be better conditions to the east, and were eager to go. Others were unsure. Anielewicz, who was busy trying to reorganize his shattered ZOB, determined to find out the destination of the trains. He managed to get some contacts outside the Ghetto to investigate. Meanwhile, the transports continued. But soon the volunteers dried up. At that point, the Jewish police were told they must produce three "volunteers" per day per policemen, or they and their families could go. There followed days when these policemen dragged and kicked half starved wretches into the streets towards the train station.

From his contacts outside of the Ghetto, Anielewicz learned the awful truth: the destination was not the Ukraine, as the Germans had told the Judenrat, but a concentration camp called Treblinka only a day's travel away! There, the Jews were forced off the train, stripped of their clothing and belongings, and told to enter strange buildings called "bathhouses" in order for delousing. The Jews who entered these buildings never left. They were being gassed to death.

 
The Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion Part 10

Jews! Do not go to the Train Station! You are going to your death! The destination is an extermination camp, where you will be gassed to death! Join us, the Jewish Fighting Organization! The time for an uprising is now!

This message appeared on flyers and posters all over the Warsaw Ghetto. As soon as one was put up, it was torn down by angry Jewish policemen. The Judenrat denied the charges. The Germans denied them. The people, without leaders, were torn as to what to do. All of this talk of uprising was beyond them. They were not, had never been fighters. And fight back with what? Still, the volunteers for resettlement completely dried up by July of 1942.

Now factories began to be liquidated, with the Germans arbritarily choosing to close one up and deport all protected laborers. More pressure was put on the Judenrat to produce people. Hospitals were raided, and orphanages. In desperation, as a last hope of preserving their culture, the Judenrat produced a list of renowned rabbis, scholars, scientists, lawyers, writers, musicians, philosophers, historians, and other dignataries- these were the cream of Polish Jewry, and requested that they be placed under special protection. The Germans agreed, but two days later they ordered everyone on the list deported in the next transport. The chairman of the Judenrat responded to this news by swallowing a cyanide tablet he had kept hidden at his desk.

The Big 7 group of smugglers, who had run the nightclubs for the Germans and served as their informers, believed they would be protected by the Germans. They were not. An order was issued for all Big 7 workers to be deported. Then it was the time of the Jewish police thugs. And still the deportations continued. At this point there was no pretense that the train station was anything but what it actually was- death. The station itself was a madhouse. Thousands of people were locked into the little square with adjacent warehouses, guarded from entering back into the Ghetto. When the trains came, once or twice a day, all of the people would rush into the warehouses, trampling over each other. The guards would pull them out one by one until the cattle cars provided were packed. They were filled so tight that few could breath, and around 20% of the passengers died en route. Then with the trains gone, the crowd remaining would leave the warehouse, knowing they had survived for another few hours. Those with any gold or jewelry remaining would press these among the German guards, hoping against hope that they could be allowed back into the Ghetto to escape for another day. Often the money was taken, and then the payer was shot. The guards were especially annoyed during these waiting periods by crying babies or children. They were used for target practice.

Inside the Warsaw Ghetto itself, the remaining Jews began creating hidden bunkers, so many of them that there was a labyrinth of tunnels under the Earth. By mid August, no one walked the streets of the Ghetto anymore. It was like a ghost town, with the remaining Jews hidden underneath the earth.

Then, in September of 1942, the transports abruptly stopped. The reason was Treblinka was oversaturated and it was receiving Jews from other cities as well, and needed a break from the Warsaw Jews to handle the load. But the damage had been done. The Warsaw Ghetto, the largest collection of Jews on Earth in a single city, had been reduced from over 500,000 people to just under 50,000.

 
THE HUMP

The Japanese attacks on Peal Harbor and Southeast Asia essentially closed the Pacific for any supplies to flow to the Chinese (under Chiang Kai-Shek), who were fighting the Japanese in China. With the Japanese takeover of Burma, the only way to supply them was from India, flying over the Himalayas. The Hump was the name given by Allied pilots in the Second World War to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains over which they flew from India to China to resupply the Chinese Government and the units of the United States Army Air Forces based there. The region is noted for high mountain ranges and huge parallel gorges, and transverses the upper regions of the several larger rivers of South-East Asia, including the Mekong, Irrawaddy, and Salween.

Creating an airlift presented the USAAF a considerable challenge in 1942: it had no units trained or equipped for moving cargo, and no airfields existed in India for basing the large number of aircraft that would be required. Flying over the Himalayas was extremely dangerous and made more difficult by a lack of reliable charts, an absence of radio navigation aids, and a dearth of information about the weather. Flying eastward out of the (Brahmaputra) valley, the pilot first topped the Patkai Range, then passed over the upper Chindwin River valley, bounded on the east by a 14,000-foot ridge, the Kumon Mountains. He then crossed a series of 14,000—16,000-foot ridges separated by the valleys of the West Irrawaddy, East Irrawaddy, Salween, and Mekong Rivers. The main "Hump", which gave its name to the whole awesome mountainous mass and to the air route which crossed it, was the San Tsung Range, often 15,000 feet high, between the Salween and Mekong Rivers.

From the beginning, the operation was plagued with problems, and relatively little tonnage was delivered to China (The first two months of the airlift in 1942 produced only 196 net tons of cargo delivered by the USAAF). However, in May 1943, at the Trident Conference, President Roosevelt ordered ATC to deliver 5,000 tons a month to China by July; 7,500 tons by August; and 10,000 tons by September 1943. Frustration at the inability of the ICW to meet these goals led Arnold to send an inspection team to India in September 1943, led by ATC commander Maj. Gen. Harold L. George.

Accompanying George was Col. Thomas O. Hardin, an aggressive former airline executive who had already been overseas a year as head of ATC's Central African Sector. On September 16, George assigned Hardin to command the new Eastern Sector of the ICW, responsible for the Hump operations. Gen. Alexander was replaced in command of the ICW by Brig. Gen. Earl S. Hoag on October 15, 1943. In addition to the revitalization of command, George instituted the "Fireball Express", weekly flights carrying spare parts for the transports from the Air Service Command Depot at Fairfield, Ohio, to India.

Hardin immediately altered operations by introducing night missions and refusing to cancel scheduled flights because of adverse weather. Although losses to accidents increased, tonnage delivered rose sharply, surpassing its objective in December when over 12,000 tons were arrived in Kunming. As a result, President Roosevelt directed that the Presidential Unit Citation be awarded to the India-China Wing. While tonnages increased, so did expectations, and both morale and safety concerns continued to plague the operation. In early 1944, one transport and three lives were being lost for every 218 flights (an accident rate of 1.968 planes lost per thousand hours). One life was being lost for every 340 tons delivered.

The final and most noted commander commander of the airlift was Brig. Gen. William H. Tunner. After selecting his key staff and making a theater inspection trip in June 1944 that included piloting a C-46 over the Hump, he took command on September 3, 1944, with orders not just to increase the tonnage delivered, but also to reduce the numbers of lives and aircraft lost in accidents, and to improve morale in the India-China Division. In Tunner's first month of command, although the ICD delivered 22,314 tons to China, it still endured an accident rate of .682 per thousand hours of flight.

By January 1945, Tunner's division had 249 aircraft and 17,000 personnel. It delivered more than 44,000 tons of cargo and passengers to China at an aircraft availability rate of 75%. To combat losses due to mechanical failure, in February 1945 Tunner introduced a maintenance program termed Production Line Maintenance, or PLM. This consisted of having each aircraft due for 50- or 200-hour maintenance inspections towed through seven maintenance stations, each with a fresh maintenance crew for a specific service task, including engine run up, inspections, cleaning, technical repair, and servicing, a process that took nearly a full 24-hour day per aircraft to complete. Each base specialized in only one type of aircraft to simplify the process. Despite initial resistance, PLM was successfully implemented throughout the division.

Tunner also implemented several measures to reduce losses due to crew fatigue or inexperience. He appointed Col. Robert D. Forman as "chief pilot," supervising in-theater training and a stringent flying safety program. Before Tunner took command, pilot tours of duty were determined by a set number of flying hours, which many pilots abused by flying daily to rotate back to the United States in as few as four months. As a result the command flight surgeon reported that half of all aircrew suffered from operational fatigue.

Although Tunner increased the number of flight hours required, he determined that a tour was twelve months in-theater, which discouraged over-scheduling. In July 1945, the last full month of operations, 662 aircraft of the Hump airlift delivered its maximum monthly tonnage, 71,042 tons. 332 of those aircraft were ICD transports, but 261 were from USAAF units whose combat mission had ended and were temporarily assigned to the airlift. An average of 332 flights to China was scheduled daily. The India China Division had 22,000 personnel permanently assigned and boasted an aircraft availability rate of more than 85%. It suffered only eight fatal crashes in July, with 11 crewmen killed. The Hump accident rate declined to .358 aircraft per thousand hours of flight.

Personally, I take my hat off to those intrepid airmen who flew an extremely hazardous route, with sudden storms and jagged mountains, to carry out their missions in the war. When you read about someone flying “over the Hump”, you know they were good pilots.

 
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Ozy, if you're going to discuss the Hump, you might as well continue with discussion of the rest of Burma as well. Don't forget to include Orde Wingate (one of my favorites) and the Chindits.

Many of the pilots who flew the Hump returned to the Air Force in 1948 in order to fly the Berlin Airlift. It was the chance for them to duplicate their incredible feats, and they certainly did so.

 
The Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion, Part 11

In January of 1943, Heinrich Himmler arrived in Warsaw to meet Otto Globocnik, head of the SS in Poland. Himmler asked about the Warsaw Ghetto, and Globocnik reported that he believed there were about 45,000 Jews still alive and remaining there. This was reported from the Judenrat which still existed after a fashion. But most of these Jews were hidden underound.

Himmler replied that Hitler himself wanted the Warsaw Ghetto finally eliminated. However, first there was the issue of hidden journals. Journals that described the experiences of the Jews of the Lodz and Cracow Ghettoes had been written and somehow been smuggled to London, where their publication was creating adverse propaganda for the Nazis. Der Fuhrer wanted to make sure that the "Jewish Lies" were discovered in Warsaw before they too could be sent to the west.

The whole issue of the discovering the journals was part of a maniacal attempt, which would begin in 1943 and continue through the end of the war, by the Nazis to cover up the Holocaust. They spent nearly as much effort at this task, which was completely hopeless, as they did with killing Jews: what began with orders from Hitler himself to dig up Jewish journals, continued with the grotesque digging up and burning of Jewish bodies, and the establishment of a camp with "good conditions" at Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia to prove to the outside world that the Jews were being treated well.

(Ringlebaum had hidden his journals in three large milk containers. These were never discovered by the Nazis. Two were uncovered by associates of Ringlebaum after the war. The third has never been discovered to this day, though it is still believed to exist somewhere under Warsaw. The two cartons contained Ringlebaum's complete history of the Warsaw Ghetto, with diaries, reports, interviews, etc.- a treasure trove of material for interested historians.)

On January 18, 1943, a platoon of German Waffen SS soldiers entered the Ghetto to begin the new resettlement of the remaining Jews. As they approached the Judenrat building suddenly two Jews appeared out of the rubble. One of them threw a Molotov Cocktail at the Germans, catching them by surprise, and the other drew a pistol and started firing at point blank range. 6 Germans were almost instantly killed and the rest, stunned, fled the Ghetto. The Jews moved among the dead soldiers, stripping them of uniforms, machine guns, and ammunition. Then they disappeared back into the rubble.

The Rebellion had begun!

 
The Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion Part 12

This is the Jewish Fighting Organization. Today, we struck back against tyranny in the name of freedom. Polish brothers, the Nazis mean to enslave us all. Join us in this fight for our dignity!

This message was broadcast over an underground radio station. If the Poles, heard it, they ignored it. Germans reported that a group of bandits had attacked some of their soldiers in a minor incident. But at Gestapo Headquarters, Globocnik was chagrined. He had been given strict orders by Himmler to clear out the Ghetto, and now this. Of course, it was only a minor delay. Still, the Jews hiding in underground bunkers could be difficult to remove. And if more of them were armed... he decided to rethink the matter.

Inside the Warsaw Ghetto, Mordechai Anielewicz was also surprised by the incident of January 18, which he had not planned. His "troops", such as they were, were in no shape for an uprising. Of the 45,000 Jews remaining somehow alive in the Ghetto, perhaps 700 were members of the ZOB. Most of these were teenagers or boys and girls in their early 20s. They still had no military training. Thanks to Anielewicz' efforts, they now had some weapons. About half the soldiers had pistols each with about two dozen rounds of ammunition. There were exactly 6 machine guns, the same ones that had been stripped from the Germans in the first attack. And from the chemists they now had just over 2,000 pipe grenades and the same number of firebombs. Of course, they were also operating at a starvation level. Hardly the sort of force that could really challenge the well-armed German Army and Waffen SS then stationed in Warsaw.

Anielewicz took advantage of the attack to seize control of the Ghetto. The ZOB seized all entrances, along with the Judenrat and what remained of the Jewish police force. Judenrat and police force members and a few known informers were given trials for collaborating with the Germans. Those that were found guilty were executed by stabbing (bullets could not be wasted.) The message was sent throughout the Ghetto: the ZOB was in control. Then, in defiance of the Germans and to the shock of the Poles outside the walls of the Ghetto, the ZOB hung out flags bearing the Star of David and the flag of Poland.

Globocnik was made aware of these activities, but he decided to wait out the Jews. The idea of a Jewish fighting force still seemed a joke to him. He released a few prominent Jews from prison and had them open up a new Judenrat. A hospital and cultural center was set up, and the Jews were invited to resume Ghetto activities with the promise that they would receive better rations in the future and no more resettlement. The ZOB sent out an order: any Jew who chose to participate in this charade was subject to execution. No one did. Enraged, Globocnik had all members of the "new" Judenrat shot. Three months had gone by since the first attack, and he feared he was beginning to look ridiculous. Suppose in Berlin they said he was afraid of Jews? He decided that enough was enough, and he ordered an attack. It was to be under the command of SS Warsaw Commander Sammern-Frankenegg, and he was given full use of German forces inside the city. His orders were simple: eradicate the Jews. The attack was set for April 19, 1943, which ironically was the eve of Passover.

Inside the Ghetto, the ZOB knew the attack was coming. According to Marek Edelman, a survivor (to this day) the Jews expected they might survive a few hours, perhaps a day of fighting. Of course it was hopeless. There was a fierce debate among the ZOB commanders. Several wanted to leave the Ghetto through the sewers and make their way to the forest and escape. There was no hope of really fighting the Germans. According to Edelman, Anielewicz overruled them:

He told us that we were fighting for more than to save ourselves. He told us we were fighting for the dignity of the Jewish people, and to show the world that the Jews would not surrender their lives and everything we had ever known without a fight. He said that we were fighting on behalf of human freedom everywhere, and that every minute, every hour we fought on was important.

And Edelman went on to say that Anielewicz predicted that, if the long history of the Jews of Poland and Eastern Europe was to end now, this rebellion would be what people would remember.

In making this prediction, he turned out to be correct.

 
I've said it once before in this thread, but I'll say it again. Thanks for telling the tale of people like Mordechai Anielewicz. I had never heard of him and likely never would have if it weren't for this thread. His kind of bravery is the kind I love to hear about and his name should not fade into history.

 
The Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion Part 13

On April 19, 1943, German forces moved into the Ghetto. There were around 2,000 troops, of which 800 were Waffen SS. They were typically armed with machine guns. Despite the warnings of their superiors these forces really did not expect too much trouble. They had been been chasing and killing Jews in ghettoes and camps for years now. It was old hat. And it was certainly an easier life than being in the army and having to face the Russians. The troops entered the Ghetto loudly singing the Nazi ballad, the Horst Wessel Song. This song, with its lyrics telling of Jewish blood on German daggers, was designed to strike terror into the Jews and make them docile.

The ZOB attacked from hidden positions. Grenades and firebombs were thrown in reckless abandoned. Pistol shots were fired. The Germans fired back, but the Jews remained concealed. Within a matter of a few minutes, the Germans scattered and again fled the Ghetto, leaving their fallen comrades behind. Now the ZOB was armed with many machine guns, though their ammunition remained limited.

Globocnik was again enraged. How could this be happening? He ordered Sammern-Frankenegg to send some tanks into the Ghetto and finish off the rag tag crew. When the tanks entered, the ZOB hesitated. How could anyone fight a tank with a pistol? Then a young girl ran up to one of the tanks, opened the top and threw a pipe bomb inside. She was crushed to death under the tires of the tank, but it was finished anyhow. Then Jews pelted the other tanks with firebombs, forcing them to retreat. Again the Germans fled. The first day of fighting was over, and the ZOB had won the day.

Anielewicz took stock of his forces that first night. He had lost over 30% of his ammunition in the first day's battles. Obviously he could not hold on for long. Also there was not enough food and water- each fighter was restricted to one glass of water per day. However, the enthusiasm of his troops was incredible. The young men and women had been blooded in battle and had won, and for the first time in most of their lives, they were battling back against an opressor. The ZOB suddenly had more volunteers than they knew what to do with. There wasn't nearly enough weapons for all of them. Again, they attempted to contact the Polish Home Army for help. And again, they were refused: the Home Army wanted nothing to do with Jews, they were not ready for an uprising, and they calculated that this one would be short lived. However, a few Polish soldiers disagreed with their command, and that same night they sneaked into the Ghetto to fight alongside the Jews.

(Note- the Poles fighting alongside the Jews never amounted to much, perhaps a few dozen men or less. I was dismayed that the Wikipedia entry about the uprising makes a big deal about this, and I strongly suspect that it was written by people attempting to minimize the Polish complicity in the Holocaust- I have seen this all the time in Holocaust entries. In this instance, they quote Stroop's reports (see below) to "prove" Polish involvement. But it's well known to historians that Stroop's reports were falsified in part so as to minimize Jewish fighting ability. The fact that these same misstatements would be used to defend Polish involvement is heavily ironic and cannot be trusted, IMO.)

Sammern-Frankenegg told Globocnik that he believed that ousting the Jews from the rubble would be impossible, much like Stalingrad. He suggested an aerial bombardment. To Globocnik this would be telling Berlin that he could not defeat the Jews. He refused the order, fired Sammern-Frankenegg, and replaced him with Jurgen Stroop. It was Stroop who would fight most of the battles against the ZOB. The next day, he ordered his troops in again. This time a land mine carrying nuts and bolts exploded, killing a few dozen men and scattering the rest. The Jews attacked again, and again the Germans were forced out of the Ghetto.

On the second night Mordechai Anielewicz carried out his greatest gamble of the uprising. He personally led a squadron of the ZOB out of the Ghetto. They were all dressed in captured German uniforms and they raided the Gestapo armory, seizing stocks of weapons, ammunition, and food, and returned it with them to the Ghetto. Now the ZOB was stronger than ever, and the Germans still had yet to gain an inch into the Ghetto.

 
The Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion Concluded

For the next 5 weeks, the ZOB continued to chase the Germans out of the Ghetto. How they did this continues to defy logic 74 years later. Their ammunition shrunk to almost zero, and still they fought on. Their food was non-existent, and still they fought on. They were bombed from the sky, burned out of their buildings, and still they fought. German soldiers wrote in diaries that they had never faced such fighters: "They were like crazy men, they refused to die. And the women were worse than the men." Day after day the Germans would send over 2,000 men into the Ghetto; day after day they were chased out again. It finally ended when the Germans started pumping poison gas into the sewers, which led to the bunkers they could not find. According to Marek Edelman:

It was burning hot at the bunker in Mila 18 (the main headquarters of the ZOB) and none of us could breathe. There were over 300 people crowded together, men women children. Only 27 ZOB soldiers were left in the Bunker. Mordechai (Anielecwicz) kept gathering us together urging one more attack, one more strike. It was hopeless.

Marek Edelman escaped through the sewers into the forest with about 200 Jews- the only survivors of the Ghetto, which once held 500,000 people. Anielecwicz' body was never recovered. It is believed he died at Mila 18.

The Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto held out longer than Poland had. Their situation was hopeless from the start. The fact that they chose to fight at all is amazing and inspirational. They honored themselves, and the history of their ancestors, by doing so. They swore that they would not go down without a fight, and they did not.

There were, of course, other Jewish rebellions in the Holocaust. Treblinka itself was destroyed after its prisoners overthrow their tormenters, and so did Sobibor. Auschwitz had its own history which I will discuss at some later pont in the narrative. But the Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion is the most famous, because it lasted so long, and because the participants were so heroic. Today, there are statues of Mordechai Anielecwicz in Warsaw and in Israel.

To those who have spent the time reading this long narrative, thanks for your patience and I hope it was worth it. I know many of you have been waiting for more actual battles, and we'll get to it now. Next up is more North Africa and the attack on Sicily.

 
Just as an added note, there are two fine novels dealing with the Warsaw Ghetto and the uprising:

Mila 18 by Leon Uris is a great narrative, written by an author is knows how to describe battles. He does full justice to the heroism involved, and gives a good sense of the story from all sides.

The Wall by John Hersey is a much more complex, literary novel, and more difficult to read, but probably better written. It's agonizing to get through, but it certainly keeps your interest. It's more of a work of art; Mila 18 is a more "fun" read, if a novel dealing with this issue could be called fun.

One more interesting note about Mila 18 for literature fans: when Joseph Heller wrote his dark comic novel of World War II, he wanted to call it Catch 18. But his publishers were worried readers would confuse it with Mila 18, which was then a best seller. So Heller changed the title to Catch 22. Somehow, I doubt that Catch 18 would have become iconic and a common phrase with that title. It doesn't roll off the tongue nearly as well, IMO.

 
timschochet said:
The Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion, Part 2

What did these priests, who were nearly illiterate themselves, say about the Scriptures? They told their believing flock that the Jews killed Jesus Christ. They told them that the Bible stated that God hated the Jews, and wanted them punished for their sins on Earth. They said that Jews poisoned wells and used the blood of gentile children in their rituals. They preached that Paul, Matthew, Luke, and the rest of the writers of the New Testament (none of whom were Jewish), wrote in that book that killing Jews was a blessing. As the Muslim mullahs do today, these priests twisted and made up Scripture, turning it into a document of hate. And the masses ate it up. It was frustrating to blame their woes on the nobles, who were often not around and were well guarded. It was much easier to blame the Jews.
Click to expand...
Tim,The bolded statement is a tad ambiguous. You do realize that Paul of Tarsus, the author of much of the New Testament, was a Pharisee from the tribe of Benjamin, yes?

 
acapella said:
timschochet said:
The Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion, Part 2

What did these priests, who were nearly illiterate themselves, say about the Scriptures? They told their believing flock that the Jews killed Jesus Christ. They told them that the Bible stated that God hated the Jews, and wanted them punished for their sins on Earth. They said that Jews poisoned wells and used the blood of gentile children in their rituals. They preached that Paul, Matthew, Luke, and the rest of the writers of the New Testament (none of whom were Jewish), wrote in that book that killing Jews was a blessing. As the Muslim mullahs do today, these priests twisted and made up Scripture, turning it into a document of hate. And the masses ate it up. It was frustrating to blame their woes on the nobles, who were often not around and were well guarded. It was much easier to blame the Jews.
Click to expand...
Tim,The bolded statement is a tad ambiguous. You do realize that Paul of Tarsus, the author of much of the New Testament, was a Pharisee from the tribe of Benjamin, yes?
Click to expand...
I think you misunderstood. My point was, it was an anti-Semitic claim that none of the Apostles were Jewish, and this was prevalent thought in Poland and Eastern Europe. Nazi Germany took it one step further: the ministers of the "Reich Church" (a merging of the ideas of Nazism and Christianity, supposedly) actually preached that Jesus wasn't Jewish either.
 
timschochet said:
acapella said:
timschochet said:
The Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion, Part 2

What did these priests, who were nearly illiterate themselves, say about the Scriptures? They told their believing flock that the Jews killed Jesus Christ. They told them that the Bible stated that God hated the Jews, and wanted them punished for their sins on Earth. They said that Jews poisoned wells and used the blood of gentile children in their rituals. They preached that Paul, Matthew, Luke, and the rest of the writers of the New Testament (none of whom were Jewish), wrote in that book that killing Jews was a blessing. As the Muslim mullahs do today, these priests twisted and made up Scripture, turning it into a document of hate. And the masses ate it up. It was frustrating to blame their woes on the nobles, who were often not around and were well guarded. It was much easier to blame the Jews.
Click to expand...
Tim,The bolded statement is a tad ambiguous. You do realize that Paul of Tarsus, the author of much of the New Testament, was a Pharisee from the tribe of Benjamin, yes?
Click to expand...
I think you misunderstood. My point was, it was an anti-Semitic claim that none of the Apostles were Jewish, and this was prevalent thought in Poland and Eastern Europe. Nazi Germany took it one step further: the ministers of the "Reich Church" (a merging of the ideas of Nazism and Christianity, supposedly) actually preached that Jesus wasn't Jewish either.
Click to expand...
Ok. Sorry.
 
I'm still behind but I thought I'd a couple questions/observations:

First, thanks Tim for the whole Warsaw Ghetto series. I had always known about it but never the whole story.

Secondly, as far as Kursk and Zhukov, I had always read that Zhukov was always looked down upon historically because of the high number of casualties. Kinda the opposite of Rommel, where Zhukov just let the superiority in numbers play out. I know it's been mentioned, but was wondering your thoughts.

Third, I knew that the Atlantic U-boat attacks were much higher and much closer to shore than the US would admit, but I had no idea that the problem was solved so rapidly, i.e. the 2-month time period because of technological advances. Thanks.

 
JaxBill said:
I'm still behind but I thought I'd a couple questions/observations:First, thanks Tim for the whole Warsaw Ghetto series. I had always known about it but never the whole story.Secondly, as far as Kursk and Zhukov, I had always read that Zhukov was always looked down upon historically because of the high number of casualties. Kinda the opposite of Rommel, where Zhukov just let the superiority in numbers play out. I know it's been mentioned, but was wondering your thoughts.Third, I knew that the Atlantic U-boat attacks were much higher and much closer to shore than the US would admit, but I had no idea that the problem was solved so rapidly, i.e. the 2-month time period because of technological advances. Thanks.
Click to expand...
You are right about Zhukov and the number of casualties, but recognize that this was the whole Soviet approach to the war. Blood was expendable. You see it in the shooting of deserters, in the feeding of bodies into Stalingrad (where a new soldier would survive for a day or two), the no retreat policy (Zhukov went to Leningrad and told the soldiers there to shoot him if he retreated). I guess when you're Stalin, and you've starved 20 million, what's a few million more? Zhukov told Eisenhower that his preferred method of clearing a minefield was to send a couple of companies of troops through it.
 
North Africa, Continued

George Patton arrived at II Corps like an exploding bomb. He sped from unit to unit in his open command car, horns blaring, outriders roaring ahead and behind, standing erect for every soldier to see this tall trim figure with the two stars gleaming on his helmet, his pearl-handled revolver swinging at his hip. To say that he tightened discipline is an understatement. He turned the screws so tight that the men began to wince. "Arrest that truck driver! He hasn't got a tie on!" Ties were useless in the desert, but Rommel gave the troops back their pride. The men loved him, calling him Old Blood and Guts. They admired the way he took on the British in the verbal war that erupted after the battle at Kasserine Pass. When some British officers made slighting comments about American courage, Patton wondered aloud in typically fiery language, "Where were the Brits when the #### hit the fan?" He cited the total lack of air cover, which was the British responsibility.

For all of Patton's theatrics, most of which were staged to impress his soldiers, he was a solid commander with a thorough understanding of tank warfare. He was eager to strike Rommel in his rear to cut his communications. But General Alexander, who had taken field command of Allied forces, held him back. He said he was fearful that the Americans would be battered. He was also responding to Montgomery's warning on the Yanks: "Don't let them be too ambitious and spoil the show." Disgusted, Patton asked Eisenhower to send him back to Morocco, where he had been planning the invasion of Sicily. Ike complied, and replaced him with Omar Bradley.

Omar N. Bradley, from Missouri, was opposite in manner to Patton. He came from modest origins, he was a quiet unassuming man with a soft voice. His modest bearing and gentle manner made his soldiers like him and trust him, (though not love or hate him; these qualities were reserved for flamboyent men like Patton and MacArthur.) Beneath the veneer of gentility, Bradley was determined and extremely decisive. Bradley could "read" a battle, much like a football quarterback reading defenses.

A few weeks after Bradley took command, the Desert Fox fought his last battle in North Africa.

 
North Africa, Continued

Rommel thought that he might catch Montgomery still preparing, so he attacked him on March 5 at Medenine. He had waited a few days too long, however, and the British were ready for him. Without barbed wire and with only a few mines to protect them, the British infantry held their position against two panzer divisions, while their artillery poured a devastating fire on the attackers. This was the perfect way to stop tanks, and Rommel lost 52 of his 140 tanks before he withdrew.

Once again, Rommel had sought to inspire his troops by showing himself at the front. But he was now a very sick man, his throat bandaged and his face covered with desert sores. A week after his defeat, he left for Germany in order to plead once again with Hitler for more equipment for his troops. Hitler again called Rommel a coward and defeatist. He refused Rommel permission to return to his men, and placed them under the command of Gen. Dietloff Jurgen von Arnim. From this interview and subsequent meetings, Rommel was now firmly convinced that the real enemy of the German people was Adolf Hitler.

Neither of the British armies made much progress against the Axis Bizerte-Tunis line, even though von Armin was experiencing severe supply shortages. It was up to the U.S. II Corps. On April 30, the attack against Bizerte went forward with the 34th Division moving on Hill 609. The 34th had done poorly at Kasserine, and Eisenhower had ordered Bradley to give it a tough objective. The 34th's soldiers went slowly up the hill, ts men falling under a killing cross fire. They took the hill the following morning, and then threw back a fierce German counterattack.

Now the British armies began to break through Arnim's defenses. On May 7 Anderson's soldiers took Tunis and on that same day the U.S. II Corps entered Bizerte. On May 13, the last Axis forces in Tunisia surrendered. A total of 275,000 enemy troops, more than half of them German, had been taken by the Anglo-Americans, a bag of prisoners even larger than the Soviets took at Stalingrad.

 
North Africa, Conclusion and Analysis

The North African campaign had taken too long and cost too much: 6 months in time and 71,810 Allied casualties, of which 10,820 were killed, 39,575 wounded and 21,415 missing or captured. But it was the first complete Allied victory over the Axis; for the first time Hitler and Mussolini had been evicted from a continent. It had landed the Allies, however, firmly in the Mediterranean. They had come there, it would seem, because "something" had to be done against the Axis in 1942 to relieve the pressure on Stalin and to allay Winston Churchill's fears of failure in France, or worse, partial success that would renew the static slaughter of World War I. But because of North Africa there was to be no cross-Channel invasion in 1943, and the Anglo-Americans and their allies would not enter northwest Europe- the one place in which Hitler could be decisively beaten- until 13 months later. The campaign surely would not have taken so long if Eisenhower had been allowed to land closer to Tunis, as he desired, or if the political problems with the North African French had not delayed him until the winter rains once again bogged him down. But Churchill's shining hopes for a decisive thrust up the Italian peninsula into Hitler's southern flank were never to be realized.

Nevertheless, the Allies had won their first decisive victory, and they had won as allies. Eisenhower had emerged as a true supreme commander. He had made many mistakes born of inexperience, and perhaps it is just as well that they were made in North Africa rather than in France. That, indeed, may have been an unforseen benefit from North Africa. The Allied coalition from the heads of government through the Combined Chiefs through Ike and his deputies down to the corps and divsion commanders in the field was now a smooth functioning machine, as it certainly would not have been in a 1943 invasion of France. Much of this was due to the supreme commander's devotion to the Alliance. It never flagged, never gave way to any other consideration, especially not himself.

It was with him even after the campaign was won, after he reviewed a military parade in Tunis and flew back to Algiers accompanied by Harold Macmillan, his British political advisor who would one day be prime minister. Looking down on the Mediterranean from their Flying Fortress, they saw a huge Allied convoy sailing in serene safety to Egypt. "There, General," Macmillan said, "are the fruits of your victory." Eisenhower turned to him with his quick smile, but with tears in his eyes.

"Ours, you mean," he said- "ours."

 
timschochet said:
North Africa, Conclusion and Analysis

The North African campaign had taken too long and cost too much: 6 months in time and 71,810 Allied casualties, of which 10,820 were killed, 39,575 wounded and 21,415 missing or captured. But it was the first complete Allied victory over the Axis; for the first time Hitler and Mussolini had been evicted from a continent. It had landed the Allies, however, firmly in the Mediterranean. They had come there, it would seem, because "something" had to be done against the Axis in 1942 to relieve the pressure on Stalin and to allay Winston Churchill's fears of failure in France, or worse, partial success that would renew the static slaughter of World War I. But because of North Africa there was to be no cross-Channel invasion in 1943, and the Anglo-Americans and their allies would not enter northwest Europe- the one place in which Hitler could be decisively beaten- until 13 months later. The campaign surely would not have taken so long if Eisenhower had been allowed to land closer to Tunis, as he desired, or if the political problems with the North African French had not delayed him until the winter rains once again bogged him down. But Churchill's shining hopes for a decisive thrust up the Italian peninsula into Hitler's southern flank were never to be realized.

Nevertheless, the Allies had won their first decisive victory, and they had won as allies. Eisenhower had emerged as a true supreme commander. He had made many mistakes born of inexperience, and perhaps it is just as well that they were made in North Africa rather than in France. That, indeed, may have been an unforseen benefit from North Africa. The Allied coalition from the heads of government through the Combined Chiefs through Ike and his deputies down to the corps and divsion commanders in the field was now a smooth functioning machine, as it certainly would not have been in a 1943 invasion of France. Much of this was due to the supreme commander's devotion to the Alliance. It never flagged, never gave way to any other consideration, especially not himself.

It was with him even after the campaign was won, after he reviewed a military parade in Tunis and flew back to Algiers accompanied by Harold Macmillan, his British political advisor who would one day be prime minister. Looking down on the Mediterranean from their Flying Fortress, they saw a huge Allied convoy sailing in serene safety to Egypt. "There, General," Macmillan said, "are the fruits of your victory." Eisenhower turned to him with his quick smile, but with tears in his eyes.

"Ours, you mean," he said- "ours."
Click to expand...
The Allies were not ready for a cross channel invasion of France in 1943. Africa was one thing, but facing the whole might of the German Western Front was an entirely different thing indeed. Even with a year more to prepare, it was still touch and go in 1944. Stalin, of course, was pushing for a Western Front as soon as possible. The Allies were concerned that he might make a separate peace with Hitler; which is why they went to Sicily and then to Italy.
 
timschochet said:
North Africa, Continued

George Patton arrived at II Corps like an exploding bomb. He sped from unit to unit in his open command car, horns blaring, outriders roaring ahead and behind, standing erect for every soldier to see this tall trim figure with the two stars gleaming on his helmet, his pearl-handled revolver swinging at his hip. To say that he tightened discipline is an understatement. He turned the screws so tight that the men began to wince. "Arrest that truck driver! He hasn't got a tie on!" Ties were useless in the desert, but Rommel gave the troops back their pride. The men loved him, calling him Old Blood and Guts. They admired the way he took on the British in the verbal war that erupted after the battle at Kasserine Pass. When some British officers made slighting comments about American courage, Patton wondered aloud in typically fiery language, "Where were the Brits when the #### hit the fan?" He cited the total lack of air cover, which was the British responsibility.

For all of Patton's theatrics, most of which were staged to impress his soldiers, he was a solid commander with a thorough understanding of tank warfare. He was eager to strike Rommel in his rear to cut his communications. But General Alexander, who had taken field command of Allied forces, held him back. He said he was fearful that the Americans would be battered. He was also responding to Montgomery's warning on the Yanks: "Don't let them be too ambitious and spoil the show." Disgusted, Patton asked Eisenhower to send him back to Morocco, where he had been planning the invasion of Sicily. Ike complied, and replaced him with Omar Bradley.

Omar N. Bradley, from Missouri, was opposite in manner to Patton. He came from modest origins, he was a quiet unassuming man with a soft voice. His modest bearing and gentle manner made his soldiers like him and trust him, (though not love or hate him; these qualities were reserved for flamboyent men like Patton and MacArthur.) Beneath the veneer of gentility, Bradley was determined and extremely decisive. Bradley could "read" a battle, much like a football quarterback reading defenses.

A few weeks after Bradley took command, the Desert Fox fought his last battle in North Africa.
Click to expand...
Bradley was very good, no doubt about it. However, he benefited because the press didn't like Patton, and so they liked him as the alternative. Patton was the kind of general who could win quickly; Bradley would be more methodical, and would get there too, but perhaps more slowly and not win as decisively. If I was down two touchdowns at the half, I'd want Patton. If I was up by two, I'd want Bradley.
 
Ozymandias said:
Bradley was very good, no doubt about it. However, he benefited because the press didn't like Patton, and so they liked him as the alternative. Patton was the kind of general who could win quickly; Bradley would be more methodical, and would get there too, but perhaps more slowly and not win as decisively. If I was down two touchdowns at the half, I'd want Patton. If I was up by two, I'd want Bradley.
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I think, at least in personality, there is a parallel between Patton and Halsey, Bradley and Spruance. MacArthur, though, is a personality all to himself, and I'll be getting to him shortly.
 
Ozymandias said:
The Allies were not ready for a cross channel invasion of France in 1943. Africa was one thing, but facing the whole might of the German Western Front was an entirely different thing indeed. Even with a year more to prepare, it was still touch and go in 1944. Stalin, of course, was pushing for a Western Front as soon as possible. The Allies were concerned that he might make a separate peace with Hitler; which is why they went to Sicily and then to Italy.
Click to expand...
I thought that FDR-Stalin correspondence pretty much debunked the "separate peace" concerns. In fact, I thought that it has been more convincingly argued that Stalin feared an Allied peace with Germany.
 
Aerial Assault said:
Ozymandias said:
The Allies were not ready for a cross channel invasion of France in 1943. Africa was one thing, but facing the whole might of the German Western Front was an entirely different thing indeed. Even with a year more to prepare, it was still touch and go in 1944. Stalin, of course, was pushing for a Western Front as soon as possible. The Allies were concerned that he might make a separate peace with Hitler; which is why they went to Sicily and then to Italy.
Click to expand...
I thought that FDR-Stalin correspondence pretty much debunked the "separate peace" concerns. In fact, I thought that it has been more convincingly argued that Stalin feared an Allied peace with Germany.
Click to expand...
Well, except that, as I mentioned in a post above, before Kursk, Von Ribbentrop and Molotov did meet and discuss a possible armistice. It bogged down over Russia's insistence on going back to the pre-war borders (and Germany's insistence on keeping some of the captured territories). So it wasn't as far fetched a concern.
 
timschochet said:
Now the British armies began to break through Arnim's defenses. On May 7 Anderson's soldiers took Tunis and on that same day the U.S. II Corps entered Bizerte. On May 13, the last Axis forces in Tunisia surrendered. A total of 275,000 enemy troops, more than half of them German, had been taken by the Anglo-Americans, a bag of prisoners even larger than the Soviets took at Stalingrad.
Click to expand...
Of those 275,000 POWs, most of them were sent to POW camps in the American South for the duration of the war. Here's an interesting article from the Mississippi Historical Society about German/Italian POWs in Mississippi:German Prisoners of War in Mississippi, 1943-1946

By John Ray Skates

World War II was truly a world war. All of the major countries and a large number of small nations were drawn into the fight. Even countries that tried to remain neutral found themselves in the conflict either by conquest or by being in the path of the campaigns of the major powers. For example, in 1940, more than a year before the United States entered the war, the major powers — Britain, Italy, and Germany — fought important battles in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya in North Africa.

Not until November 1942, almost a year after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, did American forces enter the fight in North Africa. U.S. forces made amphibious landings at the North African cities of Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers. German and Italian forces in Libya were then caught in a vise — Americans advanced from the west along the North African coast to Tunisia while British troops advanced from the east out of Egypt. The Germans and Italians had to defend on two fronts — the British front on the east and the American front on the west. (See the maps on the left.)

Afrika Korps becomes POWs

The famous "Afrika Korps," under German General Erwin Rommel, made up of German and Italian tanks and trucks, was besieged in Tunisia and fought on until May 1943. In March, Rommel flew to Germany to plead with Hitler for reinforcements. Instead, Hitler retired Rommel.

Two months later, the Afrika Korps became prisoners of war of the United States and Great Britain. General Jurgen Von Arnim, Rommel's replacement, went into captivity as a prisoner of war along with 275,000 German and Italian soldiers. They were housed in tents surrounded by barbed wire. Food, water and other essentials had to be transported to the German and Italian prisoner-of-war compounds. A shipping shortage plagued the allies. How could they feed and house the German and Italian prisoners in Africa while the United States and Great Britain needed all ships to bring troops and equipment from America for the Normandy invasion? After unloading their cargoes in Great Britain, many of these ships returned empty to the United States.

To help alleviate the shipping problems, a decision was made by the U.S. government to bring the German and Italian prisoners of war from North Africa to prisons in the United States. It would be less burdensome and less costly to house and feed the captured men in the United States. Additionally, the prisoners of war (POWs) could be put to work in non-military jobs. In the last four months of 1943, German and Italian prisoners of war began arriving in the United States from their compounds in North Africa.

A German soldier, who fought in North Africa, kept a diary from his surrender on May 13, 1943, to his arrival some months later at Camp Clinton, just outside Jackson, Mississippi. He and his fellow veterans of the now defeated Afrika Korps were marched and trucked to the city of Algiers in Algeria, North Africa, where they were put on ships that carried them to the Algerian port of Oran. They were then marched to a POW compound in the desert where they were housed in a "cage" (the name used by American soldiers for a barbed wire enclosure).

POWs arrive in Mississippi

Four weeks later the POWs were trucked from the cage back to Oran on the North African coast. There they boarded ships for the journey across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. After two weeks at sea, the ship docked at the Port of Norfolk, Virginia, on August 4, 1943. At Norfolk the prisoners who were assigned to Camp Clinton expected a slow freight train to carry them to their destination. Instead, they boarded a sleek, comfortable passenger train. Two days later they arrived at Camp Clinton.

Camp Clinton, one of four major POW base camps established in Mississippi, was unique among the other camps because it housed the highest ranking German officers. Twenty-five generals were housed there along with several colonels, majors, and captains. The high ranking generals had special housing. Lower ranking officers had to content themselves with small apartments. General Von Arnim, Rommel's replacement, lived in a house and was furnished a car and driver. Some people swore that General Von Arnim attended movies in Jackson because the movie theater was the only air-conditioned place in town.

Other major POW camps in Mississippi were established at Camp McCain near Grenada, Camp Como in the northern Delta, and Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg. The four base camps were large compounds designed to house large numbers of POWs. Camp McCain housed 7,700, Camp Clinton 3,400, and Camp Shelby housed 5,300. Camp Como originally held 3,800 Italian soldiers, but the Italians were soon moved out of Mississippi and replaced by a smaller number of Germans.

U.S. adheres to Geneva Conventions

These base camps had most of the facilities and services that could be found in a small town — dentists, doctors, libraries, movies, educational facilities (English language was the most popular course) and athletics (soccer was the most popular sport). POWs were guaranteed by an international treaty called the Geneva Conventions to get food, clothing, and medical care equal to that of their captors.

POWs were housed in barracks that held up to fifty men. Each five barracks had a mess hall with cooks, waiters, silverware, and by all accounts very good food. Food was not a complaint for the prisoners. In fact, most of the food was prepared by German cooks with ingredients furnished by the U.S. Army. A sample breakfast was cereal, toast, corn flakes, jam, coffee, milk, and sugar. A typical lunch was roast pork, potato salad, carrots, and ice water. Supper might be meat loaf, scrambled eggs, coffee, milk, and bread. Beer could be bought in the canteen.

Individual barracks fielded teams for sports as diverse as horseshoes, volleyball, and soccer. Athletic contests among the barracks were highly competitive, and tournaments were arranged to select the winners. Prisoners at Camp Shelby reported the outcome of athletic events in the camp's newspaper, the Mississippi Post.

POWs were allowed to keep their uniforms for ceremonial occasions such as funerals and holidays. These uniforms, however, had already seen much wear. For everyday wear, POWs wore black or khaki shirts and pants with the letters "PW" stenciled in paint on each leg. Winter clothes were wool jackets and pants. Athletic shorts and shirts were issued for games.

Under the Geneva Conventions, officers could not be forced to work. However, soldiers could be required to work if the tasks did not aid their captor's war efforts. If the POWs worked outside the compound, they received a payment of 80 cents a day. This was enough money to buy cigarettes and other items that were available in the prison canteen. Most chose to work. The kinds of work done by these POWs depended on the region in Mississippi where they were housed.

POWs pick cotton, plant trees

In 1944, the four base camps — Camp McCain, Camp Como, Camp Clinton, and Camp Shelby — developed fifteen branch camps. Ten of these camps were in the Delta. They were located at Greenville, Belzoni, Leland, Indianola, Clarksdale, Drew, Greenwood, Lake Washington, Merigold, and Rosedale. These camps furnished POWs to work in the cotton fields where in the spring under a hot sun, they chopped the weeds away from the young cotton plants with a hoe. In the fall they picked the cotton — a job they disliked. Mechanical cotton pickers had not yet been perfected, so cotton had to be picked by hand. The prisoners dragged heavy canvas bags, and as they filled the bag with cotton, the sack became heavier. As they pulled the cotton from the bolls, the pointed bolls scratched and punctured their hands. The summer heat of the Delta was much like that of the North African desert.

The other five branch camps were located in south Mississippi in the pine lands. They were at Brookhaven, Picayune, Richton, Saucier, and Gulfport. Much of the POW's work was in forestry. They planted seedlings, cut timber and pulpwood, and cleared lands for various purposes. They worked to complete Lake Shelby, a small lake a few miles from Camp Shelby.

Perhaps the most intricate and useful work that was done by German POWs in Mississippi was the Mississippi River Basin Model. The U.S. Corps of Engineers was in charge of major waterways, and they had long wanted to build a one-square-mile model of the entire Mississippi River basin. Such a model could be of great value in predicting floods and in assessing the water flow of the Mississippi River and its tributaries.

Chief of the United States Corps of Engineers, Major General Eugene Reybold saw an opportunity to build the model. He would use German POWs from Camp Clinton to clear a one-square-mile area near Jackson. Using hundreds of wheelbarrows and shovels, the POWs prepared the site. They dug drainage ditches, they constructed miniature streets and bridges, and they formed the one-square-mile landscape into a miniature Mississippi River basin.

Most German POWs were not dedicated Nazis. Yet small numbers of fanatical Nazis frequently intimidated the other prisoners. At Camp Clinton a German soldier was killed by these fanatical Nazis. The bitterness between the Nazis and the other prisoners threatened to become a major problem. The American authorities intervened and shipped the Nazis to special camps in Oklahoma.

Attempts at the great escape

Captured soldiers often feel they have a duty to escape, but the possibilities of successful escapes were remote in Mississippi. Most POWs in the state were content to wait out the end of the war. Nonetheless, some POWs tried to escape. Escapees found it relatively easy to get out of the prison camps. They could walk off from a cotton field or slip off into the woods. They were hardly ever successful. Their German accents, their POW clothes, or their lack of money gave them away. Despite their failures, some POWs kept trying.

At Camp Clinton the prisoners dug a tunnel 100 feet long. They hoped to tunnel under the fence. They concealed in their pants legs the dirt that they had dug out for the tunnel and then scattered the dirt around the prison grounds. They even installed light bulbs to light the tunnel. The tunnelers were caught 10 feet from the fence.

At Grenada, near Camp McCain, four prisoners were discovered eating lunch in a Grenada restaurant. More than thirty POWs walked away from a camp at Belzoni. The local police, FBI, state highway patrol, and volunteers searched the surrounding area. The missing POWS were soon found walking the streets of Belzoni looking into the store windows. They explained that they had become bored in the camp.

Perhaps the strangest escape of all involved a German pilot and the wife of a Delta planter. The wife fell in love with Helmut Von der Aue during the several months that he worked on the plantation. The German POW and the planter's wife were arrested in Nashville, Tennessee. The pilot explained that they were on their way to the east coast to steal an airplane and fly to Greenland.

POWs return home

The war in Europe ended in May 1945, but the POWs remained in the compounds and continued to work — some for almost a year after the war ended. American soldiers were mustered out of the military quickly and efficiently, but President Harry Truman decided that a labor shortage existed in the United States and that the POWs should remain in this country until the labor shortage was over. Some POWs did not get home to Germany until mid-1946. They had been in the Mississippi camps almost three years.

Over the years since 1946, German veterans have come back to Mississippi to see the camps that they lived in as young men. They are sad to learn that the camps were torn down after the war. The German POWs in Mississippi were probably aged 18 to 20 when they were captured in North Africa in 1943. The survivors of the Mississippi prisoner-of-war camps are now very old. But many of those who are alive still come back to Mississippi to remember their experience. In a strange way the camps saved their lives. Unlike many other German soldiers who were killed in the war, these POWs survived. When they entered the Mississippi camps, their war was over.

 
Italy Part 1

Following the fall of Tunisia, Dwight Eisenhower was eager to invade the island of Sicily as soon as possible. But he could not because there were not enough landing craft. Throughout the war the shortage of landing craft in every theater- especially the Pacific, in which island after island had to be invaded from the sea- was to be a thorn in the side of the Combined Chiefs. No other problem was so consistent or consumed so much of their time.

One good reason for the shortage in 1943 was that Allied production was concentrating on the ships that would end the U-Boat menace. Another not-so-good reason was that the proponents of strategic bombing had been so successful that the factories were busier making bombs than landing craft. Thus, a 2 month delay in invading Sicily was forced on Ike, and in the interval he decided to strike the island of Pantelleria.

Pantelleria lay between Tunisia and Sicily. With its excellent airfield it menaced any seaborne invasion of Sicily. It was a tiny and impregnable rock held by 11,000 Italian soldiers whose guns were registered on the narrow harbor through which any invasion had to pass. There were no beaches, only steep rocky shores. General Eisenhower thought he could bomb Pantelleria into submission. His British deputies- Cunningham, Alexander, and Tedder- demurred. But Ike persisted, convinced that "most Italians had had a stomachful of fighting and were looking for any good excuse to quit." When he added that he wanted the island's airfield, that brought Tedder around to his side. Cunningham followed, after Tedder's air forces had pounded the island and its harbor for 3 weeks. But Alexander still objected, along with the British general chosen to lead the assault. Both said Pantelleria was a minature Gibraltar, which not only could not be taken but which also could crucify any invading force. On June 7, Eisenhower joined Cunningham aboard H.M.S. Aurora, part of a fleet sailing to bombard the island. The ships ran up to the rocky coast and blasted away, with Cunningham personally directing some of the fire. Only two Italian shore batteries replied, hitting nothing. "Andrew," Ike told Cunningham, "If you and I got into a small boat, we could capture the place ourselves."

On June 11, the British invasion fleet set sail, and before a single soldier set foot on Pantelleria, the Italians surrendered. There was only one Allied casualty: a Tommy was bitten by a mule.

Eisenhower was elated. No other operation in the war had been so short and sweet and no other command decision so crowned with success. The fact that he had been opposed by commanders senior to him in rank and experience was a source of satisfaction. Now he was ready for Sicily.

About 180,000 Allied troops would go against 405,000 Axis troops, which would seem like a striking and dangerous reversal of the 3 to 1 superiority usually deemed necessary for a seaborne invasion, except that 315,000 of the enemy were Italians and only 90,000 Germans. However, the Axis forces were commanded by Marshal Albert Kesselring, one of the very best of the German generals. He would face Montgomery and Patton, and an even worse foe among his own forces- the Italians, for the most part, were ready and eager to switch sides.

 
RAID ON PLOESTI

Ploesti was a vast complex of oil refinery facilities located some 30 miles north of Bucharest, Romania. It is estimated that it supplied more than fifty percent of the refined oil necessary to keep the German war machine running. In the words of Winston Churchill, Ploesti was “the taproot of German might.” It was a strategic target whose destruction allied planners hoped would deliver a severe blow to Germany’s ability to carry on the war. Although the Russians had attempted a raid on Ploesti, it had not been very successful.

Ploesti was too far to be attacked from England. But with North Africa as a base, it was possible to launch an attack, although it was more than one thousand miles away. The blow was to be delivered by American B-24 bombers flying out of the Libyan Desert, across the Mediterranean Sea to the target and return - a two thousand mile journey that would push the abilities of both planes and crews to their limits. This would not be the first raid on Ploesti - this had occurred in June 1942 -, nor the last, but it had the highest expectations. The original raid was with many fewer planes, and had been done from high level—above 30,000 ft. This was going to be at treetop level, exposing the crews to much more danger, but with a greater possibility of success. Five bombardment groups – two borrowed from the Eighth Air Force stationed in England – equipped with B-24 Liberator bombers began low-level flight training in the Libyan dessert. Flying in formation at altitudes of fifty feet or lower to avoid radar detection and impede enemy antiaircraft fire.

It had been hoped that as many as 200 B-24 Liberators would be available for Operation Tidal Wave. It was an optimistic outlook that was, nevertheless, too small a force to strike all of the refineries that circled Ploesti.  Five primary facilities were selected and numbered Target White 1 - 5.   With the bombers launching from Libya, 200 miles closer than the first Ploesti mission and in a direct line over the Mediterranean and across Greece, the formation was plotted to approach the city from the west.  As these tactical considerations developed, two additional targets were added.  The Steau Romana facility eighteen miles north of Ploesti at Campina was designated Target Red.  The Creditul Minier facility at Brazi five miles south of the main objectives was designated Target Blue.  The latter produced the highest quality aviation fuel in Europe.

When the first of 178 Liberators began taking at 5:00 A.M. on the morning of Sunday, August 1, 1943, it marked the culmination of months of planning and more than a week of detailed practice.  Operation Tidal Wave may well have been the most thoroughly planned and intricately briefed air mission in history, and was to be lead by what was probably the most experienced leadership ever assembled.  Every officer from the Ninth Air Force commander on down, planned to fly with his men. Despite all this planning and preparation, the devil was in the details.

Loaded with extra fuel tanks, 178 attack planes struggled aloft from their Libyan airstrips early Sunday morning August 1, 1943. They flew into a fiery hell that would be remembered as "Black Sunday." Trouble began almost immediately. Unbeknownst to the air crews, the Germans had broken their communication code and monitored their flight almost as soon as they took off. As they approached their target, the lead flight made a wrong turn up a mountain valley taking one of the following flights with it. Detected by German radar, the attacking Americans had lost the element of surprise.

Arriving on target, the B-24's were confronted with one of the most heavily protected facilities the Germans had. Surrounded by hundreds of anti-aircraft emplacements, heavy-caliber machine guns and defending aircraft, Ploesti's defenses included a specially designed flak train made up of freight cars whose sides could drop revealing anti-aircraft artillery that spewed death from its guns as the train raced in tandem with attacking planes. Smoke stacks obscured by billowing smoke from exploding storage tanks also took their toll on the low-flying B-24s.

Fifty-three aircraft – each with a crew of ten – were lost in the attack. Later surveillance flights revealed that approximately forty-two percent of Ploesti’s refining capacity had been destroyed. However, it took only a few weeks for the Germans to bring the complex back to its previous fuel output.

In summary, it was a long mission with a high casualty rate. It was successful, in the short term, but doubtful that it made much of an impact, by itself, on the war effort. However, the gradual attrition of Nazi Germany's war potential was made possible by many such efforts, each of which diverted resources and manpower. Five aviators received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their actions during this raid.

 
Italy Part 2

Aware that the best of the German forces were concentrated in the west, Eisenhower planned to land in the south and southeast, after which Patton's 7th Army and Montgomery's 8th would wheel away from each other and race for Messina. The objective was not to trap the enemy forces but to clear them out of Sicily. To deceive the enemy, a corpse carrying information indicating landings in Greece and Sardinia was washed ashore in Spain. It fooled only Hitler, who reinforced those areas, but the astute Kesselring, who commanded Axis forces in Italy, reinforced Sicily.

A vast Allied fleet was gathered, a total of 1,375 ships, the largest amphibious force yet assembled. In this mighty armada were the new landing craft produced by Anglo-American ingenuity. Here were the 1,500-ton, 328-foot Landing Ship Tank (LST), the 550-ton, 112-foot Landing Craft Tank (LCT), and the 200-ton, 158-foot Landing Craft Infantry (LCI). The LST, which its disenchanted crew and the troops who sailed it insisted meant "Large Stationary Target", was to be the amphibious workhorse of the war. It could run up on a beach, open its bow doors, and lower a ramp down which troops ran and vehicles rolled. It could also do this offshore for amphibious tractors (amtracs) loaded with troops to go splashing into the water to churn shoreward. When the LCIs ran ashore, gangways were lowered on either side for troops to debark. But the LCIs were not very seaworthy troop transports and later became converted into rocket ships. The LCTs carried the tanks and artillery that are vital to support the landing troops in the early hours of an invasion. Troops landing at the water's edge are most vunerable to counterattack, especially by tanks, and an invasion force required its own tanks and artillery to repel them. Close-up aerial support also can break up tank attacks, but the Sicilian fleet was not to receive the tactical air support it needed. Allied aircraft became far too preoccupied with saturation bombing.

Nevertheless, on the morning of July 10, 1943, Allied soldiers went storming through the roaring white surf of Sicily. Patton's 7th Army landed on the left, Montgomery's 8th on the right. They met little opposition, Meanwhile, Allied paratroopers stopped the crack Hermann Goering Division, which came racing out of the west, The airborne gliders had been landed during the night. Many had been lost when the gliders were cut adrift too soon and high winds blew them back into the water. Otherwise, the landings were a great success. Montgomery's army began driving north toward Messina while Patton's split into two columns, one pushing west along the coast, the other moving straight north across the center of the island.

Within 11 days American troops had cut Sicily in two and gone rolling into Palermo on the north coast. "As we approached," wrote Patton, "the hills on each side were burning. We then started down a road cut out of the side of a cliff which went through an almost continual village. The street was full of people shouting, "Down with Mussolini" and "Long Live America!"

So it continued as the Allies pursued the despised Germans, who had gone from being the Sicilians' unloved allies to becoming their hated masters. Flowers were strewn in the path of the liberators and gifts of wine and fruit pressed into their hands. Italian soldiers began to surrender by the thousands. Eventually, both armies joined flanks to advance on a united front. Still, the Germans fought tenaciously, not so much to defend the island as to delay its conquest long enough for them to get safely across the Strait of Messina into Italy. They mined roads and dug tank traps with typical efficiency. They fought as though by timetable, blowing bridges and destroying the narrow roads winding around the cliff faces. Although the Allies were pouring a dreadful weight of metal from the skies, they were bombing open country and did little to deter the Germans' skillful delaying tactics. Allied transport was compelled to press mule trains into service while their engineers clung precariously to the cliffs to build the trestles that supported advancing spearheads. Thus, the Germans were able to get across the narrow strait into the toe of the boot of Italy before Patton's outriders came roaring and clanking into the Sicilian capital. So the Allies had captured Sicily, amost valuable springboard for the jump into Italy; and while Sicily was falling, the father of Fascism also fell.

 
Italy Part 3

By the summer of 1943, Benito Mussolini's grip on Italy was weakening. He had believed his generals, or allowed them to persuade him to choose a path he wished to follow, when they had exaggerated the strength of his armed forces, and he had led his people into an unpopular war. Now Allied air fleets were bringing the mainland under massive bombardment. There were also showers of propaganda leaflets aimed at exploiting the Italian mood of dispair. One, signed by Roosevelt and Churchill, declared:

The time has now come for you, the Italian people, to consult your own self-respect and your own interests and your own desire for a restoration of national dignity, security and peace. The time has come for you to decide which Italians shall die for Mussolini and Hitler- or live for Italy and civilization.

Such propaganda gave encouragement to Fascist leaders who were already plotting Il Duce's downfall. Mussolini was therefore delighted when Adolf Hitler suggested that they meet again. He might not have been so pleased had he known Der Fuhrer's motives. Hitler believed that only "barbaric measures" could save Italy. He wanted tribunals and courts-martial set up to try suspected traitors. Upon the invasion of Sicily, he saw at once the need to keep Italy out of Allied hands. If need be, he himself would take charge of the peninsula. For these reasons, he asked Mussolini for a conference.

They met in a small village in the Italian Alps. Mussolini's advisers had counseled him to present Hitler with an ultimatumL immediate and effective aid to Sicily and large-scale support from the Luftwaffe in Italy, or he would abrogate the Pact of Steel. After the conference began, however, Mussolini had no chance to dictate to Hitler. Nor did he hear any offers of aid. Instead, he had to listen to a catalog of Italy's crimes and omissions. At the head of the list was the Greek fiasco, and Hitler bluntly stated that all his difficulties in the U.S.S.R. derived from Mussolini's ill-fated invasion there. The faces of Il Duce and his colleagues darkened. The hands of Hitler's henchmen slid to their pistol butts. Here was an impasse that had never before risen between the two dictators. It was broken when an air force officer ran into the room waving a message slip and shouting that Rome was under massive aerial bombardment.

Mussolini sprang to his feet. Hitler, accustomed to such visitations on his own capital city, calmly remained seated. But then, realizing he must do something to sooth his friend's shattered nerves, Der Fuhrer murmured consolingly of all the assistance he would dispatch to Sicily, without however, going into details. That brought the conference to an end. The dictators shook hands briefly and took each other's leave. Mussolini put on an immaculate white flying suit and hurried to the airport. He was rushing into a trap. The government in Rome had decided they had had enough of Mussolini.

In retrospect it seems that Germany might have been better off if Italy had stayed neutral, like Spain. What, in the overall war effort, was gained for Hitler by the involvement in Greece and North Africa? It was only a distraction for the main battle in the East. Certainly the Italians did nothing at all to deserve the role of great power. Their military record in the Second World War can only be called horrible. Even the French won a battle. (Against Italy, of course.) From what I can determined, the Italian forces lost every battle they were involved in, with the exception of when they were minor troops in combined German-Italian operations, such as Rommel's North African victories.

 
Italy Part 4

In Mussolini's absence, Count Dino Grandi had enlisted a circle of conspirators. Grandi, a former foreign minister and ambassador to Britain, had bitterly opposed the alliance with Nazi Germany. He now welcomed Mussolini back to Rome with a demand that the Fascist Grand Council be convened. It had not met since 1939. But Mussolini's friends were leaving him like rats departing a sinking ship. At their head was Il Duce's son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano. Grandi and Ciano, two men Mussolini had made, and now they were arrayed against him, when 28 members of the Grand Council dressed in black Fascist uniforms convened on July 24, 1943.

Grandi had proposed that command of the armed forces should be given to the king, an effective end to Mussolini's power. But, before the voting began, the charges and countercharges were exchanged. The bearded Grandi stood erect, leveling a finger at Il Duce. "You believe you have the devotion of the people," he cried, "but you lost it the day you tied Italy to Germany. You have suffocated the personality of everyone under the mantle of a historically immoral dictatorship. Let me tell you, Italy was lost the day you put the gold braid of a marshal on your cap." In anger mixed with pity, Grandi pleaded: "Take off those ridiculous ornaments, plumes and feathers. Be again the Mussolini of the barracades- our Mussolini!"

"The people are with me!" Mussolini shouted furiously.

Grandi gazed at him in contempt. In World War I, he said, 600,000 Italians had died for king and country. "In this war, we have already 100,000 dead, and 100,000 mothers who cry, 'Mussolini has assassinated my son!'"

"It is not true!" Il Duce screamed. "That man is lying!"

Grandi sat down. He stared at Mussolini and with grinding irony quoted the dictator's battle cry of 1924: "Let all factions perish, even Fascism, so long as the nation is saved!"

Others rose to excoriate their leader. Then Ciano. With cool detachment he catalogued every treachery of Hitler since the signing of the Pact of Steel. "We have not so much been the betrayers as the betrayed," he concluded.

Mussolini stared into his son-in-law's face with icy loathing. "I know where the traitor is," he muttered.

One by one, to Grandi's rising elation and Mussolini's growing despair, the grand councillors arose to denounce the dictator. The voting began. 19 voted "Yes" to give power to the king. 7 voted no; 2 abstained. Mussolini arose. Glaring at Grandi, he said, "You have killed Fascism!" Then he strode out of the chamber.

Mussolini immediately went to visit the king, Victor Emmanuel. They had met thousands of times in the last 20 years, and the king was always subservient to Il Duce, acting as if it was a great favor to him that he WAS still king. (For much of that time, it was: Mussolini could have ended the royal family at any time without too much of a struggle.) Always the king had agreed with whatever the dictator said. Now it was different. Victor Emmanuel was cold and very formal. Still, Mussolini led off assuredly, "You'll have heard, your majesty, about the childish prank-"

"Not a prank at all," the little king cut in quickly. "My dear Benito, things are not working out in Italy any longer. The army's morale is low, the soldiers don't want to fight anymore. Today you are the most hated man in Italy. You cannot count on a single friend except me."

Mussolini tried a bluff. "But if your majesty is right, I should present my resignation."

"And I have to tell you," the king said quickly, closing the trap, "that I accept it unconditionally."

Mussolini staggered as though shot. "Then my ruin is complete!" he cried in a hoarse, croaking voice.

It was. He was arrested and jailed in the carabinieri barrackes. Marshal Pietro Badoglio, another of his disaffected lieutenants, took over the government. Throughout the night, Fascist leaders still loyal to Mussolini streamed out of Rome headed for Frascati, the headquarters of Kesselring. Mussolini himself just sulked inside his prison, loudly raging that he would have revenge; all of his enemies would be killed.

 
Italy Part 5

Dwight Eisenhower was secretly pleased when he was informed that his old friend George Patton had beaten Montgomery to Messina. But then on the same day Eisenhower's surgeon handed him a report suggesting that the dream was about to become a nightmare.

On August 10 Patton drove to the 93rd Evacuation Hospital. He strode unannounced into the receiving tent, gleaming, starched and salty, and began talking to the astonished wounded, congratulating them on their performance. From the men in bandages and splints General Patton moved with a frown among those seemingly unharmed. The malarial patients he passed by. Then he saw another patient, seated, shaking with convulsions.

"And what's happened to you?" Patton demanded.

"It's my nerves, sir," the soldier replied, tears in his eyes.

Patton stiffened. "What did you say?"

"It's my nerves," the man sobbed. "I can't stand the shelling any more."

"Your nerves, hell!" Patton shouted. "You're just a #######ed coward!"

The soldier began to weep and Patton slapped him hard across the face. "Shut up! I won't have these brave men here who've been shot see a yellow ******* crying."

Patton struck him again, with his gloves. He called to the receiving officer. "Don't you admit this yellow *******. There's nothing the matter with him. I won't have the hospitals cluttered up with sonsa#####es who haven't got the guts to fight." He whirled on the weeping soldier. "You're going back to the front lines- you may get shot and killed, but you're going back to fight. If you don't, I'll stand you up against a wall and have a firing squad kill you on purpose."

Ike was deeply dismayed when he read the report of this. He ordered his surgeon to go to Sicily to make a full investigation of the incident, but to keep it quiet. Then he wrote a long, stern and painful letter to Patton, ordering him to apologize to the soldier he had struck and to the hospital staff. Eisenhower simply did not want to lose the services of a commander whom he actually believed was indispensable to the war effort. With that, he considered the matter closed.

But when a general slaps a private in the army of a free-speech society, it is most difficult to hush it up. Three war correspondents- Demaree Bess of the Saturday Evening Post, Merrill Mueller of NBC, and Quentin Reynolds of Collier's magazine- approached Eisenhower offering a "deal". They had the facts, but they would supress them if Ike sent Patton home. The Supreme Commander was appalled. With great patience he explained that Patton's "emotional tenseness and his impulsiveness are the very qualities that make him, in open situations, such a remarkable leader of an army. The more he drives his men the more he will save their lives." He told them Patton had made his apologies and had written to him in contrition, declaring, "I am at a loss to find words with which to express my chagrin and grief at having given you, the man to whom I owe everything and for whom I would gladly lay down my life, cause for displeasure with me."

The 3 newsmen were moved, and Eisenhower thought the incident was closed. However, a radio commentator named Drew Pearson broke the story with a garbled account, and it caused an uproar in the States. Eisenhower very nearly had to sacrifice Patton to a storm of public opinion which, fortunately, subsided almost as quickly as it arose.

Patton's flamboyance never sat very well with the correspondents in Sicily, and they believed that the GIs resented Patton's theatrics. But the truth about George Patton is that no commander of his rank ever tried to share his combat soldiers' daily portion of dread and horror as much as he did, because of his belief that the most effective way for a leader to inspire his troops is by assuming an attitude of indifference to death. For this, they loved him; else why did they call him "Old Blood and Guts"?

After Quentin Reynolds remarked, "There are 50,000 soldiers who would shoot Patton on sight", Patton stepped before an audience of several thousand soldiers in Palermo and said, "I just thought I'd stand up here and let you soldiers see if I'm as big an S.O.B. as you think I am."

They cheered him to the stars.

 
I hope I get some commentary about the previous post regarding Patton's slap. Several things strike me about this story:

1. How different is the media back then versus now? On the one hand, it seems a little disturbing that they would try to force Eisenhower to send Patton home. I can't imagine something like that happening today. But I also can't imagine today's media covering up the story as well.

2. I think if it happened to day, the firestorm would be huge, and Patton would have had to go. The main difference is the 24 hour news cycle, in which molehills turn into mountains. I'm not saying that it was a molehill, only that with 24 hour news it would have been the main story, discussed constantly by talking heads, until Eisenhower had no choice but to dismiss Patton. Much more than then, the presentation of the news now actually has a vast effect on the story it is reporting. In a way, this is not a bad thing; in another way, it's highly disturbing. In the case of Patton it would have been a disaster. Ike correctly evaluated Patton's talents- he really was indispensible.

3. I see Patton as somewhat of a Bobby Knight or Woody Hayes character- a brilliant mind with a volatile temper. Both Knight and Hayes were derided for most of their careers by journalists, but generally beloved by the players they coached. Both ultimately got into trouble because they could not control their tempers. And both could be total jerks on a personal basis as well.

Any thoughts?

 
You are correct that he would probably have been dismissed as a commander today, because the press tends to sensationalize everything. And that would have been a great mistake, because Patton was, in his own way, a military genius. The problem was, the press didn't like Patton, so they went after him (or at least some did). On the other hand, they liked Roosevelt, so they covered up the fact that he was in a wheelchair.

With our understanding today, Patton's action was inexcusable; however, to put it in perspective: soldiers were wounded and dying by the hundreds, and the commanding officer was less than charitable towards one soldier who couldn't handle the pressure. It was not a big deal, and shouldn't have been sensationalized.

But in the end, I think Eisenhower handled it just right. Part of his genius.

 
timschochet said:
I hope I get some commentary about the previous post regarding Patton's slap. Several things strike me about this story:1. How different is the media back then versus now? On the one hand, it seems a little disturbing that they would try to force Eisenhower to send Patton home. I can't imagine something like that happening today. But I also can't imagine today's media covering up the story as well.2. I think if it happened to day, the firestorm would be huge, and Patton would have had to go. The main difference is the 24 hour news cycle, in which molehills turn into mountains. I'm not saying that it was a molehill, only that with 24 hour news it would have been the main story, discussed constantly by talking heads, until Eisenhower had no choice but to dismiss Patton. Much more than then, the presentation of the news now actually has a vast effect on the story it is reporting. In a way, this is not a bad thing; in another way, it's highly disturbing. In the case of Patton it would have been a disaster. Ike correctly evaluated Patton's talents- he really was indispensible.3. I see Patton as somewhat of a Bobby Knight or Woody Hayes character- a brilliant mind with a volatile temper. Both Knight and Hayes were derided for most of their careers by journalists, but generally beloved by the players they coached. Both ultimately got into trouble because they could not control their tempers. And both could be total jerks on a personal basis as well. Any thoughts?
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Tim, media coverage of WWII almost deserves a thread of its own. There was an official Office of War Information, created by an Executive Order that had as its purpose the coordinated release of war news for domestic use, using posters and radio broadcasts. It also worked to promote patriotism, warned about foreign spies and attempted to recruit women into war work. The office also established an overseas branch which launched a large scale information and propaganda campaign abroad. Remember that there was no TV in those days and all news coverage came via newspapers and radio reports and often a weekly newsreel at the movie theatre. Newspapers didn't print many photos and obviously radio doesn't have pictures, so visual images of the war that weren't "approved" or produced by OWI were very rare. Life magazine got into a huge ####-storm because it published photos of US Marines KIA and laying on the beach at Tarawa. Those photos shocked the home front.The newspaper coverage was almost universally positive and Patton was one of the "heroes". Norman Schwatzrcorpf of Desert Storm would be a modern day equivilent. Why the press turned on him over the slap, I really don't know. But it is impossible to compare press coverage of WWII with that of later wars, especially Vietnam and Iraq.
 
timschochet said:
Italy Part 3

In retrospect it seems that Germany might have been better off if Italy had stayed neutral, like Spain. What, in the overall war effort, was gained for Hitler by the involvement in Greece and North Africa? It was only a distraction for the main battle in the East.
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This is an interesting point. If Italy had been a neutral and Germany didn't have to devert resources to Africa, Italy and Greece, things would have been much more difficult for the Allies.
Ozymandias said:
The problem was, the press didn't like Patton, so they went after him (or at least some did).
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Most of the press liked him just because he was an easy quote and headline. But, I think he had some disdain for them and that didn't help him when they went after him.
 
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THE KATYN FOREST MASSACRE

Although some reports had filtered out previously, the discovery of a mass grave of 4,253 Polish military reserve officers by the Wehrmacht in April 1943, brought to light one of the most gruesome aspects of the Nazi Soviet Pact. Under that agreement, signed in 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union decide to carve up Poland. When Germany invaded from the west, the Soviet Union invaded from the east.

Joseph Goebbels saw this discovery as an excellent tool to drive a wedge between Poland, Western Allies, and the Soviet Union. On 13 April, Berlin Radio broadcast to the world that German military forces in the Katyn forest near Smolensk had uncovered "a ditch ... 28 metres long and 16 metres wide [92 ft by 52 ft], in which the bodies of 3,000 Polish officers were piled up in 12 layers." The broadcast went on to charge the Soviets with carrying out the massacre in 1940.

The Germans assembled and brought in a European commission consisting of twelve forensic experts and their staffs from Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Croatia, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, Slovakia, and Hungary. After the war, all of the experts, save for a Bulgarian and a Czech, reaffirmed their 1943 finding of Soviet guilt.

The rapid advance of the Soviet troops in 1939, when the Poles were fighting the Germans, was facilitated by the orders of the Polish Government, who told the troops in the east not to resist the Soviet advance. The Soviets took approximately 250,000 prisoners, but eventually released most of the rank and file. However, the officers were subject to lengthy interrogation, and if they failed to show sympathy for the Communist cause, were marked for execution.

Those who died at Katyn included an admiral, two generals, 24 colonels, 79 lieutenant colonels, 258 majors, 654 captains, 17 naval captains, 3,420 NCOs, seven chaplains, three landowners, a prince, 43 officials, 85 privates, and 131 refugees. Also among the dead were 20 university professors; 300 physicians; several hundred lawyers, engineers, and teachers; and more than 100 writers and journalists as well as about 200 pilots. In all, the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) executed almost half the Polish officer corps. Altogether, during the massacre the NKVD murdered 14 Polish generals.

Up to 99% of the remaining prisoners were subsequently murdered. People from Kozelsk were murdered in the usual mass murder site of Smolensk country, called Katyn forest; people from Starobilsk were murdered in the inner NKVD prison of Kharkiv and the bodies were buried near Piatykhatky; and police officers from Ostashkov were murdered in the inner NKVD prison of Kalinin (Tver) and buried in Miednoje (Mednoye). Detailed information on the executions in the Kalinin NKVD prison was given during the hearing by Dmitrii S. Tokarev, former head of the Board of the District NKVD in Kalinin. According to Tokarev, the shooting started in the evening and ended at dawn. The first transport on 4 April 1940, carried 390 people, and the executioners had a hard time killing so many people during one night. The following transports were no greater than 250 people. The executions were usually performed with German-made Walther PPK pistols supplied by Moscow. Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin, chief executioner for the NKVD, personally shot 6,000 of those condemned to death over a period of 28 days in April 1940.

The killings were methodical. After the condemned's personal information was checked, he was handcuffed and led to a cell insulated with a felt-lined door. The sounds of the murders were also masked by the operation of loud machines (perhaps fans) throughout the night. After being taken into the cell, the victim was immediately shot in the back of the head. His body was then taken out through the opposite door and laid in one of the five or six waiting trucks, whereupon the next condemned was taken inside. The procedure went on every night, except for the May Day holiday. Near Smolensk, the Poles, with their hands tied behind their backs, were led to the graves and shot in the neck.

The Allies were aware that the Nazis had found a mass grave, via radio transmissions intercepted and decrypted by Bletchley Park. German experts and the international commission, which was invited by Germany, investigated the Katyn corpses and soon produced physical evidence that the massacre took place in early 1940, at a time when the area was still under Soviet control.

In April 1943, when the Polish government-in-exile insisted on bringing the matter to the negotiation table with the Soviets and on an investigation by the International Red Cross, Stalin accused the Polish government in exile of collaborating with Nazi Germany, broke diplomatic relations with it, and started a campaign to get the Western Allies to recognize the alternative Polish pro-Soviet government in Moscow led by Wanda Wasilewska. Sikorski, whose uncompromising stance on that issue was beginning to create a rift between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, died suddenly two months later. The cause of his death is still disputed.

After having retaken the Katyn area almost immediately after the Red Army had recaptured Smolensk, NKVD forces began a cover-up. A cemetery the Germans had permitted the Polish Red Cross to build was destroyed and other evidence removed. In January 1944, the Soviet Union sent the "Special Commission for Determination and Investigation of the Shooting of Polish Prisoners of War by German-Fascist Invaders in Katyn Forest," led (at least nominally) by Alexey Tolstoy to investigate the incidents again.

The so-called "Burdenko Commission", headed by Nikolai Burdenko, the President of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, exhumed the bodies again and reached the conclusion that the shooting was done in 1941, when the Katyn area was under German occupation. No foreign personnel were allowed to join the Burdenko Commission, whereas the Nazi German investigation had allowed wider access to both international press and organizations (like the Red Cross, with experts from Finland, Denmark, Slovakia etc) and even used Polish workers, like Józef Mackiewicz and Allied POWs.

The Soviet commission declared that all the shootings were done by German occupation forces in autumn 1941. The final report of the commission lists a number of items, from gold watches to letters and icons, allegedly found on the bodies. These items were said to have dates from November 1940 to June 1941, thus 'rebutting' the German claim of the Poles being shot by the Soviets.

On 13 April 1990, the forty-seventh anniversary of the discovery of the mass graves, the USSR formally expressed "profound regret" and admitted Soviet secret police responsibility. That day is also an International Day of Katyn Victims Memorial.

After Poles and Americans discovered further evidence in 1991 and 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin released the top-secret documents from the sealed "Package №1." and transferred them to the new Polish president Lech Wałęsa, Among the documents was a proposal by Lavrenty Beria (head of the NKVD) dated with 5 March 1940 to execute 25,700 Poles from Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobels camps, and from certain prisons of Western Ukraine and Belarus, signed by Stalin (among others); an excerpt from the Politburo shooting order of 5 March 1940; and Aleksandr Shelepin's 3 March 1959 note to Nikita Khrushchev, with information about the execution of 21,857 Poles and with the proposal to destroy their personal files.

During the war, the the United States and Britain were unwilling to dig into the charges, and they feared that the alliance with the Soviet Union would be damaged. So a number of reports were simply disregarded and shunted aside.

Nazi Germany was worse than the Soviet Union; but not by much.

 
Great post, Ozy, on an absolutely fascinating subject. According to the book Lenin's Tomb by David Remnick, (which won the Pulitzer Prize), the Katyn story played a huge role in the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989-1990. It was seen as symbolic of all of the crimes of the Soviet Union during Stalin's time and afterward.

As to whether or not Nazi Germany was worse than the Soviet Union under Stalin- I keep going back and forth, and probably will until I die. But one thing is clear: Communism is simply not given the amount of damnation it deserves, not nearly as much as Nazism. That is the reason that an important person in the Obama administration can get away with praising Chairman Mao, while imagine if she had praised Hitler.

Of course, part of the reason for this is the Soviet Union was our ally. But it goes deeper than that, I think. Nazism is perceived, correctly, as a clear evil, while Communism is seen by many people as a noble idea that somehow went very wrong in its execution.

 
timschochet said:
Great post, Ozy, on an absolutely fascinating subject. According to the book Lenin's Tomb by David Remnick, (which won the Pulitzer Prize), the Katyn story played a huge role in the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989-1990. It was seen as symbolic of all of the crimes of the Soviet Union during Stalin's time and afterward.

As to whether or not Nazi Germany was worse than the Soviet Union under Stalin- I keep going back and forth, and probably will until I die. But one thing is clear: Communism is simply not given the amount of damnation it deserves, not nearly as much as Nazism. That is the reason that an important person in the Obama administration can get away with praising Chairman Mao, while imagine if she had praised Hitler.

Of course, part of the reason for this is the Soviet Union was our ally. But it goes deeper than that, I think. Nazism is perceived, correctly, as a clear evil, while Communism is seen by many people as a noble idea that somehow went very wrong in its execution.
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Agreed. Both of them embody a totalitarian state, where the "elite" make the right decisions for the rest of us. And if some of us don't agree, then we have to be eliminated for the good of all. The problem with some of those, particularly in the academic world, who are sympathetic to Communism, is that they see themselves as part of that elite. Any system which puts too much power in the hands of the government is liable to fall into the temptation that they know what is best for us.
 
THE DOWNING OF YAMAMOTO

The Lockheed P-38 Lightning was the only US fighter plane to be in production throughout the whole war, and it was responsible for downing more enemy aircraft than any other US airplane. In fact, the leading US ace, the appropriately named **** Bong, shot down 40 enemy aircraft flying the P-38. The plane was instantly recognizable because of its twin fuselages.

However, the most significant mission ever accomplished by the P-38 was Operation Vengeance, which took place over Bougainville Island in the South Pacific, on April 18, 1943.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy, scheduled an inspection tour of the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. He planned to inspect Japanese air units participating in the I-Go operation that had begun April 7, 1943, and to boost Japanese morale following the disastrous evacuation of Guadalcanal. On April 14, U.S. naval intelligence effort intercepted and decrypted orders alerting affected Japanese units of the tour.

The original message, NTF131755, addressed to the commanders of Base Unit No. 1, the 11th Air Flotilla, and the 26th Air Flotilla, was encoded in the Japanese Naval Cipher JN-25D (Naval Operations Code Book of the third version of RO), and was picked up by three stations of the "Magic" apparatus, including Fleet Radio Unit Pacific Fleet. The message was then deciphered by Navy cryptographers; it contained specific details regarding Yamamoto's arrival and departure times and locations, as well as the number and types of planes that would transport and accompany him on the journey.

Yamamoto, the itinerary revealed, would be flying from Rabaul to Ballale Airfield, on an island near Bougainville in the Solomon Islands, on April 18. He and his staff would be flying in two medium bombers (Mitsubishi G4M Bettys of the 205th Kokutai Naval Air unit), escorted by six Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters of the 204th Kokutai NAU, to depart Rabaul at 06:00 and arrive at Ballale at 08:00, Tokyo time.

News of this traveled to Nimitz in Pearl Harbor, from him to Admiral King of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, from him to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, and finally was laid before President Roosevelt. Of course, everyone knew that Yamamoto had been the mastermind behind the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the response from Roosevelt was immediate: “Get him!” The concern was that the Japanese not realize that the US had broken their codes, so the mission was set up as if it had been a random encounter in the airways.

Eighteen P-38s were tasked for the mission. One flight of four was designated as the "killer" flight while the remainder, which included two spares, would climb to 18,000 feet to act as "top cover" for the expected reaction by Japanese fighters based at Kahili. Major John Mitchell, Commander of the 339th Fighter Squadron, calculated an intercept time of 09:35, based on the itinerary, to catch the bombers descending over Bougainville, ten minutes before landing at Ballale airfield. He worked backwards from that time and drew four precisely-calculated legs, with a fifth leg added if Yamamoto did not take the most direct route.

In addition to heading out over the Coral Sea, the 339th would "wave-hop" all the way to Bougainville at altitudes no greater than 50 feet, maintaining radio silence en route. To protect the intelligence source, the pilots were told that a coastwatcher had spotted an important high officer boarding an aircraft at Rabaul, but the pilots were not specifically briefed that their target was Admiral Yamamoto.

In Rabaul, despite urgings by local commanders to cancel the trip for fear of ambush, Yamamoto's planes took off as scheduled for the 315 mi trip. They climbed to 6,500 ft, with their fighter escort behind and 1,500 ft higher, split into two V-formations of three planes.

This proved to be the longest fighter-intercept mission of the war and was so skillfully executed by Major Mitchell that his force arrived at the intercept point one minute early, at 09:34, just as Yamamoto's aircraft descended into view in a light haze. Mitchell ordered his planes to drop tanks, turned to the right to parallel the bombers, and began a full power climb.

Mitchell's flight of four led the squadron "on the deck" with the killer flight, consisting of Capt. Thomas G. Lanphier, Jr., 1st Lt. Rex T. Barber, and the spares, Lt. Besby, F. Holmes and Lt. Raymond K. Hine.

The closest escort fighters dropped their own tanks and began to dive toward the pair of P-38s. Barber banked steeply to turn in behind the bombers and momentarily lost sight of them, but when he regained contact he was immediately behind one and began firing into its right engine, rear fuselage, Barber hit its left engine, it began to trail heavy black smoke, and the Betty rolled violently to the left, Barber narrowly avoiding a collision. Looking back he saw a column of black smoke and assumed it had crashed into the jungle. Barber headed towards the coast at treetop level, searching for the second bomber, not knowing which bomber carried the VIP.

Barber spotted the second bomber low over the water off Moila Point just as Holmes and Hine attacked it. Holmes damaged the right engine of the Betty, which began emitting a white vapor trail, then he and Hine flew over the damaged bomber, carrying Chief of Staff Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki and part of Yamamoto's staff. Barber next attacked the stricken bomber, pieces of it damaging his own aircraft, and it crash-landed in the water. Ugaki survived the crash as did two others, and all were later rescued.

The top cover briefly engaged reacting Zeroes without making any kills, and Major Mitchell observed the column of smoke from Yamamoto's crashed bomber. Lt. Hine's P-38 had disappeared by this point, presumably crashed into the water. Running close to their point-of-no-return fuel levels, the P-38s broke off contact and returned to base, with Lt. Holmes so short of fuel that he was forced to land in the Russell Islands. Lt. Hine's Lightning was the only one missing and was never found. He is listed on the Tablets of the Missing at Manila American Cemetery.

The crash site and body of Admiral Yamamoto were found the next day in the jungle by a Japanese search and rescue party, led by Army engineer Lieutenant Hamasuna. According to Hamasuna, Yamamoto had been thrown clear of the plane's wreckage, his white-gloved hand grasping the hilt of his katana, still upright in his seat under a tree. Hamasuna said Yamamoto was instantly recognizable, head dipped down as if deep in thought.

A post-mortem of the body disclosed that Yamamoto received two wounds, one to the back of his left shoulder and one to his left lower jaw that exited above his right eye. Whether the admiral initially survived the crash has been a matter of controversy in Japan. The Japanese, who were finally told of the affair on May 21, 1943, were shocked at the loss of Yamamoto.

To cover up the fact that the Allies were reading Japanese code, American news agencies were told the cover story originally created for briefing the 339th, that civilian coastwatchers in the Solomons saw Yamamoto boarding a bomber in the area and then relayed the information by radio to American naval forces in the immediate area.

 
Another fascinating story. The killing of Yamamoto has always been used to defend the morality of assassination, in certain circumstances, and I think there is some justification to it. Yamamoto was a military genius, and as Admiral Nimitz pointed out at the time, perhaps the equivalent to the Japanese of several carriers. There is no doubt that his death saved the lives of thousands of men, both American and Japanese.

It would have made as much sense, in fact, for the Yankees to have assassinated Robert E. Lee in any way they could. Again, if that had been done in 1862 or 1863, it would have saved thousands of lives, both North and South. (I'm not saying Lee wasn't a great man, or that he deserved to die, I'm simply stating fact here.)

Yamamoto was a tragic figure who did not want war with the United States, and who predicted the result. Once his country was determined to do it, however, he tried his best to win. Through his efforts, Japan shocked the world in December of 1941 and came close to victory. There was nothing really wrong with Yamamoto's grand strategy until Midway. He knew at all times that it was a tremendous gamble, and the gamble depended on winning the war quickly before the American industrial machine could get ramped up. MacArthur's retreat to Bataan delayed his timetable. Then Midway occurred, and it was a victory for the U.S. because the Japanese codes had been broken (and even then, it was a very close thing.)

After Midway, Yamamoto changed his strategy as best he could to create a stalemate situation where America would hopefully exhaust herself going after island after island. Again, if not for poor Army tactics at Guadalcanal (which he wasn't involved in) it might have worked. Once Guadalcanal was seized, the way was open for American success as we shall see.

 
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Italy, Continued

The fall of Mussolini excited Dwight Eisenhower. He had already made his plans for an invasion of Italy. Monty's 8th Army was to go ashore at Reggio di Calabria across the Strait of Messina from Sicily. Mark Clark's American 5th Army would land at Salerno, south of Naples. Churchill had argued for a landing farther north, closer to Rome, but withdrew his opposition after Ike explained that his fighter cover could fly no farther than Salerno. But when Mussolini was arrested, the supreme commander saw a golden opportunity to pick off Rome on the run. Although Marshal Badoglio had stated in a radio broadcast, "The war continues," no one- the Germans or the Allies- really believed him. Everyone expected Italy to quit the war. Eisenhower yearned to make a deal with Badoglio that would give him Rome at little cost and perhaps after that the peninsula.

However, FDR stuck grimly to Unconditional Surrender. "In no event," he told Churchill, "should our officers in the field fix any general terms without your approval or mine." Churchill, more realistic, was inclined to be more generous. "Now Mussolini is gone, I would deal with any non-Fascist government that can deliver the goods." Roosevelt stayed firm: Unconditional Surrender. Privately, he told Churchill: "There are some contentious people here who are getting ready to make a row if we seem to recognize te House of Savoy or Badoglio. They are the same element that made such a fuss over Darlan." Ike still burned to make an immediate broadcast to the Italians, offering them an honorable peace and promising to come to Italy as liberators who would free them from the Germans. Now Robert Murphy told him that he had no authority to make such a political offer and must clear it with the two governments. He was right, of course, and Eisenhower submitted the text of his speech to the Combined Chiefs.

Wrangling over the wording delayed Ike's initiative another week. One more passed without any word from Badoglio, while the two governments bickered. Eisenhower, in a fury of frustration, read of the flood of German troops flowing into Italy. He complained bitterly: "I do not see how war can be conducted successfully if every act of the Allied commander in chief must be referred back to the home government for advance approval."

It was not until August 17 that the Italians finally approached the Allies. General Giuseppe Castellano arrived in Lisbon and proposed to the British ambassador there a double cross. As soon as the Allies landed in strength in Italy, the Italians would sign an armistice with them and declare war on Germany. Once again, Ike was enthusiastic, but the answer from his superiors was no. It was still Unconditional Surrender.

Although General Castellano was stunned by the Allied insistence on Unconditional Surrender, he did agree to it on September 3. On that same day, spearheads of Monty's 8th Army slipped over the strait into Reggio di Calabria. Now Ike altered his invasion plans. Instead of just the invasion of Montgomery and Clark, he would add airborne operations at the port of Taranto and at Rome. He stilled yearned to seize the Eternal City before the Germans got there. Actually, he did not have the strength to carry out such widespread operations. Marshal Badoglio was so frightened they would fail that he backed down on everything, the armistice included. He would not make his capitulating broadcast scheduled for September 8.

When Ike learned of Badoglio's double cross on that day he was furious. He struggled to contain his rage. Pencil after pencil broke in his hand as he wrote to Badoglio: "I intend to broadcast the existence of the message at the hour originally planned. Failure now on your part to carry out the full operations to the signed agreement will have the most serious consequences for your country. " Reluctantly, Eisenhower decided to cancel the Rome and Taranto operations. But at 6:30 that night he went on the air at Radio Algiers. "The Italian government has surrendered its armed forces unconditionally," he said. "As Allied commander in chief I have granted a military armistice." Next he had the text of Badoglio's proclamation read out. An hour later Badoglio read the same announcement over Radio Rome. Ike had "played a little poker"- and won.

But during the 39 days ensuing between the fall of Mussolini and Badoglio's public capitulation, the Germans had rushed 13 new divisions into Italy- even withdrawing 2 SS divisions from the Eastern Front- had begun to take control of Rome and other cities and had accomplished the effective occupation of the peninsula. In the respite granted by stubborn Allied adherence to the policy of Unconditional Surrender, Hitler had turned the "soft underbelly" of Churchill's crocodile into the crocodile's bristling armored back. Hitler was outraged by the imprisonment of his friend Benito. He blamed the Italian royalty and swore he would have revenge on all of them. And he also sought to rescue Mussolini from his captors. In my next post, I shall relate how this was accomplished.

 
GERMANY DEVELOPS THE V-1 AND V-2 MISSILES

Walter Dornberger was appointed to a secret committee in 1930, tasked with the development of a liquid fueled rocket that would surpass the range of artillery. His staff, which numbered over 90 people, was transferred to Peenemunde in 1937. (It probably should be noted that in terms of overall scientific development, Germany was the leading country in the world in chemistry, having won 15 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry prior to 1940).

The first development, that of the V-1, was really a flying jet engine. (It was an early version of a cruise missile). The V-1's Argus Schmidt pulsejet, also known as a resonant jet, could operate at zero airspeed owing to the nature of its intake vane system and acoustically tuned resonant combustion chamber. Film footage of the V-1 always shows the distinctive pulsating jet exhaust of a fully running engine before the catapult system is triggered.

The engine was started first (using a compressed air line) while the craft was stationary on the ramp. The low static thrust of the jet engine and very high stall speed of the small wings meant that the V-1 could not take off under its own power in a practically short distance, and thus required an aircraft catapult launch or an airlaunch from a modified bomber aircraft such as the Heinkel He-111. On the ground, takeoff speed was attained by using a chemical or steam catapult which accelerated the V-1 to 360 mph. The first test flight of the V-1 was in late 1941 or early 1942 at Peenemünde. (Peenemunde is in the far northeast corner of Germany).

The V-1 and V-2 programs were delayed by Operation Crossbow, a continuing program against these bombs/rockets. British intelligence had received reports that Germany was developing long range bombing missiles, and carried out airstrikes (beginning in August 1943) on Peenemunde which caused the Germans to move all the production underground to the Kohnstein Mountain, in the north of Germany. These strikes continued throughout the war. At one time, Eisenhower stated that “Operation Crossbow” was to be the #1 priority.

The V-1 attacks on London began in June of 1944. The attacks only lasted for 3 months, as advancing Allied infantry overran the launching “ski sites”, but in that time the V-1 flying bombs and destroyed over a million houses in Britain, and caused 22,000 deaths.

In the late 1920s, a young Wernher von Braun acquired a copy of Hermann Oberth's book, Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (The Rocket into Interplanetary Space). Starting in 1930, he attended the Technical University of Berlin, where he assisted Hermann Oberth in liquid-fueled rocket motor tests. Von Braun was working on his creative doctorate when the Nazi Party gained power in Germany. An artillery captain, Walter Dornberger, arranged an Ordnance Department research grant for von Braun, who from then on worked next to Dornberger's existing solid-fuel rocket test site at Kummersdorf. Von Braun's thesis, Construction, Theoretical, and Experimental Solution to the Problem of the Liquid Propellant Rocket (dated 16 April 1934) was kept classified by the German army and was not published until 1960. By the end of 1934, his group had successfully launched two rockets that rose to heights of 2.2 and 3.5 kilometers. He was the leading scientist on the development of the V-2.

The V-2 was a true liquid fueled rocket. Interestingly enough, a lot of the development is owed to an American scientist, Robert Goddard. The US was not interested in the 1920's, but the Germans were.

At launch the V-2 propelled itself for up to 65 seconds on its own power, and a program motor controlled the pitch to the specified angle at engine shutdown, from which the rocket continued on a free-fall (ballistic) trajectory. The rocket reached a height of 50 miles before shutting off the engine. It was fueled by an alcohol-water and liquid oxygen engine.

After the first successful test flight, Walter Dornberger said: “This third day of October, 1942, is the first of a new era in transportation, that of space travel..”

Over 5,000 V-2 were produced, and mostly launched from mobile platforms, which made them hard to detect prior to launch. Because the V-2 offensive did not start until September 1944, many of the launches were aimed at cities that had been recaptured by the Allies, such as Antwerp, Belgium, which received the greatest number of hits. However, over 1300 were launched against London, killing over 2,700 people.

On the 8th of July, 1944, Hitler met with Major General Dornberger, and said: “I have had to apologize only to two men in my whole life. The first was Field Marshal von Brauchitsch. I did not listen to him when he told me again and again how important your research was. The second man is yourself. I never believed that your work would be successful.”

Dornberger and Von Braun initiated contact with the Americans prior to the end of the war. They apparently surrendered in Austria, and ended up the the USA. Von Braun went on to become the leading scientist for the development of the USA's space program.

 
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Ozymandias said:
(It probably should be noted that in terms of overall scientific development, Germany was the leading country in the world in chemistry, having won 15 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry prior to 1940).
Click to expand...
This is true, but it's also a little misleading, because many of these winners (and most of the German winners in Physics) were Jews, and not allowed to work in the Third Reich.It leaves one to wonder: suppose the Third Reich had NOT been anti-Semitic? Suppose all those scientists had stayed in Germany, working for German victory? The result might very well have been a different ending to the war.

After Von Braun's success at NASA, he wrote an autobiography entitled, I Aim For The Stars. Stand up comedians at the time said that the titlle really should have been: I Aim For The Stars, But Sometimes Hit London.

 
timschochet said:
Ozymandias said:
(It probably should be noted that in terms of overall scientific development, Germany was the leading country in the world in chemistry, having won 15 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry prior to 1940).
Click to expand...
This is true, but it's also a little misleading, because many of these winners (and most of the German winners in Physics) were Jews, and not allowed to work in the Third Reich.It leaves one to wonder: suppose the Third Reich had NOT been anti-Semitic? Suppose all those scientists had stayed in Germany, working for German victory? The result might very well have been a different ending to the war.

After Von Braun's success at NASA, he wrote an autobiography entitled, I Aim For The Stars. Stand up comedians at the time said that the titlle really should have been: I Aim For The Stars, But Sometimes Hit London.
Click to expand...
True, many of them were Jews. But what it pointed to was the development of chemistry; the Germans were proficient at chemistry. Friedrich Wohler, who lived in the 19th century, and is widely regarded and the "Father of Modern Chemistry", was not Jewish (to my knowledge). The Germans were the first to synthesize gasoline from coal (during WW1), and to synthesize via coal gasification. They also produced the world's first synthetic rubber (leading to the collapse of the natural rubber industry), etc. Yes, some of the most brilliant minds were Jewish. But it would be a mistake to think that German chemical prowess depended solely on the Jews.Karl Marx was Jewish, but I doubt whether you hold him solely responsible for the atrocities of the Soviet Union. :)

 
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