View Single Post
  #2  
Old 02-05-2009, 11:40 AM
David's Avatar
David David is offline
Administrator
 

Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 46,798
Distinctions
Special Projects VOM Staff Contributor 
Default

LILI MARLENE. The famous tune was composed by Norbert Schultz in only twenty minutes in 1938. Originally called 'Song of the Sentry' it was first sung by Lale Andersen, a little known Swedish singer, and then forgotten until 1941. German troops had taken over Belgrade radio station and found they had only a few records to play to their troops in the Balkans. One was 'Lili Marlene' and it was played twice nightly for the next eighteen months. The broadcasts were picked up by Rommel's troops in North Africa and also by the British 8th Army. A British lyric writer, Tommy O'Connor, then gave the song a more sentimental wording for the British troops. Norbert Schultz survived the war and was congratulated by Montgomery at an El Alemein reunion. He died on October 16, 2002, age 91, at Bad Tölz, Bavaria. Poor Lale Andersen spent much of the war in a concentration camp because she was overheard to say 'All I want is to get out of this horrible country'. The poem 'Song of the Sentry' was first written by Hans Leip of Hamburg in 1923. In the latter part of the war the Germans had their own version ...

An der Laterne, vor der Reichskanzlie,
Hängen unsere Bonzen, der Führer ist dabai ,
Da wollen wir bieeinander stehn, Wir wollen unsern Führer sehen,
Wie einst am ersten Mai, Wie einst am ersten Mai.

MARRIAGE LOAN (Ehestanddarlehen). In Germany, financial aid was given to encourage young couples to marry and set up house and help raise the birth-rate. Between August 1933 and the end of 1936, a total of 694,367 marriages were financed. From these marriages, 485,285 children were born.

THE CAPTURE OF "THE SEAL". The only British submarine to be captured at sea was the HMS Seal. On May 5, 1940, she was damaged while laying mines in the Kattegat (between Denmark and Sweden). Attempting to reach Sweden the badly damaged HMS Seal was spotted by two Arado seaplanes which proceeded to drop bombs around the wallowing submarine. Realizing that the ship would inevitably be sunk, the captain, Lt. Cmdr. Lonsdale, surrendered by waving a white sheet from the conning tower. One of the Arados then landed on the water and took the captain on board. A radio message to a nearby German fishing trawler on submarine patrol , the Franken, soon had the entire crew of HMS Seal on board as POWs.

INTERNED. When the French 45th Army Corps was encircled by General Guderian's armour in France in 1940, the Corps, consisting of 45,000 men was forced to seek refuge in neutral Switzerland. The 12,000 Poles who had enlisted in the Corps, remained interned until the end of the war. All the others, including 29,000 Frenchmen and Moroccans were repatriated in 1941 under an agreement between Germany and Vichy France.

SECOND CHANCE. Just before the 'Fall of France' around 400 German Air Force personnel were held in French POW camps. The majority were pilots who had been shot down by British fighters. Churchill was concerned at the prospect of their being liberated by the German armies as they advanced through northern France. He requested that they be sent immediately to a POW camp in England. The transfer was never carried out owing to the speed of German advance, and so the Luftwaffe pilots were liberated to become available once more, this time for the forthcoming 'Battle of Britain'. Later, Churchill remarked "We had to shoot them down a second time".

GERMAN AIRCRAFT CARRIER. The building of the first German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin was begun in the Deutsche Werk shipyard at Kiel on Dec 28, 1936. With a displacement of 28,000 tons, it was launched on Dec. 8, 1938 by Countess Hella von Brandenstein-Zeppelin in honour of her father. Further construction of the ship was suspended in 1939 and again in 1942 because of the failure to produce an acceptable combat aircraft to operate from its deck. Work on the ship progressed slowly throughout the war but it never saw action. At the end of the war the ship was scuttled in the Baltic Sea to prevent it falling into the hands of the Russians. However, the Russians raised the ship and loaded it with war booty. It was being towed to a Russian port in 1947 when it capsized and sank because of an overloaded flight deck!

THE FIRST MAJOR WARSHIP sunk by air attack during wartime was the German light cruiser Konigsberg. Skuas from HMS Ark Royal flew 330 miles on April 9, 1940, from the Naval Air Station at Hatston in the Orkney's to dive bomb the ship lying at Bergen.

SNOWBOUND (April, 1940). Norwegian pilots faced a dilemma when over two feet of snow fell on their airstrip near Trondheim. The advancing Germans were only hours away and here they were stuck, impossible to take off and escape. Nearby, a large herd of Reindeer was being driven to their spring pastures in the mountains by their Lapp keepers. Bribed by a bottle or two of alcohol, the herdsmen agreed to drive the Reindeer down the airstrip thus trampling the snow into a hard compact surface, enough to enable the planes to take off.

FORT BREENDONK. Situated some twelve miles south of Antwerp, the fort was part of an six mile long belt of defence fortifications protecting Belgian's largest port. Built before the outbreak of World War I it became a notorious Gestapo prison and torture chamber when taken over by the Germans after they invaded the Netherlands in May, 1940. Prisoners included Resistance fighters, civilian criminals, Jews and anti-Fascists as well as hostages. For every German soldier killed, ten prisoners were executed tied to posts embedded before a mound of earth. The old powder magazine in the cellar was transformed into a torture chamber where interrogations took place in the most cruellest way. Altogether, 187 prisoners have been identified as having been murdered at Breendonk. Another sixty prisoners died from hardship and malnutrition just weeks before liberation. The commandant at Breendonk, SS Sturmbannführer Philip Johann-Adolf Schmitt, was arrested and tried for inhuman behaviour at the fort. He was found guilty and received the death sentence. He was the only German war criminal to be executed by the Belgians. (Today, Fort Breendonk remains practically unchanged. In 1947, the fort was renamed the Fort Breendonk National Memorial in memory of all those who suffered and lost their lives there.)

LOSSES. The Norwegian Campaign cost Britain 4,400 killed. Norway lost 1,335 men and the French and Polish troops together lost 530. German casualties were 1,317 killed.

GUN ACCIDENTS. Copenhagen, in German occupied Denmark, was a favourite spot for German officers on R & R. In an effort to 'get their own back' members of a Danish resistance group opened up an Arts and Craft shop specializing in scroll work. They offered to personalize the officers side weapons by fitting ivory handles to their Lugers and cover the gun with artful designs and scroll work. Some were customized as gifts for fellow officers serving on other fronts. Trade was brisk, but what was not explained was that the barrels were being modified by reducing the diameter inside and weakening the breach of the gun, which, when fired for the first time would blow up in the officers face. Of course these guns were never fired while the officer was on leave and any 'accidents' at the front were put down to 'casualties of war'. According to Harry Jensen, the only survivor of the resistance group, hundreds of these Lugers were modified this way before they closed shop.

CODENAME 'FELIX'. The German code name for the capture of Gibraltar , the Canary Island s and the Cape Verde Islands. Issued on Directive No.18 by Hitler on November 12, 1940, it was never put into operation, partly because of the refusal of Spain to join the Axis. Spain was in no position to fight another war, the civil war of 1936-39 had left the country a shambles, her cities in ruins.

CASUALTIES. During the month of November, 1940, a total of 4,588 British civilians were killed in air raids by the German Luftwaffe. Another 6,202 were injured. This was a decrease of the previous month, October, when 6,334 civilians lost their lives and 8,695 were injured. In December, 1940, this had decreased to 3,793 killed and 5,244 injured. In the last three month period of 1940, 44,717 men, women and children had been killed in Luftwaffe bombing raids.

NEUTRAL IRELAND. Although a member of the British Commonwealth, Ireland (Eire) remained neutral throughout the war. The Prime Minister, Eamonn De Valera, refused repeated requests by Britain for the use of port facilities at Cobh, Berehaven and Lough Swilly on the west coast of Ireland during the Battle of the Atlantic, ports that Britain considered essential to her survival. (These ports were closed to the Royal Navy in 1939 just as Britain was preparing to go to war). In December, 1941, Hitler had considered invading Ireland and using it as a platform for the assault on the British mainland. If this had proceeded it would have marked the end for Britain. It was Admiral Raeder who changed Hitler's mind, pointing out that in the face of Britain's huge naval superiority it was quite out of the question. The help De Valera gave the Germans was to refuse Britain the use of airfields and submarine bases in Ireland which would have set back the U-boat operations in the Atlantic. The use of the Berehaven port for instance would have enabled our anti-submarine escorts to operate a further 180 miles out into the Atlantic. How many ships and seamen's lives this would have saved is a matter of conjecture. Enlistment in the British Army however, was popular and around 42,000 Irishmen joined the armed forces or went to sea in the Merchant Navy. Eight won the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award. These servicemen, when returning home on leave had to wear civilian clothes to avoid any political embarrassment should they come home in a British uniform. Thousands more went to England to work in British munitions factories during the war. Whenever an Irishman died in battle he was reported in De Valera's press as having died while working in Britain.

THE BOMBING OF BELFAST. Northern Ireland was totally unprepared for enemy air attack during the initial stages of the war. Who on earth would want to bomb Belfast? was the thought running through the minds of its citizens at the time. However, this complacency was shattered when late on April 15, 1941, over 150 German bombers rained bombs, incendiaries and parachute mines onto the streets of the city. Panic reigned as thousands of people fled to the surrounding countryside inundating small towns and villages with terrified refugees. At 1.30AM on the 16th, John MacDermott, Northern Ireland's Minister of Public Security, then did something that no government minister had ever done before nor would ever do again, he telephoned Dublin in neutral Ireland and pleaded for help. Fifteen minutes later the city's central telephone exchange received a direct hit which served all local and trunk lines out of Belfast. Back in Dublin, in a technical breach of neutrality, de Valera immediately ordered thirteen fire trucks to be sent north to help fight the devastating fires that spread around the city. Dead animals and human corpses lay sprawled all over the place. It is doubtful whether the Luftwaffe intended to target the civilian population. The first target flares were dropped to illuminate the harbour and factory areas but had drifted in a light wind across the city and away from the intended targets. This seems to have been the case when on Sunday May 4/5 a total of 204 enemy bombers returned to finish the job on the docks and industrial area. In the first raid 745 persons were killed, in the second raid 164 persons lost their lives. This was worse than the much publicized raid on Coventry where 554 lives were lost.

COOL WELCOME. When British troops occupied Iceland on May 10, 1940, to deny the use of the island to the Germans after their occupation of Denmark, the islanders gave the 'Tommies' a cool and icy welcome. Later, Canadian troops joined the British forces and in 1942, when the Americans arrived to relieve the British and Canadians, their welcome was no less frigid. In fact everything was done to prevent them meeting the local girls. When a black sailor from one of the visiting ships was seen strolling around Reykjavik, headlines in the local newspaper screamed 'Black Icelander?'. Does this mean, the report asked, 'that one of our girls will bring forth a black Icelander, despoiling our traditions?'. The Americans took the hint and from then on, no black American was ever seen again on Icelandic soil during the war. At the other side of the world, Australia had a similar problem when at the end of January 1942, an American troopship arrived in Melbourne to face the ludicrous situation of its black troops being refused permission to come ashore. At this time Australia was zealously enforcing its White Australia Policy. It took another decision of the Australian War Cabinet to have this officious ban overturned. (After the capitulation of Italy, the Pope, Pius 12th, asked that black US soldiers were not to guard the Vatican).

DUNKIRK (May 26, 1940). The seven day evacuation from Dunkirk begins. A fleet of 861 ships and small boats set sail from Britain in a desperate attempt to save the troops trapped on the beach. Within ten days a total of 224,585 British soldiers were picked up and brought home. At the same time, 112,546 French and Belgian troops were also saved. Unfortunately, about 40,000 French soldiers had to be left behind, causing a certain amount of bitterness among the troops. A total of 231 rescue boats and six destroyers were sunk during the operation. The RAF Fighter Command lost 106 planes. During the evacuation from Dunkirk, the big mistake the Germans made was the use of the Stuka dive bomber. If the Luftwaffe had used horizontal bombing instead of dive bombing, the losses to the British Expeditionary Force would have been far greater.

CHURCHILL SPEECH? After the Dunkirk evacuation, Churchill delivered his memorable speech to the House of Commons. Later in the day the speech was broadcast by the BBC to the rest of the world. What the listeners didn't know was that the speech was read by Norman Shelley who impersonated Churchill's voice. Winston had said "I am rather busy, get an actor to do it".

WORLD RECORD. Owing to a navigational error, on October 17, 1940, two British destroyers, HMS Fame and HMS Ashanti, ran aground in fog and drizzle at Whilburn on the river Tyne. HMS Fame caught fire as fuel pipes in the engine room ruptured. Thinking that the invasion had started, defence lookout posts on shore raised the alarm and at 5am National Fire Service crews and Volunteer Life Brigade units from South Shields and Sunderland arrived at the scene. In about five hours a total of 272 crewmen from the two ships were brought ashore by Breeches Buoy thus establishing an all-time world life-saving record for a rescue of this type. The two destroyers were eventually refloated, repaired and returned to service.

GRAND THEFT. The loot the Germans transported back to the Reich from Holland was staggering.....13,786 metal working machines..... 2,729 textile machines.....18,098 electric motors.....358 printing presses.....31 dredgers.....over 7,000 barges.....90,000 lengths of railway line and a half million sleepers.....over 60,000 motor cars.....40,000 trucks and 25,000 motor bikes. 154,647 kilos of Dutch gold disappeared into the Reichsbank's safes in Berlin. On top of this, 320,000 cows, 472,036 pigs and 114,220 horses were stolen. A total of 346 works of art were stolen including 27 Rembrandts, 12 Hals, 47 Steens, 40 Rubens and 12 Van Goghs. Most of these paintings were recovered after the war.

GREED FOR GOLD. Just prior to the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, the National Bank of Belgium transferred part of its gold reserves to the Bank of France in Bordeaux for safe keeping. When France was attacked, Belgium asked the French bank to transfer the gold to London. The gold was transferred, but not to London, instead it was forwarded on to a French bank in Dakar. On October 29, 1940, the French bank promised to return the the gold to Belgium but Pierre Laval, Foreign Minister in the Vichy government of Marshal Pétain, sent it on to Berlin. There it was melted down, supplied with false seals and documentation and transferred to the National Bank of Switzerland by the Germans. The value of this gold was 378.6 million Swiss francs. Around 218 million francs worth of this treasure was resold by the Swiss to fund its banking operations. In 1945, France restored the gold that was entrusted to her in 1940 but Switzerland claimed that only 160 million francs worth was held in its Banks.

1941
ZONDERWATER P.O.W. CAMP. In February, 1941, Italian prisoners-of-war began arriving in South Africa where the Zonderwater Camp had been established in the Transvaal, twenty-three miles from Pretoria. These prisoners were captured during the Somaliland and Ethiopian campaigns. Thousands more were brought in from the campaigns in Egypt, Libya and Tripolitania during the years up till 1943. Around 9,000 of these prisoners were illiterate and among the greatest and most lasting achievements at Zonderwater was that before the camp closed in February, 1947, all had learned to read and write their mother tongue during their six years confinement. Some 5,000 learned a trade before returning home and another 4,000 were allowed to work outside the camp on neighbouring farms. A symphony orchestra of 86 musicians was formed and a brass band of 65 instrumentalists was welded together from the prisoners. Fifteen schools were established teaching a variety of subjects. At its peak, on December 31, 1941, there were 63,000 prisoners in the camp. A total of 233 prisoners died from illness and 76 lost their lives through accidents. What was done at Zonderwater represents a great achievement in the field of human relations in the treatment of prisoners-of-war. Their efforts were recognized by the post-war Italian Government when the Camp Commandant, Colonel Hendrik Prinsloo and three of his officers were invested with the 'Order of the Star of Italy'. Colonel Prinsloo was further recognized by the award of the 'Order of Good Merit' by His Holiness, the Pope.

THE LAST EXECUTION in the Tower of London was on August 14, 1941. German spy, Josef Jakobs, was executed while seated tied to a chair, by an eight man firing squad from the Scots Guards. The white lint target patch placed over the area of his heart bore five bullet holes from the eight shots fired. Jakobs had parachuted into Britain on January 31, 1941, and broke his leg on landing. He lay all night in a field until his cries for help were heard next morning. He is buried in an unmarked grave in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery at Kinsal Green, London.

FIRE BRIGADE TRAGEDY. April 20th, 1941, was Hitler's birthday and the Luftwaffe celebrated the event by dropping 1,000 tons of bombs on London. Many schools in the city were standing empty, the children already evacuated to the country. The Old Palace School in St. Leonards Street, Poplar, was now sub-station 24U of the London Auxiliary Fire Service. The playground was ideal for training and the parking of fire appliances. On the night of April 20, fire service crews were standing by in anticipation of a heavy raid on the Capital. At precisely 1.53am, a land mine, dropped from a Luftwaffe bomber, scored a direct hit on the school. Thirty two firemen and two fire women were killed. The bodies of the two firewomen, mother of three Winifred Peters and twenty one year old Hilda Dupree, on duty in the watch room, were never found. This was the largest loss of Fire Brigade personnel ever suffered in the history of the service in Britain.

SURPRISE! SURPRISE! Australia's 'invasion' of Portuguese East Timor (now Timor Luru Sae) on December 16, 1941, was the first time in history that Australia violated another country's neutrality. Aussie troops (Sparrow Force) invaded Dutch West Timor and the 2/2nd Independent Company landed on the shore near Dili, the capital of Portuguese East Timor and so pre-empt a Japanese takeover. They proceeded immediately to surround the airport. Well armed, and expecting to do battle with the Portuguese military, they approached the administration building, guns at the ready. Suddenly the main door opened and out stepped a civilian Portuguese official who tipped his hat and in perfect English said "Good afternoon". Dumbfounded, the troops stared at each other in disbelief. Not a shot had been fired. Unknown to Sparrow Force , the Australian and Portuguese governments had previously agreed to a peaceful 'invasion' of the island to help protect the inhabitants from a possible Japanese invasion which did in fact take place two months later, on February 20th,1942.

ISOLATIONISTS. Members of the 'America First Committee' held a rally on the 28th of April, 1941, in Chicago. In the speeches, mention of Winston Churchill's name drew boos from the 10,000 person audience. A speech by Colonel Charles Lindbergh, the respected US isolationist, was interrupted by applause when he said that England was in a desperate situation, her shipping losses serious, 'her cities devastated by bombs'. Two months later, the city council of Charlotte, North Carolina, changed the name of Lindbergh Drive to Avon Terrace.

DOCUMENTS. For his 50th birthday, several leading industrialists presented Hitler with a case containing the original scores of some of Richard Wagner's music. They had paid nearly a million marks for the collection. Towards the end of the war, Frau Winifred Wagner asked Hitler to transfer these manuscripts to Bayreuth. Hitler refused, saying he had placed them in a far safer place. The manuscripts involved included the scores of 'Die Feen', 'Die Liebesverbot', 'Reinzi', 'Das Reingold', 'Die Valkure' and the orchestral sketch of 'Der Fliegende Hollander'. These lost documents have never been found.

JEWS IN GERMANY. When Frederick William von Hohenzollern (1620-1688) was elected Margrave of Brandenburg, he found no Jewish permanent settlement in his state. In 1650, he invited some Polish Jews to conduct trade in Berlin, and in 1671, he welcomed fifty wealthy Jews from Vienna to settle in the capital. So began the Berlin Jewish community. In 1933, the Jewish population of Germany was 503,000. Of these, 170,000 lived in Berlin, 25% were living on charity. At the war's end, only 23,000 were living in Germany. About 100,000 German Jews perished in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Names and last known addresses of around 128,000 German Jews, victims of the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, are listed in the German Gedenkbuch (Memorial Book) in the Federal Archives in Berlin. (previously the Bundesarchives at Koblenz).

Sources differ as to the exact number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. The latest statistics put the number at 5,433,900 (about 41 %) of which just over 1.2 million died in Auschwitz. Official estimates are, year by year, gradually being revised downwards. (The World Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Paris now states that only 1,485,292 Jews died from all causes during WW II and that there were not even six million Jews in Europe at that time. Professor Paul Rassinier, the French historian, who spent some time in concentration camps, utterly refutes the myth of six million dead and says that Jewish casualties could not have exceeded 1.2 million. Raul Hilberg, the Jewish historian, estimates an even lower figure of 896,892). The country that suffered most, was Poland, it had a pre-war Jewish population of around 3.2 million, some 2.9 million of whom were annihilated (88%). Of Europe's Jewish children, alive in 1939, only 11 percent survived the war, an estimated one and a half million being murdered. Of all the Nazi occupied countries in WW II, the percentage of Jews saved in Poland was the smallest. The attitude of the vast majority of the Polish population towards Jews was violently anti-Semitic, surpassed only by their vehemently anti-German hatred. Even the Polish police joined the Nazis in rounding up Jews for deportation to the death camps. It must be said however that around 50,000 Jews were saved by Poles who helped hide them at the risk of their own lives. The 'Council for Aid to Jews' provided false Aryan documents and gave refuge to many of the persecuted Jews. Unfortunetly, many of these 'aid workers' along with their entire families, paid with their lives. (In all, Poland suffered 4,900,000 dead in WW II).

CONCENTRATION CAMPS. The term was first used by the Spanish to describe their camps set up in Cuba during the Spanish-American War of 1898. The first Concentration Camp, for the sole purpose of the physical destruction of prisoners was set up in Holmogor by the Bolsheviks in 1921. The idea in German minds that the British invented concentration camps was fostered by Dr Joseph Goebbels during the 1930s. Propaganda picture postcards in 1938 of genuine Russian camps, were re-labeled for issue as 'Genuine British Concentration Camps in South Africa'. The British camps in South Africa, set up during the two and a half year long Boer War, were for internment purposes only, but the lack of proper supervision, negligence and poor hygiene, gave the camps a bad name and caused the deaths of over 30,000 inmates, mostly from outbreaks of typhoid and measles.

EXTERMINATION CAMPS. The first camp in which Jews had been gassed was Chelmno in Poland. The first gassings took place in December, 1941. This was the first camp mentioned by name in the West. A train had left Holland on November 20 carrying 726 deportees, on the 24th, another train with 709 Jews departed and on November 30 a total of 826 Jews were deported. All the Dutch people knew was that the trains were heading east for Poland. The word 'Auschwitz' was unheard of in the West until April 18, 1943 when an eye-witness report reached London. However this report was never made public. In 1942, the Allies knew of the wholesale massacres taking place in camps such as Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor and Majdanek but the horror of Auschwitz was still to emerge. Conferences were arranged, telephone calls and telegrams exchanged, discussions took place and notes were passed back and forth but nothing was actually done and all this time the deportations and killings went on and on. Even in December, 1943, when the airfield at Foggia in Southern Italy was captured, thus bringing the camps within range of Allied bombers (a round trip of just under1,300 miles) the camp at Auschwitz was still not identified as the destination of the deportee transports. On May 31, 1944, the complex at Monovitz was photographed for the second time and Auschwitz itself was photographed but the row upon row of prisoners huts, which was holding around 52,000 prisoners, failed to register as an extermination camp in the minds of Allied intelligence services. On April 7, 1944, two Jewish prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, escaped from the camp and headed for Slovakia where they reached the village of Skalite on Friday, April 21st. Next morning they travelled to Zilina where they contacted the Jewish Agency. Their report, together with the report of two other escapees, Peter Mordowicz and Arnost Rosin, eventually reached London and on June 18 brief details were heard on the radio during a broadcast from the BBC. This alerted the outside world to the reality of Auschwitz. The first photographs to reach the west was of corpses scattered around the Majdanek camp. These were taken by the Red Army on January 3, 1945. Auschwitz had still to be liberated.

MASS MURDERER. SS Brigadier Odilo Globocnik established the four extermination camps of Treblinka, Belzec, Maidanek and Sobidor and is responsible for the murder of over one million people, mostly Jews, who died in these camps. He also played a leading role in General Plan Ost (East) which involved the relocation of around eighty million people, Poles, Jews, Russians, Czechs, Ukrainians and Balts, to areas in western Siberia. The plan was to be implemented after the defeat of the Red Army and Communism. These deportees were to be replaced with German settlers in the hope of creating a racially pure Nazi Utopia, a fulfilment of Hitler's racial version of a Thousand Year Reich. Arrested in Austria by British agents, Odilo Globocnik, the greatest ethnic-cleanser of the Nazi era, committed suicide by biting on a cyanide capsule as soon as his identity was revealed.

CHUNGKING DISASTER. The worst tragedy to hit this Chinese town was in June, 1941. Situated at the junction of the Kialing and Yangtze rivers, the town of Chungking was repeatedly bombed by the Japanese. To shelter the inhabitants the local authorities built under the city the world's largest dugout shelter (estimated capacity: 30,000). During one air-raid, lasting over four hours, the ventilation system broke down and hundreds of people rushed outside to catch a breath of fresh air between raiding waves. A sudden alarm sent them rushing back clogging the shelter's narrow entrance. Those inside clawed and tore at each other in a mad frenzy as they tried to get out. The guards lost their heads and locked the milling mass inside and then fled. With the air cut off, those inside slowly suffocated. The first official count of the dead was put at 461. A week later the death toll finally amounted to around 4,000.

I. G. FARBIN. This German company built its own camp next to the main Auschwitz Camp. Called I. G. Farben, Auschwitz, it was built to produce synthetic rubber. At least 50,000 prisoners died during its construction from starvation and exposure to the cold. In its foundations lie the bodies of many prisoners who were buried where they fell, in the cement.

SAVED. Many Jewish lives were saved by an anti-circumcision operation performed by some caring doctors. Dr. Josef Jaksy, a Czechoslovakian urologist, made a small incision on the patients penis and then issued a certificate that stated that they had recently been circumcised for purely medical reasons. Dr. Feliks Kanabus, a Polish surgeon, with the help of two other doctors, pooled their knowledge and performed around 140 operations by attaching skin from other parts of the body to the penis in order to hide the circumcision.

LEGAL RESIDENTS. By 1942 there were only 9,150 foreign Jews legally resident in Switzerland, 980 more than in 1931. Many of these were the richer Jews who had fled Germany leaving behind their shops, factories and other properties. These were quickly snapped up, dirt cheap, by unscrupulous Swiss businessmen who made their fortunes out of Jewish miseries.

THE CABINET WAR ROOMS. The nerve centre of British planning and conduct of the war was the War Cabinet Rooms. Situated at Storey's Gate in London, close to the houses of Parliament, the Foreign Office and Downing Street. Its location was one of the best kept secrets of the war. The War Rooms were once the cellars of the Board of Education building and covered an area of six acres with around 150 rooms including sleeping quarters, canteens and dining rooms. The roof was reinforced with tram lines and a six foot thick layer of cement. Churchill had doubts that it could withstand a direct hit from a 500 lb bomb. At the height of the war, over 600 people worked in the War Rooms which were abandoned on August 15, 1945 as no longer required. Only six rooms were kept, preserved exactly as they were, as a memorial to those dark days of 1939/45. They are now open to the public.

ICE CREAM SHIP. The war's most unusual ship was commissioned in 1945 at a cost of around one million dollars. It was the US Navy's 'Ice Cream Barge' the world's first floating ice cream parlor. It's sole responsibility was to produce ice cream for US sailors in the Pacific region. The barge crew pumped out around 1,500 gallons every hour! The concrete hulled vessel had no engine of its own but was towed around by tugs and other ships. A second barge, also in the ice cream business, and under the command of a Major Charles Zeigler, was anchored off Naha.

U.S. PILOTS. Seven American volunteer pilots fought alongside the RAF pilots during the Battle of Britain. One, P/O William Fiske, died of wounds on August 17, 1940. (Could P/O Fiske have been the first American casualty of World War II?) Only one of the other six, P/O Haviland, survived the war. During the Battle of Britain, the German Luftwaffe lost 1,882 planes, the RAF lost 1,265 planes. In all, 537 pilots were lost to Fighter Command, 718 pilots to Bomber Command and 280 pilots were lost to Coastal Command.

EAGLE SQUADRONS. Many American pilots served in the Royal Air Force and in order to circumvent the US Neutrality Act they assumed Canadian or South African nationality. They formed the Eagle Squadrons, approved by the British Air Ministry in September, 1940, and operated within the RAF Fighter Command. The first Eagle Squadron was No. 71 Squadron, formed with Hurricanes at RAF Station Kirton-in-Lindsay, Lincolnshire. The ultimate total of US pilots thus serving numbered 243 with additional squadrons Nos.121 and 133 operating from Kirton-in-Lindsay and Coltishall respectively. After the US entry into the war the Eagle Squadrons were transferred into the US 8th Air Force.

INVASION. As of Sept.16, 1940, in spite of RAF bombing, the build-up of invasion barges in the German held Channel ports continued to increase. Reconnaissance photos showed 600 barges at Antwerp, 230 at Boulogne, 266 at Calais, 220 at Dunkirk, 205 at Le Havre and 200 at Ostend. This was in anticipation of a second attempt at an invasion of Great Britain in 1941 after the winter had subsided.

SPITFIRE vs HURRICANE. Contrary to popular belief, it was the Hurricane, not the Spitfire that saved Britain during the dark days of 1940. The turn-around time (re-arm, refuel etc.) for the Spitfire was 26 minutes. That of the Hurricane, only 9 minutes from down to up again. During the Battle of Britain the time spent on the ground was crucial and as one fitter/mechanic of No.145 Squadron quipped: "If we had nothing but Spits we would have lost the fight in 1940". The Spitfire was an all metal fighter, slightly faster, had a faster rate of climb and had a higher ceiling, while the Hurricane had a fabric covered fuselage, was quicker to repair and withstood more punishment. With the for's and against's of both fighters they came out about even. The majority of German planes shot down during the four month period were destroyed by Hurricanes. For much of the Battle of Britain, the Spitfires went after the German BF 109s at the higher altitudes, while the Hurricanes attacked the bomber formations flying at lower altitudes. This cost the enemy a total of 551 pilots killed or taken prisoner. During the war a total of 14,231 Hurricanes and 20,334 Spitfires were produced. The famous Rolls-Royce 'Merlin' engine evolved through 88 separate marks and was fitted in around 70,000 Allied aircraft during the six years of war.

FEUDING. During the Battle of Britain, a bitter feud developed between 12 Group Commander Leigh-Mallory and the New Zealand Commander of 11 Fighter Group, Keith Park. At the height of the battle, Leigh-Mallory failed to send his forces to the aid of Park. Park never forgave him for this. When Leigh-Mallory was made Commander of Allied Forces after D-Day the American Air Force Commander General Spatz, made it clear that under no circumstances would he serve under him.

SPONSORED FIGHTERS. Many Spitfires used in the Battle of Britain were sponsored by private companies and individuals. Money raised in cities, towns and villages was used to buy a Spitfire at a cost of £5,000 each. They bore names such as Dogfighter bought by a well known Kennel Club, Dorothy was bought by women whose name was Dorothy, Gingerbread by red-haired men and women, Unshackled by donations from POWs and so on. The largest donation received came from Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands who donated £215,000 to purchase an entire squadron of 43 Spitfires.

INTO THE FIRE. In February, 1941, men of the Australian 22nd Brigade (8th Division) boarded the liner Queen Mary anchored off Toronga Park Zoo in Sydney. Embarking more troops when the ship called at Fremantle in Western Australia, the ship left harbour and turned north. It was then that the troops were told that their destination was Singapore, not Europe where all the action was. To be used as garrison troops in this outpost of Empire was a bitter disappointment for the 5,750 soldiers on board. Two weeks later Japanese forces attacked Singapore and the garrison was forced to surrender. In the defence of the city, 1,789 Australian soldiers died. The fighting in Malaya and including Singapore, cost the Australians 2,178 killed and 1,306 wounded. Two days after the surrender 14,792 Australians and some 35,000 British troops found themselves behind the walls of Changi Prison as prisoners of war.

SHELTER TRAGEDIES. At 11.12pm on Saturday, May 3rd 1941, the air raid sirens sounded in North Shields, a town on England's north-east coast. A lone German bomber dropped four bombs on the town, two exploding harmlessly, the third hitting a private house killing the two occupants. The fourth bomb made a direct hit on the three-storey Wilkinson's Lemonade Factory, the basement of which was used as a communal air raid shelter and on this night was crammed with 192 men, women and children. The top three storeys, filled with heavy factory machinery, collapsed onto the basement trapping the occupants and killing 102 persons including 36 children under the age of 16. Three others died later in hospital bringing the final death toll in the shelter to 105. On September 8, 1940, a direct hit on an air-raid shelter in the Peabody Housing Estate in Whitechapel, London, killed 78 persons. In Germany, up to March, 1945, over 120 direct hits on shelters were recorded. On July 26, 1943, an underground shelter in Hannover (Attacked 125 times) was hit killing 110 persons. On September 23, 1944, another shelter in Hannover received a direct hit killing 172 people. On March 15, 1945, a shelter on Kornerstrasse in Hagen was destroyed by a high explosive bomb. The remains of nearly 400 people were recovered from the ruins.

SHOPPING CENTER TRAGEDY. During the siege of Leningrad, a German bomb struck the city's largest shopping bazaar, Gostiny Dvor, on the main thoroughfare Nevsky Prospect. Hundreds of people had ran from the street into the store to shelter from the air-raid on September 19, 1941. A total of 98 persons were killed and another 148 wounded.

THE FIRST AMERICAN MERCHANT SHIP to be sunk by the Japanese was the 2,140 ton steamship Cnythea Olson on passage from Tacoma to Honolulu. Sunk on December 7, 1941. The crew of 33 and two military men were all lost.

LUCKY HIT. During the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Hawaiian DC-3 airliner, coming in to land, was hit by a Japanese tracer bullet and set on fire. A minute later, the plane was hit by another bullet which hit the valve of a fire extinguisher, thus putting out the fire!

PEARL HARBOR. The unprovoked attack on the American naval base in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, launched the Pacific War. Casualties were 2,403 Americans killed, 1,178 wounded. Two battleships, the Arizona and the Oklahoma, were sunk and five others damaged, 188 planes were destroyed and 162 damaged at the two US Air Force bases. The Japanese attacking force consisted of 31 ships with 253 aircraft. Japanese losses were 29 planes with 55 airmen killed and 5 midget submarines lost. In total, 64 deaths. (The first American casualty of the Pacific War was seaman Julius Ellsberry from Birmingham, Alabama, who was killed during the attack) On January 26, 1942, a Board of Inquiry found the Commander-in-Chief US Fleet, Admiral Kimmel and the Commander-in-Chief Hawaiian Department, General Short, guilty of dereliction of duty. Both were dismissed.

PLANE CRASH. The son of Italy's dictator, Benito Mussolini, was killed in an air crash on August 7, 1941. Twenty-three year old Bruno, second son of the Fascist leader, died when the four-engined bomber he was testing, crashed near San Guisto Airport at Pisa. Mussolini flew at once to the Santa Chiara Hospital and sat beside his son's body for hours before talking to the five wounded survivors.

ALIENS IN THE U.S.A. The US Department of Justice reported in August, 1941, that of all non-Americans citizens who registered under the Alien Registration Act, 694,971 were from Italy, 449,022 from Canada, 442,551 from Poland, 416,892 from Mexico, 366,834 from The Soviet Union, 315,004 from Germany, 291,451 from Great Britain and 91,843 from Japan.(a total of 4,921,439) On January 1, 1942, US Attorney General Francis Biddle, issues orders to all German, Italian and Japanese aliens to hand in their short-wave radios, cameras and firearms to their local police stations. They are also forbidden to change their address without permission and, if living on the east coast, to obey a 9pm to 6am curfew.

GERMAN/AMERICANS. The US Government viewed persons of 'enemy ancestry' as potentially dangerous. This included American born and naturalized citizens and those with permanent residence. The latter had come to the US seeking freedom and opportunity. They simply could not fathom the government's behavior when their civil liberties were completely ignored, their families torn apart and sent to different internment camps, their assets frozen for the duration of the war. American civilians held prisoner in Germany were exchanged for German-American internees. On arrival in Germany some men were arrested by the Gestapo as spies and put in camps, leaving their families destitute again. In January, 1945, the liner SS Gripsholm carried 1,000 exchangees to Germany. The last German/American was released from Ellis Island in August, 1948. Upon release, all internees (31,280) were sworn to secrecy and threatened with deportation if ever they spoke of their ordeal. Many returned to their former homes only to find the houses vandalized, the contents stolen or damaged. Confronted with feelings of anger, confusion, resentment, bitterness, guilt and shame, they desperately tried to mend their broken lives. Personal justice was denied to these German/Americans while the government acknowledged mistreatment of Japanese internees and granted them financial compensation.

JAPANESE/AMERICANS. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 16,849 Americans of Japanese ancestry were relocated in ten specially built War Relocation Authority Camps in the USA. Most of these camps were located in California. Opened in March, 1942, all were closed by 1946 most internees being released well before the end of the war. In Latin America, around 2,000 Japanese were rounded up so the US would have prisoners to exchange with Japan. During their internment, 5,918 babies were born. A total of 2,355 internees joined the US armed forces and around 150 were killed in combat. The 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team was formed after its members petitioned Congress for the privilege to serve in the war. It became the most decorated unit in US military history earning 21 Medals of Honor as well as 9,486 Purple Hearts. After the war, 4,724 US citizens of Japanese ancestry, angered by this terrible injustice, renounced their American citizenship and returned to Japan. It is strange that in Hawaii, the ethnic Japanese, over 30% of the Hawaiian population, were not interned after Pearl Harbor. There were no renunciants among the German or Italian/Americans. The US Government later agreed that the nation had acted hastily in its treatment of aliens and that the vast majority of them were loyal to America. Deaths from natural causes in the camps accounted for another 1,862. (During the war, a total of 51,156 Italian nationals were also interned in the USA. In 1942 there were around 600,000 Italian residents in the USA. All were branded 'enemy aliens' by the US Government).

INTERNED. After Pearl Harbor, the Canadian government interned around 22,000 Japanese Canadians. The Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, later apologized for this unjust treatment, stating "No amount of money can right the wrong, undo the harm or heal the wounds". A tax-free lump sum of $21,000 was paid to each internee.

THE WORKERS PARADISE. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, German soldiers wrote home to their families describing the conditions they found there. "The poverty, misery and filth we have seen in the past few weeks is indescribable. Wherever we look there is filth, decay, desolation, misery, death and suffering. People here know nothing about electric lights, radio, newspapers and the like. The houses they live in are just shanties with rotten straw roofs. Not even the farmers have enough to eat, all they have is a cow and perhaps a pig. There is lice and filth everywhere, they sit in their hovels and remove lice from each other. We look in vain for some sign of construction, for a trace of progress or a bit of culture. Only the Jews and party functionaries live well. It is worse than we imagined. One has to see it to realize how beautiful Germany is".

LENINGRAD. The 900 day siege of Russia's second largest city cost the lives of around one and a half million civilians and soldiers. Food was so scarce that thousands were dying each day from hunger, disease and cold. With temperatures reaching minus 40˚C, around 53,000 people died in the month of November. On Christmas Day, 1941, an estimated 3,700 inhabitants died from starvation. Many just collapsed in the street, their bodies soon covered by snow and their whereabouts not known until the spring thaw. Cannibalism was resorted to on a number of occasions the main victims being young boys and girls who were waylaid on the streets and murdered, in many cases by women driven to desperation to get food for their hungry children. In January, 1944, the Russian winter offensive pushed the surrounding German troops fifty miles back from the city's perimeter, allowing railway links with Moscow to reopen and relief supplies to reach the city. (Leningrad has now reverted to its pre-war name, St Petersburg).

'D-DOG' B-17 FLYING FORTRESS. The first B-17 'Flying Fortress' to be shot down in WW II was 525 D-Dog based at Kinloss, Scotland. Delivered to No. 90 Squadron of the RAF and flown by a British crew, D-Dog was shot down on September 8, 1941, by Lt. Alfred Jakobi's Bf109 of 13/JG77 based at Stavanger-Sola near Oslo. The B-17, piloted by Canadian F/O. David Romans and his co-pilot P/O F. G. Hart, plummeted to the ground in a near vertical dive and exploded just before hitting the mountainside at Bygland killing all seven crew members. The bodies were buried in the local Church Cemetery at Bygland by a Luftwaffe unit. In spite of its huge publicity the B-17 was no match for German fighters and drastic changes in armaments and other equipment were undertaken before the B-17 became the true backbone of USAAF units stationed in Britain.

LIBERTY SHIP. The first Liberty ship built was the SS Patrick Henry, launched in 1941. President F. D. Roosevelt delivered a speech using 'Liberty' as the theme. He referred to Patrick Henry's quote "Give me liberty...or give me death". Stating that these ships would bring liberty to Europe the name stuck, thence 'Liberty Ships'.

POW ESCAPE ATTEMPT FROM BRITAIN. During the war, no German prisoner of war escaped from Britain. Many believe that Franz von Werra was the most notable escapee but von Werra made his escape in Canada, where he was sent as a POW. The most audacious attempt was made by Lt. Heinz Schnabel and Oblt. Harry Wappler on November 24, 1941. The two Luftwaffe officers were prisoners in Camp No.15 near Penrith, Northumbria (formally the Shap Wells Hotel). Forging papers that identified them as two Dutch officers serving in the RAF, they made their way to the RAF airfield at Kingstown near Carlisle. Without difficulty they entered the station and with the help of a ground mechanic started the engine of a Miles Magister, of which there were fifty parked around the airfield. Taking off, they headed for the sea and Holland, a distance of some 365 miles. Over the North Sea they realized they could not make it (the maximum range of a Magister was 367 miles on full tanks) Rather reluctantly they decided to turn back and landed in a field about five miles north of Great Yarmouth. Back at Camp No.15 again, the two daring escapees were sentenced to 28 days solitary confinement.

P.W.E. (Political Warfare Executive). Concerned with the 'black' propaganda broadcasts to Germany and enemy occupied Europe. All who tuned into the wavelength believed that the station was operating inside Germany. The personalities mostly concerned with the P.W.E were, Sefton Delmer, Richard Crossman, Ian Fleming, Robert Bruce-Lockhart and David Bowes-Lyon. The headquarters of P.W.E. was at Woburn Abbey, the home of the Duke of Bedford. In 1941 the station employed a staff of 213 people.

KILLED ON WAY TO FUNERAL. On November 21, 1941, one of Germany's leading air aces, Oberst Werner Moelders, 1913-1941, was killed when the plane, an HE-111 bomber in which he was a passenger, hit a factory chimney in fog and rain near Breslau, while on his way to the state funeral of General Ernst Udet (1896-1941) Chief Air Inspector General of the Luftwaffe who committed suicide on November 17, 1941. Moelders, who had achieved 115 kills, 68 of which were achieved in the western theatre, was replaced by the fighter ace Adolf Galland (103 kills) who retained the post until January, 1945.

ULTIMATUM. Following the British ultimatum to end their conflict with Russia, the Governments of Britain, Canada, New Zealand and India declare war on Finland, Hungary and Rumania (December 6, 1941). In Britain, 150 Finnish nationals are arrested and in the US, 6 Finnish ships are seized in US ports and placed under protected custody.

THE FIRST AMERICAN NAVAL CASUALTY of the war was when the US destroyer Kearney was torpedoed and damaged off Iceland while on convoy escort duty. Eleven men were killed. The first US Navy loss was the destroyer Reuben James torpedoed and sunk off Iceland while escorting a British convoy from Halifax (October 31, 1941) 115 men were lost.

REQUEST. After Pearl Harbor, the Department of Conservation in Nashville, Tennessee, handed in a request for six million licenses to hunt Japs at a fee of $2 each. Back came a note "Open season on Japs - no license required".
sendpm.gif Reply With Quote