Fast and Furious
Filmstrip Tease GIs’ favorite training exercise
Neighborhood Bully Russia expected Finland to fold. Russia was wrong
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DECEMBER 11–20, 2014 Walk Through History on a Tour to the Ardennes Follow in the footsteps of American soldiers who battled against Hitler’s “Last Gamble.” Travel with The National WWII Museum to experience Belgium and Luxembourg during 70th Anniversary commemorations, consisting of parades, celebrations and, of course, expertly guided battlefield excursions. The group will be joined by Alex Kershaw, author of the widely acclaimed best sellers The Bedford Boys, The Longest Winter, The Few and Escape from the Deep.
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WORLD
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Ju ly/A ugust 2014 FEATURES C OV ER S T O R Y
Killer Lily The USS Saratoga caught flak for lolling in port—until the old flattop came out swinging hard at Rabaul BRUCE GAMBLE
28 PORTF OL I O
The Postwar War In an athletic event and on the street in mid-1945 Germany, an American radio operator proved that he was born to run
52 WE A P ON S MA N UA L
Private SNAFU on Duty
The USSR’s Il-2 Sturmovik
Hollywood trained GIs with hilarity
A low-down, deadly ground-attack plane
MARK HARRIS
36 White Death
JIM LAURIER
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The Winter War between tiny Finland and the Soviet Union mesmerized the world. But the David-and-Goliath trappings only went so far
Nazi Saboteurs at the High Court
ROBERT M. CITINO
DANIEL B. MOSKOWITZ
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KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES COVER: © WAYNE MILLER/MAGNUM PHOTOS
When Germany sent agents to wreak havoc in America, their case went straight to the top
D EP ART M ENT S Mail
7 World War II Today Heinrich Himmler writes home and honeypie; how Japan saved fleeing Jews; Pat Buchanan’s Reading List
Fire for Effect Past really can be prologue ROBERT M. CITINO
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Battle Films Sands of Iwo Jima through a mythologist’s lens MARK GRIMSLEY
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Time Travel Paris on the Hitler plan ALEX KERSHAW
Challenge Gangster redefined
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Reviews
Pinup
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GENE SANTORO
A German miniseries; Stalingrad in 3D; Monuments Men extras; and D-Day in IMAX
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10 Conversation A cryptanalyst who traded college for Pacific duty recalls bombings, boas, and busting enemy code
From the Footlocker Curators at The National World War II Museum solve readers’ artifact mysteries
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The 1939-40 Winter War put Finnish troops in their element. Cover: An F6F Hellcat is poised for launch on the USS Saratoga.
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M OSKO WITZ
TH O M P S O N
Robert M. Citino (“White Death”) teaches
KE R S H A W
at the University of North Texas and is a visiting professor at the U.S. Military Academy and U.S. Army War College. “The Winter War reminds us,” he tells his students, “that there will always be things worth fighting for—like liberty.”
and the Journal of American Law. He has three times won awards in the annual Silver Gavel competition for legal affairs writing sponsored by the American Bar Association, and his articles are included in the collection of model legal writing at the University of Texas School of Law.
Bruce Gamble (“Killer Lilly”) is a retired
Alex Kershaw (“Time Travel”) is a best-
naval flight officer and former historian with the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. A disabled veteran and cancer survivor, he has used a wheelchair for much of his adult life but hasn’t allowed it to slow him down. Gamble is the author of numerous articles and six nonfiction books, including a trilogy about Rabaul. A frequent public speaker, he is the recipient of multiple literary awards and appears in documentaries produced by the History Channel, Fox News Channel, and PBS.
selling author known for his works on World War II, such as The Bedford Boys and The Liberator. He is currently writing a book about Avenue Foch in Paris under German occupation.
Daniel B. Moskowitz (“Nazi Saboteurs
at the Supreme Court”) covered the U.S. Supreme Court for almost two decades as a reporter for BusinessWeek magazine and also wrote a weekly column on legal affairs for the Washington Post. Now a freelance writer in Washington, D.C., he has written for the ABA Journal, Juris Doctor,
Alvin H. Thompson (“Let the Games
Begin”) was born in Paris, Kentucky, in 1924. He came of age in California, where he captained the Monrovia High track team. After graduating, when he moved to and from Washington, D.C., to work at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, his records strayed, stranding him in civvies until he paid for his own blood test. “I think I am the only guy who had to spend $5 to be drafted,” he says. His postwar studies led to 55 years in education; he retired as Professor Emeritus from Cal Poly University, Pomona. He had research assistance on his article from Christopher Evann Jalandon.
Churchill and Lincoln – Never Give Up by Lewis E. Lehrman
Churchill had in mind a new verse to the Harrow school song which the students had recently written:
W EIDER H ISTORY EDITOR IN CHIEF
Vol. 29, No. 2 EDITOR
Not less we praise in darker days The leader of our nation, And Churchill’s name shall win acclaim From each new generation.
Roger L. Vance
JULY/AUGUST 2014
Karen Jensen Peggy Archambault Michael Dolan Guy Aceto Bridgett Henwood Jon Guttman Gene Santoro Paul Wiseman David Zabecki
Art Director Senior Editor Photo Editor Associate Editor Research Director Reviews Editor News Editor Senior Historian
ADVISORY BOARD Ed Drea, David Glantz, Jeffery Grey, John McManus,
Winston Churchill celebrating American Thanksgiving, Albert Hall, London, November 23, 1944.
“Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days.” Churchill spoke only one year after Britain had victoriously defended itself against the relentless Luftwaffe bombing of London. But for English bravery, the Battle of Britain could have ended the war before America joined it.
Only four score years before Churchill’s speech at Harrow, Abraham Lincoln, at a time of equally great crisis, had become president of the United States. If attacked, Lincoln was as determined as Churchill to fight. The president would persist in the face of great odds. Lincoln’s public writings and speeches, combined with his persevering example, inspired the nation to wage relentless war for the Union, and for emancipation, until victory in 1865...
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The War Years They were different men with different backgrounds & very different leadership styles Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill lived through remarkably comparable challenges in cataclysmic wars separated by a mere eight decades. Brilliant writers and communicators, Churchill and Lincoln unified and rallied their nations in order to defeat well-armed challengers whose social ideologies held little respect for human liberty and dignity. A Project of The Lehrman Institute
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(“A Few Good Marines,” March/April 2014). The graves were dedicated to the 25 U.S. war dogs killed there in combat. Barbara A. Carter Tuscon, Ariz.
Merchant Marines Forgotten?
Gregory Peck’s character (foreground) in Twelve O’Clock High taught FBI agents about managing stress.
Films of the FBI Twelve O’Clock High, as Mark Grimsley noted in his insightful article (“The Moral World of Twelve O’Clock High,” March/ April 2014), is indeed used as a training tool by many, including the FBI. For years, and perhaps even today, the Bureau showed the movie to managers in classes devoted to the study of stress. The movie, and in particular Gregory Peck’s portrayal of a man burdened with not only the responsibility of command, but the loneliness of command, vividly shows how any of us can be susceptible to reaching the breaking point. I still recall sitting through such a session at the FBI Academy and how, at the movie’s end, there was little of the usual frivolity associated the end of a class. It’s that compelling. Ivian “I.C.” Smith Laneview, Va.
forward observer with the 84th Chemical Mortar Battalion at Anzio. Among his many instructions to us based on his Anzio experience were the virtue and necessity of digging our guns in before a fire mission, a pit roughly 10 feet in diameter and 3 feet deep, rather hard to do in the frozen ground of Luxembourg in 1944. Nonetheless, his advice proved invaluable, as it saved my life and those of others in my squad in the Battle of the Bulge. Arthur O. Spaulding Ojai, Calif.
Anzio Lives On Alex Kershaw’s gripping account of the German counterattack to reduce the Anzio beachhead (“Highway to Hell,” March/ April 2014) stirs memories of my service in the 91st Chemical Mortar Battalion. During our training in 1944 we were assigned Major Thomas Watson—whom we soon dubbed “Anzio Joe” because of his lurid tales of fighting the Germans as a TOP, © TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX/PHOTOFEST; BOTTOM, COURTESY OF GEORGE HUISKEN
A cemetery in Guam honored war dogs.
Soldiers’ Best Friend My good friend Sergeant George Huisken of the 33rd Statistical Control Unit, Headquarters Squadron of the Twentieth Air Force took this picture of a cemetery in Guam while serving his country in 1946
Thank you Kathryn Chambers Torpey and Gene Santoro for your piece in the March/April 2014 issue (“Saved From the Depths”). I was a volunteer in the Maritime Service during World War II. The young men who served in the Maritime Service were indeed the “Forgotten Sailors.” Kenneth L. Dietrich Harrisburg, Pa. The Merchant Marine of World War II was then as it is today never a part of the American military. It was and is an industrial organization. During World War II it did not suffer the highest death rate. Its death rate through combat causes was proportionately higher than the Navy, but was proportionately exceeded by that of the Army and the Marine Corps. In testimony I submitted to the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs in May 2008, I argued that there is a miscalculation of the merchant mariner battle death ratio due to an incorrect total of Merchant Marine deaths and a skewed count of total merchant mariners. The often-cited total number of enlisted merchant mariners from that time is low because, among other reasons, it excluded short-term employees and only counted oceangoing Merchant Marine personnel, not those inland or on the Great Lakes. The assertion that those in the Merchant Marine were not provided with proper military benefits is also slightly off the mark. Government-provided War Risk Insurance covered merchant mariners during the war; such coverage did, however, fall short of that provided members JULY/AUGUST 2014
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of the military. That shortfall was in some part remedied in 1988 through administrative action authorized under Public Law 95-202 allowing the World War II mariners access to current benefits allowed by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Charles Dana Gibson Fort Pierce, Fla. Editor’s note: Joshua Smith, the director of the American Merchant Marine Museum, notes that the Merchant Marine did suffer horrific casualties higher than those of the military services for a brief period in early 1942. Once the United States began offensive ground operations with Guadalcanal, military losses overtook those of the Merchant Marine, which tapered by the second half of 1942.
Mysterious Middle Name “S” is not Harry Truman’s middle initial; it is his middle name (“Ask WWII,” March/ April 2014). There is no period after it. Walt Kimball Palo Alto, Calif.
Harry S. Truman’s middle name was indeed just the initial “S,” a compromise between the names of his two grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young. The middle “name” doesn’t technically need a period after it, but Truman himself signed it “Harry S. Truman,” and included a period on his official letterhead. Both The Chicago Manual of Style and the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual state that a period should follow Truman’s “S.” Please send letters to:
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SS Chieftain's Private Letters Revealed
The Himmlers in 1935 with their two children and a friend (left). At right, the SS man's notes to wife and mistress.
'I
am off to Auschwitz. Kisses, your Heini.” Heinrich Himmler’s private correspondence, published in January by newspapers Die Welt in Germany and Yedioth Ahronoth in Israel, show the Gestapo and SS chief balancing family life with mass murder. The 700 letters, dated 1927 to 1945, document in eerie detail what political theorist Hannah Arendt famously called “the banality of evil.” In mid-1941, knowing her man is busy planning a war, Margarete Himmler leaves Reported and written by
Paul Wiseman
her Heinrich a note. “There is a can of caviar in the ice box,” she writes. “Take it.” In July, preoccupied with invading Russia, he apologizes for forgetting their anniversary.
DISPATCHES
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William Guarnere, one of the “Band of Brothers” made famous by Stephen Ambrose and the HBO miniseries based on the book about Easy Company, died March 8 at 90 in Philadelphia, his hometown. A noncommissioned officer, Guarnere received a Silver Star for his role in a D-Day action in which he and other men of E Company, 2nd Battalion,
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(In his letters to Margarete, Himmler sometimes used endearments—“I kiss your dear, good hands and your sweet mouth”—that he repurposed in mash notes to secretary and mistress Hedwig Potthast, who bore him a son and a daughter.) Himmler never gets specific about the Final Solution in letters home. But he and his wife are on the same page. “All this Jew business, when will this pack leave us so that
we can enjoy our lives?” Margarete writes after Nazi thugs destroy Jewish businesses in the 1938 rampage known as Kristallnacht. The letters, authenticated by the German Federal Archives, spent decades hidden in Tel Aviv. No one knows how the collection got to Israel. One explanation has an aide to SS official Karl Wolff making off with the cache. Another has American soldiers filching the letters from Himmler’s residence in Bavaria. Whatever the archive’s provenance, Israeli collector Chaim Rosenthal obtained the letters and eventually passed them to the family of a documentary film producer, Vanessa Lapa, who made a film based on the epistolary archive. The Berlin International Film Festival
"Wild Bill" Guarnere, 1924-2014
TOP LEFT, REALWORKS LTD./DIE WELT/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/DPA/AP; TOP RIGHT, INTERPHOTO/ALAMY (BOTH); BOTTOM, AP PHOTO/JACQUELINE LARMA
W W I I T OD AY screened The Decent One in February. Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, hopes to obtain the collection. “These letters, which we understand and assume are authentic, have historical significance in that they open a window
into the life and thinking of one of the key architects and implementers of the Holocaust,” said Haim Gertner, director of the Yad Vashem archives. “As humanity continues to grapple with the questions of how such an event could
have happened, these types of documents provide important additional information to our understanding of the events.” Awaiting trial at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity, Himmler killed himself on May 23, 1945.
Japan Remembers a Mitzvah
W
orld War II might not seem the most promising tag for promoting Japan to visitors, but the Japan National Tourism Organization opened a March tourism fete at New York’s Grand Central Terminal with a video about how a Japanese diplomat and a seasick tourism clerk helped thousands of Jews escape the Nazis. The 10-minute documentary, Transit to Freedom, was produced by faculty at the New York Film Academy. During the war, Chiune Sugihara, Japanese consul in Kaunas, Lithuania, deliberately issued transit visas to help thousands of Jews escape advancing German troops. About 6,000 of the refugees reached Vladivostok on Russia’s Pacific coast. There, after initial hesitation, the quasi-official Japan Tourist Bureau transported the travelers by ship to Tsuruga, Japan. Tourism clerk Tatsuo Osako escorted the passengers. When not battling seasickness, Osako collected photos of fellow passengers, often inscribed with thanks in languages ranging from Norwegian to Polish. He assembled the pictures in a scrapbook in which he also affixed a poem describing the “people without nations” he was helping. Though nominally allied with Germany, Japan allowed the Jews to stay after their temporary visas expired. Most made their way to third countries, usually the United States. Eventually Japan deported about 1,000 to Japanese-occupied Shanghai, where they stayed until the war’s end. World War II remains touchy for Japan. Many of its Asian neighbors say the former Axis power has yet to accept responsibility for Imperial Army atroc-
AP PHOTO (ALL)
ities, including a 1937 massacre of tens of thousands of Chinese at Nanking and the practice of forcing Korean, Chinese, and other foreign women to serve as sex slaves.
Tourism clerk Tatsuo Osako (top, at left) befriended Jews he escorted out of Germany's grip, prompting many notes of thanks, which he saved in a scrapbook along with photos.
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W W I I T ODA Y Smile, You're on MI5's Candid Camera
T
he British intelligence agent who inspired John le Carré’s master spy George Smiley fooled Nazi sympathizers in Britain into thinking he was a Gestapo agent and revealing their efforts to undermine the British government, newly released documents show. Working for intelligence agency MI5 under the pseudonym Jack King, John Bingham befriended Marita Perigoe, whose husband, a British fascist, was in prison. Perigoe told Bingham about hundreds of fifth columnists siding with Hitler and working to subvert Britain’s government. Bingham made contact with many of those individuals, persuading them to tell him what they were planning. Details of Bingham’s counterespionage coup appear in files Britain’s National Archives released in February. One extremist was trying to alert the Germans to secret British efforts to build a jet plane. Another offered Berlin details on an amphibious tank. Others wanted to help the Germans pick bombing sites. According to an intelligence report, one woman “expressed great pleasure with the number of new graves in Hastings Cemetery, the result of the raid on the Silverhill district. She said the Germans had done a very good job on this raid.”
MI5 operative John Bingham looked every inch a man of Britain's spy establishment, but even so he was able to penetrate a circle of homegrown Nazi sympathizers.
Many of Bingham’s contacts had belonged to the British Union of Fascists, founded by English politician Oswald Mosley, but lost faith in the group, thinking it insufficiently extreme. Despite the neo-Nazis’ seeming nuttiness, an MI5
agent warns in one document against dismissing them: “It is dangerous to disregard extremists merely because they can be dubbed neurotics.” The government did not prosecute the Nazi sympathizers Bingham rolled up.
POWs' Charleston Chimney Stirs Ruckus
A
brick fireplace and chimney, the last vestige of a POW camp in Charleston, South Carolina, are at the center of a bitter dispute that arrays city officials and historical preservationists against a prominent Charleston family. The Aberman-Pearlstine family is so eager for the structure, built during the war by German POWs, to be gone they have offered to help pay for its removal from their property in the West Ashley neighborhood. The Abermans and Pearlstines are Jews who see the brickwork artifact as a reminder of Nazi
German POWs memorialized their stay in South Carolina with a brick fireplace.
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TOP, PRESS ASSOCIATION; BOTTOM, NICOLE BENGIVENO/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/VIN NEWS.COM
W W I I T ODA Y THE READING LIST
Missed Chances Britain and Europe ˇin the Twentieth Century Roy Denman (1996)
Pat Buchanan
“At the opening of the 20th century, Denman writes, ‘Britain, as the center of the biggest empire in the world, was at the zenith of her power and glory.... Britain will end the [20th] century little more important than Switzerland...the biggest secular decline in power since seventeenth century Spain.’ This is a summation of the disasters that befell the British Empire and nation, and the reasons why.”
Unconditional Hatred German War Guilt and the Future of Europe Captain Russell Grenfell, R.N. (1953)
“An eminently readable diplomatic history of how Britain abandoned the ‘splendid isolation’ of Lord Salisbury to ensnare herself in the power politics and European wars of the 20th century. Grenfell’s work is laced with bitterness at what might have been and should have been had Britain been led by wiser statesmen.”
A.J.P. Taylor (1996)
Advance to Barbarism The Development of Total Warfare F.J.P. Veale (1948)
“The Good War is described in all its barbarity in this brave book, which the media shunned in what Columbia University historian Harry
butchery. Charleston officials want to declare the POW campsite a “landmark overlay zone” protected under law, an effort making its way through municipal review channels. The West Ashley chimney, built by some of the 500 POWs held at the camp that stood in the district during the war, features a prisoner-cast concrete plaque reading, “German Prisoners of War 19.1.1945.” As the war’s end neared, the West Ashley POWs were almost part of
The Failed Courtship Robert Nisbet (1988)
“This slim volume recounts the appeasement of Stalin by FDR and Churchill at Tehran and Yalta that led to a 40-year Cold War. Churchill wanted to stand up for the Czechs at Munich. Chamberlain gave a war guarantee to the Poles. Both peoples ended up in the slave empire of the mass murderer who had colluded with Hitler in starting the war. Nisbet is pitiless in his portrayals.”
The Origins of the Second World War
“The altarpiece of a great historian and courageous man whose judgment that Hitler, far from being hell-bent on world domination, was in the tradition of German statesmen, ignited immense controversy when it first appeared. Taylor’s rendition of the events leading up to World War II is now being accorded greater respect, at the expense of the Munich myth. It was not Munich, but the war guarantee to Poland that guaranteed the war.”
Roosevelt and Stalin
A White House aide to Presidents Nixon and Reagan and a three-time presidential candidate, Pat Buchanan has authored a dozen
Elmer Barnes called ‘The Historical Blackout.’ Recounted are the massacre of the 15,000 Polish officers at Katyn, the ethnic cleansing in an orgy of rape and murder of 13-15 million Germans from Pomerania, East Prussia, Silesia, and the Sudetenland, and the revelation that Churchill secretly initiated the terror bombing of World War II.”
books, including the controversial Churchill,
the community, playing softball against a local team and forming a country band. But some remained Nazis at heart, slicing swastikas into tomatoes they picked at area farms on work details, the New York Times reported. Family members say they dislike having to maintain a relic of a regime that murdered millions of Jews. Mickey Aberman, for instance, says the chimney reminds him of stories told by an older relative who described fleeing into the
woods while German soldiers executed her parents and siblings. Charleston journalist Brian Hicks calls it “lunacy” for Charleston to insist that a Jewish family maintain a shrine associated with Nazidom. In his column in the Post & Courier, Hicks wrote that the Aberman-Pearlstine family “would rather give up land than be forced to preserve a fireplace that used to provide comfort to a bunch of Nazis. And no one with any sense could blame them.”
Hitler and the Unnecessary War. He regards World War II as the product of failed statesmanship and fatal blunders. His selections reflect his belief that, the heroism of British and American fighting men notwithstanding, the war was an avoidable calamity. His new book, out in July, is The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create America’s New Majority.
Burson with radio transcripts JULY/AUGUST 2014
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DISPATCHES
ASK WWII
(continued from page 10) 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division destroyed a German artillery battery. He lost his right leg in the Battle of the Bulge.
Axis entries into Monaco were uncharacteristically polite.
Q. Did the Axis invade Monaco? —Bahy Ahmed Tawfik Shaheen, Alexandria, Egypt McDuffie with wartime photos
- The sailor who is believed to have
planted one of the most famous kisses in history died March 9 at age 86. Glenn Edward McDuffie was identified seven years ago by a forensic artist as the man photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt kissing a nurse in Times Square to celebrate V-J Day, August 14, 1945. Many men have claimed to be kisser. Edith Shain, widely believed to be the nurse in the picture, died in 2010 at age 91.
A.
Yes. Monaco was out of the line of German fire in May 1940, but a month later the principality’s ethnic majority of often pro-fascist Italians made it easy for Benito Mussolini’s forces to swoop in—peacefully. They swooped back out after Hitler noted that Monaco’s business facilities made the tiny state more useful as a neutral than an ally. A shaky neutrality followed until November 11, 1942, when Italian troops again arrived. Upon Italy’s September 1943 capitulation, German troops from southern France seized Monaco and began rounding up Jews, hindered by Monacan police who often warned the Gestapo’s targets. The Germans left Monaco on September 3, 1944; Allied forces officially liberated it on September 6. —Jon Guttman
Q Send queries to: Ask World War II, 19300 Promenade Drive, Leesburg, VA 20176, or worldwar2@ weiderhistorygroup.com.
SOUND BITE
“The war will be won or lost on the beaches. We’ll have only one chance to stop the enemy, and that’s while he’s in the water struggling to get ashore.”
Rommel stalks the beach at Normandy.
—Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to an aide, March 1944. 14
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TOP LEFT, AP PHOTO/PAT SULLIVAN; TOP RIGHT, WEIDER ARCHIVES; BOTTOM, ULLSTEIN BILD/AKG IMAGES
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BAT BA 70th TLE TTL Ann OF E OF iver THE TH sar HÜ E BU y RTG LG EN E FOR EST
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Conversation with Mary Blakemore Johnston
Spying by the Numbers By Gene Santoro bols for converting Japanese characters into syllables; military and naval terminology; and the grammatical structures we’d find in their messages. It was fascinating but didn’t have much to do with Japanese itself. What we did was pick up certain words the Japanese used in coded transmissions to ships sailing from Tokyo to wherever, so the ships could be intercepted. A month-long voyage on the SS Lurline took you to New Guinea.
herself in late 1942, when her father,
Your father also got you into the army.
a World War I veteran, told her about
On December 6, 1942, he marched me to the recruiting station in Abingdon, Virginia. I was underweight by two pounds. “Keep those papers handy,” Dad told the sergeant. “We’ll be back tomorrow morning.” He bought me half a dozen bananas and a thick steak. I thought I’d explode. But the next morning I met the requirement.
We landed at Oro Bay, then at Hollandia, where we were in a tent city, all women. We had boa constrictors in our barracks, and had to shake our boots each morning to get tarantulas and small reptiles out of them. We had our own facilities, showers and so on, on GHQ Hill—General MacArthur’s headquarters. I never saw him, even at church. GIs were so happy to see American women they tried everything to entice us on dates. Some got drunk and wanted more than a date; so did some WACs. The rest of us accepted meal or movie offers, and met in the rec room. Sometimes we put on Ping Pong tournaments. I had a portable organ I played for church services; some fellas made a choir.
‘W
omen served in all our country’s wars as nurses; why not in other jobs?” That’s
his children speaking French while we ate dinner. We were afraid we couldn’t eat if we couldn’t remember the words!
what college senior Mary Blakemore asked
the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, which became the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). Mary withdrew from Emory & Henry College in Virginia to become a cryptanalyst in the Pacific, decoding Japanese naval messages. “It was all Top Secret,” she says. “I don’t remember all the details because I buried them so deep 70 years ago, only hypnosis could get them back!”
You trained at Vint Hill Farms Station
What was your typical workday like?
Why did the army assign you to
in Virginia.
cryptanalysis?
Only after I had agreed to be frozen in rank as a corporal so I could go overseas, which didn’t seem right. At Vint Hill, 19 of us—librarians, teachers, linguists, and lab technicians—studied cryptanalysis. We learned Hepburn kana—the sym-
There were three shifts—54 of us, 18 to a shift. After showers and breakfast, we went down the hill to Quonset huts that were very primitive: no bathrooms, two rows of small desks like old school desks. Two of us sat at each one. We had pencils with erasers. Each day, we were presented with
My linguistic ability: I knew French, Spanish, and German. I started learning French when I was able to talk. Daddy was fluent; he had studied at the University of Bordeaux after World War I. He started 16
WORLD WAR II
CHARLIE ARCHAMBAULT PHOTOGRAPHY; OPPOSITE, COURTESY OF MARY BLAKEMORE JOHNSTON
a paper that looked like a crossword puzzle and given numbers in blocks of four. We had to translate them and figure out what they meant. We used kana words. The most important were maru—“a ship”— and bakugeki—“to bomb.” We started with the most frequently used letter, A; Os and As were the key. We shuffled the vowels in different columns, then put in consonants, trying to find maru. Then we had to figure out the timing and points of departure and destination.
‘We knew our work was succeeding: the Japanese didn’t try to bomb anybody at Hollandia but us!’
It sounds like a lot of trial and error.
Oh, yes. We worked it and worked it and worked it. My partner might find a word but need a consonant, and I’d say, “Hey, it looks like that one right there.” That’s why we worked as teams. At the end of a day, the papers we hadn’t solved were gathered up and given to the next shift. Did the Japanese change codes often while you were a cryptanalyst?
Several times, usually after ships were bombed. Then they decided to try another tactic. One night Tokyo Rose said on the radio she knew those people on GHQ Hill were breaking their codes, and the women were the worst. So we had to be…well, bakugeki—bombed. The first broadcast, she made mewling noises: “Oooh, you poor girls.” We laughed. Next broadcast, she says, “Don’t you girls know that there is a life for you in the States with privileges and luxury? Go tell them you’ve had enough!” Next broadcast, she says, “We’re going to bakugeki you!” She even gave us the date and time. How stupid! What happened?
That night, our fellas got ready to defend the base. Most of the women were scared, and went down into a ravine near the barracks. I didn’t; too many creepy-crawly things. I’d had enough boa constrictors and tarantulas and reptiles. So I said my prayers and went to sleep singing “Do Not Be Afraid,” a hymn. I slept like a baby. When I woke up, everything was
call. They sent me to the hospital at Clark Field, where they treated me with gentian violet and elevated my leg. It didn’t work. I read and I slept, and I slept and I read. Then my first cousin, Bobby Wysor, who I loved dearly, came looking for me. Bobby was a captain with the 33rd Infantry on Luzon. He arranged for the doctors to release me so I could meet him at a Red Cross camp after he reported back to his battalion. But when I went to San Miguel to pick up clothes, I found everyone had been ordered to a camp south of Manila to be shipped home. What did you do?
Ready to ship out, 1943
fine. The other girls meandered back dirty and grumpy. The fellas had turned the Japanese planes back. We knew our work was succeeding: the Japanese didn’t try to bomb anybody at Hollandia but us! Next stop—San Miguel in the Philippines. Were you bombed again?
No. The fighting was farther north, but we still had to be escorted everywhere by a soldier. One morning we heard scream after scream from the bathhouse. MPs came running. The trembling girl pointed to this dirty, petrified man in a Japanese uniform who was at least as scared as she was. He’d come down from the mountains because he had seen his country’s flag on a smokestack in the camp—our fellas hadn’t had time to paint over it—and thought he’d be safe. He sure got that wrong! Soon afterward you were evacuated to Clark Field. Why?
At Hollandia I cut my right foot swimming, and it was seeping. For a couple of months, I just cut out the top of my shoe and went about my business, but it got so bad I figured I’d better go on sick
I strolled out of there. Everything was in confusion. I found a road north of town and thumbed a ride. A GI driver kindly took me in his 10-ton truck to the camp to meet Bobby; I fell asleep on his shoulder. I went swimming in the South China Sea, which was gorgeous, with clear warm water. After a few days, my foot healed— the salt must have done it. I went to meet my detachment south of Manila. The entire city was rubble except for the beautiful cathedral and the hotel where MacArthur had his HQ. In December 1945, we sailed to San Francisco on the Lurline, the same ship that brought us to New Guinea. What was your reunion with your father like?
After I enlisted, he reenlisted and, since he was a lawyer, ended up in AMG [Allied Military Government]. He went into French and Belgian villages after the fighting and established law and order. He didn’t get home till after I did. I went back to college, and in June 1946, graduated with my younger sister Martha. We were in line when the college president announced, “We have just learned that Mr. Blakemore is home, and we would like to have him give his daughters their certificates.” It was wonderful. Dad came down the aisle, blowing his nose. He gave Martha her diploma and a sweet kiss. To me, he said, “Well, Mary, it’s about time!” 2 JULY/AUGUST 2014
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WORLD WAR II
From the Footlocker
Curators at The National World War II Museum solve readers’ artifact mysteries
1
While visiting friends we came across this patch tucked inside the book Submarine Operations in World War II. It measures about eight-by-six inches, and belonged to my friend’s now-deceased father, Allie H. Lamer, who served as a chief petty officer (gunner’s mate) aboard the submarine USS Pargo. We
have no idea what the many flags represent—but considering their number, Pargo must have been quite busy. Our friend is proud of his father and his service; we would like to be able to illuminate for him some of his father’s contributions in defeating the Axis powers. —Lawrence Loughlin, Palm Harbor, Fla.
This patch is a copy of the USS Pargo’s battle flag. During World War II the submarine completed eight patrols, represented by the numbers on the dice inside the horseshoe. The flags at top left signify ships the Pargo sank; the 14 Japanese national flags represent merchant vessels, while the three flags with rays symbolize warships. The flag that looks like a sun with three tick marks next to it means that the Pargo destroyed three floating mines.
1 The USS Pargo (below, at Mare Island, California, for refit in March 1944) had eight successful war patrols, as reflected in this patch (right).
The flags at bottom right represent one warship and nine merchant ships that the sub damaged, hence the letter “D” in the center of each flag. The island flag signifies a shore bombardment—in this case, Woody Island in the South China Sea, which Pargo shelled on February 4, 1945, during its seventh war patrol. Rounds from the Pargo’s four-inch deck guns destroyed several Japanese installations, including a weather station and radio equipment. —Eric Rivet, Curator
2
My father brought this knife back from Germany in 1946, along with a Luger with a clear, engraved grip. One side
of the grip reads “Germany 1945,” the other bears his name—“SSgt Robert Miller.” He was a staff sergeant in the 973rd Engineer Maintenance Company, assigned to the Ninth Air Force, and served in Europe from August 1944 until April 1946; he died in 2011. The only emblem on the knife is a Nazi swastika, with writing around it reading, “DAP
NATIONAL SOZIALIST.”
Any help in
identifying the knife would be appreciated. —Chris Miller, Colombus, Ohio
2
U.S. NAVY
GIs used Plexiglas, plentiful at airfields, to customize their loot, like this Luger (with clip) and Nazi trench knife.
This is a German trench knife whose plain wooden grip was replaced with a custom Plexiglas grip, much as with your father’s Luger. The swastika in the grip is simply a Nazi Party pin. This type of modification is common; many pistols and knives in the collection here at the National WWII Museum have been similarly customized. These modifications were usually done by servicemen who had access to machine tools, as your father’s unit surely did. Plexiglas was easy to scrounge at airfields because it was used in airplane windows, gun turrets, and bomber noses. —Larry Decuers, Curator
JULY/AUGUST 2014
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From the Footlocker
3
3
patriotic or “Cinderella” stickers, with no postal value. They were used to show support for the organization in question—in this case the U.S. Air Corps. The insignia, a two-bladed propeller over wings, dates to the World War I-era Army Air Service, and saw use through World War II as the branch insignia of all Air Corps and Army Air Forces personnel. —Eric Rivet
Among my grandfather’s effects I found several small stamps. My grandfather, Vincent Bell, trained
as an aircraft mechanic and served in the Aleutian Islands from August 1943 to November 1945. Can you tell me anything about his stamps? —Joshua Bell, Providence, R.I.
Vintage stamp expert Steve Shebetich of the Arlington, Virginia, firm Latherow & Co. told us the stamps are known as
20
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Mechanic Vincent Bell (above) served in the Aleutians with the Eleventh Air Force.
Have a World War II artifact you can’t identify? Write to Footlocker@weiderhistorygroup. com with the following: • Your connection to the object and what you know about it • The object’s dimensions, in inches • Several high-resolution digital photos taken close up and from varying angles. Pictures should be in color, and at least 300 dpi. Unfortunately we can’t respond to every query, nor can we appraise value.
COURTESY OF JOSHUA BELL
TE PUR
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D-Day I The Marianas Campaign I Battle of the Philippine Sea Operation Bagration I CBI I Operation Valkyrie Allied Commanders I Operation Market-Garden MacArthur’s Return to the Philippines I Battle of Leyte Gulf Featuring: RICK ATKINSON I JOE BALKOSKI I RICHARD FRANK I JAMES HORNFISCHER DONALD L. MILLER I DOUGLAS PORCH I GERHARD WEINBERG
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WORLD
WAR II
Fire for Effect
Back to the Future By Robert M. Citino
M
AJOR CONVENTIONAL warfare seems to have gone out of style. Strategic analysts peering into the future see wars with shadowy “non-state actors” like al-Qaeda, or international crime syndicates like the Zetas in Mexico, or even pirates plying the waters off the Horn of Africa. I know a lot of people in the defense community, and I’m not giving away secrets when I say that is very much how they view things. More and more, the U.S. Army casts its future in terms of “building partner capacity”— helping poorer countries defend themselves against terrorism or natural disaster. Recently, though, a strange thing happened on the way to the future. Political crisis erupted in Ukraine, Russia seized Crimea after protests by Russian nationals living there, and now all Ukraine seems to be threatened by its larger neighbor. The headlines seem out of place, even shocking, in our post-Cold War world: a chest-thumping dictator, tanks massing at the Ukrainian border, enemy forces threatening the Donbas—the heavy industrial districts of Eastern Ukraine. The headlines read like something out of 1939 or 1940. Of course, this magazine’s readers have probably never been taken in by notions of eternal peace, the abolition of conventional warfare, or of a world so globalized that war between major players would be economic suicide for everyone concerned. You are a savvy bunch and you know that these ideas were common in the 1930s—a time, like our own, when the international financial system came close to collapsing, and when serious economic doldrums seemed unshakeable. War made little sense then, either, and yet a war broke out—one that rocked civilization to its foundations. The 1930s saw dictators posture and strut, armor mass on borders, and demands arise for boundary rectification. Adolf Hitler’s ultimatum to Czechoslovakia to hand over the Sudetenland—where ethnic
© IMAGE ASSET MANAGEMENT LTD./ALAMY
Details change, but in a blink tomorrow's wars could resemble yesterday's.
Germans were clamoring to unify with Germany—nearly led to war in 1938. It would have, had the western powers not abjectly surrendered at Munich. Next, Hitler demanded Poland yield access across the “Polish corridor” and return Danzig, heavily German but a Free City administered by the League of Nations and meant to give Poland a port. This time, Britain and France hung tough. They had guaranteed Poland’s security if Germany invaded, and when Germany did so, the western powers declared war on Germany and World War II was on. You don’t have to read deeply to see the similarities. Ethnic Russians live all over the countries unshackled when the U.S.S.R. crumbled: Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, the Baltic states. If dispossessed Russians have real grievances, Russia can exploit them. If they don’t, Russia can foment them. And some potential targets, like Estonia, already have a security guarantee from the West. It’s called NATO. I’m not predicting World War III,
and if I were, then you should be backing away slowly; historians make terrible prophets. But this situation should serve as a reason to keep studying World War II. Note how little issues can mushroom into global violence. Take the current U.S. strategic “rebalancing”—moving military resources away from Europe and toward the Pacific—with a grain of salt. Events have a way of upsetting the best-laid strategy. Europe hasn’t had a major land war in 70 years, but that is not the same thing as saying it will never have another. And Europe still matters to U.S. security. And yes, perhaps it might be a good idea to keep some supposedly obsolete heavy metal—M1 tanks and M2 Bradleys and F-16 strike aircraft—oiled and ready. The maniacs of al-Qaeda are still lurking out there, wishing us harm, and the military needs to go after them in its own way. But who knows what else is out there, ready to plunge the world into war? If World War II taught us anything, it’s that you can never predict the day or the time. 2 JULY/AUGUST 2014
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Time Travel
Occupying Paris By Alex Kershaw
W
E DID NOT ARRIVE at first light as Hitler had done, greeted by swastikas flying from rooftops and along silent streets. Instead we slipped into Paris by night, intent on seeing the sights as the Führer did on June 23, 1940—but also determined to explore the avenues and quarters where his most ardent followers, namely the Gestapo, cast long shadows during four years of increasingly brutal occupation. Der Führer, a former art student, had always longed to see the most civilized city in history. For his first and, as it turned out, only visit, he brought along his favorite sculptor, Arno Breker, and pet architects Albert Speer and Hermann Giesler. “Paris has always fascinated me,” Hitler confided to Breker, who shared a large Mercedes sedan with Hitler during the whirlwind tour. Our first stop is the Opéra National de Paris, today at the heart of a bustling shopping district. In 1940, the streets around this extraordinary theater were empty. A lone gendarme saluted his new master. Hitler adored the Opéra. “This is the most beautiful theater in the world,” he declared. Hitler then rushed on. Had he explored the area, as we choose to do, he would have soon discovered 122 Rue de Provence, the address of the One-Two-Two Club, the most famous of Paris’s many wartime brothels, which the SS would frequent. The club’s owner, Fabienne Jamet, loved the young Aryans’ jet-black uniforms and appreciated the gifts of flowers and champagne they brought for her best girls. She always insisted the German occupation was the best chapter in her long life as a Parisian hostess par excellence. Typically, girls at the One-Two-Two were examined three times a week for venereal disease: the Germans viewed acquiring an infection from an enemy a particularly reprehensible form of sabotage. The building today
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looks somber, with large dark blue doors straddling barred windows. Next, we head south through streets lined with expensive cars, across the gray Seine to the Eiffel Tower. In 1940, Hitler wanted to look down on Paris from the tower, but when he arrived he was told the French had severed the elevator cables. Hitler declined to climb the 1,665 steps. A few hours after he left, the elevators miraculously were working again. Paris was the Reich’s greatest prize, by far the favored place for Germans to be posted, lose their virginity, and spend their leave. And at first the Germans made good conquerors. Très correct. They paid their bills and left tips. Parisians had expected rape and pillage, not politesse. Then the Gestapo got down to business. As the
The Arc de Triomphe witnessed sweeping drama in wartime Paris, as its occupiers (opposite bottom) enjoyed their prize.
war turned against the Reich, its security services became increasingly repressive, attacks on German soldiers soared, and the SS hit back, sending thousands of Parisians to gruesome deaths. In 1943-44, there was perhaps no more feared destination than 93 Rue Lauriston. Today, a small plaque on the building— now a rather drab bloc of apartments— reminds passersby this was a place of immense evil. In the cavernous cellar, the infamous Bonny-Lafont gang of collaborateurs invented gruesome torture techniques. Off hours, the gang threw wild parties on the upper floors for Gestapo ALL COLOR PHOTOS, JOHN SNOWDON; OPPOSITE, AP PHOTO
Time Travel
and SS bigwigs who wanted to mingle with carefully selected young French actresses. On a chilly December day, as the light begins to fade, we arrive on the widest and grandest of Paris’s sweeping boulevards, Avenue Foch, lined by elegant gardens and five-story buildings restored to their honey- and white-stone splendor. This was the epicenter of Nazi power. At Number 72, Colonel Helmut Knochen orchestrated the crushing of resistance forces from an imposing white villa that is today vacant, its black shutters closed. Across the street at Number 31, now subsumed into a postwar building with no visible street number, Captain Theodor Dannecker and Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann in June 1942 planned the Grand Rafle—the Great Roundup—of July 16-17, in which French police took more than 13,000 Jews to a velodrome before they were sent to death camps. At Number 84, we look up to the fifth floor of a large villa fronted by tall, wrought-iron fencing. In those cramped rooms Gestapo operatives torParisian beauty hid scenes of horror. Number 84 (top), on posh Avenue Foch (near right), and 93 Rue Lauriston (far right) were settings of torture by the Gestapo and Gestapo collaborators.
tured legendary British Special Operations Executive agents, including Violette Szabo, “The White Rabbit,” and “Madeleine,” until their upscale neighbors could hear the prisoners’ screams. A short stroll from Avenue Foch, we find the famous Restaurant Prunier. Little has changed in 70 years: one can still glimpse the fur-clad belle monde eating shellfish and caviar at the marble oyster bar and in the opulent Art Deco dining room, as glut-
Time Travel
Today the hotel is, if anything, even more impressive Arc de One-Two-Two Triomphe than during the war Club ch Fo Ch Av en ue am ps -Él Hotel Le Hôtel years, when the Ritz ysé e s Meurice and all of Paris were The Ritz Tuileries coated in dull gray Père Lachaise Garden Cemetery Eiffel soot from decades Tower Opéra National of coal fires. Sadly, de Paris we find it undergoing renovation, not PARIS to reopen until early 2015, so we move on and enjoy a long cocktail or two in a bistro opposite Les tonous Gestapo and Wehrmacht senior Invalides, the complex that includes a officers once did. Our budget is limited so veterans home, hospital, museum, and we decide not to indulge. monuments—among them, Napoleon’s It’s after dark as we walk the Champstomb. In 1940, Hitler contemplated the Élysées. We are headed for the most glamgreat French dictator’s resting place and orous address in Paris for senior Nazis, then turned to Giesler, the architect, and where Hitler would have undoubtedly declared: “You will build my tomb.” stayed had he spent more than just a few Hitler’s last stop was in Montmartre—a giddy hours in the city: The Ritz. neighborhood, now packed with tourists, Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels atop a hill north of the Seine—for a final and cohort found the hotel, on the Place look at Paris. By nine o’clock that mornVendôme, utterly sumptuous, the service ing, his sightseeing tour was over. Later impeccable; its famous brass beds the most that day, Hitler confided in Albert Speer: comfortable in occupied Europe. The Germans discreetly kept to one wing; the WHEN YOU GO most glamorous collaborators were also in residence. The actress Arletty, famous for WHERE TO STAY AND EAT her role in Les Enfants du Paradis, shared The area around Rue Cler, near the American one of the acclaimed beds with Luftwaffe University of Paris, boasts great and affordpilot Hans-Jürgen Soehring, 10 years her able hotels and restaurants, including the Grand Hôtel Lévêque and adjacent bistro junior. “Mon coeur est français,” she proLe Petit Cler (where you can gorge on the tested after the war, “mais mon cul est interperfect croque-monsieur), both at 29 Rue national.” (“My heart is French, but my ass Cler. Another wonderful street for food, wine, is international.”) Coco Chanel, who kept and shopping is the Rue du Cherche-Midi in company with a German intelligence offithe fashionable Saint Germain quarter; the cer, lived in a room overlooking her store restaurant at 22 Rue du Cherche-Midi, named on the Rue Cambon. after the street, has a loyal neighborhood In the Imperial Suite, Göring examined clientele. A short walk north toward the Seine looted art, some of it taken from Jewish brings you to Le Bon Marché, 24 Rue de Sèvres, a true foodie’s heaven. homes on Avenue Foch. A crystal bowl of morphine tablets sat on a side table WHAT ELSE TO SEE beside another of precious gems—rubies, Check out the renovated Picasso Museum, at black pearls. The Reichsmarschall liked to 5 Rue de Thorigny. Picasso was one of Hitler’s dance with the hotel’s waiters, then drift so-called “degenerate” artists but, like Paris, into a reverie lying on a replica of Marie survived the war with little visible damage. Antoinette’s four-poster. Montmarte
r ve Ri ine Se
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“In the past I often considered whether we would not have to destroy Paris. But when we are finished in Berlin, Paris will only be a shadow. So why should we destroy it?” Four years later, Hitler changed his mind. On our last day, we visit the Hôtel Le Meurice, scene of the occupation’s grand climax. Dietrich von Choltitz, the last German military governor of Paris, made his base at the magnificent hotel, which skirts the Tuileries Garden on Rue de Rivoli. As the Allies closed in, legend has it Hitler called Choltitz in room 213 and screamed in rage: “Is Paris burning?” It was not. Once done listening to Hitler’s rant, the portly Prussian general set about making sure it did not, minimizing damage to the city before surrendering on August 25 to French general Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque at the Montparnasse railway terminal. Before heading home, we feel compelled to visit at least a couple of places where Nazism’s victims spent their last days. Not far from the Eiffel Tower we find 5 Avenue Elisée Reclus, an elegant mansion bloc. Here the Jewish writer Hélène Berr penned a deeply affecting diary of occupation that became a best seller in 2009, long after her death at the BergenBelsen concentration camp. “There is beauty in the midst of tragedy,” Berr wrote. “As if beauty were condensing in the heart of ugliness. It’s very strange.” Hélène Berr died five days before the camp’s liberation. Her journey to hell began in the rail yards northeast of the city, a few miles from the 110-acre Père Lachaise Cemetery. During our final hours in Paris, we walk through the graveyard, pausing at the resting place of Edith Piaf, who sang for Germans and French alike during those dark years. Fresh flowers adorn her grave. We continue east to a far corner of the cemetery, Paris’s largest. Here we find several impressive memorials to French victims of Nazi rule and the 200,000 deported to the camps. There are no garish bouquets—just stark marble statues, haunting and unforgettable reminders of four long years when the Nazis enshadowed the City of Light. 2 MAP BY KEVIN JOHNSON
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KILLER
Lily
They said the Saratoga spent too much time at anchor—until the old flattop roared to work By Bruce Gamble
WITH A FACE WEATHERED BY decades at sea and framed by bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows, Vice Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey Jr. often looked nearer 80-something than his actual 61 years. Late on November 4, 1943, lines creased the Bull’s brow even more deeply. That afternoon, at his advance headquarters on Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides, northeast of Australia, Halsey had learned from the crew of a patrolling B-24 of a powerful enemy fleet moving in the Bismarck Sea. Bound from the Imperial Navy’s main Central Pacific base 1,900 miles northwest at Truk, seven heavy cruisers, four smaller warships, and a train of troopships were steaming toward Rabaul, Japan’s big South Pacific stronghold on New Britain. That island’s position in the Bismarck Archipelago off New Guinea lent Rabaul enormous weight in the Pacific war. Even in the oppressive heat, the report sent a chill through the Allied commander of the South Pacific Area. Days before, Halsey had taken the last major step in his long campaign to neutralize the bastion at Rabaul by launching an invasion at Cape Torokina, Bougainville, only 250 miles southeast of the enemy stronghold. Dissecting the scout plane’s report, Halsey concluded that after a pause at Rabaul’s Simpson Harbor, the Japanese force intended to counterattack. Those seven heavy cruisers worried him. “Presumably they would refuel,” he recalled, “then run down to Torokina the following night and sink our transports and bombard our precarious positions.” The invasion at Cape Torokina, undertaken the morning of November 1, had caught the Japanese off-guard. From Rabaul the Japanese 11th Air Fleet sent three waves of land-based planes, but their bombs caused little harm. The strikes cost the Japanese 16 Zero fighters and three Aichi D3A Val dive bombers; two additional Vals with severe battle damage crash-landed back at Rabaul. Photos taken the day of the November 5, 1943, Rabaul raid show the USS Saratoga as seen from a just-launched plane (above) and an airborne F6F Hellcat (opposite), viewed from the forecastle.
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NATIONAL ARCHIVES; OPPOSITE, © WAYNE MILLER/MAGNUM PHOTOS
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charts. One of Halsey’s most gifted aides was Captain Harry R. “Ray” Thurber, his operations officer. The urbane Thurber, who seemed never to sleep and who had planned much of the Solomons campaign, observed that Halsey did have two ships to deploy. One was a newly fledged light carrier; the other a relic flattop with a reputation for absenteeism during big battles. But those ships, along with their supporting task force, were 500 miles from where they needed to be.
The Japanese next sent a force of cruisers and destroyers that was bearing down on Torokina when American scout planes spotted them. At nearby Empress Augusta Bay, Rear Admiral Aaron S. “Tip” Merrill arrayed four light cruisers and eight destroyers. In a spectacle that unfolded in the early hours of November 2, Merrill’s ships traded dozens of torpedoes and thousands of shells with the attackers. American gunners won the night, their radar-controlled rounds sinking a light cruiser and a destroyer and scoring hits on a heavy cruiser—a solid victory for Merrill, whose own damage report was limited to a light cruiser and two destroyers. After fending off attacks by more than 100 Japanese planes later that morning, Merrill sailed southeast 400 miles to Purvis Bay to rendezvous with an oiler and refuel his vessels and rest his exhausted crews. The surviving Japanese ships withdrew to Rabaul, where the new force that sortied from Truk on November 3 was also apparently headed—justifiably putting Halsey on edge. Not only had his forces barely secured a beachhead on Bougainville, but an American convoy was en route there with 3,500 troops and 5,000 tons of supplies. A few destroyers guarded the convoy. Against so muscular an enemy, the supply ships would be naked. “This was the most desperate emergency that confronted me in my entire term as Commander South Pacific,” Halsey wrote later. “Even if Tip Merrill had been within reach, and fresh, he would not have had a prayer of stopping such an armada.” In such situations Halsey usually had powerful countervailing forces to deploy, but at the moment he saw no capital ships available to defend his holdings on Bougainville’s western side. As Halsey fretted about the Japanese cruisers, his staff studied 30
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THE CARRIERS IN QUESTION represented contrasting points on the continuum of naval aviation. The USS Princeton was a small and relatively untested light carrier of the new Independence class, an interim design intended to get American airpower to sea as quickly as possible. (See “Hard-Charging Hybrid,” September/October 2012.) The Princeton was decidedly junior in size and age to its companion, the USS Saratoga, a full-size flattop that dated to the first blush of naval aeronautics, when aircraft carriers were repurposed ships ranging from colliers to cruisers. The Saratoga originated on paper in 1916 as a fast battle cruiser, but before the U.S. Navy could commission it, a 1922 arms-control treaty limited production of big-gun capital ships. The navy, which had planned to build six battle cruisers, scrapped four. The two nearest completion were converted into carriers. Thanks to their hull design and four steam-fed turbines generating more than 200,000 horsepower, “Sara” and sister ship Lexington could hit nearly 35 knots—about 40 miles per hour. The Saratoga numbered among its peacetime captains a former destroyerman named Halsey, who had been so eager to command a carrier that he completed pilot training at age 52, entitling him to take the carrier’s helm in 1935-37. The Saratoga’s war began fitfully. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the big carrier sailed from San Diego to Hawaii and then headed west as part of a task force intended to relieve besieged Wake Island. When reconnaissance revealed a more powerful Japanese force in that vicinity, the Saratoga and accompanying vessels were recalled to Pearl on December 23; Wake surrendered the same day. Off Hawaii less than a month later, in January 1942, a Japanese submarine torpedoed the carrier, which had to limp to back to the West Coast for three months of A plane director (opposite) signals the pilot of an F6F Grumman Hellcat positioned near the Saratoga’s deck elevator.
Halsey did have two ships to deploy: a new light carrier and a relic flattop. But the ships and their task force were 500 miles from where they needed to be.
MAP BY JANET NORQUIST/CREATIVE FREELANCERS; NATIONAL ARCHIVES
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repairs and improvements at Bremerton, Washington, including an antiaircraft upgrade. That August the Saratoga supported the Guadalcanal landings and fought in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons—until another Japanese torpedo hit. Repaired at Pearl, Saratoga returned to the war zone in November 1942. In the next 11 months the aging carrier sortied sparingly from the American naval base at Nouméa on New Caledonia. In mid1943, when the carrier Enterprise returned stateside for overhaul, the Saratoga became the only American flattop in the South Pacific, used for training runs but otherwise held in reserve. The ship had missed out on several major carrier-on-carrier battles and spent so much time in port that sailors conferred on it caustic nicknames like “Pond Lily,” “Reluctant Dragon,” and “Sara Maru”—maru being Japanese for a civilian vessel. Life aboard the Saratoga quickened in late 1943. The energetic Rear Admiral Frederick C. “Ted” Sherman arrived to command Task Force 38, with the Saratoga as flagship and Princeton in support. The Saratoga got a new air group, led by Commander Henry H. Caldwell. Its fighter squadron, VF-12, was headed by one of the navy’s best-known pilots, Commander Joseph C. “Jumpin’ Joe” Clifton, a gridiron star at the Naval Academy. In August, Captain John H. Cassady, an aviator who had served aboard the Saratoga during peacetime, took the carrier’s helm. On November 1-2, in support of the Bougainville landings, Task Force 38 saw its first action. The Saratoga and Princeton Japanese at Rabaul could count among their defenses scores of Zero fighters on loan from the carriers Zuiho and Zuikaku.
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air groups sent a total of four raids against Buka and Bonis airdromes at the northern end of Bougainville, causing moderate damage. Afterward, the task force sailed 500 miles southeast and joined with the oiler Kankakee waiting near Rennell Island, south of Guadalcanal, to refuel. The carriers and screening ships spent that day and most of the next siphoning oil from the huge tanker. Meanwhile, that enemy armada heading for Rabaul— and presumably aimed at Bougainville—was giving Halsey fits. AS THE ADMIRAL AND HIS STAFF pondered how to parry the Japanese cruiser force, some at the chart table urged a defensive stance. Thurber disagreed. It would be a stretch, the operations officer said, but if Task Force 38 could hotfoot it into range of Rabaul, planes from the Saratoga and the Princeton might be able to surprise the enemy cruisers as they refueled. Every ship in Task Force 38 was built for speed. Halsey’s aide, Lieutenant H. Douglas Moulton, ran the numbers with Thurber—twice. The two drafted a message to Sherman. Accompanied by Halsey’s chief of staff, Rear Admiral Robert B. “Mick” Carney, Thurber and Moulton walked the plan to the admiral’s quarters. Without a glance at their papers Halsey asked, “You’re not going to send Merrill to Rabaul, are you?” “No, sir,” they answered. “This is Ted Sherman again.” Halsey got their meaning: in February 1942 Sherman had captained the Lexington when that carrier made the first stab at an air strike on Rabaul—a raid shelved when enemy planes spotted the task force 400 miles out. This time, Sherman would have two flattops—and perhaps the advantage of surprise.
“We looked up with utter astonishment. With the number of airplanes and the altitude advantage [the Japanese] had, they should have decimated us.”
Carney, who had known Halsey for decades, watched as the older man silently eyed the proposal. Besides committing the only two American carriers in the South Pacific to a dangerous fight, the plan would send Halsey’s only son into the dragon’s jaws. Poor eyesight had kept William F. Halsey III out of the Naval Academy, but under looser wartime requirements he qualified for restricted duty as the Saratoga’s aviation supply officer. “Every one of us knew what was going through the admiral’s mind,” Carney said. “It showed in his face, which suddenly looked 150 years old.” Halsey handed the papers back to Carney. Unless he could keep those cruisers away from Bougainville, his entire campaign might unravel. “Let ‘er go,” Halsey said. Task Force 38 had just topped off its tanks when the orders arrived: move at all possible speed to a position south of Bougainville, where at first light Saratoga and Princeton were to launch a maximum-effort strike against Rabaul. Notifying Cassady, Sherman radioed Princeton and accompanying vessels. To get within range of Rabaul, they had to steam 500 miles. Sherman ordered a northwesterly course at flank speed, and soon the formation was running at 27 knots, a momentum the crews would maintain all night. As air group personnel scraped for intelligence on their target, Cassady briefed Caldwell and the squadron commanders. “Boys, we are hitting Rabaul tomorrow morning,” Cassady said. “This is a hell of a tough assignment. If we are not successful tomorrow, the Japs will very probably force us to abandon our invasion at Empress Augusta Bay.” He told the aviators to focus on the enemy cruisers, adding that Sherman promised to have the carriers within reach when they had finished the job. “You have damn little time [to prepare],” he said. “God bless you, boys.” BY DAYBREAK ON NOVEMBER 5, Task Force 38 was southwest of Empress Augusta Bay and about 220 miles from Rabaul. At 7 a.m. flight deck crews on the Saratoga began launching 33 F6F Hellcat fighters, 16 TBF Avenger torpedo planes, and 22 SBD Dauntless dive-bombers. The Princeton added 19 Hellcats and seven Avengers. The 97 aircraft climbed northwest toward Rabaul, and for the first half of the two-hour flight, Caldwell briefed squadron commanders by radio. Visibility was excellent as the formation, stacked above 13,000 feet, crossed the southern tip of New Ireland and followed Saint George’s Channel toward the target. Able to see the full 50 miles IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM HU 86092; OPPOSITE: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Saratoga aviation supply officer William F. Halsey III (left) with his father, South Pacific Area commander William F. Halsey Jr.
to Rabaul, the attackers realized they had hit the jackpot. Six of the heavy cruisers on their hit list were moored in Simpson Harbor (the seventh was escorting troopships back to Truk) and other targets abounded: three light cruisers, 11 destroyers, and dozens of freighters. The timing was equally excellent. Some cruisers were refueling; others rode at anchor. The American pilots were to swoop from the north for a fast strike and then bolt back to the carriers. Caldwell steered the formation to the tip of New Britain. In the seven minutes the pilots needed to wheel wide and straighten out over Simpson Harbor, the Japanese scrambled 70-some interceptors. Most were A6M Zeros from the Zuiho’s and Zuikaku’s carrier groups, recently deployed to Rabaul. The sight of so much enemy airpower startled Lieutenant Marvin Harper, flying close cover in a Hellcat. “We looked up with utter astonishment. It was just mindboggling,” Harper recalled. “With the number of airplanes and the altitude advantage they had, they should have decimated us.” Unfamiliar with the boxy blue Hellcats, the Japanese aviators held back. Zero pilots did try to draw Americans out of formation, which would have allowed other interceptor pilots to dive on them out of the sun, invisible in the glare. However, Clifton held his pilots close, and the Zeros kept a respectful distance. The Japanese flyers also had to watch out for their own antiaircraft fire. As the Americans neared, shore and ships’ batteries, even JULY/AUGUST 2014
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Heavy cruiser Chikuma, above, is hit by Task Force 38 planes. Right, sailors help wounded SBD Dauntless gunner Alva Parker.
cruisers’ main guns, cut loose. The barrage brought down two Hellcats, but the formation stayed intact. Crossing Simpson Harbor, the SBDs descended to 10,000 feet. Pilots rolled into choreographed wingovers and began the twomile dive. Over the intercom a gunner reported that most antiaircraft fire was bursting behind his plane—until enemy gunners sharpened their game. “They are hitting on our left now!” he called out. “They are hitting on our right… I give up; they are all around us.” Seconds later a shell scored a direct hit on the diving plane and the intercom fell silent. The young airman was dead. One by one, the SBDs roared down on cruisers at anchor or slowly getting under way. The 668-foot cruiser Maya, of the heavy Takao class, had just cast off fueling lines when a bomb hit its portside scout plane deck. The explosion deformed Maya’s hull and started a fire that engulfed an engine room, killing 70 men and wounding 60. Class namesake Takao caught a heavy bomb on its main deck that killed 23 men. Heavy cruiser Atago 34
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was refueling when three SBDs attacked and missed—but only by feet; blast effects and shrapnel killed 22 men, including the captain. A thousand-pounder hit heavy cruiser Mogami between its first two turrets. The bomb detonated below, badly damaging the hull and killing 19 men. To keep ammunition from exploding, the crew flooded the Mogami’s forward magazines. The torpedo bombers were less successful. Of 22 fish dropped, Japanese records cite two hits—both duds. One slightly bashed a NATIONAL ARCHIVES (BOTH)
“I was face-to-face with the eight-inch guns of a Jap cruiser pushing everything it had at me. I thought, ‘This is pretty silly, me dueling with this joker.’”
light cruiser, the other punctured a destroyer’s fuel tank. Now came the most dangerous phase: getting away. Jinking, skidding, and occasionally hopping over a ship, the Avengers and Dauntlesses sped across Simpson Harbor through a curtain of enemy fire. “I was face-to-face with the eight-inch guns of a Jap cruiser that was pushing out everything it had at me,” remembered Lieutenant Commander Vincent W. Hathorn, an SBD division leader. “The only thing I could think of doing was to pull my gun switch and give him return fire with my two fixed .50-caliber guns. I thought, ‘This is pretty silly, me dueling with this joker.’ And then I got past him, and there were two destroyers, about twenty-four hundred tons each, doing the same thing to me. That made the battle a little more even.” Zeros aggressively engaged Hellcats by the dozen in an aerial brawl, with no pair of foes able to hammer one another for long lest somebody else land a sucker punch. American pilots and gunners claimed 28 enemy planes shot down, including a twin-engine bomber. Actual losses, according to Japanese records, amounted to four single-engine planes; the “bomber” turned out to be a transport that crash-landed on Tobera airdrome, 15 miles southeast of Simpson Harbor. As the melee moved out to sea, several American planes fell or were ditched. The only members of the strike force maintaining position were Commander Caldwell in an Avenger and his escort of two Hellcats, observing the strike from 10,000 feet. Crammed in behind Caldwell, Photographer’s Mate Paul T. Barnett was documenting the Japanese ships’ attempts to escape. Suddenly eight Zeros jumped the three planes. The Hellcat piloted by Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Stanley K. Crockett veered out of the fight when a 20mm round severed his plane’s battery cable. Gunfire riddled Ensign Carlton W. Roberts’s Hellcat with almost 270 bullet and shrapnel holes—but the armored seat protected Roberts, who sustained only superficial wounds. Caldwell’s plane took a similar beating. His turret gunner and radioman returned fire until wounded, their weapons falling silent. A Zero’s 7.7mm round caught Barnett in the head; he bled to death. Caldwell assumed he was the only man aboard alive until the radioman handed him a note saying the other two were “out of commission.” The Avenger had no radio, no hydraulics, no aileron controls, and only one main wheel would extend. Even so, Caldwell landed on the Saratoga on his first attempt. As carrier crews counted planes and airmen, they realized
how well the sortie had paid off. Only six American aircraft were missing. Several damaged planes set down in the water, bringing the cost to nine aircraft and 14 men. For that price, the dive bombers had obtained phenomenal results. With only 22 bombs the Dauntlesses had damaged five of six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and two destroyers badly enough to eliminate the cruiser force as a threat to American forces at Bougainville. THE NEWS DELIGHTED HALSEY. He had preserved the Bougainville lodgment, and still had his two carriers along with most of their air strength. His boy was safe. “I took a deep breath,” he wrote. “So did the men at Torokina; so did Ted Sherman.” He sent the task force a glowing message: REPORT OF ATTACK IS REAL MUSIC TO ME. WHEN THE SARATOGA IS GIVEN A CHANCE SHE IS DEADLY. PRINCETON TOO TAKES A DEEP INITIAL BOW IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC. MAY THE JAP CRIPPLES PERMANENTLY BE BURIED IN DAVY JONES LOCKER. A FUNERAL DIRGE HAS BEEN SOUNDED FOR TOJO’S STRONGEST SOUTH PACIFIC BASE. Halsey’s words proved prophetic. After the Saratoga and the Princeton returned on November 11 with the carriers Bunker Hill, Independence, and Essex for another go at Simpson Harbor, the Imperial Navy promptly pulled its cruisers out of Rabaul and back to Truk, later sending most of them to Japan for repairs. The Combined Fleet never sent another cruiser to Simpson Harbor. Besides illustrating what fast carriers could accomplish under duress, the overnight raid by Saratoga and Princeton showed that a flattop as old as any afloat still could project a powerful striking force over a long distance in a remarkably short time. The Saratoga spent the second half of 1944 as a training vessel. On February 21, 1945, the warship was at Iwo Jima, carrying night fighters, when kamikaze damage sent it stateside for repairs. Used as a floating classroom until Japan surrendered, the vessel next served as a troopship, ferrying men home from the Pacific. Anchored at Bikini Atoll in 1946 as one of 95 test vessels, the Saratoga survived the blast from a nuclear bomb dropped from a B-29 and exploded midair. A second device, detonated underwater, finally sent the venerable warship to the bottom. 2 JULY/AUGUST 2014
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WARTOONS When Hollywood enlisted, the fight sometimes got funny
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t 44, Frank Capra was Hollywood’s richest and most successful director and a three-time Academy Award winner. Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, which came a week before he was to finish shooting Arsenic and Old Lace, he had been thinking of enlisting; within five days of finishing the shoot he was a major in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Capra’s first assignment was the propaganda series known collectively as Why We Fight, but he also conceived and commissioned what would turn out to be by far the most popular series of training films made for servicemen during the war. Soon after Capra arrived in Washington, he had commissioned one of the writers in his charge to draft a lighthearted script for a short called Hey, Soldier!, in which a complaining private would be made to understand the importance of various army rules and regulations. The movie was never made, but, inspired by the way draftees were responding to animation in the Why We Fight films he directed, Capra reconceived Hey, Soldier! as a series of cartoons. Capra came up with a character called “Private SNAFU,” a
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grumbling, naïve, incompetent GI who would be featured in a run of short black-and-white cartoons in which—usually by catastrophically negative example that more than once ended with the GI being blown to bits—he would inform young enlistees about issues such as the importance of keeping secrets and the need for mail censorship, as well as the hazards of malaria, venereal disease, laziness, gossip, booby traps, and poison gas. To oversee the writing and production of the series, Capra recruited an editorial cartoonist from New York City who had been doing caustic satirical work for the left-wing newspaper PM. Theodor S. Geisel—later famous as Dr. Seuss—had first
TO DISCOURAGE BLABBING, a SNAFU short had the hero run his mouth into a pay phone (opposite) harboring a contemporaneous caricature of a Japanese agent.
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gotten Capra’s attention in early 1942, when he had depicted isolationist Senator Gerald Nye, one of his favorite targets, as a literal horse’s ass. Geisel was a strongly pro-Roosevelt German American who, in his single-panel sketches, had demonstrated an unerring ability to draw blood and get laughs at the same time. With a few strokes of Geisel’s remorseless pen, Hitler became a tantrum-throwing infant and isolationism was reduced to a scrawny bird being blown to kingdom come after Pearl Harbor. In several memorable drawings, famous aviator turned isolationist leader Charles Lindbergh was transmuted into an ostrich with his head in the sand and his butt—sometimes emblazoned with a disparaging message—waving in the breeze. Capra—who eventually moved his operation back to California where it was nicknamed “Fort Fox”—sent one of his army writers, Leonard Spigelgass, to New York to recruit Geisel, and Spigelgass sent word back to his boss that “he has a remarkably good brain, and seems to me useful infinitely
ALL IMAGES, WARNER BROS., EXCEPT WHERE NOTED
DO NOT DO LIKE SNAFU, the training films emphasize in story after story in which the irrepressible idiot finds new ways to hurt the cause—even falling for a Nazi vixen (above) whose brassiere is wired for sound.
beyond a cartoonist.” Geisel, who had no animation or filmmaking experience, was sworn in as a captain in New York and brought west to Fort Fox, where Capra walked him through the animation studios. They ended up at the editing bays, outfitted with Moviola editing machines. “He gave me the tour,” Geisel said, “and the last thing he said was, ‘Here, Captain, are the Moviolas.’ I said, ‘What is a Moviola?’ He looked at me rather suddenly and said, ‘You will learn.’” Disney and Warner Bros. had both put in bids to produce the SNAFU shorts, but Disney had insisted on retaining rights to the characters and images. Warner did not, and won. In a historically felicitous pairing, Capra teamed Geisel with a 30-year-
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old animator named Chuck Jones. For the last few years, Jones had been developing a new character named Elmer Fudd in a handful of Merrie Melodies shorts. He refined Elmer’s appearance with each new cartoon and experimented with giving him different voices. Working with Geisel, he took some early character sketches and turned Fudd into Private SNAFU. With voice talent Mel Blanc providing voices for the characters, Geisel writing the early scripts, and a team that included not only Jones but top-flight Warner animation directors, the Private SNAFU shorts—26 would be produced over the next 18 months—were the funniest, most original, and unquestionFrom FIVE CAME BACK by Mark Harris. Published by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), LLC. Copyright © 2014 by Mark Harris.
PLAYING TO AUDIENCES of men, the animators used risqué images (above) and familiar characters to enliven their serious messages.
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THE SNAFU SERIES HELPED propel Chuck Jones (seated above) to success, as he and colleagues put the private (left) to work setting GIs straight. Puns like a jeep freezing its nuts off (bottom) and SNAFU alter ego Technical Fairy, First Class (left middle and top) drove the message home.
ably the raunchiest movies ever produced by the Signal Corps. Munro Leaf, a pacifist whose popular illustrated children’s story about Ferdinand the Bull had been widely viewed as an antiwar parable, also worked on the series, and Geisel and Jones took his great contribution—the advice that if they wanted GIs to pay attention they should “make it racy”—and ran with it. That approach began with the explanation of the title in the very first cartoon—“SNAFU means Situation Normal All…Fouled Up,” says the narrator, inserting a droll pause before “fouled” that never would have passed muster with either the Production Code or Lowell Mellett, the liaison between the government and the movie industry. Geisel and Jones used the fact PENCIL SKETCH AND PHOTO, COURTESY OF CHUCK JONES CENTER FOR CREATIVITY
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THE SNAFU SERIES creators did as colleague Munro Leaf urged—”Make it racy!”—a sly tactic that encouraged recruits to keep their eyeballs glued to projection screens.
that the only audience for the cartoons would be adult men as a permission slip to break every barrier in the movies, and Capra gave them his blessing. The first SNAFU shorts, which introduced the main character, the private who was always wishing for things to be different—along with his fairy godfather, “Technical Fairy, First Class”— were made for about $2,500 ($38,000 today) each. Unfolding with protoSeussian rhyming narration that played like an early draft of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, they included words like “hell” and “damn,” fleeting cartoon nudity, burlesque jokes, toilet humor, and sometimes lines that even the creators couldn’t believe they were getting away with. “It’s so cold it would freeze the nuts off a jeep!” Geisel wrote as a dare to Jones, who promptly storyboarded a cutaway to lug nuts falling off a shivering army vehicle. As soon as the SNAFU shorts made their 1943 appearance in the biweekly newsreels that Capra’s team also produced, they were a hit with GIs around the world. The shorts entertained the troops until late 1945, and while a second series starring Private SNAFU’s brother, Seaman TARFU, was slated, the project ended with the war. —Mark Harris
LITERALLY DEMONIZING the foe (above), yet another film shows SNAFU getting into hot water. At right, an NCO attempts to educate the boneheaded GI about plane-spotting. 40
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CAPRA, OPPOSITE, AP PHOTO
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SKILLED AT LEADING studio crews, Major Frank Capra (in Washington, D.C., in March 1942, right), marshalled platoons of artists to create Signal Corps training films.
THE SNAFU SHORTS jitter with iconic animation loved by young men who grew up on the Looney Toons that Warner Bros. made ubiquitous.
Ghostly in snow cloaks and gas masks, Finnish ski troops proved an adept and deadly adversary against Soviet invaders in the 1939-40 Winter War.
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© HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS
When Finland fought the Soviet Union in 1939, it was like David and Goliath—with a perverse twist By Rober t M. Citino JULY/AUGUST 2014
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s they mustered for battle in the Valley of Elah, the armies of Israel knew disaster awaited. Their war against the Philistines was going badly, and no Israelite would stand up to the enemy champion, a mighty armored giant. Finally, a young shepherd answered the call. His brave action gave the world a new phrase to describe a fight against hopeless odds: “David and Goliath.” World War II generated a classic example: the Winter War. In November 1939, the Soviet Union—with a Red Army numbering in the millions of men, tens of thousands of tanks, and thousands of aircraft—invaded tiny Finland, a third-rate power whose military force was less than a tenth as large. World War II was a deadly environment for smaller nations, with the Great Powers wiping them off the map at will. Finland was one small power that said “no.” The Finns fought back, leaving a legacy of heroism that persists to the present. Like David of old, Finland went up against a giant and stared death in the face. That fight showed what a determined people could achieve even in the most desperate circumstances. The Winter War reminded the world that it was better to go down swinging than to submit to injustice. The Finns’ stand is why the Winter War mattered in 1939, and why it always will.
The Soviet-Finnish conflict began in that strange interlude during World War II known as the “Phony War.” The Germans had invaded and overrun Poland in September 1939, leading Britain and France to declare war on the Third Reich. And then, for six months, nada. The Germans were conflicted about how to proceed, with Hitler demanding an immediate offensive in the West and most of his officer corps demurring. Although the German army had beaten Poland with ease, it had been uncertain at times and unsteady under fire. That performance left German commanders underwhelmed, and destined the Wehrmacht for a winter spent in rigorous training, honing its edge and learning techniques for combined arms warfare. The Allies reverted to World War I mode, trying to strangle Germany’s economy with a naval blockade, a tactic that would take years. The combination resulted in inaction on all fronts. Actually, not all. One great power was ready to march. In August 1939, the Soviet Union had signed an agreement with the Reich not to attack one another. The Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact had shocked the world, as mortal enemies embraced and drank hearty toasts to each other’s health. It was the factor that allowed Hitler to invade Poland the next month The Red Army’s size and strength, on display below at a 1940 commemoration of the Bolshevik Revolution, dwarfed that of the Finnish army. The off-balance battle elicited wide support: a French poster (opposite) praises Finland’s “noble souls.”
without having to worry about a prolonged war on two fronts. The pact also contained a secret protocol dividing Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Here was a classic example of power politics, with the strong taking what they wanted and the weak having to pay the price. The Germans were to get primacy in Western Poland, “in the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the areas belonging to the Polish state”—that is, once they had destroyed Poland. The Soviets got much more territory: the province of Bessarabia (then part of Romania, today independent Moldova); the eastern half of Poland (the Kresy, or “borderlands” region); the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia; and Finland. Essentially, the protocol reimposed the borders of the old Tsarist Empire, entitling Joseph Stalin to territories that had broken away from Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. And now it was time to cash in. Through foreign minister and henchman Vyacheslav M. Molotov, Stalin began to put the screws to Finland, a sprawling but sparsely populated land Russia had controlled from 1809 to 1917. On the surface, the demands on the young nation seemed moderate enough. The Soviets wanted to lease the Hanko Peninsula on Finland’s southern coast for use as a naval base. And they wanted to push back the border on the Karelian Isthmus, only 20 miles from the great Soviet metropolis of Leningrad. Molotov also declared Stalin’s willingness to cede lands in adjoining Soviet Karelia amounting to twice the territory demanded of Finland. In other words, the Soviets promised to give Finland more land than they were taking away. The Finns, however, saw not negotiation but ultimatum. This was the era, after all, of Hitler and Benito Mussolini and Imperial Japan, of lawlessness in the international arena, of the stronger preying on the weaker. The Finns knew that ceding any territory to their former imperial masters would threaten their independence. Soviet demands gave way to threats, and when the talks faltered, Molotov had the last word: “Since we civilians don’t seem to be making any progress, maybe it’s the soldiers’ turn to speak.” And just like that, the world had another war on its hands. On November 30, 1939, the big guns roared, Soviet bombers screamed overhead, and the Red Army invaded Finland. What Finns called the Talvisota (“Winter War”) had begun. The Soviets must have been confident of a rapid, decisive victory. Only months earlier, German panzer columns had sliced through Polish defenders in multiple sectors, linking up far behind the lines and encircling virtually all of Poland’s million-man army. The Poles had fought bravely, even heroically in most cases, but were simply outclassed. It was a result typical of a clash between a strong power and a smaller, weaker neighbor, and no doubt what Stalin, Molotov, and Soviet commanders expected on the Finnish front. What they got was very different. The Soviets had numerical and material superiority on the ground—even greater in the TOP, MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY/ALAMY; LEFT, AKG IMAGES IMAGES/THE IMAGE WORKS
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Finland’s Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim (foreground) came out of retirement in 1939 at age 72 to command all Finnish forces. He went on to become president of Finland in 1944.
air—and their round-the-clock bombing of Helsinki and other targets had inflicted heavy civilian casualties, but the first month of the conflict defined the term “military disaster.” The Red Army got nowhere and suffered mass casualties in doing so. Some of it was Stalin’s fault. In response to the darkening international situation, he enlarged the Soviet military—expanding the Red Army between 1937 and 1939 from 1,500,000 men to around 3,000,000—but he also simultaneously and bloodily purged the army’s leadership, accusing some 75 percent of his army, corps, and divisional commanders of disloyalty. Many would wind up imprisoned or shot. The combination left masses of poorly trained soldiers serving under officers who were political hacks or scared to death of exercising initiative for fear 46
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of running afoul of Stalin and his secret police. Stalin had also not counted on the Finns to fight—and fight well. Commanding the Finnish army was the wily Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim. Tall, handsome, and refined, he was the scion of Swedish nobility who had settled in Finland in the late 1700s; though multilingual, Mannerheim never became particularly adept at speaking Finnish. Born a subject of the Tsar, he entered the Russian army and rose to the rank of Lieutenant General. After the Tsar’s overthrow in February 1917 and the Bolshevik Revolution that October, the Grand Duchy of Finland declared independence. In the almost four-month civil war that followed, Mannerheim successfully led the “White” faction against the pro-Bolshevik “Reds.” He served briefly as the new state’s regent, chaired Finland’s Defense Council, and, at 72, came out of retirement to fight the Russians. Coolly sizing up the situation, Mannerheim recognized that he would have to wage two wars. He had no choice but to deploy most of the regular army—six of nine small divisions—on the southern frontier opposite Leningrad. That 90-mile front spanned the Karelian Isthmus between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga. There the marshal constructed an interlocking system of tank traps, trenches, machine-gun nests, and armored bunkers that became known as the Mannerheim Line and sat patiently, waiting for the Soviets. When the Soviet 7th Army, under theater commander General Kirill A. Meretskov, lumbered forward in clumsy frontal assaults, the Finns shot them to pieces. Meretskov was one of those generals who had risen by virtue of the purges. While he would go on to a reasonably successful wartime career, in late 1939 he certainly wasn’t ready for army command. He planned sloppily, hastily deploying assault divisions drawn from the relatively temperate Ukrainian Military District. These troops were neither conditioned nor equipped for the frigid north and its thick forests, and Meretskov knew little about the Finnish forces, their defensive preparations, or even the terrain over which he had to fight. The general’s campaign was, one historian later wrote, an example of
“organizational incompetence” from top to bottom. Haphazard planning led to battlefield disaster. After a perfunctory artillery bombardment, 7th Army assault troops charged. But their rounds had negligible effect. The Finns, hunkered in protected bunkers, managed to reach their machine guns in plenty of time to meet—and slaughter—the attacking infantry. Soviet reinforcements were late getting to the front, and almost always went where the Finns were holding up the attack, rather than where the Red Army was making headway. Piling more soldiers into killing grounds of Finnish fire only multiplied Soviet casualties.
weapon, and the forerunner of today’s improvised explosive devices (IEDs). (See “A Toast to Mr. Molotov,” page 50.) While that weaponry might have been primitive, the Finns made up for it with intestinal fortitude, bravery, and grim determination. They call it sisu—“guts.” As badly as the Soviets’ drive against the Mannerheim Line had gone, they faced something much worse in the north. In the
Up north, Mannerheim had to conduct a very different kind of war. With nearly 600 miles of border and nowhere near enough regular divisions to cover them, he relied upon the Home Guard as the backbone of his defense. These were independent battalions of hardy citizen soldiers, dead shots who knew every inch of the land and were accustomed to the cold. Virtually all Finns could ski, but the Home Guard specialized in fighting on skis, gliding silently out of the forest, nearly invisible in long white parkas and hoods, to rake a ponderous Soviet column with fire from their viciously effective KP/-31 submachine guns, and then vanish back into the trees. The Guard preferred soft targets with high impact, like field kitchens and supply wagons, but guardsmen also fashioned crude gasoline bombs that worked well against Soviet tanks. First used in the Spanish Civil War, these “Molotov cocktails,” as the Finns called them, were a true poor man’s MAP BY BAKER VAIL; OPPOSITE, HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
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Soviet dead and captured (left) reached shocking numbers in the battle at Suomussalmi, which claimed two full divisions.
forests near Suomussalmi, a village astride the route through the narrow waist of central Finland, a reinforced brigade of Home Guardsmen ambushed, trapped, and largely destroyed two entire Soviet divisions, the 44th and 163rd. At the village of Tolvajärvi, north of Lake Ladoga, two more invading divisions, the 139th and 75th, suffered the same fate. In both battles, roadblocks stalled the attackers long enough for highly mobile ski formations to get around their flanks and into their rear. By Christmas, the defenders had broken invading columns into isolated, immobile fragments. The Finns called the starving, freezing, surrounded invaders motti—sticks bundled for firewood and left to be picked up later. For the Soviets 48
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it was an operational debacle of the first magnitude, made worse by arctic weather. In their plight, Red Army men turned to a traditional remedy. “They started giving us 100 grams of vodka a day,” one of them wrote. “It warmed and cheered us during frosts, and it made us not care in combat.” Soviet soldiers fought unflinchingly, whether charging the Mannerheim Line or holding on grimly in their motti positions, but losses soon reached the hundreds of thousands. One Finnish sniper, Simo Häyhä, was responsible for 505 of them. In civilian life a farmer and a prize-winning marksman, Häyhä kept to himself and rarely said a word as he went about his grim business. The Russians nicknamed him “White Death”—a name that suited the entire Finnish army in this period of the war. By the end of December, the Finns seemed to have won the Winter War. They had stood tall and smashed the invaders. Global opinion rallied to their cause, especially in the democratic West, where the Finns had become world celebrities—good democrats “fighting with the heroic loyalty characteristic of a free people when its liberty is at stake,” as the Times of London put it. The League of Nations had meanwhile expelled the Soviet Union on December 14. The British and French governments were actually considering sending aid to Finland, perhaps even an expeditionary force, to
fight the Soviets. (They didn’t, which was probably for the best. Such a move would have made the Soviet Union and Germany true brothers in arms, allied against Britain and France—with almost unimaginable consequences.) In the United States, former president Herbert Hoover formed a Finnish Relief Fund to aid the beleaguered nation’s civilians and refugees. Within two months, the charity raised $2,000,000. Volunteers the world over—from the United States and Canada, and from Hungary, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden—tried to book passage to Finland to fight in the war, much as others had flocked to Spain to fight just three years before. And yet, even amid Finland’s seeming triumph, the military situation was eroding. In the Bible, David slew Goliath, but in this frozen Valley of Elah, Goliath was still standing. Mannerheim’s forces had no way to carry the war into Russia, and thus no sword to slay their enemy. The Finns had staggered the Red Army, but the Soviet Union remained an immense and wealthy country with impressive powers of recuperation. And in war, bigger battalions often find a way to reassert themselves— no matter how serious their early defeats or how righteous the cause of the underdog. Most often David doesn’t win. The first days of 1940 saw the tide turn quickly, when Stalin named one of his bright young officers, General Semyon K. Timoshenko, to command in the theater. The new supremo,
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44, was a vigorous, hard-headed leader who took a sober view of things. Yes, the opening of the war had been a disaster, but Timoshenko knew the Red Army still had the reserves to beat Finland. All it needed was a firm hand and better planning. Stalin kicked Meretskov downstairs to command the 7th Army alone; another army, the 13th, under General Vladimir. D. Grondahl, arrived alongside him. Timoshenko spent January in careful preparation, weeding out inefficient or incompetent commanders, and drilling his troops in assault tactics. When he had tuned the army to his satisfaction, he chose what a military analyst might call the obvious solution. He suspended the fruitless fight in the north and launched a coordinated two-army assault against the Mannerheim Line, with the 7th Army on the left and the 13th on the right. The assault involved 600,000 men, arrayed in four echelons, with lavish air and artillery support. The Soviets again endured stupendous losses, but the Finns could not match such numbers, and neither could the Mannerheim Line. Timoshenko also showed a great deal of finesse, launching elements of his XXVIII Rifle Corps across the frozen Gulf of Finland toward the key port at Finland’s The Red Army—here manning .30-caliber Maxim machine guns—rebounded in early 1940 under new command. The peaked budyonovka field caps saw use early in World War II.
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A Toast to Mr. Molotov
A
s Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949, Vyacheslav M. Molotov presented a more public face to
the world than even Joseph Stalin. Molotov’s name became a household word in August 1939, when he signed the Nonaggression Pact with Nazi Germany. From then on, he tended to personify Soviet policy as much as, if not more than, his boss—which probably suited Stalin fine. “Molotov” went from household word to adjective on November 30, 1939, when Soviet aircraft bombed Helsinki. After the Finns reported the surprise attack, Soviet news agencies termed those claims a fabrication, maintaining that the Soviets were dropping bread to starving Finns. From that time on, the Finns used a wry term for the bombs: “Molotov bread baskets.” And when the Finns began to pelt Soviet tanks and strongpoints with homemade incendiary devices in bottles, they gave the makeshift weapons a nickname that has endured: Molotov cocktails. —Jon Guttman
second-largest city, Viipuri. The appearance of major Soviet forces deep on the Finns’ right flank and rear did what had seemed impossible: it helped force the Finns out of the Mannerheim Line. The assault opened on February 1, 1940, and cracked the Line by the 11th. Three weeks later, Viipuri was in Soviet hands, as was the main road from Viipuri to Helsinki. By now, the defenders had suffered nearly 70,000 casualties: not a staggering figure—unless your population is only four million. Blasted out of their one solid defensive position, the Finns had no choice but to ask for terms. The Soviets had won the Winter War and, in the subsequent Moscow Peace Treaty, took much more than they had originally demanded. Finland had to cede Viipuri and the northern port of Petsamo, along with the entire Karelian Isthmus. All told, Finland lost some 11 percent of its original territory. But victory had come at great cost to the Soviets. Nikita Khrushchev later placed the casualty figure at an even one million. “All of us,” he wrote, “sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns.” Khrushchev’s tally was almost certainly inflated, part of his effort as Soviet Premier to discredit the Stalinist regime, but the reality was bad enough: somewhere between 400,000 and 600,000 total casualties, with 120,000 to 200,000 killed in action—many times the number of men in the entire Finnish army at the start of hostilities. Whatever the true figure, the Soviet Union paid a steep price for what was, in the end, a border rectification. 50
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The Winter War presented a dual face to the world. Phase one featured the Red Army carrying out some of the clumsiest, most inept frontal assaults imaginable. “They chose to throw people chest first into the machine-gun and artillery fire of pillboxes, in bright sunny days,” as one participant put it. Phase two offered a contrary image: youthful and gifted Soviet commanders with a solid grasp of high-intensity combined arms operations, skillfully employing a huge, well-supplied force and crushing an enemy that had, a few weeks earlier, seemed invulnerable. Only time would tell which was the real Red Army. Learning the lessons of a war has never been an exact science, and observers at the time drew contradictory conclusions. Many analysts saw their notions of Soviet military incompetence confirmed. Precisely because of its David-and-Goliath character, the Winter War’s opening phase drew worldwide attention. The image of those nimble ski troops slashing into a lumbering adversary was simply irresistible. Certainly Hitler and the German General Staff, imagining an invasion of the Soviet Union, looked at the Winter War and pictured a pushover. Perhaps they all should have paid more attention to the more conventional end of the fighting: to Goliath’s rebound, to Timoshenko’s war. The Soviets, too, had blind spots. To their credit, they realized that the war had been a fiasco. On the debit side, they made the common mistake of overreacting. In the 1930s, the Red Army had been at the forefront of experimentation with high-tempo mechanized warfare. In the wake of the Winter
War, the Red Army returned to basics: reconnaissance, security and concealment of columns on the march, carefully phased attacks. Soviet military literature from just after the Winter War showed a force obsessed with the minutiae of battle in cold climates: which gear to use crossing deep snow in a tank, the importance of rapid first aid in extreme cold, preparation of ski trails. Soviet doctrine of that period no longer emphasized deep strikes utilizing masses of armor, but “overcoming the enemy’s long term defenses” and “patiently gnawing through breaches in the enemy’s fortifications.” According to one young commander, the new doctrine was more like “engineering science” than the art of operations or maneuver. But the spring of 1940 was the worst time to be thinking slow and small, as the German invasion in 1941 would prove. Finally, what of the Finns? They were the global heroes of 1939-40, and the savage fight they put up probably made the difference between losing border territories and being annexed and occupied by Soviet forces. Unfortunately for them, a desire to win back lost territories led to a classic wrong turn. The Finns rearmed as feverishly as their tiny economy would allow. They embarked on a policy of close military cooperation with Germany—never formally joining the Axis, but going so far as to allow Hitler to station troops on Finnish soil. On June 25, 1941, three days after the Germans launched
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Operation Barbarossa, Finnish forces invaded the Soviet Union. This was the Jatkosota, the “Continuation War”—far less the stuff of epic, with minimal gains, heavy losses, and, after a massive Soviet offensive into Finland in June 1944, a hasty exit from the war. Finland was no longer a hero in the West—it now appeared to be just another one of Hitler’s lackey states. Yet even in defeat the Finns managed to preserve their independence. They experienced neither a bloody Soviet-style “liberation,” nor the agony of Italy, first occupied by its erstwhile Axis ally, then destroyed in the course of heavy fighting. Still, the Winter War was a signal moment. The long-term aim of World War II was the defense of the weak against the strong: Poland versus Germany, China against Japan, Greece versus Italy. The era’s dictators thought they could laugh at international law, but eventually they all learned to stop laughing. The Winter War was a David-and-Goliath tale that invited contempt for bullying and aggression. The Soviets won territory; the Finns, the admiration of the world. In that sense, the loser won. 2 Finnish ski troops retreat following the Soviets’ March 1940 capture of the city of Viipuri. Although Finland’s army inflicted disproportionate damage on the invader, its mobility and agility were ultimately no match for the Red Army’s sheer size.
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Let the Games
By Alvin H. Thompson
After peace broke out across Europe, it was time for combat by other means
Begin
WHEN THE Selective Service drafted me in February 1943, I recalled a neighbor’s exciting stories of serving as an artilleryman in France during the First World War. I thought the artillery would be the place for me. The army had other ideas. I was fit as could be—I had been a star athlete in high school—but did not have gunner’s eyes. However, I did have an aptitude for high-speed radio, and wound up with the Army Airways Communications System, which helped guide military planes. In late 1943 my unit shipped out for Britain, where I spent the war as a code slinger. I served Soldier-athletes pass the baton in the 800-meter relay at Nuremberg Stadium on August 11, 1945. Author Al Thompson (above) competed on the Air Corps team.
ABOVE, COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR; LEFT, NATONAL ARCHIVES
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In his prewar days as an athlete at California’s Monrovia High, Thompson (left) captained the track team and played football.
about as far from the front as you could get and still be in the European Theater of Operations. But I nonetheless emerged from my two years overseas with an armload of war stories. There were Luftwaffe bombings, V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket attacks in London, strafings in Aberdeen, Scotland, an assault by a Nazi guerrilla in Nuremberg, Germany—even the near outbreak of World War III. Or so it seemed to a wide-eyed GI standing at the feet of the legendary General George S. Patton. My military career intersected with Patton’s during a postwar GI Olympics in which I raced at a stadium in the complex where the Nazis once staged their monstrous ceremonies.
O
ur convoy took 16 days to reach Glasgow, Scotland. From there we moved to the Midlands and then to London. With the name of a pub in hand and having
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heard all about Piccadilly Circus and its bold ladies of the night—whose preferred introduction was to grope a fellow through his greatcoat and say, “Cough!”—several of us set out to see the sights of wartime London. We survived a brush with the “Picadilly Commandos” and had just settled into the recommended snuggery when the building began to rumble and ashen-faced GIs burst through the blackout drapes to report an air raid. Through the drapes I caught a glimpse of a piece of Luftwaffe plane burning. I really was in the war. The next day we moved from our billet into top-floor digs across from Green Park. That night, after another evening out, we were awakened by the second attack of what was being called the “Baby Blitz,” complete with sirens and antiaircraft guns. One of our bunkmates had enjoyed himself so much he refused to wake up for the march to the shelter, so we had to carry him down five floors. In the morning the same fellow refused to believe he had slept through a bombing raid until we showed him a newspaper headline and pictures of incendiaries striking Westminster Abbey.
From London we went on station in Aberdeen and at a Royal Air Force base in rural Dyce that attracted the occasional Messerschmitt; to escape a strafing, my companions and I dove into a stairwell. We roomed with families who invited us to country dances, where the style was for two gents to take a female partner by the hands and whirl her off her feet. Watching one trio too closely, I caught a boot on the chin that knocked me cold. Finally I got to my long-term wartime post, Air-Sea Rescue Station Mullaghmore, in northern Ulster, Ireland, where 25 or so Americans inhabited three Nissen huts. We each pulled three eight-hour shifts at the electronics, with a couple of days off in between duty sessions. By this time I was missing my long-familiar exercise routine. At Monrovia High in California I had played football and captained the championship track team. I was top dog in the 100- and 220-yard dashes, lead man for our undefeated 4x220 relay team, and scored the occasional point in shot put. My new location and schedule meant I could run on the beach and work on my shot putting with round rocks. I also had time to participate in meets nearby and on the outskirts of Belfast. A few times I qualified for meets as far away as London, where my exquisite timing always seemed to place me in the middle of V-1 and V-2 attacks.
B
y the time Germany surrendered, Mullaghmore station had shut down. We Yanks moved into nearby Coleraine, in Northern Ireland, again rooming with locals, as we waited to amass the points we needed to go home. That’s what I was doing in mid-1945 when word came about a “GI Olympics” taking place that August in Nuremberg. The games, intended to provide diversion for restless GIs twiddling their thumbs in Europe waiting to be discharged, were open to personnel from all services of the United States and Canada. High-ranking Russians would be observing. In the preliminaries, held around Britain and France, my fellow track-and-field competitors and I from the Air Corps got no real direction. Our official coach, an American who had played college football in the South, seemed more interested in recruiting for his alma mater. “Al, you’re the only real athlete here!” he’d crow to me. “We want you at our campus!” Older gents from civilian athletic clubs did show an interest in us. One of these fellows told me, “What ye need to do next noon break, sonny, is ter go ter yer shelter, drink a full pint of Guinness, wrap yerself up in yer very heavy blanket and just let vitamins soak in while ye eat lunch, then ye repeat the process before returning to the field.” Even so, the UK contingent made the semifinals in Paris. Happy distractions—the racy Pigalle quarter, the bohemian haunts of Toulouse Lautrec, chasser les femmes, and all that— kept trumping training, but I still won the 100- and 200-meter dashes and placed in the shot put and broad jump. Out of high school habit I resumed the role of captain. Now all we
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR (BOTH)
had to do was win the Air Corps berth in the GI Olympics. When we arrived in late July 1945 at Nuremberg Stadium— renamed Soldiers’ Field—the man at the duty desk said we might as well go back to Ulster; the qualifying meet had just ended. He mentioned that he coached the winning Air Corps team. Stunned, I asked to see their times. We were in the same league, if not better, especially in the dashes. We argued him into a run-off—which we won handily.
T
he big event was two weeks away. We found billets in the suburbs, where we began to acquire a smattering of spoken German and souvenirs like the combat boots and Luger that I picked up to go with my GI-issue trench knife. We had strict orders not to fraternize with Nurembergers, many of whom were furious at what our bombing and artillery had done to their city. Also, there was much talk, official and unofficial, about “Werewolves”—in German, Werwolfen: diehard Nazi guerrillas who were supposed to be lurking everywhere, using pretty women to lure GIs into sexual encounters that turned into castration, usually by razor blade. Oh, and we trained regularly, too. One morning I was heading for the track, spikes over my shoulders, when I turned a corner and nearly knocked down an American military policeman. The MP was holding a Thompson submachine gun on a Bad eyes kept Thompson out of the artillery, but facility with code earned him a spot on a rescue radio team in Ulster.
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Thompson’s mementos of his jaunt to Germany include not only a flyer and his admission card but a scrap of Nazi regalia.
squad of German POWs, and he was on edge. I could see why. Those guys looked hostile, from the death’s head insignia on their peaked hats all the way down to their hobnailed boots. “Ach,” I said. “Der Schutzstaffel ist kaput, ja?” The POWs started forward in my direction. The MP 56
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charged his piece and waved it. “You dumb sonofabitch!” he yelled. “Get out of here before you get us all killed!” When Bob Hope brought one of his USO troupes, including Les Brown and His Band of Renown, to the Opera House, my teammates and I caught a ride to the show. It was drizzling, and the opera house roof was long gone. I was glad to be wearing my GI raincoat, though I had to shift position often to keep from sitting on my trench knife. Even in the drizzle, Hope and company were stellar. By the time we returned the rain had ended. I found a restaurant and enjoyed a snort. As I was leaving, two demure Fräuleins asked in perfect English if I would escort them home, saying it was dangerous for them to be out so late. They lived down the way, they said. All thought of bans on fraternization disappeared from my head. We three strolled, making small talk, toward a vine-covered arch that spanned the street. Beyond the structure overhead lay darkness. A thought tickled my memory. I had my hands in my coat pockets. I got a grip on my knife.
Up in the arch, something rustled ominously. With a right arm hardened by shot putting, I drew my knife, tip toward the mystery noise. A man jumped down from the ivy and onto the blade. I stepped back. My assailant hit the ground. I tore a pin off the fellow’s jacket and broke whatever speed records existed for whatever distance it was that I covered to get back to where the streetlights and safety beckoned. From then on I stuck to track and field, and my diligence paid dividends. I qualified for a spot in the 100-meter dash and as lead-off man for the Air Corps team in the 4x100-meter relay. On the appointed day at Soldiers’ Field, the announcer summoned sprinters for the 100-meter dash. We took our marks. “Get set!” the announcer squawked. I poised, waiting for the pistol. The PA crackled. “We interrupt these proceedings,” the man said, “to announce that Japan has agreed to surrender!” The starter fired his gun. I leaped straight up, thinking that surely given the circumstances the judges would call us back. Nope. I think I finished sixth. Our relay foursome did better. The team from Patton’s Third Army took the overall prize, but our third place in the NATIONAL ARCHIVES; OPPOSITE, COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR (ALL)
General George S. Patton hails three of the Americans who captained winning teams at the August 1945 GI Olympics.
relay earned us a spot on the podium on closing day. After marching with fellow competitors into the stadium, we took our places between two stands of VIPs, with the Red Army general staff to our right and on our left, the master of ceremonies, General George S. Patton himself. Patton was bursting with pride as he leaned into the microphone and in his raspy, high-pitched voice said, “I am here to tell you that no matter what anyone else says, the American soldier is still the best goddamned soldier who ever set foot upon this earth!” As he spoke Patton looked straight at the Russians. They were smiling and waving, completely unaware of what their host had said, as the interpreters blanched from the struggle to paraphrase Patton’s invitation to start World War III. The interpreters must have found the right words, because the smiling and waving on the Russian side continued. We marched out, and when World War III didn’t start, I packed my gear and returned to Ulster to count my points toward my long-awaited trip home. 2 JULY/AUGUST 2014
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WEAPONS MANUAL by Jim Laurier
Death from Not Far Above Soviet Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik Type 3 This resilient ground-attack plane saw brutal losses; out of every 30 sorties by Il-2s, one went down. But semi-skilled hands could assemble this crude icon of Soviet defiance toward German invaders, who labeled it Schwarzer Tod (“Black Death”). Besides loosing hails of machine-gun and cannon rounds, rockets, and bombs, Il-2 crews laid smoke, shot photos, and directed artillery. The seven-ton plane Joseph Stalin’s soldiers called “The Flying Tank”—its cast tub
hull boasted as much as 8mm of alloy armor—could hit 251 mph and had a range of 475 miles. “The Red Army needs the Il-2 as it needs air and bread,” Stalin telegraphed an Ilyushin plant manager in December 1941. “I urge you to produce more Ilyushins.” The “Man of Steel” got his way. The 36,163 Il-2s built outnumbered any other warplane of the era. White Stripes Lines on the armored canopy glass served as gun and bomb sights.
People’s Power The Sturmovik was propelled by a 12-cylinder liquid-cooled engine that developed 1,720 horsepower.
Production started out stumbling, but as efficiency improved (below), output rose to 300 Il-2s a month and more. “Il” stands for designer Sergey Ilyushin.
Half-ton of Hurt Four 220-lb. bombs traveled in bays, plus one hanging from each wing.
Built to Bang Around Il-2s were tough enough to survive bullet-shredded flying surfaces and return home for repair, often landing successfully on rough strips.
PHOTOS: SOVFOTO/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES
Got Your Back Il-2s began as single-seaters, but in February 1942 got a rearward 12.7mm or 7.62mm machine gun and a second aviator. The extra weight hurt handling until a 1944 redesign swept back the wings, restoring agility.
Pavlov’s Pals Ivan F. Pavlov, pilot of the aircraft depicted, flew 204 missions with the 6th Guards Assault Aviation Regiment. The fuselage inscription reads, “To the compatriot Hero of the Soviet Union, comrade Pavlov from the workers of the city of Kustanaj.”
Attacking Il-2 pilots (above) rarely hit their planes’ 11,480-foot ceiling but stayed low—30 feet was not unusual— slamming targets’ hindquarters, where armor tended to be thinnest.
Back Off To foil pursuers, the gunner could launch parachute grenades set to explode 100 yards aft.
Coming Heavy Il-2M3s had two in-wing 7.62mm machine guns and two cannons—a few 37mms but mostly 23mms, fed by 300-round belts.
Rocket in my Socket Eight electronically controlled rails accommodated various sizes of unguided missile.
The Competition American Republic P-47 Thunderbolt Crew: 1 • Top speed: 433 mph • Weight: 6.6 tons • Range: 800 miles • Ceiling: 43,000 feet • Armament: 8 12.7mm machine guns, 10 rockets, 2,500 lbs. of bombs • Production: 15,660 • Nickname: “Jug”
German Henschel Hs 129 Crew: 1 • Top speed: 253 mph • Weight: 5.75 tons • Range: 428 miles • Ceiling: 29,530 feet • Armament: 2 13mm machine guns, 2 20mm cannons, 6 110-lb. bombs or 2 bombs and a 30mm armor-piercing gun • Production: 865 • Nickname: “Tank Cracker”
German Ju87G Stuka Crew: 2 • Top speed: 242 mph • Weight: 4.75 tons • Range: 311 miles • Ceiling: 29,600 feet • Armament: 3 7.92mm machine guns, 2 37mm cannons, 2,200 lbs. of bombs • Production: 6,500 • Nickname: “Cannon-Bird”
British Hawker Typhoon Crew: 1 • Top speed: 412 mph • Weight: 5.7 tons • Range: 510 miles • Ceiling: 35,200 feet • Armament: 4 20mm cannons, 8 unguided rockets, 2,000 lbs. of bombs • Production: 3,317 • Nickname: “Tiffy”
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Nazi Saboteurs at When Germany sent agents of destruction to By Daniel B. Moskowitz
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n July 29, 1942, the Japanese extended their invasion of New Guinea by beginning a march over the Owen Stanley mountains to attack Port Moresby; the British, unable to follow up their infantry penetration in northern Egypt with a tank assault, retreated from positions around Tell el MakhKhad; and German forces at Tsimlyansk, Russia, pushed back a fierce Red Army as it rushed across the Don River. But arguably the most important World War II battle fought that Wednesday took place on First Street NE in Washington, D.C., just east of the Capitol building. That day, the U.S. Supreme Court—meeting in special session for the first time in its 152-year history— weighed the fate of eight Nazi agents who six weeks before had landed from U-boats on the Atlantic coast. Traveling from the submarine base at Lorient, France, four landed at Amagansett on Long Island, and four at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. All came ashore in uniform—the Long Island squad in full marine infantry Capture of the German agents (top) galvanized Americans, as splashy headlines cropped up nationwide.
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kit, the Florida four in bathing suits plus marine uniform hats— which they buried in the sand, quickly donning civilian clothes. The infiltrators brought quantities of explosives and $172,200 in U.S. currency (approximately $2.46 million today). Their orders: slip into American life and eventually maneuver into position to blow up aluminum plants, railroad connections, locks on the Ohio River, and other targets. The eight were the vanguard of Operation Pastorius, named for Franz Daniel Pastorius—founder, in 1683, of the first organized German settlement in North America, Germantown, outside Philadelphia—and developed by Abwehr chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris to land saboteurs in the United States. Canaris wanted to emulate his own feats during World War I, when he destroyed munitions at Black Tom Island in New York Harbor and damaged the Statue of Liberty. Pastorius operatives were German citizens who had lived in the United States but had returned to Germany, where the Ausland Institute, which tracked émigrés, recruited a handful. The saboteurs trained near Berlin in chemistry and incendiary making, and toured German factories and rail yards to learn points of vulner-
the Supreme Court America, the case against them went to the top ability. (The Supreme Court case, known as Ex parte Quirin, is named for lead defendant Richard Quirin, a native of Berlin who lived in Schenectady, New York, for 12 years before returning to Germany to become one of the first Pastorius agents recruited.) The Roosevelt Administration had hoped that trying the speedily captured agents in a military tribunal would keep details of Operation Pastorius secret; the high court hearing pulled back the veil. The Justices were not weighing whether the prisoners were guilty of violating the law of war, but whether the men had a Constitutional right to trial in civilian courts, with all the accompanying legal protections and rights to appeal, rather than before a military tribunal. The “law of war” is the international standard defining acceptable and unacceptable wartime conduct; the Articles of War regulate the American military. The charges against the prisoners were based on both. The Justices’ decision set precedents that are at the heart of current controversy over how to try suspected terrorists. The World TOP, NATIONAL ARCHIVES; BOTTOM, MYRON DAVIS/TIME LIFE PICTURE/GETTY IMAGES; OPPOSITE BOTTOM, WEIDER ARCHIVES
War II-era ruling “has been a key case in most of the recent decisions on the status of detainees at Guantanamo,” says Charles A. Blanchard, general counsel of the U.S. Air Force. Quirin was invoked in 2002 as support for the military tribunals set up to try those suspected in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
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he 1942 military tribunal was created by presidential decree six days after American authorities took the last of the saboteurs into custody. Law enforcement had quickly learned of the Germans’ arrival—John Cullen, a Coast Guard seaman second class, spotted four of them on the beach at Amagansett—and the Federal Bureau of Investigation trailed the men for days before arresting them. Later, when news of the successful manhunt became public, the FBI reaped widespread kudos, but in fact key revelations had simply
The saboteurs’ case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, here (left) as army prosecutors approach.
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The press and public were hungry for news of the Nazi plot. The saboteurs’ landing had come to light on June 28, 1942, when the FBI announced their capture—and little else. fallen into the Bureau’s lap. One of the Long Island four, George John Dasch, had called the New York FBI office on June 14, a day after coming ashore, saying he had important information he would reveal in Washington, D.C., the following week. Five days later, Dasch phoned FBI headquarters, telling officials to pick him up at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel. As soon as they saw Dasch, agents recognized him; Cullen had described one of the men on the beach as having a streak of silver hair. Dasch willingly described the Pastorius plot and details about his accomplices. Thanks to coming clean, Dasch was not a party to the Supreme Court proceedings, but his fate clearly depended on the outcome. Major General Frank R. McCoy headed Roosevelt’s tribunal. The West Point graduate had led the 165th Infantry Brigade in World War I, retiring from the army in 1938. McCoy’s panel consisted of three other major generals and three brigadier generals. The decree specified that a vote of two-thirds of tribunal members would suffice to sentence the defendants to death. The case came to the high court because the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia rejected the prisoners’ petition for civil trial. Their attorneys asked the Supreme Court to review that order, and later filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. The high court took the unusual step of accepting the case before the Court of Appeals heard it because of, in Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone’s words, “the public importance of the questions raised by their petitions.” The Supreme Court hearing was clearly not a normal one. Interrupting their four-month summer recess, the Justices began work on the case before Justice William O. Douglas could return from vacation; he made it from Oregon to the capital on July 30, in time to vote on the outcome. Justice Frank Murphy did not participate. He was in uniform himself, technically “a reserve officer on inactive duty” using a short-term leave from the court to serve as a lieutenant colonel on General George C. Marshall’s staff. Murphy listened to the proceedings sitting concealed by the crimson drapes behind his fellow Justices. Rather than business suits, most lawyers involved—including Major General Myron C. Cramer, chief advocate general of the army—wore uniforms. Security was taut. At 10 a.m., two hours before the hearing was to begin, a dozen FBI agents swept the courtroom, then stood guard around the chamber. The defendants, confined in the D.C. jail, were barred from the proceedings, but several Washington notables—including FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and the wives of Justices Robert H. Jackson 62
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and James F. Byrnes—were among the 300 spectators, many of whom stood in line for hours in blazing July heat to claim seats. And compared with the standard one hour allowed each side in a case to address the Court, the Justices gave the lawyers an extraordinary amount of time to present: the July 29 hearing started at noon, stopped at 2 p.m. for a 30-minute lunch break, and did not adjourn that day until 6. The Court convened the next day for three-and-a-half hours of additional argument.
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he press and public were hungry for news of the Nazi plot. The saboteurs’ landing had come to light on June 28, when the FBI announced their capture—and said little else. The military tribunal had rejected all efforts to illuminate events in Room 5235, an FBI lecture hall at the Justice Department, where the trial was going on behind barricaded doors. Elmer Davis, the CBS newscaster who headed the Office of War Information, pleaded with President Franklin D. Roosevelt for enough access to the tribunal proceedings so he at least could give the press a daily summary. FDR seemed to agree, but on July 7, when Davis sent a subordinate to work out that arrangement, guards barred the man from even trying to get close to the trial room. Later that day Attorney General Francis B. Biddle twice sent personal notes to General McCoy urging him to meet with Davis’s people, but McCoy—backed by Secretary of War Henry Stimson—ignored both requests. So until the Supreme Court hearing, the news from the tribunal consisted of reports about witnesses seen entering the makeshift courtroom; only once, during a recess, were reporters allowed into Room 5235 to glimpse the layout and the prisoners. The tribunal trial had been underway for three weeks by the time the issue reached the Supreme Court—and continued as the high court considered the case. Part of the process worked out for the extraordinary session was that during it neither side would give out information about the tribunal. Nonetheless, the high court hearing revealed that during the military proceedings the saboteurs’ lawyers had challenged one panelist’s objectivity, without success. Biddle himself argued the government claim that the tribunal was constitutional. The Germans’ attorney was Colonel Kenneth C. Royall, a former U.S. Senator from North Carolina whom Roosevelt had selected to defend them. Royall contended that Congress could decree that military tribunals rather than civilian courts try allegations of a particular war crime—as legislators had done in
FBI agents in Florida (above) show where the interlopers hid gear such as fuses disguised as pens and mechanical pencils.
regard to spying—but argued that the president lacked authority to make such a determination. And Royall unveiled the Germans’ main defense. Admitting his clients had trained in sabotage and had landed covertly in the United States from German submarines, Royall insisted that their motive was simply to return to the country where they had once lived. At least one prisoner, Herbert Haupt, “has been treated miserably in Germany,” Royall said. “He says he wanted to come home. At no time did he pledge allegiance to Germany. He always was an American. The only evidence that he ever joined the German army is merest hearsay, which NATIONAL ARCHIVES (BOTH)
this court should not consider.” None of the eight intended to carry out any plot, Royall argued. While they did come ashore with explosives, “no location was ever selected for their use,” he said. “There was no specific plan.” The men had not used the explosives and had “done no damage and no one was injured.” They also carried no personal arms, Royall noted. The Justices’ questions seemed to reflect an aim of determining the Germans’ status. Justice Jackson noted that the U-boat delivering the men had entered American waters. Had the Germans, wearing Nazi uniforms, been seen and shot as soon as they stepped ashore their killings would have been justifiable, not murder, he said. “Why are not these men all members of an invading force and subject to the law of war?” Justice Jackson asked. “Because they do not admit they were an invading force, but only used this means to get out of Germany,” Colonel Royall answered, insisting that the men were “unarmed.” To that, JULY/AUGUST 2014
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The interlopers had not only done their training at a German sabotage school but had signed contracts there, so they ‘were employed and paid by the German government.’ Justice Jackson suggested the Germans’ TNT was an armament. He wondered if the defendants were contending that they could not be prosecuted “until the explosives are set off.”
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nder the pertinent Article of War, the government can suspend habeas corpus—a detainee’s right to a court hearing—for actions occurring in a “theater of operations.” The Justices and the lawyers extensively debated what comprises a theater of operations. “We contend that with civil courts open and operating, Congress did not intend that these charges should not be tried therein,” Royall said. Justice Hugo Black questioned whether defense lawyers were too narrowly defining “theater of operations.” “What about the planes that fly over foreign countries and drop bombs and destroy property far removed from the scene of battle?” Justice Black asked. “If it is a military plane, that is generally accepted as a means of fighting or of combat,” Royall answered. “A submarine is, too,” Justice Black said. “These submarines in this case did not do anything but transport.” Justice Felix Frankfurter cast doubt on Royall’s interpretation of a combat zone. “Whatever may be an instrument of the enemy may become a military operation,” he insisted. Under that approach “anything that affects the war effort is part of the war,” Royall warned. “There has got to be some limit on it, or we have very few constitutional guarantees left when we go to war.” An expansive definition of a theater of operations, he said, could embrace a war plant whose workers went on strike. Justice Frankfurter tried to test the limit. “Suppose an enemy should place a chemical in the Glenn Martin plant so that whole plant explodes,” he said. “Would you say that soldier was engaged in a military operation?” “No, I would not say so,” Royall answered. “Then if a regiment of soldiers marched on the plant,” Frankfurter said. “Then that would not be a military operation?” “The situation is different,” Royall replied. “Somewhere a line would be drawn.” He observed that Coast Guardsmen patrolling the beaches where the Germans landed did not carry arms. At the podium, Biddle attacked Royall’s contentions. “We are at war with Germany and these men are our enemies,” Biddle said. “War wipes out the rights of the alien.” He revealed that not only had the men trained at a German sabotage school but
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had signed contracts there, so they “were employed and paid by the German government.” “They came here wearing fatigue clothes of German marines so that if arrested as they landed they could make the claim that they were prisoners of war,” Biddle added. “They forfeited that right when they changed into civilian garb.” Royall spent most of his effort before the Justices pleading to try the eight in civilian court rather than before a tribunal. He also argued that the tribunal itself was improperly constituted because it did not meet standards Congress laid out in the Articles of War. Among other ostensible deficiencies, according to Royall, the tribunal could set its own rules, decide less than unanimously, and convey that decision directly to the president without the defendants knowing the vote or the outcome. Biddle countered that the Constitution gave the commander in chief powers to wage war beyond those outlined by Congress. Normal procedure at the high court is for the Justices to discuss a case in private, then take a preliminary vote. Based on that vote, one Justice among the majority is assigned to write a formal opinion, which other members of the majority revise and edit. The outcome is announced only when all Justices have signed off on the full written opinion and it is made public. That was not how the saboteur case went.
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nstead, after the arguments ended on July 30 the Justices immediately circulated memos among themselves presenting their individual views of the case—Justice Jackson insisted the prisoners had no Constitutional rights, that they were spies and invaders and deserved no further consideration—and met later that day. At that private conference, Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone declared that in his view “from time out of mind, it is within the power of the commander in chief to hang a spy.” The next day, during a four-minute public session of the Court, Chief Justice Stone announced that he and his colleagues unanimously refused the prisoners’ petition for a writ of habeas corpus and found the president within his rights to set up the tribunal as the sole venue for trying the agents. A written opinion explaining that outcome was not issued until October 29. “An important incident to the conduct of war is the adoption of measures by the military command not only to repel and defeat the enemy, but to seize and subject to disciplinary measures those enemies who in their attempt to thwart or impede our military effort have violated the law,” Chief Justice Stone
A bystander (above) watches trucks carrying the prisoners from the Justice Department. Of the nine Justices, eight participated in the saboteur case; Justice Frank Murphy (standing, second from right) was on leave serving as an officer in the U.S. Army.
wrote. The prisoners had no right to civilian trial, he explained, because the acts they were charged with as enemies operating under orders to destroy wartime infrastructure were violations of the law of war that military tribunals are set up to adjudicate. To the defense attorneys’ claim that their clients should not be considered unlawful enemy combatants, the court held, in Chief Justice Stone’s words, “Those who during time of war pass surreptitiously from enemy territory into our own, discarding their uniforms upon entry, for the commission of hostile acts involving destruction of life or property, have the status of unlawful
combatants punishable as such by military commission.” Given the wartime need for national unity, the chief justice felt it important the court rule unanimously—a goal that proved difficult to achieve. Admitted Justice Douglas much later, “While it was easy to agree on the original per curiam [the basic ruling], we almost fell apart when it came to write out the views.” Chief Justice Stone managed to keep colleagues from publishing dissenting or concurring opinions; nonetheless, he still had to write that while all agreed that the prisoners had no right to civilian trial, “a majority of the full Court are not agreed on the appropriate grounds for decision.” By the time the Court’s opinion officially appeared, however, it was a footnote. Immediately after the announcement of the July 31 ruling that okayed the tribunal, the proceeding in Room 5235 wrapped up. On August 3, the tribunal members found all eight saboteurs guilty and sentenced them to death. President Roosevelt, reviewing that sentence, affirmed it for six of the
TOP, NATIONAL ARCHIVES; BOTTOM, THOMAS D. MCAVOY/TIME LIFE PICTURES/GETTY
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The six died on August 8, 1942, in the electric chair on the third floor of the District of Columbia jail. Authorities buried their remains in a potter’s field near the city sewage plant. Germans. FDR commuted Dasch’s death penalty to 30 years in prison and Burger’s to life behind bars, acknowledging their confessions and assistance to the FBI in capturing their coconspirators. The other six died just days later, on August 8, 1942, in the electric chair on the third floor of the D.C. jail. Their remains were buried in a potter’s field near the city sewage plant. (In 1948, federal authorities freed Dasch and Burger and deported them to the American-controlled zone of West Germany.)
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he executions and imprisonments did not end the high court’s involvement with Operation Pastorius. Two more cases came before the Justices that stemmed from the saboteurs’ incursion. The first involved a German-born naturalized American citizen, Anthony Cramer. Cramer and one of the Pastorius agents, Werner Thiel, had roomed together during Thiel’s earlier time stateside. At one point the two jointly owned an unsuccessful delicatessen. After landing from the submarine, Thiel contacted Cramer; the men met twice in public places, and Cramer agreed to hold onto $3,400 that Thiel handed his former business partner. After Thiel’s arrest, authorities arrested Cramer and charged him with treason. A trial court convicted him, but the Justices overturned that verdict, 5-4. Without evidence of traitorous intent, social contacts simply could not be seen as giving material assistance to an enemy, the majority ruled. A similar review of a conviction for treason by giving aid and comfort to the enemy came before the Justices in the case of prisoner Herbert Haupt’s father, also a German-born American
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citizen. The elder Haupt was convicted of a dozen specific acts of helping his son’s sabotage mission, including letting the younger man live in the family residence in Chicago, accompanying his son when he applied for a job at a factory making lenses for bomb sights, and buying him a car. By an 8-1 vote, the Justices upheld the father’s conviction, ruling that sheltering an enemy agent was by definition unlawful aid. Haupt senior, sentenced to life imprisonment, was released and deported in 1957. The core saboteur case remains a point of controversy. “The conventional wisdom is that Ex parte Quirin was a pro-government case,” the Air Force’s Charles Blanchard noted in a 2013 blog post. But he called attention to an alternative interpretation by Fordham University Law School professor Andrew Kent, who argues that the Justices should never have considered the saboteurs’ appeal. Before the saboteur case, no enemy soldiers had gotten a chance to take any dispute to American civilian courts, Kent noted. In doing so, he said, Quirin amounted to a defeat for the government, because Quirin can be read to open the way for prisoners of war brought to the United States—or even to American-controlled territory, such as Guantanamo—to claim access to court consideration of any complaints. Justice William O. Douglas might have agreed. “It was unfortunate the Court took the case,” Douglas wrote nearly 40 years afterward. 2 The high court’s ruling in Quirin led to swift and fatal justice, and still resonates in American jurisprudence.
WEIDER ARCHIVES
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WORLD
REVIEWS
WAR II
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An Unconscious Slide to Evil
The wartime actions of five German friends pose a big question for fans several generations removed.
GENERATION WAR Directed by Philipp Kadelbach. 279 minutes. 2 DVDs, May 6. German; English subtitles. $34.95.
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eneration War begins and ends in a Berlin bar. Five German friends— bright, cheerful, optimistic, expecting to be home by Christmas—say farewell in 1941, on the eve of Operation Barbarossa. Four years later, the disillusioned survivors meet again, and an unasked question hovers in the air: “Why?” Wilhelm is the narrator; he is already a lieutenant who leads from the front and sets his men an example. Younger brother Friedhelm, serving in Wilhelm’s platoon, uses irony to detach himself from the war’s realities and brutalities. Charlotte—“Charly”—is the baby of the group: a freshly certified army nurse. Greta is her counterpoint: a wannabe singer and worldly-wise, at least in her own estimation; her Jewish boyfriend
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Viktor and his family survive on the Reich’s fringe. These characters’ experiences and responses structure this television miniseries, which aired in Germany in 2013. But Generation War is more than that: it has become one of the defining pop-culture experiences shared by reunified Germany. For the third and fourth postwar generations of Germany who watched— over seven-and-a-half million tuned in for the final episode—these tales might as well be from antiquity. Because of that, Generation War needs to be considered not just in itself, but for its larger implications. The film’s production values are exemplary, the result of eight years and 150 sets recreating the ambience of the two sites that embody Germany’s World War II experience: the Russian front and
wartime Berlin. From infantry weapons to women’s underwear, the props are accurate. The plot’s sustained pace facilitates the willing suspension of disbelief required for successful genre works. The main characters are well cast and well acted, with distinct personalities, which helps viewers track the many quick crosscuts and segues. The editing itself admirably conveys the manic balance between traumatic shock and everyday routine that defined, say, the German experience in Russia. Some have criticized Viktor’s presence in the circle of friends at this stage of the Third Reich. A more significant criticism describes Generation War as airbrushing the Germans’ complicity as a people in the Reich’s crimes, even presenting them as merely another set of Hitler’s victims. That is easier said MUSIC BOX FILMS; OPPOSITE, © 2014 N3D LAND FILMS
REVIEWS [ than proven. In this film, Nazis are not remote brutes; they are an everyday presence. Their criminal behavior is routine. What are the reactions from Germans? Awareness and indifference—and this is the point. None of the “Aryan Four,” for instance, says “No” to Nazi logic for any significant length of time. Wilhelm obeys an order to execute a Russian commissar. Charly betrays a Jewish woman from Ukraine working at her hospital. Friedhelm initiates using Russian civilians to clear an unmarked minefield. Greta, in Berlin, becomes a Gestapo officer’s sex toy—to secure exit documents
Directed by Pascal Vuong. Narrated by Tom Brokaw. 43 minutes. Opens at IMAX 3D theaters across the country in May; check local theater listings.
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his relatively brief take on D-Day outpunches its weight. A cogent overview of the Battle of Normandy focusing on the invasion, the film uses a state-of-the-art palette of cinematic techniques that keeps adults in the game while making it especially attractive and useful for kids. In fact, the filmmakers have built an educational package around it. The history is solid and well-told, if necessarily elliptical. Director Pascal Vuong, who wrote the script, has managed to hit not just expected high-visibility points (Pointe du Hoc, Caen, Omaha Beach) but touches on all five beaches, and even sketches events up to the Falaise pocket. Along with detailing Allied airplanes (“They were painted with stripes for D-Day, so they would be easily recognized and avoid friendly fire”), he includes Ike’s chosen mechanical D-Day heroes, like the jeep and bulldozer. And as Vuong tracks the movements of hundreds of thousands of Allied and Axis troops and partisans, he focuses on individuals from all sides,
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for Viktor, certainly, but also to revive a moribund singing career. And all this occurs in episode one! Melodrama and manipulation? Perhaps; at times, almost certainly. But Generation War is better understood as the final stage of a historical process in Germany—which is why it has provoked such widespread, thoughtful discussion there. Its protagonists were teenagers when Hitler assumed power; they were conditioned, then co-opted, and ultimately corrupted by the Nazi regime and its ideology. Human nature being what it is, whatever is left of their
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private selves and values becomes a very slender reed to lean on during a total war under a totalitarian dictatorship. They are not consciously evil. But they unsettlingly demonstrate how disinformation, self-interest, duty, and compromise combined to create steep and slippery slopes that led Germans ever downward, without inspiring heroes and martyrs— or producing individuals able or even willing to say “No” for long. “Why?” Why indeed. Generation War suggests that perennial question may be fundamentally unanswerable. —Dennis Showalter
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humanizing the massive operations. But Vuong’s true creative contribution comes with his imaginative visuals. Not so much the digitized, stereoscoped, and colorized photos and footage from the period, though those work well enough in IMAX 3D. What’s truly striking are the transitions. Vuong uses animated sketches, in both black-and-white charcoal and impressionistic color, to bridge between scenes—a simple-seeming yet inspired change-up that alters the emotional mood, letting
viewers catch their breath after a fact-laden segment. Even more clever is his animated storybook, which opens to display drawings and key questions like “When?”; this recurring chapter break orients viewers toward what’s coming. Threading throughout is Tom Brokaw’s distinctive voice. (No, he doesn’t utter the words “Greatest Generation.”) Brokaw says he only did the film because it avoids the usual D-Day clichés. That assesscontinued on page 70
Creative animations and reimagined photos enhance this IMAX D-Day feature.
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REVIEWS
continued from page 69 ment, it turns out, points to D-Day: Normandy 1944’s greatest strengths. —Gene Santoro THE DEAD AND THOSE ABOUT TO DIE D-Day: The Big Red One at Omaha Beach By John C. McManus. 384 pp. NAL Hardcover, 2014. $27.95.
A
fter 70 years, is there anything about D-Day left to discover? Yes, because history is a moving target made up of facts and human interpretation. But writing history significantly and convincingly is another story. In The Dead and Those About to Die, John McManus hits the target, despite focusing on Omaha Beach— arguably the most written-about aspect of D-Day—and the 1st Infantry Division—one of the war’s most
renowned. McManus believes the Big Red One has been historically overshadowed by the 29th Division’s gasp-inducing catastrophes on Omaha, and seeks to right the balance. He succeeds. Marshalling archival and interview resources gathered over decades, McManus chronicles the 1st’s Normandy ordeals in a rigorous, fluent narrative that evokes the nauseating carnage and unthinkable bravery on the beach, as well as the personalities of the men and the division. But that’s only half the job. McManus argues that D-Day planning actually compounded disaster on Omaha. Once any part unraveled—air and naval bombardment missing the beach
entirely; overlooked tides and scared coxswains shifting personnel to the wrong landing zones and shredding to-the-minute timetables; soldiers, freighted with 70 or more pounds of gear they didn’t really need, dropping into water over their heads or facing withering fire—the entire operational plan was bound to disintegrate. McManus suggests this fits “a recurring pattern in American military history—the tendency to place too much confidence in technology, firepower, and materiel.” For the Big Red One, all these elements failed. Only courage and improvisation carried the day. —Gene Santoro
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MODERN WAR STUDIES The Stalingrad Trilogy Volume 3 $AVID-'LANTZWITH*ONATHAN-(OUSE
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Book One offers the definitive account—the “ground truth” to counter a half-century’s worth of myth and misinformation—of the beginning of the end of one of the most infamous battles of the Second World War. In Book Two, Glantz and House conclude their definitive history with a closely observed account of the final ten weeks of the campaign. Together, Book One and Book Two complete a vivid and detailed picture of the Axis defeat that would prove decisive.
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“J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI had a busy Second World War. There were vicious battles against Britain’s MI6, America’s OSS, the War Department and grasping double agents. Then there were the Germans and the Japanese. Batvinis recounts this history with the insight of someone who has himself been in the game. . . . an important contribution to the literature.” —Mark E. Stout, Director of Global Security Studies, Johns Hopkins University and former Historian, International Spy Museum PAGES PHOTOGRAPHS #LOTH
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To the Gates of Stalingrad
Armageddon in Stalingrad
Soviet-German Combat Operations, April–August 1942
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The Stalingrad Trilogy, Volume 2
University Press of Kansas 0HONE s&AX sWWWKANSASPRESSKUEDU
REVIEWS [
STALINGRAD Directed by Fedor Bondarchuk. 131 minutes. DVD, May 13. Russian and German; English subtitles. $30.99.
T
he first Russian IMAX feature to hit American screens is the kind of war movie Americans know and usually love, and in 3D—our current favorite visual punch. (It’s refreshingly CGI-free, though; its sets were actually built.) The sense of familiarity is subliminally enhanced by a spot-on score from Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet). Here, it had a one-week run in IMAX theaters nationwide and barely missed an Oscar nomination; at home, six weeks after its release, it became the highest-grossing film in Russian history. So let’s get it straight from the jump. Stalingrad is not a historical analysis or overview, nor is every prop accurate. It’s a genre flick—part melodrama, part history, mixed with a consistently intelligent and deft hand. Think of it as Band of Brothers, Russian style. And it works. The narrator is the son of a woman who spent her girlhood surviving Stalingrad’s brutal ravages. “I have five fathers,” he says, by way of opening. As Stalingrad unfolds in vignettes probing the gritty, unsavory reality of a city reduced to ruins and the constant, nerve-shredding maneuvering to kill and avoid being killed, it gradually reveals what that sentence means. Technically dazzling, emotionally shrewd, and exquisitely paced, the film draws you into the tensions and releases that grip a handful of characters, Russian and German, with symbolic overtones. Five Russian soldiers—a classic war-movie mix ranging from shrewd lieutenant to kindly big guy to wetbehind-the-ears kid—have managed to cross the Volga River alive, part of the Red Army’s decision to insert just
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enough troops into Stalingrad to stall the Wehrmacht while orchestrating a massive encirclement. They find their mission impossible, so they hole up in a battered house barely clinging, like them, to the river’s western banks. There they discover a thin, almost affectless girl who refuses to leave. They cajole, threaten, plead: she’s in the way, she’ll get killed, she’ll get them killed. But her quiet refusals attract and energize them even as they’re puzzled or angered; inevitably each soldier, over time, falls in love with her in his own way, and she, in turn, falls in love with them. She tends them, sews on their buttons, even fights alongside them as they fend off endless attacks—and, above all, makes the men feel, for all-toofleeting moments, human in the midst of daily horror. Cut across the battle line—which, in Stalingrad, is practically across what’s left of the street. A German lieutenant brings milk and food and goodies to a Russian girl who reminds him of his dead lover. She seems unwilling but
passive, at least at first; she puts up with him for the stuff he drops off so proudly, which she mostly gives away. But her neighbors, trapped with her in a cramped basement, despise her nonetheless. Almost against her will, she is drawn deeper into the strange, semi-fantasy relationship her German lover so single-mindedly desires. And so it goes from there. Some of it you’d probably expect. But the true gift of genre movies comes when they’re better than they have to be, and Stalingrad is—far better. The actors and script give the characters real heft and nuance. The plot turns resonate against the larger background without becoming predictably trapped within it. The direction moves adroitly from subtle to full-frontal attack, enhanced and sharpened by ingenious use of IMAX 3D. The skirmish scenes especially are ingeniously choreographed. Now that Stalingrad has been released on DVD, it’s well worth watching even without the high-tech big screen—if only to rediscover how what most folks think and do during wartime, regardless of which side they’re on, remains fundamentally human. —Gene Santoro
One woman acts as a link to humanity for Russian soldiers in a city wrecked by war.
SONY PICTURES
[
THE NORMANDY BATTLEFIELDS D-Day & The Bridgeheads By Leo Marriott & Simon Forty. 192 pp. Casemate, 2014. $29.95. This lushly illustrated coffee-table book is aimed at armchair travelers and Normandy visitors alike. The historical text is solid; the then-vs-now pictures remind us that time heals at least some wounds.
SECOND FRONT The Allied Invasion of France, 1942-1943 By Alexander M. Grace Sr. 288 pp. Casemate, 2014. $29.95. What if Vichy France cooperated with the Allies to invade the undefended southern coastline of France? A thorough alternative history.
B O O K BR IE F S
]
THE FIGHT FOR THE FOUR FREEDOMS What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great By Harvey J. Kaye. 304 pp. Simon & Schuster, 2014. $28. Argues that FDR’s progressive agenda was inextricably linked to rebuilding America and winning the war.
THE AMERICANS ON D-DAY A Photographic History of the Normandy Invasion By Martin K.A. Morgan. 240 pp. Zenith, 2014. $45. From the buildup to the aftermath, D-Day expert Morgan covers all aspects of the invasion, juxtaposing old photos and new images with thorough captions.
D-DAY: JUNE 6, 1944 The Climactic Battle of World War II (Illustrated Edition) By Stephen E. Ambrose. 768 pp. Simon & Schuster, 2014. $40. The D-Day classic is reissued as an oversized tome with some 130 photos to celebrate the landing’s anniversary.
PRAIRIE FORGE The Extraordinary Story of the Nebraska Scrap Metal Drive of World War II By James J. Kimble. 236 pp. Nebraska, 2014. $19.95. Or how Cornhuskers ignited the national campaign that salvaged five million tons of scrap. —Gene Santoro
For information on placing a Direct Response or Marketplace ad in Print and Online contact us today: (800) 649-9800 • Fax: (800) 649-6712 •
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REVIEWS [ THE MONUMENTS MEN Directed by George Clooney. 118 minutes. Blu-Ray/DVD, May 20. $30.99.
B
ased on Robert Edsel’s book (see “The Monuments Men Man,” January/February 2014) about the
B L U -R A Y / D V D
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efforts to recover and protect Nazilooted art across Europe, this high-profile Hollywood flick opened to mostly negative reviews but managed to gross $77 million in the United States, and that much again worldwide. The allstar ensemble cast, including George
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Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, and Bill Murray, does its work well, though their characters, despite being mostly intellectual, aging, and decidedly unmilitary, don’t veer too far from genre types. The Blu-ray Combo Pak offers four add-on featurettes. “George Clooney’s Mission” centers on interviews with the director and cast about the film’s making. In “Marshalling the Cast,” the actors discuss the people they portrayed. “In Their Own Words” looks at the historical Monuments Men via interviews with a veteran and letters and documents. Finally, “A Woman Amongst the Monuments Men” features Blanchett’s take on a character modeled after Rose Valland, the famed Parisian curator who risked her life to keep records of what the Nazis plundered. —Gene Santoro
$48
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The Monuments Men on DVD reveals more about the true story of rescued art.
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COLUMBIA PICTURES/PHOTOFEST
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Battle Films
The Hero’s Adventure in Sands of Iwo Jima By Mark Grimsley
T
HE NEXT TIME you’re talking war movie trivia with friends, ask, “Who is the hero in Sands of Iwo Jima?” Almost inevitably, someone will say, “John Wayne.” Or perhaps “Sergeant Stryker,” since that’s the name of the character Wayne portrays. Either answer will be wrong. Although Stryker is the film’s central figure, the hero is the entire Marine rifle squad he leads into battle. The film’s story unfolds most richly when this is understood. The ideas of mythologist Joseph Campbell offer that understanding. In 1949—the year Sands of Iwo Jima debuted—Campbell published The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Studying cultures the world over, Campbell discovered that each had stories of a hero on a journey of adventure that shared a common structure. In mythic terms “Hero” means more than behaving heroically: a mythological hero is a character who undergoes an adventure that challenges and changes him, and from which he returns with a “boon”—that is, something of lasting value for himself or for others. “A hero,” Campbell said, “is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” Although you may never have heard of Campbell’s book or his terminology, you’ve surely seen his ideas on display, because in creating his Star Wars trilogy, writer/producer George Lucas consciously drew upon them. The Hero (Luke Skywalker) leaves the “ordinary WEIDER ARCHIVES
An understanding of mythology lends layers of depth to a classic war film.
world” of the planet Tatooine, enters the “special world” of the adventure, learns to operate in that world thanks to a Mentor (Obi-Wan Kenobi), fights an adversary (the Empire), reaches a point of maximum peril (the loss of a hand and of his friend, Han Solo), and finally defeats his adversary and brings the boon of enduring peace to the galaxy. Although Campbell was the first to delineate this structure, storytellers have intuitively used it for millennia. So it was with Sands of Iwo Jima, written by Harry Brown and James Edward Grant, and directed by Allan Dwan. The film opens in the “ordinary world” of a Marine Corps training camp in New Zealand. The rifle squad—in mythic terms, the Hero Team, whose members embark on the adventure together—are the first characters introduced. Only then does Sergeant John M. Stryker appear. Stryker’s task is to prepare the Hero Team to enter the “special world” of combat—making him their Mentor. He underscores this when he and the squad first meet: “If I can’t teach you one way, I’ll teach you another. But I’ll get the job done.” And frequently invoking his catchphrase—“Saddle up!”—Stryker proceeds to do exactly that.
Save for the squad’s two combat veterans, the men do not particularly like Stryker. Nor does he try to make himself likeable. He even strikes Private First Class “Sky” Choynski (Hal Baylor) with the butt of his rifle when the private fumbles the footwork involved in a bayonet drill. But true to his word, if Stryker can’t teach Choynski one way, he’ll teach him another. Later in the film he has Choynski shuffle to the tune of the “Mexican Hat Dance” to give Choynski a sense of the rhythm and shifting of body weight involved. As with the Star Wars trilogy, many mythic adventures involve not only a Mentor but a Shadow Mentor, who tries to induce the Hero into embracing the special world’s dark side. In Star Wars, the Shadow Mentor is Darth Vader. In Sands of Iwo Jima, Stryker is both Mentor and Shadow Mentor—a characterization that illuminates the film’s central conflict, that between Stryker and Private First Class Peter Conway (John Agar). Most rifle squad members see only the Mentor, but Conway clearly perceives the Shadow Mentor—helped by the fact that Stryker strongly reminds Conway of his father, a flinty Marine colonel under whose command Stryker served on Guadalcanal. Of his father, Conway speaks bitterly. “I wasn’t tough enough for him. Too soft. ‘No guts’ was the phrase he used. He wanted me to be like Stryker…. I bet they got along just fine. Both with ramrods strapped on their backs…. They’re not going to strap one on mine.” Conway JULY/AUGUST 2014
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views Stryker as the embodiment of man the violent animal as opposed to man the lover of life, family, and culture. Conway directly encounters the Shadow Mentor the night after the Tarawa landings. This is the point of maximum peril for the Hero Team, for headquarters has assigned the squad to hold a sector that requires a force three times larger. In the midst of this tense situation, Conway and Stryker hear a wounded comrade cry out. Stryker refuses to help, saying that the cry may be a ruse and that attempting rescue would give away the squad’s position. To Conway, this response is inhuman. “Sit here if you want,” he says, “I’m getting him. The only way you’ll stop me is to kill me.” Stryker turns his rifle on Conway, his expression one of icy malevolence: “That’s just what I’ll do!” Conway stays put. Success at Tarawa achieved, the squad returns to its training camp, ultimately to be thrown into desperate combat again,
© REPUBLIC PICTURES/PHOTOFEST
The hero of the film is not Sergeant Stryker; the hero is the squad Stryker leads into battle.
this time on Iwo Jima. In the film’s climactic scenes, the squad supports the patrol carrying the Stars and Stripes to the summit of Mount Suribachi. In that fight, Stryker is killed. As the squad huddles around his body, the men watch the flag rise, an act symbolic of the American triumph over Japan and the mythic boon of peace. Then Conway steps forward to lead them. “All right, saddle up!” he growls, using Stryker’s trademark phrase. “Let’s get back in the war.” The squad has completed the Hero’s adventure. But a knowledge of mythic structure leaves us wondering what journey Conway himself has completed. Has he embraced Stryker as Mentor after all? Or has he embraced the Shadow Mentor? Perhaps, as Campbell once expressed it, Conway has “put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty and life” and has at last submitted “to the absolutely intolerable.” 2
JULY/AUGUST 2014
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Challenge
ANSWERS to the March/April Challenge What the…?!?
Churchill’s pressure pod, designed for flying at high altitudes but never used
Hollywood Howlers
The film has German soldiers wearing World War I-era helmets
What the ...?!? What was this contraption and who used it?
Hollywood
Howlers
Name That Patch
The British unit that replaced Thunderbirds at Anzio caves, the 56th London Infantry Division
Congratulations to the winners: Douglas K. Swim, David Edward, and William H. Niemeier
By casting Edward G. Robinson as FBI agent Ed Renard to chase operatives of German Naval Intelligence in his 1939 thriller Confessions of a Nazi Spy, director Anatole Litvak helped the star reboot from gangster to good guy. However the script ran aground on a key detail. What is it?
Please send your answers to all three questions, and your mailing address, to:
Name That Patch
July/August Challenge World War II 19300 Promenade Drive Leesburg, VA 20176
Which unit wore this insignia?
or e-mail:
[email protected]
WEIDER ARCHIVES
Three winners, chosen at random from all correct entries submitted by August 15, will receive a copy of the film Monuments Men on Blu-ray. Answers will appear in the November/December 2014 issue. JULY/AUGUST 2014
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Pinup
Winning Smile The face is familiar; the pose, perhaps less so. Before Lucille Ball became the beloved star of the 1950s television series I Love Lucy, she was a model and B-movie actress—with an unusual war story. She was driving through Los Angeles in 1942 with just-installed temporary fillings in her teeth. As she passed a series of vacant lots she suddenly picked up a staccato rhythm in her mouth. “My whole jaw was vibrating,” she told television host Dick Cavett in 1974. An investigation allegedly revealed a hidden Japanese radio station. Strange coincidence? Prank by a gifted comedienne? Or were Lucy’s, as Cavett said, the “teeth that helped win the war”?
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COMMEMORATE THE 70th ANNIVERSARY of D-DAY and SUPPORT AMERICA’S WWII MUSEUM
MICHELIN BATTLE OF NORMANDY MAP
THE LONGEST DAY 70th ANNIVERSARY COLLECTOR’S EDITION by CORNELIUS RYAN
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