lesser known details of WW2 part two

Also, the tunnel may have existed but nobody was allowed to leave without proper authorization. The flying tribunal squads made sure of this.

 

it was actually more of a tunnel system with several different branches. The water aquesuct that I spoke of being one. I have an elderly customer who mentions retreating through one in the last days of the Berlin chaos where she escaped with her familie. She told me of events that were gruesome to thier neighbors, that I will not repeat here. She at times along with her other brother and younger sister would remain up on the two story rafters, covering themselves with soot so they would blend in with the burned roof line. Her parents had a secret trap door in the floor and on more than one occassion the Soviets would come in and ran-sack what was left of their home, drunken like skunks and there to remain for hourse before being found by their commanders. Crapping and pissing all over the place, and yet to return on more than 5 different times to do the same again.......

~E

 

Oooops! Please excuse the faux pas. Did not know you literally meant a 'tunnel'.

 

Do I remember wrong or did not the SS open the flood gates (?) into the tunnel system and actually kill many German civilian people during the very last days of the war? probably some Russians but the main damage being done to the civilians?

 

Why not?

German rational- the individual is insignificant to the state.

 

Mildred Harnack.



Mildred was born Mildred Fish in Milwaukee USA on September 16th 1902. In 1926, she married Arvid Harnack whom she met while studying literature at Wisconsin University. In 1929 she and her husband moved to Berlin where she was a lecturer at the university. They became friends with Martha Dodd and were often invited to receptions at the American Embassy where she met many influential Germans. When the war started, Arvid and Mildred supported the resistance movement against the Nazi regime through their friendship with Harro Schulze-Boysen and the spy ring known as "The Red Orchestra". On September 7th 1942, she was arrested and taken to Gestapo headquarters. At her trial in December 1942, she was sentenced to six years in prison for "helping to prepare high treason and espionage". On December 21st Hitler rejected the sentence and ordered another trial which took place in January 1943 and resulted in a death sentence. At 6.57 p.m. on February 16, 1943, Mildred Harnack was guillotined, becoming the only American woman to be executed inside the German Reich for resisting Adolph Hitler and the Nazionalsozialisten (Nazis). . (By September, 1943, all fifty one members of the 'Red Orchestra' had died, two by suicide, eight on the gallows and forty-one guillotined).


http://www.dsha.k12.wi.us/harnack.htm




Arvid and Mildred Harnack, an economist and teacher, respectively, were leaders in the German resistance movement.

 

What?

No conversation? Kill all the US persons in Reich for the *** of it? Hello? Anyone know this woman? Or was her sacrifice a total zero?

 

Ok, but that´s a fact that I sent you earlier...if that doesn´t make you feel I don´t know if anything else will???



------
Big Yank’s Crew Story

http://www.483rd.com/yank2.html

The second Unit Citation was for a March 24, 1945 mission. It was called the longest mission flown in Italy, 75 miles beyond Ruhland to the capital of the Fatherland, Berlin. The target was the Daimler-Benz Tank Works which had been assembling heavy and medium tanks for direct shipment to the Russian front. The bomb pattern was accurate in spite of an attack by 16 ME-262 German jet fighters. In the ensuing battle, we were credited with the destruction of six jets against the loss of only one Fortress, the Dailey/Dean crew of the 817th.

The 483rd is the only Bomb Group in the entire Air Force to be credited with having shot down three German turbo-jet fighters (Me-262) on one mission by one plane, and is the only Group with an aerial gunner to be credited with having shot down two Me-262's. This is the story of the gallant crew that was the Group’s tail-end Charlie in the Big Yank on the Berlin mission on March 24, 1945 and who won these honors for us and helped to earn the second Presidential Citation awarded to the 483rd Bomb Group (H).

 

A story of one different story how to drink the toast in WW2 ( in Norway ):

From "Eye of Dietl" by Konrad Knabe:

During the years the reconnaissance men had developed a form of therapy called " Göppinger Salamander"; As well this was the home place of the men in Württenberg:

During the early hours the commander would say:

" All up! Attention! Grap the table by your right had! Grap the table by your left hand! Lift the table! Left hand off! Right hand off!"

And a crash as all the bottles and glasses fell to the ground...

 

The Polish and Iran 1942 ( Yes, the Polish!)

http://www.polandsholocaust.org/1942.html

March 1942

Over 70,000 Polish ex-POWs and exiles assemble at Buzuluk, USSR, as members of Anders' Army. Evacuated to Iran, they will be equipped by the British and will
form the Polish 2nd Corps which will fight in the Middle East and Italy.

April

First mass evacuation of Poles from the USSR. Overcrowded Soviet ships ferry them across the Caspian Sea from Krasnovodsk to Iran. Some 77,200 soldiers and 37,3000 civilians, including 15,000 children, are released by the USSR.

September 12 Polish Army is formed in Iraq from Command in the Middle East
and Polish Military Forces in USSR evacuated to Iran. In 1943 the army is transferred
to Palestine in preparation for the Italian Campaign, and the Polish 2nd Corps leaves
here for Europe.

--------------

http://www.immi.gov.au/research/publications/langfitt/langfitt52.htm

----------

http://www.netiran.com/Htdocs/Clippings/Social/020430XXSO01.html

-----------

Exile and Identity: Polish Women in the Soviet Union During World War II, 356 pages, published in 2002 by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2003/february5/exile-25.html

After the Red Army invaded and annexed eastern Poland in 1939, Communist authorities began a series of carefully orchestrated deportations. Similar events took place in the Baltic states and to many ethnic groups within the USSR. Of those, about 600,000 were women.

What is unusual about the Polish experience, compared to that of the other deported groups, is that an estimated 115,000 people were permitted to leave Soviet territory in 1942. After the German army invaded the USSR, the Soviets turned to the Poles as allies. The 1941 Sikorski-Maiskii Pact called for the formation of a Polish army in the USSR to fight the Nazis and it promised an amnesty to all Polish citizens inside the country.

Jolluck explains that a Polish general, Wladyslaw Anders, was released from a Moscow prison to form what became known as the Anders army. In the summer of 1941, waves of Poles began arriving in the southern portions of the USSR in search of the military outposts.

"Although the Soviets were supposedly amnestying everyone, they tried to hold people back by not giving travel documents or money," Jolluck said. "Soviets would divert trains to collective farms and force people to pick cotton. Women sold their last possessions -- like a sweater -- to buy food. Many of those people were stuck there for good."

As part of the amnesty, two evacuations took place in 1942 from Soviet territory across the Caspian Sea to Iran. More were promised but did not materialize because Soviet-Polish diplomatic relations broke down following the 1943 discovery of the massacre in Katyn, Ukraine, where Soviet authorities murdered 4,400 Polish army officers in 1940.

Shortly after arriving in Iran, evacuees were asked by Polish officials to write about their experiences under the Soviet regime. The objective was partly to collect information that would be used to help nullify the annexation of eastern Poland after the war ended. The exiles also formed the first large group of people in about 20 years who were exposed to life in the Soviet Union and then allowed to leave. "The testimonies may constitute a precious source enabling us to reveal to world opinion the truth about Russia," one official noted in the book. Of the tens of thousands of handwritten reports collected, about 20,000 ended up in the Hoover Institution, including at least 2,000 written by women.

 

Germany´s attempt to kill Churchill (?)

Jun. 2, 1943: Leslie Howard, the British actor who had played Ashley Wilkes in the 1939 classic film “Gone With the Wind,” was killed as the airplane in which he was flying was shot down by German raiders. Howard was returning to London from Lisbon, where it is now believed he was on a secret mission. Also onboard BOAC Flight 777 was Alfred Chenfalls, a double for British Prime Minister Winston Churchill . It is thought that the Germans believed that the great English statesman was on the plane. The last film in which Howard appeared was “The First of the Few,” the film-bio of Reginald Mitchell, the designer of the Spitfire, England’s most successful fighter plane of World War II. Unfortunately, Howard was not the first of the few, but one of many British citizens to die in the service of his or her country during the war.

http://www.ojornal.com/Community/article_11_english.htm

 

A very interesting ( and now very rare ) book about this incident, called 'Flight 777' by Ian Colvin, was published in 1957.

The aircraft was apparently attacked by eight Ju 88 C-6 aircraft of KG40, and the fatal attack is believed to have been made by a Leutnant Bellstedt.

 

Ha haa,

back to the weird stories of the WW2:

On Risto Peltovuori´s book "Germany and Winter war " (1975 )

Marshal Göring sent his first message in late October 1939 to the Finnish government through Count Eric von Rosen. Rosen told to Finnish R. Numelin in Stockholm that Göring had been backing Hitler´s Russian politics for an hour after which he had burst to tears: " No, I cannot any more; I´m here backing the communist regime and that´s totally against my conviction!"

 

The turbocompressor

http://aerostories.free.fr/technique/turbo/page2.html

by Philippe Bauduin


The first known air turbine was made in Alexandria 150 years before our era. It consisted of a large vertical tube which by the draught it created, spun a propeller on which revolved pictures from mythology.

Not until last century with the development of aviation was any interest shown in air turbines or exhaust gases as a supercharge for engines. More than its known performance, it was its use in lack of air at high altitude that led to the use of the compressor in the First World War. It was a Frenchman Auguste Rateau who, in 1916 suggested the fitting of compressors as a supercharge. Two methods were used : to combine the compressor with the motor or to use the exhaust gases passed through a turbine. The first method: that of coupling the compressor to the motor was soon abandoned since at a certain altitude the power used by the compressor was greater than it produced. The second method, the turbo compressor, using energy from the exhaust gave greater force.

Of all the aircraft fitted with a supercharge of this nature, two are worthy of note. They were engaged in a dog-fight at 44,000 feet, a record altitude. One was a Junkers 86 fitted with a German heavy oil two-stroke diesel and a compressor attached, piloted by Horst Götz , (of whom more later as pilot of the Arado 234).

He was intercepted over Christchurch on his way to bomb Cardiff. His adversary in a Spitfire with a Rolls-Royce carburetor engine fitted with compressor was an Ace pilot of the RAF : Prince Emmanuel Galitzine, a descendant of Catherine the Great of Russia . They met at 44 000 feet in the first dog fight ever at that altitude, in a rarefied atmosphere for men and motors alike.

The engagement lasted 45 minutes without either gaining advantage. Horst Götz returned to Caen-Carpiquet worn out. It was an engagement that remains without parallel in air warfare of the Second World War.

After Mario Pezzi in 1939, they demonstrated that high altitudes were accessible to men and machines.
It may be noted in passing that Diesel aviation motors of the time were more powerful in relation to their weight than those fuelled by petrol. This perhaps explains why there is renewed interest today in diesel motors for light aircraft.

 

http://www.sonic.net/~bstone/archives/000902.shtml

Under the publicly stated terms of the British guarantee to the Poles in March 1939, the British would have been within their rights to declare war on the Soviets for their invasion of Poland, although a secret clause in the Anglo-Polish treaty stipulated that the term aggressor applied to Germany only . For the moment, the British confined their response to a Foreign Office note delivered to the Soviets condemning their invasion of Poland and making it clear that a permanent partition of the country was unacceptable.



I guess the British government policy had been quite early on set to the fact that they need the Russians to beat Hitler´s Germany...

 

Osborn, Patrick R. Operation Pike: Britain versus the Soviet Union, 1939-1941. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.

http://www.sonic.net/~bstone/archives/000902.shtml

From the site:

"He discusses in considerable depth Winston Churchill's seriously hare-brained scheme, Operation Catherine, for providing Royal Navy battleships with water-filled "galoshes" to reduce their draft, "mine bumpers," and an additional "umbrella" of deck armor-- all so they could sail into the Baltic and isolate Germany from Scandinavian iron ore, consequently winning the war in record time."

Churchill, still First Lord of the Admiralty, also forecast that Germany would promptly move into the Balkans before attacking France; this led to his much-cherished dream for a Balkan bloc to offer a unified front against Germany. Similarly, General Weygand in the Levant wanted desperately to introduce Allied troops into the Balkans. Meanwhile, General Wavell in Egypt communicated fears of a Russo-German thrust through Turkey or Iran into the Near East to capture the oilfields in Iran and Iraq and the Suez Canal and proposed strategies for dealing with the threat.

Various other far-fetched schemes were mooted by assorted diplomats and soldiers: convincing Tokyo to join in an Anglo-Japanese declaration of war against Russia; infiltrating agents and saboteurs into the country; sailing a Royal Navy squadron into the Black Sea to "hold it" in case of war with Moscow; slipping submarines into the Black Sea to attack Soviet oil tankers; "encouraging" Free Polish submarines to sink Soviet shipping in the Baltic Sea. In short, many Western leaders were in favor of going to war against Stalin, and indeed many in a position of power in the British government still found Bolshevism more of a threat than Nazism. This attitude was mirrored in Paris, and soon reached new levels.

The Soviet invasion of Finland set off another frenzy of brainstorming that hatched more hopeless schemes of anti-Bolshevik intervention, now including, at least in theory, Mussolini's Italy. Among those seriously considered was "intervention by proxy" with Free Polish troops landed at Petsamo, since Poland was already considered to be at war with Russia.

By the end of Marc 1940 Churchill was advocating that three British submarines move into the Black Sea to intercept Russian oil traffic there.

 

http://www.feldgrau.com/30i.html

30.Infanterie-Division

In Sept.1939 as a part of Heeresgruppe Sud, 8.Armee, X.Armeekorps (General Ulex), the 30th, led by Generalmajor von Briesen, saw very heavy action against the cut-off Polish Army in the final stages of the short campaign. After action reports state that with his division stretched to the limits against the counter-attacking Poles, Generalmajor von Briesen personally led his last reserve battalion into the desperate fighting, halting the Poles, but losing his left forearm in the process. Vistied in Hospital by Keitel and Hitler, von Briesen was awarded the Knights Cross for his gallantry, and for maintaing the integrity of Blaskowitz's 8.Armee's lines; the first Divisional commander of the war to be thusly awarded. Hereafter, the 30.Infanterie was commonly known as the Briesen Division. (Von Briesen himself was promoted, and later became Military Commandant of Paris, 1940-42.)

General der Infanterie von Briesen retired from active service in 1943.

 

Wehrmacht Oath of Loyalty

http://ddickerson.igc.org/oath-of-loyalty.html

Each member of the German armed forces (Wehrmacht) swore an oath of personal allegiance to Adolf Hitler -- and not to the constitution. This oath went into effect on 2 August 1934, the day that Reich President Paul von Hindenberg died, and Hitler immediately consolidated the offices of president and chancellor.

The Wehrmacht Oath of Loyalty to Adolf Hitler, 2 August 1934


"I swear by God this sacred oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich, supreme commander of the armed forces, and that I shall at all times be prepared, as a brave soldier, to give my life for this oath."

The defence minister General von Blomberg accepted this oath for the army and the oath was written by General major Walter von Reichenau.

An addtition to the oath by General Blomberg was that all soldiers must call Hitler as "Führer"!

 

You are right, Kai. Beneath Anhalter, at the underground station, the Headquarters of Panzerdivision 'Münchenberg' was located along with hundreds of refugees and civilians hiding from the bombings. But when the Russians started getting into the underground tunnel-system, Hitler ordered his SS troops to flood the tunnels to prevent the Russians from using them. However, some one forgot to tell the Führer that there were many civilians and German troops hiding in the tunnels...

 

And forgot to tell you that the gallery of British military leaders was very useful, thanks!