Lesser known details of WW2 part four

Alex Büchner : the German defensive battles of the Russian front 1944

" Hitler placed no value in such positions in the rear areas and was often against them ( "They encourage the Generals to have an eye to the rear!" he once observed ). As a rule the available reserves were one division for each army, one battalion for each division and a company for each regiment- a laughable number."

 

Thomas Cooper was badly wounded in fighting the Russians during February 1943. He was picked up by his men, and carried back to Schablinov. From there he was evacuated via Narva, Riga and Konigsberg all the way back to Bad Muskau, a small town located near Gorlitz. Due to his injuries, Thomas Cooper was awarded the Wound Badge in Silver, becoming the only Englishman to receive a German Combat decoration.


http://www.stephen-stratford.co.uk/thomas_cooper.htm

 

THE LOST DIVISION

Around 19,000 American soldiers had deserted in France and in Germany at the end of 1945, many living on farms and working as labourers, as black market racketeers, or in safe hiding places in their new found girl friends houses. By 1948, about 9,000 had been found. In 1947, the British Government announced an offer of leniency for British deserters and 837 gave themselves up.

Lesser Known Facts of WW2

 

Last Japanese Soldier to Surrender was in 1980!

The last Japanese soldier to surrender was Captain Fumio Nakahira who held out until April, 1980, before being discovered at Mt. Halcon on Mindoro Island in the Philippines. Before that, there was Onoda Hiroo, discovered in the jungle of Lubang Island on March 11, 1974, twenty-nine years after the war ended. He has since published a book 'No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War'. Nakamura Teruo was discovered on the island of Morotai on December 18, 1974, still believing the war was on. Sergeant Yoloi Shoichi survived in the jungles of Guam until found on January 24, 1972. He died in September, 1997 at the age of 82.

 

Megargee, Geoffrey P. Inside Hitler's High Command. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000.

Hitler's style of command, and especially the so-called Fuehrerprinzip, or leader principle, was beginning to have insidious effects on the command system. According to the Fuehrerprinzip, every commander held sole responsibility for decisions within his command, and he was also duty-bound to obey every order he received from his superior commander. The Fuehrer himself stood, of course, at the top of this hierarchy; his will was quite literally law. Every senior commander (and more junior commanders, too, as the war went on) knew that Hitler had the power to issue or change any order. More and more often they began to appeal to him directly , as Guderian did on December 20, and his personal style was such that he allowed such behavior, even though it clearly violated the chain of command.

For a time Hitler simultaneously held four levels of command: head of state, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, commander-in-chief of the Army, and commander of Army Group B, the latter at a distance of some 800 miles.

As Allied material superiority increasingly made itself felt, the lack of German resources caused greater and greater competition between OKH and OKW for their own purposes. Some of these disputes, despite their deadly seriousness, were laughable.


In late February, for instance, the commander in chief west, Rundstedt, complained to the OKW that the General Staff had ordered a division to move out for the east on April 3; he said that the unit was not yet ready for combat in Russia. The Armed Forces Command Staff then reminded the General Staff that, in accordance with the Fuehrer's policy, only the Command Staff could determine departure dates for units in the OKW theaters. Finally the problem went to Hitler, after which the OKW notified the General Staff that the division would be available on April 4-- one day later than the General Staff's original target date. Such were the quarrels that were taking up an increasing amount of the staffs' time.

Command arrangements grew ever more nightmarish. Eventually, an OKW-controlled army group, E, was part of the front line facing the Soviets, but the Armed Forces High Command obstinately refused to transfer control of the force to OKH. Tactical units on the ground, side by side at the theater boundary, had to appeal all the way up to the very top of the chain of command to coordinate with each other.

The next 1a was Lieutenant Colonel Ulrich de Maiziere, whose story sums up the status of the General Staff in the last weeks of the war. He was not quite thirty-three years old when he took up his post, and yet for the last two weeks of his tenure (April 10-24, 1945), he was the de facto chief of the Operations Branch. In an interview in 1996 he emphasized that he would not have been qualified for that post as it had existed earlier; he was not experienced enough to plan major operations. De Maiziere was extremely busy, but his role was almost clerical. The Operations Branch collated the situation reports and updated the maps as always. Hitler reviewed the reports in his briefings and made his decisions, which de Maiziere would record and issue as orders.De Maiziere went so far as to place a quote from a film in his office: "It is not my place to think about the senselessness of the tasks that are assigned to me."

In April 1945 Hitler finally rationalized his command apparatus by officially subordinating OKH to OKW. He was a day late and a dollar short. "When Hitler issued that last order regarding the command structure, Russian artillery shells were already bursting in the Chancellery courtyard above his head."

 

Damn, I have to get this one!

 

Now that's dedication. The History Channel ran a program on that a few years back on Onada Hiroo. I wasn't aware of Nakahira though.

 

The Falco and Regia Aeronautica in the Battle of Britain.

(Found this a while back but still find it quite interesting and rather unkown...)

One of the least well documented episodes of the Battle of Britain concerns the activities of Corpo Aereo Italiano (CAI) when during the late stage of the battle the Regia Aeronautica was instructed to establish a force in Belgium to assist in operations against the British.Participation of the Regia Aeronautica at the end of the Battle of Britain was viewed as a political necessity - yet it was unwanted by the German High Command (!).

CAI came into being on 10 September 1940, under the aegis of 1a Squadra Aerea di Milano. Generale sa (Air Marshal) Rino Corso-Fougier was made Air Officer Commanding.
There where three Stormi (roughly a RAF Wing). Two of these were bombers and were the striking force, self-protection being provided by the fighter Stormo. With the transport element (twelve Caproni 133Ts, one Savoia-Marchetti S.75, with nine Ca164s for communications) a force of some two hundred aircraft.
On 22 October the CAI is finally complete in Belgium.Zone of operations allocated to the Italians was bounded by the parallels 53oN and 01oE. The worthwhile targets were along the coast between the Thames and Harwich including the estuaries of the Orwell and Stour. In fact there is a single unconfirmed report of only one inland attack and that on Canterbury.

Operations commenced on October 24 with a night bombing raid on Felixstowe and Harwich, twelve BR.20Ms of 13o Stormo and six from 43o Stormo taking part.

On 16 April 1941 20o Gruppo took off from their base to fly back to Italy and further on to Libya.
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Another operation that took place by late 1940 was the infamous Corpo Aereo Italiano (C.A.I.). The propaganda operation designed to have Italian aircraft operating against the RAF on the Channel was ill conceived and conducted and showed at full the defects and the approximation of the Regia Aeronautica. The FIAT CR. 42s operating with C.A.I. were fifty, belonging to 18° Gruppo. On 10/19/40 they transferred on to the Belgian airfield of Ursel. The first action took place on 10/29, when 39 CR.42s escorted the Br.20s over Ramsgate. On 11/11 the bombers were escorted over Harwich by 40 CR.42s but were intercepted by Spitfires and Hurricanes causing the loss of three CR.42s, while another nineteen were forced to crash-land in Belgium due to lack of fuel caused by the combat. The last action of November took place on the 29th between Margate and Folkstone with a combat against Spitfires that caused the loss of two more CR.42s (the British losses are still uncertain, if any). On 1/10/41 the CR.42s began to come back to Italy. Lack of heating equipment, open cockpits, primitive radio sets, in addition to an absolute lack of navigational capacities of the Italian pilots (a specific training was undertaken only after 1942) transformed this operation in a real nightmare for those involved!


http://www.dalnet.se/~surfcity/falco_bob.htm

 

The famous ace Bob Stanford Tuck carried a Beretta pistol as his personal sidearm - it was taken from one of the Italian bombers shot down over East Anglia.

 

There's quite a book on this.

Chianti Raiders

 

Two genuine (?!) pics being sold in Finnish auction site.

 

Service de Travail Obligatoire (STO)

The STO was possibly the biggest single recruiting factor for the French Resistance throughout the war years. It was a system by which young French men were obliged to go and work in Germany and take the place of civilians who had been drafted into the armed forces. It was extremely unpopular and when it was made compulsory in February 1943, by the French Prime Minister Pierre Laval, it provided a huge boost to the resistance forces.

 

ok ok, what the heck is this finnish site yall keep going to?! could somebody give me a link? i would like to browse and buy there...

 

The link is:

www.huuto.net

Unfortunately I think it is a bit "too Finnish" as the descriptions are only/mostly in our language....

 

The Sturmgeschütz III originated from an initial proposal that Colonel Erich von Manstein submitted to General Beck in 1935 in which he suggested that Sturmartillerie (Assault Artillery) units should be used in a direct-fire support role for infantry divisions. To that end, on June 15, 1936, Daimler-Benz AG received an order to develop an armoured infantry support vehicle capable of mounting a 75 mm (2.95 in) artillery piece.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/s/st/sturmgesch%C3%BCtz_iii2.htm

 

RAF bomber command losses by plane,target and month at the end of the site mentioned below:

http://www.elsham.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/raf_bc/

By target:

1. Berlin
2. Training (!)
3. Minelaying (!!)
4. Essen
....

 

That is a very good site. They lost almost as many aircraft to training as they did bombing Berlin.

 

note for Essen how close it is to Venlo, one of the prime night fighter network airfields with access from several defence units in the north. Duisburg and Bochum in the outsdie locals of Essen were heavily defended also by numerous 8.8cm's

 

From Maser´s "Hitler"

Hitler was released from Austrian ( Austro-Hungarian?) army service on Feb 5th 1914 in Salzburg for being too weak to serve ( it is suspected his "lung disease" was the cause ).

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So this means he was not in Germany in order to stay out of army really. But he was not prepared to fight for the Austrian army, but for the German army yes!

 

It seems that the German propaganda machine used a term to strengthen the Berlin defence in early 1945 that "The Soviets are as far from Berlin as the German army was from Paris in 1918"...