Lesser known details of WW2 part four

The V-J Day kiss



It seems as if everybody's claiming to be the sailor--or the nurse he's kissing--in the famous photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt for LIFE magazine on V-J Day, August 14, 1945.

http://www.life.com/Life/special/kiss01.html

But LIFE magazine has never identified the couple in the historic embrace--and probably never will....


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or is the nurse Edith Shain?

http://arthistory.about.com/b/a/193676.htm

 

The only major combat engagement by Corsairs in Europe came on April 3, 1944, when RNFAA Corsairs from HMS Victorious escorted bombers which attacked the German battleship Tirpitz in Norwegian waters.

http://rwebs.net/dispatch/output.asp?ArticleID=16

 

http://crime.about.com/od/gangsters/a/genovese.htm

Vito "Don Vito" Genovese

In 1937, Genovese fled to Naples, Italy to avoid the possibilities of facing a murder charge. While in Italy, he got involved with Benito Mussolini and became the main drug source for Count Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law.

 

Ordeal of Convoy NY119

One of the most daring and unusual Atlantic convoys left New York for England in September 1944. It was made up of a variety of sea-going tugs, small harbor tugs, yard tankers, and railroad car floats with wooden barges mounted on top. These were owned by the U.S. Army and were desperately needed in the bombed-out harbors of France. The U.S. Navy, with a few destroyer escorts and other small vessels, managed to herd this slow-moving armada to Falmouth, England, via the Azores Islands. The convoy, which took 30 days, encountered a violent storm in the English Channel, losing a large number of ships and 19 mariners in this dare-devil crossing.

http://www.usmm.org/ww2.html#anchor1638580

 

In Hitler's Henchmen Dr. Henk van Capelle and Dr. Peter van de Bovenkamp tell how Henriette von Schirach in 1943 was invited to the Netherlands by friends in the German occupation forces. She witnessed a frightful scene in Amsterdam: a crowd of scared Jewish women with bundles brutally being rounded up for deportation.

She was shocked and asked her friends for an explanation. She later recalled: "I was told that Jewish women were being deported and didn't I know about it? .. My friends advised me to take the matter up with Hitler himself .."

Henriette broke off her visit to the Netherlands, and telephoned the Berghof to make an appointment with Hitler: "It was a splendid, somewhat sultry fall evening when we joined the regular company by the large open fire at the Berghof. I was still confused and had thought out no plan for the manner in which I would approach Hitler .. Long after midnight Hitler turned to me and asked in a friendly tone: You have just come back from Holland, have you not?"

Henriette presumed on her long friendship with Hitler to describe what she had witnessed in Amsterdam: "Although I had already had a double cognac, the moment still came totally unexpectedly. I took a deep breath and answered: Yes, that is why I am here. I wanted to speak to you about some terrible things I saw; I cannot believe that you know about them. Helpless women were being rounded up and driven together to be sent off to a concentration camp and I think that they will never return."

"A painful stillness fell; all color had left Hitler's face. His face looked like a death mask in the light of the flames. He looked at me aghast and at the same time surprised and said: We are at war. He very cautiously stood up .. At that moment he screamed at me: You are sentimental, Frau von Schirach! You have to learn to hate! What have Jewish women in Holland got to do with you?"

"The rest of the company were quite as mice. Nobody looked at me. I walked out of the room and once in the vestibule I began to run. One of Hitler's adjutants came running after me. The Führer was furious. I was asked to leave the Obersalzberg immediately."

Henriette von Schirach and her husband were never invited again ...

http://www.annefrank.dk/Schirach/new_page_2.htm

 

Interesting info:

"Hitler's People's State: Robbery, Racial War and National Socialism" by Goetz Aly

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,347726,00.html

Hitler, says Goetz Aly, was a "feel good dictator," a leader who not only made Germans feel important, but also made sure they were well cared-for by the state.

Despite near-constant warfare, never once during his 12 years in power did Hitler raise taxes for working class people. He also -- in great contrast to World War I -- particularly pampered soldiers and their families, offering them more than double the salaries and benefits that American and British families received.

Financing such home front "happiness" was not simple and Hitler essentially achieved it by robbing and murdering others, Aly claims. Jews. Slave laborers. Conquered lands. All offered tremendous opportunities for plunder, and the Nazis exploited it fully, he says.

Once the robberies had begun, a sort of "snowball effect" ensued and in order to stay afloat, he says Germany had to conquer and pilfer from more territory and victims.

Aly cites secret Nazi files showing that from 1941-1943 Germans robbed enough food and supplies from the Soviet Union to care for 21 million people. Meanwhile, he insists, Soviet war prisoners were systematically starved. German soldiers were also encouraged to send care packages home to their families to boost the morale of their wives and children. In the first three months of 1943, German soldiers on the Leningrad front sent more than 3 million packages stuffed with artifacts, art, valuables and food home, Aly says.

The documents include reams of complex economic, bank and tax records as well as thousands of clippings from regional newspaper archives that Aly spent the past four years scouring. In the book, he uses them to support his theory that half the war was financed by government credit and that close to 70 percent of the rest came from plunder.....

 

Von Bock privately expresses outrage at the atrocities. But after repeatedly being prodded to object to Hitler personally and take concrete action to stop it, instead he sends one of his subordinate officers to lodge the complaint. When his envoy returns empty-handed, von Bock declares triumphantly:

"Gentlemen! Let it be noted that Field Marshal von Bock protested."

 

Not translated to English yet

 

Mosquito over Kobenhavn March 21st 1945

http://www.befrielsen1945.dk/temaer/hverdagen/moerklaegning/kilder/kilde3.html



Low level bombing in Europe

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/theartofwar/prop/the_fighting_forces/INF3_1273.htm



Across the North Sea to Berlin...(?)

http://www.mikekemble.com/ww2/mosquito.html

 

Nazi Saboteurs in America

Minutes after midnight on June 13, 1942, four men, led by George Dasch, landed on the beach in Long Island, New York. Dasch along with his three accomplices, Ernest Peter Burger, Heinrich Harm Heinck, and Richard Quirin, had enough explosives for two years of sabotage.

In Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, another four man team landed on June 17, 1942. They too had enough explosives to conduct two years of sabotage in the United States.

The goal of this mission was to bring the war to America. The eight men were to disrupt our ability to produce and transport crucial equiptment to our boys in Europe and frighten the American population.

Before being able to commit any acts of sabotage, all eight men were arrested by June 27, 1942. All eight were found guilty by a Military Commission. Six of the eight received the death penalty. The other two received prison sentences -- one received a 30 year imprisonment and the other received a life sentence.

http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/nazi/nazi.htm

 

A bit earlier before WW2 but interesting..

After "Night of the long knives" Hitler flew back to Berlin where on arrival Sepp Dietrich reported to Hitler at the Chancellery. Hitler told Sepp: " Do you know you were also on the list...?"

( Hitler removed his name put who put it there...)

 

I would not doubt it if Himmler put his name on the list. Dietrich could have been percieved as a strong rival within Himmler's SS empire until the war started and Dietrich showed more interest in leading fighting troops than policing a state.

[ 30. November 2005, 09:07 AM: Message edited by: PzJgr ]

 

Agreed. I have read that Göring was another one who put more names in the list but Himmler definitely wanted Sepp out of the pic...

 

M3 Grant tank:

The US were able to produce more than 6,000 M3´s in little more than 15 months...!!?

http://tuskan.huuto.net/auctionimages/e/a1/926c433e1d47868f1d1fe8afee636-orig.jpg

 

No doubt the U.S. chose production over quality. They were trying to play catch-up with stop-gaps.
They chose production over R&D, until the Pershing, designed from the start as a "tank killer".
After years of hard knocks, the Pershing incorporated the lessons learned. Low profile, big gun, good suspension/mobility/speed, better armor.

 

The Stroop Report was an album prepared by SS Major General Juergen Stroop, commander of the German forces which liquidated the Warsaw ghetto, to document the suppression of the ghetto uprising in the spring of 1943. Commissioned by Friedrich Wilhelm Krueger, Higher SS and Police Leader in Krakow, and bound in leather, the report was intended as a souvenir album for Heinrich Himmler to celebrate the hard won victory, which took twenty days and 1,200 SS, Wehrmacht and police troops to accomplish. The Stroop Report consists of three parts: an introduction and summary of SS operations, a collection of daily communiques, and a series of approximately 52 photographs. Three albums were prepared: for Himmler, Krueger and Stroop, all of which were recovered after the war. One of them was introduced as evidence at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg and later published under the title, "The Stroop Report." The albums --which bear slight discrepancies in the number of photos they contain-- are currently located at the National Archives (Washington), the Bundesarchiv (Koblenz), and the Main Crimes Commission (Warsaw).

http://www1.ushmm.org/uia-cgi/uia_doc/photos/4207?hr=null

 

Very interesting, Kai. Never knew this existed but it is fascinating....Thanks for posting.

 

You´re welcome Stevin!

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When the news of Roosevelt's death crackled over the Berlin radio, Josef Goebbels, the wily intellectual of Hitler's inner circle, had just
returned by motor car from the Eastern Front. The city was suffering bombardment, and the Adlon Hotel was burning. As he mounted the steps of the Propaganda Ministry, a German reporter said to him, "Herr Reichsminister, Roosevelt is dead."

Goebbels stood transfixed, then invited the reporter inside for some champagne. Speaking on his private line to the Fuehrerbunker beneath the Chancellery building, Goebbels informed Hitler: "My Fuehrer, I congratulate you! Roosevelt is dead. It is written in the stars that the second half of April will be the turning point for us. This is Friday, April the 13th. It is the turning point!" Hitler made a reply to Goeb­bels, and when the propaganda minister had replaced the tele­phone in its cradle, he was ecstatic.

It is not strictly true that Hitler and Goebbels believed in astrology, but several Nazi leaders such as Himmler did; this was tolerated and served to amuse the Fuehrer. Goebbels would employ astrology or any device he could think of to cheer up his leader. As he remarked after the telephone call, "Crazy times call for crazy measures."

http://www.animalfarm.org/mb/6.shtml

 

The biggest jerk in ETO was Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee (USMA 1909), commander of Services of Supply (SOS). He had a most difficult job, to be sure. And of course it is in the nature of an army that everyone resents the quartermaster, and Lee was the head quartermaster for the whole of ETO.

Lee was a martinet who had an exalted opinion of himself. He also had a strong religious fervor (Eisenhower compared him to Cromwell) that struck a wrong note with everyone. He handed out the equipment as if it were a personal gift. He hated waste; once he was walking through a mess hall, reached into the garbage barrel, pulled out a half-eaten loaf of bread, started chomping on it, and gave the cooks hell for throwing away perfectly good food. He had what Bradley politely called "an unfortunate pomposity" and was cordially hated. Officers and men gave him a nickname based on his initials, J.C.H. -- Jesus Christ Himself.

http://edition.cnn.com/books/beginnings/9808/citizen.soldier/

 

Supply and Overlord

By June ( July?) the Allied were 30% behind in planned port capacity. In August 207 ships sat waiting to be unloaded but there was nowhere to go. Cargo ships began to be used as floating warehouses. In the fall of 1944 American divisions arriving in France were forced to sit idle because there was no way to support them.

1944 Americans in Brest
Jonathan Gawne

http://www.militaria.com/brittany/bob.html