The Magnificent Eleven: D-Day's Famous Photos

One of the eleven frames from D-Day. Photo sourced from WikiCommons.

Today is the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. Those who think of D-Day often picture the opening scene of Steven Spielberg's iconic film "Saving Private Ryan" (or, "The Longest Day", for those of the older generations). Aside from first-hand accounts, the knowledge to film those scenes successfully had to come from somewhere, and we are fortunate to have any photos of D-Day at all.

Omaha Beach is where "Saving Private Ryan"'s scenes take place, and it is where the heaviest fighting occurred on D-Day. It is also where Robert Capa, combat photographer for Life magazine, found himself riding along in the landing craft with the second wave of troops.

Wading through the water, ducking behind steel obstacles, and eventually a disabled tank, Capa was snapping pictures left and right, totaling four rolls of film, 106 frames.

Capa made it back on one of the returning landing craft, holding his film bags over his head to prevent the film from getting wet. Upon the film reaching London, it was rushed to be developed. In the film technician's haste, 95 of the 106 frames were destroyed when the drying locker was set too high and the emulsion was melted away (this account of how the film was destroyed is still the subject of debate).

Of the 11 remaining frames, all are slightly out of focus. This is usually attributed to Capa's hands shaking in the intensity of the battle, intensity which the photos have immortalized and embody the horror of war that we must never forget. Until next time, thank you for reading.

(Information sourced from Wikipedia and The Daily Mail.)

70 Years Ago: Hermann Goering Takes the Stand

Goering (first row, far left) during the Nuremberg Trials

While 2015 was a year of important milestones from World War II, there were still significant events that took place in the aftermath of V-E Day. One such notable event was the Nuremberg Trials, and seventy years ago this month Hermann Goering, considered the most important surviving Nazi official after the war, would stand to atone for his country's crimes.

A little context is important before the trial: in April of 1945, Berlin was surrounded by the Soviet Red Army. What few German fighting forces were left were battling Soviet forces to the death while many more were almost eager to surrender to American, British, and French forces to escape Soviet occupation.

With Berlin under siege and Hitler more or less sealed in his bunker underneath the Reich Chancellory, Germany's defeat was inevitable, and while no one in the German High Command spoke it aloud, there were concerns about who would assume command of the Nazi government once Berlin fell, since Hitler had repeatedly stated his unwillingness to leave the capital city.

Goering had held the rank of Reichsmarshall since 1940, with Hitler the year before declaring Goering to be his successor. However, as the war turned against Germany, Goering made many promises about 'his' Luftwaffe's abilities that it could not keep, such as failing to break the back of the Royal Air Force and failing to keep the surrounded 6th Army at Stalingrad supplied via airlift indefinitely. These and other failures led to Hitler losing all faith in his old friend as his mental state deteriorated along with Germany.

This led to Goering spending more time outside of Berlin around the time it was encircled. When the communications lines between Berlin and the rest of Germany began to break down, Goering rightly assumed that the capital was going to fall. With this in mind, Goering attempted to enact earlier plans which would transfer command of Germany's armed forces to himself.

However, Hitler got wind of this and assumed that Goering was trying to take power away from him. Outraged, he rewrote his will to place Admiral Karl Doenitz, head of the Kriegsmarine (navy) to be the next President of Germany, with Joseph Goebbels, head of the Propaganda Ministry, becoming the next Chancellor. After Hitler and Goebbels committed suicide on April 30, along with many high ranking Nazi officials, Germany officially surrendered on May 8th, along with Hermann Goering.

When the Nuremberg Trials began in November of 1945, even though Doenitz was officially the highest surviving German head of state, Goering was the highest ranking Nazi that the Allies managed to capture alive. Becuase of this, much emphasis was placed on his testimony, which took place through much of March 1946. He was tried for not only indiscriminate bombing done by the Luftwaffe but also for all of the Nazi atrocities such as the Holocaust.

When he was declared guilty, he requested that he be shot rather than hanged like many of the other condemned war criminals, but his request was denied. In the end, before his sentence was to be enacted on October 15, 1946, he committed suicide with a smuggled in cyanide capsule. None should forget the atrocities committed by the Nazis, and to this day there are still former Nazis who are being pursued for their roles in these tragedies. Nothing can change what happened, but just as in 1946, justice and peace of mind for the survivors, their descendants and the rest of humanity must be sought. Until next time, thank you for reading.

(Photo sourced from Wikipedia. Information sourced from "Illustrated History of the Third Reich" by Alex Cook and "World War II" edited by H.P Willmott, Robin Cross, and Charles Messenger)

The Elections of Roosevelt, Before and During Wartime

Franklin Roosevelt

It's turning out to be a turbulent year in the United States, mostly because of the presidential election. With vastly differing ideologies and stated visions for the country's future direction, voters are going to end up deciding what choices our country makes, both at home and abroad: whether to focus on rebuilding our country and not get involved in world affairs or to dive head-first into a world tearing itself apart with shifting alliances and blood being spilled. Finally, voters will have to decide whether to elect a candidate that might not take the country down the best path but it would be historic nonetheless.

If this sounds like 2016, then you are only partially right. The truth is, this situation is one our country has faced before. In 1940, the United States found itself staring at a world that was tearing itself apart, and we as a country were reluctant to get involved.

By this time, mainland Europe had been overrun by Germany and Great Britain was feeling very much alone in the face of a possible invasion as well as constant aerial attacks. Britain was in desperate need of war materiel and looked to the United States for aid. They would get it, but not without controversy.

Wendell Willkie

Franklin Roosevelt was nearing the end of his second term. The country was slowly pulling out of the Great Depression, but there was still much rebuilding to be done. At this point, there was no law that limited presidents to two terms, although it was a standing tradition since George Washington refused to run for a third term. On the Republican side, an unlikely Wall Street candidate named Wendell Willkie, a former Democrat who supported Roosevelt's 1932 election but now was a critic of his policies towards monopolies in the electric industry, was rising to fame and gained a surprising amount of support.

Roosevelt surprised many, including his own party, when he finally announced he would run for a third term. Roosevelt ran on a platform that sounded very similar to Woodrow Wilson's 1916 campaign promise America will not be drawn into another World War. While many were dubious about whether this promise would be kept, many more worried about Roosevelt's deal with Britain for their purchase of arms, and later the enactment of Lend-Lease. In fact, Churchill respected Roosevelt's pleas not to publicly say anything that implied America would be dran into the fighting until after the election.

In the end, Roosevelt capitalized on his Depression-era popularity and his campaign promises to pursue foreign policies that kept America out of the fighting to a 55%-45% victory over Willkie. However, since the war overlapped with the next election year, 1944, Roosevelt was again faced with re-election, this time for his fourth term.

Thomas Dewey

This time, though, there was no formal opposition on the Democratic side against Roosevelt, as by that time the war seemed to be drawing to a close. On the Republican side, Thomas Dewey was nominated on the anti-New Deal and smaller government platform, but the current system was working too well for that route to stand much of a chance. Roosevelt won re-election with a comfortable 54%-46% victory.

However, rumors during the campaign of Roosevelt's declining health, while never confirmed at the time, turned to reality on April 5, 1945 with his death just six months into his fourth term. Roosevelt's death dealt a heavy blow to American morale, since many alive at the time could not remember having another president. This directly led to the ratification of the 22nd Amendment in 1947, which limited the presidency to two terms.

What conclusions can be drawn from these two elections? Well, we know that history is made every day, but some things are more historic than others. Also, some things can only be seen as good in hindsight. Just imagine if we as a nation had isolated ourselves from the world's problems. Would we have been drawn into the war at Pearl Harbor again? Maybe not, but if we didn't take the steps we did, then what would the world we live in today look like? Until next time, thank you for reading.

(Photos sourced from Wikipedia. Information sourced from Wikipedia and Inferno: The World at War 1939-1945 by Max Hastings)

V-E Day: 70 Years Ago Today

Soldiers raise the Soviet flag near the Brandenburg Gate
upon Berlin's surrender on May 2. Photo obtained from Wikipedia.

There are seminal dates that are forever associated with events in World War II. December 7 will always be, in Franklin Roosevelt's words, "a day that will live in infamy", as it was the day that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and brought the United States into the war in 1941. June 6, the day General Dwight D. Eisenhower told his troops to "embark on the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months" on the beaches of Normandy, France.

May 8 may not be as well-known in the minds of popular American culture, but is an important day nonetheless: Victory in Europe Day, the day that Germany surrendered and World War II ended in Europe.

Of course, this day is somewhat deceptive. There were several steps that led up to the surrender. By the middle of April 1945 the Red Army had completely surrounded Berlin, Germany's capital. Within two weeks of heavy bombardment and bloody street to street fighting Berlin was in ruins, and on April 30, Adolf Hitler committed suicide, along with many of the Nazi Party's highest officials including Joseph Goebbels.

Hitler had bequeathed the leadership of what remained of Germany to Admiral Karl Doenitz, the head of the German Navy, slighting Hermann Goering, head of the German Luftwaffe and Hitler's next in line whom Hitler had practically disowned in the war's final months.

Fighting would continue in pockets around Germany for another week, as many of the remaining combat units were SS fanatics clinging to Hitler's last order to not surrender. On May 2 Berlin officially surrendered to the Soviets, leading to surrenders in other small pockets of resistance. By May 5 Soviet troops had reached the outskirts of Prague, capital of then-Czechoslovakia and the last pocket of organized German resistance.

The formal declaration of surrender was signed on May 7 in Reims, France on behalf of the German Army. General Alfred Jodl, head of the German High Command, signed for the Germans. This was repeated in Berlin on May 8 for a very important reason.

The Big Three, the US, Great Britain and Soviet Union, had agreed to only accept Germany's unconditional surrender as one unified power, and had agreed to a draft of the surrender. However, the copy signed in Reims was slightly different than the agreed-upon draft, and the Soviet representative, General Susloparov, was apparently not authorized to accept the surrender on behalf of the Soviet Union, hence two ceremonies and why May 8, not the day before, is considered the official V-E Day.

However, fighting continued in Prague until May 11, which would seem to indicate that May 11 is the 'real' end to the war in Europe. Whatever the real date may be, V-E Day should be remembered as the day that the greatest conflict Europe has ever seen came to an end.

Thank you for reading, and have a pleasant day.

(Events and dates sourced from "Campaigns of World War II Day By Day" by Chris Bishop and Chris McNab)

WWII Movie Review: "Battle of Britain"

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few", are some of the most famous words spoken by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in recognition of the monumental effort of the Royal Air Force in repelling the German Luftwaffe, which in turn prevented the German invasion of Britain.

The 1969 film "Battle of Britain" was the attempt to capture this effort and memorialize the brave men who fought in the battle. With an all-star cast featuring Michael Caine, Robert Shaw, Curt Jurgens, and Laurence Olivier, this film has the recipe to blow the audience away with epic performances.

German bombers begin to bomb British airfields on Eagle Day
 (screenshot)

Some interesting facts about this film are that nearly all of the planes used in this film are actual vintage planes (with the exception of the Junkers 87 Stukas, which were 1:2 scale RC models). Also, in filming this movie, the amount of (blank) ammunition used in all of the takes the director ordered exceeds the amount of ammunition that was used in the actual battle!

Nevertheless, there are some problems with this film. The brief romantic scenes in this movie, meant to show the personal strain the battle had between pilots and their wives and lovers, seemed to be thrown into the mix and not done very well, at times appearing to be an afterthought of the scriptwriters to make this picture something more than a pure war picture, and therefore drag down the picture as a whole. Also, some of the aerial combat scenes tended to be drawn out a bit too long.

Overall, though, this film is a staple for any World War II movie library, as it does a fantastic job in honoring the soldiers who lived and died in the skies above Britain on both sides. Until next time take care, and thanks for reading.

(Image fair use rationale: 1. This image is being used to illustrate the article on the movie in question and is used for informational or educational purposes only. 2. This image is of low resolution. 3. It is believed that this image will not devalue the ability of the copyright holder to profit from the original work. 4. No alternative, free image exists that can be used to illustrate the subject matter.)

Georg Gaertner: The German Who Got Away

In a couple of my previous posts I have talked about the lauded successes of the Allied prison breaks from German POW camps and the few who made it all the way home. This story, however, is of a soldier from the other side and has a far less pleasant ending. His name is Georg Gaertner, and his name is Dennis Whiles. One identity is real, the other fake. Today, even the man himself has a hard time reconciling which is which.

Gaertner was a soldier serving in the Afrika Korps and was captured in Tunis in 1943. He was sent to a POW camp in Deming, New Mexico where he spent the remainder of the war. Upon the war's end, the Germans were going to be shipped to their homes. However, Gaertner knew that his home was in the Soviet zone of occupation and later ceded to Poland, where Germans in the region were pressured out.

Gaertner managed to escape in May of 1945 and spent the next 40 years on the run, assuming the identity of Dennis Whiles. He spent these years trying to live a quiet American life, even marrying. His circumstances finally forced him to confess his true identity to his wife, and later to the country in 1985. Until that point, Gaertner/Whiles was one of the top fugitives on the FBI Wanted list, with his POW picture posted in almost every post office in the country.

Whiles, having spent 40 years suppressing his birth identity, has spent the last 23 years trying to rediscover his past life. He is 93 now, and lives alone in Boulder, Colorado. Until next time take care, and thanks for reading.

(For further details on Georg Gaertner, watch "Hitler's Lost Soldier" from 2006.)

Ghost Army: The First US Army Group

Today is the 69th anniversary of the Normandy landings and one of the defining moments of World War II. Many thousands of brave men died on the beaches due to heavy German resistance in some places, especially Omaha Beach. However, many more men may have died, and indeed the invasion may not have succeeded were it not for Operation Quicksilver: the Allied intelligence operation intended to draw German units away from Normandy and otherwise confuse the Germans into thinking the invasion was going to happen somewhere else.

While the main invasion was at Normandy, the Germans
believed it would come at Pas de Calais to the north.
Map obtained from WikiCommons.

The thinking behind this operation is clearly shown in the 1970 film "Patton", because General George Patton would play a vital role in the deception. In the midst of the fallout from Patton slapping a battle-fatigued soldier in front of the press, Patton was removed from command of the Seventh Army and temporarily relieved of duty.

However, the Germans followed his movements very closely, due to their belief that he was the Allies' best commander and he would be in charge of the eventual invasion of Europe. The Allies sought to use this and placed Patton in 'command' of the First US Army Group.

The group was, in fact, completely fictitious. However, through the use of staged radio traffic, mock-up vehicles to fool air reconnaissance, occasional real units moving in and out of the group, and turned German double agents relaying false information to the German High Command made it seem that the main invasion would come at the Pas de Calais, the closest point in the English Channel (it is possible to see the White Cliffs of Dover from France at this point).

This eventually led to the redeployment of several German units, including the majority of the Panzer units in western Europe, away from Normandy. When the invasion finally came, Hitler and the High Command believed that it was a diversion and the 'real' invasion would still come from Calais.

So successful was this deception that the men who worked to create it would go on to do several diversionary 'performances' in Europe. Their exploits have recently been declassified and can be seen in the new documentary "The Ghost Army" available through PBS. Until next time take care, and thanks for reading.