WW2 Anniversary

|   10 February 2012

Bombing Germany

German civilians living in cities like this were now legitimate targets for the British

Seventy years ago this month the British took a decision which, just before the war, they would have considered against International Law – they decided that German civilians were a legitimate target for RAF Bomber Command.

An Air Ministry directive of February 1942 authorised this new and terrible destruction: ‘The primary objective of your [ie British bomber] operations should now be focused on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular of the industrial workers.’ It was an instruction that would lead to the indiscriminate killing of women and children in attacks like the fire-bombing of Hamburg.

There isn’t space here to debate the morals or merits of this new development in British policy – one which was driven not by an ethical discussion but a practical one. The fact was that British bombers were too inaccurate to precision bomb military targets and so were now directed against cities instead.

I’m familiar with the arguments on both sides about the legitimacy of these attacks. I’ve met former bomber pilots, Germans who suffered at their hands and discussed all the relevant issues with expert academics in this field of study, like the brilliant Professor Tami Biddle. I know enough to know that the questions around the British decision are not simple ones. But, in essence, I guess what concerns me is the question of ‘proportionality’. If you feel under threat, is it OK to do anything to survive and beat the enemy? If we could only have destroyed Nazism by bombing every school and hospital and kindergarten in Germany and killing all their children would we have? But suppose we didn’t need to do that to survive, but by killing all their children we would shorten the war by six months and save thousands of our servicemen’s lives as a consequence. Should we have done that? Is there an equation here – say a thousand German children equal one British soldier?

That’s not so fanciful an argument. After all, Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, who took over RAF Bomber Command in spring 1942, said three years later at the height of the destruction of Germany: ‘I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier.’

Really, was he right?

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WW2 People

|   29 January 2012

Flying into Stalingrad

The ruins of Stalingrad

Imagine the scene. It’s December 1942 and you are a German officer who has just recovered from sickness, when you are told to report to your commanding General. He tells you that you are to be flown into the besieged German held area around Stalingrad where your comrades in the Sixth Army are currently awaiting capture at the hands of the Red Army.

At one level there is no point in you flying into Stalingrad – as an individual you can’t sway the fate of the battle one way or the other. But you are ordered on this assignment because you are scheduled to serve with the Sixth Army, and not to send you would be to admit to the Germans trapped in Stalingrad that their colleagues have given up on them.

So you fly into Stalingrad in early January 1943 and less than a month later you are captured by the Red Army. You then endure twelve years of imprisonment in the Soviet Union before finally being allowed back to Germany in 1955.

How would you feel?

Well, a former Colonel in the German Army I met some years ago – called Guenther von Below – suffered exactly this fate. And he said that he had no ‘problem’ about being ordered back into Stalingrad. ‘A soldier goes to war knowing that he may fall,’ he remarked stoically.

I was re-reading the transcript of our interview with Colonel Below last week, whilst working on my new book and TV series, both of which deal with some of these issues, and it made me think once again about the nature of heroism. Why could von Below have no doubts about his actions, never – as far as I know – show weakness. Is it training? Is it genetic inheritance? Is it education or parenting? Is it the times and circumstances of history? Is it all of these things mixed together?

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WW2 Anniversary

|   17 January 2012

Misunderstanding Wannsee

The Wannsee conference was held here at 56–58 Am Grossen Wannsee.

Seventy years ago this month – on 20 January 1942 to be precise – one of the most infamous meetings of WW2, indeed of the 20th century, was held on the shores of the Wannsee on the outskirts of Berlin.   And, as I know from the many times that I have been asked about Wannsee, large numbers of people still think this was the moment that the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’ was decided upon.

It wasn’t. And the reasons why this mistake is often made are interesting.

The fact is that the fifteen senior Nazi functionaries who attended the Wannsee conference were second tier figures in the Nazi state. Goering wasn’t there, Himmler wasn’t there, crucially Hitler wasn’t there. Mind you, it wasn’t surprising, of course, that Hitler wasn’t there. He hated committee meetings of any kind. As a result the German cabinet hadn’t met since 1938.

Wannsee was held to decide on a whole series of potentially contentious issues which had arisen because elsewhere much more important decisions about the fate of the Jews had already been taken. These decisions were important – like what was the exact definition of a ‘Jew’ – but they were not fundamental. Much more important to the history of the Nazis so-called ‘Final Solution’ of the Jewish ‘problem’ were the discussions that Hitler held with Himmler in December 1941 and the conversations Hitler had with other senior Nazi figures immediately after Pearl Harbour.

So why do people need to think that Wannsee was the moment the extermination of the Jews was decided upon by the Nazis? Well, because I think there is a natural human desire to want to believe that the most appalling crime in history was decided upon at a definite moment. It lends certainty to our understanding. Trouble is, the decision making process of the ‘Final Solution’ was not like that. Yes, of course, Hitler was ultimately responsible, but the process was piecemeal and cumulative. In a word – it’s ‘complicated’.

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WW2 Anniversary

|   7 January 2012

Humiliation in Singapore

The WW2 guns of Singapore point south.

I was in Singapore this week – which was an education in itself as one witnesses first hand how many of the Asian economies seem to be outstripping debt struck Europe.

But I was also seeing first hand the sight of what, seventy years ago, Winston Churchill called ‘the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history.’ On 15 February 1942, Lieutenant General Arthur Percival gave up Singapore to the Japanese. More than 60,000 British and other Commonwealth and Empire troops surrendered to an Imperial Army force of around 35,000.

The prime reason for the disaster was the incompetence of the British leadership in Singapore – particularly that of the inept Percival – but complacency born of racism also played a part. The British simply couldn’t believe that the Japanese were capable of advancing through the Malayan jungle to the north of Singapore – but they did. In addition, the Asian theater of war had been depleted of many resources because the direct threat to immediate British interests – and, indeed, to the territory of Great Britain – came from Nazi Germany. And Japan, after all, was on the other side of the world.  The British plan had always been that a strong naval force would act as the prime deterrent to Japanese aggression, rather than extensive land forces. But here too, British arrogance would prove costly. On 10 December 1941 two huge British battleships, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, were sunk by Japanese planes, largely because the British government – headed by Churchill, of course – had allowed them to sail in these waters without adequate air support.

As I walked through Singapore this week and saw the immense riches and drive of this small island nation, I thought of the ignorance in Europe and America today amongst many people about the vast economic strides that have been made – and will continue to be made in the future – in Asia. Of course, the warlike intentions of nations like Japan are no more. But the complacency the British had about the military capability of the Japanese 70 years ago is still reflected, I feel, in the complacency many people in the West feel about the economic potentiality of the East.

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WW2 Anniversary

|   11 December 2011

Declaring war on America

Seventy years ago today Germany declared war on America.

Many people are mystified by Hitler’s decision to take on the most powerful economic power in the world – especially since the German army was mired in a conflict with the Soviet Union at the time, and Hitler had no real way of ever conquering America. What were the Germans going to do, invade Manhattan? They hadn’t even been able to cross the English Channel to land on the beaches of the south coast, so what chance did they have of ever crossing the vast Atlantic?

But Hitler’s thinking was not so crazy, and this decision is easy to explain. In essence, Hitler believed that the Germans were effectively already at war with America. The German declaration of war of 11 December 1941 accused Roosevelt of ‘virtually’ bringing America into the war three months before, as result of his decision to allow US ships in pursuit of their convoy protection duties to attack German warships in the Atlantic .

The head of the German navy, Grand Admiral Raeder, had told Hitler in the autumn of 1941 that it was all but impossible for the German navy to prevent American convoys reaching Britain. How could German submarines know which convoy protection ships were American – and avoid them – and which were British – and attack them?

Moreover, Hitler was concerned that in the wake of the Pearl Harbour attack and the entry of America into the war against Germany’s ally, Japan, it was likely that Roosevelt would shortly declare war on Germany himself. Hitler, for reasons of prestige and no doubt still smarting from the British and French decision to declare war on Germany on 3 September 1939, thought that great nations declared war on other nations, they didn’t wait for others to decide to fight them.

It didn’t even matter to Hitler that Todt, his armaments minister, told him that with the resources of America behind them, the British were all but unbeatable. Hitler still believed that Germany’s future would be decided on the Eastern front. If the Soviet Union could be defeated then American involvement in the war would be an irrelevance.

Those were the thoughts that were in Adolf Hitler’s mind 70 years ago today.

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WW2 Competitions

|   1 December 2011

Autumn Competition Result

Congratulations to Jemma Mortimer of the Midlands who was the first subscriber to WW2History.com picked from all those who gave the correct answer to our Autumn Competition.

The question we posed was: Which Nazi Gauleiter – one of the hardest of hard liners who had previously ruled with an iron hand over the Ukraine – ran to Flensburg in the final days of the war and vainly demanded a U boat to take him to South America? He died in captivity in Poland in 1986.

Ms Mortimer, along with many other subscribers, correctly identified this particular Nazi as Erich Koch. A signed, hardback, first edition of Ian Kershaw’s wonderful new book ‘The End’ about the last days of the Third Reich will shortly be winging its way to her.

Our new competition has an equally impressive prize on offer – a signed hardback copy of Max Hasting’s stunning new history of WW2: ‘All Hell Let Loose’

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WW2 Anniversary

|   27 November 2011

Causes of great events

Pearl Harbour – 70 years ago today the Japanese fleet were on their way to Hawaii.

Historians often focus their attention on great events – the Battle for Berlin or Stalingrad or the German invasion of the Soviet Union. And we commemorate these and other anniversaries, marking the date when something of vital importance happened.

But today I want to focus on the 70th anniversary of events that were about to happen.

Seventy years ago this month three actions which were to be of great significance in the history of WW2 – indeed the history of the world – were all in preparation. Two of them would bear immediate fruit in December 1941 – and many of the historians I most respect consider December 1941 the most important month in the history of WW2, as I will explain in a later blog – and one would not be drawn to the attention of the world until much later.

What were these three actions? Well, the first is the most obvious. Exactly seventy years ago yesterday, on November 26, 1941, a Japanese fleet tasked with attacking the American naval base in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, left the Japanese home islands. Constructed around six aircraft carriers, this fleet would eventually launch its assault on 7 December, and draw America into the Second World War.

Second, seventy years ago today, military units from Siberia were in the process of traveling west within the Soviet Union to defend Moscow. These units would, on 5 December, provide the backbone of the vast Soviet counter attack on German forces who were closing on the Soviet capital.

And, finally, in Eastern Poland near the small town of Belzec, the Nazis had begun construction of the very first fixed extermination centre. In November 1941 these gas chambers were being constructed to kill Jews from the surrounding area. Whilst the Europe wide Holocaust had not yet begun, this still marks a decisive, and horrific, moment in the history of the human race.

All these events – the Japanese fleet en route to Hawaii, Siberian soldiers en route to Moscow, the construction of the gas chambers at Belzec – were, seventy years ago today, as yet unknown to the vast majority of people. But the fuse for the momentous explosion that each would contribute to had been lit.

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WW2 Relevance

|   19 November 2011

What are you here for?

Churchill – he certainly knew what he was here for.

I was talking to some American university students a few weeks ago about – not surprisingly – the Second World War, when, much to my surprise, one of them asked this question: ‘is there anything useful you have learnt from all this that might help me find and keep a good job after I graduate?’

Well, I have had some pretty left field questions thrown at me before, but this one was entirely new.

The first thing that came into my head, as I considered an answer, was the courage and certainty I had encountered in many of the people I met who had fought against the Japanese Empire or the Nazis. And then I thought of the one quality that these people had seemed to lack and which many people who I have seen fail in employment have had in abundance – cynicism. Often disguised as ’sarcastic wit.’ This kind of attitude is the reason why I saw a lot of potentially talented individuals never attain their potential. Often their bosses never wanted to mention the issue because they knew how difficult it is to discuss someone’s personality, so they would simply not renew their contract or try and sideline these difficult people. I mentioned this to the American students, and also expressed my long held view that it seems crazy that nowhere in the traditional educational system are students taught the importance of possessing enthusiasm and an attitude that demonstrates a willingness to help out.

I also told them that the vast majority of the most impressive people I’ve met personally, or have heard about through others, possessed a kind of passionate enthusiasm for what they were doing and were unencumbered by any sense of bitterness. I remember when I was making a film about the playwright and performer Noel Coward – a film looking in particular at his contribution to wartime propaganda – that the actress Joyce Carey told me that she most valued a visit from Coward when she was feeling low. ‘He gave you a sense that you could press on,’ she said. ‘Not live for ever or anything, just press on.’

Winston Churchill’s personality, of course, was crucial to motivating the British during WW2. And studying Churchill’s leadership skills made me realise that he seldom burdened himself with the question ‘What’s the point of things?’ – the toughest question of all, it seems to me, to answer – because he re-phrased it as ‘What am I here for?’ a question he most certainly could answer.

As Ghandi said: ‘Almost everything you do will seem insignificant, but it is important that you do it’.

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WW2 Relevance

|   13 November 2011

Remembering the right history

Today, on Remembrance Sunday, two days after Remembrance Day, it’s important to remember the right thing – which is, of course, the bravery and sacrifice of our warriors. But let’s also remember the right way of looking at the history that is the reason we have Remembrance Day at 11 o’clock on the 11th day of the 11th month.

I guess most people realize we commemorate the war dead on 11 November because 11 November 1918 was the day that the First World War ended. And many people will also know that many Germans – especially the Nazis – came to call the politicians who had agreed to end the war on this day ‘November criminals’. The fantasy that the German army could have carried on the fight but was ’stabbed in the back’ by revolutionaries (and Jews) behind the lines back in Germany became an iconic belief of the Nazis.

The alleged ‘harshness’ of the  various settlements in the wake of the November armistice – most notoriously the Versailles treaty – has also been blamed for permitting the rise of the Nazis and, indeed, causing the Second World War. My point is that we should be very careful about this analysis. Yes, Versailles was hated by most Germans, but by 1928 – ten years after the end of WW1 – the Nazis were supported by less than 3% of the German population. It was the economic depression after the Wall Street Crash in 1929 that was central to the Nazis’ rise to power. And, yes, the Germans were hit hard by this in part because of the reparations of Versailles, but the Americans suffered a massive economic decline as well, and they, of course, won the war.

What is often forgotten is that after the end of WW2 the Germans suffered much more at the hands of the victorious Allies than they did at the end of WW1. Under Versailles, Germany lost 13.5% of her territory. After WW2 it lost more than 20%. Moreover, in the years after WW2 Germany itself was split apart into East Germany under Soviet domination and West Germany under British, French and American occupation. In addition, whilst under Versailles, the German Army was limited to 100,000 soldiers, in August 1946 the Allied Control Council abolished the German Wehrmacht altogether.

The difference was that America realized the damage that restrictive policies were doing to West Germany after WW2 earlier than the Allies realized the problems that reparations were causing to the long term future of Germany after WW1. It was the economic aid of the Marshall plan in 1947 that turned the fortunes of West Germany around. As for East Germany, it languished until 1989, enduring a degree of suffering much worse than anything the Allies ever caused in Germany after WW1.

(A talented young history student called Eira Brewer helped me with this piece)

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WW2 Relevance

|   3 November 2011

Duty, honour, sacrifice.

Allied POWs celebrate their liberation after imprisonment in Japan.

One of the great challenges for any historian is to imagine what it was like to live in the past. Not so much coming to terms with the obvious changes, like living with no internet and no Greek debt crisis, but trying to understand the different way people expressed themselves and the different belief systems they held dear.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this in part because of posting the testimony of Peter Lee on the site for subscribers this week. He was one of the most impressive people I ever met. Upright, dignified, self-effacing, he described the horror of his own captivity in Borneo during the war. Japanese guards beat him, and his fellow prisoners, and fed them on near-starvation rations. Yet Peter Lee told me that he felt the important thing was not to hate his captors but instead to focus energy on helping his fellow POWs. ‘In those sort of circumstances,’ he said, ‘keep your mind and body occupied as much as you can and don’t mope about and never feel sorry for yourself.’ In other words, he said: ‘in the old British phrase, you have to grin and bear it.’

I thought as he told me this steadfast philosophy how much it was a product not just of his own individual thinking but of a whole belief system that many members of his class, at the time, subscribed to. Indeed, his view that the way to deal with terrible problems in one’s life is to ‘grin and bear it’ is something that others like him from that time had expressed to me before.

Many veterans tried, after the war, to live the rest of their lives according to this ‘never feel sorry for yourself’ mantra. I remember a few years ago a relative of mine – who like Peter Lee had been a British officer during the war and who came from a similar background – was dying of a horrible wasting disease over a period of about 18 months. I was astonished at his bravery. He never fell apart and never moaned about his fate. I told him that I was in awe of his courage. He looked at me like I had said something distasteful. ‘I don’t think it is necessary to say that kind of thing,’ he replied.

How could these people behave with such dignity and self-sacrifice? To what extent was this stoical attitude a product of their own genetic make-up and to what extent a product of their upbringing, social class and the time they happened to be born into?

And if it was a result of when and where they happened to be born, to what extent should we give them credit for their impressive way of living?

Like so many important questions – easy to ask and hard to answer.

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