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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WW2 Controversies

|   29 October 2011

Germans, Greeks and Nazis

Athens today

This morning I was interviewed on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 about something I think is very important.

As has been recently reported in the British press, cartoons and street posters have appeared in Greece comparing the current German regime with the Nazis. Clearly, many in Greece are angry about the financial plight their country faces – as well as the austerity measures that have to be imposed to solve the problem. So angry, indeed, that some Greeks blame the Germans for wanting to impose financial probity upon them. And from there it’s but one small step to portraying the Germans of today as Nazis.

It’s outrageous. And the fact that there is not more immediate outrage about this – especially in Germany – shows how tolerant many Germans obviously are.

What is the thinking behind these cartoons? Well, the first point to make is that not enough people realise how much Greece suffered during WW2. Around half a million Greeks died – more than the British lost – out of a relatively small population of little more than seven million. The Nazis committed a whole series of atrocities against Greek civilians in an attempt – futile as it turned out – to destroy the Greek resistance movement.

Add to that terrible history the desire to seek scapegoats in a crisis and you have the mix out of which comes this unfair treatment of today’s Germany. The biggest – and bleakest – irony, of course, is that it was the Nazis themselves who embraced the idea of scapegoats long ago. Jews, communists, gypsies – the Nazis blamed any number of different groups for Germany’s woes. They never accepted that the Germans themselves had been largely responsible for the mess the country found itself in after the First World War.

A desire not to accept responsibility for one’s own mistakes – one of the most fundamental human desires of all. The Nazis demonstrated it in the first half of the Twentieth Century, a number of Greeks are demonstrating it in the first half of the Twenty first.

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WW2 Controversies

|   22 October 2011

In honour I gained them and in honour I will die with them

Dealing with a difficult past…

I’ve just got back from filming in Germany for my next TV series, and was reminded by my cameraman of an incident a few years ago when we were filming an interview with a distinguished former German soldier. He had retired as a General in the Bundeswehr, the post-war German army. He was a pioneering tank commander and had helped develop NATO’s strategy during the 1950s and 60s in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

However, I was interested in his career during WW2 when he had taken part in the epic battle of Kursk in 1943 in Western Russia – the largest tank battle in history. But after the interview he showed me his various post-war awards and medals. In his book of certificates were numerous citations from the West German government, the British and the Americans. But as I flipped through the pages I came across a number of other certificates clearly not from the post WW2 era. These ones were headed ‘In Namen des Fuehrers’ (‘In the name of the Fuehrer’) and bore the swastika symbol.

‘You won a great deal of gallantry medals fighting for the Nazis,’ I said.

‘Fighting for Germany,’ he corrected me.

‘And I notice you keep them in the same folder as your post-war awards,’ I said, a little incredulously. He replied with a variant of Nelson’s famous words at the Battle of Trafalgar, which he spoke when warned not to go on deck wearing all his medals since French sharpshooters could easily target him. ‘In honour I gained them,’ said Nelson, ‘and in honour I will die with them.’

Then he looked at me, clearly annoyed. ‘But you know the worst thing,’ he said. ‘Once I was in the Bundeswehr, the West German government wouldn’t let me wear the medals that I won on the Eastern Front during the Second World War! Imagine that!’

I remember I stared back at him for a moment, unable to think of anything appropriate to say.

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WW2 Anniversary

|   11 October 2011

One of the most important days in history

Moscow in the snow

First, I want to ask forgiveness from the few of you who are already aware of my views on this – but, I’m sorry, I can’t let this anniversary go by without mentioning the immense importance of a decision that was taken seventy years ago, on 16 October 1941.

In October 1941 the German Army was closing on Moscow. It seemed as if the Soviet capital might fall to the Nazis. There was panic, as many Muscovites sought to escape the city. And amongst those who favoured running from the enemy was Lavrenti Beria, the head of the NKVD – the Soviet secret police. Stalin’s own armoured train was prepared and waited at Moscow’s central station, ready to carry the Soviet leader east to safety.

But Stalin decided not to run. On 16 October 1941 he resolved to stay and lead the resistance against the Nazis from his office in the Kremlin in the centre of Moscow.

I believe Stalin’s decision to stay was a momentous one. I think that if Stalin had run from Moscow then the capital would have fallen. And Moscow, as the centre of the Soviet road and rail network, would have been an immense prize for the Germans. It’s not too hard to imagine, if this had happened, that Stalin’s authority as leader would have been fatally compromised. Perhaps then – probably then, I think – the Soviet governement would have sought some kind of peace with Hitler, most likely along the lines of the Brest-Litovsk treaty in early 1918 which gave huge amounds of territory, including the Baltic states and Ukraine, to Germany. (Territory which the Germans subsequently lost in the peace settlement after their defeat in WWI).

So think of that, this Sunday, the 16th October. Exactly seventy years ago one man made a decision which could well have decided the outcome of the Second World War and which, unknown to most people in this country, also had a huge effect on all our lives. And, appalling as Joseph Stalin was, we must recognise that it was a decision that took great personal courage and benefited every one of us.

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WW2 Reviews

|   3 October 2011

All Hell Let Loose

Max Hastings’ new book ‘All Hell Let Loose’ is a one volume history of the Second World War. It is also, for a variety of reasons, a tremendous achievement.

Anyone seriously interested in WW2 is already familiar with Hastings’ work. From ‘Bomber Command’ to ‘Overlord: D Day and the Battle for Normandy’, from ‘Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945’ to ‘Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45′, Hastings has chronicled the conflict with his particular gift for understanding both military strategy and personal experience.

But ‘All Hell Let Loose’ is his best book on the war to date – and given his previous track record that really is saying something. It’s an important work in part because of the simplicity of the central question at the core – ‘what was it like to be in this war?’ And in exploring this vital issue Hastings delivers all of the insight into the military experience you might expect from a master of this history.

I was particularly struck, for example, not only by the power of the testimony he has found from both the Eastern Front and the Western Allies’ march on Berlin, but also by the anecdotes from the less well covered theaters of the conflict. Recounting the humane treatment the German Afrika Korps often meted out to their captives, for instance, Hastings quotes the revealing testimony of an Australian, Private Butler. He recovered two wounded comrades from the Germans and these Aussies told him that, ‘The Germans had shot them and then went out at great personal risk, brought them in and dressed their wounds, gave them hot coffee and then sent for their medical assistance. Thank God there is chivalry.’

But perhaps my favourite insight from the many warriors quoted in the book comes from Spitfire pilot Geoff Wellum, who recalls thinking this as he closed for a kill during the Battle of Britain: ‘My target, concentrate, the target. Looking at him through the sight, getting larger much too quickly, concentrate, hold him steady, that’s it, hold it… be still my heart, be still. Sight on, still on, steady… fire NOW!’

However, even more impressive, and showing a compassionate side that not every military historian possesses, is the way Hastings tells the story of the war through the words of those who suffered. He reveals, for example, how Derek Lambert, a nine year old evacuee, ‘sobbed in awful desolation’ having been taken from his home. And how a nineteen year old Jewish refugee in Norway, Ruth Maier, thought of ‘the Germans more as a natural disaster than as a people…’. In one particularly poignant piece he quotes Gustave Folcher watching columns of refugees as he passed them by during the Battle for France: ‘The children look at us one by one as we overtake them, holding in their hands the little dog, the little cat or the cage of canaries they didn’t want to be separated from.’

Alongside this moving and eclectic mosaic of testimony, Hastings tells the wider story of the war with all of the penetration and brilliance that his many fans expect. Indeed, the necessity to be concise in this single volume history of the war – to try and explain the entire conflict in one readable book – has brought out some of Hastings best ever historical writing and analysis. Always sympathetic, always understanding, yet never sentimental, Hastings has written a monumental work.

In his conclusion he eschews glib and simple judgment, saying rather that the Second World War ‘was the greatest and most terrible event in human history. Within the vast compass of the struggle, some individuals scaled summits of courage and nobility, while others plumbed depths of evil, in a fashion that compels the awe of posterity.’ And whilst he feels that, ‘It is impossible to dignify the struggle as an unalloyed contest between good and evil’ he ends this wonderful book with this important reminder:  ‘All that seems certain is that Allied victory saved the world from a much worse fate that would have followed the triumph of Germany and Japan. With this knowledge, seekers after virtue and truth must be content.’

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