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The week the French Army collapsed was the week Hollywood experienced the greatest number of production delays. Studio wags believed it was an indicator as to just how many European refugees were employed on their stages. Studio bosses banned all radio and newspapers from their properties in hopes that each production would maintain their respective schedules.
Production Delays (PM Tabloid, 1940) Read More »
The triumphs of the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion on the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc on D-Day stand as a testament to the superb combat leadership skills of Lt. Colonel James E. Rudder (1910 – 1970), who is the subject of the attached article. As a participant in the planning the Allied invasion of Normandy, General Omar Bradley recognized that the German heavy guns situated above and between the Omaha and Utah beaches had to be silenced if the landings were to be successful; Bradley selected Rudder and his group to do the job, later remarking that this order was the most difficult he had ever, in his entire career, given anybody.
Written ten years after that historic day, this article is about Rudder’s return to Omaha Beach with his young son, and his recollections of the battle that was fought.
A good read; an even more in-depth study regarding the assault on Pointe du Hoc can be found at Amazon: Rudder’s Rangers.
More about Rangers can be read here…
The Rangers of Pointe du Hoc (Collier’s Magazine, 1954) Read More »
During the closing weeks of the war it was estimated that the Germans lorded over as many as 65,000 American POWs. Likewise, in the United States, there were 320,118 German Prisoners of War held captive. This article compares and contrasts how each army chose to treat their prisoners.
‘Anger at Nazi Atrocities” (Newsweek Magazine, 1945) Read More »
The greatest deception deployed by the German Army during the the Ardennes Offensive was to parachute Nazi commandos into the American lines – men who had been raised in the U.S. and spoke the language well. They wore American uniforms and performed heinous acts of sabotage, and as this article spells out, lured many GIs to their deaths.
Two of these Germans attempted to kidnap and assassinate General Eisenhower, click here to read about it…
Nazi Infiltrators (Newsweek Magazine, 1945) Read More »
Attached is a stirring collection of eyewitness accounts by the American survivors of the Malmedy Massacre (December 17, 1944) that took place during the Battle of the Bulge.
The German officer in the car stood up, took deliberate aim with a pistol at an American medical officer in the front rank of the prisoners and fired. As the medical officer fell, the Germans fired again and another American dropped. Immediately two tanks at the end of the field opened up with their machine guns on the defenseless prisoners…
By thew war’s end it was revealed that 43% of American prisoners of war had died in Japanese camps; by contrast, 1% had died in German POW camps.
Click here to read about the Nazi murder of an American Jewish P.O.W.
The Malmedy Massacre (Yank Magazine, 1945) Read More »
On April 2, 1945, elements of the American First Army liberated a German prison camp adjacent to the little town of Orb, Germany:
What they found there appalled even the toughest GI and seemed to demonstrate that in some cases at least the Germans had treated British and American prisoners of war as badly as any of the pitiful slave laborers.
Nightmare At Stalag IXB (Newsweek Magazine, 1945) Read More »
An article from the Fall of 1943 that reported on the second campaign fought by the men of the 82nd Airborne Division, the invasion of Sicily:
These air-carried forces were will be in a position to assist seaborne invaders not only by harassing the rear of the foe’s first lines, but by standing in the way of his attempts to bring up his reserves…These men were also to show that an airborne force can assail and capture and enemy’s strategic strong points, can man his bridges and his highways, can dominate his high-banked rivers and fight off his counterattacks.
The 82nd Airborne in Sicily (Collier’s Magazine, 1943) Read More »
In the fall of 1978 former TIME MAGAZINE war correspondent Bill Walton remarked privately about how wildly inappropriate it was to cast the pretty-boy actor Ryan O’Neal in the roll as General James M. Gavin (1907 – 1990) for the epic war film, A Bridge Too Far. Having dropped into Normandy in 1944 with a typewriter strapped to his chest, Walton witnessed first-hand the grit and combat leadership skills that made Gavin so remarkable. The attached YANK article tells the tale of Gavin’s teen-age enlistment, his meteoric rise up the chain of command and his early advocacy for a U.S. Army parachute infantry divisions.
Another article contrasting the Germans and the Japanese can be read here…
The Jumping General: James Gavin of the 82nd Airborne (Yank Magazine, 1945) Read More »
Five days into Operation Market Garden, this hastily written notice was dispatched by a Stars and Stripes reporter on assignment with the allied airborne forces in war-torn Holland.
Dispatch from Operation Market Garden (Stars and Stripes, 1944) Read More »
The seasoned war correspondent explained in the attached article as to why Operation Market Garden was such a disaster (and the censors let him) and why the next ambitious Allied parachute assault, Operation Varsity, would be different. Reminiscing about all that he saw of the famed parachute jump beyond the Rhine prior to being forced to turn-tail and bail out over English-occupied Belgium, he observed:
…the C-46s come in and apparently walk into a wall of flak. I could not see the flak, but one plane after another went down. All our attention was on our own ship. It could blow up in mid-air at any moment. From the pilot’s compartment came streams of stinging smoke.
Operation Varsity: The Last Parachute Drop of the War (Collier’s Magazine, 1945) Read More »
