“The Red Army has Berlin. The once fat, strong heart of German power, now a wreck, was taken in 12 days of [the] bloodiest battle by the overwhelming might of Marshals Zhukov and Konev. The surrender of the remnants of the Nazis in the ruins of the Chancellery where Hitler is said to have his end, and the smashed-up Tiergarten turned a page in history>”
Attached are two articles by American journalist Lowell Thomas (1892 – 1981) regarding all that he witnessed while reporting on General Edmund Allenby’s campaign against Johnny Turk in the Sinai and Palestine Theater during the First World War. This reminiscence was written many years after the war in an effort to make up for the fact that “after eighteen years, no clear-cut account of Allenby’s campaign has been set down.”
Click here to read about Lawrence of Arabia…
Here is an article by a doctor who believed that a modicum of self-knowledge is required before embarking on a diet. It is important to understand why the aspiring dieter overeats in the first place and understands what kind of diet they will be likely to complete successfully:
“Nobody can live on a few shreds of lettuce, a grated carrot and two ounces of boiled asparagus a day, and nobody has to resort to such rigorous tactics.”
This article appeared two days before the German capitulation; the Allies were in Berlin, Hitler was dead and the Pentagon was planning to send some men home while shipping a million off to fight the Japanese.
Try as they may, the silver-tongued diplomats who rebuked Germany so mercilessly at Versailles in 1919 never could get an apology out of the Kaiser, or Hindenburg or Ludendorff. They just had to sit tight and wait – because in 1923 Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber (1869 – 1952), [alas] speaking in an unofficial capacity as a German, apologized for the whole monkey show: Lusitania, Belgium, etc. Everything comes to those who wait.
Even before the Home Front kicked into high-gear, the men who had been picked up in the 1940 draft were causing real problems in every area where a military training camp could be found. Knowing that the enlistments were soon to grow and these problems would be getting worse, the brass hats joined arms with the town elders to curb the drinking and whoremongering. The cure for these difficulties came in the form of the USO, which would be eatablished before the year was out.
A similar article can be read here.
The American magazines and newspapers of late April and early May, 1945, were all about the end of the German Army and now its time to clobber the Japanese. The attached article, from May 6, addressed the subject that this would not be an easy task. If the Atom Bomb hadn’t come along, the Pentagon believed the war would have gone on for another two or three years, and the Japanese were determined to fight until the end:
“The influential Tokyo paper Sangyo Kezei said editorially on April 30: ‘Japan will fight on regardless of any sudden changes in Europe.'”
A similar article can be read here.
“A bitter indictment of the International Red Cross Committee for its failure to tell the world what it knew about barbarous conditions in the prison camps of Nazi Germany, at a time when public indignation might have eased the tragic plight of millions, appears in the May issue of the magazine Jewish Frontier, out today.”
U.S. Representative Emanuel Cellar (1888 – 1981) and a number of senators were all in agreement that the International Red Cross had failed in their task to police Nazi P.O.W. camps for prisoner abuse:
“In accordance with the conditions of the Geneva Convention, the Red Cross has the right to visit prisoner-of-war camps… These killings, starvations, and abuses did not happen in one day. They were prolonged operations. Didn’t the Red Cross know about them?”
This is an Auschwitz testimony from a larger work titled The Camp of Disappearing Men. It was printed in 1944 by an organization called the Polish Workers Party and the singular voice giving the account is unidentified. This eyewitness does not explain how he made good his escape but the testimony was published in the Spring of 1945 – when the existence of the death camp was first discovered and made known to the world.
N.B.: Auschwitz was first called Oświęcim, named for the nearest Polish city.
“What is the reason for Il Duce’s newly acquired antisemitism? Why the new laws degrading the Jews of Italy? There are hardly 60,000 native-born Jews in all Italy. Many Italians have never laid eyes on a Jew. Antisemitism played no part in Italian life until Il Duce determined to banish the Jews into a moral and material ghetto.”
“War and the Working Class, Moscow publication, asserts that German labor must be used to restore the destruction wrought by the German Army in Europe…In an article entitled Labor Reparations, it contends that Using German labor for this purpose will achieve effective military and economic disarmament of Germany.”
“When most of Manhattan is sound asleep, the free-lance photographer Arthur Fellig (1899 – 1968) – better known as Weegee – begins his wide-awake work of catching the city’s nocturnal drama. Weegee sleeps by day and at midnight sets out to cruse the city in his car, equipped with [a] police radio and bought with the proceeds from crime photos. He earned his nickname through his uncanny Ouija Board ability to know about distant happenings and beat others to the scene.”
Click here to read more about New York City.
“…It is said that the panic grew out of the fears aroused by the ferment in the Southern States. Although at New Orleans all is quiet, and everybody seeks peace, throughout the states of Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Georgia, great excitement prevails; and if any reliance can be placed upon the assertions of the politicians and the newspapers of those states, the election of Lincoln will not be tolerated without a struggle. What that form of struggle may take remains to be seen.”
For reasons unknown, the men who ran the Allied war effort chose to ignore the fact that it was German Admiral Karl Doenitz who issued the order that German U-boats were to machinegun all Allied lifeboats after sinking their vessels. The attached journalist was right in pointing out that Doenitz was whitewashed. But it didn’t stick – he was found guilty at Nuremburg and served 12 years.
When Hitler blew his brains out (April 30, 1945), what was left of the baton was passed to the Nazi fleet admiral, Karl Doenitz (1891 – 1980). This article points out that the admiral was a predictable choice for Hitler to make and no one at SHAEF was surprised.
“Lightning warfare suggests initiative and spirit of the offensive; it carries with it the element of surprise, not so much in the happening as in the speed and force with which the attack is launched and delivered.”
Click here to read about the nature of Total war.
Click here to read about a Kamikaze attack like no other…
“Lightning warfare suggests initiative and spirit of the offensive; it carries with it the element of surprise, not so much in the happening as in the speed and force with which the attack is launched and delivered.”
Click here to read about the nature of Total war.
Click here to read about a Kamikaze attack like no other…
