World War II

Bombing of Dresden, Feb. 13-15, 1945, Legitimate Target or Terror?

One of the more controversial battles of World War II occurred with the bombing of Dresden, Germany in the final months of the war. The initial bombing campaign took place over a three day period where 722 RAF and 527 USAAF heavy bombers dropped a total of 3900 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs over four raids from 13-15 February 1945.

The civilian casualty rates were appalling. The heat from the incendiary devices created a firestorm destroyed nearly seven square kilometers of the city center and burned to death anywhere between 35,000 and 135,000 people. The wildly varying casualty estimates are because although Nazi Germany was on a total war footing, Dresden, considered the “Florence on the Elbe” before the war, was not a high-value target. There was little in the city of military consequence and because of this, refugees fleeing the Russians to the east, streamed into the city.

German propaganda initially reported the death rate of over 200,000 but that was proven false. While the death rate could have risen as high as 135,000, the figure was probably closer to the lower figure of 35,000. That number is still horrific.

Prelude to the Bombing: In late January 1945, the Nazi war machine was smashed. The Battle of the Bulge on the Western Front was over and resulted in losses far more than the German Army could afford and the foolhardy and disastrous New Year’s Day Luftwaffe campaign left the Nazis with virtually no air cover. The Russians were in German territory and their offensive was set to cross the Oder River, just 70 km from Berlin.

The RAF Bomber Command drew up preliminary plans to bomb the cities of Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, and Chemnitz to create confusion among the people and hamper the Germans ability to reinforce the Eastern Front offensive.

The American intelligence had Dresden, which to this point of the war had been untouched of having 110 factories and employing 50,000 workers. It also contained a massive communication and rail hub.

A memo sent to the Bomber Command the night before the raids commenced, stated that a secondary purpose for the raid was to show the Russians what RAF Bomber Command can do.

Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than Manchester is also the largest unbombed built-up area the enemy has got. In the midst of winter with refugees pouring westwards and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium, not only to give shelter to workers, refugees, and troops alike but to house the administrative services displaced from other areas. At one time well known for its china, Dresden has developed into an industrial city of first-class importance…. The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front… and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.

However, during the raid, the industrialized sectors of Dresden’s suburbs were not touched. All of the major industry was located there. Instead, the raids would be targeting the city’s hub and the rail and marshaling yards.

The Bombing Raids Commence: The attack was slated to begin with the USAAF to bomb in the daylight followed by an RAF night attack. Bad weather canceled the American assault on February 13. The British plan was to hit the target in waves three hours apart so that when the second wave arrived, the German firefighting units would just be going into action.

The first group of RAF bombers consisted of heavy Lancasters acting as Pathfinders. They would drop streams of flares, which the Germans called “Christmas trees” to illuminate the target area. Next, small Mosquito bombers would drop 1000 lb Target Indicators which would glow red for the bombers to aim at.

The main body of the attack was 244 heavy Lancasters (10 had turned back) carrying 500 tons of high explosives (HE) and 390 tons of incendiaries. The HE bombs varied from 500 to 4000-pound, “Blockbuster” bombs which would create airflow for the incendiary bombs to follow.

The bombing began at 22:14 hours and lasted eight minutes, the last bomb dropping at 22:22. The target area covered was a mile and a quarter long and a mile and three-quarters wide. Dropping from 8000 feet, the devastation was appalling.

When the second wave of the bombers appeared shortly after 1 am, the fires could be seen from 60 miles away on the ground and visible from 500 miles away in the air with smoke rising to over 15,000 feet. Therefore, the Pathfinders didn’t need to pinpoint the area so they expanded the target area.

The second wave began at 01:21 hours on 14 Feb. and finished at 01:45 hours. The next group of 529 Lancasters dropped an additional 1800 tons of bombs.

At noon 431 heavy B-17 bombers accompanied by 781 P-51 fighters were to attack Dresden. Of those, 316 B-17s dropped 771 tons of bombs on Dresden while 60 moved to Prague and bombed it with 153 tons of bombs.

On the 15th, the US was to bomb Leipzig but it was obscured by clouds, so they moved to Dresden and dropped their bomb loads using the H2X radar. The bomb loads were widely scattered.

The Germans put up virtually no defense over Dresden. Their heavy flak artillery had been sent to the Eastern Front. The British lost six aircraft in all out of 796 aircraft involved. Three were lost when bombs dropped from a higher squadron, hit aircraft flying below. The Americans lost one bomber in the action.

Horror on the Ground: The firestorm that engulfed the city center was unlike anything the people had ever witnessed before. The oxygen was sucked out of the air, leaving people to collapse in the street where they were quickly incinerated. One witness described the horror.

Burned bodies in the center of Dresden were burned with flamethrowers as they were too many to bury.

Explosion after explosion. It was beyond belief, worse than the blackest nightmare. So many people were horribly burnt and injured. It became more and more difficult to breathe. It was dark and all of us tried to leave this cellar with inconceivable panic. Dead and dying people were trampled upon, luggage was left or snatched up out of our hands by rescuers. The basket with our twins covered with wet cloths was snatched up out of my mother’s hands and we were pushed upstairs by the people behind us. We saw the burning street, the falling ruins, and the terrible firestorm. My mother covered us with wet blankets and coats she found in a water tub.

We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death, burning people ran to and fro, burnt coaches filled with civilian refugees, dead rescuers, and soldiers, many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire everywhere, everywhere fire, and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm threw people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from.

I cannot forget these terrible details. I can never forget them.

The damage to the German industry was negligible. German Minister of Armaments Albert Speer reported after the war that the industry was back up and running and the recovery was fast. It was the residential areas that were hard hit.

Over 78,000 dwellings were completely destroyed. Nearly 28,000 uninhabitable and 64,500 damaged but fixable. Casualties were everywhere. There were so many dead bodies at the Altmarkt Square that the bodies had to be cremated in place. By the end of the raid, the Germans had accounted for 22,096 including those cremated in the square. Of all of the refugees streaming from the east, 35,000 were missing. Of those 10,000 were later accounted for. Another 1858 bodies were later found when the city of Dresden was going thru reconstruction after the war and until 1966.

The author Kurt Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden and saw first-hand the destruction and carnage that the German Army sent POWs in to bury the bodies, “but there were too many corpses to bury. So instead the Nazis sent in troops with flamethrowers. All these civilians’ remains were burned to ashes.”

He later put his recollections into his novel “Slaughterhouse Five” which describe the bombing of Dresden.

The debate over whether the bombing and the resultant firestorm over Dresden was a war crime or a legitimate military target still rages. The British and Americans who took part in the bombing raids, for the most part, believe that the city was a vital military target. While the German citizens, like those of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, believe it to be genocide.

Photos: Wikipedia

The Eighth Air Force, “The Mighty Eighth” Was Born on This Day 1942

Just six weeks after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army Air Corps (later to become the Army Air Force) activated the 8th Bomber Command at Hunter Airfield in Savannah, Georgia. The Eighth was slated for duty in England. Brigadier General Ira C. Eaker took the Eighth Air Force Bomber Command Headquarters to England the next month and located at High Wycombe, about 40 miles west of London. As the men began pouring into England, the Eighth Air Force was born. MG Carl “Tooey” Spatz assumed command in May 1942 and established a headquarters at Bushy Park about 15 miles west of London on June 25, 1942.

At its peak, the Mighty Eighth was the most powerful airforce in the world with over 200,000 men assigned to it. During the war’s peak in early 1945, the 8th could send a bomber force of 2000 and 1000 fighters in the air at the same time.

Despite some early growing pains at being housed in Britain, a familiar British refrain was the “Yanks are overpaid, overfed, oversexed and over here”, the two cultures meshed and became very close. So close in fact that 50,000 women married US servicemen.

Of the 350,000 men assigned to the Eighth in World War II, 26,000 men paid the ultimate sacrifice. When the Air Force became a separate branch in 1947, the 8th remained active and moved its flag to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.

Heavy Air Combat Over Europe: The skies over Europe during the war were bloody and violently contested. The goal was for the U.S. and Britain to gain air superiority to the extent that they could launch an invasion of the European mainland.

There was a difference of opinion between the British and Americans over whether or not to use strategic bombing in the daytime or at night. The British favored night bombing; the Americans were proponents of precision daylight bombing. They both learned that the Germans, who had a powerful air force, had no concept of strategic bombing and were suited to tactical support. In the end, it was decided the Americans would bomb by day and the British at night.

The 8th AF used the heavy B-17 and B-24 bombers as their main aircraft to take the fight to Germany. The U.S. developed the Norden bombsight that was so advanced at the time, the claim was a bombardier could drop a bomb from high altitude into a pickle barrel. While in combat situations, the results were far from that exact, it was normal for B-17s to drop its bomb load in good weather within 1000 feet of the target.

The United States didn’t have fighters that could escort the bombers to Germany and back until later in the war. They believed that the heavy armament of the bombers, flying in tight formation, could keep the German fighters at bay. They were wrong.

The 12 machine guns (.50 caliber) on each B-17 were insufficient to keep the German fighters away. Losses early in the war were staggering. The 8th Air Force lost over 26,000 men. Initially, air crew losses were at nearly 86 percent. An additional 28,000 men became prisoners of war. Aircraft losses were appalling: 10,561 planes of varying types were shot down, 4754 of those were B-17 heavy bombers. The attrition was so high that the Army capped a crew’s tour to 25 missions. If they survived 25, they could return to the states.

Coincidentally, the first B-17 to complete 25 missions was not the Memphis Belle. The Belle was the first to complete 25 and return home for a bond tour. Captain Irl Baldwin’s Flying Fortress, nicknamed after the Howard Hughes film “Hell’s Angels” in the 303rd Bomb Group, completed their 25 missions, nine days prior and volunteered to remain. They flew 48 combat missions without ever losing a man. I met Baldwin in 1998 at an 8th Air Force Reunion in Savannah. I asked him which was worse, the flak or the fighters. He smiled and said….”yes, both.” He relayed that in the early days of the German raids, you could seemingly walk on German flak for miles.

Hell’s Angels, piloted by Irl Baldwin of the 303rd BG was the first 8th AF bomber to complete 25 missions

During the 995 days of air combat against Germany, the 8th AF sortied 332,645 heavy bombers. Gunners on-board the bombers destroyed 6,001 enemy aircraft in air combat in addition to 3,073 planes destroyed or damaged on the ground. Some of the heaviest losses were against the Schweinfurt ball-bearing factories on August 17, 1943, and again on October 14. In the first raid, of the 209 bombers that crossed the coast, 145 were either lost or damaged. On the latter raid, 254 bombers crossed the coast and 198 were either lost or damaged.

On August 17, 1942, the first American heavy bomber mission was launched from England. Twelve B-17s of the 8th Air Force’s 97th Heavy Bombardment Group raided the Sotteville-lès-Rouen railroad yards, while six more made a diversionary strike. Three more daytime raids went out on August 19, 20, and 21.

By the end of 1942, the 8th Air Force was cutting its teeth on smaller, easily accessible targets along the French coast, much to the chagrin of their British cousins who were leading large night-time raids in Germany and doing heavy damage. In early 1943, the first daylight raids into Germany were hit hard by Nazi fighters.

The Americans switched their tactics and decided to bomb Nazi aircraft factories. The issue was, they were nearly inaccessible and heavily defended like the ones at Regensburg. This was followed by the attempt to cripple the German ball-bearing works at Schweinfurt. The Americans spent a week of flying thru waves of flak and fighters and lost 148 aircraft. And after the horrific losses, they found they did little damage to the German war machine and what damage was incurred was quickly recouped.

With the air war of Germany hanging in the balance, a cooperative effort between the British and Americans turned the tide of the war. The P-51 Mustang was an American built fighter. But from December 1943-March of 1944, the planes were refitted with the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. The results were dynamic. The Allies now had a fighter escort that could far outperform the German fighters and escort the bombers as far as Berlin and back.

The German fighter command could no longer feel secure anywhere over the skies of Europe in daylight. The air war initiative tipped to the Americans nearly overnight. Everywhere the Germans flew, they faced an ever-increasing multitude of aggressive Mustang pilots.

The bombers, which up to the devastating Schweinfurt raids had been hammered, saw their losses drop dramatically. The skies over Europe became dominated by American air power. As a result, the American planners grew bolder, the results were much more accurate with bomber losses in March 1944 just a third of what they were in October.

By August of 1944, the Allies now well entrenched ashore in France at Normandy and beyond had nearly swept the Luftwaffe from the skies because they had overrun the German early warning radar sites and advanced fighter bases.

One German infantry soldier joked during the Normandy that “if you see a silver plane, it is American. If you see a black plane it is British and if you see no plane it is German.”

With the air war turned, in mid-1944 the Allies turned their sights on German fuel production and transportation networks. Up until 1944, German arms industries had not only kept up with losses but had increased its production. But the turning of the air war had resulted in devastating losses for German war production, especially in their fuel production. By September, Albert Speer, the Nazi architect, turned Armaments Minister, sent a memorandum to Hitler that fuel production was down to just 8 percent of the levels they had in April.

The rail networks were devastated as the Allies hammered the rail junctions by carpet bombing. The result was the slowing and tying up of vast amounts of war material. These were then ripe for fighter-bomber attacks. By January of 1945, air attacks had the entire military system of Germany on the verge of collapse.

The Germans tried a panic move to restore air superiority over Europe with an offensive designed to knock out Allied airfields. Over 950 fighters had been sent west from the Russian Front for “Operation Bodenplatte”. On 1 January, the entire German fighter force in the West, comprising combat aircraft from some eleven fighter wings, took off and attacked 27 Allied airfields in northern France, Belgium and the southern part of the Netherlands in an attempt by the Luftwaffe to regain the initiative.

It failed. The Germans lost 300+ fighters they could ill-afford to do without and the Allies’ losses were replaced in just weeks. The gamble, like the Battle of the Bulge in December, was a failure. No air superiority even briefly was achieved. The result was even less air support from the massive air attacks that were hammering the German’s industry, oil, and transportation systems already.

As Germany shrank, the number of targets did as well and the results were devastating. On April 7, 1945, 8th Air Force bombers in overwhelming force, attacked German airfields destroying 300 fighters on the ground. A week later they smashed 700 more on the ground, the once proud German Luftwaffe was no more.

After the surrender of Germany on May 7, plans were to shift the Mighty 8th, to the Pacific and bomb the Japanese mainland from Okinawa. General Jimmy Doolittle was setting up his headquarters there. The 8th was slated to get the new B-29s. But the two atomic bomb drops on Japan forced them to surrender and the war was over.

Today the 8th AF is part of the USAF’s Air Combat Command and took part in the Gulf War, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, as well as protecting American airspace.

In a future piece, we’ll look deeper at the US fighters and fighter groups in the 8th AF.

Photos: US Archives/Wikipedia

January 26, 1945, LT Audie Murphy Awarded the Medal of Honor

Audie Murphy was one of the most decorated soldiers of World War II. Murphy lied about his age to enlist in the army and by the time he was 19, had been awarded every major medal for valor of the United States as well as French and Belgian awards for heroism. On January 26, 1945, Murphy, then a 2LT after a battlefield promotion, single-handedly held off a German company in the Colmar Pocket, then led a counter-attack while wounded and nearly out of ammunition. For this, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Murphy would later become a film star and played himself in the autobiographical “To Hell and Back.” He also became known as a western hero in a movie career that would last 21 years. Due to his war-time heroics and extensive battle experiences, he would be plagued by what we call today, PTSD (post-traumatic stress syndrome) where he slept with a gun under his pillow and sleeplessness would plague him, along with an addiction to sleeping pills for the rest of his life. He died tragically in a plane crash in 1971. He was only 45 years old.

Humble Beginnings: Murphy was born on June 20, 1925, in Kingston, Texas as the seventh of 12 children. His parents were sharecroppers but his father would frequently leave the family before disappearing for good when he was still a young child. He was forced to quit school in fifth grade and picked cotton for a dollar a day to help feed the family. He became adept at hunting small game which helped put food on the table as well.

Murphy’s mother died just before his 16th birthday in 1941, and his three youngest siblings were put into an orphanage. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, he tried to enlist in both the Army and Marines but was rejected for being both underage and underweight. His older sister helped forge his birth certificate and signed an affidavit where he was finally accepted into the Army on June 30, 1942, and was sent to Camp Wolters for Basic Training. He was just 16 years old.

Military Service and World War II: After his basic training, Murphy was shipped to Fort Meade, MD for advanced infantry training. From there in late February 1943 he was shipped out to Casablanca, Morocco as part of B Company, 1st Bn. 15th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division. He was assigned as the platoon messenger. The division trained hard for the upcoming invasion of Sicily. Murphy was promoted to PFC and then CPL on 15 July just five days after the invasion of the Italian island at Licata.

As a division runner, Murphy was with the division as they fought across Sicily, into the ancient city of Palermo and finally on to Messina where they closed the door on the German’s withdrawal.

He took part in the Salerno landings on mainland Italy at Battipaglia. He and another soldier broke up a German ambush by killing five of the enemy. The fighting in Italy raged thru the autumn and Murphy was promoted to Sergeant in December 1943. Less than a month later he was promoted again to Staff Sergeant in January 1944.

After the landing at Anzio, Murphy took part in the Battle of Cisterna where the 1st and 3rd Ranger Battalions were annihilated due to faulty intelligence and poor planning by the Corps Commander.MG Lucas. The Anzio landings were virtually unopposed and caught the Germans by surprise. But Lucas rather than press home his advantage grew timid and opted to consolidate his own beachhead rather than flank the Germans, which was the reason for the landing. By the time he moved, the Germans were ready and a three Ranger Battalion force supporting the 3rd Division was virtually wiped out. Murphy was made a platoon sergeant after the battle. He hadn’t yet turned 19 years old.

Holding up in an abandoned farmhouse, Murphy destroyed a German tank with rifle grenades and killed the crew. For that, he was awarded the Bronze Star with “V” device. The Americans took Rome on June 4, and the 3rd Division remained there thru July awaiting orders. They didn’t have long to wait.

Murphy and the division took part in Southern France and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for actions taken on August 15, 1944. Murphy’s platoon was fighting through a vineyard when the men were attacked by German soldiers. Murphy grabbed a machine gun, returned fire at the German soldiers, killing two and wounding one. Two Germans exited a house about 100 yards away and asked to surrender.

Murphy’s best friend responded and as he moved forward to take them, prisoner, they shot and killed him. Murphy advanced alone on the house under direct fire. He killed six, wounded two more and amazingly after what happened to his friend, took 11 prisoners. The 1st Bn. received a Presidential Unit Citation for their fighting around Montélimar.

He received a Purple Heart from mortar shrapnel in September. Murphy’s Silver Star medal was for his action in charging a German machine gun position where he killed four and wounded three more in neutralizing the threat to his men. He received a Bronze Leaf on his Silver Star when crawled up a hill and directed fire against the Germans while under constant, direct fire. His actions resulted in 15 killed enemy and 35 wounded.

On the 14th of October and less than four months after his 19th birthday, Murphy was given a battlefield promotion to 2nd Lieutenant. He was wounded for the 2nd time on October 26, when he captured two Germans before being shot thru the hip by a sniper. He returned fire, shooting the sniper right between his eyes. His wound would keep him out of action until January.

He was wounded in both legs in mid-January after rejoining his troops in the fighting around Holtzwihr.On January 26, he became the Company Commander of B Co. On that day as they were attacking the German positions, an M-10 Tank Destroyer supporting the infantry was hit and set afire.

While ordering the company to retreat to the woodline, he remained at the flaming M-10, firing his M-1 Carbine and calling in fire on the German troops. The entire time Murphy was in full view of the Germans and they were pouring fire in his direction.

Then he did the unimaginable. Murphy climbed up on top of the burning tank destroyer and mounting the .50 caliber machine gun, he poured fire at the German troops. The enemy sent a squad crawling up a ditch trying to get to him but he saw them and cut them all down. He stood alone, on a flaming open-topped tank destroyer for an hour with German infantry and tanks advancing and pouring fire at him.

He killed or wounded 50 of the attacking enemy. The Germans finally wounded him in the leg, but he remained on the TD until he ran out of ammunition. He then made his way back to his men and refused medical evacuation until he personally led them back to push the Germans back.

For this incredible action, Murphy was awarded the Medal of Honor. He was promoted to First Lieutenant and moved off the line and into a Regimental Headquarters slot as a liaison officer.

Awards and Decorations: Murphy was awarded the American Campaign Medal, the European–African–Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with arrowhead device and 9 campaign stars, the World War II Victory Medal, and the Army of Occupation Medal with Germany Clasp. France recognized his service with the French Legion of Honor – Grade of Chevalier,the French Croix de Guerre with Silver Star, the French Croix de Guerre with Palm, the French Liberation Medal and the French Fourragère in Colors of the Croix de Guerre,which was authorized for all members of the 3rd Infantry Division who fought in France during World War II. Belgium awarded Murphy the Belgian Croix de Guerre with 1940 Palm

At Salzburg, Austria on 2 June 1945, Lieutenant General A.M. Patch, Commander of the 7th Army presented Murphy with the Medal of Honor and Legion of Merit for his actions at Holtzwihr. When asked after the war why he had seized the machine gun and taken on an entire company of German infantry, he replied, “They were killing my friends.”

Postwar: Murphy suffered from what we now call PTSD, or what was referred to then as Battle Fatigue or Shell Shock. He spoke to the Veterans Administration about it. In an effort to ease the strain on returning Vietnam veterans, he spoke candidly about his own problems and called on the government to give increased consideration and study to the emotional impact of combat experiences and to extend health care benefits to war veterans.

Film Career: Murphy launched a 21-year career as a film star being active from 1948-1969. He was known mainly for his westerns but he later played himself in the autobiographical “To Hell and Back.” That film became the biggest hit in Universal’s history at that time. He later raised quarter horses at his ranch but fell on hard financial times.

He was killed in a plane crash in Virginia in 1971 and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. His gravesite across from the amphitheater is one of the most visited other than JFK’s.

Photos: US Archives

Wannsee Conference Outlines Nazi Plans for the “Jewish Question”

In January 1942, the leaders of the Nazi Third Reich gathered in Wannsee, Germany, a suburb of Berlin to implement their plans and policies for what they termed the “Jewish Question.” The meeting was called and chaired by Reich Main Security Office SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich.

The Nazi’s plan, the “Final Solution” to the Jewish question was for the SS (Schutzstaffel) to oversee the obliteration of all of the Jews in Europe. Heydrich’s plan, where he laid out a proposal to force all of the Jews in Europe to Nazi-occupied Poland where they would be exterminated.

Discrimination Begins WIth Nazi Rise to Power:
As soon as Hitler and the Nazis came to power, the discrimination of the Jews began to take place. The Jews were gradually stripped of their rights as German citizens, their shops were vandalized and looted and they were encouraged to emigrate out of the country while leaving nearly all of their money and property of course.

Laws were passed to keep Jews from civil service careers. Then additional laws were enacted that would keep the Jews from practicing in any of the skilled professions such as doctors and lawyers, etc.

The in 1935, the Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws which forbade Jews from marrying anyone of Germanic extraction. The Reich Citizenship Law stripped Jews of their German citizenship. Even those hardy souls who had lived through many of the pogroms that plagued Europe, this one is too much. As a result by 1939, more than half of Germany’s 500,000 Jews had emigrated to the United States, Britain, or Palestine.

With the invasion of Poland in 1939, the Nazis were putting their plans into action. Einsatzgruppen (Special Task Forces) began the hunting and killing of Jewish civilians. SS and regular Wehrmacht troops murdered civilians as well.

One the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, they quickly began rounding up and exterminating Jews as the Final Solution had been in effect for some time.

The Meeting By the Lake in Wannsee:
The conference was attended by fifteen of the Nazi’s top leaders or the deputies of those leaders. The attendees besides Heydrich were:
Gauleiter Dr. Alfred Mayer (Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories)
Reichsamtleiter Dr. Georg Leibbrandt (ditto)
Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart (Reich Ministry for the Interior)
Dr. Erich Neumann (Head of the Four Years Plan Office)
Dr. Roland Freisler (Reich Ministry of Justice)
Dr. Josef Bühler (Director General of the Generalgouvernement)
Dr. Martin Luther (Foreign Office)
SS-Oberführer Gerhard Klopfer (NSDAP Chancellery)
Ministerialdirektor Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger (Reich Chancellery)
SS-Gruppenführer Otto Hofmann (Race and Settlement Main Office)
SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller (Reich Main Security Office/Gestapo)
SS-Obersturmbannf Adolf Eichmann (Reich Main Security Office)
SS-Oberführer Dr.Karl Eberhard Schöngarth (Commander SD / SIPO Krakow)
SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Rudolf Lange (Commander SD Latvia)

The purpose of the meeting Heydrich said was to discuss the plan of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question and would entail rounding up all of the Jews of Europe. It was decided that the SS under Heinrich Himmler were to be in charge of the operation to exterminate the Jews of Europe. The Jews would be transported eastward to Poland and organized into large labor gangs. Work and living conditions would be extremely brutal, with little food, so that they could kill large numbers by natural reduction. Any survivors would be treated accordingly. Treated accordingly was the alternative term for extermination.

As would be later noted during the Nuremberg War Crime Trials, not one of the 15 men there would object to the planned extermination of an entire race of people. A bigger bone of contention among the Nazis attending the conference was, how to define what exactly makes one Jewish? Himmler, always a believer in quack-science, foolishly hoped that a simple blood test could be developed that could differentiate between Jews and non-Jews. When that proved useless, the Nazis decided to go back two generations. If there was a Jewish grandparent in the last two generations, then that person was a Jew. But in their ardor to destroy the race, it ended up simply being if a Nazi party member thought you were a Jew, you were.

The minutes of the meeting never mentioned extermination but just a few months later, gas chambers were being introduced into the six Nazi death camps in Poland, Belzec, Birkenau, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka. This did not bother the attendees at all, once again because in their minds, Jews were Untermensch or subhuman.

A copy of the minutes survived the War and was furnished at the Nuremberg trials. In one of the paragraphs it broke down how the approximate 5 million Jews of the USSR were employed:

The breakdown of Jews residing in the European part of the USSR according to trades was approximate as follows:

    Agriculture                                       9.1 %
    Urban workers                                    14.8 %
    In trade                                         20.0 %
    Employed by the state                            23.4 %
    In private occupations such as
    medical profession, press, theater, etc.         32. 7%
Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.

The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as a the seed of a new Jewish revival (see the experience of history.)

In the course of the practical execution of the final solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east. Germany proper, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, will have to be handled first due to the housing problem and additional social and political necessities.

The evacuated Jews will first be sent, group by group, to so-called transit ghettos, from which they will be transported to the East.

The entire meeting lasted only 90 minutes. Heydrich instructed Eichmann to sanitize the minutes, (protocols in German) to sanitize them as nothing too explicit was to be put in there. All of the attendees were given a copy of the minutes after they were carefully scrutinized by Heydrich. At the end of the war, most of the copies were burned as the Nazis tried to cover their tracks in the last days of the Reich.

Heydrich was quite pleased with the meeting. No one opposed his absolute rule over the Jewish question and in fact, rather than oppose him, many at the conference pledged their support to him on the matter.

But for the Jews of Germany and the rest of Europe, the nightmare of the Holocaust was only going to get worse.

Photos: Wikipedia

Roosevelt and Churchill Meet for the Casablanca Conference

On January 14, 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt, English Prime Minister Winston Churchill met to discuss war strategy in Casablanca, Morocco with Combined Chiefs of Staff and how they wanted to proceed with their war plans. Also invited were representatives from the Free French, General Charles de Gaulle and General Henri Girard. The French were in effect the government-in-exile and Churchill and Roosevelt wanted to ensure a united France after hostilities ceased.

Roosevelt’s trip was the first time in its short history that a standing U.S. president had left the country during a time of war. Roosevelt, under heavy security, had flown from Miami to Morocco. The meetings took place in the Anfa Hotel from January 14-24, 1943. Josef Stalin was invited to attend as well but due to the ongoing battle at Stalingrad, he declined to keep close tabs on the battle.

The French, though treated cordially, were not warm to the task and had to be persuaded to attend. Even then, there was a forced handshake for the sake of the cameras that was so fast, it had to be done again.to preserve it for the press.However, some of the British in attendance came to the conclusion that the two French generals probably hated each other more than the Germans. The French, however, were not invited to and didn’t participate in the military planning.

Unconditional Surrender Declaration: The announcement by FDR at the conference was that the Allies would only accept the unconditional surrender of the German Army. That raised eyebrows and concerns for all of the Allied politicians including Churchill who was surprised by Roosevelt’s declaration. The President had stolen the idea from Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War who had used the term against the Confederacy on several occasions.

Many of the politicians felt that “unconditional surrender” was too inflexible and left no room for political machinations to take place, similar to how World War I ended. That’s exactly what FDR was shooting for. In a radio address later in February, Roosevelt explained what he meant by unconditional surrender: “we mean no harm to the common people of the Axis nations. But we do mean to impose punishment and retribution upon their guilty, barbaric leaders”

But many of the more pragmatic Allied leaders weren’t too worried about FDR’s declaration. One of them, Allen Dulles from the Intelligence Office of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) which later became the CIA would remark that the Casablanca Declaration was “merely a piece of paper to be scrapped without further ado if Germany would sue for peace. But Hitler had to go.”

Many in the Roosevelt Administration, including his Moscow Ambassador Charles Bohlen believed that FDR wanted to tie down most of the German troops on the Eastern Front and he (Roosevelt) was worried that Stalin may try to make a separate peace with the Germans.

Invasion of France Put Off: Roosevelt, after conferring with General George Marshall was in favor of a quick cross-channel invasion of France. Churchill with his Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Alan Brooke advised against it. They knew the green American army wasn’t ready yet to take on the veteran Germans on French soil.

Churchill sold them on his plan to take on the Axis through the Mediterranean. Churchill pushed for the invasion of Sicily and then Italy, what he called the “soft underbelly of Europe.” Invading Italy will not only take them out of the war but force the Germans to further weaken the western defenses in France by diverting more troops to their south.

That would help them in the future invasion of France, not to mention that the many months before invading France, the Russians would further weaken the German troops with the no-quarter fighting going on in the Eastern Front.

But the compromise by FDR also got Churchill to agree to furnish more troops for the Pacific Theatre and Burma fighting the Japanese. The Allies were fully behind Chiang Kai-Shek’s efforts in China. The US agreed to furnish the British with escorts and landing craft.

The leaders decided on a strategy to deal with the U-Boat wolf packs that scoured the Atlantic and interfered heavily with attempts to resupply and rearm Britain. The two leaders also agreed to help out the Russians in any way possible. Stalin was furious at the Allies for not opening a second front while the Germans had millions of troops in his country.

FDR, with General Patton and Harry Hopkins, eat with the troops out of an Army mess kit.

FDR decided to visit the troops and he went to visit General George Patton and the Americans in Rabat. The troops from the 3rd Infantry Division were shocked and thrilled to see their president so far from home. He sat down for lunch and ate a standard meal out of a mess kit. The Army band serenaded the President with some of his favorite songs and speaking with several of the soldiers moved him to write their families when he returned home.

Churchill and FDR then met with the press who hadn’t been told of the meeting and the two laid out their plans. Roosevelt laid on the charm while Churchill played his part to a tee. The Allies were united in spirit and in their plans. But Churchill had one more request, for FDR to accompany him to Marrakech, which was, as Mr. Churchill said, “the nicest place to spend the afternoon.” The trip and the conference were a huge success, and even the President’s staunchest critics lauded the audacity and the success.

Staunch Republican newspaper editor William Allen White wrote perhaps the best description of the conference. “…we are compelled to admit that Franklin Roosevelt is the most unaccountable and on the whole the most enemy-baffling President that this United States has ever seen… a certain vast impudent courage… Well damn your smiling old picture, here it is… We, who hate your gaudy guts, salute you.”

Remembering Greg “Pappy” Boyington, USMC Medal of Honor

Greg Boyington was a Marine aviator during the Second World War fighting in both the Marine Corps and as a member of the legendary Flying Tigers, the American Group (AVG). Boyington was credited with shooting down 26 enemy planes and was the recipient of the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross. He was shot down in 1944 and spent nearly two years as a POW. A television series very loosely based on him, “Baa Baa Black Sheep” ran for two seasons in the late 1970s.

He was a hard-drinking, fighting man who was a menace to his commanders during the peacetime military but a tremendous combat pilot during the time of war.

Boyington was born, Gregory Hallenbeck in December 1912 in Idaho. He always assumed his stepfather was his actual father but later learned that his real father, Charles Boyington, had been divorced from his mother while Boyington was still an infant. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Washington, where he was enrolled in Army ROTC. After graduating with a degree in aeronautical engineering in 1934, he served for a short time as a member of the Army Reserve as a 2LT in the Coast Artillery.

He transferred to the Marine Corps and was accepted into their Cadet Aviation Program. He became a Naval Aviator in March of 1937 and became a Second Lieutenant in the active Marines on July 2, 1937. He served at both San Diego and at Pensacola as an instructor pilot, reaching First Lieutenant in 1940.

World War II Service: Boyington resigned his commission in July 1941, to join what became known as the American Volunteer Group, AVG, the Flying Tigers. He was a flight leader with the AVG and was credited with 2 air victories with another 2.5 aircraft destroyed on the ground. Boyington in his memoirs claimed, however, that he had six air victories. He described each in detail, but they were never officially substantiated.

Boyington frequently butted heads with the leader of the AVG Claire Chennault and after the United States’ entry into the war when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he had his chance. Boyington broke his contract with the AVG and returned to the U.S. on his own in April 1942.

He returned to the Marine Corps and was given a promotion to Major as the Corps was in need of experienced aviators and he was one of the very few with combat experience.

He was assigned to Marine Fighter Squadron 122 on Guadalcanal as the Executive Officer and later became the Commander of Marine Fighter Squadron 112 before taking over the command of Marine Fighter Squadron 214, the Black Sheep Squadron in September 1943.

It was here that Boyington achieved his most success as a combat pilot. His pilots nicknamed him Gramps which became Pappy because of his age. He was 31 and a decade older than the men who served under him. But he was no kindly grandpa in the skies above the Russell Islands-New Georgia and Bougainville-New Britain-New Ireland areas.

Flying in the Vought F4U Corsair, the Marine pilots loved the aircraft and for the first time, the US had a plane that was superior to the Japanese Zero. The Corsair was faster and could dive and climb faster than their Japanese counterparts. The aircraft was extremely rugged and could sustain a lot of damage and with six M2 .50 caliber machine guns mounted in the wings, they had an enormous firepower advantage over their enemy. Corsairs shot down 2140 Japanese aircraft during the war against a loss of just 189. The kill rate was an outstanding 11:1.

Boyington’s squadron regularly mixed it up with the Japanese and he was piling up the kills in the air. In one 32 day period, he shot down 14 Japanese aircraft. In October of 1943, Boyington and his Black Sheep circled the Japanese airfield at Bouganville with 24F4Us. The Japanese had 60 fighters there and the Americans were daring them to take the bait. When the Japanese came after them, the Americans chopped them up, downing 20 Japanese aircraft without the loss of one American. The balance in the air war in the Pacific had gone firmly to the American side. In just 84 days, Boyington’s squadron had shot down or damaged 197 aircraft and had sunk troop transports supply ships while destroying some ground installations.

On another mission to Bougainville, the Japanese tried a ruse and radioed for his position in English. Boyington didn’t buy it but radioed the Japanese their exact position but 5000 feet lower. When the Zeros arrived, the Corsairs blew a dozen out of the sky.

On January 3, 1944, Boyington would shoot down his 26th plane, tying the World War I record of the legendary Eddie Rickenbacker, although Boyington claimed he had 28. But it was on this mission where he was shot down. The Americans scrambled 48 fighters over Rabaul, including Boyington’s flight of four from the Black Sheep Squadron. There they tangled with about 80 Japanese fighters, Boyington was shot down and his wingman was killed.

He was picked up by a Japanese submarine and transported to Rabaul where he was brutally interrogated before moving to Truk and finally to a notorious Japanese POW camp at Ofuna. There the guards’ treatment was brutal for any infraction, real or imagined. One of his fellow prisoners there was Louis Zamperini, the Olympic runner and the inspiration for the film “Unbroken” from 2014.

Upon being repatriated from the POW camp, Boyington learned he was to be awarded the Medal of Honor from President Harry S. Truman. He went on a Victory Bond Tour but his problems with alcohol would surface and trouble him for most of his remaining life. The Marine Corps retired Boyington in 1947 for medical reasons.

After the war, he bounced between jobs and marriages and while in AA in 1958 wrote his autobiography “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and he resurfaced as a war hero. In the late 1970s, Hollywood created the television show very loosely based on Boyington’s squadron. He was portrayed by Robert Conrad. But his men became incensed at the portrayal of themselves as drunken, misfits.

Boyington died quietly in his sleep of cancer on January 11, 1988, and was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. He was buried next to Joe Louis. One of his fellow pilots remarked that Pappy wouldn’t have far to go find a fight.

Photos: US Archives/Wikipedia

Richard “Dick” Winters, Easy Company 506th PIR Died January 2, 2011

Richard “Dick” Winters was the central figure of the Stephen Ambrose book “Band of Brothers” that focused on the ordinary men that made up a rifle company in the 101st Airborne Division during World War II.

Thru their rigorous training at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, North Carolina, England before jumping into combat at Normandy on D-Day, again in Holland, fighting the German offensive in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge and later into the heart of Germany, Winters was the face of the men of Easy Company.

Rising from a platoon leader to commanding Easy Company before eventually commanding the battalion, Winters was a tough, no-nonsense commander who could relate to his men. He never asked them to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. He led from the front and his men respected him as no other.

When Ambrose’s fine book was put into a film during an HBO mini-series by Stephen Spielberg, Winters and the other veterans would post interview snippets during the series intermittently, which put a real face on the actors’ roles. Chief of which was Winters’, who was portrayed excellently by Damian Lewis.

Entrance into the Army and Toccoa: Winters enlisted in the Army in August of 1941. He took Basic Training at Camp Croft, SC. After graduation, he remained at Croft and was made into cadre for training new soldiers and draftees. He remained while the rest of his battalion was shipped to Panama.

Shortly after the US entered the war, Winters was selected to attend Officer Candidate School (OCS) at Ft. Benning, GA. He graduated and became a 2LT in the Infantry and volunteered for Airborne training. During his time at Benning, Winters met Lewis Nixon who would become his lifelong friend and a member of Easy Company, 506th PIR.

Winters received orders to report to Camp Toccoa, GA, to become part of the new Airborne Infantry Regiment (506th) being trained there by Col. Robert Sink. Winters was made the Second Platoon Leader, in E Co, 2nd Bn, 506th PIR under the command of 1LT Herman Sobel.

Sobel was a martinet who would punish the men for the slightest of infractions, real or perceived. Winters would later claim that the tough training and discipline that Sobel instilled in the men would save many of them in combat. But the men grew to hate their company commander because although he was a strict disciplinarian, as a field soldier, Sobel was a disaster, constantly getting lost during field training. Winters, however, was greatly respected by his men and that began to drive a wedge between the two officers.

Although Winters was promoted to First Lieutenant and made the Company Executive Officer, Sobel became jealous of him and the esteem the men held for him.

England and a Court-Martial: By June 1943, the 506th had gone thru intensive training at Camp Mackall, NC and been made part of the 101st Airborne Division. In September, the troops boarded a troop ship and sailed to England to prepare for the invasion of France.

Easy Company was stationed in Aldbourne, Wiltshire and was training hard for the D-Day invasion. Despite looking at going into combat soon, Sobel’s jealousy of Winters came to a head. Sobel accused of Winters of failure to obey a lawful order. The charge was what the troops call “a chickenshit” move. Winters fought it and asked for a court-martial. The Battalion commander Major Robert Strayer set the charges aside. Sobel was incensed and brought more charges against Winters the next day. Winters asked for a general court-martial. While the decision on how to proceed with this was debated at the Regiment, Winters was transferred to Headquarters Co. and made the Battalion Mess Officer.

That was the final straw for Easy Co’s NCOs. Several of them signed a letter that they refused to serve as NCOs in the company under Sobel. Sink was furious. He transferred a few out of the unit. Some were demoted and he chased them out of his office. But Sink realized the problem was Sobel and transferred him out of the Regiment to head up the parachute training school at Chilton-Foliat. Winters was put back in Easy Co. as the 1st Plt Commander. Then 1LT Thomas Meehan was given command of the company and the hard training resumed for the invasion prep of France.

D-Day and Beyond: During the invasion of Normandy, the C-47 carrying the Headquarters Section of Easy Co. was shot down and crashed, killing all on board. With Meehan dead, Winters became the acting commander of the company.

On the morning of the invasion, Winters gathered up all the men he could find and moved to the rally point which was near Sainte Marie du Mont. He was given the task of taking 13 men to destroy a battery of German 105mm howitzers that were firing on Utah Beach. The guns were located at Brecourt Manor.

Winters men destroyed three of the guns before they were joined by Lt. Ronald Speirs and men from D Co. who destroyed the fourth. Winters placed machine guns to cover the troops and take out German MG-42 emplacements. Once Winters and his men got to and destroyed the first gun with TNT in the barrel, they jumped into the trench system the Germans utilized to supply the guns. There, they were able to move easily from gun to gun. The attack not only knocked out the guns, wiping out a 60 man German garrison but during it, Winters found a map with all of the German artillery positions on Utah beach. American commanders were so impressed with the map, they ordered the first two Sherman tanks ashore to support the 506th in clearing the rest of Brecourt Manor.

Sink recommended Winters for the Medal of Honor, but there was an unwritten rule that each division would be only allowed one Medal of Honor. It was downgraded to the Distinguished Service Cross. Winters’ attack is still taught at West Point as a classic case of an attack against a fixed position. He was promoted to Captain on July 1 and a few days later was decorated by LTG Omar Bradley. He would command the company until they were pulled off the line in Normandy to prepare for the invasion of Holland.

Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge: In late September, the Allies made the huge Operation Market Garden airdrop in Holland with the 101st, 82nd US Airborne Divisions and the 1st British Airborne. On Oct. 5, Winters learned that Germans had broken thru the lines and were 1200 yards from the Bn Command Post.

He took a squad of men and led an attack on the crossroad where he thought there was a platoon-sized element of Germans there. There were more than 300. Winters attack and mortar fire from the battalion decimated the numerically superior Germans.

Four days later he became the Battalion XO after that officer Major Ollie Horton was killed in action. Soon after, the battalion was pulled off the line.

The German attack in the Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge) found the 101st shipped quickly to the crossroads town of Bastogne. Winters and the 2nd Bn defended the area near Foy.

After the Americans under General Patton relieved the encircled 101st, they went on the attack, taking Foy from the Germans. They stayed on the line until early March when they moved to Haguenau. Winters was promoted to Major. Shortly thereafter he became the acting battalion commander. The positions there were fairly static until the Battalion was ordered first along the Rhine and then to capture Hitler’s mountain resort at Berchtesgaden. There the unit remained until the Germans surrendered.

Winters and other officers in Berchtesgaden.

Winters separated from the Army on November 29, 1945, before being recalled to active duty during the Korean War. He graduated Ranger School and was going to be sent to Korea but was instead discharged. He worked for his friend Nixon as a General Manager of the Nixon Nitration Works in New Jersey where he met his wife.

Winters later went into business for himself and moved to Hershey, Pennsylvania where he remained until he retired. He passed away on January 2, 2011, and was buried in a family plot in Ephrata, Pennsylvania.

(From Wikipedia) On June 6, 2012, during the 68th Anniversary of the D-Day landings and parachute assaults, a 12-foot tall bronze statue in Winters’ likeness was unveiled near the village of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, France. Winters only agreed for the statue to bear his resemblance on the condition that the monument would be dedicated to all junior officers who served and died during the Normandy landings.

Photos Courtesy: US Army

The Luftwaffe Starts the “Second Great Fire of London, 1940

On this night, December 29-30, 1940, the Luftwaffe unleashed one of the more deadly raids on the city of London during “The Blitz”, firebombing the capital and destroying a large segment of the city.

The Blitz was the name Londoners gave to the German bombing of England that took place between 7 September 1940 – 10 May 1941 and was short for the German word “Blitzkrieg” or Lightning War which the Nazis under Hitler had termed.

During the Blitz and the bombing of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, nearly 40,000 civilians were killed. London was bombed every night for 57 straight nighttime raids. Over a million homes were destroyed in London and much of the historic part of the city was burned to the ground.

On this particular night, the Nazis would drop over 10,000 incendiary bombs and create a firestorm that locals would call the “Second Great Fire of London.”

Background: The Germans began World War II by invading Poland in September 1939 but it wasn’t until the spring of 1940, that their army, the Wehrmacht would show how effective this Blitzkrieg was. In May and June, the Germans invaded Belgium, Holland, France, and Norway and quickly took all of them. Their army quickly dispatched the French and English troops who were woefully unprepared for war.

The British and French were bottled up on the coast and only a daring rescue of the troops at Dunkirk saved them from annihilation. Britain was preparing for the inevitable invasion by the Germans. Hitler’s plan, “Operation Sea-Lion” was dependent upon the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe to gain air superiority.

The Luftwaffe began by attacking the British airfields and anti-aircraft defenses. But instead of sweeping aside the heavily outnumbered RAF, the losses the Luftwaffe took were appalling. Just when the British were in danger of losing control of the air battle, Hitler blinked first. He switched the air attacks from the airfields to the cities and the Germans first bombed London on September 7. This allowed the British to recover, regroup and rearm. Operation Sea-Lion was canceled but the bombing of the British cities, especially London continued.

By October, the Germans decided to try to bomb the British into surrendering by attacking the cities and large population areas. This just steeled British resolve. The Germans were also hampered by poor intelligence. They knew little of the British industry and during the Blitz, British production increased rather than decreased. The German High Command couldn’t make up its mind to attack certain targeted industries, such as aircraft production, their supply chain or by targeting the civilian populace in terror bombing. This condemned the Luftwaffe to failure.

The Bombing of 29 December: On the attack on London, the Germans were using Kampfgruppe 100 (Bomber Group), at 1817 hrs, they sent 10 He-111s “Pathfinders” using incendiary bombs to light the way for the main force raid. The raid force consisted of nearly 150 bombers, mainly the He-111.

The raid lasted three hours and the Germans hit central London with over 24,000 high explosive bombs and 100,000 incendiary bombs. The firestorm created by the bombing burned more territory than the “Great Fire of London” in 1666, almost 275 years previously.

The devastation stretched from the south in Islington to the St. Paul’s Cathedral Churchyard. The Germans planned the attack around a particularly low tide on the river Thames so it would be harder for the British to fight the more than 1500 fires that were raging around the city.

More than 160 civilians died during the raid, although many more would die of their injuries later in the days that followed. Still, civilian casualties could have been much higher. A total of 14 firemen died fighting the fires and 250 were injured. Buildings completely destroyed in the firestorm included 19 churches, 31 guild halls and all of Paternoster Row. Paternoster Row was the center of the London publishing trade and an estimated 5 million books were lost in the fire.

Amazingly, St.Paul’s Cathedral was saved, due to the bravery of the British firefighters and the volunteers of the St. Paul’s Watch, over 200 civilians who volunteered to save the Cathedral. Winston Churchill urged the firemen to save the Cathedral at all costs.

The iconic photos of St. Pauls standing resolutely while London burns around it became a rallying point for British resistance against the Blitz.

Two footnotes should be mentioned, above it said the blitz lasted until 10 May 1941, that is when most of the front line German troops were pulled off the Western Front and sent east for “Operation Barbarossa” which was the Nazis invasion of the Soviet Union.

And the British would have a long memory. In February 1945, the British and Americans decided that the firebombing of Dresden may prove detrimental to the German morale.

In four raids over two days in February 1945, 722 heavy bombers of the RAF and 527 heavy bombers of the USAAF (United States Army Air Force) hit Dresden with a combined 3900 tons of high explosives and incendiary devices.

The resultant firestorm devastated Dresden and upwards of 25,000 civilians died of flames or by the scorching heat.

Many Germans considered what Britain and the US did in Dresden was a war crime.

Photos:Wikipedia

Dec. 20, 1941, the AVG, Flying Tigers Flies in Combat For the First Time

The First American Volunteer Group [AVG] popularly known as the Flying Tigers was a civilian contractor group of US Army, Navy and Marine Corps aviators who volunteered to fight for the Chinese against the Japanese in the early days of World War II.

Although the Flying Tigers were in existence for a very short time, they established a stellar combat record and have become one of the most iconic units of the war, readily identifiable by their Shark’s tooth nose art painted on their P-40 fighters.

The AVG was recruited from the military with Presidential authority and was commanded by Claire Lee Chennault. The strength of the group was never more than about 90 planes with three squadrons of 30 aircraft each. The three squadrons were named “Adam & Eve”, “Panda Bears” and “Hell’s Angels” after the 1930 Howard Hughes film.

R.T. Smith of the 3rd Pursuit Squadron, (Hell’s Angels) of the AVG. The Flying Tiger logo was done by the Walt Disney Co.

Although they were in combat from only December 20, 1941 – July 4, 1942, they shot down 229 Japanese aircraft and destroyed another 68 on the ground against a loss of just 16 of the AVG. The members of the volunteer group were in actuality members of the Chinese Air Force although their pay $250 a month for a mechanic, and up to $750 a month for a squadron commander was about three times what they were paid in the US military.

Chennault, was a retired U.S. Army Air Corps officer who had worked in China since August 1937, as an advisor to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and later as the director of a Chinese Air Force flight school centered in Kunming.

The pilots were discharged from the military and promised $600 a month for flight officers, $675 for flight leaders and $750 for squadron commanders. They were promised a bounty of $500 for every Japanese plane shot down. In April 1941, the pilots took ships from the United States to Burma while they awaited their aircraft to be shipped over and shuttled to their training fields.

Chennault’s Training Doctrine Proves Effective: Chennault studied the Japanese aircraft, their tactics and the results the Soviet pilots had while flying against them in 1940. He decided to break from established US doctrine that was being taught to US fighter pilots in the states.

Chennault’s doctrine forbid the AVG pilots from taking on the enemy in a turning dogfight. The Japanese fighters were far too maneuverable for the P-40s to take on in a dogfighting. Instead, the AVG would dive on enemy aircraft in teams from an altitude advantage, and then to execute a diving or slashing attack and to dive away to set up for another attack. This “dive-and-zoom” technique proved to be extremely effective once the Tigers took on the Japanese fighters. Although much more nimble, the Japanese fighters didn’t have the dive speed of the heavier American fighters.

The P-40 was superior to the Japanese fighters in a few areas. The pilot’s armor protection, much heavier armament and self-sealing gas tanks. Plus, they had the advantage of diving faster which fit their tactics to a tee.

Combat begins: Shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the AVG was now combat ready. Chennault moved a squadron [Hell’s Angels] to Kunming to defend the Burma road on December 20, the Japanese sent a force to bomb Rangoon and the AVG shot down four aircraft with no losses of their own while breaking up the attack.

On the 23rd, the Japanese struck again and the Tigers shot down eight more of the enemy while losing three of their own.

On Christmas Day 1941, the Japanese Air Force sent 63 bombers escorted by 25 fighters to attack again, they were met by a force of just 14 P-40s. The AVG ripped into the Japanese formations shooting down a combination of 35 bombers and fighter with a loss of just five of their own.

The combat continued into 1942 as the AVG found itself consistently outnumbered by superior Japanese numbers and although the Chinese and Allies were pushed back, the AVG took a toll on the attacking Japanese pilots. The AVG maintained a superior kill ratio to the enemy and far beyond anyone else in the theater.

Nineteen AVG pilots became Aces while in the service of the Chinese:

Robert Neale: 13 victories
Ed Rector: 10.5 victories
David Lee “Tex” Hill: 10.25 victories
George Burgard: 10 victories
Robert Little: 10 victories
Charles Older: 10 victories
Robert T. Smith: 8.9 victories
William McGarry: 8 victories
Robert Walters: 8 victories
Charles Bond: 7 victories
Frank Lawlor: 7 victories
John V. “Scarsdale Jack” Newkirk: 7 victories
Robert Hedman: 6 victories
C. Joseph Rosbert: 6 victories
J. Richard Rossi: 6.25 victories
Robert Prescott: 5.5 victories
Percy Bartelt: 5 victories
William Bartling: 5 victories
Edmund Overend: 5 victories
Robert Sandell: 5 victories
Robert H. Smith: 5 victories

Return to the US Military: In typical bean-counter form, the US military decided to revert the AVG back into the armed services in mid-1942, and in a total snafu sent a general officer General Clayton Bissell to strong-arm the Tigers back into the US military. Bissell was a long-time hater and enemy of Chennault. His “recruitment” speech for the AVG was full of demands and threats as to what would happen to the Tigers if they refused. Most of the pilots told him to pound sand. Only a few stayed on out of respect for Chennault who was promoted to Brigadier General and put in command of the new unit.

From the diary of Dick Rossi: We were in actual combat for seven months; we had less than 300 people. As of Dec 2, 1941, there were 82 pilots and of the original 100 P-40s sent out to Chennault, 78 remained with 62 in commission, 68 with radios and 60 with armament. There were shortages of just about everything and no spare parts to speak of. The group has a confirmed count of 297 enemy aircraft destroyed with another 150 probable. Our losses were 4 pilots lost in aerial combat, 7 shot down and killed by anti-aircraft fire during strafing runs, 8 killed in operational and training accidents unrelated to enemy action. Four were MIA and of those 3 were found to be POWs. Three died from Japanese bombing raids. One was shot down and seen alive, but no word as to his fate. The American Fighter Aces Association confirms 20 AVG pilots as Aces with another 6 pilots achieving Ace status during the next few years.

Chinese Memorials: Despite not being on the best terms with the US during the Communist years, the Chinese people remember the Flying Tigers and the AVG quite fondly and there are numerous memorials built to honor the memory of the American men who risked their lives for the Chinese people.

From Wikipedia: A Flying Tigers Memorial is located in the village of Zhejiang, Hunan Province, China and there is a museum dedicated exclusively to the Flying Tigers. The building is a steel and marble structure, with wide sweeping steps leading up to a platform with columns holding up the memorial’s sweeping roof; on its back wall, etched in black marble, are the names of all members of the AVG, 75th Fighter Squadron, and 14th Air Force who died in China. In 2005, the city of Kunming held a ceremony memorializing the history of the Flying Tigers in China, and on 20 December 2012, the Flying Tigers Museum opened in Kunming. The date is the 71st anniversary of the first combat from Kunming of the Flying Tigers. The Memorial Cemetery to Anti-Japanese Aviator Martyrs in Nanjing, China features a wall listing the names of Flying Tiger pilots and other pilots who defended China in World War II, and has several unmarked graves for such American pilots.

The largest private museum in China, Chengdu Jianchuan Museum, devotes a wing in its military section to the history of the Flying Tigers, including a tribute wall featuring a thousand porcelain photos of members of the Flying Tigers as well as many historical artifacts from the era.

In March 2015, the Flying Tiger Heritage Park was opened in Guilin in collaboration with the Flying Tiger Historical Organization. The park is built on the site of Yangtang Airfield and includes a museum, aircraft shelters, and relics of a command post located in a cave.

Photos; US Archives

Massacre of American Soldiers at Malmedy December 17,1944

During the opening days of the Germans’ Ardennes Offensive late in 1944, elements of the 1st SS Panzer Division [Leibstandarte] committed a series of grisly atrocities against American prisoners of war [POWs] around the Belgian town of Malmedy. These actions by Kampfgruppe Peiper, led by SS Sturmbannführer Joachim Peiper led to a war crimes trial in Dachau in 1946.

Background: Nazi Germany was on the verge of collapse in late 1944, the Russian Army in the east was steadily pushing them back toward Germany and bleeding an incredible amount of casualties every day. In the west, the Allies had successfully come ashore at Normandy and once they had achieved a breakthrough in the hedgerow country, raced across France. They had penetrated the frontiers of the German border in a few places while their bombers were devastating German war industry and their cities.

Hitler developed a grandiose plan where he was going to withdraw a large part of his Panzer Army from the Russian Front and try to take advantage of the bad winter weather, which would ground Allied aircraft and punch a hole in the thinly defended American lines in the Ardennes forest. He wanted to split the Allies in two and drive to Antwerp. His generals had no delusions about making it to Antwerp. But they thought it could push the Allies back to the Meuse River it would buy them time while delaying the war.
Peiper’s attack was to be the vanguard of the left wing of the Sixth SS Panzer Army. His orders relayed to him by General Sepp Dietrich and from Hitler, himself stated that the Russian Front rules of engagement would be in effect. No quarter to be given, no prisoners taken and the Belgian citizens were to be shown no quarter either. Hitler wanted to shock and frighten the American army. It would have the opposite effect. Once the infantry poked a hole in the American lines, Peiper’s Kampfgruppe spearhead was to race his column of armored and motorized infantry thru the crossroads at Stavelot and Trois Pointes and seize the important bridge over the Meuse at Huy. The timetable for this was 48 hours maximum. This would prove to be too ambitious and the Germans would be behind their schedule almost immediately.

The Germans Attack: At 0530 on December 16, the Germans began their attack along the front. Artillery pounded US positions from between 20-90 minutes. The German Volksgrenadiers who were to punch a hole in the green American 99th Infantry Division were delayed in breaking thru. The untested and heavily outnumbered Americans delayed the German advance for four hours. The result was a huge traffic jam behind the lines for Peiper’s armored force. He didn’t break thru until after dark, far behind his timetable, but drove his men all thru the night, not stopping. He initially lost five of his tanks when they rolled over an old German minefield

Shooting of prisoners at Honsfeld and Büllingen: Peiper’s column raced as quickly as they could all night on the roads in the American rear. At dawn on the 17th, his troops surprised and took the town of Honsfeld, capturing many vehicles and anti-tank guns. They then shot down 17 unarmed Americans, the first of the atrocities committed by these hardened German troops who were accustomed to the bitter no-quarter-given battles on the Eastern Front.

Peiper’s column was already in need of fuel. He learned of an American fuel depot at Büllingen which wasn’t in his sector but the Hitler Youth [Jugend] Division’s sector. Peiper swung two miles off course and quickly captured the fuel depot and capturing 50 Americans. His men forced the Americans to fuel his vehicles and then shot them down in cold-blood, murdering them and leaving them before swinging back on his route and pushing west.

As Peiper’s men pushed west, they just missed running headlong into a column of Combat Command [Brigade] of the 7th Armored Division heading for St. Vith. Had they met a massive tank battle would have taken place, instead, the Americans passed by unaware of the armored column in their rear. Following the American tanks was a column of 125 men attached to the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion.

Malmedy Massacre: The meeting between the two columns was strictly by chance, the Americans were in unarmored trucks and the Germans disabled the first and last vehicles forcing the men to surrender. They were herded into a small field surrounded by crossroads with other POWs from earlier in the day.

Later reports had about 120 prisoners in the field. As follow-on German columns were approaching on all sides in armored vehicles, the Germans opened fire on the American prisoners. They machine-gunned them in the field. There was no escape, no one was able to run. Unlike in some films that showed Americans running into the woods, that didn’t happen.

After the troops were machine-gunned, SS troops walked thru the field and were shooting any soldier that showed signs of life and mocked Americans who cried out for their mother or God as they applied a coup de grace. 43 men survived by feigning death under the bodies of other soldiers. That was their only chance.

After the Germans moved off, the survivors in ones and twos began making their way back to the American lines. By late that afternoon, the American high command was learning of the Germans executing prisoners of war and the word quickly filtered down to the troops in the line. There would be no more surrendering. In fact, one unit posted orders that no German paratrooper or SS men were to be taken prisoner.

Reaction and Aftermath: The American army interviewed all of the survivors and their stories all matched, they knew that the Germans were conducting atrocities and were looking to gather evidence for a war crimes trial. For the average foot soldier, the feeling was payback. And that is just what they did.

On January 1, 1945, the Americans machine gunned about 30 German POWs outside of the small town of Chenogne, Belgium. It was quickly covered up and no soldier or officer was ever called to answer for their crimes.

Unfortunately, the bodies at Malmedy weren’t recovered until January 14, 1945, when the Americans finally took back the Baugnez crossroads where the massacre took place. An inspection of the dead showed many died from a pistol to wound to the head with powder burns showing execution by the SS.

Peiper’s men were accused of killing other prisoners in several other Belgian towns and the killing of 100 civilians in Stavelot.

An interesting side note to the events was the capture of an American officer, a Major Harold D. McCown of the 119th Infantry Regiment. He was captured in the fighting around Gleize. He was brought before Peiper and knowing about Malmedy, he asked about the safety of his men and himself. Peiper, according to McCown that neither he nor his men were at any risk and that he [Peiper] was not accustomed to killing his prisoners. McCown also testified that neither he nor his men were threatened in any way. McCown would later testify at Peiper’s war crime trial in 1946.

During the trial at Dachau in 1946, Peiper, his commander Sepp Dietrich and 70 subordinates were tried and sentenced for crimes against humanity. There were 43 death sentences, 22 life sentences, and several smaller sentences. No one was ever executed. All of the sentences were commuted and the last to leave prison was Peiper himself in 1956.

After the war, he moved to France where he lived quietly before being murdered by French communists in 1976. Ironically, he had just begun work on a book about Malmedy.

An excellent account of the Malmedy Massacre is the book “Fatal Crossroads” by Danny S. Parker. It can be ordered here:

Photos: US Archives