World War Two
Published 21 Apr 2023As the RAF closes in on Berlin and the German Army is running dangerously low on men, the Nazi leadership is determined to use their resources to spread their crimes deeper into Hungary and Italy.
(more…)
April 22, 2023
Hitler’s Revenge on the Italian People – War Against Humanity 101
Comments Off on Hitler’s Revenge on the Italian People – War Against Humanity 101
December 23, 2022
A Jungle Miracle – War Against Humanity 092
World War Two
Published 22 Dec 2022Two escapes, one from the Nazis in Kovno (Kaunas) Lithuania, from the prison at Fort IX, and one from Japanese terror on Panay in the Philippines this week, will help to document the crimes of the Axis powers.
(more…)
Comments Off on A Jungle Miracle – War Against Humanity 092
November 25, 2022
The Secret Radio in Auschwitz – War Against Humanity 088
World War Two
Published 24 Nov 2022In Auschwitz the inmates gathering evidence of Nazi crimes score two successes, while the RAF score a direct hit on Goebbels as they set Berlin aflame. In the Pacific the accidental sinking of the SS Suez Maru triggers a Japanese war crime.
(more…)
Comments Off on The Secret Radio in Auschwitz – War Against Humanity 088
November 24, 2022
Pavlov’s House, codenamed “Lighthouse” in Stalingrad
In The Critic, Jonathan Boff reviews The Lighthouse of Stalingrad: The Hidden Truth at the Centre of WWII’s Greatest Battle by Iain MacGregor:
In the summer of 1942, with the German army deep inside the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler launched Operation Blue, an attack from around Kharkiv in south-east Ukraine across hundreds of miles of steppe towards the oil fields of the Caucasus. Part of the plan required the German Sixth Army under General Paulus to secure the flank by seizing the industrial city of Stalingrad on the banks of the Volga.
By the middle of September Paulus’s troops were fighting their way, street by street, building by building, and sometimes room by room, through a city reduced to ruins by artillery shelling and the bombs of the Luftwaffe. The fighting was ferocious. Although by November most of Stalingrad was in German hands, several pockets of resistance still held out. Meanwhile, the Red Army was secretly massing for a counter-attack in the open terrain on either side of the city.
On 19 November 1942, General Zhukov unleashed a giant pincer attack which quickly overran the Romanian, Hungarian and Italian forces protecting Paulus’s flanks. Within days the German Sixth Army found itself trapped in a giant pocket, cut off from the rest of the German army. Here, in the depths of a Russian winter, nearly 300,000 surrounded men tried to hold out as their supplies of food, fuel, ammunition and medicine dwindled away.
By the end of January 1943, all hope of relief was gone. To Hitler’s disgust, Paulus ordered the remnants of his army to lay down their weapons. Of the 91,000 German soldiers sent into captivity in Siberia, only 5,000 would survive to ever see their homes again. Immense and terrible as the battle was — we will never know exactly how many troops took part, nor how many died, but it is probable that the total of dead, wounded and captured on both sides reached two million — Stalingrad was not the biggest battle of the war, nor even the bloodiest. Nonetheless, it remains, alongside Dunkirk and D-Day, among the touchstones of the Second World War, largely because it encapsulates three linked but distinct stories. Iain MacGregor does a fine job of covering each in his rich study.
First, Stalingrad was one of the most important battles of the war. It marked the high-water mark of the Nazi invasion of the USSR and an end to Hitler’s genocidal dreams of destroying the Soviet Union. Before Stalingrad, and the other crushing defeats the Axis suffered at around the same time in Tunisia and the Solomon Islands, the initiative had always lain with Germany and Japan. Afterwards, the Allies decided where, when and how the war would be fought.
MacGregor establishes this context neatly. He explains with just the right amount of detail why Operation Blue was launched and what it hoped to achieve. He offers a clear discussion of the decisions taken, and mistakes made, on both sides; and he hints at the logistical weaknesses that probably damned the Germans to disappointment from the start.
The strongest point of this book, however, is its description of the street-fighting in the heart of the city around a building known as “Pavlov’s House” (codename Lighthouse: hence the title of the book). Here the German 71st and Soviet 13th Guards rifle divisions fought for months. By focusing on this small area and these two formations, MacGregor is able to dig deep enough into the tactical detail to give us a clear sense of the difficulty, violence and terror of urban warfare, without swamping us with repetitive detail. His descriptions of fighting have a cinematic quality, swooping smoothly from panoramic tracking shots of the initial German charge down towards the waters of the Volga into close-ups of bullet-riddled mannequins fought over in the ruins of a department store.
Comments Off on Pavlov’s House, codenamed “Lighthouse” in Stalingrad
November 7, 2022
Inside the Gulag System – WW2 Special
World War Two
Published 4 Nov 2022Even as the Allied powers condemn the German crimes against humanity, their recent victories are in part thanks to the massive system of forced labour built by Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. Over one million prisoners work in the Gulag to power the Soviet war economy.
(more…)
Comments Off on Inside the Gulag System – WW2 Special
October 22, 2022
Battle of the Bulge 1944: Could the German Plan Work?
Real Time History
Published 21 Oct 2022Sign up for Nebula and watch Rhineland 45: https://nebula.tv/realtimehistory
The Battle of the Bulge was one of the last German offensives during the Second World War. It caught the US Army off guard in the Ardennes sector but ultimately the Allies prevailed. But did Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein (“Operation Watch on the Rhine”) ever have a chance to succeed and reach Antwerp?
(more…)
Comments Off on Battle of the Bulge 1944: Could the German Plan Work?
October 18, 2022
CENSORED: The Great Escape from Death Camp Sobibor – October 16, 1943 – WAH 082
World War Two
Published 16 Oct 2022The German Nazis and their helpers are facing increasing resistance, this week in Rome from the Vatican, and at the Sobibor extermination camp from their victims.
(more…)
Comments Off on CENSORED: The Great Escape from Death Camp Sobibor – October 16, 1943 – WAH 082
October 14, 2022
Nazis Suck at Sabotage – WW2 – Spies & Ties 23
World War Two
Published 13 Oct 2022They say every masterpiece has its cheap copy. Well, the German Sicherheitsdienst are trying to copy the success of the Soviet Partisans. With Walter Schellenberg, Heinrich Himmler, and Reinhard Heydrich in charge, you know it’s going to be a bloody affair.
(more…)
Comments Off on Nazis Suck at Sabotage – WW2 – Spies & Ties 23
July 27, 2022
When the founder of the SAS was captured by Italian troops in 1943
In The Critic, Saul David describes what happened when Lieutenant Colonel David Stirling was captured during his “most hare-brained scheme” to link up the troops of Britain’s First and Eighth armies in Tunisia:
In January 1943 Lieutenant Colonel David Stirling, founder of the SAS, was flown to Rome for interrogation. He had been captured by the Italians on his “most hare-brained scheme yet” — leading a small raiding party deep into enemy territory in Tunisia to attack lines of communication, reconnoitre the terrain and become the first Eighth Army unit to link up with the First Army advancing from the west.
Cautious when speaking to the Italians, he was “vain and voluble” in conversation with a fellow “captive”, Captain John Richards. Unbeknown to Stirling, Richards was an Anglo-Swiss stool pigeon, Theodore Schurch, who had deserted from the British army and was working for fascist intelligence.
Prior to Schurch’s court-martial for treachery in late 1945, Stirling denied he had revealed any sensitive information. If he had, it was inaccurate and “designed to deceive”. This was a lie, told to protect Stirling’s reputation. In fact, as the British authorities knew all too well from intercepted signals, Stirling had told Richards vital details about current SAS operations, including the location of patrols and their orders. He had even given them the name of his probable replacement as SAS commander: Paddy Mayne.
The story of Stirling’s unfortunate encounter with Schurch has been told before, notably by Ben Macintyre in his bestselling SAS: Rogue Heroes. But Macintyre underplays Stirling’s indiscretion and fails to link it to the many other examples of the SAS commander’s recklessness and poor judgement of character. For Gavin Mortimer, on the other hand, both the capture and loose talk were typical of a man who was “imaginative, immature, immoderate and ill-disciplined”. Small wonder that even his own brother Bill thought he would be better off in a prisoner-of-war camp.
The subtitle of Mortimer’s book — a carefully researched and impeccably sourced take-down of the legendary special forces pioneer — is a corrective to the flattering but inaccurate nickname that was first coined for Stirling by British tabloids during the Second World War. “When word reached Cairo of the Phantom Major moniker,” writes Mortimer, “it must have sparked a mix of hilarity and indignation. All the falsehoods and fabrications would have been harmless enough had Stirling not stolen the valour of his comrades.”
Thread by thread, Mortimer unpicks the myth of Stirling’s life and war service that the subject and his fawning admirers had so carefully constructed, both during and after the war. Stirling was not training in North America for an attempt on Mount Everest’s summit when war broke out in 1939, as he later claimed, but rather working as a ranch hand because his exasperated family hoped it might give the feckless youth some focus and direction.
Comments Off on When the founder of the SAS was captured by Italian troops in 1943
July 18, 2022
General Patton Orders War Crimes – WAH 069 – July 17, 1943
World War Two
Published 17 Jul 2022This week, we see a contrast in the way different civilians behave within occupied Ukraine, Patton orders war crimes, and Jewish resistance give up one of their own fighters.
(more…)
Comments Off on General Patton Orders War Crimes – WAH 069 – July 17, 1943
May 22, 2022
Axis Prisoners Face French Wrath – WW2 – 195 – May 21 1943
World War Two
Published 21 May 2022The Allies have won the battle for Africa, but now they have nearly 250,000 POWs to care for, and do not have the facilities to do so. The Trident Conference continues in Washington to try and decide the direction of the Allied war effort, but they launch the Dambuster Raids this week in Germany to try and cripple German water power — and thus, industry — with a new type of bomb.
(more…)
Comments Off on Axis Prisoners Face French Wrath – WW2 – 195 – May 21 1943
May 15, 2022
The End of the War in Africa – WW2 – 194 – May 14, 1943
World War Two
Published 14 May 2022With the end of the Tunisian Campaign, the Allies have won the war for the African Continent. What next? They meet at the Trident Conference in Washington DC to try and figure that out. Meanwhile, the fight in the field continues — in Burma, the Aleutians, China, and the Kuban.
(more…)
Comments Off on The End of the War in Africa – WW2 – 194 – May 14, 1943
April 17, 2022
Kursk – The Next Great Battle? – WW2 – 190 – April 16, 1943
World War Two
Published 16 Apr 2022The Allies have one chance left to catch the Axis forces in Tunisia before they can reach the Tunis defences; in the USSR both the Axis and Soviets are making plans for a fight near Kursk; and in the skies, in the South Pacific a Japanese aerial offensive ends and Yamamoto himself flies off to congratulate his pilots.
(more…)
Comments Off on Kursk – The Next Great Battle? – WW2 – 190 – April 16, 1943
April 8, 2022
QotD: The fearlessness of De Gaulle
Like many monsters — for he could be a monster to those who defied him, and was often cruel and unfair to his most devoted supporters — he had enormous charm when he chose to turn it on. He was deeply mischievous and enjoyed puzzling and wrong-footing others. When he did not wish to give ground, he could be obtuse, an experience described by one victim as like “being confined … with a cormorant who spoke only cormorant.”
The evidence suggests that he was one of those dangerous people who simply do not know what fear is, and that he discovered this quite early in his long life. If a sergeant had not fallen dead on top of the young Lieutenant de Gaulle when he first went into battle at Dinant in August 1914, he would probably have died in some useless, gallant sacrifice and never have been heard of again. If he had not been knocked unconscious by the blast of a grenade at Verdun in March 1916, it is hard to believe that he would have allowed himself to be taken prisoner by the Germans. In that case he would almost certainly have died in that frightful battle, or not long afterward, another silent shade in that huge legion of shades who marched off into the dark during that appalling war.
Only his wife Yvonne was unimpressed by his grandeur, more than once urging him to retire, or puncturing his ambition. During the long, frustrating wilderness years between his wartime glory and his final presidential triumph, he mused to her that he might one day repeat his great rallying call of 1940. Using the rather patronizing endearment “Pauvre Ami,” she declared flatly, “Nobody will follow you.” He snapped back, “Shut up, Yvonne! I am old enough to know what I want to do!” In fact, on that occasion he was wrong and she was right. She even mocked his soldierly abilities. When the general’s aides suggested that they might install a machine gun at their remote, forbidding country home in Colombey, in case of an attack by communists, Yvonne scoffed that her husband would have no idea how to use it. Perhaps she would have.
Peter Hitchens, “A Certain Idea of France”, First Things, 2019-04.
Comments Off on QotD: The fearlessness of De Gaulle
April 1, 2022
Denazify the World. Resist Now. – WAH 055 – March 1943, Pt. 2
World War Two
Published 31 Mar 2022The Nazis and the Soviets discover each other’s atrocities, while resistance is on the rise, and a half-dormant conspiracy against Hitler comes back to life to take his life.
(more…)
Comments Off on Denazify the World. Resist Now. – WAH 055 – March 1943, Pt. 2
