World War II December 2020

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PHILIPPINES, DECEMBER 8, 1941

WHY DID MACARTHUR WAIT FOR THE ENEMY TO STRIKE FIRST? —page 28

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EXPERIENCEWWIIPOW

CAMP DOUGLAS DOUGLAS

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uring World War II, Douglas was home to the primary prisoner of war camp for Wyoming.

There were 17 satellite camps throughout Wyoming.

Construction of the camp began early in 1942; the first prisoners to arrive at the camp were 412 Italians on Aug. 28, 1943. The camp was over a square mile in size and comprised of 180 buildings, which housed up to 2,000 Italian and 3,000 German POWs and 500 army personnel from the spring of 1943 to the winter of 1946. During the camp’s use it was larger than the town of Douglas.

CAMP DOUGLAS

Douglas, Wyo., is the #JackalopeCity

One prisoner at the camp was quoted saying, “We never had it so good.” For many of the prisoners, it was the first time since being drafted that they had clean clothes, a warm bed, good food and health care.

Prisoners at the camp ranged from 14 to 80 years old.

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Shocked sailors on December 7, 1941, watch explosions from the seaplane base on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES; COVER: JOHN FLOREA/ THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES; PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN WALKER

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DE CE M B E R 2020 ENDORSED BY THE NATIONAL WORLD WAR II MUSEUM, INC.

F E AT U R E S COVE R STO RY

28 PULLED PUNCHES

The inside story on why General Douglas MacArthur held back at a critical point in the war JOSEPH CONNOR

38 ONE FALSE STEP

Could a young army pilot have prevented the Pearl Harbor attack?

The lost opportunity followed him for life JOSEPH CONNOR

46 THE DARK PLACE

Actor Jimmy Stewart’s nightmarish war experiences transformed his postwar performances DAVE KINDY

P O RT F O L I O

54 FROM WEHRMACHT TO U.S. ARMY

One soldier’s strange journey, from two years in the German army to a fresh start with the Americans RICHARD E. SCHROEDER

W E A P O N S M A N UA L

60 HEAVYWEIGHT FIGHTER Germany’s KMS Tirpitz battleship

62 THE FOURTH AXIS POWER

Hungary’s wartime leader struck a Faustian deal with Adolf Hitler and discovered there was a huge price to pay BILL YENNE

D E PA RT M E N T S

8 MAIL 12 WORLD WAR II TODAY 18 CONVERSATION

Writer Erik Larson on Churchill as leader, strategist­—and family man

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20 FROM THE FOOTLOCKER 22 NEED TO KNOW 24 TRAVEL

Follow in the footsteps of escaped POWs on Italy’s Freedom Trail

70 REVIEWS

Racecars as weapons in Faster; Nazi spies; The Last Vermeer film

76 BATTLE FILMS

Everyone enjoys “Hitler Rant” parodies. Should we?

79 CHALLENGE 8O FAMILIAR FACE DECEMBER 2020

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WWII Online WORLDWARII.com

The crew of the USS Ward’s numberthree gun fired upon and sank a Japanese mini sub off Oahu.

Michael A. Reinstein CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER David Steinhafel PUBLISHER Alex Neill EDITOR IN CHIEF

VOL. 35, NO. 4 DECEMBER 2020

EDITOR

KAREN JENSEN Larry Porges SENIOR EDITOR Kirstin Fawcett ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jerry Morelock, Jon Guttman HISTORIANS David T. Zabecki CHIEF MILITARY HISTORIAN Paul Wiseman NEWS EDITOR Stephen Kamifuji CREATIVE DIRECTOR Brian Walker GROUP ART DIRECTOR Melissa A. Winn DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Guy Aceto, Uliana Bazar, Jennifer E. Berry PHOTO EDITORS

If you enjoy Joseph Connor’s story, “One False Step,” on page 38 of this issue, you’ll want to check out the tale of another potential lost opportunity to defend against the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor:

First Shots Fired at Pearl Harbor

By Steve Twomey An old vessel, the USS Ward, and its new captain and crew of reservists encountered the enemy off Oahu in the crucial minutes before the Pearl Harbor attack. Their alerts to navy commanders went unheeded.

ADVISORY BOARD

Ed Drea, David Glantz, Keith Huxen, John McManus, Williamson Murray CORPORATE

Rob Wilkins DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIP MARKETING Tom Griffiths CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT Graydon Sheinberg CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT Shawn Byers VP AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Jamie Elliott PRODUCTION DIRECTOR ADVERTISING

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FORMS MUST BE RECEIVED ON OR BEFORE 12/31/2020. FAX ORDERS TO 504-527-6088 OR MAIL TO: THE NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM, ROAD TO VICTORY BRICK PROGRAM, 945 MAGAZINE STREET, NEW ORLEANS, LA 70130. The National WWII Museum’s Road to Victory brick program honors the WWII generation, the American heroes who served during the war, and their families. The goal of our program is to celebrate the American spirit while forging a link between the present generation and the generation who fought to secure our nation’s freedom during World War II. Therefore, the Museum reserves the right to deny requests for inscriptions that might be considered offensive or inappropriate to those who sacrificed during the WWII era, or messages that do not align with the Museum’s mission, which is to tell the story of the American experience in the war that changed the world—why it was fought, how it was won, and what it means today—so that all generations will understand the price of freedom and be inspired by what they learn.

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CONNOR

SAINSBURY

KINDY

SCHROEDER

YENNE

JOSEPH CONNOR (“One False Step,” “Pulled Punches”), who holds degrees from Fairleigh Dickinson University and Rutgers Law School, worked for seven years as a newspaper reporter and editor before serving as an assistant county prosecutor in New Jersey for 27 years. Always fascinated by the Pacific War’s early stages, Connor considers Pearl Harbor’s radar readings and the events surrounding Japan’s attack on Clark Field to be intriguing stories that deserve a closer look.

DAVE KINDY (“The Dark Place”) is a

freelance writer who lives in Plymouth, Massachusetts. A lifelong lover of history, he is especially fond of old Hollywood films and patriotic movie stars like Jimmy Stewart. He writes for Smithsonian, Air & Space, Military History, Vietnam, American History, and other publications.

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BRENDAN SAINSBURY (“A Narrow

Escape”) has long been interested in World War II—a fascination largely inspired by his father, who served as a wireless operator in the Royal Air Force between 1944 and 1947. Sainsbury has authored more than 60 guidebooks for Lonely Planet. He first became aware of Italy’s Freedom Trail in 2008 while conducting research in Italy, and he returned to hike the trail for a second time in 2019.

RICHARD E. SCHROEDER (“From Wehrmacht to U.S. Army”) holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and specializes in Cold War and intelligence issues. He served as a U.S. Army intelligence officer in Washington, D.C., and at the U.S. Military Command in Vietnam.

During his 31-year career as an officer of the CIA’s Clandestine Service,

he held senior management positions in Washington and Europe in the Directorate of Operations and the Directorate of Science and Technology. He is a founding member of the Board of Advisors of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., and the author of the 2017 book The Foundation of the CIA: Harry Truman, the Missouri Gang, and the Origins of the Cold War.

BILL YENNE (“The Fourth Axis Power”), who grew up without a TV, initially learned about World War II by reading and rereading every Life magazine published during the war.

He’s always been intrigued by the story of Miklós Horthy, the Hungarian admiral who became an Axis leader, which he revisits in this issue.

Yenne has written more than three dozen nonfiction books and has appeared in various documentaries.

PORTRAITS BY JOHANNA GOODMAN

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REGARDING YOUR AUGUST 2020 COVER STORY, “Night of the Assassins,” about Germany’s Operation Long Jump: Had the plot to assassinate the three Allied leaders succeeded in Tehran in 1943, we know who would have replaced Roosevelt. Who would most likely have replaced Churchill and Stalin, and how might that have affected the rest of the war?

Richard Smith Horseshoe Bay, Tex. Howard Blum, the story’s writer and author of the book Night of the Assassins: The Untold Story of Hitler’s Plot to Kill FDR, Churchill, and Stalin, responds: This “what if” question is particularly problematic because neither the United Kingdom nor the Soviet Union had a statutory system for succession. If both Churchill and Stalin had been assas-

8

sinated at Tehran, it remains a matter of pure conjecture—however well-informed—as to whom would have taken their place.

In Britain, the logical heir would have been Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary. However, if the Long Jump assassins had killed Churchill, it’s quite probable that Eden would have been murdered in the same attack. That would have left Churchill’s chosen successor, Sir John Anderson, the lord president of the Privy Council. But if King George VI had held a general election following Churchill’s death, it’s likely that Clement Atlee, the leader of the opposition Labour Party (above, at right), would have won, as he did in July 1945, two

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FROM TOP: COURTESY OF GLENN BEARD; COURTESY OF LOUIS BARKER

A SPECULATIVE SUCCESSION

Roosevelt had a clear replacement lined up if he were to be killed in Operation Long Jump, but the same couldn’t be said for Churchill or Stalin.

© CORBIS/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES; INSETS, LEFT TO RIGHT: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; JOHN PHILLIPS/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES; PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN WALKER

MAIL

THE HINT’S IN THE HUMP

FROM TOP: COURTESY OF GLENN BEARD; COURTESY OF LOUIS BARKER

© CORBIS/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES; INSETS, LEFT TO RIGHT: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; JOHN PHILLIPS/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES; PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN WALKER

months after the German defeat. “over the hump”—pilots’ nickname In the Soviet Union, the likely for the dangerous air route across successor to Stalin would arguthe Himalayan Mountains. ably have been Vyacheslav Molotov, the deputy chairman of the UNWANTED State Defense Committee. HowSOUVENIR ever, let’s assume that like Eden, I was very interested in August Molotov had been killed by the 2020’s “From the Footlocker” Nazi assassins in Tehran. In this column (“Ounce of Cure?”), which case, the fight to assume control discussed Atabrine, the artifiwould have been br uta l. My cially produced antimalarial drug. money, though, would have been My father, Staff Sergeant Robert on par t y f unctionar y Georgi Craft, served with the 38th InfanOne of the most Malenkov (opposite, far left), who try Division. His first stop in the went on to succeed Stalin (albeit dangerous enemies South Pacific was in New Guinea, troops faced in the in a short-lived reign) in 1953. in preparation for the invasion of Pacific was malaria— Yet the question rema ins: and their weapon of the Philippines. While there, like Would the deaths of the Big Three choice was Atabrine. many, my father contracted a virhave changed the course of the ulent form of malaria. One of my war? Yes, the Allies would still have won. Nev- most vivid early childhood memories from the ertheless, it’s my opinion that in the after- late 1940s is of his recurring malarial bouts. math of the triple assassinations, the new While experiencing alternating chills and leaders would have abandoned FDR’s stony high fever, he shook so violently that his entire demand for an “unconditional surrender.” A bed vibrated. For those many who contracted peace would have been negotiated, the war it, malaria—just like other war wounds— shortened, and Germany might very well have didn’t end with discharge. walked away from the treaty table with some Bob Craft Jr. of its conquered territory in Eastern Europe South Bend, Ind. still under its control, its coffers filled with stolen foreign assets, and its most notorious villains escaping the judgment of the Nuremberg trials.

Your August 2020 “Travel” article (“Able and Ready”) included a picture of a man standing in front of a plane with painted bomb silhouettes across its side. These images represented the number of completed bombing flights. But underneath the bombs, there seems to be silhouettes of camels—30 of them, by my count.

I understand that airmen often painted planes, tanks, trucks, ships, and anything else they might have destroyed from the skies. My question is: Why would an airplane based on an island in the Pacific have painted silhouettes of camels? What am I missing?

Richard A. Evans New Rochelle, N.Y. Editor’s note: The camels on the plane represent the trips it previously flew from India to China

PORTAL TO THE PAST

I thoroughly enjoyed author Dan Fost’s August “Travel” article. Like him, I have a strong familial connection to the Mariana Islands. My father, Robert M. Sherrard, was a 2nd Lieutenant in the 2nd Marine Division; he made amphibious landings on Saipan’s Red Beach One in June 1944 and then on Tinian’s northern end in July 1944. In July 2017, to understand a part of his life I knew little

FROM THE EDITOR In two stories this issue, Joseph Connor, one of the magazine’s perennial superstar authors, explores two seemingly small decisions around which giant events turned.

There is that of the radar center operator near Pearl Harbor—a classic case of “wrong place, wrong time”—and that of General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines, involving actions that are unclear even today. History’s job in instances like these is not to assign blame or apply justice—although that might be a byproduct—but to seek the truth.

And that truth can be a moving target as our view of the past evolves. You, as readers, are part of that evolution. Let us know what you think.

—Karen Jensen

Camels in the South Pacific?

A reader knew that this plane’s bomb art tallied successful missions—but wondered about its 30 humps.

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about, I traveled to Saipan and Tinian to walk both landing beaches and then head inland as the invasions would have progressed.

On Saipan I took a tour with a guide who was a retired Marine. With me in my group was a very old and frail Japanese man, accompanied by his grandson and young great-granddaughter. The Japanese man’s brother had died on Saipan while fighting the Marines; his remains were never returned to Japan. He had, however, mailed a final letter to their mother and told her that he was on Saipan, sheltering in a Japanese Army headquarters cave located in a deep ravine on the south side of Mount Tapochau; he enclosed a hand-drawn map.

My tour mate brought the tattered map with him to the Marianas.

Based on my research, my father’s Marine battalion and company had maneuvered up the very same rocky ravine heading toward the mountain summit. In the cool of the morning, we drove as far as we could and then parked and walked; as the terrain steepened, the park ranger roped a safety line to a cave high up on the ravine’s wall. We climbed upward and finally through a crag into a large cave. The cave’s walls were blackened and pockmarked by bullets and, no doubt, flamethrowers. Illuminated by our flashlights, I could see a pile of human remains embedded in the sandy floor. Stuck into the sand were Shinto prayer flags, a Japanese flag, a ceremonial sake cup, and many pieces of broken cups and incense sticks.

Medic Ralph Indelicato died in Malmedy while trying to save a hurt soldier’s life.

The old Japanese man requested that we dim our lights, and he knelt down upon the sand next to the bones with his family. I knelt with the guide, and in the darkest of dark we clasped each other’s hands. The young girl lit incense sticks and gave one to each of us to place on the pile of sa nd a nd huma n bones. The old man murmured a prayer, bowed, and placed a small container atop the heap. Later, the guide told me that the container held the ashes of his mother.

James H. Sherrard Plano, Tex.

QUESTION ANSWERED

Editor’s note: My April 2020 “From the Editor” item about our story on the Malmedy massacre concluded with this thought: “We often hear from readers who’ve spotted a loved one in our pages; would someone who knew the young man at the bottom of page 35 see this awful image?

Would they write in to share his story and resurrect his memory?” Four months after that issue appeared, the letter below arrived, identifying that soldier—a medic, author Joseph Connor tells us, who was tending to a wounded soldier when he and the soldier were gunned down— and reminding us of the cost of every life lost: The name of the soldier marked “2” on page 35 of the April 2020 issue is Medic Corporal Ralph John Indelicato of St. Louis, Missouri.

He is buried at Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri. For 18 years I lived next door to Ralph’s sister, Catherine. Catherine and I discussed her brother Ralph and his death probably more than a hundred times over the years.

She was a 12-year-old girl when the family was notified of Ralph’s death. She told me that when the mailman was bringing back returned letters from Ralph, he would whistle and she would run out and intercept the letters so her distraught mother wouldn’t see them. Her mother died six months later of what she called a broken heart. Catherine kept the many letters to and from Ralph; her son now has them.

I have had the same photo you displayed in the magazine on my computer for years.

Larry Thomlison St. Charles, Mo. Correction: On page 26 of August 2020’s Travel story, we incorrectly described the arrow on Tinian’s Runway Able as pointing south. It points west.

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TOP: DAN FOST; BOTTOM: UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM/NATIONAL ARCHIVES; INSET COURTESY OF LARRY THOMLISON

Limestone caves in the Marianas provided shelter for Japanese soldiers, and in some cases served as their final resting place.

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Washington, D.C.’s new Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial honors the five-star general and twoterm president.

WWII TODAY

DELAYED BY CONTROVERSY over architect Frank Gehry’s design, and then the coronavirus, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial finally opened in September in Washington, D.C. The $150 million, 4-acre site includes statues of Ike as a young man, D-Day commander, and president positioned before a stainless-steel tapestry of the Normandy coast in peacetime. It occupies an impressive

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spot across the street from the National Air and Space Museum and offers a good view of the Capitol.

Commissioned in 1999, the memorial’s original design drew complaints from critics—including members of Eisenhower’s family—that Gehry made too much of Ike’s humble Kansas origins and downplayed his accomplishments. Eventually, former Secretary of State Jim Baker brokered a compromise. The statue of young Ike was moved to the side, and Gehry dropped plans to display Kansas on the tapestry.

The memorial showcases the arc of Eisenhower’s career amid America’s rise to global power, harkening back to a time when American politics were less divisive.

Washington Post art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott called the memorial “deft and daring,” and “magical” when illuminated at night. Other critics were unmoved. Justin Shubow, president of the National Civic Art Society, told the New York Times that the memorial was an “uninspiring, gargantuan failure.”

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FROM TOP: LOUISVILLE NAVAL MUSEUM; NATIONAL ARCHIVES, LONDON

IKE’S MEMORIAL OPENS TO MIXED REVIEWS

FROM TOP: CAROLINE BREHMAN/CQ-ROLL CALL, INC VIA GETTY IMAGES; EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES

REPORTED AND WRITTEN BY PAUL WISEMAN

FROM TOP: LOUISVILLE NAVAL MUSEUM; NATIONAL ARCHIVES, LONDON

FROM TOP: CAROLINE BREHMAN/CQ-ROLL CALL, INC VIA GETTY IMAGES; EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES

MUCH-NEEDED TLC FOR MIRED SUB

THE USS LING HAS BEEN STUCK in the Hackensack River’s mud for years, damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and flooded when vandals opened its hatches in 2018. The Balao-class sub was essentially abandoned when its caretaker, the New Jersey Naval Museum, closed in 2013 to make way for riverside development.

Now a wide-ranging collection of volunteers—submarine enthusiasts, first responders, off-duty sailors from the navy base in Groton, Connecticut, aging veterans who trained on the Ling, Jersey boys who toured it as kids—are working weekends to make the old vessel seaworthy again.

Their plan has been to tow the Ling down the Atlantic Coast, across the Gulf of Mexico, and up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to a new life as a maritime museum in Indiana across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. Organized by military veteran Lewis Palmer, the Louisville Naval Museum (louisvillenavalmuseuminc.org) is raising money from corporate sponsors and by selling merchandise.

The volunteers have cleared the sub of muck, though operations director David Laney, a volunteer firefighter from Pennsylvania, warns that the Ling is not ready for tours. “It’s disgusting,” he noted. He said the sub would likely be in shape to relocate in the spring of 2021.

The Louisville museum has also picked up a second vessel. P-520, a World War II Crash Rescue Boat donated by a California marina, could ultimately dock alongside the Ling.

The project has not always gone smoothly. The owner of the Hack-

There’s hope on the horizon for the USS Ling after years of neglect in New Jersey’s Hackensack River.

ensack property was initially reluctant to allow access to the sub. And the former president of the Submarine Memorial Association, which operated the defunct New Jersey museum, resisted the volunteers’ salvage efforts for unknown reasons, even calling the police on them several times.

Relations with the property owner have improved, and the association’s new president is much more amenable to the operation.

But obstacles remain. Laney reckons the project will cost about $5 million, and the Louisville museum team has raised just $100,000. The Jeffersonville, Indiana, shipyard that originally agreed to house the new naval museum is in bankruptcy proceedings, further clouding the outlook. Other sites are possible—perhaps Jacksonville, Florida, or Hoboken, New Jersey, about 10 miles from the Ling’s current site. The P-520 may serve as a traveling museum until a location is found.

Commissioned in June 1945, the Ling never saw combat. It was later used for training at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

DISPATCHES Noor Inayat Khan, a wartime spy for Britain, became the first woman of Indian origin to be honored in London with one of the English Heritage charity’s prestigious Blue Plaques that “link the people of the past with the buildings of the present.” In August, the plaque went up outside her former home in the city’s Bloomsbury district, near a memorial bust that was unveiled in 2012.

Khan, a pacifist and the daughter of a Sufi saint, had been living in France with her family when the Germans invaded. She moved to London, was recruited

by Britain’s Special Operations Executive, and went to occupied France to work as an undercover radio operator. She was arrested by the Gestapo in October 1943 and executed at Dachau in September 1944.

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BEHIND EVERY GRAVESTONE, there’s a story. Don Milne wants to tell 400,000 of them.

Recently retired, Milne is on a mission to pass along the story of every American who died in World War II. For his “Stories Behind the Stars” campaign, he’s getting help from more than 500 volunteers. Milne hopes to have biographies for each of the fallen completed by September 2, 2025, the 80th anniversary of the war’s end.

Milne, who recently relocated from Utah to Kentucky, is putting the stories in a searchable database and hopes to develop an app that will let visitors at veterans’ cemeteries scan headstones on their phones and read stories of the men who lie beneath them. “You can take a cemetery and turn it into a museum,” he said.

The project began as a hobby. His kids grown and his golf game lamentable, Milne in 2016 started writing the short biographies— usually on his lunch break—and posting them on a blog. He intended to stop in September to mark the 75th anniversary of the war’s end.

By then, he had written about 1,200 entries.

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TOP LEFT: SERGE ATTAL/SYGMA VIA GETTY IMAGES; TOP RIGHT: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; LOWER LEFT: © JLRIVOIRE

VOLUNTEERS TRACE MEMORIES OF THE FALLEN

But along the way, he’d drawn thousands of loyal readers who did not want him to stop. So Milne’s push continued—this time with help.

Two hundred volunteers jumped in and soon they were knocking out 100 bios a week.

Milne has been struck by how many of the dead were killed not by enemy fire, but by illness and accident. Consider Lieutenant George Hutchison, stationed on Guam with a bomber squadron as the war was ending.

Other pilots in his group headed north on September 2, 1945, to fly over Tokyo Bay as Japan surrendered. Hutchison instead volunteered to airdrop supplies to an American POW camp in Osaka, Japan. A few hours into the flight, his B-29 developed mechanical problems and he turned back to Guam. As the bomber came in, it clipped a tree, broke in half, and burst into flames. Hutchison died along with several others, leaving as a widow the woman he’d married two months before Pearl Harbor.

Milne visited Hutchison’s grave at Honolulu’s National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. “It was just another gravesite with a name and a date,” Milne said. He wanted something more for Hutchison and others lost in the war.

You can find Milne’s project—and pitch in— at storiesbehindthestars.org.

ISAAC HALE, DAILY HERALD

Don Milne’s remembrance project is working to produce a biography for each of the 400,000 Americans who died in World War II.

This F4F-3 Wildcat sports insignia on top of both wings, a pattern the U.S. Navy employed briefly in 1942-43.

Most younger Americans can’t name Auschwitz or any other death camp.

TOP LEFT: SERGE ATTAL/SYGMA VIA GETTY IMAGES; TOP RIGHT: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; LOWER LEFT: © JLRIVOIRE

ISAAC HALE, DAILY HERALD

HARD LESSONS UNLEARNED MOST AMERICAN MILLENNIALS and members of Generation Z (the generation born after 1996) don’t know that six million Jews perished in the Holocaust, and almost half can’t name a single concentration camp. An alarming 11 percent even say the Jews caused the Holocaust.

Released in September, the survey by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (also known as the Claims Conference) also found that 15 percent of respondents thought it acceptable to hold neo-Nazi views.

“If people can’t name Auschwitz…that’s deeply concerning,” Claims Conference president Gideon Taylor told USA Today. “I don’t think there is any greater symbol of man’s depravity in recent history than Auschwitz.”

The Claims Conference attributes the survey results to inadequate education and the spread of Holocaust denial on social media.

DISPATCHES

Divers found what they believe is the wreck of the USS Grenadier, a submarine scuttled in Asia’s Strait of Malacca after being hit by Japanese bombs in April 1943.

The crew smashed a coding machine and dumped documents before being captured by the Japanese. In September, the four divers revealed that they had discovered the wreck in about 270 feet of water. One of them, Belgian Ben Reymenants, had taken part in the 2018 rescue of a dozen boys and their soccer coach from a Thai cave.

ASK WWII Q: Why were aircraft markings for the U.S. Army Air Forces (and later the U.S. Air Force) only applied on the top side of the left wing, with none on the right wing? The reverse arrangement was employed on the underside, with markings only on the right wing. I believe this format is unique to the air forces of the United States.

–Patrick Kane, Dublin, Ireland A: When you stated that having a national insignia

on the upper-left wing and underside of the right wing was unique to America’s air forces, you gave half the rationale behind it right there. When the U.S. Army Air Corps authorized the restriction of wing markings in that manner on February 26, 1941, it was intended to help facilitate recognition of friend and foe if the United States became embroiled in the spreading conflict. The other reason was to “eliminate a balanced target” by presenting a somewhat asymmetrical effect—if you see two white stars (i.e., one on each wing), it is easier to aim your guns between them. After all, throwing the enemy’s aim off in a combat situation for even a split second could literally make the difference between life and death. In the same directive, rudder stripes were eliminated from camouflaged aircraft.

That policy would remain in effect for the U.S. Army Air Forces and the U.S. Air Force, albeit with changes to the insignia itself. But trust the U.S. Navy to do things its own way: On January 5, 1942, the navy reverted to insignia on both wings—a red dot within a white star and a larger blue disc—and the adoption of 13 red-and-white stripes to the rudder.

Operations against the Japanese, whose aircraft prominently displayed a red rising sun, eroded that regalia away. On May 15, 1942, the red dot was universally eliminated from the American white star and, on June 28, 1943, white rectangles (or “wings”) were added to each side of the blue disc to ensure further distinction from the red “suns” on Japanese airplanes. The U.S. Navy (and U.S. Marine Corps) officially returned to regalia on one wing only on February 1, 1943.

—Jon Guttman, Historian, World War II magazine SEND QUERIES TO: Ask World War II, 1919 Gallows Road, Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182 OR EMAIL: worldwar2@historynet.com

DECEMBER 2020

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FOR FIVE MONTHS, they fought behind enemy lines in the Burmese jungle, battling stifling heat and disease as well as elite Japanese troops. By the time the unit disbanded in August 1944, 95 percent of Merrill’s Marauders were dead, wounded, or medically unfit for combat.

“We were expendable,” the late Marauder Sam Wilson, who went on to become an Army lieutenant general and a founder of the Delta Force, once said.

In September, the Marauders were recognized with a Congressional Gold Medal. “I feel like I’m floating on air,” said Robert Passanisi, 96, of Lindenhurst, New York, one of nine surviving Marauders. “I am thrilled beyond words.”

Allied leaders decided at the Quebec Conference in August 1943 to send the Marauders—officially the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional)—into Burma (now Myanmar) to harass Japanese forces and cut their supply lines.

Three thousand men, most with either experience or training in

WORD FOR WORD “Let everyone hold before him a single thought—to destroy the enemy on the ground, in the air, everywhere—destroy him!”

—General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower’s orders to Allied troops during the Battle of the Bulge, December 22, 1944

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jungle warfare, volunteered for the treacherous duty. Among them were 14 Japanese American interpreters. The unit was named for Brigadier General Frank Merrill, who suffered a heart attack and had to give up command a few weeks into the mission, codenamed “Galahad.”

They teamed with Chinese troops to fight the Japanese in northern Burma and clear the way for construction of the Ledo Road, a supply route from India to China.

Slogging through jungles and up mountains, they fought five major battles and 30 minor encounters, defeating the veteran Japanese 18th Division. In May 1944, they captured the only all-weather airstrip in northern Burma at Myitkyina.

Marauder Gabriel Kinney, 99, of Daphne, Alabama, said the medal “will help keep our story alive.... There were only 18 left from my platoon when we reached the Myitkyina airfield, and those who did not make it to the airfield are the ones to remember and honor.”

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JONNIE MELILLO CLASEN; BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; POPPERFOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

MERRILL’S MARAUDERS HONORED

Congress has awarded a Gold Medal to Merrill’s Marauders (above), including unit members Gilbert Howland (far left) and Robert Passanisi.

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CONVERSATION WITH ERIK LARSON

BY KIRSTIN FAWCETT

FOLLOW THE LEADER

You’ve now written six works of historical nonfiction, two of which are set during World War II. Was this a coincidence?

There was absolutely no connection between the two. I don’t come at my books from a desire to write about a particular period. I’m very story-driven.

What was the story you wanted to tell in The Splendid and the Vile?

How the people of London survived Germany’s air bombardment throughout the first year of Churchill’s premiership. My wife and I moved to New York City from Seattle in 2014 after our kids flew the coop. There, I had this epiphany: the experience of 9/11 in New York had been so different from what I experienced out West. I then started thinking about what it would have been like to have endured essentially 57 9/11s in a row—the first phase of the Blitz— followed by six more months of raids.

You considered letting this story unfold through the eyes of a typical London family. Then you landed on perhaps the most iconic London family outside the House of Windsor: the Churchills.

I didn’t really appreciate up front just how much material there is about Winston Churchill. I told my daughter what I was working on, and she looked at me and said, “Dad, what are you doing? Have

18

you lost your mind? What can you possibly say that’s new about him?”

That line kept on running through my head every day for the next four and a half years. This wasn’t a bad thing, because I felt driven to find new material and tell his story in a fresh way.

How did you do that?

I think my personal vision of Churchill is more nuanced than some other portrayals.

You gain a cartoonish sense of him if you only watch Darkest Hour or The Crown. And if you read “great men” biographies in which he’s portrayed as master strategist of the war, you forget about his personal life.

Churchill’s personal life was front and center for me. That’s how this book is different.

Churchill’s family and friends are featured prominently.

His youngest daughter, Mary, provides commentary via a newly tapped source: her diary.

Access to the diary was controlled by Mary’s family. Much to my delight, I was given permission to look at it. She was a wonderfully charismatic person with an acute ability to measure the world around her. Unlike some other dia rists, she had absolutely no thought that her observations would one day be of public interest.

What’s the story behind the book’s title?

I derived the title from the diary of John Colville, Churchill’s private secretary.

Colville witnessed an air raid unfold from a bedroom window, and he was struck by its sheer malignant beauty. He referred to it as this juxtaposition of “natural splendor and human vileness,” and I thought that was a

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NINA SABIN; INSET: GETTY IMAGES/HULTON ARCHIVE

ERIK LARSON IS A BESTSELLING WRITER, but he’s a father first and foremost: “My three daughters tend to see me as the king of anxiety,” he laughs. While researching London in World War II, Larson envisioned parenting amid the looming threat of German invasion.

“How do you go about dealing with that?” he wondered. This question partially inspired his latest work, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz. The book debuted in February; since then, it’s spent more than six months on the weekly New York Times Best Sellers List for Nonfiction.

The Splendid and the Vile unfolds in 1940-41 as Winston Churchill, England’s newly appointed prime minister, stands strong against Hitler amid a seemingly endless spree of German bombing raids.

Churchill’s legacy often inspires hagiography; aware of the historical tropes, Larson aimed to instead provide a humanizing look inside Churchill’s inner circle—a glimpse of the prime minister as a leader, a military strategist, a friend, and, yes, a family man.

Churchill entertains his daughter Mary (above) in June 1943. Her diary provided author Erik Larson (left) with a fresh look inside her father’s circle of confidants during the Blitz.

lovely statement. Nearly right away that became the title of the book.

NINA SABIN; INSET: GETTY IMAGES/HULTON ARCHIVE

Even with imminent destruction looming, the characters you explore in The Splendid and the Vile still experienced joy—and had plenty of fun.

Churchill could be an awful lot of fun. One of my favorite scenes in the book is a get-together at Chequers, the prime minister’s country house. Churchill, wearing a blue siren suit and a gold silk dressing gown, gets out his bayonet. As martial music plays on the gramophone, he proceeds to do his drills in the Great Hall. His many guests are either awestruck or laughing hysterically.

Churchill was a dichotomy: the life of the party, but also a resolute leader. Where do you think he gained his confidence?

You know, I have thought about that. It comes down to that fundamental element that makes people who they are: character. Where does character come from? Is it taught? Is it learned? Is it absorbed?

I don’t know. But Churchill did have this unshakeable confidence— not just in Britain, but in himself—throughout his career. I think on

“Churchill did have this unshakeable confidence— not just in Britain, but in himself.” some level he knew that at some point he would be prime minister.

He seemed to relish the prospect of coming into power amid a global crisis.

Churchill was a man of action. To him, what compounded the satisfaction of becoming prime minister was that he became this leader when he could lead the empire into and through an evolving war. That was part of the thrill for him. H DECEMBER 2020

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This is a negative of a wellknown photo of the Japanese surrender ceremony that hails from Admiral Chester W. Nimitz’s collection and is an Official U.S. Navy Photograph.

Does it have a tale to tell?

NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES Curators at The National World War II Museum solve readers’ artifact mysteries

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While going through my father’s wartime memorabilia, I happened upon a notebook in which he explains that original negatives of images a U.S. Navy photographer took of the Japanese surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri were lost, “probably during a gala on ship in New York Harbor.” When the loss was discovered, he—U.S. Navy Photographer’s Mate Third Class Allan Thomas Kimmell—and others working at a photo lab in the Philippines photographed prints to make new negatives.

He passed copies of those negatives along to me. I have never heard about the negatives’ loss and am hoping you’ll find it as fascinating as I have and want to learn more.

—Karen Kimmell, Alto, N.M.

Have a World War II artifact you can’t identify?

None of the photo archivists we contacted were aware of this either, and all are intrigued. “I am afraid I have never heard such a thing and would have thought it would have been noticed if we were using copy negatives for these

Write to Footlocker@historynet.com with the following: — Your connection to the object and what you know about it.

— The object’s dimensions, in inches.

— Several high-resolution digital photos taken close up and from varying angles.

— Pictures should be in color, and at least 300 dpi.

Unfortunately, we can’t respond to every query, nor can we appraise value.

COURTESY OF KAREN KIMMELL

FROM THE FOOTLOCKER

images. That said, anything is possible,” says Holly Reed of the Still Picture Reference Team at the National A rchives and Records Administration, the repository of all Official U.S. Navy Photographs. Unfortunately, the Archives is closed due to Covid-19; without someone onsite there to see if they have original or copy negatives for the images, we won’t be able to advance the story much.

The September 2, 1945, ceremony that ended World War II—when a group of Japanese delegates boarded the USS Missouri to sign the instrument of surrender—was one of the most photographed events of the entire war. Given the ceremony’s importance, dozens of still and motion picture photographers were set up and ready to capture every moment from the delegates’ arrival to the signing of the surrender. Within hours, the first images began spreading around the world through a system that had been established to develop, censor, and transmit photographs.

The New York celebration your father references came seven weeks after the surrender ceremony. The USS Missouri entered New York Harbor on October 23, 1945, to take part in the Navy Day celebration on Saturday, October 27, when an armada of 47 American warships sailed the Hudson River before millions of appreciative spectators, with President Harry S. Truman in attendance.

We hope to learn more upon the National Archives’ reopening, and will certainly pass it along. In the meantime, treasure your father’s collection. —Josh Schick, Curator

WORLD WAR II

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A GUIDE TO THE END A LITTLE OVER A YEAR AGO, I was in Sicily on one of my numerous trips to the island—part of my research for a narrative history of the Allied campaign there that I was writing. There were some places I hadn’t seen before that I wanted to check out, not least the town of Trapani on Sicily’s west coast, where German fighter pilot Johannes “Macky” Steinhoff had been based with his wing, Jagdgeschwader 77. Using Steinhoff’s diary as a guide, I climbed the winding road up the 2,500-foot mountain that looms over the town, Monte Erice, until, a few miles from the top, I saw a sheer rock face and, before it, a small plateau, just as he’d described it. Lo and behold, there were the remains of the operations base for the Luftwaffe fighters—several derelict stone buildings, long since abandoned, overgrown and forgotten.

From there, I could gaze out to Trapani and the airfield and the big, winedark Mediterranean beyond. Back in 1943, Steinhoff and his fellows had had a terrible time and his diary is rich in atmosphere and mood. Theirs was a desperate situation: they didn’t have enough support from their superiors; they were increasingly outnumbered by the enemy. There weren’t enough aircraft, spares, or fuel and it was hot—blisteringly hot. They struggled with combat fatigue and physical exhaustion, and the heat and dust added to the misery.

What struck me about the Luftwaffe on Sicily in the summer of 1943 was how much it mirrored the experience of the Royal Air Force on Malta around a year earlier. In the spring of 1942, tiny Malta, just 60 miles south of Sicily, was similarly beleaguered. The British pilots were suffering in the sweltering heat, plagued by dust and mosquitoes, with not enough to eat, and not enough spares or fuel or anything like enough aircraft. They were being hammered.

The reversal of fortunes of the two air forces in that single year was extraordinary, and it occurred to me that this perfectly illustrates the vital importance air power played in World War II in the west. When the Luftwaffe was in its ascendancy so, too, was Nazi Germany. Yet the moment the Luftwaffe began struggling to produce properly trained aircrew and enough high-qual-

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ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD MIA

NEED TO KNOW

ity aircraft, Germany’s fortunes dramatically began to wane.

Malta and the Mediterranean are a case in point. In May 1942, with Malta on its knees, the Luftwaffe was pulled out of Sicily and sent to North Africa to support Erwin Rommel’s new offensive. This allowed the RAF on Malta to cling on, then fight back, so that by July of that year they had regained air superiority over the island. At the same time in Libya, the RAF’s reorganized and muchimproved Desert Air Force was able to save the British Eighth Army from annihilation after the fall of Tobruk on June 21, 1942. Once safe behind the Alamein Line, the Eighth Army never, ever retreated again at any point in the war.

While heavy bombing had always been part of the Allies’ plans, less thought initially had been given to close air support of the army—what would become known as a tactical air force. All that changed in the summer of 1942 in North Africa, when the RAF indisputably proved its immense worth. From then on, the tactical air forces of both the RAF and the U.S Army Air Forces were developed exponentially and, by 1943, had become the spearhead of future operations.

By the time Macky Steinhoff and his men were battling over Sicily in the summer of 1943, the Allies had amassed a staggering 3,500 aircraft in the Mediterranean Theater.

Coincidentally that was pretty much the number of aircraft the Luftwaffe lost over the Mediterranean that summer—catastrophic losses that signaled the slide to irreversible defeat for the Germans in the war in the west. From then on, there could be no recovery.

Standing on Monte Erice, looking toward Trapani, it was easy to think of Steinhoff there before me, knowing that the tables had turned irreversibly and that his struggles in the skies above were doomed. And although he was on the wrong side, I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him. H

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10/8/20 11:27 AM

TRAVEL ITALY’S FREEDOM TRAIL

BY BRENDAN SAINSBURY

A NARROW ESCAPE

CLIMBING A STEEP SLOPE a few miles outside the central Italian city of Sulmona, I come across a wooden bench grafted invitingly into the hillside and sit down to study the view. To the northeast lie Abruzzo’s smooth-topped Morrone Mountains, dotted with medieval hermitages and ancient beech forests. To the east and partially obscured are the taller, craggier peaks of the Majella range. Beneath me, in the Peligna Valley, lies the compact city of Sulmona with its 12th-century aqueduct and, if I look closely enough, something more sinister: an infamous prisoner of war camp known as Campo 78.

Nearly 80 years ago, during the winter of 1943-44, passing travelers would not have wanted to sit on this solitary bench and admire the view. Danger lurked all around. The steep, narrow path I’m following—which starts just outside Sulmona and winds precipitously across the Apennines for nearly 40 miles—was not a hiking trail but an escape route for Allied prisoners trying to outrun and outwit the German army.

On September 8, 1943, the prisoners at Campo 78 in the village of Fonte d’Amore, three miles north of Sulmona, awoke to discover that their Italian guards had deserted their posts. With the Allied armies invading Italy from the south, the Italian government had ignominiously surrendered. Anxious to derail a swift Anglo-American advance, the Germans promptly activated Fall Achse (Case Axis), disarming the Italian forces and taking over the defense of the country themselves. However, during the transition, confusion reigned.

Taking advantage of the uncertainty, around two-thirds of the 3,000 POWs in Campo 78—mostly British and Commonwealth soldiers from the North African campaign—decided to flee before the Germans arrived. Breaking through

24

the perimeter wire, they ran haphazardly into the surrounding mountains, where they hid in caves, mineshafts, and old barracks. By lying low, they reasoned it wouldn’t be long before they could head south and reconnect with the advancing British and American armies.

A day earlier, I had wandered north out of Sulmona to see what is left of the prison. From a quiet, rural lane on the edge of Fonte d’Amore, I am surprised to see that much of the camp remains intact. Viewed from the road, its high barbed-wire fence and cylindrical watchtowers set a menacing tone. The eeriness continues inside as I walk through overgrown grass and invasive weeds past two rows of simple brick huts, each once home to around 50 prisoners.

While devoid of furnishings, these spartan barracks contain something more poignant. On the dirty white walls, the prisoners had etched their names, scribbled playful military doodles, and drawn insignia of their regiments, including the “York and Lancaster” and the “Royal Hussars.”

The Germans arrived in Sulmona on September 14, 1943. Better armed and organized than their Italian counterparts, they proceeded to round up more than three-quarters of the camp’s escaped prisoners, cap-

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10/17/20 2:40 PM

OPPOSITE: MARCELLO NATARELLI; UNA FONDAZIONE PER IL MORRONE (BOTH)

More than 500 people join an annual walk along central Italy’s 37-mile-long Freedom Trail to commemorate the route escaped Allied POWs took to evade the German army.

OPPOSITE: MARCELLO NATARELLI; UNA FONDAZIONE PER IL MORRONE (BOTH)

turing many of them in the surrounding countryside before transporting them north to POW camps in Germany. To counter an Allied advance into Italy’s industrial heartland, the Germans set up fortifications across the Apennine Mountains. Over the ensuing months, defenses embedded along the so-called Gustav Line just south of Sulmona successfully stalled the Allies until June 1944 and created a formidable barrier for desperate Campo 78 escapees still hiding in the high country.

Back on the hillside, I abandon the bench and head east toward the imposing Majella Mountains. These days, this hiking trail is known as the Sentiero della Liberta̋, or Freedom Trail. Marked with wooden information boards and stone memorials, the trail was laid out by a local cultural association in the early 2000s in remembrance of the prisoners and partisans who used this and other paths during the war.

In the fall of 1943, as the weather grew colder and news filtered through that the Allies had taken the town of Casoli on the banks of the Sangro River, surviving Campo 78 escapees who had so far eluded Nazi roundups plotted to break out of German-held territory and reclaim their liberty.

Casoli was around 40 miles east of

Fonte d’Amore’s Campo 78 (above, during the war, and today) held up to 3,000 Allied prisoners.

Sulmona, a treacherous journey across the Majella Mountains through backcountry regularly patrolled by German troops. The POWs split themselves into small groups and opted to hide by day and, often disguised as local shepherds, trek by night. With the help of Abruzzi villagers who risked being shot if they were caught, they subsisted on sheep’s milk, leftover food scraps, and Red Cross parcels they’d taken from the camp before they left. Different groups took different routes. Two Canadian airmen named Raymond Sherk and Don McLarty spent three weeks sheltering in a cave near the village of Roccacasale, eight miles north of Sulmona. They were aided by a local woman named Maria Carbone and ultimately made it across the Gustav Line in November 1943, eight weeks after their initial escape. Others weren’t so lucky, having to wait until the following February, March, or even later until they reached safety.

Today’s 37-mile-long trail, which tracks one of the more direct escape routes, is maintained by the Majella National Park and marked with signposts emblazoned with the letter “L” for “liberta̋” (freedom). Beyond my restful bench, the path ascends and descends across scrubby hillsides and walled pastures, dipping in and out of beech groves and crossing grassy meadows punctuated with the occasional gurgling spring. I imagine the fear and trepidation of fleeing fugitives as I pass under a brick railway arch and circumnavigate the hushed village of Cansano on quiet backroads. In the shifting alliances of warDECEMBER 2020

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The mountains outside Sulmona offered refuge to the runaway POWs.

ENLARGED AREA

Sulmona

Casoli Campo di Giove Guado di Coccia

Rome

M I L E S 0

Palena

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time Italy, it became increasingly difficult to decipher friend from foe, partisan from fascist.

On the edge of the large village of Campo di Giove, 13 miles southeast of Sulmona, a plaque acknowledges the escape of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, a second lieutenant in the Italian army who tackled the trail during a blizzard in March 1944 on his way to join the Italian Resistance in Bari, nearly 200 miles away. Ciampi went on to become his country’s prime minister in 1993-94 and its president from 1999 to 2006. In May 2001, at the age of 80, he inaugurated an annual commemorative march along the Freedom Trail, an event that today attracts more than 500 people who split the trek between Sulmona and Casoli over three days.

From Campo di Giove, I ascend the rocky Majella toward Guado di Coccia, the path’s highest point at 5,500 feet.

Atop a barren mountain pass, now home to a ski lift and a public mountain refuge, another memorial marks the spot where a defecting Italian lieutenant named Ettore di Corti was shot by the Germans in October 1943 when the group of 20 Italian partisans he was escorting ran into a Wehrmacht patrol.

From the Guado, where views open out east toward the Adriatic, fugitives could practically sniff freedom. By early 1944, the British Eighth A rmy had crossed the Sangro River and were oper-

26

WHEN YOU GO Sulmona is two and a half hours from Rome by frequent daily trains. Winter snow in the Apennine Mountains can be heavy, making May to October the best season for hiking. Campo 78 remains largely intact; visits to the brick barracks can be made by appointment through the local tourist office (email: unafondazioneperilmorrone@gmail.com). Give at least two weeks’ notice. There are plans to make the camp into a memorial park.

WHERE TO STAY AND EAT Albergo Stella (albergostella.info) is a congenial, family-run hotel with an attached café in the historic center of Sulmona. The city’s restaurants offer some fine examples of Abruzzo cuisine, such as chitarra (Abruzzostyle spaghetti) and arrosticini (barbecued lamb skewers). Try Il Vecchio Muro, with its pleasant garden and cavernous interior, or La Cantina di Biffi, set in a handsome stone-walled cantina, or wine cellar. (See both restaurants’ Facebook pages for details.)

WHAT ELSE TO SEE AND DO Sulmona’s Gothic-meetsbaroque Cathedral of San Panfilo protects the relics of the famous hermit pope Celestine V. While strolling the compact historic center, look out for the 12th-century Gothic aqueduct and a classical statue of the Roman poet Ovid. It’s worth taking a 25-minute bus ride to the spectacularly sited village of Pacentro, where the Majella National Park office (parcomajella.it) dispenses trail information.

BRENDAN SAINSBURY; MAP BY BRIAN WALKER

ITALY

ating out of headquarters in Casoli under the command of a British officer named Lionel Wigram. In a military marriage of convenience, Wigram enlisted volunteer Italian partisans from the newly formed Majella Brigade to fight alongside the Eighth Army. With their detailed knowledge of the local terrain, Brigade volunteers often operated behind German lines and were key in aiding and abetting runaway Allied soldiers to navigate their way out of German-held territory.

Bruised clouds are amassing as I climb over the Guado di Coccia with nearly 20 miles wearing on my legs. I spot the clustered rooftops of the village of Palena on the other side. There is little cover on this exposed hilltop; I try to capture the unease and paranoia that would have gripped escapees who had made it this far.

I zigzag down the mountainside, paralleling a stream and passing a small ruined chapel. With no Germans to evade, my freedom trail ends here, at Palena. It’s been a long, hilly hike since Sulmona, and the light is beginning to fade. Unlike the erstwhile escapees, I have the luxury of spending the night in a small village guesthouse. In the morning, I’ll take a bus and a train back to Sulmona. The final 17-mile stretch of the Sentiero della Liberta̋, from Palena to Casoli, can wait for another day.

Of the 2,000 or so inmates who fled Campo 78, an estimated 200 ultimately breached the Gustav Line and rejoined the Allies, making it one of the most successful prison breakouts of World War II. The remaining POWs were mostly reimprisoned by the Germans; mercifully, few lost their lives. The Gustav Line held firm until late spring 1944, when repeated assaults from Allied troops around Monte Cassino finally punched a significant hole in the German defenses. Sulmona was liberated in June, and the Allies finally pushed north toward Tuscany and, ultimately, Lombardy and Piedmont.

Nowadays, Sulmona remains a quiet Abruzzo town. Famous for being the birthplace of the Roman poet Ovid, it shows few visible signs of the war. The surrounding mountains are protected in the Majella National Park—their slopes largely peaceful, but their trails colored with the heroic stories of a tumultuous past. H

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10/20/20 3:19 PM

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10/8/20 5:34 PM

PULLED PUNCHES The inside story on why MacArthur failed to act at a decisive moment in the war

By Joseph Connor

A

t about 3:40 a.m. on December 8, 1941, the phone rang inside Lieutenant General Douglas MacArthur’s lavish apartment atop the Manila Hotel. It was MacArthur’s chief of staff, calling with the shocking news that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor earlier that morning—December 7 across the international date line in Hawaii. MacArthur, commander of American forces in the Philippines, hastened to his headquarters, where his air chief arrived shortly thereafter with a request: Major General Lewis H. Brereton wanted permission to launch a bombing raid against Japanese bases in Formosa before the Japanese could strike Clark Field, the main American air base in the Philippines.

Despite repeated appeals from Brereton, however, and even several minor Japanese air raids on the Philippines, nearly seven hours went by before MacArthur finally authorized the strike.

By then, it was too late.

At 12:30 p.m. Brereton’s B-17 Flying Fortresses were on the ground at Clark Field, being fueled and loaded with bombs for the Formosa mission, when 88 Japanese bombers and fighters attacked. Brereton’s B-17s were defenseless. Of the 17 on the ground at the time, 12 were destroyed and five were badly damaged. Not a single one was flyable. “It was a mess. Oil dumps and hangars were blazing fiercely. Planes were burning on the ground,” said Lieutenant William E. “Ed” Dyess, who surveyed the destruction below from the cockpit of his P-40 fighter plane. On the ground, things were as bad as they looked from above. Private Howard Watson saw “devastation and havoc all around,” and Lieutenant Colonel Ernest B. Miller noted the “dead and wounded…strewn about.” To Lieutenant Austin W. Stitt, “Everything everywhere seemed on fire and dead.”

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10/18/20 8:15 AM

General Douglas MacArthur (here in 1947) waited nearly seven hours to respond to a Japanese attack against the U.S.

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10/18/20 8:16 AM

EVER SINCE THE PHILIPPINES became an American possession in 1898, U.S. officials wondered how to defend it in case of war with Japan, a country thought to have an expansionist eye on the islands. The Philippines is

30

AMERICAN OFFICERS shared Quezon’s doubts about their ability to defend the Philippines. “A troop of Boy Scouts flying kites could take these damned islands,” Major Kirtley J. Gregg complained in a letter to his wife in March 1941.

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10/18/20 8:16 AM

FROM LEFT: GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES; THE NEW YORK TIMES

Brereton’s heavy bombers were the linchpin of the Philippines’ planned defense—but in one stroke, Japan had obliterated that threat. Why MacArthur had held back and waited for the enemy to strike first was a mystery even to his colleagues. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall couldn’t fathom “how MacArthur happened to let his planes get caught on the ground,” and air force commander Henry H. “Hap” Arnold wrote in his 1949 memoirs that he never felt he got “the real story of what happened in the Philippines.” Historians and MacArthur biographers have debated ever since why MacArthur waited so long to authorize the Formosa raid.

The answer may lie in the close relationship—too close, perhaps—between the American commander and Philippine President Manuel L. Quezon.

FROM TOP: INTERIM ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; PREVIOUS PAGES: JOHN FLOREA/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

MacArthur (here in 1930) had a long relationship with the Philippines and its president, Manuel L. Quezon (right, in 1942), whom MacArthur first met in 1904 as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army.

5,000 miles from Hawaii, which made reinforcement and resupply difficult, but fewer than 300 miles coast to coast from Japanese-held Formosa (now Taiwan). In 1934, defense of the Philippines became a short-term proposition when Congress voted to grant it independence in 1946.

In 1935, Philippine President Quezon—the overwhelming choice that year in the country’s first nationwide election—persuaded Washington to appoint outgoing U.S. Army Chief of Staff MacArthur as military adviser to the Philippines, to develop an army to protect it upon independence. Quezon and MacArthur had met in 1904 when MacArthur was a 24-year-old lieutenant fresh out of West Point and Quezon was a 26-year-old lawyer with political aspirations. Their friendship ripened into “remarkable intimacy,” the New York Times reported, when MacArthur was stationed in the Philippines during the 1920s. As military adviser, MacArthur continued to draw his U.S. Army salary while the Philippine government paid him a generous remuneration and provided him with an expense account and a penthouse apartment in Manila. When MacArthur retired from the army in 1937, Quezon appointed him field marshal of the Philippine Army.

Quezon was the driving political force in the islands, “one hundred and forty pounds of political and human dynamite,” in the words of a New York Times correspondent. To High Commissioner Francis B. Sayre, the senior U.S. official in the Philippines, Quezon was a man “of marked ability, and a consummate politician…a prima donna of the first order. Always he was adroit and dramatic.” An advocate of independence, Quezon proclaimed he would “rather live under a government run like hell by Filipinos than one run like heaven by Americans.” He was loyal to the United States, but he believed his primary duty was to his people. When American and Philippine interests diverged, he did not always willingly toe the American line.

Until 1946, the Philippines’ defense was America’s responsibility, and Quezon began to doubt that the United States could protect his country against Japan. In 1937 and 1938, he visited Tokyo, ostensibly on vacation, and felt out senior Japanese officials. The Japanese rolled out the red carpet, and Quezon even dined with Emperor Hirohito.

“Japan has no aggressive intentions towards the Philippines. All we want is your trade,” Quezon remembered Japanese officials assuring him. They promised to respect Philippine neutrality once the islands became independent. This planted the seed in Quezon’s mind that Japan might spare his country in the event of war with the United States—an idea with long-term consequences.

FROM LEFT: GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES; THE NEW YORK TIMES

FROM TOP: INTERIM ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; PREVIOUS PAGES: JOHN FLOREA/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

That was about to change, however, and the catalyst was the B-17 Flying Fortress, a fourengine bomber that could fly 2,400 miles while carrying two tons of bombs. These planes would bring “American power back into the Islands,” Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson proclaimed in September 1941. A fleet of heavy bombers in the Philippines might become “the decisive element in deterring Japan from undertaking a Pacific War,” army chief of staff Marshall believed. If war came, Philippine-based B-17s could hit Japanese bases on Formosa. Should Japan advance against Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies to seize the oil and other raw materials it desperately needed, B-17s could menace that advance. Marshall even envisioned Fortresses from the Philippines striking the Japanese home islands and landing in Vladivostok, Russia, to refuel and rearm.

The War Department planned to have 170 heavy bombers in the Philippines by October 1942. As of late November 1941, however, only 35 B-17s of the 19th Bombardment Group had arrived; 33 more Fortresses were expected in December and 51 in January. In an off-therecord press briefing, Marshall referred to the 35 B-17s already there as the greatest concentration of Flying Fortresses in the world.

As relations with Japan deteriorated, the army had recalled MacArthur to active duty on July 26, 1941, and put him in command of all American and Filipino troops in the islands. On November 27, Marshall warned MacArthur that war was imminent. If hostilities could not be avoided, “the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act,” Marshall told him.

If war came, General Brereton planned to have his B-17s strike the air and naval bases in southern Formosa, about 500 miles north of Clark Field. By December 8, 1941, Brereton had the bombers split between two bases.

Nineteen were at Clark Field on Luzon, the main Philippine island. The remaining 16 were at Del Monte Field on Mindanao, more than 500 miles south of Clark and safely out of range of Formosa-based planes.

Brereton learned of the Pearl Harbor attack at about 4 a.m. on December 8 when Lieutenant General Richard K. Sutherland, MacArthur’s chief of staff, woke him with the news.

Brereton promised Sutherland that his bombers would be ready to hit Formosa at daybreak. He planned to have the B-17s at Clark Field strike Formosa immediately, then fly the Fortresses at Del Monte up to Clark for a second attack later that day.

Quezon and MacArthur greet supporters in Washington, D.C., in 1937. Quezon also visited Japan that year; though the press remarked on his quest for “some good Japanese food” (above), he in fact sought reassurance that Japan would spare the Philippines in the event of hostilities.

Quezon was the driving political force in the islands, “one hundred and forty pounds of political and human dynamite.”

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day—and authorized the Formosa attack.

Because of MacArthur’s delay in approving the mission, Brereton now planned a threeplane photoreconnaissance mission to be followed by a 16-bomber strike against “known airdromes in Southern Formosa at the latest daylight hour today that visibility

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10/20/20 3:26 PM

THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

At 5 a.m., Brereton went to MacArthur’s headquarters seeking permission to hit Formosa. Sutherland told Brereton that MacArthur was too busy to see him and that he was to prepare for an attack, but to await further orders before launching one. Thirty-five minutes later, Marshall sent MacArthur a radiogram ordering him to carry out tasks outlined in the current war plan, Rainbow 5, including “air raids against Japanese forces and installations within tactical operating radius of available bases.”

Brereton returned to MacArthur’s headquarters at 7:15 a.m., but Sutherland again refused to let him see MacArthur. Brereton renewed his request to bomb Formosa. Sutherland went into MacArthur’s office and returned a minute later. “The general says no. Don’t make the first overt act,” Sutherland said. When Brereton protested that the Pearl Harbor attack was certainly an overt act, Sutherland went back to MacArthur’s office, returning with the message that Brereton’s role was defensive “for the time being.” A frustrated Brereton believed that MacArthur was throwing away the air force’s best chance of striking a decisive blow. To avoid having his B-17s caught on the ground, Brereton ordered them aloft and out of harm’s way, circling over Luzon by 9 a.m.

MacArthur soon got word of overt acts against the Philippines. By 9:45 a.m., reports of three minor Japanese air raids in the far northern part of Luzon that morning had trickled into his headquarters. But when Brereton phoned at 10 a.m., Sutherland, sticking to MacArthur’s earlier instructions, again refused to allow an attack. Brereton warned that if the Japanese hit Clark Field, a Formosa raid might no longer be possible. Finally, at 10:14 a.m. according to Brereton’s headquarters diary, MacArthur called Brereton—his first direct contact with Brereton that

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B-17 bombers are assembled at Lockheed’s Burbank, California, plant. Major General Lewis H. Brereton (below) and other U.S. leaders saw the aircraft as central to the Philippines’ defense.

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will permit.” With an early morning strike now impossible, photoreconnaissance would give Brereton’s bombardiers fresh target information. The air chief ordered Clark Field’s B-17s to land; by 11:30 a.m., ground crews began refueling the bombers and loading them with bombs, while the flight crews received briefings on the mission.

But before the B-17s could take off, 54 Japanese bombers appeared over Clark Field at 12:30 p.m. and struck with deadly accuracy.

They took out the hangars and repair facilities and left the runways pockmarked with craters. When the bombers finished, 34 Zero fighters strafed the field for an hour, inflicting more damage to the B-17s than the bombing had. By 1:30 p.m., 12 Fortresses were burning wrecks and five were badly damaged. Only two that had been in the air during the attack remained flyable. Fifty-five Americans were killed and more than 100 wounded.

The B-17s at Del Monte Field were unharmed, and MacArthur promised the War Department “a heavy bombardment counterattack tomorrow morning on enemy airdromes in southern Formosa”—an attack he later canceled when it became evident that Clark Field could no longer be used as the staging area. MacArthur called the Clark disaster unavoidable. “Every possible precaution…was taken here,” he radioed Washington that afternoon, attributing the losses “entirely to the overwhelming superiority of the enemy force.”

Hap Arnold placed a blistering phone call to Brereton. “How in the hell could an experienced airman like you get caught with your

planes on the ground?” he demanded. Nearly half the B-17s were lost, and Clark Field was no longer a viable home for them. Much had been expected of the bombers, but they hadn’t delivered. On December 20, 1941, 14 of the original 35 that had survived were evacuated to Australia.

THERE IS LITTLE DOUBT that MacArthur pulled his punches by waiting for Japan to strike before he authorized the Formosa mission. The elusive question is why.

After the war, MacArthur gave several explanations for his baffling conduct, but none hold water. First, he claimed that his orders prohibited offensive action “unless and until the geographic boundaries of the Philippine Islands had been invaded,” but that isn’t true.

On November 27, Marshall had instructed him that if war came, Japan must commit “the first overt act.” The Pearl Harbor attack was an indisputable overt act against the United States; Marshall had never specified an act against the Philippines. Even if MacArthur had misunderstood Marshall’s November 27 order, Marshall’s 5:35 a.m. order on December 8 authorizing “air raids against Japanese forces and installations” should have removed all doubt. It is unlikely that MacArthur, a brilliant man and a master wordsmith, misunderstood such a clear message.

Second, MacArthur denied that Brereton had ever asked him personally for permission to attack Formosa. Brereton, Sutherland, and MacArthur’s headquarters diaries confirm Brereton’s requests to strike Formosa, but

Smoke rises from Clark Field during the December 8, 1941, Japanese raid on the air base. Nearly half of the B-17s in the Philippines were badly damaged or destroyed.

Before the B-17s could take off, 54 Japanese bombers appeared over Clark Field.

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MacArthur implied that Sutherland had kept these requests from him, saying he knew “nothing of what may have taken place between General Brereton and…General Sutherland.” Sutherland, a self-described “first-class son of a bitch,” had a reputation for blocking access to MacArthur, but the evidence suggests he did not hide Brereton’s requests from his boss. Lieutenant Colonel William P. Morse, a member of MacArthur’s staff, heard Brereton’s 7:15 a.m. pitch and saw Sutherland take that request into MacArthur’s office.

On top of that, MacArthur insisted he would never have allowed a Formosa raid because it would have been “sheer suicide.” But Brereton’s headquarters diary shows that MacArthur himself had called Brereton to authorize the mission. And MacArthur’s proposed next-day attack on southern Formosa is something he would not have promised had he considered it to be suicide.

Finally, in a 1945 interview with historian Walter D. Edmonds, Sutherland claimed all 35 B-17s should have been out of harm’s way when the Japanese attacked Clark Field because, days earlier, MacArthur had ordered Brereton to move all heavy bombers from Clark Field to Del Monte. Researchers, however, have searched in vain for any such order.

FORMOSA (PRESENT-DAY TAIWAN)

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IN SEVERAL LITTLE-KNOWN written statements, MacArthur implies a more plausible reason for holding back his bombers: that he had deferred to Quezon’s hope that Japan would spare the Philippines.

“Even after the attack upon Pearl Harbor,” MacArthur wrote to historians Paul S. Burtness and Warren U. Ober in 1962, “it was hoped that the Japanese would not attempt invasion of the Philippines in view of its…approaching independent status.” In 1954, he pointed to the source of this hope. “While I personally had not the slightest doubt we would be attacked,” MacArthur wrote to historian Louis Morton, “great local hope existed that this would not be the case.” “Great local hope” can mean only one thing: Philippine President Quezon, a view shared by John D. Bulkeley, a naval officer close to MacArthur, who insisted “it was Quezon who put the clamp on things.”

Quezon had a strong motive to encourage MacArthur to wait to see if Japan attacked. If the Philippines became a battleground, it would mean thousands of Filipino deaths and untold destruction—something Quezon wanted to avoid. Japan had promised friendship to his country and respect for its neutrality upon independence; Quezon seemed to accept these promises. Japan didn’t want to attack the Philippines, he believed, and would do so only if threatened by American forces there. If the United States launched a bombing mission against Formosa, he knew it would kill any chance Japan would leave the Philippines unharmed.

Even after Japan invaded the Philippines in Luzon’s Lingayen Gulf on December 22, 1941, Quezon clung to the hope that Japan might still be persuaded to spare his country. On February 8, 1942, at a time when Filipino and American forces had fought the Japanese to a standstill on the Bataan Peninsula, Quezon asked President Franklin D. Roosevelt for immediate independence for the Philippines so he could

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General Richard K. Sutherland (at right with MacArthur on Corregidor in March 1942) was a fierce gatekeeper for his boss. Below: the lavish Manila Hotel, where MacArthur occupied a penthouse suite, courtesy of President Quezon.

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declare the country neutral. Whether Japan would have respected Philippine neutrality seems only a highly remote possibility, but this will never be known because Roosevelt refused to accelerate independence.

After being evacuated from the Philippines in February 1942 to avoid capture by the Japanese, Quezon told Dwight D. Eisenhower— whom he knew from Eisenhower’s days as a MacArthur aide—that MacArthur had waited for Japan to strike out of the hope that it would spare the islands. Then Quezon added a twist: He said it was MacArthur, not he, who believed Japan might bypass the Philippines.

That scenario, however, is unlikely. As an experienced military officer, MacArthur knew Japan couldn’t ignore the threat U.S. forces posed there. He was also aware that A merican radar had detected Japanese planes flying nighttime reconnaissance missions over Clark Field on December 2-5, 1941, a sign Japan intended to attack the Philippines when war came.

But MacArthur had reason to defer to Quezon—something the proud military man would be reluctant to admit. MacArthur commanded fewer than 35,000 American troops,

and too few were infantrymen. To defend the islands, he needed the 120,000-man Philippine Army—and the morale and staying power of the Filipino troops hinged on Quezon’s unequivocal support for the war effort.

Quezon was a revered figure in the Philippines. Just a month before the outbreak of war, he had won reelection with more than 80 percent of the popular vote. The U.S. State Department called him “the most important rallying point we have to keep the Filipino people loyal to the United States” and noted that Quezon had “gained the affection of the Filipino masses…as has no other Filipino leader.” The volatile Quezon’s support would be no sure thing if he believed MacArthur had needlessly brought war there.

MacArthur’s nearly 40-year friendship with Quezon also can’t be overlooked. From 1935 to 1941, MacArthur had served as a well-paid adviser to Quezon. In an executive order issued shortly after the Japanese invasion, Quezon paid MacArthur an additional $500,000 (more than $8 million today) from the Philippine Treasury “in recognition of outstanding service to the Commonwealth of the Philippines.”

(See “Mystery Money?” on page 36.)

Filipino troops march before spectators just prior to the outbreak of war with Japan.

MacArthur needed the large Philippine Army—and Quezon’s backing—to defend the islands.

Quezon had a strong motive to wait to see if Japan attacked.

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THE FINAL QUESTION is whether a Formosa raid could have succeeded. The chances were “extremely remote,” wrote Louis Morton, author of the Philippine campaign’s definitive account.

Lieutenant Arthur A. Fletcher, a 19th Bombardment Group pilot, had a blunter assessment: “the Japs would have been sitting on ready, licking their chops.” Brereton’s pursuit planes—P-40s, P-35s, and P-26s—lacked the range to escort the heavy bombers to Formosa. Unescorted B-17s were vulnerable to fighter attack, especially Brereton’s early models, which lacked tail guns.

Postwar interrogation of Japanese officers, however, shows that an attack on the main air base in southern Formosa that morning might have had a chance, albeit a slim one. The Japanese had planned a sunrise attack on the Philippines, but heavy fog had delayed takeoff from Formosa until 10:15 a.m. If Brereton had launched his B-17s by 6:30 a.m., they would have found the enemy planes on the ground beneath the fog, loaded with bombs and gasoline, and might have struck the type of blow the Japanese would later inflict on Clark Field. This prospect so worried the Japanese that a false report of approaching American bombers that morning threw the base there into a frenzy.

And if the B-17s had taken off later, the enemy planes would have been on their way to Clark Field, at least leaving the B-17s to attack the Formosa base without strong opposition. Japanese officials later admitted their antiaircraft defenses were poor and that they had committed all their frontline planes to the Clark Field mission, leaving only obsolete fighters for defense.

The loss of the heavy bombers at Clark Field did nothing to derail MacArthur’s career or sully his

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MYSTERY MONEY?

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IT WAS AN ODD THING for Philippine President Manuel L. Quezon to do with his country on the brink of disaster.

By early January 1942, Japan had invaded the islands, sweeping aside General Douglas MacArthur’s American and Filipino troops. MacArthur’s forces were withdrawing to the Bataan Peninsula for a last-ditch fight, ceding to the enemy the capital of Manila and most of the main Philippine island of Luzon. Quezon was trapped on Corregidor, MacArthur’s island command center in Manila Bay. Despite the dire situation, Quezon issued Executive Order No. 1, dated January 3, 1942, directing the Philippine Treasury to pay MacArthur $500,000 (more than $8 million today) “in recognition of outstanding service to the Commonwealth of the Philippines.” The American public did not learn of this payment until 1980, and its belated disclosure created a stir.

“Mystery Money,” Time magazine called it, and the media insinuated it was a bribe to MacArthur, perhaps to ensure Quezon’s evacuation from the Philippines before the islands fell to the Japanese. Despite the payment’s suspicious look, however, other indicators suggest it was not a bribe, but simply what the executive order said it was: a reward for MacArthur’s prewar service to the Philippine government.

From 1935 until recalled to active U.S. Army duty in July 1941, MacArthur had served as military adviser to Quezon, working with the Philippine president to develop an army to defend it when it gained its independence in 1946. Executive Order No. 1 rewarded not just MacArthur but three MacArthur aides from his prewar staff: Richard K. Sutherland ($75,000), Richard J. Marshall ($45,000), and Sidney L. Huff ($20,000). No payment was made to anyone who had joined MacArthur’s staff after he had returned to active duty. That the money was for prewar service is confirmed by Quezon’s June 1942 offer of a similar payment to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had served as a MacArthur aide in the Philippines from 1935 to 1939. Eisenhower, who was not yet the famous figure he would soon become, knew the payment had a bad look and politely declined the offer.

While the sum paid to MacArthur was large, Quezon had a history of generosity to MacArthur and his staff. From 1935 to 1941, for example, he had paid MacArthur $18,000 per year (more than $300,000 today), along with providing a $15,000 expense account and a penthouse apartment in the Manila Hotel. As another example, from 1935 to 1939, he had paid Eisenhower $11,760 per year (more than $200,000 today) and given him a suite at the same hotel. When Eisenhower sought assignment back to the United States in 1939, Quezon offered him a blank check to stay in Manila.

Finally, Quezon had no need to bribe MacArthur or his staff because Quezon knew that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had already decided to evacuate him. —Joseph Connor

MacArthur bowed to Quezon’s wishes on other occasions. In late December 1941, when MacArthur’s forces were retreating to Bataan, U.S. quartermasters realized they lacked sufficient food to feed the garrison there. They tried to buy rice from a Philippine government depot on Luzon and transport it to Bataan. Even 20 percent of that rice would have fed the troops there for nearly a year, but MacArthur refused to overrule Quezon’s prohibition against the sale. Quartermasters also tried to confiscate canned food from warehouses owned by Japanese firms, but under pressure from Quezon, MacArthur refused to allow it. In January 1942, the Japanese emplaced artillery at Ternate, on the Luzon coast, to batter Corregidor, the island fortress in Manila Bay. For two weeks, MacArthur prohibited American artillery from firing on Ternate because Quezon feared civilian casualties.

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BASILIO J. VALDES DIGITIZED COLLECTION

On October 20, 1944, MacArthur famously returned to the Philippines to retake the islands from the Japanese.

reputation. On December 19, 1941, he was promoted to full general, and he later received the Medal of Honor for “conspicuous leadership in preparing the Philippine Islands to resist conquest.� This was a far different fate from that suffered by Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter C. Short, the commanders at Pearl Harbor, who lost their jobs for getting caught with their ships at anchor and planes on the ground.

For Quezon and the United States, the fighting in the Philippines ended as badly as it had begun. On April 9, 1942, the 78,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan surrendered; the 11,000 men on Cor reg idor capitulated nearly a month later, on May 6.

The Philippines were in Japanese hands. By then, both MacArthur and Quezon had been evacuated to safety. MacArthur vowed to return to liberate the islands, and Quezon dreamed of being at his side, but it was not to be: while being treated for tuberculosis at Lake Saranac, New York, the 65-year-old Philippine president died on August 1, 1944, fewer than three months before MacArthur stepped back onto Philippine soil. H

Quezon died in the U.S. in August 1944 and was buried in the Philippines two years later.

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Ships burn on Pearl Harbor’s Battleship Row the morning of the Japanese attack; the USS Arizona is in the foreground.

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ONE FALSE STEP Could a young army pilot in Hawaii have prevented the Pearl Harbor attack? It was a question that shadowed Kermit Tyler all his life

By Joseph Connor

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F

irst Lieutenant Kermit A. Tyler was the next man up on the squadron duty roster, so he resigned himself to spending the coming Sunday morning, 4 to 8 a.m., at the Aircraft Information Center at Fort Shafter on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. At 3 a.m. on that day, December 7, 1941, the 28-year-old fighter pilot drove south from his house on Oahu’s North Shore to Fort Shafter, listening to Hawaiian music on his car radio.

The Information Center was the hub of a cutting-edge system designed to warn of air attacks aimed at Hawaii. A half-dozen radar stations were located throughout Oahu, the site of several military bases including the naval base at Pearl Harbor. The radar operators’ job was to detect approaching planes and report unusual contacts to the center. Center personnel would evaluate the information and determine if the aircraft might be hostile, in which case they would scramble pursuit planes to intercept them.

The idea was sound, but the system was not yet a smooth-running operation. Pilots were randomly sent to man the center, serving as little more than warm bodies. Tyler, for example, had no training in radar—and no idea what he was supposed to do at the center. A few days earlier, he had asked his superior, Major Kenneth P. Bergquist, about his role. Bergquist only suggested that if a plane crashed, Tyler could help with the rescue operation. Even the center’s location was

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Pilot Kermit A. Tyler, here as a lieutenant colonel in 1944.

BORN IN IOWA IN 1913, Kermit Tyler grew up in Long Beach, California. After two years of college, he joined the Army Air Corps in 1936 and earned his wings the next year. In February 1941, Tyler was assigned to the 78th Pursuit Squadron in Hawaii. For a young airman, life in idyllic Oahu was “very pleasant indeed,” he said. He and future ace Charles H. MacDonald shared a beach house on the North Shore, splitting the $60 monthly rent, and Tyler took up surfing, an avocation he pursued for the next 50 years.

While Tyler and his fellow pilots honed their flying skills with aerobatics and mock dogfights in their P-40 Warhawks, other officers studied technological advances that would help win the next war. One of the most promising was known as “radio detection and ranging,” or radar. When high-frequency radio waves hit an object, like an airplane, they deflect back, producing an image on an oscilloscope screen pinpointing the object’s location. The British had pioneered important advances in the field; the previous year, radar had proved pivotal in the Battle of Britain, alerting the Royal Air Force to approaching German bombers and enabling its fighter planes to intercept them.

The advent of aircraft carriers had made even island outposts like Hawaii vulnerable, so radar became the linchpin of Hawaiian air defense. Operating at the upper end of the present-day FM broadcast band, the radar sets in use at the time, called SCR-270Bs, could detect planes more than 100 miles away.

Still, they had limitations. Foremost, they could not distinguish between friendly and enemy planes. The British had technology to do that—a system called Identification, Friend

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makeshift: a room above a warehouse, pending construction of a permanent home.

The first three hours of Tyler’s Sunday shift were uneventful, even boring. Only a skeleton staff was on duty. The officer whose job it was to identify approaching aircraft wasn’t scheduled to be there that morning, but it didn’t seem to matter because there were few planes in the air. Tyler passed the time writing letters home and thumbing through a Reader’s Digest. But at 7:20 a.m., fate intervened to ensure the young pilot an unwelcome and enduring place in history, branded as the man who had a chance to thwart the Pearl Harbor attack—but didn’t.

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The radar system then used in Hawaii, the SCR-270B (left), technologically lagged behind one in use by the British, which could distinguish between friendly and enemy aircraft— like this German Me-109 fighter near the English coast.

or Foe—but the U.S. Army Signal Corps was still developing an American version. The SCR-270B also couldn’t discern the number of planes in a contact.

Many junior officers had embraced radar, but the higher-ups showed little interest, noted Major Bergquist, who was setting up the Hawaiian radar system. Commander William E. G. Taylor, a navy officer then working on radar in Hawaii, observed that radar was “sort of a foster child at that time, we felt.”

Turf battles between the Signal Corps and the Air Corps didn’t help either, Bergquist said; the result was bureaucratic inertia, a shortage of trained personnel, and a lack of spare parts, which limited radar station operating hours to 4 to 7 a.m. each day. Even when they were active, the sets weren’t used to detect hostile aircraft. Instead, radar was used more to train for hypothetical future threats rather than for “any idea it would be real,” explained Lieutenant General Walter C. Short, the army commander in Hawaii.

By late 1941, American relations with Japan had reached their breaking point. U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall issued a war warning to General Short on November 27, alerting him to “hostile action possible at any moment.” Marshall also ordered Short “not, repeat not, to alarm the civil population,” so Short confined Marshall’s warning to officers he deemed to have a need to know.

Short placed his command on alert—but at the lowest possible alert level, one that warned only against “acts of sabotage and uprisings within the islands, with no threat from without.”

AT THE SAME TIME that Kermit Tyler started his shift on December 7, Private Joseph L. Lockard, 19, and Private George E. Elliott Jr., 23, fired up the radar station on Opana, some 30 miles north of Fort Shafter, on the upper tip of Oahu. Of the two, Lockard was the more experienced, although he had no formal schooling in radar. He operated the SCR-270B, and Elliott plotted radar contacts on a map. It was a “rather dull morning. There was not much activity,” Lockard recalled. At 7 a.m., with the day’s scheduled radar operations completed and an hour remaining in Tyler’s shift, Lockard and Elliott prepared to shut down. But the truck scheduled to bring them back to their camp was late to arrive; in the meantime, they kept the radar on to give Elliott practice operating it.

At 7:02 a.m., his eyes popped at what he saw on his screen: a large blip 132 miles north of Oahu. Lockard was surprised, too, as it was the

His eyes popped at what he saw on his screen: a large blip 132 miles north of Oahu.

Like Tyler, his superior, Major Kenneth P. Bergquist (left), was unaware of the war alert Lieutenant General Walter C. Short (below) had received.

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largest contact he had ever seen—so large he initially thought the radar had malfunctioned. After verifying that his equipment was working properly, he told Elliott that it looked like a large flight of planes. The SCR-270B, however, could not ascertain how many planes were there or whether they were American. Lockard and Elliott were curious, but not alarmed. Neither had been privy to Marshall’s war warning, and neither suspected that the planes might be Japanese. Nevertheless, the contact was so unusual that Elliott thought they should report it to the Information Center. Lockard laughed and told him he was crazy; after some prodding, he relented, and Elliott made the call.

At about 7:20 a.m., Elliott reached the center’s switchboard operator, Private Joseph P. McDonald, and gave his report: “Large number of planes coming in from the north.” McDonald thought that he was alone and didn’t know what to do. When he saw that Tyler was still on duty, he had Tyler speak with Lockard. Lockard told Tyler about the contact, which was now 20-25 miles closer to Oahu, deeming it the most substantial reading he had ever gotten.

Tyler remembered the Hawaiian music he had heard on his car radio

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Private Joseph L. Lockard (below) was part of the team that picked up radar warnings of incoming aircraft, like this Aichi D3A carrier dive bomber.

earlier that morning. He knew that the radio station, KGMB, broadcast overnight only when American heavy bombers flew in from the mainland. The air force wanted the station’s signal available as a navigation aid. That must be it, Tyler thought, and he concluded that the radar contact was a flight of friendly planes. He told Lockard not to worry about it and decided against disturbing his superior, Bergquist, who was at home. In the peacetime military, Tyler knew, lieutenants did not drag majors out of bed on a Sunday morning without good reason. That this contact might be Japanese planes was the farthest thing from Tyler’s mind because he, too, was unaware of Marshall’s war warning. In fact, from the news accounts he had read, he thought the United States’ relations with Japan had actually improved over the previous few weeks.

Lockard and Elliott continued to track the planes until 7:39 a.m., when they lost them 22 miles from Oahu once the island’s topography interfered with the radar beam.

A flight of 12 B-17 Flying Fortresses was, in fact, coming in from California that morning.

But what Opana had picked up wasn’t American bombers, but the first wave of Japanese planes bound for Pearl Harbor. They struck at 7:55 a.m.—35 minutes after Elliott’s call. Tyler sensed an inkling of trouble at 8 a.m. when, his shift over, he stepped out of the center for fresh air. Glancing toward Pearl Harbor, five miles away, he saw antiaircraft fire and diving planes but thought it was a drill. Five minutes later, he learned the truth when nearby Wheeler Field called to report that it was under attack.

The Japanese had achieved complete surprise. Their attack killed 2,335 American servicemen, sank or damaged 19 ships, and damaged or destroyed 328 army and navy aircraft. Since General Short’s alert had warned only against sabotage, the planes at the Hawaiian airfields had been lined up wingtip to wingtip—making the planes easier to guard against interlopers but easy prey for the Japanese attackers.

The Pearl Harbor attack was a seismic shock, and Americans could not grasp how the army and navy could have been caught so flatfooted. The tragedy became one of the most thoroughly investigated events in American history, with a presidential commission, an army board, a navy court of inquiry, and a congressional committee all trying to figure

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Private George E. Elliott Jr. (top left), who had insisted on reporting the radar contacts, testifies at one of the 1945-46 Congressional hearings (left); here, a senator gestures at a chart showing waves of attacking Japanese aircraft around Oahu.

out what had happened and who was to blame.

These panels focused on the commanders— Short and the Pacific Fleet commander, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel—but Tyler’s dismissal of the Opana radar contact did not escape scrutiny.

IN 1942, the Roberts Commission, appointed

by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and chaired by Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts, took testimony and cleared Tyler, noting he had firm reason to believe that the approaching planes were American. Tyler’s commander, Brigadier General Howard C. Davidson, backed Tyler, telling the commission that Tyler would have needed “prescience beyond the ordinary person’s capacity” to recognize the radar contact as Japanese planes.

Two years later, a Navy Court of Inquiry likewise excused Tyler’s failure to heed the Opana contact due to the SCR-270B’s inability to identify hostile planes and Short’s failure to disseminate Marshall’s war warning. That same year, however, the Army Pearl Harbor Board was more critical, chastising Tyler for

failing to call Major Bergquist. Tyler “had no knowledge upon which to base any action,” the board noted, “yet he assumed to give direction instead of seeking someone competent to make a decision.” The board’s presiding officer was more understanding. Upon hearing how Tyler had arrived at the center without orders or a defined role, Lieutenant General George Grunert, a soldier since 1898, noted, “It seems all cock-eyed to me.”

The final investigation, conducted by a congressional committee from 1945-46, placed the blame squarely on General Short.

Tyler’s failure to alert Bergquist would have been inexcusable had he known of the war warning, the panel concluded, but he didn’t.

“The real reason…that the information developed by the radar was of no avail was the failure of the commanding general to order an alert commensurate with the warning he had been given by the War Department that hostilities were possible at any moment,” the committee concluded.

For more than a half-century, history enthusiasts have debated whether Tyler could

Tyler’s dismissal of the Opana radar contact did not escape scrutiny.

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If Tyler had acted, he would have called Bergquist, who was home in bed and also unaware of Marshall’s war warning. For that call to have had any impact, Bergquist would have had to have believed the contact might be hostile planes and passed a warning to his superiors. Furthermore, Bergquist’s superiors would have had to have promptly issued a full alert and notified the navy. Given the hubris of which Admiral King had complained, none of these actions was likely, as another incident that December morning shows.

At about 6:45 a.m., the destroyer USS Ward sank a Japanese mini submarine near the mouth of Pearl Harbor (see page 4). The Ward’s skipper reported this action to his superiors at 6:51 a.m., but naval commanders did not take the report seriously enough to issue an alert. There is no reason to believe that an ambiguous radar contact would have led army commanders to act any more decisively than their navy brethren had. Time was also short: Lockard spoke to Tyler at 7:20 a.m., just 35 minutes before the attack. Even with a prompt alert, there was too little time for ships to get underway or warplanes to get off the ground.

The most tantalizing “what if” involves an omission that cannot be laid solely at Tyler’s feet. After the attack began, more experienced officers like Bergquist and Major Lorry N. Tindal, an air force intelligence officer, took over for Tyler, although Tyler stayed on duty at the center. Due to “the shock of the attack,” the center was in “quite a turmoil,” Tindal said. No navy liaison officer was present, and no one from the army thought to tell the navy about the Opana radar contact until two days later—a lapse that Admiral Kimmel called “incomprehensible.” The Opana station’s radar plot showed the path the Japanese planes had taken to Oahu, a valuable clue to the location of the carriers that had launched them. If the navy had had that information on December 7, it might have found and attacked those carriers, Kimmel believed—but without it, the navy chased its tail, searching to the west and southwest instead of to the north.

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FROM TOP: THE BOSTON GLOBE/NEWSPAPERS.COM; THE LOS ANGELES TIMES/NEWSPAPERS.COM

have changed the course of history by passing the Opana radar contact up his chain of command. Would the army and navy have been better prepared to meet the attack? Navy Secretary Frank Knox thought so. In a report issued on December 14, 1941, he asserted that if the Opana radar contact had been “properly handled, it would have given both Army and Navy sufficient warning to have been in a state of readiness, which at least would have prevented the major part of the damage done, and might easily have converted this successful air attack into a Japanese disaster.”

Other factors, however, dispel the navy secretary’s conclusion. Nothing Kermit Tyler could have done would have been likely to have made a difference.

The main impediment was American complacency—what Chief of Naval Operations Ernest King later called “the unwarranted feeling of immunity from attack that seems to have pervaded all ranks at Pearl Harbor— both Army and Navy.” Japan had been viewed as a second-rate power whose planes and ships were inferior to their American counterparts. Few imagined that Japan would have the audacity to attack heavily defended Pearl Harbor—and it’s hard to be ready for an attack believed to be impossible. It took defeats at Pearl Harbor, Guam, Wake Island, and the Philippines to show the United States that Japan was indeed a formidable foe.

FROM LEFT: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; JOHN PHILLIPS/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

Along with General Short, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel (above) was assigned most of the blame for the debacle, while Private Lockard (with his family, right) was hailed as a hero.

FROM TOP: THE BOSTON GLOBE/NEWSPAPERS.COM; THE LOS ANGELES TIMES/NEWSPAPERS.COM

FROM LEFT: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; JOHN PHILLIPS/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

THERE WAS A WAR TO BE FOUGHT, and Kermit Tyler moved on. In September 1942, he was promoted to captain and given command of the 44th Fighter Squadron, flying combat missions in the Solomon Islands.

Tyler was later promoted to major, named operations officer for the 13th Fighter Command in May 1943, and promoted to lieutenant colonel in November of that same year.

The Opana station’s Private Lockard emerged from the Pearl Harbor attack as a minor celebrity. On February 10, 1942, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for detecting the Japanese planes. The press portrayed him as one of the few people on the ball on December 7, unaware that he had laughed off the radar contact until Private Elliott prodded him to report it. Lockard was commissioned a lieutenant and spent the war as a radar officer in the Aleutians; Elliott stayed out of the spotlight and served as a radar operator in the States for the war’s duration.

Radar had done its job in detecting the Japanese planes, and the brass took notice. The attack unlocked a cornucopia of resources for radar operations. “After the 7th I just had to snap my fingers and I got what I wanted,” Major Bergquist said.

But Pearl Harbor followed Tyler for the rest of his life. He remained in the air force after the war, but a postwar effectiveness report questioned his ability to react in a crisis—the kiss of death for advancement. He retired from the service in 1961 as a lieutenant colonel, the same rank he had held since 1943. Books and films have portrayed Tyler as asleep at the switch that fateful morning, and for the rest of his life he received occasional angry letters at his home from people second-guessing his performance at Pearl Harbor. When he died in 2010, newspapers across the country ran his obituary, calling him the man who had ignored the approaching Japanese planes.

Why had fate singled him out? Tyler had often wondered. He agonized over whether he should have done more, but in his heart of hearts, he knew the answer: “I could have done the same thing a hundred times, and I would have arrived at the same conclusion, given the state of alert, or lack of alert, that we were in,” he reflected in 1991. In the end, Tyler accepted that he was simply the unlucky man thrust into an impossible situation at what had unexpectedly become a pivotal moment in history, and he made his peace with it. H

Although Tyler was largely absolved of wrongdoing, the events of that December day followed him throughout his long life.

He died at age 96 in 2010.

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THE DARK PLACE World War II left its mark on a renowned actor and transformed his postwar performances

By Dave Kindy

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t is arguably one of the most emotional and impactful scenes in Hollywood history. Sitting at Martini’s bar in the fictional town of Bedford Falls, a forlorn George Bailey has reached his breaking point. Festive music plays in the background as gleeful customers celebrate Christmas Eve. However, the hero of the classic holiday film It’s a Wonderful Life is immune to the merriment. He sits at the bar, nursing a drink and fondling his life insurance policy, a payout of which could cover the lost $8,000 from Bailey Building & Loan. A tight close-up shows Bailey with tears in his eyes as he holds his head in his hands and begins to pray: “God, God, dear Father in Heaven. I’m not a praying man, but if you’re up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I’m at the end of my rope. I… show me the way, oh God.” Actor Jimmy Stewart nailed the scene—and then some. He followed the script exactly but then added something extra: the tears. Stewart broke down unexpectedly during the 1946 filming of this memorable moment, about a year after World War II had ended in Europe. Bottled-up feelings poured forth in a rare display of emotion by Stewart, who had already won an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1940’s The Philadelphia Story.

Director Frank Capra was elated with the performance, but he knew he hadn’t captured the scene properly. The cameras were set up for a long shot and Capra

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Actor and wartime pilot Jimmy Stewart just after the war, in September 1945 (opposite), and in a revealing performance in the film It’s a Wonderful Life (above) the following year.

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wanted to reshoot it with a tight frame on the actor’s face as the tears spilled.

Stewart looked at the director and said, “Frank, I can’t do that again. Don’t ask me.”

The actor knew the moment had been spontaneous: he had opened up a reservoir of buried emotions and was unwilling to revisit that dark place in his soul. Although Stewart himself rarely talked about the source of that despair, those close to him knew it came from his combat service as a bomber pilot in World War II. Many noticed the change in him when he returned home after flying 20 missions in Europe in a B-24 Liberator.

Capra would have to find another way to get the scene he wanted.

SOLDIER’S HEART. Shell shock. Battle fatigue. Flak happy. PTSD. As long as humans have fought wars, soldiers have suffered the psychological impact brought on by the horrors of combat. The ancient Greeks even wrote about it in their plays and histories. At the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, Herodotus described how Epizelus “spent the rest of his life in blindness” after witnessing the man next to him killed by a large bearded Persian.

Whatever it is called, Jimmy Stewart most

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likely suffered from it. “His wife talked about the symptoms of PTSD he had long after the war,” said Robert Matzen, author of the 2016 book Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe. “The nightmares, the sweats, the shakes. He did have to stand down from some rotations because the pressure got to him. In his command position and with the pressure he put on himself as a perfectionist, he just couldn’t stand up to it.”

Fellow actors on the set of It’s a Wonderful Life were concerned by Stewart’s darker side, according to Ben Mankiewicz, a host on Turner Classic Movies and a film critic. “Donna Reed noticed it,” he noted. “She said people were tense. There was definite discussion about playing someone who was that depressed and considering suicide, knowing obviously that was something that was happening across America at the time. Jimmy Stewart was clearly affected by what he went through, and it’s a change we didn’t understand.”

It is well-documented that Stewart suffered nightmares, nervousness, anxiety, and fits of rage after the war. In his book, Matzen evokes the actor’s postwar terrors: “[T]he nightmares came every night. There he was on oxygen at 20,000 feet with 190s

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COURTESY OF THE FILM STILLS COLLECTION, L. TOM PERRY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

Stewart was a licensed pilot and was determined to use those skills with the U.S. Army Air Corps.

LOS ANGELES TIMES; PREVIOUS PAGES: PETER STACKPOLE/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES; INSET: CBS VIA GETTY IMAGES

Stewart joined the army before the U.S. entered the war—and just one month after accepting an Oscar for his performance in The Philadelphia Story.

COURTESY OF THE FILM STILLS COLLECTION, L. TOM PERRY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

LOS ANGELES TIMES; PREVIOUS PAGES: PETER STACKPOLE/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES; INSET: CBS VIA GETTY IMAGES

As a pilot stationed in England during the war, Stewart studies maps in the hands of a base intelligence officer before a mission.

[German fighter planes] zipping past, spraying lead and firing rockets, flak bursting about the cockpit. B-24s hit, burning, spinning out of formation. Bail out! Bail out! Do you see any chutes? How many chutes? Whose ship was it? Oh no, not him! Not them! Bodies, pieces of bodies smacking off the windshield. And the most frequent dream, an explosion under him and the plane lifted by it and the feeling that this was the end. There he was, straddling a hole at his feet big enough to fall through, feeling the thin air at 30 below biting at his skin and swirling as he choked on the stench of gunpowder, looking four miles straight down at Germany.”

After the war, Stewart talked about his service in mostly positive terms and avoided dwelling on the negative. “I saw too much suffering,” he once said. “It’s certainly not something to talk about.” Like so many men of that generation, Stewart would deal with psychological issues that followed him after living through the terror of combat in his own way. “He learned that the anger he had inside of him could be channeled into these dark performances, dark character moments,” Matzen said. “You are looking at the effects of war in some of the scenes in that movie and many other pictures after that. His wife and daughter both said, ‘That’s him in real life.’ He would go from zero to 100 in two seconds. He would fly into a very rare blind rage.

That was the war.”

STEWART’S MILITARY CAREER is remarkable, considering how improbable it was. He was 33 when America entered World War II— old by the day’s standards, when most combat pilots were 21 or 22.

He had had a love of airplanes long before he stepped in front of the footlights. He was a licensed pilot and was determined to use those skills with the U.S. Army Air Corps. But his 6-foot-4, rail-thin frame earned him a sixmonth deferment when he was evaluated for service in the fall of 1940: he was too underweight for his height. He was persistent, though. While trying to get his status changed, Stewart set about getting his transport license as a commercial pilot, figuring that would help offset his age problem: at just shy of 33, he was already over the maximum age for air cadet training. He was at last inducted into the army on March 22, 1941, and assigned to the Air Corps—soon to be the U.S. Army Air Forces.

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earned his wings, and piloted B-17 Flying Fortresses as an instructor.

Stewart pushed for a combat assignment and finally got his wish when he was transferred in November 1943 to the 445th Bombardment Group (Heavy). Based at the Royal Air Force airfield Tibenham in Norfolk, England, the unit was part of the VIII Bomber Command, later Eighth Army Air Force, which had been established the year before to conduct daylight bombing raids on strategic targets in Germany. This squadron flew Liberators, so Stewart was checked out on the B-24 after joining the unit.

“Stewart’s commander knew how badly he wanted to get into the war,” said Michael S. Simpson, unit historian for the 445th. “He knew of a B-24 outfit that was in their initial stage of training and needed an operations officer for one of the squadrons. Stewart’s CO asked if they could use an experienced officer, and he got the job.” It wasn’t long before Stewart’s leadership abilities were noticed, and he was made commanding officer of the 445th’s 703rd Bombardment Squadron.

He led by example, and his men loved him. Stewart used the laid-back style that he displayed onscreen to get his crews to trust him and follow his orders no matter what.

“His soft drawl was calming to the airmen,” Simpson said. “I talked with several members of the 703rd who said he was a dynamic leader who didn’t need to crack the whip. Once, an enlisted man stole a keg of beer from the officer’s club. They stashed it in their Quonset hut and wrapped it up in blankets. Stewart came in and noticed the pile of blankets. Instead of throwing a fit, he took a canteen cup and poured himself a beer. As he sipped on it, he mentioned that a keg of beer had disappeared, and he knew that none of his men would have taken it.

He then finished the beer and walked out of the hut. They couldn’t wait to return the keg!”

Stewart led 11 of the 41 missions the 703rd Bomb Squadron flew against German targets—each of them pressure-filled and dangerous. In 1943 the Eighth Air Force had no long-range fighter protection, so the B-24s were at the mercy of German Me 109s and Focke-Wulf Fw 190s as they attacked the formations in deadly waves. Once past the enemy fighters, the Liberators—“widow makers,” as the crews dubbed them—would be pounded mercilessly by exploding flak as they made their bombing runs.

For the Americans, daylight bombing was a meat grinder. Losses were appalling, especially early on in the campaign before defensive tactics were perfected and fighters could escort the bombers to their targets. All told, the Eighth Air Force lost more than 10,500 airplanes, w ith 26,000 men killed and another 28,000 taken prisoner. By contrast, the U.S. Marines had a total of 23,160 men killed during its bloody island-hopping campaign across the Pacific.

The 703rd Bomb Squadron suffered comparable losses under Stewart’s command. The unit lost 10 aircraft in combat, with 71 men killed in action and 25 taken prisoner. Stewart took each one of those losses personally, compounding the stress he felt in organizing and

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NATIONAL ARCHIVES (BOTH)

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Stewart (back row, center) stands before a B-24 with officers of the unit he commanded, the 703rd Bombardment Squadron.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES (BOTH)

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

The nightmarish scenes Stewart witnessed during the war—B-24s battered and burning (like those here and below) and men dying— haunted his dreams in the years to follow.

leading the assaults against Nazi Germany.

Stewart was a perfectionist in many ways, trying to control outcomes with unrealistic expectations. His father, Alex, had been a demanding alcoholic who insisted his son get it right all the time. The pressure Stewart placed on himself to perform was immense. “I prayed I wouldn’t make a mistake,” he later recalled. “When you go up, you’re responsible.”

A few missions, in particular, left a mark on Stewart’s psyche. One was during “Big Week” in February 1944, the attempt by the Allies to knock the Luftwaffe out of the war by bombing airplane factories and luring German fighters to their doom in a costly battle of attrition. The 445th Bomb Group lost 13 of 25 airplanes and 122 airmen. Stewart’s B-24, in which he was copilot and group commander, took a direct hit from an 88 shell, which left a two-foot hole in the fuselage just below the actor’s seat. The damage was so extensive that the Liberator suffered a structural failure when it landed back in England.

While the experience was unsettling, it’s not what Stewart feared the most. His deepest dread was making mistakes that would result in men under his command getting killed—a situation that is almost impossible to avoid in the fog of war. For those who didn’t return, Stewart was often the one who had to write to the families and tell them their loved ones wouldn’t be coming home.

“He felt responsible for these men,” Matzen said. “These were either men in his squadron or that he had trained or were in his formation. Stewart took that so seriously.”

Flak was also a problem on Stewart’s last mission with the 703rd Bomb Squadron. The unit planned to bomb an aircraft engine factory in Basdorf, Germany, but due to weather it was diverted to Berlin, its secondary target. The planes took a beating from antiaircraft fire over the German capital. Michael Simpson’s father, Lieutenant Leland Simpson, was lead bombardier with Stewart that day.

“The strain was really starting to show then,” the historian said.

“His commanding officer was concerned Stewart was flying too many missions. When the 453rd Bomb Group lost its group operations officer, it was decided to transfer Stewart, by then a major, to that role.

This didn’t mean Stewart would stop flying, just that he would be farther up in the rotation and wouldn’t fly as much.” He went on to fly nine missions as operations officer for the 453rd. Nearly a month later, Stewart’s final mission—his 20th—was a near-disaster. The 453rd Bomb Group almost collided with another, causing several formations to veer away and miss their target: an airfield full of Me 262 jetfighters. Instead, bombs rained down on farm fields and forest.

Quietly, Stewart was told to stand down. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces, let the actor know his services were more important to the Eighth Air Force as an operations officer.

“It wasn’t ever official, but I just told him I didn’t want him to fly any more combat,” Arnold recalled. “He didn’t argue about it.”

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THE WAR IN EUROPE ended two months later. “He loved to fly, but he came home after the war vowing to never fly again,” Matzen said. “That’s the toll 20 missions took on him.”

Stewart eventually found himself back in Hollywood looking to resume his acting career.

The pickings were slim at first, especially for a 38-year-old former star who had been away from moviemaking for five years.

Also working against him was his appearance. Stewart had aged remarkably during the war. Comparing photos of him from when he entered the service and when he left show a much older, wearied individual—someone weighed down by the ravages of command in combat. Back in Hollywood, Stewart was so anxious that he couldn’t keep weight on. His stomach was in knots, and all he could keep down was ice cream and peanut butter. Capra, who had spent the war in the U.S. Army Signal Corps producing a series of films aimed at American troops, approached Stewart with the script for It’s a Wonderful Life. At first Stewart wasn’t interested, but he eventually

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CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT: RKO PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES; JOHN KOBAL FOUNDATION/GETTY IMAGES; SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

Throughout It’s a Wonderful Life, there are glimpses of Stewart revealing the emotions he had tamped down during the war.

changed his mind and embraced the project.

He had previously worked with Capra on such classics as You Can’t Take It with You (1938) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).

Throughout It’s a Wonderful Life, there are glimpses of Stewart revealing the emotions he had tamped down during the war, including the scene in the living room where he explodes while the family is preparing for Christmas.

Stewart yells at the children and knocks over gifts and furniture in a fit of rage. Even the aftermath, when he apologizes for his behavior, is uncomfortable to watch.

“Only great actors can tap into those feelings,” Mankiewicz said. “It’s not enough to experience it; you have to have that ability to communicate that to a movie camera. You have to turn it on and capture it. Jimmy Stewart was not a method actor, but he knew intuitively that he was able to find it within himself and translate it for the audience.”

For the scene in Martini’s bar, Capra had planned a long shot to show the action surrounding Stewart. Neither the director nor the actor was prepared for what happened next, as tears poured forth as if from an inner fount.

“As I said those words,” Stewart told Guideposts magazine in 1987, “I felt the loneliness, the hopelessness of people who had nowhere to turn, and my eyes filled with tears. I broke down sobbing. This was not planned at all.”

Afterward, Capra tried to figure out what to do to make Stewart’s grief the key visual for the scene. Since a reshoot was out of the question, he did something that had never been tried before. At great expense, the director had film technicians painstakingly enlarge each frame of the scene one by one—thousands of images in all—until Stewart’s face and his tears filled the screen.

“He created a new process where he simulated the move he wanted to make but couldn’t make,” Matzen said. “Luckily, this is film with a very high quality to start out with.

Today, directors can go into the Avid bed [an editing system] and do an optical zoom on computers. That wasn’t possible back then.

Capra created a process for simulating the zoom he couldn’t do.”

It’s a Wonderful Life premiered on December 20, 1946. It received mixed reviews and failed to recoup its budget—all the larger because of the special process Capra invented.

While the Hollywood Reporter called the film “wonderful entertainment,” New York Times

PETER STACKPOLE/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

After the war, Stewart’s hometown of Indiana, Pennsylvania, welcomed home the actor, then 37.

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT: RKO PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES; JOHN KOBAL FOUNDATION/GETTY IMAGES; SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

PETER STACKPOLE/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

reviewer Bosley Crowther found it overly sentimental, although he noted that its star “has grown in spiritual stature as well as in talent during the years he was in the war.”

The 1946 film by director Frank Capra (top right) revealed Stewart as an actor with newfound depth (top left). Since a disappointing opening, it’s gone on to become a beloved holiday classic.

THE FILM SAT ON A DUSTY SHELF at the studio for decades until, thanks to a lapsed copyright in 1974, it resurfaced to introduce itself to new generations and become a holiday staple on television. It has since been ranked high up on the list of many critics’ favorite films.

“It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” Frank Capra told the Wall Street Journal in 1984. “The film has a life of its own now, and I can look at it like I had nothing to do with it. I’m like a parent whose kid grows up to be President. I’m proud…but it’s the kid who did the work.”

Despite his pronouncement about never flying again, Stewart did—and with the military, too. After the war, he joined the Air Force Reserve and was promoted to brigadier general in 1959, becoming the highest-ranking actor in U.S. military history. In 1966, Stewart flew a B-52 mission over North Vietnam as an observer. He retired from the Reserve in 1968.

Of course, Jimmy Stewart also became one of Hollywood’s most endearing and enduring stars. He appeared in 80 movies and was nominated five times for a Best Actor Oscar. He died in 1997 at the age of 89. Two years later, the American Film Institute ranked him third on their list of greatest American actors.

Later in life, Stewart admitted that It’s a Wonderful Life was his favorite movie. The role of George Bailey and that moment in Martini’s bar inexorably changed the arc of his journey and set the stage for even greater things. Says Ben Mankiewicz: “That scene was the beginning of the second act of Stewart’s very lengthy Hollywood career.” H DECEMBER 2020

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ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF RICHARD E. SCHROEDER

In 1937, at age 21, Adolf Schroeder—a U.S. citizen raised in Germany—wears a custom German army uniform his foster parents had made for him. The braided lanyard on his shoulder marks him as the best gunner in his regiment.

Six years later, in 1943, Schroeder was a sergeant in the U.S. Army (opposite).

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ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF RICHARD E. SCHROEDER

n late 1968, I was in my final weeks of Infantry Officers’ Basic Training at Fort Benning, Georgia, when I was unexpectedly summoned to meet two army investigators in civilian clothes. My infantry classmates were destined for combat duty in Vietnam, while I—a first lieutenant in military intelligence—had orders to something called the U.S. Army Intelligence Threat Analysis Group in Washington, D.C. And now these two men, to my puzzlement, were asking about my relationship with my father.

Of course I knew my father had an unusual story: born in the U.S. in 1916 to German immigrants, he had been sent to Germany at age five to live with an affluent childless couple after his father abandoned the family and his mother was unable to provide for him. While the whole world suffered through the Great Depression and widespread political turmoil, his school years were happy and untroubled—although in Germany even scouting, camping, hiking, and bicycling took on political overtones as the Nazis

FROM WEHRMACHT TO U.S. ARMY One soldier’s strange journey

By Richard E. Schroeder

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FROM WEHRMACHT…

SCOUT’S HONOR At age 14, in 1930, Schroeder was a member of the German Boy Scouts, the Deutsche Freishar. Once the Nazi era began in 1933, youth groups took on a more militaristic tone.

and other political parties tried to dodge the disarmament restrictions imposed by the victorious Western Allies at Versailles in 1919.

By 1935, with the Nazis in power, six months of service in the Arbeitsdienst—the more militaristic German version of America’s Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps—was required before entering a German university, which my father fulfilled. And he topped that by being drafted later that year, despite his American citizenship, into the resurgent German army for two years in field artillery. When he turned 21, his foster parents—who had discovered he had a Jewish grandparent—decided he’d be safer back in the United States. He returned in 1937, graduated from college, and met and married my mother, only to be drafted again in 1942—this time into the U.S. Army.

My father’s story notwithstanding, I did get my security clearance and went on to spend three decades in the Central Intelligence Agency.

I never learned why the army investigators had asked about him, but I suspect it was related to the same suspicions my father faced in the U.S. Army 25 years earlier. (Did I mention he had a thick German accent and that his name was Adolf?) He was shuttled from one tedious stateside job to another until finally, when the war had ended, the army found a position ideal for someone with two years’ Wehrmacht training and flawless German: supervision of a German POW camp near Le Havre, France. These were mostly enlisted men, made to work until they could be released to their homes in Germany. Master Sergeant Adolf Ernst Schroeder knew the soldiers’ tricks for shirking work or attempting escape, knew barracks German, had been a German sergeant—and now had command of 1,000 German soldiers. H

SHOVEL BRIGADE Beginning in 1935, the year this photo was taken, six months’ service in the Arbeitsdienst—a Nazi labor force—became compulsory for men aged 18-25. Here Schroeder, third from left, and his unit drill for an appearance in that year’s Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally; at the last minute he was deemed too short, at five foot six, to march.

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LINE OF SIGHT Schroeder entered the Wehrmacht in late 1935 and by 1936 was a gunner in Artillery Regiment 76—here, sighting one of the unit’s guns. At the time, military service was required for one year.

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HORSE-DRAWN When Schroeder entered the Wehrmacht, his field artillery unit was a mounted one—using horses to pull World War I-era guns (left). Schroeder, third from left, loved riding, especially a feisty three-year-old mount named Irrtum, which translates to “Mistake.”

DRIVING AHEAD By March 1936, Schroeder’s unit had converted from horses to half-tracks and larger, more modern guns (middle left). Returning from a field exercise one day that March, they learned that Hitler—who had already announced he was extending conscription by one year—had sent military forces to occupy the Rhineland.

BROTHERS IN ARMS Seeking to return to the U.S., Schroeder wrote to his commanding officer in late 1936, requesting a release from the German army. While he awaited it, his officers engaged in good-natured teasing, to the likes of: “Sergeant Schroeder, button that jacket, or you’ll never become an American general! (below).”

“Sergeant Schroeder, button that jacket, or you’ll never become an American general!”

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IN THE ARMY NOW Schroeder was inducted into the U.S. Army on July 7, 1942, and underwent basic training at Fort Bragg in North Carolina (above)—where he was subjected to good-natured teasing, American-style, with a pair of “bunny ears” lofted behind his head.

VETERAN RECRUIT “Of course this training was all too familiar to me, who had experienced two years of German army training five years earlier,” Schroeder wrote much later. “While I tried not to show off or let on, it must have been evident to our drill sergeants and instructors that I was no raw recruit, and they quickly promoted me to ‘acting sergeant’” (opposite, top left; Schroeder is standing at center)—a designation given to promising trainees.

A LOOK BACK Schroeder had expected to be assigned to military intelligence, a specialty recommended for him at induction; instead he received orders to the 259th Military Police Company, stationed in St. Augustine, Florida (opposite, top right). By winter 1942, he was promoted to sergeant and was awaiting orders to head overseas.

OVER THERE First, though, came a series of mundane assignments in the States; once the war ended, Schroeder finally got an assignment that took advantage of his strengths, supervising German POWs at a camp near Le Havre, France (opposite, bottom left).

LOVE AND WAR Schroeder met his future wife, Becky Boies, while he was a graduate student at Louisiana State University. The pair married in the spring of 1942, just before he learned he’d been drafted; they remained married for 72 years.

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MAKING RANK To his frustration, Schroeder held the rank of sergeant (opposite, bottom right) for most of the war, at last promoted to master sergeant, then the highest rank for enlisted men, in November 1945—a final acknowledgment that he was a good soldier and a patriot. Officers joked, he said, that he “looked like a zebra now, with all those black-and-white stripes.”

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…TO U.S. ARMY

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WEAPONS MANUAL GERMANY’S KMS TIRPITZ BATTLESHIP ILLUSTRATION BY JIM LAURIER

HEAVYWEIGHT FIGHTER LEAVE IT TO ADOLF HITLER to build the largest battleship ever produced by a European power.

In 1935, Hitler unilaterally renounced the Treaty of Versailles and began rebuilding Germany’s army, air force, and navy.

His engineers proceeded to design two giant warships: KMS Bismarck, a 50,000ton behemoth when fully loaded, commissioned in Aug ust 1940; a f ter some modifications, Tirpitz followed in February 1941. Tirpitz was actually 2,200 tons heavier than its better-known sister ship.

Unfortunately for the Kriegsmarine,

SIDE EFFECTS

Tirpitz shelters in a fjord near Trondheim, Norway. The ship endured several Allied attacks before it met its end from Royal Air Force bombs in 1944.

Tirpitz had numerous ways to inflict damage. Above-water torpedo tubes could launch 21-inch G7e torpedoes, four from either side of the deck.

POWER FORWARD Twelve boilers provided steam to Tirpitz’s three turbine rooms, each of which powered a three-blade screw propeller.

PITCHING IN Tirpitz carried four Arado Ar 196 reconnaissance floatplanes. This aircraft crane positioned the planes for launch from a double-ended catapult.

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this effort coincided with the emergence of air power as a strategic tool in naval warfare.

The British navy, with contributions from Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers, sank the Bismarck on May 27, 1941.

In early 1942, Tirpitz anchored in Norway to guard against Soviet forays into the Arctic as well as any possible Allied invasion. But its most critical role was as a “fleet in being,” forcing the Allies to divert numerous ships to Scotland to counter the constant threat that Tirpitz presented.

Tirpitz spent much of its existence evading Allied air and mini sub attacks in Norway’s fjords. Its only offensive operation came in September 1943, when it shelled Allied positions on the northern Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. On November 12, 1944, British “Tallboy” bombs from Royal Air Force Lancasters struck and sank Tirpitz near Tromsø, killing about 1,000 German sailors.

Scrap from the once-mighty ship was sold off in a postwar salvage operation that lasted 11 years, a final testament to Tirpitz’s massive size. —Larry Porges

GERMANY’S KMS TIRPITZ

Crew: 2,600 / Length: 824 ft. / Speed: 35 mph / Displacement (fully loaded): 52,600 tons / Range: 10,000 mi. / Main battery: 8 x 380mm SK C/34s / In September 1943, Tirpitz was struck and temporarily put out of action by a British mini sub in Norway.

THE COMPETITION AMERICA’S USS WASHINGTON

Crew: 1,800 / Length: 729 ft. / Speed: 32 mph / Displacement (fully loaded): 45,500 tons / Range: 20,000 mi. / Main battery: 9 x 406mm Mark 6s / Washington served throughout the war in both the Atlantic and Pacific campaigns.

BRITAIN’S HMS KING GEORGE V

Crew: 1,600 / Length: 745 ft. / Speed: 32 mph / Displacement (fully loaded): 42,200 tons / Range: 6,300 mi. / Main battery: 10 x 360mm Mk VIIs / Britain’s King George V took part in the attack that sunk Tirpitz’s sister ship, the Bismarck.

ITALY’S VITTORIO VENETO

Crew: 1,900 / Length: 780 ft. / Speed: 35 mph / Displacement (fully loaded): 46,000 tons / Range: 5,000 mi. / Main battery: 9 x 381mm M1934s / Vittorio Veneto, Italy’s most active battleship of World War II, saw action on 11 offensive missions.

ROOM WITH A VIEW The main battery control and range finder stood atop the bridge tower. The antiaircraft and secondary battery control resided directly below it.

LITTLE BROTHERS Complementing the main battery were more than 100 secondary weapons, including dozens of antiaircraft and flak guns.

LONG SHOTS Tirpitz carried eight main guns, four facing fore and four aft from two double-gun turrets.

The 380mm SK C/34 could fire its 800-kilogram (1,764-pound) warheads more than 22 miles.

MADE TO DAZZLE The ship’s dazzle paint scheme was designed less to camouflage than to mislead pursuers about Tirpitz’s speed and direction.

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Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy rides triumphantly into the city of Kasse after his country’s reannexation of Czechoslovakian lands in 1938. Horthy found short-lived success by allying with Nazi Germany.

THE FOURTH AXIS POWER Hungary’s wartime leader Miklós Horthy began his career prospecting for gold on Guadalcanal before striking a Faustian deal with Adolf Hitler

By Bill Yenne

I

t is November 20, 1940, and there is excitement in the air. Two months earlier, when the signing of the Tripartite Pact on September 27 brought the three-party “Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis” into being, German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop had announced that “any other State which wishes to accede to this bloc . . . will be sincerely and gratefully made welcome.”

Now, Hitler and Ribbentrop are ready to welcome additional members to their notorious club, and both Hungary and Romania are eagerly maneuvering for the coveted fourth slot. In Berlin, Döme Sztójay, Hungary’s ambassador, is on the phone with foreign minister István Csáky in Budapest. There is a breathless urgency in his voice—Ribbentrop is practically holding out a pen for Sztójay to sign the document, but he must act quickly. Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu will be personally arriving in Berlin within 48 hours.

Hungary’s regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, wrote

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WHO WAS MIKLÓS HORTHY, once a household name as the fourth Axis head of state but who has since slipped into obscurity?

A nobleman from Kenderes, Austria-Hungary, Horthy was a man in the right place at the right time—repeatedly—whose luck consistently allowed him to bounce back from what seemed to be insurmountable calamities. In 1892, he was a young Austro-Hungarian naval officer on an extended cruise to the South Pacific. In Australia, Horthy’s party picked up Austrian geologist Baron Heinrich von Foullon-Norbeck, who was surveying various South Sea islands in search of minerals.

On this trip he was headed to the Solomon Islands, then a German protectorate. He went ashore some 30 of these islands, including Guadalcanal, and Horthy was the officer who accompanied him. On Guadalcanal, they found traces of both gold and nickel.

Four years later, the baron returned to Guadalcanal, where he was murdered by locals who took exception to his attempt to climb Tatuve, a sacred mountain. By then, Horthy’s naval career had already taken off. He commanded a series of progressively more important naval vessels and eventually became the naval aide and favored hunting buddy of Austria-Hungary’s Emperor Franz Josef I. When World War I began, Horthy was in command of the battleship SMS Habsburg. In May 1917, leading a force of three cruisers and other supporting vessels, he achieved a victory over the Allied navies in the Battle of the Strait of Otranto, the largest ship-on-ship surface action in the Mediterranean since the Napoleonic Wars. In February 1918, Horthy was promoted to rear admiral and named commander-in-chief of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Fleet.

Half a year later, the war ended badly for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which shattered into fragments, some gobbled up by

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Hungary, the kingdom without a king, turned to Horthy, the admiral without a navy.

in his memoirs that “considerable efforts were made to make it appear that a signal honor was being paid us in allowing us to join Germany, Italy and Japan as a fourth partner, but a hint was also dropped that should we hesitate to accept it, Romania would be given this ‘place of honor.’”

As Ribbentrop waited, Horthy ordered Csáky to tell Sztójay to take the pen and sign.

By the time Antonescu arrived in Berlin to join the Axis on November 23, Hungary had been the fourth power for three days.

For Hungary, being fourth carried with it both the prestige of being first to join the original three and the satisfaction of beating archrival Romania. Though Hungary and Romania were now both part of the Axis, their ethnic and territorial animosity was deepseated, predating even having been on opposite sides in World War I. Much of this centered on Transylvania, a 40,000-squaremile mountainous region that had been Hungarian—albeit with an ethic Romanian minority—for the better part of a millennium, but which was granted to Romania by the victorious Allies after the First World War. The three original signatories of the Tripartite Pact, because of their size and the weight of their armed forces, determined the strategic direction of the Axis and bore the

brunt of the war against the Allies. But they were eager for additional material support, and the new fourth and fifth Axis powers, Hungary and Romania, were equally eager to contribute. For Horthy and Hungary, embracing the apparently invincible Hitler seemed like a brilliant maneuver as, with that stroke of the pen, Hungary was on the road to reclaiming lost territory and lost prestige. But, as Horthy discovered all too soon, there was a price to pay for making a deal with the devil.

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At the 1940 signing of the Tripartite Pact, Germany’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop (far right), extended an invitation for other nations to join the Axis alliance established with Italy and Japan. Horthy was eager to accept.

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Italy and Romania and the rest reinvented as separate countries. Hungary was one of these. It became an independent entity for the first time in over a century, but it was just a shell of its former self. Before World War I, as part of the empire, Hungary had an area of 125,000 square miles; when the war ended, it was reduced to fewer than 36,000 square miles. A great deal of land was lost to newly created Czechoslovakia—but particularly irritating to Hungarians was the loss of Transylvania to Romania.

Internally, the Kingdom of Hungar y descended into chaos and instability, with a revolving door of governments. Karl I, of the House of Habsburg, who had become the Emperor of AustriaHungary when his great-uncle Franz Josef died in 1916, had also Thus, as a kingdom without a king, landlocked reigned as King Károly IV of Hungary embraced the admiral without a navy.

Hungary. However, the Allies did As regent, Horthy fixated upon Hungary’s not want the Habsburgs on the national identity and yearned for a way to throne—the 1920 Treaty of Trireclaim its lost glory and lost territory. Humilianon abolished his first job and ated Hungary and its regent needed a powerful would not allow him to take the friend, ideally one who shared their disdain for second. Karl/Károly renounced Allied treaties. They found him in the person of pa r t icipat ion i n Hu nga r ia n Adolf Hitler. a f fairs but did not abdicate.

Therefore, Hungary became a WHEN HITLER CAME TO POWER in 1933 kingdom without a king, and the with territorial ambitions toward rebuilding country fell into political turmoil. and expanding the German Reich, Horthy In March 1919, the Communists hitched Hungary’s wagon to the star with the seized power, established the Hunswastika emblazoned upon it. garian Soviet Republic, and began Horthy rose through the In the near term, this seemed to have been astute what was called the Vörösterror (Red Austro-Hungarian navy political mastery. By the mid-1930s, Hitler was in Terror), a period marked by chaos and to warship commander his ascendancy—and, just as he was keen to undo (above, in 1915, and political executions. perceived injustices done to Germany by the Treaty top right, in 1917) and For Admiral Miklós Horthy, who eventually vice admiral. of Versailles, he promised Horthy that he could do largely avoided being caught up in the the same for what Trianon had done to Hungary. postwar turmoil, the war had ended not so Horthy first met Hitler at Berchtesgaden in 1936, recalling in his badly. Under orders from his government— memoirs that the Führer was “a delightful host” who “had shown who now took their orders from the victorious nothing but goodwill toward Hungary” since coming to power. He met Allies—he had surrendered all of the Austro- with Hitler on several later occasions and was also graciously received Hungarian navy’s ships and naval bases. He by Mussolini in Rome. In August 1938, Horthy and his wife, Magdolna, hung up his sword and retired to the family received an extravagant state welcome in Berlin and then traveled on estate at Kenderes. to the Reich’s naval base at Kiel. Here, Magdolna, as the wife of the By 1920, however, having deposed the Austro-Hungarian fleet’s former commander-in-chief, was honored Soviet Republic and readopted its identity as with christening the German cruiser Prinz Eugen. Her husband, given the Kingdom of Hungary, the country yearned every naval honor imaginable, beamed. In his memoirs, Horthy for a steadying hand and turned to war hero claimed that he was already wary of Hitler—but photos from this visit Horthy. He was called out of retirement, first show both men grinning ear to ear. to head a new national army to restore order After the infamous Munich Conference of September 1938, Britain and then to lead the kingdom. Since the and France gave Hitler carte blanche to occupy the German-speaking Habsburg monarch could not rule, the situa- Sudetenland areas of Czechoslovakia, which he did in October. A month tion called for a “regent,” or pro tempore ruler. later, Hitler and Mussolini twisted the Czech arm even further in the DECEMBER 2020

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Antonescu reluctantly accepted Horthy’s reoccupation of Transylvania as the price of having Hitler on his side to counterbalance the Soviets on his eastern border.

Again astride his white horse, Horthy personally and colorfully led the Hungarian First Army into Transylvania on September 6, 1940, two weeks before the signing of the Tripartite Pact. About 1.3 million ethnic Hungarians and roughly the same number of ethnic Romanians became Hungarian citizens. The New York Times reported that 30,000 Hungarians cheered Horthy’s dramatic arrival.

For Miklós Horthy, it was the best of times, the apogee of his reign as regent.

In April 1941, when Hitler ’s legions marched through Hungary and into Yugoslavia, the Hungarian Third Army marched with them, adding more than 8,000 square miles to Horthy’s Hungary. By the spring of 1941, Hungary had nearly tripled in size since 1938 to more than 90,000 square miles.

Two months later, on June 22, when Hitler

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so-called “First Vienna Award,” giving Horthy the green light to start reincorporating Hungarian-speaking slices of Czechoslovakia into Hungary. Headlines in the New York Times of November 7, 1938, read, “Horthy Is in Tears in Reclaimed City: Hungarian Regent Has Triumph at Komarom—Crowds Shout for More Territory.” Hungary even issued a postage stamp picturing Horthy riding across the bridge into Komárom on a white horse.

Meanwhile, Romania had gained territory at the end of World War I from both the collapsed Russian Empire and from Hungary, but by the summer of 1940 it was between a rock and a hard place. The Soviet Union took back what had been taken from Russia, while Hitler and Mussolini pressured Romania’s corrupt King Carol to return Transylvania to Hungary. In the wake of this, Carol abdicated, handed his dictatorial powers to pro-Hitler General Ion Antonescu, and left his teenage son Michael as a figurehead. In the chess game of eastern European power politics,

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Horthy was elected Hungary’s regent in 1920 after the victorious World War I allies forbade its king, Károly IV (bottom right), from serving as monarch. Horthy aligned himself with Hitler (above, in 1938) and, on November 20, 1940, committed to joining the threepower Axis war machine. Ion Antonescu (top right), leader of Romania, joined the Axis coalition three days later.

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launched his Operation Barbarossa invasion attached to the German Fourth Panzer of the Soviet Union, he expected Horthy to Army for the Battle of Voronezh, 300 step up to his role as an Axis leader. Horthy miles south of Moscow, during which it initially hesitated. However, on June 26, an air was badly mauled. Nevertheless, the raid struck the Hungarian city of Kassa. His Hungarians pressed eastward, along German friends presented Horthy with comw ith the Ita lia n a nd Roma nia n pelling evidence that the Soviets were responarmies, as part of the Wehrmacht’s sible, and Hungary joined in Barbarossa.

Army Group South. Through the Through the years, though, many—including summer and into the fall, they pushed Horthy in his memoirs—would insist that the eastward on the road that would lead Kassa raid had been staged by the Germans. them to the place—and the disaster— In any case, both Horthy and Antonescu called Stalingrad. supplied forces to serve under the command of In November, as the Battle of the Wehrmacht’s Army Group South. Hungary’s Stalingrad grew intense, the Huncontribution included the 40,000-man Gyorgarians helped anchor the Axis shadtest, or “Rapid Corps.” Considered the most line’s northern f lank while the elite organization in the Hungarian Army, it was German Sixth Army spearheaded hardly “rapid.” A late start to its mobilization had the drive into the city. A combinaleft the Gyorshadtest understrength—it contion of determined Soviet countertained just two barely mechanized brigades, a attacks and bitterly cold winter border guard brigade, a horse cavalry brigade, temperatures took a toll on the Axis and a small air component. Antonescu, on the armies. On February 2, 1943, the other hand, sent in his Third and Fourth Armies, Sixth Army, encircled inside the comprising 13 divisions. city, surrendered to the Soviets.

Despite its shortcomings and the severe losses Meanwhile, only 20 percent of the it incurred, the Gyorshadtest performed well men in the shattered Hungarian during Barbarossa’s initial stages, especially in Second Army made it home several the Battle of Kiev in October. However, attrition A Hungarian magazine months later. took its toll on the Hungarians. Casualties spi- cover (top) and postage In April 1943, Hitler met separately raled to nearly 30 percent, and most of their stamp (above) celebrate with Mussolini, Antonescu, and Horthy heavy equipment was lost. As the Axis offensive Horthy’s success in at Schloss Klessheim in Austria. Each winning back lands lost ground to a halt amid the drifting snow of the in World War I. man insisted to the Führer that the war Russian winter, the Hungarians were able to was lost and pined for a way out. Hitler withdraw to regroup, but Hitler made it clear to Horthy that he naturally disagreed and argued that his Axis expected his support when operations continued in the spring of 1942. partners were not pulling their weight.

Horthy recalled Hitler complaining that the THE FIRST COLD, BLEAK DAYS OF 1942 marked the beginning of a “Hungarian troops had fought badly during reversal of fortune for Miklós Horthy. On January 6, 1942, when Rib- the previous winter offensive, to which I bentrop came to call on him in Budapest to discuss coming Barbarossa replied that the best of troops cannot put up a operations, Horthy was on the defensive, recalling that “there was a good show against an enemy superior in considerable gap between the contribution Hitler demanded of us and number and arms; that the Germans had promised us armored vehicles and guns but that which we were prepared to make.”

However, the German foreign minister replied that the Western had not supplied them; and that the heavy Allies, which by then included the United States, “had gone so far in losses of our troops were the best testimony to their reckless indifference as to promise the Communists a free hand the strength of their morale.”

Hitler also demanded that the Jews in in Europe in order to encourage the Soviets to make greater sacrifices.”

A chilling fear of the Communists had lingered with Horthy since Hungary “must either be exterminated or put the chaotic power struggles that had convulsed Hungary two decades in concentration camps,” to which Horthy earlier, and this trumped his hesitancy to go all-in with Hitler’s recalled that he “saw no reason why we should planned 1942 offensive. This plan, known as Fall Blau (Case Blue), capitulate to Hitler and change our views on called for a decisive offensive against the southern Soviet Union. this subject.”

Although Horthy may not have signed on to Horthy committed Hungary’s Second Army, including the only Hungarian armored division, with around 200,000 troops—more than the idea of Hitler’s “Final Solution,” he was far from a humanitarian. In his memoirs, he four times the number that had seen action in 1941.

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JUST AS HE HAD BOUNCED BACK from the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s collapse after World War I, though, Horthy managed to survive the calamitous climax of World War II. Hitler’s orders to the SS to

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introduced a special levy on Jewish capital as a ‘war contribution’ and had also restricted the Jewish tenure of land.”

As the months dragged on, Horthy and Antonescu—the two archrivals who had cast their lot with Hitler because they feared the Soviets—now watched Germany’s armies, still containing small numbers of Hungarian and Romanian troops, in retreat. Meanwhile, Stalin’s increasingly powerful war machine was moving inexorably toward their borders.

One by one, Hitler’s Axis partners were falling away. In July 1943, Italian troops arrested and imprisoned Mussolini, and the Italians announced an armistice in September. Hitler intervened, occupied the country, rescued and released Mussolini, and continued to fight the Allies in Italy.

Meanwhile, both Antonescu and Horthy battled the approaching Soviet armies—while simultaneously making peace overtures to the Anglo-American Allies that they thought were secret. Hitler found out and, in March

1944, summoned Horthy to Klessheim—while at the same time quietly ordering German troops to occupy Hungary under Operation Margarethe. When Horthy returned to Budapest, he was met by German soldiers. Though he was allowed to stay on as regent, he was compelled to reshuffle his government. Horthy’s party had controlled the National Assembly for years, but in the previous election, the fascist Arrow Cross Party and their allies had taken about 20 percent of the seats. It was Operation Margarethe that finally put the Arrow Cross in full control. The admiral was now a puppet.

Antonescu fared even more poorly. In August 1944, King Michael had him arrested and Romania switched sides. With Soviet help, Michael then made a move to “liberate” the part of Transylvania that Hitler had given to Horthy in 1940.

By September 1944, Germany’s Axis partners in Europe could be counted on the thumbs of one hand. Only Hungary remained, but Horthy was now at war with Romania and so desperate to shake his ties with Hitler that he was sending secret emissaries to Moscow.

On October 15, as Horthy went on the radio to announce that he had signed an armistice with the Soviets, the infamous SS commando leader Otto Skorzeny was already in Budapest to execute Operation Panzerfaust (Armored Fist) and seize control of the country. He took Horthy into custody and sent him to Schloss Hirschberg in Bavaria with orders that he be shot before he could be taken by the Allies.

Horthy would never see Hungary again.

Hungarian and German troops now faced off against advancing Soviet and Romanian forces in a desperate final campaign. Budapest fell on February 13, 1945, after a bloody 50-day siege.

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Hungary’s Second Army fought alongside the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, suffering heavy casualties against the Soviets at Voronezh (inset) in June 1942 and even greater losses that winter in Stalingrad.

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kill him had yet to be carried out when the U.S. Army’s 36th Infantry Division arrived at Schloss Hirschberg on May 1, 1945.

Initially, the Allies imprisoned Horthy in Nuremberg, but in December 1945 they moved him to a house near Schloss Hirschberg where his wife had taken up residence after the Americans arrived. Here the two remained, literally living off care packages and the largesse of friends. As had been the case so often in his life, Horthy was in the right place at the right time. The Soviets had let it be known that if he were to be released from his American house arrest, he had a date in a Budapest courtroom for a trial with a preordained verdict. A similar fate did befall Ion Antonescu, who was tried and executed in Romania in 1946.

Meanwhile, the borders of Hungary, which Horthy had worked so hard to expand, were returned, with a few minor adjustments, to where they had been in 1920—and so they remain today.

In December 1948, the Americans allowed Horthy and Magdolna to travel to Switzerland, where their son knew the Portuguese ambassador. Visas were eventually arranged, and they traveled onward, via Genoa, Italy, on a slow boat to Portugal.

As guests of Portugal’s authoritarian prime minister Antonio Salazar, the couple settled into Casa San Jose, a comfortable, flowercovered villa in Estoril, an upscale western suburb of Lisbon. At last, the long-landlocked

admiral had a refuge with a view of his first love, the sea.

From the Strait of Otranto to his triumphant ride into Komárom, Horthy had always been in the right place at the right time. Spared the wrath of the Guadalcanal islanders who later slew his geologist colleague, he went on to dodge the bullet promised him by the SS as well as a Soviet noose. Now, he would spend the rest of his days anguishing over the Communists then in control of Hungary and writing his memoirs. These were published shortly before his death in February 1957. H

German-backed Arrow Cross troops (above) march in Budapest in September 1944; Hitler deposed and detained Horthy the following month. The Americans saved Horthy from execution when they arrested him in 1945 (below).

From the Strait of Otranto to his triumphant ride into Komárom, Horthy had always been in the right place at the right time.

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FASTER How a Jewish Driver, An American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler’s Best

By Neal Bascomb. 368 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. $28.

REVIEWS BOOKS

DRIVEN TO WIN

IN APRIL 1938, just a year and a half before France declared war on Nazi Germany, teams of drivers from the two countries faced off on a racetrack in Pau, France, on the northern edge of the Pyrenees. Both sides had trained heavily to win the 1938 Grand Prix motorsport competition, but the Germans held an advantage over their rivals: Adolf Hitler had channeled his country’s industrial might into the development of a streamlined, muscled-up fleet of German racecars called the Silver Arrows, built by MercedesBenz and German carmaker Auto Union. In Faster, journalist Neal Bascomb tells the story of the underdog French team that dared to take on the Third Reich—and how the Silver Arrows played a prominent role in Nazi propaganda.

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Hitler’s turbocharged racers acted as advertisements for the Führer’s technologically advanced weaponry—such as Panzer tanks and Luftwaffe aircraft—that would ultimately be unleashed on Poland, France, and the Soviet Union. The German cars typically dominated the Grand Prix, with onlookers raising their arms in “Sieg Heil” salutes as the Silver Arrows took the checkered flag.

“A Mercedes-Benz victory,” the Nazis proclaimed, “is a German victory.”

As war clouds gathered, the Germans arrived at Pau and the Silver Arrows rolled onto the track draped in Nazi flags. Everyone expected a lopsided win. Nobody gave much of a passing thought to a Jewish driver, France’s René Dreyfus. He would challenge the formidable Germans in a new car fabricated by Delahaye, a struggling French truck manufacturer. Lucy Schell, an American heiress who had organized Dreyfus’s racing team, Écurie Bleue, would cheer him on while also providing financial support. A prospective victory over Hitler wouldn’t set the Silver Arrows, or Germany, back for long, but it would nonetheless be a point of pride for Dreyfus, Schell, and for France—a country on the verge of subjugation. “Triumph over the Nazis,” Bascomb writes, “promised redemption for all of them.”

Bascomb does a superb job of balancing historical context and political intrigue while bringing the characters’ vivid personalities to life. His exhaustive research and sweeping descriptions propel the book forward, bringing the reader along for an actionpacked ride. —Michael Cannell is the author of A Brotherhood Betrayed: The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc. (2020).

ADATTO ARCHIVES

René Dreyfus, a driver and French Jew, didn’t just want to win the 1938 Grand Prix—he wanted to beat the Nazis.

REVIEWS BOOKS

U.S. ARMY SIGNAL CORPS, COURTESY OF U.S. ARMY HERITAGE CENTER

ADATTO ARCHIVES

OUT OF THE ASHES ON DECEMBER 2, 1943, German Ju 88 aircraft dropped bombs on the dozens of Allied ships docked at the harbor in Bari, Italy, completely obliterating one vessel and heavily damaging many more. The blasts ruptured the port’s fuel pipeline and thousands of gallons of sticky oil rushed into the water before catching fire. Explosions threw crewmembers overboard in flames.

Bari was one of the war’s worst naval disasters, with at least 800 hospitalized in the attack’s wake. Medical personnel treated these casualties for burns and blast wounds.

But the following morning, victims exhibited an array of strange symptoms: reddened skin, huge blisters, and compromised vision.

When some of them regained consciousness and appeared cogent only to die seconds later, it became obvious that something unexpected had happened at Bari—and that someone was trying to cover it up. Jennet Conant’s The Great Secret unravels the medical mystery behind World War II’s “Little Pearl Harbor,” as headlines of the era referred to the strike.

Stewart Alexander, a 29-year-old U.S. Army physician and chemical weapons specialist dispatched from the North African Theater, suspected that the servicemen had been poisoned by mustard gas, a deadly agent used in World War I. But the gas alarm hadn’t been triggered that night and patients’ injuries did not indicate an attack from above. If the Germans hadn’t deployed mustard gas, where had it come from?

Authorities professed ignorance. Alexander’s dogged search for the truth would lead

A 1943 chemical weapons disaster in Italy killed numerous servicemen, but also transformed medicine.

him through countless hospital hallways, damaged docks, stacks of medical records, grim autopsy reports, and even to a halting correspondence with Winston Churchill, who repeatedly denied that the Allies had amassed chemical weapons at Bari.

Alexander did eventually discover the truth— only to be rebuffed by military officials just days later. Sixty-nine men died from mustard poisoning at Bari; one of the bombed Allied ships, the SS John Harvey, had held a secret cache of chemical THE GREAT SECRET weapons. Many of these deaths might have been The Classified World War II Disaster prevented with proper diagnosis and treatment. that Launched the But the disaster had an upside. Alexander, as it War on Cancer turns out, had just years earlier performed secret

By Jennet Conant. research on nitrogen mustard as a possible anti- 400 pp. W.W. Norton, cancer agent. The Bari disaster, he thought, 2020. $27.95. showed that mustard gas could kill human cells— which might prove groundbreaking for cancer treatment. But Alexander had promised to establish a private medical practice with his father after the war, and abandoned both military and chemical research. In New York, researchers at the Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, newly founded in August 1945, continued his line of work; they soon learned that mustard nitrogen chemotherapy was in fact deadly for patients, but a new era of medical research had dawned.

The Great Secret’s mystery-driven plot and Allied coverup make for compelling reading, but the book’s pace falters once Alexander drops out of the picture and Conant focuses on the less-sympathetic corporate backers and medical researchers who funded and attempted early chemotherapies. The book is also strangely light on medical science; a more detailed explanation of how cancer spreads in the human body, for example, would have made a section on early chemotherapy experiments more engaging. Overall, however, The Great Secret is a captivating, highly readable medical mystery. Its hero simply exits the narrative too soon. —Emily Berquist Soule teaches history at California State University Long Beach. She coauthored the May 2017 World War II article “The Guinea Pig Club.”

DECEMBER 2020

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Dutch artist Han van Meegeren (Guy Pearce) makes a unique case for why he sold a Vermeer to Hermann Göring.

REVIEWS MOVIES

Directed by Dan Friedkin. 117 minutes. TriStar Pictures. Opening in theaters November 20, 2020.

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AN ART FORGER AND CON MAN as a reallife World War II hero? The Last Vermeer depicts the colorful saga of Dutch art dealer Han van Meegeren, a charismatic swindler who fooled the Nazis into thinking that his forged masterpieces were real—only to find himself after the war rushing to prove to his countrymen that they were, in fact, fakes.

The film opens in postwar Amsterdam, amid a period of moral reckoning in Europe.

It’s against this cultural backdrop that Dutch authorities try the 58-year-old Meegeren (Guy Pearce) for selling the Nazis priceless paintings by 17th-century master painter Johannes Vermeer. Both the government and its constit uents desperately wa nt the unabashedly f lamboyant Meegeren to be swiftly tried and executed as a proxy for the nation’s complicity with Hitler.

The Netherlands lost three-fourths of its Jewish population to the Holocaust—a higher percentage than any other nation in Western Europe—and after the war, Hollanders craved a high-profile scapegoat for their own exoneration. Ironically, it is Jewish Resistance fighter Joseph Piller (Claes Bang) who points out this uncomfortable reality to the Dutch government, helping to exonerate Meegeren by proving in a dramatic trial that the “Vermeers” in question were actually all forgeries,

painted by the dealer himself.

Director Dan Friedkin and executive producer Ridley Scott successfully depict postwar Amsterdam as a cesspool of conflict, corruption, and resentment as its beleaguered inhabitants scramble to either conceal or exploit their wartime identities. The film’s measured pace and subtle dialogue, anchored by a largely European cast, magnify Pearce’s portrayal of Meegeren as an unapologetically opportunistic and louche wartime racketeer.

Meanwhile, though Piller’s wartime resistance efforts and his postwar commitment to justice are indeed heroic, the film takes care to show the havoc Piller wreaks in his personal life as a result of wartime trauma.

Director Friedkin tells World War II that depicting both Meegeren’s charisma and Piller’s personal vulnerabilities is “a recognition [of] the complications of war” off the battlefield, and that the film’s pacing reflects the slow unfolding of these complexities after V-E Day. Overall, The Last Vermeer is a compelling acknowledgment that in Holland and elsewhere in postwar Europe, the lines between hero and villain were often blurred—and the wounds of World War II remained long after Germany’s surrender. —Mary M. Lane is the author of Hitler’s Last Hostages: Looted Art and the Soul of the Third Reich (2019).

WORLD WAR II

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GERMAN U-BOAT MUSEUM

THE LAST VERMEER

©2020 COLUMBIA TRISTAR MOTION PICTURE GROUP, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

FORGING AHEAD

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UNFRIENDLY FIRE

GERMAN U-BOAT MUSEUM

©2020 COLUMBIA TRISTAR MOTION PICTURE GROUP, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

THE THIRD REICH’S CRIMES against its own armed forces remain an overlooked subject in World War II literature. In U-boat Commander Oskar Kusch, history professor Eric C. Rust brilliantly illuminates the unlikely chain of events that led a loyal and talented German U-boat commander to be tried and executed in May 1944.

Captain Kusch, just 24, was popular among his men for his amiable personality and excellent combat judgment. But he ran afoul of some of his fellow officers, who saw in the young, liberal-minded skipper a Nazihater who openly criticized Hitler and the regime’s propaganda. In early 1944, following a second patrol under Kusch, his first officer, Ulrich Abel—a former judge and a Nazi Party member—denounced his commander on charges of cowardice and treason. Kusch was cleared of cowardice at a hastily arranged court-martial but condemned to death for “undermining the fighting spirit” of his crew—even though the prosecution had only recommended a 10-year prison sentence.

Kusch’s superiors, including Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, Germany’s top naval commander, halfheartedly promised to save his life, but in the end they did nothing. Abandoned by nearly all and spurned by a naval apparatus that ultimately caved to Nazi protocol, Kusch was executed by firing squad.

Author Rust is a former German naval officer who specializes in German maritime and THE NAZI SPY RING IN AMERICA, a new book by intelligence scholar Rhodri JeffreysJones, has all the trappings of an irresistible novel: foreign secret agents, self-dealing G-Men, and nosy reporters. But the tale he tells of a little-known 1930s espionage case is actually a true one.

The book is primarily set in New York City in 1938, where German military intelligence, the Abwehr, ran an operation to obtain technology secrets, including plans for American ships and planes that Germany might one day face in battle. Two of the Abwehr’s principal agents were German Americans who had volunteered to serve the Third Reich: Günther

naval history, particularly submarine warfare. He traces Kusch’s short life and career, and the 50-year quest led by naval officers and academics to absolve the captain’s name.

The result is a page-turner t hat br ist les w it h v iv id descriptions—like that of the Oskar Kusch presiding judge and jurors at had earned the Iron Cross by Kusch’s trial who “headed a age 23. procession of fellow conspirators and colluders, spineless naval brass, assorted opportunistic underlings, and a coterie of cowardly hangers-on down the path to a judicial murder.” At the same time, Rust highlights the misconception that the German military uniformly comprised supporters of Hitler’s mad visions; a considerable number disagreed with the Führer and sought to perform their own duties honorably. But Rust also dismisses the notion that the U-boat service was a close-knit band of comrades, impervious to Nazi influence.

U-BOAT COMMANDER Decades in the making, Rust’s work is the OSKAR KUSCH first academic study in English to focus on Anatomy of a Kusch. It will serve as an excellent reference Nazi-Era Betrayal and on the captain’s untimely fate, long confined Judicial Murder to the margins of history. —Jeremy Gray’s By Eric C. Rust. 384 pp. article about Oskar Kusch, “Truth and Con- Naval Institute Press, sequences,” appeared in World War II’s 2020. $45.

December 2019 issue.

REVIEWS BOOKS

WEB OF SPIES THE NAZI SPY RING IN AMERICA Hitler’s Agents, the FBI, & the Case That Stirred the Nation

By Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones.

320 pp. Georgetown University Press, 2020. $29.95.

DECEMBER 2020

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REVIEWS GAMES

SHADOW ARMY THROUGH THE DARKEST OF TIMES Paintbucket Games, $14.99. Available on Steam.

WORLD WAR II RATING

HHHHH

THE BASICS Through the Darkest of Times follows a resistance cell in Berlin, Germany, from the time Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor in 1933 until shortly after the war’s end, in 1946.

THE OBJECTIVE Players assemble resistance groups from randomly generated characters, assuming a leadership role while struggling to gain resources, recruit supporters, dodge arrest, and conduct missions—the last of which are scattered across a Berlin city map for the player to choose from as the calendar moves forward in time. If the group’s morale dips too low, they get busted; if a player is caught, the game is over.

HISTORICAL ACCURACY Through the Darkest of Times accu-

rately recreates both well-known historical events in 1930s Germany, like the Reichstag Fire, and lesser-known ones like a 200,000-person strong protest against Hitler and the Nazi Party held at the Berlin Lustgarten in February 1933. The game also portrays Germany’s diverse mix of political and social minorities—including Communists, Jews, Catholics, Democratic Socialists, and others at odds with the new regime—and the atrocities they faced on a daily basis.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY This is a game for play-

ers who prefer strategy and problem-solving over bright graphics and action-based gameplay. The artwork is dull and dark and its cartoon characters are simplistically stylized, but these elements add to the game’s dystopian atmosphere.

PLAYABILITY

Players control the game with a simple click of a mouse. The hard part is mental: you’ll occasionally conduct onthe-fly risk assessments during missions to avoid capture, and all choices of action require critical thinking and judgment, as they can significantly alter the story’s outcome—or cost you your life. I, myself, was unable to beat the game.

THE BOTTOM LINE Through the Darkest of Times offers both

challenging gameplay and a unique view of Nazi Germany from the inside. —Hayden A. Foster is an assistant editor at American Rifleman magazine.

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( Spies, continued from page 73) Maria Rumrich, who wanted to redeem himself from a hard-drinking, ne’er-dowell lifestyle by spying for the Fatherland, and Ignatz Greibl, an anti-Semitic doctor with a medical practice seemingly made to order to support a spy network. Problems arose, however, once Rumrich tried to obtain blank U.S. passports. A suspicious clerk alerted the police, New York’s finest arrested Rumrich, and the FBI swooped in and took over the investigation.

From there, an up-and-coming Special Agent named Leon G. Turrou unearthed at least 17 other spies in the network—many of whom had yet to actually do any spying, or merely held supporting roles. But once the case was ready for a grand jury, Turrou announced that he was resigning from the FBI and selling his part of the story for fame and fortune. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover announced that Turrou couldn’t quit because he was being fired, and the ensuing tiff played out in the press. Meanwhile, at least 14 members of the newly discovered spy ring fled the United States or refused to return for trial, leaving just four (including Rumrich) to answer to charges of stealing military secrets. Upon conviction, the group received sentences of two to six years in jail—mild punishments compared to the death sentences later handed out to German spies who ventured onto U.S. soil during World War II. Turrou’s case shed light on America’s vulnerability to espionage and persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt to dedicate more resources to the FBI. But did the entire affair actually put the nation on guard against Germany, as the book’s subtitle suggests? Given the state of public polling in the late 1930s, it’s possible to glean broad measures of decreasing approval for Germany and increasing support for European democracies at this time—but not to ascribe these trends to specific causes like the Rumrich case.

Careful documentation, however, lends authenticity to a fast-paced plot: JeffreysJones is a thorough researcher who plumbed sources from New York City court records to Gestapo files in Germany to write a book that I was sorry to see end.

—Nicholas Reynolds is the bestselling author of Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy (2017).

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Taking Flight

The Nadine Ramsey Story Raquel Ramsey and Tricia Aurand Foreword by Maj. Gen. Jeannie M. Leavitt, USAF

“Taking Flight, Nadine Ramsey’s story, is more than the tale of her days as a WASP pilot ferrying high-priority army aircraft across the skies of wartime America. It is the heartfelt account of her family and its collective grit, patriotism, and raw courage. We learn of Nadine’s painful recovery from an early plane crash, the healing that allowed her to fly as a WASP, and finally her battle against the recurring pain in later life. A good read and a ton of great research.”—Sarah Byrn Rickman, author of The Originals: The Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron of World War II and WASP of the Ferry Command: Women Pilots, Uncommon Deeds “From humble beginnings, Nadine Ramsey was destined to fly. Chasing planes and opportunities, she honed her skills as a ‘hot pilot.’ Soon she was in the ranks of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots in World War II and was one of the first women to fly military aircraft. This honest and heartfelt book chronicles the life of a woman who struggled to overcome the barriers of her day, and occasionally brushed the bounds of heaven.”—Lisa K. Shapiro, author of No Forgotten Fronts: From Classrooms to Combat

312 pages, 74 black and white photos, 13 color photos, Cloth $29.95

Ebook edition available from your favorite ebook retailer.

University Press of Kansas Phone 785-864-4155 • www.kansaspress.ku.edu

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION (required by Act of August 12, 1970: Section 3685, Title 39, United States Code). 1. World War II 2. (ISSN: 0898-4204) 3. Filing date: 10/1/20. 4. Issue frequency: Bi Monthly. 5. Number of issues published annually: 6. 6. The annual subscription price is $39.95. 7. Complete mailing address of known office of publication: HistoryNet, 1919 Gallows Rd. Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182. Contact person: Kolin Rankin. 8. Complete mailing address of headquarters or general business office of publisher: HistoryNet, 1919 Gallows Rd. Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182. 9. Full names and complete mailing addresses of publisher, editor, and managing editor. Publisher, Michael A. Reinstein, HistoryNet, 1919 Gallows Rd. Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182, Editor, Karen Jensen, HistoryNet, 1919 Gallows Rd. Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182, Editor in Chief, Alex Neill, HistoryNet, 1919 Gallows Rd. Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182. 10. Owner: HistoryNet; 1919 Gallows Rd. Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182. 11. Known bondholders, mortgages, and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent of more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or other securities: None. 12. Tax status: Has Not Changed During Preceding 12 Months. 13. Publisher title: World War II. 14.

Issue date for circulation data below: September/October 2020. 15. The extent and nature of circulation: A. Total number of copies printed (Net press run). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 66,564. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 49,275. B. Paid circulation. 1. Mailed outside-county paid subscriptions. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 45,442. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 43,290. 2. Mailed in-county paid subscriptions. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 0. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0.

3. Sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors and counter sales. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 4,791. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 1,044. 4. Paid distribution through other classes mailed through the USPS. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 0. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. C. Total paid distribution. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 50,233. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date; 44,334. D. Free or nominal rate distribution (by mail and outside mail). 1. Free or nominal Outside-County.

Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 0. Number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. 2.

Free or nominal rate in-county copies. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 0. Number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. 3. Free or nominal rate copies mailed at other Classes through the USPS. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 0. Number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. 4. Free or nominal rate distribution outside the mail. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 566. Number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 424. E. Total free or nominal rate distribution. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 566. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearestTaking to filing Flight date: 424.

F. Total WW2-201200-001 Raquel Ramsay Book .inddfree 1 distribution (sum of 15c and 15e). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 50,799. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 44,758. G. Copies not Distributed. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 15,765. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 4,517.

H. Total (sum of 15f and 15g). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 66,564. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing: 49,275. I. Percent paid. Average percent of copies paid for the preceding 12 months: 98.9% Actual percent of copies paid for the preceding 12 months: 99.1% 16. Electronic Copy Circulation: A. Paid Electronic Copies. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 0. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. B. Total Paid Print Copies (Line 15c) + Paid Electronic Copies (Line 16a). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 50,233. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 44,334. C. Total Print Distribution (Line 15f) + Paid Electronic Copies (Line 16a). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 50,799. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 44,758. D. Percent Paid (Both Print & Electronic Copies) (16b divided by 16c x 100). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 98.9%. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 99.1%. I certify that 50% of all distributed copies (electronic and print) are paid above nominal price: Yes. Report circulation on PS Form 3526-X worksheet 17. Publication of statement of ownership will be printed in the Nov/Dec 2020 issue of the publication. 18. Signature and title of editor, publisher, business manager, or owner: Shawn G. Byers, VP, Audience Development & Circulation . I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on the form may be subject to criminal sanction and civil actions.

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THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF MILITARY HISTORY

‘ERNIE WAS ONE OF US’

Journalist Ernie Pyle brought World War II home to millions of Americans—and was a hero to the ordinary soldiers he wrote about.

The Hollywood Hussar Showdown at Trevilians

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BATTLE FILMS

ALL-PURPOSE MELTDOWN

THE SCENE TAKES PLACE some 48 minutes into Downfall, director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 2004 German film depicting the final days of Adolf Hitler. Deep in Hitler’s bunker beneath the Nazi Chancellery, General Hans Krebs (played by actor Rolf Kanies) runs his finger across a map of Berlin and explains the situation, which is dire. Hitler (Bruno Ganz) waves a hand dismissively, saying that all will yet be well. Then General Alfred Jodl (Christian Redl) spills the bad news: the Dallas Cowboys have blown their shot at the playoffs. Obama has won reelection over Romney.

Hans turns out to be the real villain of Frozen.

England has defeated Germany in the World Cup. Hitler has tested positive for Covid-19.

The list of disasters is seemingly endless.

That’s because since 2006, hundreds of amateur satirists have taken this pivotal scene from Downfall—in which Hitler throws a tantrum after learning that the counterattack on which he has pinned all his hopes will not occur—and gleefully changed the English subtitles to produce parodies that often leave viewers convulsed with laughter.

To get the flavor of these videos, you must watch them for yourself—a YouTube search for “Hitler Rant” will bring up dozens. Their humor often hinges on inside jokes: Hitler is an anguished Dallas Cowboys fan, for example, but if you know nothing of the team’s record or roster you won’t find his anguish funny. And always, Hitler’s enraged response to the bad news is festooned with unprintable obscenities. Many of these parodies have received over half a million views on YouTube.

Since nearly anyone with a modicum of technical know-how can make their own “Hitler Rant” scene, there’s also considerable room for mishap. A University of Massachusetts professor was reprimanded after showing a student-made video in which Hitler fails his accounting course. A New York bank created a mandatory training film featuring a “Hitler Rant”—and found itself paying a $40 million settlement to an Orthodox Jew forced to watch along with his fellow employees.

In a reversal of this scenario, an Australian oil refinery worker, fired after lampooning his bosses with a customized Führer tirade, successfully won back his job after appealing Inspired by the German film Downfall (2004), “Hitler Rant” YouTube videos poke fun at the titular tyrant while providing satirists with a creative outlet. But are they appropriate?

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to an arbitration commission, which ruled that the “Hitler Rant” parody had become so widespread online that no one could seriously believe the refinery worker was comparing his employers to Nazis.

But the real question is whether these videos are appropriate in any context, period. Constantin Film, the production company behind Downfall, briefly attempted to compel YouTube to remove the “Hitler Rants.” However, this effort ran afoul thanks to laws stipulating that parodies are “fair use,” not copyright infringement; the sheer ubiquity of these videos on YouTube (no sooner did one come down than a dozen more went up); and the fact that Downfall’s own director, Hirschbiegel, found most of them hysterically funny.

More serious is the issue of whether joking about Hitler tacitly humanizes him and detracts from the fact that the dictator was a monster who set in motion a war that killed over 70 million human beings—including six million Jews slaughtered in Nazi death camps.

The comedic genius Charlie Chaplin, who famously skewered Hitler in his 1940 film The Great Dictator, later regretted doing so: “Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps,” he wrote, “I could not have made The Great Dictator; I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis.”

That’s a valid response. But it must be pointed out that the humor of the “Hitler Rant” parodies depends upon knowing that Hitler was a monster. They wouldn’t be funny otherwise. They ridicule the carpet-chewing tirades that were a hallmark of his insanity.

In any case, the videos are likely here to stay: Chris Hassel, the head of a British ad agency that specializes in viral advertising—advertising

NIGHT OF THE

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that relies on widespread circulation by consumers themselves—explained to the Guardian that the Downfall parody was “almost the perfect viral because it’s easy to create, and you’ve got a clip that can be easily adapted to anything…. It’s always the same joke, but every niche interest takes it and makes it work for them. If it makes them laugh, it’s probably going to work for millions of others.”

And in some respects, the videos are an unintended homage to the widespread Allied burlesques during World War II that painted Hitler as a clown. “Hitler Rants” have nothing on Spike Jones’s “Der Fuehrer’s Face” (1943), a popular anti-Hitler ditty loaded with Bronx cheers, or on Warner Brothers’ 1942 retelling of “The Three Little Pigs,” with the wolf wearing a toothbrush mustache. Lest anyone miss the point, the latter spoof issues a disclaimer: “Any similarity between this Wolf and that @#$!! jerk Hitler is purely intentional.”

One thing is certain: “Hitler Rant” parodies aren’t going away anytime soon. And until they do, the film incarnation of that @#$!!

Nazi dictator will have an endless string of things to rave about. H

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!

N IO T C U D O R P Y C N E G R E EM

Actual size is 40.6 mm

Rush Production of U.S. Silver Dollars Creates 2nd Lowest Mintage in History

4,000,000

2,000,000

The Mystery of Silver Bullion A coin’s value is often tied to its rarity.

One way to determine a coin’s rarity is by its mint mark—a small letter indicating where a coin was struck. Since Silver Eagles are almost always produced solely in West Point, the coins don’t feature one of these mint marks. But this year’s Silver

2015-P

2020-P

2017-P

2016-P

2017-S

1996

0

1994

1,000,000

Philadelphia Steps Up For just 13 days, the U.S. Mint struck an “Emergency Production” run of U.S. Silver Dollars at the Philadelphia Mint.

This was great for silver buyers, and really great for collectors. Here’s why:

2nd Lowest Mintage (240,000)

3,000,000

1997

West Point, the U.S. Mint branch that normally strikes Brilliant Uncirculated (BU) Silver Eagles, went into lockdown.

Prices quickly shot up, and freshly struck Silver Eagles became much harder to find at an affordable price. To meet the rising demand, the U.S. Mint knew it had to act—and act fast.

5,000,000

1995

U.S. Mint Halts Production

Eagles were also produced in Philly—so few (a scant 240,000) that they are now the second smallest mintage of Silver Eagles ever struck! So how do we tell a 2020(W) Silver Eagle from a 2020(P)?

2016-S

O

ne of the most popular ways to buy silver is the Silver Eagle— legal-tender U.S. Silver Dollars struck in one ounce of 99.9% pure silver.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began sweeping the world, demand skyrocketed.

But there was a problem...

Certified “Struck at” Coins Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) is one of the world’s leading third-party coin grading services. Thanks to some skilled detective work, they have certified these coins as being struck at the Philadelphia Mint during this special Emergency Production run. What’s more, a number of these coins have been graded as near-flawless Mint State-69 (MS69) condition—just one point away from absolute perfection!

Buy More and Save!

We’re currently selling these coins for $79 each. But you can secure them for as low as $59 each when you buy 20 or more and mention the special call-in-only offer code below. Call 1-888-201-7639 now!

Date: Mint: Weight: Purity: Diameter: Mintage: Condition: Certified:

2020 Philadelphia (P) 1oz (31.101 grams) 99.9% Silver 40.6 mm 240,000 Mint State-69 (MS69) Emergency Production

2020(P) Emergency Production American Eagle Silver Dollar NGC MS69 Early Releases —$79 1-4 coins — $69 each + s/h 5-9 coins — $67 each 10-14 coins — $65 each 15-19 coins — $63 each 20+ coins — $59 each FREE SHIPPING on 3 or More!

Limited time only. Product total over $149 before taxes (if any). Standard domestic shipping only. Not valid on previous purchases.

Call today toll-free for fastest service

1-888-201-7639 Offer Code EPE242-01

Please mention this code when you call.

GovMint.com • 14101 Southcross Dr. W., Suite 175, Dept. EPE242-01 • Burnsville, MN 55337 GovMint.com® is a retail distributor of coin and currency issues and is not affiliated with the U.S. government. The collectible coin market is unregulated, highly speculative and involves risk. GovMint.com reserves the right to decline to consummate any sale, within its discretion, including due to pricing errors. Prices, facts, figures and populations deemed accurate as of the date of publication but may change significantly over time. All purchases are expressly conditioned upon your acceptance of GovMint.com’s Terms and Conditions (www.govmint.com/terms-conditions or call 1-800-721-0320); to decline, return your purchase pursuant to GovMint.com’s Return Policy. © 2020 GovMint.com. All rights reserved.

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10/8/20 4:42 PM

CHALLENGE

FIGHTING FORM

UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN WALKER

We modified this photo of a fighter on the deck of the carrier USS Enterprise to create one inaccuracy. What is it?

Answer to the August Challenge:

“It was very clear that the barrel of the Sturmtiger is waaaaay too long,” says reader Marco Peter of the Netherlands. He’s right—as were 108 others; the unaltered photo is at far left. A number of you thought we messed with the soldiers’ uniforms or boots: we didn’t!

Congratulations to the winners: Cecil Boblitz, Ryan

McGehee, and Shane Stolte

Please send your answer with your

name and mailing address to: December 2020 Challenge, World War II, 1919 Gallows Road, Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182; or e-mail: challenge@ historynet.com. Three winners, chosen at random from all correct entries submitted by December 21, will receive The Nazi Spy Ring in America by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones.

The answer will appear in the April 2021 issue.

DECEMBER 2020

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79 10/17/20 2:22 PM

FAMILIAR FACE

LIGHT AND SHADOW

COURTESY OF ANNE SERLING; INSET: CBS PHOTO ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

A somber man in a jacket and tie looks at the camera and begins speaking. The exact introduction to the television series varied over the years, but its essence didn’t. The viewer was about to journey into a land called “The Twilight Zone;” the speaker, Rod Serling, was the guide. The show, which ran for five seasons on CBS, from 1959 to 1964, was famous for the quality of its writing—Serling wrote many of the scripts—and for its plot twists.

Twists, terrible ones, were something Serling faced as a paratrooper with the 11th Airborne Division. On Leyte in late 1944, after weeks of fighting, he and a buddy, Private Melvin Levy, were watching as food crates dropped from an aircraft.

Levy was joking about where the crates would fall when one struck and killed him before a horrified Serling. The private Serling wasn’t a tortured man, but the horror of war was always with him, remembers his daughter, Anne: “He got it off his chest in his writing.”

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WORLD WAR II

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10/19/20 8:11 PM

STUDY WORLD WAR II WITH WORLD-CLASS SCHOLARS Learn Online and on Your Own Time

The National WWII Museum and Arizona State University have launched new online education programs focused on the most significant event of the 20th century.

The fully accredited Master of Arts in World War II Studies program features an in-depth academic survey of the war and its legacies.

Continuing education course offerings provide history enthusiasts a rare opportunity to engage and interact with leading experts on an array of WWII topics.

There is an enriching journey into WWII history here for learners of all backgrounds—from educators seeking professional development to students of all ages looking to expand their understanding of the war that changed the world.

AN ENRICHING JOURNEY INTO WWII HISTORY FOR LEARNERS OF ALL BACKGROUNDS

MEET THE FACULTY, EXPLORE COURSE DESCRIPTIONS, AND LEARN MORE TODAY: N AT I ONA LW W 2 MUS E UM.O R G / A SU D I S TA N C E L E A R N I N G

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10/28/19 5:32 PM 10/8/20 5:36 PM

“WORLD WAR II MOVIES HAVE COVERED ALMOST EVERY POSSIBLE ANGLE, AND YET ‘THE LAST VERMEER’ FINDS A FRESH AND FASCINATING STORY TO TELL. GUY PEARCE’S CAREER-CAPPING PERFORMANCE MAKES ART DEALER HAN VAN MEEGEREN ENDLESSLY FASCINATING.” - Stephen Farber, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

TELLURIDE FILM FESTIVAL

TORONTO

INTL. FILM FESTIVAL

GUY

PEARCE

CLAES

THE

BANG

LAST VERMEER BASED ON TRUE EVENTS

DECEPTION IS A FINE ART

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HistoryNet.com

DEC 2020

(American History, Civil War Times, Wild West, and World War 2 Magazines)

10/13/20 9:12 PM