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P O RT F O L I O

32 Larger Than Life

50 Underwater Warriors

58 Saboteurs on Skis

Reichsmarschall Hermann Gring

was an outsize character in every
sense of the term JAMES HOLLAND

Scantily equipped reconnaissance

and demolition teams cleared
the way for amphibious landings
across the Pacific

In the snowbound mountains of

Norway, a band of commandos
dared to take on the Nazi atomic
bomb program NEAL BASCOMB

C OV E R S TO RY

42 A Hanging Offense

WEAPONS MANUAL

PLUS

The American executioner at

Nuremberg may have dished out
extra punishment when he hung
some Nazi elite ANDREW NAGORSKI

56 Steadfast Striker

62 Nazis and the Bomb

The B-17 Flying Fortress was the

workhorse of Americas daylight
bombing campaign in Europe

How close did Nazi Germany

actually come to developing
nuclear weapons? MARK WALKER

ILLUSTRATION BY JIM LAURIER

WORLD WAR II

Combat swimmers of Underwater

Demolition Team 15 at Balikpapan,
Borneo, watch as kamikazes attack
U.S. Navy ships on July 1, 1945.
NATIONAL NAVY UDT-SEAL MUSEUM; COVER: AP PHOTO

10 World War II Today

26 Fire for Effect

74 Battle Films

A former Nazis transformation

into Mossad assassin; Congress to
honor Americas Ghost Army

Why German general was a bad

career choice ROBERT M. CITINO

Sophies Choice: evil as an act

of faith MARK GRIMSLEY

28 Time Travel

IN EVERY ISSUE

Wyomings Heart Mountain

internment camp

8 Mail
79 Challenge
80 Pinup

20 Conversation
Jimmy Doolittles copilot, Dick
Cole, also flew the Hump and
piloted gliders MICHAEL DOLAN

K. D. LEPERI

68 Reviews
24 From the Footlocker
Curators at The National
World War II Museum solve
readers artifact mysteries

The Winter War, detailed in two

lavish volumes; anti-Semitisms
deep roots; Orchestra strikes a
sour note; Silent Victory game

Visit us at WorldWarII.com
World War II magazine
@WWIImag

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 6

WWII Online
Visit us at WorldWarII.com

Michael A. Reinstein CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER

David Steinhafel ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

Vol. 31, No. 2 JULY/AUGUST 2016

EDITOR

KAREN JENSEN
Paraag Shukla SENIOR EDITOR
Rasheeda Smith ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Jon Guttman, Jerry Morelock HISTORIANS
David Zabecki CHIEF MILITARY HISTORIAN
Paul Wiseman NEWS EDITOR
Stephen Kamifuji CREATIVE DIRECTOR
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DIGITAL

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In the fall of 1941, two gargantuan

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Eye on a Juggernaut
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Neal Bascomb (Saboteurs on Skis)

is the author of seven award-winning,
bestselling books, including the search
for a Nazi war criminal in Hunting Eichmann. His article is drawn from his latest
history, The Winter Fortress. Inspired by
Richard Rhodess classic The Making of
the Atomic Bomb and by many journeys
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is the author of the bestselling Fortress

Malta, The Battle of Britain, and Dam
Busters, as well as numerous works of historical fiction. A regular commentator for
British television and radio, he has
written and narrated World War II
documentaries for the BBC and others.
His latest book, The Rise of Germany
1939-1941, the first volume in a trilogy,
was published in 2015.
K. D. Leperi (Time Travel) is a retired

federal manager for the Departments of

Energy and Agriculture and former U.S.
Navy Reserve officer. Nowadays, she travels the world in pursuit of historical and
cultural stories that have helped define
the world we live in today. Her love of the

WORLD WAR II

WA L KE R

American West and the town of Cody,

Wyoming, eventually led her to the World
War II story of Heart Mountain.
Andrew Nagorski (A Hanging

Offense) spent more than three decades

as an award-winning foreign correspondent and editor for Newsweek. His books
include The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler,
and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow
That Changed the Course of World War II
and Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses
to the Nazi Rise to Power. His latest book,
The Nazi Hunters, was released in May;
it chronicles the stories of the men and
women who refused to allow the crimes
of the Third Reich to be forgotten.
Mark Walker (Nazi Germany and
the Bomb) grew up on a farm in Iowa,
studied mathematics at Washington University in Saint Louis, earned a PhD in
History from Princeton University, and is
the John Bigelow Professor of History at
Union College in Schenectady, NY, where
he teaches the history of science and
technology as well as modern European
history. He is the author of the books
German National Socialism and the Quest
for Nuclear Power, 1939-1949 and Nazi
Science: Myth, Truth, and the German
Atom Bomb.

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Mail

bilizer and rudder system to make the

airframe more stable in flight. It also
increased the aircrafts armament and
bomb capacity.
I am curious if the PB4Y2 Privateer
participated in bombing raids on the
Japanese home islands, similar to those
carrier aircraft that did.
Clifton Danley
Johnson City, Tenn.

Dereliction of Duty
In the Japanese fighter attack on the
B-24 Superchick (Replacement,
March/April 2016), Top Gunner Joe
Busbey was out of his turret as the attack
came in from 12 oclock high. He would
have been in perfect position to alert
the crew to the attack and to attempt to
thwart it with counter-fire. As it was, the
attack came in unopposed and without
alert until the last moment, by the flight
deck team. As a result command pilot
Elmer Gladson was killed, other crew
wounded, and the aircraft damaged to
the extent that it was very nearly lost.
Busbeys absence from his battle station
in combat was a court-martial offense.
Was he ever charged and tried?
Wayne Long
Chester, Md.
Kenny Kemp, the author of Replacement, responds:
Busbey died in the attack along with
Gladson. Had he survived, it is unlikely
he would have been court-martialed.
Given the many hours flown in empty
skies over the Pacific en route to targets,
crew were generally allowed to roam the
ship until the pilot ordered them to get
8

WORLD WAR II

on station. Even at his turret, Busbeys

reaction time would have been minimal.
The combined closing speed of 500 mph
between the Japanese Tonys and the
Liberator meant an enemy attack could
occur within seconds.

Editors note: No, Privateers did not

participate in the actual bombing of
Japan. But the planes longer fuselage
and greater operational range made it
effective in patrolling for enemy surface
vessels and subs, and in dropping naval
mines. Look for the PB4Y-2 Privateer in
an upcoming Weapons Manual.

Mystery Plane

Facing Facts

In your story Replacement, the opening photo shows a B-24 lifting off from
Okinawas Yontan Airfield. In the background are what initially appear to be
more B-24sactually a newer patrol
bomber in the U.S. Navy inventory, the
PB4Y2 Privateer. The navy replaced the
B-24s twin tail with a single vertical sta-

In Hollywood Howlers, you feature a

World War II film with a factual error.
Personally, I have yet to see a World War
II movie that did not have errors. That
doesnt bother me because movies are
for entertainment. But documentaries
are for education and I have yet to see
a World War II documentary without
glaring errors in the video or audio. You
would be doing a great public service
by pointing out these errors or asking
subscribers to submit them. Maybe if
you do this, documentaries would start
doing their jobs a bit better.
Dave Jenkinson
Liberty Township, Ohio

Pride Before The Fall?

The navys PBY4-2 Privateer did not

bomb the Japanese home islands.

Regarding your news item, Russian

Diplomat Claiming Poland Partly
Responsible for World War II (World
War II Today, January/February 2016),

NATIONAL ARCHIVES (BOTH); STAMP: GUY ACETO COLLECTION

Armed with twin machine guns, a gunner in an early B-24 peers out of the top turret.

Mail

there is some truth to it. It is well known

that after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Hitler, his next target was
Poland. With this in mind, France and
England sent a delegation to Moscow
to negotiate how to stop Hitler. On the
Soviet side, Defense Minister Klim
Voroshilov held talks with the delegation. Stalin, who was involved in the
negotiations, said, The only way to stop
Hitler is by show of force. The Soviet
dictator suggested putting three Red
Army divisions on the German-Polish

the war, but the hatred of Poland against

Russia was obvious.
Regarding the Katyn Forest Massacre:
Yes, Stalin murdered 16,000 to 17,000
Polish Army personnel along with millions of Soviet citizens. My father was
one of them. At the same time, Nazi collaborators in Ukraine murdered 60,000

to 70,000 Poles in the Volyn regionbut

nobody is talking about this crime anymore because today Poland and Ukraine
have a common enemyRussia. As
an old saying goes, The enemy of my
enemy is my friend.
Steve Tirer
Paramus, N.J.

Book Eight in the

Raiding forces series

PRIVATE
ARMY
Did Polish Foreign
Minister Josef Beck
doom Poland
to the Nazis?

PHIL WARD
World War II Fiction Wherever books are sold

border to enforce the Polish Army.

The Anglo-French delegation went
to Warsaw with this proposal and met
with Polish government officials. After
listening to the Soviet proposal, Polish
Foreign Minister Josef Beck replied:
What? Russian soldiers on Polish soil?
Not in my lifetime. Nobody knows if
the Soviets idea would have prevented

Facebook.com/raidingforces
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Almost Victory
Border Showdown
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W W I I T OD AY

From Nazi Ofcer to Israeli Assassin

Reported and written by

Paul Wiseman

10

WORLD WAR II

Otto Skorzeny, here in 1943,

was a Nazi favorite for
planning and executing special
commando operations.

him. And he orchestrated

the kidnapping of the son
of Hungarian strongman
Admiral Miklos Horthy in
a 1944 bid to keep German
ally Hungary from signing a separate peace with
the Allies. After the war,

Skorzeny faced a war crimes

tribunal, but the charges
against him were dismissed.
In 1962, a young couple
posing as lost and penniless German tourists
approached Skorzeny in
Spain and expressed their

interest in a romantic evening with Skorzeny and his

wife. Skorzeny saw through
the ruse and pulled a gun,
thinking they were Mossad
assassins. He was halfrightthey were Mossad
recruiters. Skorzeny even-

ULLSTEIN BILD/WALTER FRENTZ

tto Skorzeny looked

like the villain he was.
The Austrian Waffen-SS
lieutenant colonel stood six
foot four, his face disfigured
by a long, jagged, dueling
scar. But the man known as
Hitlers Commando ended
his career working for an
improbable employer: the
Israeli intelligence agency,
Mossad, according to a
detailed account in March in
the New York-based Jewish
newspaper Forward.
Drawing on new interviews with former Mossad
operatives and Israelis
who have access to intelligence archives, CBS News
correspondent Dan Raviv
and Israeli journalist Yossi
Melman report that the
Israelis hired Skorzeny in
1962 to assassinate German
rocket scientist Heinz
Krug, who was working for
the Egyptian government.
Skorzeny also mailed a
bomb that killed five Egyptians at a rocket factory. I
met and ran Skorzeny, the
legendary Israeli intelligence operative, Rafi Eitan,
told the journalists. Eitan,
known as Mr. Kidnap for
his role in abducting Nazi
Adolf Eichmann in 1960,
refused to offer any details
on his work with Skorzeny.
Working for Israel was
a stunning turnabout for
Skorzeny. He had masterminded the 1943 rescue of
Benito Mussolini, who had
been jailed by the Italian
government that overthrew

W W I I T ODA Y
tually agreed to work with
Mossad, asking in exchange
that his name be removed
from Nazi hunter Simon
Wiesenthals list of fugitive
war criminals. Although
Wiesenthal later refused to
honor the Nazis request,
Skorzeny nevertheless
continued to work for
Israel. Perhaps, Raviv and
Melman write, he wanted
to avoid being assassinated
by Mossad. Or, he may have
just relished adventure. Or
he may have even felt genuinely sorry for his actions
in World War II. Skorzeny
died of lung cancer in 1975
at age 67.

DISPATCHES

-A museum in Copenhagen discov-

X-rays have determined an Enigma machine dating

from 1934 is the oldest of three surviving devices.

ered that it owns the worlds oldest

marine Enigma machine, Danish media
reported in April. The German army
used the cipher machines to exchange
coded messages, but Britains Bletchley
Park cryptographers, including Alan
Turing, famously broke their complex
code. Copenhagens Post and Tele
Museum has had the Enigma machine
in its collection since a sherman
pulled it up from the ocean oor 16
years ago. The device was in poor
condition but a recent x-ray and examination helped reveal its serial number,
M522, which established it as the
oldest of the worlds three surviving
marine Enigma machines.

Restored Red-Tail Mustang Makes Its Debut

TOP: POST OG TELE MUSEUM; LEFT: NAITONAL WWII MUSEUM; RIGHT: DOUG MACCASH/TIMES-PICAYUNE

he National WWII Museum in New Orleans

unveiled a newly restored P-51D Mustang
painted to resemble a red-tailed aircraft own
by the U.S. Army Air Forces 332nd Fighter
Group. An all-black unit popularly known as
the Tuskegee Airmen, the 332nd gained
renown for its successful missions ying
bomber escort over Axis-occupied Europe.
Attending the event were former Tuskegee
Airmen and Lieutenant Colonels Charles
McGee, 96, and George Hardy, 90. The
Mustang will remain on permanent display at
the museum, in its U.S. Freedom Pavilion.

Former Tuskegee Airmen Charles McGee

(left) and George Hardy ew combat
missions over Europe and, after the war, had
successful careers in the U.S. Air Force.

JULY/AUGUST 2016

11

W W I I T OD AY

Congress Set to Honor

Americas Ghost Army
ne of World War IIs
finest acting jobs is
up for an awardnot an
Oscar, but a Congressional
Gold Medal. Bipartisan
legislation would recognize
the U.S. Armys 23rd Headquarters Special Troops,
more evocatively called the
Ghost Army, which used
inflatable tanks, fake radio
transmissions, and playacting to fool the Germans
on the whereabouts and
strength of Allied forces
from June 1944 through
March 1945. Their tactics
were meant to be invisible,
but their contributions
are as lasting as any of the
Greatest Generation, said
Senator Edward Markey, a
Massachusetts Democrat
who introduced the legisla-

tion in March. It is time the

Ghost Armys heroics came
out of the shadows. The
units activities were classified until 1996.
The 23rds recruits were
an unusual bunchactors,
stagehands, and advertising
men. Ghost Army veteran
Bud Bier, 93, who joined
the unit as an 18-year-old
art student, told the Boston
Globe that other GIs considered them a bunch of
sissies. Bier recalled that
he and his comrades would
awake to classical music, not
the country-and-western
tunes many units favored.
It was a completely different atmosphere, he said.
The Ghost Armys deceptions started June 14, 1944,
when they landed at Omaha

Recruited for his creative skills, Ghost Army soldier Bill Blass
became a celebrated fashion designer after the war.

Beach and set up fake gun

emplacements to draw
German fire away from
American artillery. They
successfully baited attacks
by German guns and aircraft
and suffered no casualties
in their initial assignment.

It took 20 minutes to inate the dummy M4 Sherman tank, which weighed just 93 pounds.

12

WORLD WAR II

During September 1944,

they used fake radio traffic
and inflatable decoys to successfully plug a dangerous
mile-wide gap in American
lines while General George
S. Pattons Third Army
massed to attack Metz.
In their final mission, the
1,100 Ghost Army troops
used blowup vehicles and
soundtracks of construction
activity to impersonate two
divisions of 40,000 men.
The ruse helped allow the
U.S. Ninth Army to cross the
Rhine River into Germany.
Three Ghost Army men
were killed during the war.
Several Ghost Army vets had
illustrious postwar careers:
designer Bill Blass, painter
Ellsworth Kelly, wildlife
artist Arthur Singer, and
Eddie Haas, who wrote for
TVs The Munsters. The
tricksters may also get the
Hollywood treatment of
their own. Entertainment
media reported last year
that actor Bradley Cooper
plans to produce a feature
film about the Ghost Army.

GHOSTARMY.ORG (BOTH)

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W W I I T OD AY

Honored
Weathermans
Relatives Found

-Researchers from the University of

Hawaiis Undersea Research Laboratory

recovered a bronze bell from wreckage of
a massive wartime Japanese submarine
off the coast of Oahu. In 1946, the United
States deliberately sank the I-400-class
sub, which could launch aircraft, to keep it
away from the Soviets. In March, researchers used mini-subs to reach the wreck and
retrieved the bell with a robotic arm.

Researchers
recover a bronze
bell from a
sunken Japanese
submarine (left, in
1945) near Hawaii.

-

Brown in 2015,
and as a
British pilot
(inset).

Eric Melrose Winkle

Brown, the British Navy
test pilot who helped
establish the P-51 Mustang
as the Allies top escort
ghter, died February 21 at
age 97. In 1944, he tested
the Mustang for American
General James H. Jimmy
Doolittle. Fluent in German, Brown conducted
postwar interrogations of German rocket
scientist Wernher von Braun, Luftwaffe chief
Hermann Gring, and aircraft designers Willy
Messerschmitt and Ernst Heinkel. In December
1945, he made the rst jet takeoff and landing
on an aircraft carrier.

WORD FOR WORD

It is evil things that we will

be fighting againstbrute
force, bad faith, injustice,
oppression, and persecution
and against them I am certain
that the right will prevail.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain,
speech broadcast on September 3, 1939
14

WORLD WAR II

ast November, the U.S. government belatedly awarded four

Purple Hearts to U.S. Weather
Bureau civilians killed in September
1942 when a German U-boat sank
their weather ship. Descendants of
three of the meteorologists
attended the ceremony at the Navy
Memorial in Washington D.C.; relatives of the fourth, Luther Brady of
Atlanta, could not be found.
At least not until two volunteer
genealogists went to work.
After reading about the men in
the March/April
2016 issue of World
War II, Janice
Rosenthal of
Wilmette, Illinois,
started searching
for Bradys kin.
She enlisted
Georgia genealogist Melora Hiler
for help. The job
Meteorologist
was tough. Luther
Luther Brady
Brady, a bachelor, was killed in
never had chil1942.
dren. Neither did
his brothers,
Joseph and William. Hiler was relentless, combing the Georgia Archives
and old newspaper obituaries for
clues. Eventually, she found Helen
Hayes Cobb, granddaughter of
Luther Bradys maternal uncle. The
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) is hoping to
arrange a small ceremony with
Cobb after nal conrmation of
the relationship.
Its very satisfying to know that
were nally able to honor Luthers
family for his seless service, says
NOAAs Captain Jeremy Adams, who
arranged the November ceremony.

TOP, LEFT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; TOP, CENTER: HURL/UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII; MIDDLE, LEFT: JEFF J. MITCHELL/GETTY IMAGES; MIDDLE, CENTER: ERIC BROWN;
FAR RIGHT: NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION; BOTTOM: NATIONAL ARCHIVES/SSPL/GETTY IMAGES

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W W I I T OD AY

Russian Historian Deates Legend, Career

veteran historian
who debunked Soviet-era myths about World
War II was demoted. In
mid-March, Russian State
Archive director Sergei
Mironenko (inset) was
ousted from his position
and reassigned to the job
of research director.
Mironenko told Radio
Free Europe that the move
was a mutual decision.
But the demotion came
less than a year after he
discredited the much-celebrated wartime legend of
Panfilovs 28 Guardsmen
at a time when Vladimir

Putin began using World

War II nostalgia to rally
political support.
According to legend,
Major General Ivan Panfilov led a unit of soldiers
who fought to the death
against German tanks outside of Moscow in November 1941. Russian streets
are named for the men
and a Russian film about
them is in production. But
last year Mironenko published declassified 1948
documents proving that
the heroics were exaggerated and that some of the
supposed martyrs had sur-

vived. Mironenko
said their actions
were not just
a myth, but a
deliberate falsification by the
Soviet government.
Russian Culture Minister
Vladimir Medinsky lashed
back, saying it was not
Mironenkos job to fight
historical falsifications.
Mironenko also courted
controversy last year when
he criticized Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and the
1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop
nonaggression pact with
Nazi Germany.

Q: I have watched newsreels showing airborne drops

in Europe and I wondered if
there were drops in the
Pacic. It would seem impossible to land on a small island
with lots of trees. Bruce
Slocum, Grapevine, Texas

The February 1945 drop

into Corregidor was one
of the few airborne
jumps in the Pacic.

A: Indeed, the islands and jungles of the Pacic did not lend
themselves well to airborne
operations. But there were a
handful of drops there during
the war. In early 1942 Japanese
paratroopers conducted three operations in the Dutch East Indies. The rst
American airdrop in the Pacic occurred

16

WORLD WAR II

in September 1943 in New Guinea, and

American glider troops operated in
Burma the following spring. There was a

urry of American airborne

activity in the Philippines in
early 1945, notably the recapture of The Rock, Corregidor.
That May, the Indian 50th Parachute Brigade dropped outside
of Rangoon, Burma, as part of
Operation Dracula. Despite
these occasional airborne
actions in the Pacic, most histories of airborne operations
tend to focus almost exclusively on the larger operations
in the European Theater.
Jon Guttman
Q Send queries to: Ask World War II, 1600 Tysons
Blvd., Suite 1140, Tysons, VA 22102, or e-mail:
worldwar2@historynet.com.

TOP, LEFT: SPUTNIK/ALAMY; TOP, RIGHT: RADIO FREE EUROPE/RL; BOTTOM: HULTON ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES

The Guardsmen Memorial in

Dubosekovo is over 30 feet tall.

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W W I I T OD AY
THE READING LIST

Josiah Bunting III

Masters and Commanders

hairman of Friends of the National World

How Four Titans Won the War in the

West, 1941-1945
Andrew Roberts (2009)

War II Memorial, an organization dedicated

to honoring and preserving Americas memory

of World War II, Si Bunting knows a thing or

By far the standard for military

history on the making of the
grand strategy for World
War II. Roberts provides a
detailed accounting of all the
great war conferences, and
the personalities, politics,
and interactions of
the British, the American,
andbeginning in 1943
the Russian participants.
A terric read.

two about accomplishment. President of the

Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Bunting
is a Rhodes Scholar with a degree in Modern
History from Oxford University. He served in
Vietnam in the 9th Infantry Division, taught
history at West Point, and was professor of
Strategy at the Naval War College. Here, Bunting
focuses on works of rare accomplishment.

The Guns at Last Light

The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945
Rick Atkinson (2014)

The denitive, most elegant, most

comprehensive survey of Americas
war in Europe. Atkinsons book
combines exhaustive research with
a very graceful blend of anecdote
and meaning. It is the best we have:
compellingly readable.

Eisenhower in War and Peace

Jean Edward Smith (2012)

Engineers of Victory
Ardennes 1944
The Battle of the Bulge
Antony Beevor (2015)

The Problem Solvers Who

Turned the Tide in the Second World War
Paul Kennedy (2013)

Among the ve or six impressive

works on the Battle of the Bulge,
Beevors stands out in its richness of
detail and depth of research, combined to convey a clear sense of how
the battle was fought on both sides
and the consequences. The majority
of the soldiers in this battle were very
youngand it is important that people
remember that. It shows what 18- and
19-year-old American kids can accomplish when theyre up against it.

Most histories of World War II are

devoted to shows of valor and grand
strategy, and we lose sight of the role
and consequences of the wars technological developments. Kennedys book is
by far the best examination of the theme
of Technological Determinism: that the
weapons we build determine how we
ght. The book is particularly strong in
its coverage of the Pacic, and the steep
and rapid learning curve it depicts in
mastering amphibious landings.

The last word on Ike. A comprehensive biography, from Abilene

through Ikes presidency and beyond.
Smiths work goes beyond offering a
portrait of Ikeand what made him
the way he wasto creating a portrait
of Eisenhowers extraordinarily agile
mind and what shaped it. Ike always
kept learning and kept changing. The
British regarded Eisenhowerand
rightly soas a beau ideal of what
an American gentleman should be:
Natures Gentleman, historian Max
Hastings called him. An extraordinarily
good book.
Josiah Bunting III is the author of Ulysses S.
Grant (2004)part of Arthur M. Schlesingers
American Presidents Series. His biography of
George C. Marshall, Marshall, will be published
by Knopf early next year.

-One hundred New Zealand volunteers dedi-

cated $240,000 and 100,000 hours of work over

four years to get a Consolidated PBY Catalina ying
boatthe last yable version of the amphibious
patrol plane in the southern hemisphereback in
the air. The 1944 plane, which had been grounded
for six years before the refurbishment, took off at
the Warbirds Over Wanaka international air show
on New Zealands south island in March.

18

WORLD WAR II

The restored PBY

Catalina has again
taken to the skies.

ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO; BOTTOM: GAVIN CONROY

DISPATCHES

Conversation with Richard Cole

So Far, So Good
By Michael Dolan

Dick Cole, who copiloted the

lead B-25 on the famous 1942
Doolittle Raid, visits one of
its kin in April, at the National
Museum of the Pacic War.

the two former airmen delivered produce

Doolittle as a boss and mentor?

over Tokyo that made him world

to a circuit of customers. Now, at age 100,

famous, Richard ColeColonel

Dick Cole travels to aviation-related events,

Jimmy Doolittles copilot on the innovative

has closed down more than one hotel bar,

April 18, 1942, raid against the Japanese

and at home enjoys rummaging in his

capitalparachuted into China. With help

barns. He recently sat for a phone interview

he reached India where, for the better part

facilitated by daughter Cindy Cole Chal.

Every moment I spent with Colonel

Doolittle I was in a state of awe. He
was a powerful personality, but you
never experienced a sense of separation
between him and you. In his realm you
were on a team. He really put the concept of team on the map.

of a year, he flew transport planes carrying

cargo over the Himalayan Hump between
New Delhi, India, and Kunming, China, and
back, then transported glider-borne troops
in an invasion of Burma.
Between those assignments Cole met,
wooed, and wed fellow aviator Lucia Marta
Harrell. Retiring as a lieutenant colonel in

When did you first become interested

in aviation?

I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, where I was

born in 1915. When I was nine, I joined
the Airplane Model League of America.
Members made stick planes out of
balsa wood powered with rubber bands.

1966, the former B-25 pilot took up orange

growing in Comfort, Texas. His neighbor
Warren Reedwho once had been a P-38
pilotwas growing grapefruit. For 14 years,

20

WORLD WAR II

What was it like to have Jimmy

Doolittlea boyhood idol of yours
choose you as his copilot? How was

Which characteristics do you think

helped make you a successful airman?

I was in good condition. I didnt smoke

or drink. I got training that taught me
to keep a good eye out. I always enjoyed
flyingall the time, even when the
weather was bad. And I never really
was struck by misfortune, like losing
an engine or having to tangle with an
enemy fighter.

SOL NEELMAN; OPPOSITE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

FTER HE SPENT THOSE 30 SECONDS

Whom do you think of as the heroes

of World War II?

Well, in a warand even in peacetime

heroes are the people who know their
jobs and do them. One was Colonel
John Alison of the Flying Tigers. Others
were Colonel Doolittle and Charles
Lindbergh and others who
took risks that brought about
important consequences.
You started out left-handed.
Did being made a righty
affect your flying career?

There was a lot of

jubilation, but then
it got quiet as people
realized what they
were mixed up in.

What were you hauling?

Flying into China, we carried aviation

gas in barrels for the squadron based
in Kunming that used to be the Flying
Tigers. We dropped rice and supplies
to Merrills Marauders and we also flew
American mules into China to build airstrips there. Flying back from
Kunming we brought tungsten to harden the steel that
went into aircraft frames.
What was your schedule?

It took about six hours to

When I was a child and got
make it to Kunming. We
changed into a right-hander,
didnt fly daily, but we could
for a while I wasnt much
wind up doing 24 hours
good with either hand, but
of flying. Jake Sartz and I
I adjusted. Being ambidexroomed together. We each
trous was a general help to
bought a bottle of Scotch we
me. The first trainer I flew
planned to drink in our offhad a throttle control in
hours, but we decided to save
the center, but the next two
that hooch for when we fintrainers had the throttle on
ished our tour of duty, which
Cole ew beside his idol, Jimmy Doolittle (front right and left),
with crewmates Hank Potter, Fred Braemer, and Paul Leonard.
the left, and even though I
was a very good decision.
had been retrained to use my
to get used to seeing nothing but water.
Assess the C-47 and the C-87
right hand I took to that. When I flew
I was not made to be a sailor.
the transport based on the B-24
larger planes the controls were back on
heavy bomber.
the right but I could work with it.
As you and Colonel Doolittle began
The C-47 was a good plane, but it had a
Rate the B-25 medium bomber.
pretty low ceiling and couldnt go readyour bomb run, what was going
The biggest drawback was noise, but
ily to altitude. You had to take it up in
through your head?
As we were flying over the Japanese
otherwise it was a dream airplane. Getstages. The C-87 was a real boon. The
countryside, I was impressed by the
ting into a B-25 was like getting into a
engines were turbocharged, and you
beauty of the place, and as we came over
modern sports car after driving a Ford
could go right to 30,000 feet. A C-87
Tokyo I was amazed that nobody was
Model T. I remember sending my folks
cleared the Himalayas really well.
jumping us and that there was no acka newspaper photo of a line of MitchYou once looped a transport.
ack. This was the first time that any of us
ells with a note saying something like,
I guess it was a case of monkey-see,
who were on the raid had seen combat,
Look at these babies!
monkey-do. Before I could fly the Hump
and I thought, So far, so good.
What was your reaction when, at sea
I had to be checked out in a DC-3 by
What was it like to fly over the
aboard the USS Hornet, you learned
Johnny Paine. He had been chief pilot
worlds tallest mountains?
that you would be bombing Tokyo?
for Eastern Airlines. With him at the
I guess I felt the same way as the rest
Most of the time flying the Hump was a
controls beside me I took off three times
of the people aboard. There was a lot of
milk run. But during the dry season the
and landed three times. Say, howd you
jubilation and so forth, and then it got
winds would shear up and downyou
like to loop this thing? Johnny asked.
kind of quiet as people realized what
could drop 10,000 feet in secondsand
I looked at him as if to say, are you kidthey were getting mixed up in. But
that was very disturbing. Fortunately
ding me? Lets see if we can do it, he
nobody jumped ship and nobody bailed.
the C-47or the civilian version that
said. He put that DC-3 through two
we flew, which was called the DC-3
loops and looked over at me. I went
How did you like being at sea?
held together well, and we didnt lose
ahead and made a loopbut I couldnt
I didnt get seasick, but I never was able
that many planes.
see any value in doing a second one.
JULY/AUGUST 2016

21

Conversation

They were from passenger airlines, so

their doors were narrow, which made
loading and unloading a little tricky.
You once landed just as Japanese
pilots bombed the field.

I was coming down onto the strip when

the Japs started in. I was able to get the
plane onto the ground and get out of the
aircraft. I threw myself into some tea
bushes alongside the field, and as I lay
there a piece of shrapnel hit the ground
right in front of my nose. If I had been
standing I wouldnt be talking to you now.

Shrapnel hit right in

front of my nose.
If Id been standing
I wouldnt be talking
to you now.
Summer
1943,Tulsa,
Oklahoma

After flying the Hump you returned

stateside. What happened next?

I was at Tulsa, Oklahoma, testing B-24

Liberators at the Douglas plant. We were
taking them up to 30,000 feet. One day I
was doing a walk-around, examining the
plane wed be flying, when a young lady
rode up on a bicycle. She told me she
was taking flying lessons and planned
to join the WASPs and wanted to fly big
planes. I told her we couldnt take her up
because it was against regulations and
we didnt have a chute for her.
A little later we boarded, taxied, and
took off. We were at about 12,000 feet
when the young lady came into the cockpit. She had stowed away. Her name was
Lucia Marta Harrell. We had to scrub
the mission. When we landed the copilot handed her a matchbook and asked
22

WORLD WAR II

You flew a C-47 called Hairless Joe.

I was a big comics reader. One of our

assistant crew chiefs, Maurice Roberts,
thought I looked like a character by that
name in the strip Lil Abner.
Among the men on Project 9 was
actor Jackie Coogan.

He was very gung ho. I suppose he could

have arranged not to be there, but he
didnt. He played on the baseball teams,
and he was a good guy.

In the China-Burma-India Theater,

uniform discipline was, shall we say,
relaxed. You were known for wearing
a U.S. Navy jacket.

After parachuting into China I was on

my way to India through Kunming.
That first night in Kunming we went
into a cantina the Flying Tigers favored,
where there were all kinds of people.
A P-40 crewman liked my A-2 leather
jacket, and I liked his leather jacket,
which was from the navy and had pockets and a fur collar. We exchanged jackets, and that was that.

those poles and snag the line. It was

okay during the day but night pickups
were pretty hairy. It was not too appealing an arrangement.

In 1947, an Air Force board decided

against giving you a peacetime commission. How did you respond?

her to write down her phone number.

She did, but she gave the matchbook to
me. It took me two weeks to call but I
guess it was love at first sight, because
within two weeks we were married. We
had five kids.
Back overseas you flew in Project 9,
the invasion of Burma using gliders.

Project 9 was pretty well organized,

but the constant rain that spring made
taking off and landing very problematic. One interesting element was that
the same pilots flew fighters and bombers. They would take off in the morning
in B-25s for bombing runs on Rangoon,
return for lunch, and then go up in P-47
Thunderbolts and P-51 Mustangs.
You had a glider snagging system.

The 80x involved a reel for taking up

the slack on glider lines and a couple of
polesthey looked like a football goal
post with flashlights taped to the tops
that held a tow rope for the tailhook to
snag. You had to come down between

I applied again and meanwhile pursued

my original field, forestry. I enrolled at
Oregon State University in Corvallis,
expecting to become a forest ranger. I
was working between semesters in a
sawmill when a second board offered
me a commission. I was very glad; I
really wanted to fly. And my assignment
was Wright-Patterson Air Force Base at
Dayton, Ohiomy hometown. Marta
and I threw our baby, Cindy, into our
blue 1941 Ford convertible with as much
stuff as we could fit and drove straight
through to Dayton. Housing there was
tight; until we could buy a house we
lived with my dad; my mom had passed
away the year before.
You served in the Air Force until 1966.
What did all that flying teach you?

I learned how to be organized and to

adapt and to keep my eye on the ball.
Youve done two things well: fly warplanes and grow oranges. What do
those occupations have in common?

The only similarity I see between the

two is that a crate of oranges weighs
about as a much as a box of machinegun ammunition. That orange growing
is hard work. 2

COURTESY OF RICHARD COLE

What challenges did DC-3s present

in use as military planes?

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From the Footlocker

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

A few years ago, I found this badge at a ea market here in New Brunswick,
Canada, and bought it for around $10 CAD. It is two inches tall at its tallest point.
I did some research and found the badge is of American origin, but didnt learn
much more. Do you know what it is, and what a Special Agent of the War Depart-

ment was responsible for? Evan Schriver, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

Badges of this type hail not from World War II, but from the American Civil War.
Upon the wars outbreak in April 1861, Washington, D.C., was surrounded by territory sympathetic to the Confederate cause. The Confederacy used this geographic
advantage to insert agents into the city to spy on Union movements. To combat

authentic, the badge at left

1 Ifdates
from the Civil War. The
World War II version below it
would have been carried by an
agent of the Counter Intelligence
Corps (CIC), like the man
searching documents, below.

these spies, the Federal War Department, along with Allan Pinkertons
National Detective Agency, designated officers to catch Confederate
undercover agents. Although the War
Department issued the badges, its
operatives rarely would have carried
them: Confederates catching anyone
with a badge likely would have hung
them as spies. Unfortunately, many
examples of the badge you see today
are fakes, so you may want to have a
professional check it out.
Just before World War II, the
U.S. War Department expanded
its counterintelligence gathering
efforts. Agents of the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) investigated
acts of possible sabotage and investigated American citizenssuch as
Japanese Americansfor possible
treason. CIC agents also conducted
background checks for access to topsecret information and served in the
eld in Europe and the Pacic during
the war and its aftermath. James M.
Linn IV, Curator

I am trying to determine the

identity of the regimental
insignia on my grandfathers
helmet liner and uniform to ll

in some gaps in my knowledge of his

service. My grandfather, Edward Neil
Kaser, served in Europe with the 22nd
Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division,
from February 1945 until sometime after

Kasers helmet
liner (left) and
uniform signify
stateside duty,
before events
pulled Kaser
to Europe for
the wars last
months.

24

V-E Day. Ryan Williamson, Fort Bragg,

North Carolina

The insignia on the helmet liner is

the crest for the Army General School
Library located at Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas. It was part of the officer education systemlater succeeded by the
Ike Skelton Combined Arms Research
Libraryand is still located on the
base at Fort Leavenworth. It serves
as a military research center support-

CIC BADGE: FLYING TIGER ANTIQUES; PHOTO: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

on
2 Insignia
Edward Neil

ing the Army Command and General

Staff College.
The insignia on the uniform is for
the 174th Infantry Regiment. Originally part of the New York National
Guard, the 174th was inducted into
Federal service in September 1940
and assigned to the 44th Infantry
Division. The unit was sent to Camp
Claiborne, Louisiana, and Fort Lewis,
Washington, and also spent time in
California. In January of 1943, the
regiment was assigned to the Western
Defense Command, III Corps, and
moved to Camp White, Oregon. The
174th stayed stateside and was deactivated on September 26, 1945.
My guess is that because of the critical shortage of combat riemen in
Europe in summer and fall 1944the
result of unexpectedly heavy casualtiesyour grandfather was one
of those taken out of their stateside
units and sent overseas as desperately
needed replacements. The regiment
to which he was assigned, the 22nd
Infantry, is the unit Ernest Hemingway famously attached himself
to after going to France to report on
the Normandy invasion. Hemingway
accompanied the regiment and its
iconic commander, Colonel Charles T.
Buck Lanham, in some of the toughest ghting of the war, notably the
Hrtgen Forest. Toni Kiser, Assistant
Director for Collections Management

Admiral Bill Halsey

A Naval Life
Thomas Alexander Hughes
During World War II, Americans showered
adulation on Douglas MacArthur, George S.
Pattonand upon William F. Halsey Jr.
Afterward, biographers flocked to chronicle
the generals lives; less so the admirals. Now
this stellar work, which seamlessly blends deep
research and shrewd analysis, emerges as the
most complete and sophisticated Halsey
portrait.
Richard B. Frank, World War II Magazine
$35.00

Justifying Genocide
Germany and the Armenians from
Bismarck to Hitler
Stefan Ihrig
Ihrigs deep, scrupulous research reveals the
official pattern set by the Germans vis--vis the
Armenians as an enabler for the Ottomans,
later giving way to open justification, denial,
and whitewashing of the horrors visited on the
Armenian people . . . A groundbreaking study
that shows how Germany derived from the
Armenian genocide a plethora of recipes to
address its own ethnic problems.
Kirkus Reviews
$35.00

The French Resistance

Olivier Wieviorka
Translated by Jane Marie Todd

Have a World War II artifact you cant

identify?

The work of [a] seasoned scholar and energetic

researcher . . . The ultimate question is what

Write to Footlocker@historynet.com
with the following:

difference the French Resistance really made.

Wieviorka considers this matter most fully.

Your connection to the object and

what you know about it
The objects dimensions, in inches

Robert O. Paxton, New York Review of Books

Several high-resolution digital photos

taken close up and from varying
angles. Pictures should be in color, and
at least 300 dpi.

Olivier Wieviorka [is] one of the most brilliant

historians of his generation.
LExpress

Unfortunately we cant respond to every

query, nor can we appraise value.

Belknap Press | $39.95

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www.hup.harvard.edu

tel: 800.405.1619

Fire for Effect

Danger Zone

ORLD WAR II
offered a number
of perilous job
opportunities: airman in a
B-17 over Europe, Marine in
the Pacific, submariner on a
U-boat prowling the Atlantic.
In all these, life was short,
danger ever-present, and
mortality high.
Here is another dangerous job: German general.
German officers liked to fight
aggressively, generating maximum force at the point of
impact. The best way to lead,
they believed, was from the
front. And the Wehrmachts
field commanders died in
droves in this war223 army
generals by one count, an unusual phenomenon in the modern era.
Take a look at one month in this long
war. June 1944 saw the Allies landing in
Normandy. Although historians remember the fighting s early phase for its
hedgerow-slogging frustration and high
losses, the real loser in the campaign was
the German officer corps. Consider this
list: General Wilhelm Falley of the 91st
Air Landing Division; General Erich
Marcks, commander of the LXXXIV
Corps; General Fritz Witt of the 12th SS
Panzer Division Hitlerjugend; General
Heinz Hellmich of the 243rd Division;
General Rudolf Stegmann of the 77th
Division. These men were all competent,
hard-driving commanders, schooled in
the operational art and trusted by their
subordinate officers and men.
They were also all killed in the first
two weeks of the fighting in Normandy:
Falley on D-Day itself, Marcks on the
12th, Witt on the 14th, Hellmich on
the 17th, and Stegmann on the 18th.
Allied air attacks killed Marcks, Hellmich, and Stegmann, 20mm shells
stitching the latter two.

26

WORLD WAR II

The dead general toll could easily

have gone higher. On June 10, an RAF
raid targeted Panzergruppe Wests Normandy headquarters, badly wounding
the commander, General Leo Geyr von
Schweppenburg. Some say that Schweppenburg, a neophyte at operating under
enemy air superiority, had inadequately
camouflaged his headquarters. Schweppenburgs chief of staff and at least 12
other staff officers died in the attack.
And although the general survived, his
headquarters was out of the fighting for
the next two weeks, preventing the Germans from unleashing their Panzer divisions in a counterattack. A few weeks
later, on July 17, another Allied air raid
caught Field Marshal Erwin Rommels
staff car tearing along the road between
Vimoutiers and Livarot, killing the
driver and wounding Rommel so grievously that first responders thought the
field marshal was dead.
June 1944 was also a fateful month on
the Eastern Front, featuring the Soviet
armys great offensive in Byelorussia,
Operation Bagration. Leading from the

front was not the only thing

that killed German generals
here. The powerful Soviets
literally destroyed three
German armiesthe 3rd
Panzer, and the 4th and 9th
Armieswithin days. The
Red Armys rapid advance
encircled German forces all
over the map; many of the
dead generals had perished
trying to lead breakouts.
The fighting claimed two
corps commanders early on;
Generals Georg Pfeiffer (VI
Corps) south of Vitebsk and
Robert Martinek (XXXIX
Panzer Corps) near Mogilev. It also took Martineks
successor, General Otto
Schnemann, the next day.
Division commanders got hit, too, with
Generals Robert Pistorius and Rudolf
Peschelcommanders of the 4th and 6th
Luftwaffe Field Divisions, respectively
dying in the Vitebsk encirclement.
Sometimes it was just bad luck. In the
follow-on Soviet offensive to Bagration,
the Lvov Operation of July, Soviet armies
encircled General Arthur Hauffes XIII
Corps in the town of Brody. Hauffe surrendered, but as his Soviet guards frogmarched him into captivity, he stepped
on a mine and was blown apart.
There is no mystery here. The dead
German generals had been fighting enemies with more productive war economies and vastly superior logistics. In a
war of men against fire, fire usually wins.
The death toll was yet another price the
Wehrmacht paid for waging global war
on a shoestring.
Being a German general: the very
thought gives me a heart attack. Which
is precisely what happened to the commander of the German Seventh Army in
Normandy, General Friedrich Dollmann,
on June 29th, 1944.

ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN TOMAC

By Robert M. Citino

The 70th Anniversary of WWII Conference Series

Presented by Tawani Foundation in association with Pritzker Military Museum & Library

NOVEMBER 1719, 2016

The National WWII Museum

Espionage and the Cold War I War Crimes Trials I A New America I Coming Home I The End of Empires
The Iron Curtain I Displaced Persons I China Goes Red

presented by:

ww2conference.com

877-813-3329 x 511

conferences@nationalww2museum.org

Time Travel

Heartbreak at Heart Mountain

By K. D. Leperi

Wyomings Heart
Mountain Interpretive
Center uses period
artifacts and life-size
photos to evoke interned
Japanese Americans
wartime experiences.

LONELY BLOCK OF mountain

dominates the road to Heart
Mountain Relocation Center in
northwestern Wyoming, one of 10 camps
that held interned Japanese Americans
during World War II. The Crow Indians,
who saw in its peak a resemblance to a
buffalo heart, named the unusual formation. A geological enigma, Heart Mountains limestone summit is 300 million
years older than the rock basin below.
In a cruel twist of fate, the upsidedown mountain would reect a topsyturvy time of contemporary history,
when eventually more than 110,000
unfortunate souls60 percent of them
American citizensfound themselves
caught in a vise grip of paranoia and
hysteria brought on by the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor. At the Heart
Mountain camp, 14 miles northeast of

28

WORLD WAR II

In the Centers Reection Room, visitors

can inscribe their thoughts on paper ID
tags and hang them for others to read.

Cody, enough Japanese Americans were

imprisoned behind barbed wire during
the warnearly 14,000 in totalto make
it the third-largest city in Wyoming at
the time.
On February 19, 1942, 10 weeks after
the Pearl Harbor attack, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive
Order 9066. It authorized the immediate removal of all persons of Japanese
ancestry living in areas U.S. military
authorities had declared Exclusion
Zonesall on the West Coast, where
the countrys Asian population was
densestand moving them into remote,
heavily guarded relocation centers further inland. The displaced were allowed
to take only what they could carry. In the
process, they left behind their homes,
businesses, careers, and friends to face
a future and fate unknown.

Time Travel

Heart Mountain high schoolers (left) gather between classes. Internees

took pains to create a sense of normalcy while living under armed guard.
The Heart Mountain peak (below) towers near the Center (bottom).

Heart Mountain
Relocation
Center
Shoshone
National
Forest

Area of
detail
ID

WY

WY
ALT

120

Powell

14

Heart Mountain
Interpretive Center
Cody
14
0

10

MAP: HAISAM HUSSEIN; ALL PHOTOS: HEART MOUNTAIN INTERPRETIVE CENTER, EXCEPT TOP RIGHT: K. D. LEPERI

MILES

Roosevelts decision rested in good

part on pressure from many West Coast
politicians and on the rationale of Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, who
was responsible for West Coast security
as chief of Western Defense Command.
The Japanese race is an enemy race,
DeWitt argued in a February 1942 report,
and while many second- and thirdgeneration Japanese born on United
States soil, possessed of United States
citizenship, have become Americanized, the racial strains are undiluted.
Construction at Heart Mountain
began in June 1942; on August 11 it
received its rst residents. So many came
from Californiathe majority from Los
Angeles Countythat the then-governor of Wyoming called Heart Mountain

Californias dumping ground.

I rst saw the camp on August 20,
2011, when I attended the dedication
of its new museum, the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center. I met Norman
Mineta, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Secretary of Transportation, who spent several years as a boy
interned at Heart Mountain with his
family, and spoke of the importance of
being vigilant in our protection of our
constitutional rights to ensure that
our past mistakes are not repeated. The
keynote speaker, Hawaii Senator Daniel
Inouye, was living on Honolulu at age 17
when the Japanese attacked. The son of
a Japanese immigrant, Inouye recalled
spotting the Japanese Rising Sun on the
wings of aircraft careering overhead and

thinking, At that moment I knew my life

had changed. In short order, it did, with
Inouye and other loyal Americans being
treated as Enemy Aliens.
Although eager to prove their loyalty, Japanese Americans were initially
barred from ghting in the war. Restrictions nally lifted in February 1943, and
more than 800 men and women from
Heart Mountain served in the U.S. armed
forces, with many of the men ghting in
Europe. The Japanese American 442nd
Regimental Combat Team became the
United States most decorated military
unit for its size and length of service.
Twenty-one of the regiments warriors
received the Medal of Honor; one of
them was Daniel Inouye.
Today, Heart Mountain Interpretive
JULY/AUGUST 2016

29

Time Travel

Center is a testament to the illogicality

of war. Bland and lackluster from the
outside, the Center is a barracks-style
building designed to evoke the original
barracks and the bleakness of camp life.
As I stand before it, the mid-morning
summer sun blazes down on my skin.
It is a dry, intense heat that saps your
energy. There are no trees or shade
around me, only the suns blistering rays.
Out front, an American ag gently aps
in the slight breeze.
Inside, a docent hands me a rectangular paper tag, similar to the numbered
tags the government used to identify
internees and their luggage, and ushers
me into the theater for an introductory
lm. In All We Could Carry, by Academy Award-winning lmmaker Steven
Okazaki, whose father was interned at
Heart Mountain, 12 former residents
talk about life behind the barbed wire.
You cant always be worrying about
what you lost. You have to just keep on
going, one says.
Afterward I tour exhibits depicting a

timeline of the roundup of West Coast

Japanese, and stories of how the FBI
knocked on doors in 1942, issuing ID tags
to each Japanese occupant. Throughout,
museum displays are artfully and effectively built around life-size photo cutouts of residents, taken from historical
images. The progression shows families
packing their entire lives in their bags,
with suitcases and clothing from the
time bringing the point home. People
with quizzical expressions board buses
and trains to Heart Mountain, transporting them to an unknown future.
Most poignant is the display of two
adjoining rooms in a typical barracks.
A disturbing reminder of what greeted
evacuees once they arrived, the rst is a
crude wooden shanty with uninsulated
walls, a bare window, and military cots.
The adjacent room shows what the same
room looked like once occupied, and
with touches addeda quilt, a toyto
make the space feel more like home. Privacy was nonexistent, save for the occasional improvised bed sheet hung from

WHEN YOU GO
The Heart
Mountain Interpretive Center
(heartmountain.org) is a
15-minute drive northeast
of Cody, Wyoming, on
Highway 14a. Admission
is $7.00 for adults and
$5.00 for seniors and
students. Members and
children under 12 are free.
WHERE TO STAY
AND EAT
Cody has an
array of appealing options for
lodging and food. The
Chamberlin Inn (chamberlininn.com) is a familyowned and operated
boutique hotel located only
steps from Codys historic
main street, Sheridan

30

WORLD WAR II

Avenue. Larger but equally

nice is the Best Western
Premier Ivy Inn & Suites
(bestwesternwyoming.
com). Blackwater Creek
Ranch (blackwatercreekranch.com), 35 miles
west of Cody, offers visitors
an authentic western dude
ranch experience.
One of the newest
restaurants in town is The
Local (thelocalcody.com).
An organic farm-to-table
boutique restaurant, the
place is wildly popular with
locals and visitors alike.
For juicy cuts, try the Wyoming Rib and Chop House
(ribandchophouse.com);
The Proud Cut Saloon &
Steakhouse (307-527-6905)
is another hearty choice for
lunch and dinner.

WHAT ELSE TO SEE

The Buffalo Bill
Center of the
West (centerofthewest.org) in Cody is a
Smithsonian-quality collection of ve museums in one
building. The Buffalo Bill
Museum explores its namesakes legacy; the Whitney
Western Art Museum
shows masterworks of the
American West; the Plains
Indian Museum shares
tribes stories and culture;
the Draper Natural History
Museum provides an overview of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (the
parks east entrance is 52
miles west of Cody); the
Cody Firearms Museum
has an exhaustive collection of American rearms.

the ceiling. Residents shared bathroom

and laundry facilities and ate their meals
in communal mess halls.
The museums main room is dedicated
to camp life. While armed military police
guarded the 46,000-acre facility from
nine towers, internees tried to create
normalcy inside. They built and worked
in camp schools, movie theaters, and
hospitalswhere they delivered more
than 550 babies conceived in connementand created photography clubs,
sports teams, writing, woodcarving,
sewing and knitting classes, and Boy
and Girl Scout groups. I thought back
to the Centers inaugural opening, and
Norman Minetas story of how, as a
12-year old, he had befriended 12-yearold Alan K. Simpson, a future Wyoming
Senator. They met at a Boy Scout jamboree, somehow cutting across barbed wire
and barriers to forge a lasting friendship.
To improve nutrition and vary their
diet, inmates dug an irrigation canal and
cleared the land of sagebrush. Gardening was a struggle, but hard work transformed once-barren earth into elds
of food. Sweet peas, tomatoes, squash,
cucumbers, and daikon radishes supplemented their diet while helping the
facility become more self-sufficient. In
August 1944, the camp newspaper, the
Heart Mountain Sentinel, reported an
all-time high in harvesting, describing
the abundance of produce grown that
year from the gardens. Today, a victory
garden replicates crops grown by Heart
Mountains internees.
My last stop is the Reection Room,
where visitors inscribe thoughts on
their ID tags and hang them on barbed
wire lining a wall. Large windows frame
Heart Mountain in the distance. We
must never forget the lessons of Heart
Mountain, even as the face of evil
changes, one reads. We had no idea
about this camp or that there were so
many of them, says another. Thank you
for teaching us about this truly tragic
time. May we never repeat it.
It was a time when America lost
its heart. 2

Pe
r

so
na
liz

FR

at
io
n

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Hermann Gring was

an outsize character
in every sense of the term
BY JAMES HOLLAND

32

WORLD WAR II

An artist from a Soviet

propaganda collective
portrayed the second
most powerful Nazi as
a creature of villany
and excess.

t 11:45 p.m. on October 15, 1946,

Allied guards were preparing to
escort top Nazis convicted of war
crimes from their cells in Nuremberg to the prison gymnasium for
hanging. The condemned included
Joachim von Ribbentrop, Adolf Hitlers foreign minister,
and General Alfred Jodl, chief of the German General Staff.
The best known was Hitlers deputy, the Wehrmachts highest-ranking officer, one of Europes richest and most powerful businessmen, and head of the Luftwaffe: Reichsmarschall
Hermann Gring.
Gring had fallen far. In early May 1940, he commanded
the worlds most powerful air force, poised to roar from continental victories and triumph over hated England. At home,
Germans adored their Fhrer, but found in der dicke HermannFat Hermanna figure of ebullient entertainment.
Slender, ascetic Hitler ate only vegetables, abstained from
smoking and drinking, and wore mainly plain gray jackets.
Not Gring. In flamboyant uniforms of his own design and
fingers bedizened with rings, the fat man ate, drank, and
made riotously merry, living out loud.
34

WORLD WAR II

Flamboyance and
excess suffused
Grings life.
He raised lions
throughout
the 1930s (1),
swapping them
for smaller
versions at the
Berlin Zoo when
they grew too
large. He indulged
a passion for
huntingand
for hunting
apparel (2,4)
and played the
role of dapper
sailor (3) aboard
his yacht, the
Carin II.

Florid style suffused Grings life.

He loved food, wine, art collecting, and
hunting. His country lodge, Carinhall,
named after his beloved first wife,
abounded with sculptures, paintings,
and furniture. Endangered species
roamed his grounds. He kept pet lions.
He adored cars and sailing; he called
his 90-foot motor yacht Carin II.
Grings dandy image made him a
persistent figure of ridicule. Germans
mocked him and the foreign press

1: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; 2, 3: ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES;

PREVIOUS PAGE: HERITAGE IMAGE PARTNERSHIP LTD/ALAMY

4
Grings love of luxury extended to playthings.
In addition to a detailed square-rigger model (5),
he had an elaborate toy railway at his country
home, Carinhall, with moving mechanical aircraft
that ew on wires overhead.
5

4: ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES; 5: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

painted him as an overweight buffoon. But Hermann Gring

was a colossus in every way: a wily Machiavellian with an
outsize IQ, skilled at combining charm, guile, and ruthlessness to get what he wantedskills he employed to the end.
ermann Wilhelm Grings name had been a household word in Germany since he was in his early
20s. After spending 1914-15 in the trenches of the
Western Front, he finagled his way into the air service, flying
on the sly as an unofficial observer for a friend. When found
out, he formally transferred to the service, becoming a
fighter pilota good one. His 22 victories earned him the
Orden Pour le Mritethe Blue Max, then Germanys most
exalted combat award. In July 1918, Gring, 25, assumed
command of Jagdgeschwader 1, the famed Flying Circus
led by Manfred von Richthofen until his death in action
three months earlier.
After the Armistice in November 1918, Gring gravitated
to barnstorming, performing aerobatic displays and demonstrations in Scandinavia for the Fokker Company. In autumn
1919, he was flying passenger planes for airline Svenska Lufttrafik. A war hero and decorated ace, with pale blue eyes and

lean, dashing good looks, Captain Gring made a splash in

Swedish society.
One night in February 1920, he flew Count Eric von Rosen,
a wealthy explorer and right-winger, to Rosens lakeside
castle at Rockelstad. Gring pressed through several blizzards, executing a perfect landing on the frozen lake. Rosen
invited the pilot to stay; other guests included Rosens sister-in-law, Carin von Kantzow. Gring fell hard for the similarly smittenand marriedCarin, then separated from her
husband; their affair generated gossip across Stockholm that
propelled the couple to Bavaria.
They were staying in the mountains near Munich in late
1922 when Gring, who was trying to organize former military men into a political party, attended a rally in Munich
protesting the Versailles Treaty. As the crowd shouted for
a Herr Hitler of the National Socialist German Workers
Party to speak, Gring realized the fellow was standing only
yards from him. Hitler kept silent, but something about the
man impelled Gring to attend the next session of the salon
the Austrian held Monday nights at Caf Neumann.
That evening, Hitler spoke vividly of resisting the Versailles Treaty with bayonetsjust the kind of fiery rhetoric
Gring yearned to hear. The pilot stood and spoke of the
need to put honor first in any conflict. Chatting afterward,
he and Hitler felt a mutual man-crush; Gring drawn to Hitlers pugnacity, Hitler to Grings glamour and connections.
Gring joined the fledgling party the next day.
JULY/AUGUST 2016

35

36

WORLD WAR II

Grings star had

been on the rise
since the First
World War. By
1918 (1) he took
command of a
celebrated ghter
wing. A leading
member of the
Nazi Party from
its early days (2),
he formed a close
relationship with
Hitler (3) that
spanned decades.
In 1939, Spain
honored him (4)
for the role
German volunteer
iersthe
Condor Legion
played in its
civil war.

PHOTO CREDIT

By January 1923, Hitler had put his new associate in

charge of the Sturmabteilung, known as the SA, the organizations paramilitary wingthen a motley rabble. Gring
quickly whipped the SA into shape, recruiting and arming
more men while imposing structure and discipline. The
next month Gring and Carin married; by summer he had
quit flying to support Hitlerorganizationally and financiallyrun the SA, and look after his bride. The soldier was
becoming a politician.
That November, Hitler persuaded war hero General Erich
Ludendorff to head a coup to take over Munich. At a speech
by the Bavarian State Commissioner, Hitler, guarded by
SA toughs, leaped to the stage declaring a revolution. The
Beer Hall Putsch collapsed, but not before Hitler, Gring,
and about 3,000 fellow Nazis marched into Munichs heart.
Police opened fire, killing 16 and wounding Hitler and
others, including Gring, who was shot in the groin.
Gring reluctantly relinquished leadership of the SA to
Ernst Rhm, a brutal war veteran, while he recovered during
a long, forced exile in Italy and Austria. To ease Grings persistent pain, doctors injected morphine; he became addicted
to the opiate. His dependency became a lifelong plague,
causing or exaggerating many of his outlandish characteristics. The drug induced a sine wave of effects, from energetic
euphoria to morose passivity, as well as weight gain, vanity
and delusions, and extreme anxiety.
The imprisoned Hitler asked Gring to seek financial
backing from Benito Mussolini and his Fascists, an odyssey

1: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; 2: EVERETT COLLECTION/ALAMY; 3: SEUDDEUTSCHER ZEITUNG/ALAMY; 4: ULLSTEIN BILD VIA

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that ended in humiliation. He and Carin, now brokein part

from loaning the Nazi Party moneyresented the charity
they needed. Irritation fed their growing anti-Semitism and
devotion to the National Socialist cause. Never in this life
was it so hard to exist, in spite of all the happiness I have
with my darling Hermann, Carin wrote in late 1924.
Addiction drove Gring into an asylum in 1925 and again
briefly in 1927. He emerged from these dark passages by
force of will and with his wifes encouragement, only to learn
the Nazis had dumped him from the roster. Carins health
waned, compromised by tuberculosis; by early 1927, at age
38, she was in a Swiss nursing home. Gring was in Germany
seeking work, trying to rekindle his political career and quit
dope. Darling, darling, I think of you all the time, Carin
wrote to him. You are all I have, and I beg you, make a really
mighty effort to liberate yourself before it is too late.
ring pulled himself from the precipice. In the
upcoming 1928 spring elections, he wanted to run
for the Reichstag; Hitler said no. Knowing that the
Nazis once had the secret backing of industrialists, Gring
told Hitler that unless he got his endorsement he would
make the information public and sue Hitlers underwriters
for every pfennig he and Carin had loaned the party since
1922. Hitler folded, and in May, Gring won the election as
one of 12 Nazi deputies, entitled to a salary, influence, and

Grings inuence grew

along with his wealth.
He drew crowds as a
powerful orator (5);
studied a model in
1939 for a factory (6)
that would bear his
name; and in 1940
during the Battle of
Britainmet with his
former squadron (7).
His fortunes, however,
were already shifting.

above all, opportunity that he was determined not to waste.

On June 13, 1928, Carin was strong enough to accompany
him to the Reichstag opening in Berlin. His partys marginality didnt bother him. We were the Twelve Black Sheep,
he said. Gring had found his mtier. While Carin played
hostess, he set to work with the energy of a thunderbolt.
He declared himself the partys transportation expert, nurturing contacts in the aviation and auto industries. Hitler
asked him to woo Berlin society to the Nazi cause. A natural
firebrand, Gring quickly learned to play to an audience. He
was now Hitlers most valuable asset. At the next election,
in September 1930, the Nazis won 107 seats, making them
the Reichstags second-biggest faction. The party needed a
deputy speaker; Hitler appointed Gring.
As the new deputy speaker, Gring traveled on behalf of
the Party, orating with rabble-rousing style. In July 1931, he
addressed 30,000 struggling farmers ripe for recruitment.
He was so moved to see all these people in need, wrote
Carin. There they all stood, singing Deutschland, Deutschland ber Alles, most of them with tears streaming down
their faces. How his nerves stand it beats me.
Carins health, however, continued to fail. A heart attack
laid her low just one day after her mothers funeral in September 1931. She died the next month in a Swedish sanatorium with Gring at her side. Grief and remorse hammered
at him. His marriage had dragged him from his morphine
JULY/AUGUST 2016

37

addiction and empowered him to succeed. And that, he

told Carins niece, was how my megalomania began.
ring overcame sadness through work. In the July
1932 elections, the National Socialists won with
the largest percentage of the vote. President Paul
von Hindenburg refused Hitler the chancellorship, but
Gring became president of the Reichstag. In January 1933,
when Hitler did become Chancellorlargely thanks to
Grings negotiating skills, nerve, and ruthlessnessGring
became the Fhrers right-hand man.
During the first year of Nazi rule, Gring purged Communists, Jews, and dissidents and paved the way for a oneparty state using a combination of manipulation, bribery,
and hired thugs. He was now Reich Commissar for Aviation and head of Germanys largest police force. He bound
the nations industries to the Nazis through coercion. Ive
always said that when it comes to the crunch hes a man of
steelunscrupulous, Hitler later noted.
In April, Gring set up the Forschungsamt, his personal
spy agency, with Hitlers consent. The operation bugged and
tapped the phones of foreign leaders and businessmen, and
almost every Nazi leader. In the regimes power struggles,
Gring always stayed a move ahead.
Publicly, he created the Geheime Staatspolizei, the
dreaded Gestapo secret police. He set up the first concentration campsoriginally holding pens for Nazi Party foesat
Oranienburg and Papenburg in the German state of Prussia.
Titles attached themselves to him: Speaker of the German
Parliament, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister
of Prussia, President of the Prussian State Council, Reich
Master of Forestry and Game (his hunting laws still exist),
and commander of a clandestine air force.
With the Nazis in power, the SA and its storm troopers lost
their utility, making their ambitious leader, Rhm, a threat
to Hitler. Gring urged Hitler to destroy Rhm and his top
goons, a step he got SS chief Heinrich Himmler to endorse.
In return, Gring handed off the Gestapo to the SS, which
took over as the partys military wing.
The resulting June 30, 1934, bloodbath, known as the
Night of the Long Knives, was almost entirely a Gring
production. He kept to his Berlin villa, sitting at a large oak
table on a gold-trimmed velvet chair, while hit squads and
SS men assassinated Rhm and at least 83 others. A few days
later, Gring organized a crab feast for fellow managers
Himmler and Erhard Milch, Grings number-two in the air
force. While they cracked open claws, a telegram from President Hindenburg arrived applauding their energetic and
victorious action.
That August, Hindenburg died and Hitler became Fhrer
of the Third Reich. The Luftwaffe came out of the shadows,
with Gring as commander in chief. Hitler often used him
38

WORLD WAR II

THE NIGHT OF THE LONG

KNIVES WAS ALMOST
entirely a Gring production. He kept to
his Berlin villa, sitting on a gold-trimmed
velvet chair, while hit squads and SS men
assassinated ambitious SA leader Ernst
Rhm and at least 83 others.

as his unofficial deputyover deputy Rudolf Hessand

eventually elevated Gring to the rank of Reichmarschall,
the only German officer ever appointed to the position.
The grand elevations hugely increased Grings power. But
they also shortchanged him of the practical experiences of
an officer rising through the ranksa bill that would come
infamously due.
mong the Fhrers henchmen, Gring was the one
most at ease with the Volk, a gregarious and optimistic contrast compared to dour mopes like propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Amid countless jokes at
his expense, Gring outranked any Nazi in popularity except
Hitler. The Reichmarschalls annual winter ball was the
social event of the year, and his uniforms and pomp grew
ever more outrageous.
Agriculture minister Walter Darr once visited Gring
as his valet was dressing him. A second servant presented
a cushion on which lay 12 ringsfour each of red, blue, and
green. Today, I am displeased, Gring told Darr with no
small amount of campiness. So we shall wear a deeper hue.
But we also desire to show that we are not beyond hope. So
we shall wear the green. On another occasion, a woman
invited to tea found the Luftwaffe commander wearing a
toga, jewel-encrusted sandals, and rouged lips.
The big man missed being married, and went looking
for another wife. His eccentricities did not put off former
actress Emmy Sonnemann, who in April 1935 became the
second Frau Gring. For their Berlin wedding, 30,000 soldiers lined the streets. Wrote a foreign reporter: You had
the feeling that an emperor was marrying.
In April 1936, Hitler assigned Gring control of oil and
synthetic rubber production, critical in a belligerent country short on petroleum. That summer, Gring was a dynamo,
quickly absorbing economic principles and introducing tax
breaks and other innovations. He bartered with Yugoslavia,
Romania, Turkey, and Spain for foodstuffs and raw materials,
while investing at home in research into synthetic fuels and
other emerging technologies. Gring recruited Germanys
best economists and leading industrialists to his new cause.

That October, Hitler adopted his proposals, naming

Gring the Special Commissioner of the Four-Year Plan,
the program readying Germany for all-out war; Economic
Minister Hjalmar Schacht now reported to him. Gring
was to reorganize the economy: continue rearmament,
amass resourcesparticularly fuel, rubber, and metalcut
unemployment, boost harvests, develop the autobahns and
other public works, and stimulate coal and other industrial
production. Trust this man I have selected, the Fhrer
announced. He is the best man I have for the job.
Gring also ran Germanys foreign exchange reserves;
no corporation purchased imports without his say-so. The
impecunious flyboy of the 1920s had transformed himself
into one of Europes richest men. But he wanted more. He
spun himself an empire through bribes, favors, and secret
deals. When German iron ore and steel production underperformed, he set up an outfit to absorb independent
operations in the Ruhr Valley and in Austriahence his
enthusiasm for the March 1938 Anschluss that incorporated
Austria into the Nazi Reichand monopolized the Reichs
steel sector. The move made him one of Europes, if not the
worlds, biggest industrialists.
The all-powerful and autocratic Hermann Gring Werke,
or HGW, evolved into a holding company. HGW owned 53
percent of arms maker Rheinmetall, 78 percent of auto firm
Steyr-Daimler-Puch, and 100 percent of gun manufacturer
Steyr Guss-Stahlwerke, whose holdings included a Swiss
arms factory. All ran as before, except that under Gring
the companies escaped state intervention, courtesy of his
patron, Adolf Hitler.
Wealth and his prestigious position within the Third Reich
awarded Gring his own armored train, Asien. His sleeping
car featured a huge bathtub; other carriages sported a photographers darkroom, a six-bed clinic with operating theater, and a barbershop. Two flat cars carried Grings fleet
of American, French, and German automobiles and his sixwheel-drive Mercedes W31 Gelndewagen convertible. Two
freight cars bristling with rapid-fire anti-aircraft Oerlikon
cannons provided security.
Simultaneously Gring honed the Luftwaffe, charming
and cajoling the best men from military and civil life into his
air force. One, General Walter Wever, became the first Luftwaffe chief of staff. The forward-thinking Wever kenned that
an air force had two roles: support ground forces, and operate strategically on its own.
Nurtured by bottomless budgets, the Luftwaffe grew
quickly, heightening Grings inclination to see all things
as possible, as he ignored unpalatable truths. In 1936, for
example, Wever had been planning for a long-range heavy
bomber force when he died in a flying accident. Successors
Hans Jeschonnek and old-time Gring wingman Ernst
Udet lacked Wevers vision. While Gring was immersed in

the Four-Year Plan, the Luftwaffes general staff scrapped

four-engine bomber plans, placing more emphasis on
dive-bombersa vision the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka seemed to
confirm during the Spanish Civil War in 1936.
Gring went along with the plan. But by 1940, he was
woefully out of touch. He had finished the previous war as a
captain, spent more than a decade as a civilian, and in being
abruptly elevated to general, missed staff college and the
on-the-job education of climbing through the ranks.
No four-engine bomber could dive-bomb, but that was
how Udet and Jeschonnek envisioned the Heinkel He 177a
turkey of a design that gobbled time, money, resources, and
the lives of their top pilots trying to test-fly it. Nor could the
new twin-engine Ju 88 achieve the Stukas capabilities. The
Luftwaffe headed into war with already obsolescent, mid1930s era bombers rather than powerful modern ones.
The Luftwaffe also failed to adapt an independent strategic role. Unaware of the problems, Gring boasted to
Hitler that his fliers would wipe out British troops retreating across the English Channel from Dunkirk. Only fishing
boats are coming over for the British, he said. Lets hope
the Tommies can swim!
The subsequent air battle laid bare the dive-bombers
shortcoming: With Messerschmitt Bf 109s protecting them
on attacks against buildings, the Stukas ruled, but when the
target was a moving ship defended by Supermarine Spitfires
and Hawker Hurricanes, the gull-winged predators could
not dominate. The Royal Air Force prevailed over the Channel, and 338,000 Allied troops escaped.
The same hubris suffused the Battle of Britain. Grings
chief intelligence officer, Colonel Joseph Beppo Schmid,
told his chief only what he wanted to hear: that the Luftwaffe could smash the RAF; that Germany was outpacing
Britains warplane production; that the Messerschmitt
Bf 110 trumped the Hurricane; that the English had but a
few hundred fighters. And those antennae along their coast?
Third-rate radar.
n fact, Britain had an advanced sensing system and a
coordinated air defensethe worlds firstand built
planes at twice Germanys rate. Myth holds that the
Battle of Britain was a near-run thing for the defenders, but
Grings men never came close.
Throughout, Gring meddled ineffectually. In early
September 1940, he summoned fighter commanders to
Carinhall for a pep talk. The airmen sat dutifully as Gring,
puffing a huge cigar, bloviated. What he said sounded
like the script of a movie about World War I, said Captain
Johannes Macky Steinhoff, an experienced and successful
fighter pilot. Biplanes looping, attacking from below, flying
so close that pilots could see the whites of their enemys eyes.
I couldnt stand it. Raising a hand, Steinhoff offered the
JULY/AUGUST 2016

39

Reichsmarschall a few truths about modern fighter doctrine.

Young man, you still have a lot of experience to gain and
a lot to learn before you think you can have your say here,
Gring replied. Now why dont you just sit back down on
your little rear end.
Losing the Battle of Britain proved disastrous, forcing
Hitler to turn east far earlier than he wanted and triggering a
two-front war. Thus started Gringsand the Luftwaffes
long, hard slide. Although the Luftwaffe would dominate
over the Soviet air force and in 1941-42 enjoy brief glories
in the Balkans and at Malta, Grings air force was soon in
decline, overstretched, and underproducing. Gring could
have retrieved the situation by unleashing Erhard Milch,
now a field marshal and still his ruthlessly efficient deputy.
However, Gring resented, mistrusted, and repeatedly
undermined Milch, and left his less competent pal Ernst
Udet in charge of procurement and production. The strain
broke Udet, who shot himself in November 1941, leaving a
mess never to be sorted out.
Gring and his industrial empire survived, but the Luftwaffe, once Germanys spearhead, fell into terminal decline.
At Stalingrad in November 1942 the Soviets encircled
250,000 men of the German Sixth Army. Hitler demanded
that Gring supply his trapped soldiers by plane but the
Luftwaffe botched the job, blackening Jeschonneksand
by association Gringsrecord. On February 2, 1943, what
remained of the Sixth Army in Stalingrad surrendered.
A month later, RAF Bomber Command hit Germanys industrial Ruhr Valley.
Gring thought he saw a lifeline: jet-powered warplanes
40

WORLD WAR II

Caricaturists
including Arthur
Szyk (1), an
artist known only
as BEN (2), and
Arias Bernal (3)
played off
Grings size and
style. The caption
accompanying
BENs image of a
heavily-medalled
Gring standing
next to an underclothed Fhrer
translates
from the French
(politely) as,
Me, I dont
care. Im
covered.

able to outrun enemy aircraft. On

May 25, 1943, fighter ace Adolf Galland touted the twin-engine Messerschmitt Me 262 jet, which flew 100
mph faster than any Allied pistonengine aircraft. The bird flies, Galland told the former fighter pilot. It
flies like theres an angel pushing.
To get the Me 262 fighting, Gring
scrapped Messerschmitt pistonengine projects. The Me 262 and other
wonder weapons, such as the rocket-propelled Me 163 fighter, lent the

1: REPRODUCED WITH THE COOPERATION OF THE ARTHUR SZYK SOCIETY, BURLINGAME, CA; WWW.SZYK.ORG; 2, 3: WARREN BERNARD COLLECTION

Grings affability and arrogance

continued after capturein a mug
shot (4); press interview (5); and at
Nuremberg (6). Asked on the stand
if he realized he was the only living
man who could explain the Nazi
Partys inner workings, he replied:
I am perfectly aware of that.

4, 6: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; 5: GETTY IMAGES

Luftwaffe enough perceived punch for Gring to persuade

Hitler that the Luftwaffe was the tool around which German
fortunes would turn once more.
So it was that Gring remained Hitlers chosen successor almost right up until the end. When Gring left Hitlers
bunker in Berlin on April 21, 1945, headed for Obersalzberg,
the Nazi enclave in Bavaria, he assumed he was next in the
line of Nazi succession.
That was about to change.
itlers secretary, Martin Bormann, loathed Gring
and convinced Hitler that a telegram Gring sent
him on April 23, suggesting he take over Germanys
leadership since Hitler had lost his freedom of action,
revealed that his longtime deputy was a turncoat. That same
day, the Fhrer authorized Grings arrest. But not long
after the SS came knocking, Hitler, Bormann, and the Third
Reich were dead. Grings captors held him at his childhood
home south of Salzburg until May 6.
Gring sent an aide with a letter to Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower, seeking a faceto-face meeting. The next morning, after hearing that an

American general was at a castle about 50 miles away,

Gring set off in his usual cavalcade. The U.S. Army officer
in question, Brigadier General Robert I. Stack, informed that
Gring wanted to surrender, set off leading a task force to
accept it. The motorcades met midway. After trading stares,
the American motioned to Gring to get into his vehicle.
Twelve years, Gring muttered. Ive had a good run for
my money.
During his 18-month incarceration and trial, Gring lost
weight, detoxed, and demonstrated acute intelligence, guile,
wit, and even charm. He befriended Lieutenant Jack G.
Wheelis, a burly guard and fellow hunter from Texas, and
Ludwig Pflcker, a physician. In court, Gring ran rings
around his prosecutor, made Justice Robert H. Jackson look
a fool, and often provoked onlookers to laughter. But he failed
to win one final battle. Certain he was doomed, Gring
hating the idea of dangling from a noose like common criminallobbied to go before a firing squad, a death befitting a
hero and martyr. The Allies refused his petition.
With the climb to the gibbet two hours away, the former
Reichsmarschall unscrewed a brass cartridge case he had
concealed and retrieved a glass vial of cyanide. The capsules
source remains a mysteryPflcker, or perhaps Wheelis.
Gring placed the ampule in his mouth between two molars.
He lay on his metal bed, blanket to chest, arms visible atop
the cover as his jailors required, and bit down. His gasp drew
guards, but too late. The Third Reichs second most important Nazi died, one eye open, one squeezed shut. As his heart
stopped, Hermann Gring appeared to be winking. 2
JULY/AUGUST 2016

41

When an
American
executioner
dispatched
top Nazis at
Nuremberg,
was his
method
torturously
inefficient
by design?
BY ANDREW
NAGORSKI

42

WORLD WAR II

Master Sergeant John C. Woods

deferred his demobilization
from the U.S. Army to hang
top Nazis condemned at the
International Military Tribunal in
Nuremberg in October 1946.

JULY/AUGUST 2016

The way Woods performed this job, the final chapter of

the Third Reich, would prove to be highly controversial
raising questions about the Allies decision to employ hanging as the means of execution, and Woods as the executioner.
The International Military Tribunal had sentenced 12
Nazi leaders to dieone of them in absentia. Martin Bormann, Adolf Hitlers right-hand man by the end of the war,
had escaped from his bunker in Berlin during the wars
final days and seemingly vanished. (His purported remains
turned up in a Berlin construction site in 1972; in 1998, DNA
tests confirmed their identity and led to the conclusion that
he had died on May 2, 1945, two days after Hitler committed
suicide.) That left 11 to be hanged in Nuremberg.
Hermann Gring, the highest-ranking Nazi sentenced
to death (see Larger than Life, page 32), was to be first to
mount the gallows, which had been hastily constructed in
the Nuremberg prison gym where American security guards
had played a basketball game only three days before the execution date. But Gring also eluded Woods: he bit into a cyanide pill the night before the executions began.
What particularly incensed Gring and some of the others
was the planned method of execution. Corporal Harold
Burson, a 25-year-old from Memphis who reported on the
trial and wrote daily scripts for the Armed Forces Network,
recalls: The one thing that Gring wanted to protect above
44

WORLD WAR II

everything else was his military honor. He made the statement more than once that they could take him out and shoot
him, give him a soldiers death, and he would have no problem with that. His problem was that he thought that hanging
was the worst thing they could do to a soldier.
Fritz Sauckel, who had overseen the slave labor apparatus,
shared those sentiments. Death by hangingthat, at least,
I did not deserve, he protested. The death partall right
but thatthat I did not deserve.
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and his deputy general,
Alfred Jodl, also pleaded to be spared the noose. They asked
for a firing squad instead, which, in Keitels words, would
offer them, a death which is granted to a soldier in all armies
of the world should he incur the supreme penalty. Emmy
Gring would later reportedly claim that her husband only
planned to use the cyanide capsule if his application to be
shot was refused.
That left 10 men to face the hangman. Herman Obermayer, a young Jewish GI who had worked with Woods at
the end of the war providing him with basic materials such
as wood and rope for scaffolds for earlier hangings, recalls
that the hangman defied all the rules, didnt shine his shoes
and didnt get shaved.
There was nothing accidental about the way Woods
looked. His dress was always sloppy, Obermayer added.
His dirty pants were always unpressed, his jacket looked
as though he slept in it for weeks, his M/Sgt. stripes were
attached to his sleeve by a single stitch of yellow thread at
each corner, and his crumpled hat was always worn at an
improper angle.
This alcoholic, ex-bum with crooked yellow teeth, foul
breath, and dirty neck, as Obermayer put it, knew he could
flaunt his slovenly appearance since his superiors needed
his services. And no more so than at Nuremberg, where suddenly Woods was at the center of events, yet betrayed no
nervousness as he carried out his assignment.
A committee of four generalsfrom the United States,
Britain, France, and the Soviet Uniondetermined the overall arrangements. Workers set up three wooden scaffolds,
each painted black, in the gym. The idea was to use two of the
scaffolds alternately, keeping the third in reserve if anything
went wrong. Each scaffold had 13 steps; the ropesa fresh
rope for each hangingwere suspended from the crossbeams supported on two posts. As Joseph Kingsbury-Smith,
the pool reporter at the scene, wrote, When the rope was
sprung, the victim dropped from sight in the interior of the
scaffolding. The bottom of it was boarded up with wood on
three sides and shielded by a dark canvas curtain on the
fourth, so that no one saw the death struggles of the men
dangling with broken necks.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES; PREVIOUS PAGE: AP PHOTO

EARLY 70 YEARS AGO, U.S.

Army Master Sergeant John
C. Woods carried out his most
famous assignment. On October 16, 1946, the beefy 35-yearold Kansan, the only American
hangman in the European Theater, dispatched 10 top Nazis
sentenced to death by the International Military Tribunal
at Nuremberg. He boasted later
that he had already executed
347 people during his 15-year
career, including several American servicemen accused of
murder and rape, along with
Germans accused of killing downed Allied pilots and
other offenses. Nuremberg was just what I wanted,
he told Stars and Stripes. I wanted this job so terribly that I stayed here a bit longer, though I could have
gone home earlier.

At 1:11 a.m., Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitlers foreign

minister, was the first to arrive. The original plan was for
the guards to escort the prisoners from their cells with their
hands unrestrained, but following Grings suicide, the rules
changed. Ribbentrop entered the room with his hands bound;
a guard then replaced the manacles with a leather strap.
After mounting the scaffold, the former diplomatic
wizard of Nazidom, as Kingsbury-Smith archly put it, proclaimed to the assembled witnesses: God protect Germany.
Allowed to make an additional short statement, the man who
had played a critical role in launching Germanys attacks on
country after country concluded: My last wish is that Germany realize its entity and that an understanding be reached
between the East and West. I wish peace to the world.
Woods then placed a black hood over his head, adjusted
the rope, and pulled the lever that opened the trap, sending
Ribbentrop to his death.

Two minutes later, Field Marshal Keitel entered the gym.

Kingsbury-Smith noted that he
was the first military leader to
be executed under the new concept of international lawthe
principle that professional soldiers cannot escape punishment for waging aggressive wars
and permitting crimes against humanity with the claim they
were dutifully carrying out orders of superiors.
Keitel maintained his military bearing to the last. Looking down from the scaffold before the noose was put around
his neck, he spoke loudly and clearly, betraying no signs
of nervousness. I call on God Almighty to have mercy on
the German people, he declared. More than two million
German soldiers went to their death for the Fatherland
before me. I follow now my sonsall for Germany.

At Nuremberg, captive
Nazi leaders listen to
charges against them in
a custom-made dock
whose armrests were
designed for discomfort.

JULY/AUGUST 2016

45

crimes he was accused of. I have loved my German people

and my Fatherland with a warm heart. I have done my duty
by the laws of my people and I am sorry my people were led
this time by men who were not soldiers and that crimes were
committed of which I had no knowledge.
As Woods produced the black hood, Kaltenbrunner added:
Germany, good luck.
Alfred Rosenberg, one of the earliest members of the
Nazi Party, who served as the de facto high priest of its
deadly racist cultural creed, was the most speedily dispatched. Asked if he had any final words, he did not respond.
Although Rosenberg was a self-professed atheist, a Protestant chaplain accompanied him and prayed at his side as
Woods pulled the lever.
After another short break,
Life magazine displayed
guards ushered in Hans Frank,
images of the executed
Hitlers Gauleiter, or goverNazis corpses along with
nor-general of occupied Poland.
Hermann Grings to
Unlike the others, after his
disprove rumors, the
death sentence was announced
text explains, that the
he had told Gilbert: I deserved
hangings were bungled.

NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM, GIFT OF TOM HEMRICK, 2002.432.081

With Ribbentrop and Keitel still hanging from their ropes,

the proceedings paused. An American general representing
the Allied Control Commission allowed the 30 or so people in
the gym to smokeand almost everyone immediately lit up.
An American and a Russian doctor, equipped with stethoscopes, ducked behind the curtains to confirm the two mens
deaths. When they emerged, Woods went up the first scaffolds steps, pulled out a knife strapped to his side, and cut
the rope. Guards carried Ribbentrops body, his head still
covered by the black hood, on a stretcher to a corner of the
gym blocked off with a black canvas curtain. This procedure
would be followed for each body.
The break over, an American colonel issued the command:
Cigarettes out, please, gentlemen.
At 1:36, it was the turn of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the Austrian SS leader who had succeeded the assassinated Reinhard
Heydrich as the chief of the Reich Security Main Office, the
agency that oversaw mass murder, the concentration camps,
and all manner of persecution. Yet from the scaffold Kaltenbrunner insistedas he had to G. M. Gilbert, an American
psychiatrist at the prisonthat he knew nothing about the

46

WORLD WAR II

I SAW
A SMALL
SMILE
CROSS
HIS LIPS
AS HE
PULLED
THE
HANGMANS
HANDLE.

it and I expected it. During his imprisonment, he had converted to Roman

Catholicism. As he entered the gym,
he was the only one of the 10 with a
smile on his face. He betrayed his nervousness by swallowing frequently,
but as Kingsbury-Smith reported, he
gave the appearance of being relieved
at the prospect of atoning for his
evil deeds.
Franks last words seemed to confirm that: I am thankful for the kind
treatment during my captivity and I
ask God to accept me with mercy.
Next, all that Wilhelm Frick, Hitlers minister of the interior, had to say was Long live eternal Germany.
At 2:12 a.m., Kingsbury-Smith noted, the ugly, dwarfish
little man, Julius Streichereditor and publisher of the
venomous Nazi party newspaper Der Strmerwalked to
the gallows, his face visibly twitching. Asked to identify himself, he shouted: Heil Hitler!
Allowing for a rare reference to his emotions, KingsburySmith confessed: The shriek sent a shiver down my back.
As a guard pushed Streicher up the final steps, he glared at
the witnesses and screamed: Purim Fest, 1946. The reference was to the Jewish holiday that commemorates the execution of Haman, who, according to the Old Testament, was
planning to kill all Jews in the Persian Empire.
Asked formally for his last words, Streicher shouted: The
Bolsheviks will hang you one day. While Woods was placing
the black hood over his head, Streicher could be heard saying
Adele, my dear wife.
But the drama was far from over. The trapdoor opened
with a bang with Streicher kicking as he went down. As the
rope snapped taut, it swung wildly and the witnesses could
hear him groaning. Woods came down from the platform
and disappeared behind the black curtain that concealed the
dying man. Abruptly the groans ceased and the rope stopped
moving. Kingsbury-Smith and the other witnesses were convinced Woods had grabbed Streicher and pulled down hard,
strangling him.
HAD SOMETHING GONE WRONGOR WAS THIS NO
accident? Lieutenant Stanley Tilles, charged with coordinating the Nuremberg hangings, later claimed Woods had
deliberately placed the coils of Streichers noose off-center
so that his neck would not be broken during his fall; instead,
he would strangle. Everyone in the chamber had watched
Streichers performance and none of it was lost on Woods. I
knew Woods hated Germansand I watched his face become

florid and his jaws clench, he wrote, adding that Woodss

intent was clear. I saw a small smile cross his lips as he
pulled the hangmans handle.
The procession of the unrepentant continuedand so
did the apparent mishaps. Fritz Sauckel, the man who had
overseen the vast Nazi universe of slave labor, screamed
defiantly: I am dying innocent. The sentence is wrong. God
protect Germany and make Germany great again. Long live
Germany! God protect my family. He, too, groaned loudly
after dropping through the trapdoor.
Wearing his Wehrmacht uniform with its coat collar half
turned up, Alfred Jodl only offered up the last words: My
greetings to you, my Germany.
The last of the 10 was Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who had
helped install Nazi rule in his native Austria and later presided over occupied Holland. After limping to the gallows on
his clubfoot, he, like Ribbentrop, presented himself as a man
of peace. I hope that this execution is the last act of the tragedy of the Second World War and that the lesson taken from
the world war will be that peace and understanding should
exist between peoples, he said. I believe in Germany.
At 2:45, he dropped to his death.
Woods calculated that the total time from the first to the
tenth hanging was 103 minutes. Thats quick work, the
hangman declared later.
While the bodies of the last two condemned men dangled,
guards brought out an eleventh on
a stretcher. An army blanket covered the body, but two large bare
feet protruded from it and one
arm in a blue silk pajama sleeve
was hanging down on the side.
A U.S. Army colonel ordered
that the blanket be removed to
avoid any doubt about whose body
was joining the others. Hermann
Grings face was still contorted
with the pain of his last agonizing moments and his final gesture
of defiance, Kingsbury-Smith
reported. They covered him up
quickly and this Nazi warlord, who
like a character out of the Borgias,
had wallowed in blood and beauty,
passed behind a canvas curtain
into the black pages of history.

WOODS
CALCULATED
THAT THE
TOTAL TIME
FROM THE
FIRST TO
THE TENTH
HANGING
WAS 103
MINUTES.
THATS QUICK
WORK, HE
DECLARED
LATER.

IN HIS STARS AND STRIPES

interview, Woods maintained that
the operation had gone off preJULY/AUGUST 2016

47

48

WORLD WAR II

as a matter of fact, Ill probably

die that way myself.
Aw, for Christs sake, be serious, thats nothing to kid about,
another soldier interjected.
Woods wasnt laughing. Im
damn serious, he said. Its
clean and its painless, and its
traditional. He added: Its traditional with hangmen to hang themselves when they get old.
Obermayer was not persuaded. Hanging is a special kind
of humiliating experience, he said, looking back at those
encounters with Woods. Why so humiliating? Because
when you die, all your sphincters lose their elasticity. You
become a shitty mess. In his view, it was hardly surprising
that the top Nazi officials at Nuremberg pleaded so desperately for the firing squad instead.
Nonetheless, Obermayer was convinced that Woods
was sincere in his belief that he was carrying out a job that
needed to be done with maximum efficiency and decency.
Pierrepoint, his British counterpart whose father and uncle
had plied the same trade, made a similar claim at the end
of his career: I operated, on behalf of the State, what I am
convinced was the most humane and dignified method of
meting out death to a delinquent, he wrote in a memoir

British hangman Albert

Pierrepoint, here in the
1970s, criticized Woodss
technique. Unlike Woods,
Pierrepoint calculated
individual drops for his
victims based on their
height and weight.

WANDSWORTH MUSEUM COLLECTION; OPPOSITE: U.S. ARMY

cisely as he had planned it. Everything went A1. I have

never been to an execution which went better, he said. I
am only sorry that that fellow Gring escaped me; Id have
been at my best for him. No, I wasnt nervous. I havent got
any nerves. You cant afford nerves in my job.
But in the aftermath of the hangings, some press accounts
and military men fiercely disputed Woodss claims. Kingsbury-Smiths pool report left no doubt that something had
gone wrong with Streichers execution, and probably also
with Sauckels. A report in the London Star claimed that
the drop had been too short and the condemned men were
not properly tied, which meant they hit their heads as they
plunged through the trapdoor and died of slow strangulation. In his memoirs, General Telford Taylor, who helped
prepare the International Military Tribunals case against
the top Nazis and became the chief prosecutor in the subsequent 12 Nuremberg trials, pointed out that photographs of
the bodies laid out in the gym seemed to confirm such suspicions. Some of the faces appeared to be bloodied.
This prompted speculation that Woods had intentionally
bungled some parts of the job. Albert Pierrepoint, Britains
highly experienced hangman, did not want to criticize his
American counterpart directly, but he did refer to newspaper reports of indications of clumsinessarising from the
unalterable five-foot drop and the, to me, old-fashioned
four-coiled cowboy knot. In his book Nuremberg: A Nation
on Trial, German historian Werner Maser asserted that Jodl
took 18 minutes to die; Keitel as long as 24 minutes.
Those claims did not tally with Kingsbury-Smiths pool
report, and some subsequent accounts of the hangings may
have deliberately exaggerated or sensationalized what went
wrong. Still, the hangings were hardly the smooth operation
that Woods insisted he had carried out. He tried to deflect
criticism prompted by the photographs by saying that
sometimes victims bit their tongues during hangings, which
would account for the blood on their faces.
The debate about Woodss performance only underscored
the issue several of the condemned men had raised in the
first place: why choose hanging over the firing squad? As
Whitney Harris, a member of the U.S. prosecution team
pointed out, the Allies had clearly decided to have the top
Nazis share the fate of common criminals; they had no
desire to provide them with what they considered to be the
more dignified military ritual of a firing squad. Yet Woods
was genuinely convinced about the virtues of his trade.
Obermayer, the young GI who had assisted Woods when
he carried out earlier executions, recalled a more-or-less
drunken moment when one soldier asked the hangman
whether he would like to die at the end of a rope or by some
other means. You know, I think its a damn good way to die;

published in 1974. Among Pierrepoints victims during his

tour in Germany were the Beasts of Belsen, including the
former commandant of Bergen-Belsen, Josef Kramer, and
the infamously sadistic guard, Irma Gresejust 22 when she
went to the gallows. By the time Pierrepoint reached old age,
however, his views had changed. Capital punishment, in my
view, achieved nothing except revenge, he concluded.
Obermayer remained convinced that Woods approached
all his assignments, including his most famous one, with
professional detachment. It was just another job for him,
he wrote. Im sure his approach to it was much more like
that of the union workman who stands on the slaughtering
block in a Kansas City packing house than that of the proud
French fanatic who guillotined Marie Antoinette in the
Place de la Concorde.
But in the aftermath of the war, it was hardly surprising that notions of revenge and justice often intermingled,
regardless of the motives of the executioners themselves.

Among his fellow GIs at Nuremberg, Corporal Burson, the

Armed Forces Network scriptwriterlater co-founder of
the giant global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller
regularly encountered arguments that there was no need
for trials since summary executions of the top Nazis would
be quicker and easier. In his scripts, Burson countered
that view, quoting the reasoning of Supreme Court Justice
Robert H. Jackson, the chief American prosecutor in that
lead trial: We must never forget that the record on which
we judge these defendants today is the record on which
history will judge us tomorrow. Or, as Burson put it in his
script: We do not desire to employ the Nazi wayto take
em out and shoot emfor our system is not lynch law. We
will dispense punishment as the evidence demands.
As for Woods, his prediction about how he would die
proved wrong. On July 21, 1950, while repairing a power line
on Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands, Woods accidentally
electrocuted himself. 2

A gallows trapdoor
yawns, here at
Germanys Lansberg
Prison. Woods, who
hung dozens of war
criminals there, called
hanging a damn
good way to die.

JULY/AUGUST 2016

49

[ portfolio ]

Elite teams cleared the way for amphibious landings across the Pacic Theater

tarting in August 1942 the U.S. military began

creating specialized units of navy and army
personnel trained in beach reconnaissance and
obstacle demolition. Each unit, however, trained in
uniquely different ways and operated independently.
Following the Marines costly beach landings at Tarawa
in November 1943, Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner,
Commander of the 5th Amphibious Force, ordered the
creation of a standardized training program with newly
organized teams focused solely on reconnoitering enemyheld beaches and destroying their defensive obstacles
the Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs). The rst UDT

teams went into action in the Marshall Islands in January

1944, but the mens wet fatigues, boots, helmets, and
life jackets hampered their movement. When one team
was unable to paddle its rubber boat across a coral reef
to its objective, the pair stripped down to their underwear, swam undetected to the objective, and successfully
returned with crucial intelligence. Subsequent training
emphasized combat swimming and reduced the mens
reliance on equipment. Ultimately 34 UDTs were formed,
and from June 1944 to August 1945 the web-footed
naked warriors, as they became known, participated in
every major amphibious landing in the Pacic.

AGILE, EFFECTIVE, MOTIVATED

Gunners Mate 1st Class S. C. Conrad
prepares to dive on a reconnaissance
mission near Balikpapan, Borneo.
Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs)
underwent rigorous training that
emphasized bold action using minimal
equipment. The teams provided vital
intelligence prior to the U.S. Army and
Marine Corps amphibious landings.

JULY/AUGUST 2016

51

[ portfolio ]

BARE MINIMUM
By mid-1944 UDT men trained in combat swimming
wearing only trunks, a face mask (top, right) and
rubber fins (right). One such naked warrior (above)
checks his gear during operations at Balikpapan in July
1945. Generally, UDT members used air hoses and lifelines (below) only during training.

PROVING THEIR METTLE

UDTs pioneered the creation of
specialized gear, including the pontoon
craft (left) used to transport men and
equipment behind a powered vessel.
Once near their objective, men relied on
their skills in the water. UDT swimmers
(below) train to plant explosives on
commonly encountered beach defenses.

JULY/AUGUST 2016

53

[ portfolio ]

CLEARING THE WAY

Navy Combat Demolition Unit personnel (below),
many of whom were later reorganized into UDTs,
tow an explosive-laden rubber boat to clear a
channel of coral near Morotai, Maluku Islands,
in 1944. UDTs often used explosives to clear
man-made and natural obstacles. UDT 6 men
(right) observe an explosion near Saipan in 1945.

Exhausted UDT 10 men (left),

their bodies still camouflaged
with greasepaint, celebrate on
the submarine USS Burrfish
after conducting operations
at Peleliu and the Yap Islands.
UDT 10 was the only UDT team
to operate from a submarine
during the war. Two of the five
men pictured were later killed
in action.

ALL IMAGES: NATIONAL NAVY UTD-SEAL MUSEUM

ALL IN, ALL THE TIME

FROGMAN
A UDT diver prepares to plant
a satchel of explosives on an
underwater obstacle. Tactics and
equipment developed during the
warin training and in combat
heavily influenced future special
warfare units, including the U.S.
Navys SEAL Teams.

JULY/AUGUST 2016

55

WEAPONS MANUAL

Steadfast Striker

Throwing Shade
Painted panels
on the engine
cowlings and
in front of the
cockpit helped
reduce glare.

Americas Boeing B-17 heavy bomber

ILLUSTRATION BY JIM LAURIER
The B-17 Flying Fortress is best known as
the primary workhorse of the U.S. Army Air
Forces daylight strategic bombing campaign
in Europe. In all, the B-17 equipped 32 overseas combat groups and dropped 640,036
tons of bombs in Europe, more than any
other American aircraft. Although the B-17
also operated in the Pacific Theater, General Henry Hap Arnold preferred the B-24
Liberators longer range, and B-17 groups
there converted to other types by mid-1943.
Nevertheless, pilots largely preferred the
B-17 for its stability and ability to keep flying
even with extensive battle damage. During
the war, Boeing and other companies manufactured 12,731 Flying Fortresses in eight
variants. The final model, the B-17G, began
production in July 1943 and featured numerous improvements over previous variants.
The B-17G cost an average of $238,300; 8,680
were built by wars end. The B-17G depicted
here, A Bit O Lace, completed 83 consecutive missionsa testament to the ground
crews dogged efforts to keep the bomber fit
for duty. Paraag Shukla

The Competition
British Avro Lancaster
Range: 2,530 mi. Top speed: 282
mph Ceiling: 21,400 ft Armament:
8 machine guns Typical bomb load: 14,000 lbs Production: 7,377
The Lanc was Britains main heavy bomber and the primary instrument of the Royal Air Forces nighttime bombing campaign.

Stage Front
The nose art
depicts cartoonist
Milton Caniffs
beloved Miss Lace,
a central character
of his comic strip
Male Call. The
bomb icons above
it mark the B-17s
many missions.

German He-177 Greif

Range: 2,000 mi. Top speed:
350 mph Ceiling: 26,000 ft
Armament: 5 machine guns, 2 cannons Typical bomb load: 15,800 lbs
Production: 1,169 The Luftwaffes only long-range heavy bomber
had a tendency to catch fire, sparking the nickname Flaming Coffin.

Italian P-108B Bombardiere

Range: 2,187 mi. Top speed: 267 mph
Ceiling: 27,100 ft Armament: 7
machine guns Typical bomb load: 7,700 lbs Production: 24 The
P-108B was a costly design, and Mussolinis son, Bruno, died in one
of its many learning-curve accidents.

56

WORLD WAR II

Supercharged Power
Four Wright R-1820-97 radial
engines, each producing 1,200 hp,
propelled the B-17G to a top speed
of 287 mph. With a service ceiling
of 35,600 ft, the B-17 had a range of
2,000 mi with a 6,000 lb bomb load.

B-17s propeller and exhaust contrails (above) were often visible in frigid
altitudes over 20,000 feet. After ak mangled their B-17G over Germany,
the pilots managed to y their crippled bird (right) back to base in England.

In the Buff
B-17s were initially painted in olive drab
camouage, but once the Allies established
air superiority, the aircraft appeared in
their natural silver nish, which helped
reduce weight and drag.

PHOTOS: NATIONAL ARCHIVES (BOTH)

Flying Porcupine
Prior to the introduction of long-range
ghter escorts, B-17s relied on their
defensive repower and ew in close
box formations. The ball turret was one
of eight .50-caliber machine gun positions
covering areas around the B-17G.

Geometric Identification
A Bit O Laces tail markings identify
it as part of the 709th Bombardment
Squadron, 447th Bombardment Group,
3rd Air Division, Eighth Air Force.

JULY/AUGUST 2016

57

Nazi-occupied Norway,
February 27, 1943
IN A STAGGERED LINE, the nine saboteurs
of Operation Gunnerside cut across the mountain slope. Instinct, more than the dim light
of the moon, guided the young men. On skis,
they threaded through the pine stands traversing down the uneven terrain, much of it
pocked with empty hollows or buried under
snowdrifts. Dressed in white camouflage snowsuits over British Army uniforms, the Norwegians
looked like phantoms haunting the woods. They
moved as quietly as ghosts, the silence broken
only by the swooshing of their skis and the occasional slap of a pole against an unseen branch. A
steady wind blowing through Vestfjord Valley, 100
miles west of Oslo, dampened even those sounds.

SABOTEURS ON
In the snowbound mountains of Norway, a band of
commandos took on the Nazi A-bomb program
BY NEAL BASCOMB

58

WORLD WAR II

SKIS
Norwegian commandos, depicted here in a
1948 dramatization, trek across the landscape
laden with weapons and equipment to attack a
hydroelectric plant in Nazi-occupied Norway.

JULY/AUGUST 2016

59

single-lane suspension bridge provided workers and vehicles the only point of entry.
Now, the commandosa heavily armed five-man covering
party and four-man demolition teamplanned to infiltrate
the fortress. They were not the first to try. Each man was
painfully aware that the last mission had met with absolute
disaster: the death of an entire 41-member British force.
Although the commandos had been told that destroying
Vemork would strike a significant blow against the Nazi war
machine, their commitment and dedication were more personal. They had seen Nazi Germany invade their country in
April 1940, curtail their rights, and humiliate, starve, and
kill their family and friends. No matter the military objective, the men were there for Norway and the freedom of
its people. The saboteurs refastened their skis and started
down the road through the darkness.

CROSS THE NORTH SEA, IN OXFORD, ENGLAND,

the operations mastermind, Leif Tronstad, 39,
tensely awaited word of the mission. A celebrated
former chemistry professor with sharp blue eyes
and keen intelligence, he had once led the construction of an industrial facility at Vemork. Now he was at the
center of a mission to destroy it.

PHOTO CREDIT

The woods soon became too dense and steep for them to
continue by any means except on foot. It was tough going.
They clambered through the heavy, wet snow carrying rucksacks filled with 35 pounds of equipment and armed with
submachine guns, pistols, grenades, explosives, and knives.
When they finally cleared the forest, the men came to the
road running across the valleys northern side, westward
toward the Lake Ms Dam. From here the commandos could
hear the low hum of their target: the Vemork hydroelectric
plant. The power station and adjacent eight-story hydrogen
plant were just south of the small band, an eagles swoop
over the precipitous Mna River gorge.
In the moonlight, the Vemork plant cast the imposing silhouette of a fortress. The concrete and steel monolith occupied a defensively advantageous location on an icy ledge,
600 feet above the river. The Germans who oversaw it,
however, were taking no chances. They had installed floodlights, barbed wire fences,
sirens, and planted mines
The Vemork hydroelectric
in the surrounding hillplant (below, in 2013) was
sides; machine-gun nests
the rst industrial-sized
and troop barracks stood
heavy water plant in the
nearby; patrols frequently
world. By 1942 the Allies
sought to put it out of action.
swept the grounds; and a

TOP: NORGES HJEMMEFRONTMUSEUM; MIDDLE: PRIVATE COLLECTION, HAUKELID FAMILY; BOTTOM: NORSK INDUSTRIARBEIDERMUSEUM; OPPOSITE: PICTORAL PRESS LTD/ALAMY; PREVIOUS PAGE: HERO FILM/RONALD GRANT ARCHIVE/ALAMY

The commandos had seen Nazi Germany invade their country,

curtail their rights, and humiliate, starve, and kill their family and friends.
The men were there for Norway and the freedom of its people.

Leif Tronstad (top right, with

exiled Norwegian King
Haakon VII in England),
masterminded the mission.
The team included Brooklynborn Knut Haukelid (left),
who would go on to strike
the nal blow against the
Nazi heavy water program,
and 23-year-old Joachim
Rnneberg (below, front row,
right), who led the operation.

Before the war, Tronstad was a consultant for many Norwegian industrial firms. In 1933, he proposed that one such
firm, Norsk Hydro, build a facility at Vemork to produce a
form of water known as deuterium oxide, or heavy water. It
is as rare as it is distinctive; for every 41 million molecules
of ordinary water there is just one molecule of heavy water.
Tronstad was not sure about the substances utility, but, as
he often told his students, Technology first, then industry and applications! He did know that Vemork, with its
inexhaustible supply of cheap power and water, provided
the perfect setup for such a facility. Through an ingenious
inverse-pyramid arrangement of electrolysis chambers,
Tronstad built the firstand onlyindustrial-sized heavy
water plant in the world.
When the Vemork plant shipped its first containers of
heavy water in January 1935, scientists around the world
heralded it as a breakthrough. Even though heavy waters
application remained uncertain, Tronstad spoke passionately of its promise for chemical and biomedical research,
and its use in the burgeoning field of atomic physics. By 1939,
rapid advances in the latter pointed to one significant use:
heavy water could be a key componenta so-called moderator, like graphitein nuclear fission, helping to release a
burst of energy on a previously unthinkable scale.
When the Nazis occupied Norway in spring 1940, they
took control of the Vemork plant. And Tronstad, still ostensibly a professor and consultant, began spending most of his
time on resistance activities. He established a spy network
to supply the British with intelligence on German activity
in Norway; one of his reports described the Nazis efforts to
rapidly increase production at Vemork.
By September 1941, the Gestapo had learned of Tronstads
underground activities and sought him for arrest. Forced to
leave behind his wife and two young children, the scientist
escaped to England, where the exiled Norwegian government had established headquarters. The British scientific
community tried to recruit Tronstad into their fold, but he
wanted an active role in freeing Norway. He maneuvered
himself into a position with the Norwegian Army High Command, chiefly as a liaison with the British Special Operations
Executive (SOE), which conducted espionage, sabotage, and
reconnaissance in occupied Europe. With his knowledge of
Norwegian industry, Tronstad had rare insight into how to
undermine the German war machine.
JULY/AUGUST 2016

61

By early 1942, the Allies knew the Nazis were racing to

harness nuclear energy. Given German interest in Vemorks
heavy water, British intelligence believed the Nazis intended
to build a self-sustaining reactor to produce plutonium,
a highly fissile element ideal for manufacturing an atomic
bomb. Since [plutonium] is best prepared in systems
involving the use of heavy water, an April 1942 statement
from Churchills War Cabinet read, the Committee recommends that an attempt should, if possible, be made to stop
the Norsk Hydro production [at Vemork].
The Americans and British pushed to strike Vemork by air
or with a major ground attack as a joint effort of the Combined Operations Headquartersthe British War Office
department tasked with coordinating forces to conduct
harassing raids against German forces on the continent.
Tronstad feared either scenario would cost too many Norwegian lives. He advocated a small, well-planned commando
attack against the facility.
Instead, in November 1942, Combined Operations Headquarters launched an airborne operation, Operation Freshman, in which a British force in two gliders would land near
Vemork, destroy the plant, and escape to Sweden. But both
gliders crashed before reaching their landing zones. Those
the crashes did not kill, German soldiers did: altogether 41
Royal Engineers, glider pilots, and crew died on the mission.
And the Nazis now knew of the Allies interest in their heavy
water production.
The SOE turned to Tronstad. He assembled a force whose

Norwegian members had escaped Nazi occupation and traveled to England, where they were recruited into Kompani
Linge, an elite group of commandos under the control of the
Norwegian Army High Command and the SOE. As he had
with Operation Freshman, Tronstad provided the commandos with scores of reconnaissance photographs, blueprints,
equipment diagrams, and reams of intelligence reports.
They even practiced using a scale mock-up of the target. On
the mission they would wear standard-issue British Army
uniforms to prevent Nazi reprisals against the Norwegian
population. Still, Tronstad knew an unexpected event could
plunge the operation into disaster. He hoped their preparationand a little luckwould see it through to success.
For the sake of those who have gone before and fallen, I
urge you to do your best, he told the team. Trust that your
actions will live in history for a hundred years to come.

IEUTENANT JOACHIM RNNEBERG,

Operation Gunnersides leader, surveyed the scene
from the edge of the snowbound hillside. Intelligent and steady, with a slim, patrician countenance,
Rnneberg, 23, had an innate ability to lead, and the
teams complete respect. At his command, they continued
toward the bottom of Vestfjord Valley, hanging onto shrubs
and branches, repeatedly slipping and losing their footing
in the snow, until they finally reached the Mna River. The
cliffs of the gorge soared upward on either side of them.
One of the commandos, Claus Helberg, a boyish 24-year-

NAZI GERMANY AND THE BOMB

How close were they? BY MARK WALKER

N THE EVE OF WORLD WAR II,

war (September 1939 to November

declaring war on the United States days

four scientiststwo Germans and

1941), neither the United States, which

later. In Germany and the United States,

two German migrscollectively

remained neutral, nor Germany, which

military and political authorities asked

discovered nuclear ssion. Work to

had enjoyed a string of victories without

scientists working on nuclear weapons

understand and develop the discovery

a signicant defeat, needed what the

the same question: when can we expect

began quickly thereafter. Scientists in

Germans would later call wonder weap-

these weapons? Underpinning this ques-

many different countriesLeo Szilard in

ons. As a result, nuclear research in both

tion was another: can these weapons

the United States, Frdric Joliot-Curie in

countries proceeded with surprisingly

decide the outcome of the war?

France, Rudolf Peierls in Britain, Paul

equal progress.

Harteck in Germany, among themsaw

answer: yes, nuclear weapons appear

in the discovery a potential for military

The German Blitzkrieg ground to a halt in

possible, but developing them will take

applications, and some discretely con-

the Soviet Union and the Japanese attack

years. The contexts for that answer dif-

tacted authorities.

on Pearl Harbor brought the Americans

fered, however. In 1941-42, planners in

into the war, with Hitler unilaterally

(Continued on page 64)

During the Blitzkrieg phase of the

62

That changed in the winter of 1941-42.

Scientists on both sides had the same

WORLD WAR II

The cliffs of the gorge soared upward on either side of them. Up close
in the dark, the steep, 600-foot ascent looked nearly unassailable.
But there could be no turning back. Rnneberg gave the hand signal: up!

LEFT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; CENTER: AIP EMILIO SEGRE VISUAL ARCHIVES; RIGHT: MARK WALKER

old, had grown up in the immediate area and worked as a

mountain guide for a touring organization before the war.
He and several other compatriots on this mission had spent
the previous five months living in the mountain wilderness,
surveilling Vemork and preparing for the attack against it.
Up close in the dark, however, the steep, 600-foot ascent he
had chosen looked nearly unassailable. But there could be
no turning back. Rnneberg gave the hand signal: up!
Each man took his own silent path up the rock wall. Water
trickled down the cliff, freezing into tricky patches of ice and
encrusted snow. On some stretches they scrambled to grab
rock outcrops or tree trunks to quickly gain a few feet. When
the men glanced down the way they had come, the gorge
looked like a set of terrible jaws, ready to devour them. Shaking off the sight, they continued. Sweat soaked their clothes
as they dug their fingers and boots into crevices and inched
their bodies sideways, pressing tightly against the gorge wall
to avoid gusts of wind. It took half an hour to reach the halfway point, and they were growing weary. Their fingers hurt.
Their toes were numb. Their limbs ached. Any missed hold

or slipped foot could prove fatal.

At last, a few minutes past 11:00 p.m., the first commando
scrambled up the final bit of scree to the railway line leading to the plant. The others followed, relieved to be at the
top. For a spell, nobody spoke. They rested on the tracks and
looked toward the fortress at the end of the line.
Now it was time to finish the job.

T 12:30 ON THE MORNING OF FEBRUARY 28,

a half hour after Vemorks guards had changed shift,
Knut Haukelid, 31, cut the chain on the gate to the
railway line. The team maverick, he had been born
in Brooklyn to Norwegian parents. Now Haukelidwho bore a striking resemblance to American actor
Humphrey Bogartwas second-in-command of Gunnerside
and leader of the covering party. The men moved onto the
grounds, Haukelids eyes sweeping for any signs of alarm.
They would be ready to act if German guards approached
or an alarm sounded. The demolition party followed,
heading for the eight-story hydrogen plant. To double their

American soldiers dismantle the Nazis

experimental research reactor (left) at
Haigerloch, Germany, in April 1945. The
reactor featured a lattice design of metal
uranium cubes (below). It was not until late
in the war that the Allies were able to
reliably assess just how close the Germans
were to developing an atomic bomb.

JULY/AUGUST 2016

63

Kayser followed.
They quickly reached
their objectivethe basement room housing 18
high-concentration cells,
where the final stage of
heavy water production
occurred. In the tens of thousands of electrolysis cells on the
floors above, the ratio of heavy water to ordinary water flowing through the system had steadily increased. Now these 18
cells brought the concentration to nearly pure deuterium
oxide. A sign on the double doors read: no admittance
except on business.
Rnneberg and Kayser drew their Colt .45 pistols and
entered. The night-shift worker overseeing the plant, a
portly, gray-haired Norwegian, swung around in his seat.
Kayser was beside him in an instant, his pistol leveled at the
mans chest. Put your hands up, Kayser barked in Norwegian. Nothing will happen to you if you do what youre told.
Were British soldiers.

Vemork began shipping heavy

water (above) in January 1935.
Rapid advances in atomic
physics soon suggested its
utility as a key component
of nuclear ssion.

NAZI GERMANY AND THE BOMB

Goebbelss calls for total war and

wonder weapons to stave off defeat

(Continued from page 62)

Alamos, New Mexico. German research,

did not directly affect the German

the United States assumed it would

which concentrated on nding a method

nuclear weapons project. Instead, the

take years to defeat Germany and Japan,

to separate uranium isotopes and on

Third Reich put its faith in rockets, jet air-

meaning nuclear weapons might decide

building nuclear reactors relying on a

craft, and other apparently more promis-

the outcome. At that same time, Ger-

substance called heavy water as a mod-

ing high-tech weaponry.

many remained optimistic about winning

erator, did not expand. Nevertheless,

the warif it could be won quickly, which

German political and military authorities

of the war in Europe, the German scien-

ruled out the need for nuclear weapons.

considered uranium research important

tists struggled hard to achieve their

enough to continue during wartime,

goalsnot an atomic bomb, but suc-

weapons would take immense man-

exempting its scientists from frontline

cessful uranium isotope separation and

power and resources. The United States

military service and providing them

the construction of a nuclear reactor

quickly boosted uranium research to

relatively generous support in materials

that could control a self-sustaining s-

the industrial level for the Manhattan

and funds.

sion chain reaction. In the end they were

Both sides knew that creating such

Project with massive isotope separation

64

Stalingrad in 1943, propagandist Joseph

Throughout 1942, German scientists

During the last, desperate 18 months

able to signicantly enrich uranium 235

plants in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; pluto-

worked hard and made progress, but

and came close to creating a self-

nium plants in Hanford, Washington;

unknowingly fell far behind the Ameri-

sustaining chain reaction. Thus, by May

and, of course, the weapons lab in Los

cans. Following the German collapse at

1945, the Germans had achieved almost,

WORLD WAR II

HYDRO ARCHIVES

chances they split into two pairsRnneberg with Fredrik

Kayser and Birger Strmsheim with Kasper Idland.
Rnneberg and Kayser edged around the eastern side of
the building. Their goals, a steel basement door and adjacent
first-floor door, were locked and inaccessible. Rnneberg
remembered discussing alternate entry points with Tronstad, who had suggested a narrow utility tunnel running
between the basement ceiling and first floor, with an access
hole in the exterior wall. Rnneberg led Kayser around the
building and searched through the snowbank until they
found a steel ladder leading to the tunnel. The two climbed
15 feet to the entrance. It was unbarred. Rnneberg swept
snow out of the opening and crawled inside. His body barely
fit, so he dragged his rucksack of explosives behind him.
Kayser squirreled after him. Meanwhile, Strmsheim and
Idlandwho had not seen the pair climb into the tunnel
sought another way inside.
After crawling dozens of yards through the maze of pipes,
Rnneberg arrived at a large opening revealing a cavernous hall. He checked the room and dropped to the floor.

At any moment, a German sentry could raise the alarm,

bringing on searchlights, sirens, and machine guns. The likelihood of
something going wrong increased with each passing minute.

As Kayser guarded the worker, Rnneberg unpacked the

explosives and fuses from his rucksack. The heavy water
cells stood in two rows, looking exactly like the replicas with
which they had trained. Each stainless-steel cell tank was
50 inches tall and 10 inches in diameter, with a cluster of
rubber tubes, electrical wires, and iron pipes snaking out the
top. Rnneberg had 18 charges of one-foot-long Nobel 808
plastic explosives to destroy them. Donning rubber gloves to
avoid electrical shock from the metal containers, Rnneberg
moved from one cell to the next, adhering a daisy-chained
series of plastic explosives to their bases. The night-shift
worker, his hands still held high, became increasingly nervous as he watched Rnneberg work.
Watch out, he blurted. Otherwise it might explode!
Thats pretty much our intention, Kayser replied drily.
Rnneberg had just finished fastening a band of explosives
to the ninth cell when the window behind him shattered. He
grabbed his pistol and he and Kayser swung around to face
the threatbut it was Strmsheim.
Like Rnneberg and Kayser, Strmsheim and Idland had

but not quite, what the Americans

including migrs who had ed Nazi
Germany and Fascist Italyhad accomplished by December 1942.
Ironically, the Germans believed they

been unable to find any accessible doors and decided to force

their way into the roomonly narrowly avoiding being shot
by their comrades. Now working together, Rnneberg and
Strmsheim positioned the remaining explosives. Idland
remained outside to block the light emanating through the
shattered window.

UTSIDE WITH THE COVERING PARTY,

Knut Haukelid felt as though hours had passed
since they had snuck through the railway gate. He
glanced at his watch: it had been only 20 minutes.
He wondered if the demolition team had made it
inside the building and if all was going according to plan.
At any moment, a German sentry could raise the alarm,
bringing on searchlights, sirens, and machine guns. Haukelids eyes searched for guards patrolling the grounds. If any
walked past, he had chloroform-soaked pads ready to take
them downor several grenades, if it came to that.
So far they had encountered no one, but the likelihood
of something going wrong increased with each passing

ERE THE GERMANS TRYING TO

atomic bomb. Despite that attack and the

make nuclear weapons? This

February 1944 sinking of a Norwegian

might seem like a simple ques-

ferry loaded with heavy water, the Ger-

tion, but it is not, and helps explain why

mans had enough heavy water for their

the Nazi regime never came close to

model nuclear reactor experiments.

were ahead of the Americans. After the

building an atomic bomb. If by trying,

Many war-related factors slowed the

end of the war in Europe, an American

one means doing what was necessary

German work. A shortage of heavy water

intelligence unit housed ten German

investing massive resourcesthen the

was not one of them.

scientistsnine of whom had worked

Germans did not try. But if one means

directly in uranium researchat Farm

using available resources to work hard

honorable and daring efforts of the Nor-

Hall, an English country house near Cam-

under adverse conditions to achieve the

wegians, Britons, and Americans seeking

bridge wired for eavesdropping. When

rst necessary steps toward an atomic

to stop the Germans heavy water pro-

the Germans heard a radio announce-

bomburanium isotope separation and a

duction. At the time, the Allies had good

ment about the bombing of Hiroshima,

self-sustaining nuclear reactorthen,

reason to believe that the Nazi nuclear

their world shattered. Instead of having

yes, the Germans were trying.

program was a threat, and the heavy

done important and valuable work under

By February 1943, when Norwegian

This should not call into question the

water plant at Vemork was one of the

difcult conditions, they had been sec-

commandos attacked the Vemork hydro-

few targets they could attack. The Allied

ond-class. Moreover, postwar revelations

electric plant producing heavy water for

men involved were told that this was

of Nazi atrocities made very clear the

German uranium research, there was no

necessary, and they risked everything to

sort of regime they had been working for.

chance of Germany coming close to an

carry it out. 2
JULY/AUGUST 2016

65

minute. Fear gnawed at his mind.

Once the explosives were in place, Rnneberg secured
fuses to the charges. He sent Strmsheim to open the exterior basement door while Kayser moved the night-shift
worker to the hall. Footfalls suddenly echoed in an interior
stairwell. Expecting a guard, Kayser and Strmsheim aimed
their pistols and waited. But it was the Norwegian night
foreman, who whelped in surprise and flung up his hands.
As Kayser guarded his two hostages, Strmsheim unlocked
and opened the steel door leading outside.
In the high-concentration room, Rnneberg carefully
checked the explosives one last time before lighting the
fuses. He barked at Idland, who was still outside the window,
to get clear and dashed into the hall, counting down seconds
in his head. He told the two hostages to go upstairs, lie down,
and keep their mouths open to avoid having their eardrums
blown out when the explosives detonated.

German General Nikolaus von

Falkenhorst (above, in white)
visits Vemork. He planned
the April 1940 invasion of
Norway and commanded
Wehrmacht forces there.

As the Vemork workers

raced up the stairs, the
three commandos pushed
through the basement
door. Kayser slammed it
shut behind them and the
men sprinted away from
the plant. Idland joined them on their run. The commandos were 20 yards away when they heard a muffled explosion and saw a flash of light as the high-concentration room
windows shattered. To Haukelid, who was still in position
covering the demolition party, the explosion seemed like
an anticlimax: an insignificant pop. Nevertheless, German
sirens across the facility eventually began to blare and
Haukelid and the rest of the covering party joined their comrades in their flight back toward the railway line. They would
have to move fast.

The commandos pushed through the door and sprinted away

from the plant. They heard a muffled explosion and saw a flash of light
through the windows of the high-concentration room.

66

WORLD WAR II

NORSK INDUSTRIARBRIERMUSEUM; OPPOSITE: NORGES HJEMMEFRONTMUSEUM

ITHIN AN HOUR, VEMORKS CHIEF

engineer, accompanied by a host of Germans,
inspected the high-concentration room. Everything lay in ruins. Pumps were broken, walls
scorched, the network of tubes a twisted wreck.
Shrapnel had sliced through the cooling systems copper
pipes and water sprayed the room. The 18 steel-jacketed
cells had been shredded, and all their precious heavy water
had swirled down the rooms drains. Whoever the saboteurs
were, the chief engineer concluded, they knew exactly what
to destroy and did their job well.
The most splendid coup, remarked the commander of
German forces in Norway, General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, when he visited Vemork after the sabotage. His admiration for the work did not dull his wrath toward his men
guarding the plant.
The Germans staged a massive manhunt, sending more
than 3,000 soldiers to comb the area in search of the fleeing
saboteurs. The commando team split up; some of the men,
including Haukelid and Helberg, escaped into the mountains to wait out the hunt and continue further operations
against the Nazis. Rnneberg and four others made their
way on a long, looping trek toward Swedenan arduous,
18-day journey that covered more than 280 miles, and an
epic feat in its own right.

N L O N D O N, L E I F
Tronstad received a
long-awaited confirmation from one of his
operatives in Norway:
Operation carried out
with 100 percent success. High-concentration plant completely
destroyed. Shots not exchanged since Germans
did not realize anything. Germans do not appear
to know whence the party came or whither they
disappeared.
Tronstad estimated that Operation Gunnerside had cost
the Germans up to 700 kilograms of heavy water, and that
the damage to the plants equipment would delay production
by at least 10 to 14 months.
His estimate proved optimistic: Within five months, the
Germans rebuilt the hydroelectric plant and returned it to
production. Only the combination of American air raids on
the plant that November and a last-minute sabotage raid by
Knut Haukelid on a ferry carrying the plants heavy water
supplies the following February would put the fortress at
Vemork out of play for good. But the first major blow against
the Nazi atomic bomb program had come at the hands of the
saboteurs on skis. 2

American heavy bombing

raids in November 1943
caused extensive damage
to the Vemork plant (above),
but failed to decisively
knock it out of action.

JULY/AUGUST 2016

67

REVIEWS

Northern Aggression

FINLAND AT WAR
The Winter War 1939-40
By Vesa Nenye, Peter Munter, and Toni
Wirtanen. 304 pp.
Osprey (hardcover), 2015. $34.95.

FINLAND AT WAR
The Continuation and Lapland Wars
1941-45
By Vesa Nenye, Peter Munter, Toni Wirtanen,
and Chris Birks. 336 pp.
Osprey (hardcover), 2016. $40.

he war between Finland and the

USSR continues to exert a magnetic pull on World War II acionados.
If youre one of those who just cant
get enough of the Mannerheim Line,

68

WORLD WAR II

Finnish ski patrols, and the Suomi

KP/-31 submachine gun, and if Talvisota (Winter War) is the rst Finnish
word you ever learned, and sisu (guts)
the second, then you wont be able to
live without both volumes of Finland
at War. Lead author Vesa Nenye is a

veteran of the modern Finnish armya

former tank commanderand this work
is clearly a labor of love, a stirring recreation of a time when a few stood against
the many.
While other books present the
same heroic narrative, Finland at War
shines by giving us the
deep background of the
conict. Volume 1 offers
complete coverage of
Finlands history from its
emergence as an independent nation following the
Russian Revolutions of
1917, the bloody civil war
between Reds and Whites

OSPREY PUBLISHING

Finnish Infantrymen overrun

Soviet trenches; their uniforms
date the scene to the
Continuation War beginning
June 25, 1941.

MUSEUM OF WORLD WAR II, BOSTON (ALL)

REVIEWS

in 1918, the rise of Carl Gustav Mannerheim as national strongman, the young
countrys attempt to conquer Soviet
Karelia in order to liberate the ethnic
Finns living there (the Kinship Wars
of 1918-22), and much more. The result
makes the Soviet invasion of 1939 more
understandableas part of a long-term
historical development rather than a
bolt out of the blue.
On the other side of the Winter War,
Volume 2 provides the most comprehensive account currently in print of
the Continuation War of 1941-44, when
Finland partnered with Hitlers Germany and participated in the invasion of
the Soviet Union. Finally, Nenye and his
co-authors conclude with a detailed rendering of the end game of Finlands war,
the Lapland War of 1944-45, when Finland switched sides and fought against
the Wehrmacht. In this phase, the Finnish army launched a successful drive to
expel the Germans from the forests and
tundra of the far north, although the
German commander, General Lothar
Rendulic, carried out a scorched earth
policy as he retreated, which laid waste
to much of poor Lapland. Through all
these conicts, whether ghting Red
Army Ivan or German Landser, the
Finns gave a good accounting of themselves, defending ercely against all
comers. Their toughnesstheir sisu
was surely one of the reasons that Stalin
decided not to Sovietize the country
after 1945.
Throughout this fascinating,
rigorously-detailed talemuch of which
remains unknown to American readersthe presentation is sumptuous
with detailed battle maps, commander
biographies, and hundreds of rare
wartime photographs.
Osprey deserves kudos for its rstclass treatment of Nenyes indispensable work. Robert M. Citino, a history
professor at the University of North
Texas and author of numerous books on
the war, writes World War IIs Fire for
Effect column.

Building Hatred, Step by Step

enneth W. Rendell has a

mission: to show how
hatred tolerated at low levels
can grow dangerously. A collector of World War II memorabilia since 1959, he is founder
and executive director of the
Museum of World War II,
Bostonthe worlds most
comprehensive collection of
World War II artifacts. His latest
book, The Power of AntiSemitism; the March to the
Holocaust, 1919-1939 (with
Samantha Heywood, 80 pp.
Museum of World War II, Inc.
2016. $14.95), has been published in conjunction with a
New-York Historical Society
exhibit running through July 31,
2016. Both draw on his collection to demonstrate how Hitler
encouraged hatred of Jews.
Each step was incremental,
Rendell writes, but the increments forcefully accumulated
and led to the Holocaust.

An anti-Semitic
rant Hitler
scribbled in
1919 (top) grew
to become
ofcial policy.
Jews are not
welcome here,
the bottom sign
reads.

JULY/AUGUST 2016

69

REVIEWS

THE DEVILS DIARY

Alfred Rosenberg and
the Stolen Secrets of the
Third Reich
By Robert K. Wittman
and David Kinney. 528 pp.
Harper, 2016. $35.
In a decade-long hunt, an FBI agent and a
journalist track down the diary of the mastermind of the Third Reichs racial ideology,
which had vanished after Alfred Rosenbergs
execution. The long-lost volumes pages
offer a newly intimate look at the Nazis rise
and the Holocausts evolution.
Maestro Arturo Toscanini
and Bronislaw Huberman
after the 1936 inaugural
concert in Tel Aviv.

BAYONETS IN
PARADISE

PANZER
The German Tanks
Encyclopedia
By Laurent Tirone. 192 pp.
Caraktre, 2015. $59.90.
This lush and colorful
overview of the German
tanks of 1933 to 1945 is light on text and
heavy on photosmany rarely seenand
detailed illustrations.

MESSERSCHMITT
BF 109
The Complete
Monography
By Jean-Claude Mermet
and Christian-Jacques
Ehrengardt. 192 pp.
Caraktre, 2016. $59.90.
Enthusiasts of the venerable German
ghter will enjoy this comprehensive and
detailed technical guide. Rasheeda
Smith is Associate Editor of World War II.

70

WORLD WAR II

Palestines Opus for Freedom

ORCHESTRA OF EXILES
The Story of Bronislaw Huberman,
the Israel Philharmonic, and the
One Thousand Jews He Saved from
Nazi Horrors
By Josh Aronson & Denise George. 384 pp.
Berkley, 2016. $28.

n 2012, screenwriter-director Josh

Aronson released a nonction lm
about the creation of the Israeli Philharmonic in the shadow of the Nazi menace
in 1930s Europe. It was engaging and
moving, but had one serious aw: the
movie shifted between archival footage and reenactments, never clarifying
scene changes between the two. Now,
Aronson has teamed up with prolic
writer Denise George to produce a book
version of the lm bearing the same
name. However, the book only amplies
the problems of the lm, while diminishing its virtues.
There is no question the story is a
compelling one. Violinist Bronislaw
Huberman, after concert tours of Palestine in 1929 and 1931, became xed
on the idea that Palestine should have
its own top-tier orchestraan idea that

seemed impossible given the regions

difficult living conditions and underdevelopment. Shortly after Hitler came
to power, Huberman presciently sensed
how dangerous Nazi ideology was for
Jews living in Germany, and saw Jewish
emigration to Palestine as a way to both
save the lives of some
prominent musicians while realizing
his dream of creating an orchestra
there. He eventually
got approximately
70 musicians and
their families out of
war-torn Europe. In
December 1936, the
world-class orchestra gave its inaugural
concert in Tel Aviv under the baton of
renowned conductor, Arturo Toscanini.
The problem, however, is not with the
story, but with its telling. A prefatory
note sets off the alarm: Every event in
this book is true; happened the way it is
told; all characters are historical. Some
dialogue has been created. This warn-

FELICIA BLUMENTHAL MUSIC CENTER LIBRARY

Martial Law in Hawaii

during World War II
By Harry and Jane Scheiber.
512 pp. University of
Hawaii, 2016. $45.
An in-depth yet readable account of how
the U.S. Army ruled Hawaii and its residents immediately after the Pearl Harbor
attack until late 1944the longest period
American civilians have been governed
under martial law.

REVIEWS

ing is substantially understated, as the

book is told almost entirely in dialogue,
and virtually none of it comes from any
place but the authors imagination. Notes
are sparse and not always from the most
authoritative sources. For example, the
most suspect claimthat Huberman
saved 1,000 Jewsis referenced from the
script of Aronsons own lm.
But what if we forget academic rigor
and approach the book as if it were a
historical novel? It falls short there,
too. The style is almost insultingly simplistic, all in the present tense, with
sentences so pared down that there are
virtually none with subordinate clauses.
Many of the nearly 80 chapters are only
two or three pages long, and the books
stilted dialogue seldom resembles the
way people really talk.
Finally, in trying to expand their reach
past Hubermans story to include the
entire geopolitical environmentwith,
for example, a purported conversation
between Hitlers mother and father
hours after the Fhrer was bornthey
reach for a panoramic presentation far
beyond their talents.
Its nothing I thought I would ever say,
but it would be better to skip this book
and watch the lm. Washington-based
journalist Daniel B. Moskowitz is a
frequent contributor to World War II.

Japans Struggle
in the Solomons

we of Combined Fleet made an important resolution. If and when this attempt

fails to achieve satisfactory results,
there will be no hope of future success
in this area. Having seen the state of
affairs in Rabaul, Ugaki wondered if
this has been fully brought home to
those concerned with operations.

After the February loss of Guadalcanal, the bigwigs of Japans Imperial General Staff disagreed on where and how to
halt the American advance. Japans navy
was adamant that New Georgia, the next
big step up the Solomon Island chain,
could be defended. However, the army
sensed another Guadalcanal and instead

This unique reference, written

by Capt. Steven E. Maffeo,
U.S.N.R., Ret., presents 59
biographies of people who were
key to the sea services being
reasonably prepared to fight the
Japanese Empire when the
Second World War broke out,
and whose advanced work
proved crucial. These intelligence
pioneers invented techniques,
procedures, and equipment from
scratch, allowing the United
States to hold its own in the Pacific
despite the loss of much of its
fleet at Pearl Harbor.
540 pages, 65 Photos,
Bibliography, Index

$

NEW GEORGIA
The Second Battle for the Solomons
By Ronnie Day. 368 pp. Indiana University
Press, 2016. $35.

LAST DITCH AT
THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL
OF MILITARY HISTORY

n April 3, 1943, Admiral Yamamoto

Isoroku, commander of Japans
Combined Fleet, ew to Rabaul to head
an air offensive against Guadalcanal.
That night, as thunder rumbled over
New Britains hills, Vice Admiral Ugaki
Matome, Yamamotos chief of staff,
expressed foreboding. He wrote in his
diary, When we decided to come down
south to take command of operations,

ANZIO

Allied soldiers foil erce

German counterattacks

Greeces
Uncivil War
The Man on the
Flying Tank
Marc Mitscher:
Carrier-War
Champion
SUMMER 2016

HistoryNet.com

MHQP-160700-COVER-DIGITAL.indd 1

4/7/16 9:50 AM

JULY/AUGUST 2016

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CONSIM PRESS

REVIEWS

urged pulling back to Bougainville. In

the end, the navy unwisely promised
Emperor Hirohito that, once properly
fortied, New Georgia would inict
great damage on Guadalcanal.
Many histories of the Solomon campaign play out similarly to island hopping. While doubling down on the bigger
and bloodier battles for Guadalcanal and
Bougainville, they
downplay the intervening captures of
New Georgia and
nearby islands.
Pe r h a p s w i t h
some irony, the
Allied plan for
seizing New Georgia was code-named
Operation Toenails;
the 1st Marine Division, after all, once referred to Guadalcanal as Operation Shoestring. In the end,
however, Toenails contained some of
the most iconic moments of the Pacic
War, including the aerial assassination
of Yamamoto and a test of endurance
for a young PT boat skipper named
John F. Kennedy.
In New Georgia: The Second Battle
for the Solomons, author Ronnie Day
delivers an updated three-dimensional
accountground, air, and seaof Toenails. It is a real tragedy that Day did
not live to see the book in print; he died
shortly after completing the manuscript. New Georgia is a worthy account,
workmanlike in its detail, solid in its
documentation.
Toenails, a campaign of probes and
feints, had a lot of moving parts, many
of them poorly executed. As a result,
some narrative difficulties occur, especially where the author is committed
to covering all aspects of the campaign.
It requires unfailing reader attention
as Day shifts focus among air, land,
and sea engagements. That said, New
Georgia is an estimable valediction.
New Jersey-based writer David Sears
is a historian and frequent contributor to
World War II.

Tonnage of Fun

SILENT VICTORY
Consim Press, 2016.
$55.

World War II Rating

THE BASICS: In this solitaire board game, you command a U.S. Navy submarine
on a series of missions to
sink Japanese shipping, beginning from
December 1941 to July 1945. You take
on the role of a eet submarine commander faced with difcult decisions
that will affect the outcome of the
game as you avoid being killed, captured, or relieved from command.

THE OBJECTIVE: The players objective is to sink as

many Japanese ships as
possible. What ships the
player encounters is determined randomly, from merchant ships to warships. However, tonnage is key. The
amount that is sunk results in various
winning outcomes, however you lose if
you do not destroy enough tonnage,
are captured, or your sub is destroyed.

HISTORICAL
ACCURACY: Exemplary.
As commander you
choose which ships to
attack, whether or not to ght escorts,
how to attack, which weapons to use,
areas to patrol, methods of evasion,
and more. Game variables include an
assortment of submarines, crew effectiveness, damages, repairs, numerous
missions, and random events.

PLAYABILITY: This is not

an easy game, but well
worth playing. Players can
guide a real historical U.S.
Navy skipper to victory by combining
role-playing and strategy. Randomly
generated missions and disasters
ensure you do not play the same game
twice. You may never ght Kagathe
monstrous Japanese aircraft carrieror
you might get to sink it every game!

THE GOOD, BAD, AND

UGLY: The game is beautiful with highly detailed
counters and a gorgeous
map providing a realistic simulation.
While the rules are simple, the volume
of them may be intimidating for beginners. This game works best for solo
play; a variation for two players allows
them to simply take turns, rather than
playing against each other.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

Solitaire board games like
this are great when you
cant nd opponents or
you want to play at your own pace. The
way missions are generated makes
every game different. SIlent Victory is
addictive, giving you the same options
and choices real commanders had.
Chris Ketcherside, a former Marine,
is working on a PhD in military history.

JULY/AUGUST 2016

73

Battle Films

Evil as an Act of Faith

By Mark Grimsley

HE PHRASE Sophies
Youre so beautiful, he
Choice has entered the
whispers to her. Id like to get
vernacular to mean an imposyou in bed.
sible dilemma, a choice that is
He asks if she is a Polack
morally unbearable. It comes
or one of those filthy Comfrom the title of William Stymunists. She says nothing. He
rons acclaimed 1979 novel
starts to walk away. She decides
which was later adapted into a
to call after him.
1982 film starring Meryl Streep
I am not a Jew! Neither are
as Sophie, in a powerful performy children! Theyre not Jews.
mance that won her an AcadThey are racially pure. Im a
emy Award for Best Actress.
Christian. Im a devout Catholic.
By now, everyone knows
That gets the doctors attenthat Sophie was a Polish Holotion. He turns slowly and walks
caust survivor forced to choose
back to her. Youre a believer?
which of her two young chilYes, mein Hauptmann. I
dren would live and which
believe in Christ.
would die. She gradually reveals
So you believe in Christ, the
that truth, like the peeling of
Redeemer?
an onion, to an aspiring writer
Yes.
named Stingo (Peter MacNiThe doctor looks at Jan, then
col), who befriended Sophie and
Eva, whom Sophie is carrying in
her lover Nathan (Kevin Kline)
her arms.
two years after the war at the
Did He not say, Suffer the
Brooklyn boarding house where
little children to come unto
the three live, and who also narMe? A short pause. Then: You
rates the film from a vantage
may keep one of your children.
Beyond the 1982 lms central dilemma is the motivation
point many years later. That
She cannot comprehend this
of the camp doctor who forced the decision upon Sophie.
truth haunts the moviedirecat first. He explains that one of
The second flashback runs just under
tor Alan J. Pakula described the film as
her children can stay but the other must
six minutes and depicts Sophie and her
a ghost storybut so does the man who
go, and she has the privilege of making
childrens initial arrival at Auschwitz,
made her choose, a nameless SS camp
the choice. She screams repeatedly that
including the moment when the terrible
doctor (Karlheinz Hackl).
she cannot choose, but finally he snaps,
choice is forced upon her.
The film contains two flashbacks.
saying that if she does not choose, he
Lets take these in chronological order,
The SS doctor appears in both. The first
will take them both. Only when a guard
not the order in which they appear in the
and longest unfolds over 32 minutes
reaches out to seize Jan and Eva does
film. Upon arrival at Auschwitz, Sophie
as Sophie, a Catholic, explains that she
Sophie say, Take my baby! Take my
and her children join a long line of others
was arrested for stealing a contraband
little girl! The camera follows Eva, who
as they wait for whatever the Nazis have
ham and sent to Auschwitz with her two
screams hysterically as the guard carries
in store for them. The SS doctorwho
children. Her seven-year-old daughter,
her away like a sack of potatoes.
holds the rank of Hauptmann, or capEva, was taken directly to the gas chamThe first on-screen flashback, which
tainwalks slowly and dispassionately
bers while her nine-year-old son, Jan,
chronologically takes place weeks
along the line of arrivals. He has not yet
went to the Kinderlager, the childrens
later, follows Sophies experience in
made any decisions about which people
camp. Because she spoke fluent German,
camp commandant Hsss household.
will go to the labor camps and which will
Sophie found herself working in the resiIt includes a scene in which Hss has
be immediately gassed. Sophies striking
dence of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf
lunch on his patio with the SS doctor.
beauty makes him halt.
Hss (Gnther Maria Halmer).
In the flashbacks context in the film,

74

WORLD WAR II

UNIVERSAL PICTURES/THE KOBAL COLLECTION

A Date Which Will Live in Infamy...

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Prices may be more or less based on current market conditions. The markets for coins are unregulated. Prices can rise or fall and carry some risks. The company is not afliated with the U.S. Government and
the U.S. Mint. Past performance of the coin or the market cannot predict future performance. Price not valid for precious metals dealers. All calls recorded for quality assurance. Offer void where
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and its shipping address P.O. Box 170339, Austin Texas 78717, a commercial co-venturer with U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation (USNMF), with its principal ofce at 701 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Suite 123, Washington, DC 20004, (202)
737-2300. For every 75th Anniversary Pearl Harbor coin purchased, $5 will be donated by USMR to USNMF. All of the contributions raised by the solicitation will be utilized for the production and installation of the USNMF Lone Sailor Statue
expected to be installed at a location to be determined at Pearl Harbor, HI. The advertising campaign for the Pearl Harbor Coins will terminate on or about February 28, 2021. USMR and USNMF are not afliated with the U.S. Navy or any unit of the
U.S. Government. All spokespeople appearing in USMRs advertisements and all USMR representatives are compensated for their efforts. INFORMATION FILED WITH THE NEW JERSEY ATTORNEY GENERAL CONCERNING THIS CHARITABLE
SOLICITATION AND THE PERCENTAGE OF CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED BY THE CHARITY DURING THE LAST REPORTING PERIOD THAT WERE DEDICATED TO THE CHARITABLE PURPOSE MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY BY CALLING 973-504-6215 AND IS AVAILABLE ON THE INTERNET AT http://www.state.nj.us/lps/ca/charfrm.htm. REGISTRATION WITH THE ATTORNEY GENERAL DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSEMENT.

Battle Films

I select who shall

live and who
shall die, the Nazi
doctor says. Is that
not Gods work?
Gods work. I select who shall live and
who shall die. He pauses, then asks: Is
that not Gods work?
In this scene, Pakula, who wrote

the screenplay in addition to directing the film, is trying to convey William Styrons speculation in the novel
about the SS doctor who offers Sophie
the choice and what motivates him.
Looking back, the mature Stingo
believes that the doctor must have been
unique among his fellow automata:
If he was not a good or a bad man, he
still retained a potential capacity for
good and his strivings were essentially
religious. But the state-sanctioned,
industrialized slaughter at Auschwitz
seemed to be beyond good and evil. It
removed sin, and in the doctors mind it
therefore removed God.
Was it not supremely simple, then,
Stingo writes, to restore his belief in
God and at the same time affirm his
human capacity for evil by committing
the most intolerable sin that he was able
to conceive? 2

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

the audience does not yet know who the

doctor is, and Sophie barely appears in
the scene (she is the servant). Her back
is turned to the camera as she brings
Hss a bottle of wine. In that sense, the
scene is a slight cheat: Sophie could not
know the content of the conversation
and therefore could not later recount it
to Stingo, and she would surely have recognized the SS doctor. But it is an indispensable window into the darkness at
the center of Sophies Choice.
You are looking well, Hss says to
the SS doctor, who has just returned
from leave.
Ja, responds the doctor. He is pensive. I hardly drank after I left here, he
says quietly, implying that he has been
relying on alcohol to endure his duties at
Auschwitz. Can you imagine? My father
asked me what kind of medicine I practice here. What can I tell him? I perform

76

WORLD WAR II

$GYHUWLVHPHQW

87 Year-Old Veteran Stuns His

Wife And Comes Back To Life
At California Veterans Home
Hes turning into a shell
of his former self his
wife cried.
Len had become so frail that it took
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himself out of his scooter and into his
favorite Lazy Boy.
But Len hadnt always been
this way...
In fact, when he was serving our
country during World War II, he was a
strapping 225 lb. guy!
But now, he was so weak that his
wife was forced to wait on him aroundthe-clock at the Veterans home.

She Couldnt Take

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But just 12 days later, she couldnt
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Lens Resurrection!
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Len was already up and trekking his
way across the Veterans home to get
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E\-H5HDJDQ

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My Husband Has Come

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I am watching my 87 year
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thanks to a powerful drink used by members of the
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Challenge

ANSWERS

Hollywood Howlers

to the March/April
Challenge

The 1990 lm Memphis Belle

depicts a highly-ctionalized
version of the famed B-17Fs
nal combat mission on May
17, 1943. As the crew is preparing for takeoff, the radio
operator transmits: Tower,
this is Army 485. Over. This is
a radio check. Charlie, Uncle,
Victor, Tango, Nancy, please
acknowledge. Over. How did
the lmmakers trip up?

What the?!?
The subs cargo was Aichi
M6A Seiran seaplanes

Name
That
Patch

FROM TOP: WARNER BROS., HISTORYNET ARCHIVES, NATIONAL ARCHIVES; ANSWERS, FROM TOP: WARNER BROS.; NATIONAL ARCHIVES, GUY ACETO COLLECTION

Hollywood Howlers
John Wayne, then 54,
played Colonel Benjamin
Vandervoort, 27

Which unit
wore this
symbol?

Name That
Patch
865th Bombardment
Squadron
Congratulations
to the winners:
Michael Chumbley,
Cheryl Warnock, and
Mark Fassio

Please send
your answers
to all three questions,
and your mailing address, to:
July/August Challenge,
World War II
1600 Tysons Blvd., Suite 1140
Tysons, VA 22102
or e-mail: challenge@historynet.com
Three winners, chosen at
random from all correct entries
submitted by August 15, will
receive both volumes of Finland
at War by Vesa Nenye. Answers
will appear in the November/
December 2016 issue.

What the...?!?
What is this B-25 Mitchell bomber carrying?

JULY/AUGUST 2016

79

WORLD

WAR II

Pinup

No Regrets

STEVEN VOGEL COLLECTION

Gorgeous Jane Adams is best

known for playing an unattractive
character: the hunchbacked
nurse Nina in the 1945 lm House
of Dracula. For many vain
glamour girls, writes Gregory
William Mank in Women in Horror
Films, 1940s, the role seemed a
fate worse than death in catty
Hollywood circles. Not so Jane
Adams. But she knew true
tragedy: her husband, a navy
pilot, had been killed on his rst
World War II mission. She married
again, on July 14, 1945, to an
infantry ofcer, Thomas K.
Turnage, deferring a honeymoon
until the war ended and largely
giving up on acting. But she
looked back on playing Nina
fondly. House of Dracula, she said,
is probably my favorite lm.

80

WORLD WAR II

What would have happened if Hitler had

managed to develop nuclear weapons?*
A riveting, high-action World
War II thriller with nothing less
than the fate of Planet Earth on
the line. Just imagine the horror
if Hitler had gotten the atomic
bomb. Written with great verve
and historical acumen, Bascomb
hits the mark of excellence.
Highly recommended!
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY

Neal Bascomb brilliantly tells the

extraordinary true story of arguably the
most important and daring commando
raid of World War II: how an amazing band
of men on skis made sure Hitler never
got to drop the ultimate bomb.
*ALEX KERSHAW

Bascombs riveting prose puts the reader

into one of the more daring missions of
the war and the Allies efforts to sabotage
a crucial aspect of Germanys nuclear
program. An excellent read.

Neal Bascombs The Winter Fortress is a

spellbinding piece of historical writing.
MARTIN DUGARD

PATRICK K. ODONNELL

Available everywhere books and e-books are sold

MAY 2016

the national wwii museum presents

75th anniversary of pearl harbor symposium and tour

december 1-8, 2016

Exactly 75 years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, The National WWII Museum returns
to the sites that defined a date which will live in infamy. Join us for an unforgettable experience.
Featuring renowned WWII historians Richard Frank, Donald L. Miller, PhD, Allan Millett, PhD, and Jonathan Parshall.

CALL 877-813-3329 x 257 OR VISIT WW2MUSEUMTOURS.ORG TO LEARN MORE.