But has the last word been said? Must hope disappear? Is defeat final? No!

Believe me, I who am speaking to you with full knowledge of the facts, and who tell you that nothing is lost for France. The same means that overcame us can bring us victory one day. For France is not alone! She is not alone! She is not alone! She has a vast Empire behind her. She can align with the British Empire that holds the sea and continues the fight. She can, like England, use without limit the immense industry of the United States.

This war is not limited to the unfortunate territory of our country. This war is not over as a result of the Battle of France. This war is a world war. All the mistakes, all the delays, all the suffering, do not alter the fact that there are, in the world, all the means necessary to crush our enemies one day. Vanquished today by mechanical force, in the future we will be able to overcome by a superior mechanical force. The fate of the world depends on it.

I, General de Gaulle, currently in London, invite the officers and the French soldiers who are located in British territory or who might end up here, with their weapons or without their weapons, I invite the engineers and the specialised workers of the armament industries who are located in British territory or who might end up here, to put themselves in contact with me.

Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished. Tomorrow, as today, I will speak on the radio from London.

See article on Charles de Gaulle’s ‘Appeal of 18th June‘.

Rupert Colley.

Read more about the war in The Clever Teens Guide to World War Two available as an ebook and 80-page paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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The post Charles de Gaulle’s ‘Appeal of 18 June’ speech – Text appeared first on Rupert Colley.

Eastward ambition

The signing of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact on 23 August 1939 had been the penultimate piece in Hitler’s grand jigsaw. With the Soviet Union safely out of the way, Hitler was now free to pursue his ambitions.

Three days later, on 26 August, Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland. Troops had begun to mobilize only for Hitler, nervous of Britain’s response, to rescind the order. He knew he couldn’t simply march in – he needed a pretext. In the event, he made one up.

On 28 August, Hitler revoked the German-Polish Non-Aggression Treaty of 1934. The Poles knew what was coming.

On the nights leading up to 31 August / 1 September, there were no less than twenty-one incidences along the German-Polish border faked by the Germans which, to a gullible world, would seem like acts of Polish aggression for which retaliation was perfectly justifiable.

Operation Himmler

These acts of farce, codenamed Operation Himmler, were organised by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. The most notorious was the Gleiwitz Incident, the faked attack on the radio transmitting station, a few miles inside Germany, near the border town of Gleiwitz in the Silesia region (pictured).

Early evening on 31 August 1939, SS soldiers, dressed up as Polish partisans and led by a notorious Nazi thug, Major Alfred Naujocks, ‘attacked’ the German transmitter and its German guards (more SS men dressed up), and broadcast in Polish a brief anti-German message.

To make the attack look more authentic, the Germans had brought along an inmate from the Dachau concentration camp, the forty-three-year-old Franciszek Honiok, a farmer and a known Polish sympathizer, arrested by the Gestapo just the day before. The unfortunate Honiok was, what the Germans called, ‘canned goods’, kept alive until the Gestapo had need for a dead but still warm body.

Having dressed Honiok as a Polish bandit, they drugged him unconscious, shot him at the scene and then left his body there as evidence of the supposed attack. Local police and press found the body and the news spread across Europe. ‘There have been reports of an attack on a radio station in Gleiwitz,’ reported the BBC. ‘Several of the Poles were reported killed, but the numbers are not yet known.’ The attack made the New York Times the following day.

Hitler knew that the falsehood of Operation Himmler was highly transparent but, as he lectured his staff the week before, ‘I need a propagandistic cause for declaring war, whether convincing or not. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth’.

4.45 a.m. World War Two starts

The following morning, 1 September, at 4.45 German troops attacked Poland. Hours later Hitler spoke to the nation, referring to the ‘Polish atrocities’. He continued, ‘This night for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our own territory. This group of Polish Army hooligans has finally exhausted our patience. Since 5.45 a. m. we have been returning the fire… I will continue this struggle, no matter against whom, until the safety of the Reich and its rights are secured.’ Whether by accident or design, Hitler was an hour out. 

Rudolph Hess, getting carried away in hyperbole, declared, ‘There is bloodshed, Herr Chamberlain! There are dead! Innocent people have died. The responsibility for this, however, lives with England, which talks of peace while fanning the flames of war. England that has point blank refused all the Fuhrer’s proposals for peace throughout the years.’

Technically, Franciszek Honiok had been killed during peacetime but his death can be considered the first in a conflict that would, over the ensuing six years, claim over fifty million victims.

The Second World War had begun.

Rupert Colley.

Read more about the war in The Clever Teens Guide to World War Two available as an ebook and 80-page paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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Background

The war was not going well for Italy and Mussolini. Campaigns against Greece and Albania had ended in ignoble defeat and things were going poorly for Italian forces fighting in North Africa. The Italian people were beginning to taste the bitter fruit of disillusionment with their leader.

On 20 January 1943, Mussolini had a meeting with his foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, who was also his son-in-law. Believing the war to be a lost cause, Ciano urged Mussolini to seek terms with the Allies. Mussolini flatly refused. (Indeed, Ciano had approached his British counterpart, Anthony Eden, the previous November but had no joy. Ciano had been dubious about Italy’s participation in the war from the start. When, on 10 June 1940, Mussolini declared war on France, Ciano wrote in his diary, ‘I am sad, very sad. The adventure begins. May God help Italy!’) Ciano paid for his lack of faith when, on 5 February 1943, his father-in-law sacked him from his post. Ciano took up a post within the Vatican who were also holding discussions with the Allies into the make-up of a potential non-fascist Italian government.

The end in sight

Allied troops landed on Sicily on 10 July 1943, where they enjoyed an ecstatic welcome from the islanders. By mid-August the German forces escaped the island by crossing over the narrow Strait of Messina onto the Italian mainland. Mussolini appealed to his ally, Adolf Hitler, to send reinforcements but with German forces tied up on the Eastern Front, where they had just lost the crucial Battle of Stalingrad, no help was forthcoming.

On 19 July, Allied bombers pounded Rome, killing over a thousand civilians. Further evidence for the Italian population that defeat was inevitable.

As a result of the invasion of Sicily and the critical situation now facing Italy, Mussolini agreed to convene a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, the first meeting since 1939. Lasting from 5 pm to 3 am on 24 July 1943, the meeting centred around the resolution, put forward by Dino Grandi, another of Mussolini’s former foreign ministers, that Mussolini be desposed and that the king, Victor Emmanuel III, should replace the dictator as head of the armed forces. Mussolini delivered an impassioned two-hour speech, exhorting his fellow fascists to put up a fight. His plea fell on deaf ears and after ten hours of heated discussion, the council voted 19 to 8 (with three abstentions) in favour of Grandi’s resolution. One of those who voted against Mussolini was Galeazzo Ciano (pictured).

The most hated man in Italy

The following day, Mussolini kept his fortnightly meeting with the king, believing that the vote the previous evening was neither constitutional nor binding. He was much mistaken. Almost apologetically, Victor Emmanuel dismissed the 59-year-old dictator: ‘My dear Duce, it’s no longer any good. Italy has gone to bits… The soldiers don’t want to fight any more… At this moment you are the most hated man in Italy.’

Mussolini was immediately arrested and imprisoned. His successor, Pietro Badoglio, appointed a new cabinet which, pointedly, contained no fascists. The Italian population rejoiced.

On 8 September, as the Allies advanced onto the mainland, Italy swapped sides and joined the Allies and, on 13 October 1943, declared war on Germany. The king and his government fled Rome and abandoned the northern half of the country to the Germans.

Meanwhile, Mussolini was kept under house arrest and frequently moved in order to keep his whereabouts hidden. On 26 August, he was moved into the Campo Imperatore Hotel, part of a ski resort high up on the mountains of Gran Sasso in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. It was here, on 12 September, that Mussolini was dramatically rescued.

Gran Sasso

The hotel had been emptied of guests. Mussolini, although complaining of stomach pains, idled away his time in relative luxury attended to by his guards, who tended to treat him more as a guest than a captive.

Meanwhile, on 26 July, Hitler had personally charged 35-year-old Waffen SS colonel, Otto Skorzeny, an Austrian with an Action Man-type duelling scar down his left cheek, to rescue ‘Italy’s greatest son’. First Skorzeny (pictured) had to find out where Mussolini was being held. Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s head of the SS, allegedly consulted astrologers to help him in the task. Instead, the more traditional method of intercepting coded radio messages revealed the exact location.

But how to rescue the man proved more challenging. The hotel, being on a mountainside, made the possibility of a parachute drop impractical. Aerial reconnaissance revealed a small field behind the hotel, so Skorzeny decided on landing a group of handpicked commandoes by glider – a risky venture but the only option available to him.

In the early afternoon of 12 September 1943, as the twelve gliders prepared to descend, Skorzeny realized that the field was not flat, as he believed, but a steep hillside. They had no choice but to crash-land on the uneven but flatter ground in front of the hotel. One glider crashed, resulting in a few injuries, but otherwise the risk paid off.

Despite being outnumbered by 200 Italian guards, or carabinieri, Skorzeny’s men quickly took control of the situation, forcing the carabinieri to surrender without a single shot being fired. Skorzeny was helped by having brought with him an Italian general, Fernando Soleti, who emerged from the glider shouting, ‘Don’t shoot’ and sowing confusion among the Italian guards. Skorzeny attacked the radio operator with the butt of his rifle, then smashed the radio, before rushing up the stairs. Having found Mussolini’s room, Skorzeny burst in announcing, ‘Duce, the Fuhrer has sent me! You’re free!’ Overwhelmed, Mussolini, who had watched the gliders land from his window, responded, ‘I knew my friend Adolf wouldn’t desert me.’

Skorzeny then radioed for assistance from a small STOL (Short Take-Off and Landing) aircraft waiting nearby. The plane landed on the dangerously short and rocky field while Mussolini thanked his captors and, grinning, posed for photographs.

Skorzeny escorted Mussolini to the plane. Taking off from the plateau would be no less risky than landing. Skorzeny made what was already a dangerous undertaking even more so by insisting on joining Mussolini and the pilot in a plane designed only for two. But Skorzeny knew that if the mission failed Hitler would never forgive him and he would be forced into taking his own life. (A fate that befell Erwin Rommel a year later). With the three men on board, the pilot revved the engine to full power while twelve Germans held the plane back by its wings. On the given signal, they let go and the plane took off. But, failing to gather enough height, one of its wheels hit a rock. The plane veered off the plateau and downwards into the valley below.

The Germans leaned over the plateau and watched horrified as the plane descended but then the pilot was able to pull the aircraft up, and off it went. Meanwhile, the remaining commandos made their escape on foot. (The account is based mainly on Skorzeny’s testimony which, of course, could have been and probably was exaggerated. Another witness later said that Skorzeny did not want to be in the front glider and only appeared on the scene first because the first glider had crashed, and that it was Soleti, the Italian general, that persuaded the carabinieri to surrender without a fight).

The plane taking Mussolini to freedom landed on an airstrip near Rome, where he was transferred onto another plane and flown to Vienna. The following day, he was flown to Munich where he was reunited with his wife, Rachele, and daughter, Edda, wife of Ciano. Two days later, he met with Hitler at the Führer’s Wolf Lair HQ near Rastenburg on the Eastern Front.

Little more than a corpse

On Hitler’s orders, Mussolini was returned to German-occupied northern Italy as the puppet head of a fascist republic based in the town of Salo on Lake Garda. There, having established the Italian Social Republic (ISR) with its own flag (pictured), he dealt with his son-in-law and other ‘traitors’ who had voted against him at the Fascist Grand Council meeting in July. Ciano had gone to Germany only to be forced back to Mussolini’s new republic. Despite Edda’s pleas, Mussolini had Ciano and five colleagues tried in Verona in January 1944, and five, including Ciano, were executed by firing squad on the 11 January. To add to the humiliation, they were tied to chairs and shot in the back. Ciano’s last words were ‘Long live Italy!’ (Ciano had kept a detailed diary of his meetings with political figures, including Mussolini and Hitler. Edda, knowing the content could be embarrassing to the Nazi regime, tried to trade them in return for her husband. She failed. Two days before her husband’s execution, Edda escaped to Switzerland, taking the diaries with her. They were published in 1946. Her son, Fabrizio, later wrote a book with the wonderful title, When Grandpa Had Daddy Shot).

Mussolini didn’t have long to enjoy his new-found freedom, knowing he was no more than a puppet and that his end was nigh. In January 1945, he gave an interview in which he said: ‘Seven years ago, I was an interesting person. Now, I am little more than a corpse…  Yes, madam, I am finished. My star has fallen. I have no fight left in me. I work and I try, yet know that all is but a farce…. I await the end of the tragedy and — strangely detached from everything — I do not feel any more an actor. I feel I am the last of spectators.’

Nineteen months after his rescue, Mussolini, his mistress, Clara Petacci, and a few followers attempted to escape into Switzerland. Stopped by Italian partisans, Mussolini’s attempts to disguise himself with a Luftwaffe overcoat and helmet failed, and on 28 April 1945, at Lake Como in Lombardy, Mussolini and Petacci were shot. Their bodies were transported to Milan where they were beaten and urinated upon and finally left to hang upside down for public display.

Rupert Colley.

Read more about the war in The Clever Teens Guide to World War Two available as an ebook and 80-page paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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The tension kicks off within the first minute. It then doesn’t let go until the last. But before we get to the film, a quick paragraph of history…

Dunkirk – the background

On 10 May 1940, German forces launched their attack against France. Their advance was spectacular. By the end of the month, over a third of a million Allied troops were trapped in the French coastal town of Dunkirk, subject to German shells and attacks from the air. It was only a matter of days before the full-blown assault would come. Losses were heavy but by 4 June, the evacuation had brought back to Britain 338,226 British, French and other Allied soldiers. Plus 170 dogs. Soldiers put much store by their mascots.

A triptych

Dunkirk is a very visceral experience. You experience the fear and the vulnerability of the men stranded with little more than their rifles. Usually, whenever we have a film based on a huge event, for example, Titanic, there has to be a romantic subplot in there somewhere. Not so with Dunkirk, and it’s all the better for it. It’s also a very British experience. Although we catch a brief glimpse of a few French and colonial troops, we do not see a single German. The German is the unseen enemy, unseen but still too close for comfort. And when he does appear, hurling in his Messerschmitt towards our brave boys on the beach or on a vessel, the sound is frightening. It’s a film with surprisingly little dialogue. It’s also a war film with surprisingly little blood – there are no close-ups of limbs being ripped off, of men being blown to smithereens or in their death throes. Nolan was certainly chasing the lower age certificate here. Yet he manages to achieve this without diminishing his stranglehold on us.

The film has three distinct viewpoints – which act almost like a triptych. The first is from the ground as we follow a young British Tommy called Tommy, funnily enough. And it is through Tommy, we meet Alex, played by Harry Styles. And let’s be honest here – most of us watching this film will be on tenterhooks looking out for Harry.

The sea plot follows a man in his late fifties, a Mr Dawson who, along with his son and his son’s friend, form part of the civilian armada who, sailing from England, braved the choppy waters of the English Channel to do their bit and help rescue the stranded men.

Lastly, we see it from the air, from the point of view of three, soon to be two, RAF pilots, one named Farrier. And they’re all terribly upper crust, unlike those ruffian army boys, with their fine uniforms and Spitfires. The aerial combat scenes are stunning. Almost eighty years on and the sight of those Spitfires ranging through the air can still stir the heart.

These three points of view represent the three main elements of what constituted Dunkirk so Tommy, Mr Dawson and Farrier are each in their own way an ‘everyman’ for what happened there. We get to learn a little of Mr Dawson’s backstory but we don’t get to know them as characters, as people. Their role here is to tell the bigger story. The only additional subplot that was entirely unnecessary but still effective concerned the friend of Mr Dawson’s son.

The cast is stellar – Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy and Mark Rylance as Mr Dawson to name but a few. And yes, to answer the big question – Harry Styles can just about act.

CGI and Nimrod

As a director, Christopher Nolan is known for eschewing CGI and special effects. Understandable perhaps, noble for sure, but perhaps a bit of CGI here may not have gone amiss. We are told early on that there are some 400,000 men on the beaches of Dunkirk – yet often we see shots of an almost deserted beach. Likewise, with the civilian ships – there were hundreds of them but, watching the film, you get the impression that only about half a dozen had come across. But this is a minor quibble.

The music, by Hans Zimmer, plays its role perfectly – it’s effective, it enhances but it never distracts. It comes to the fore towards the end, naturally, with a strange mash-up of Elgar’s Nimrod Variation, the famous one, the one that stirs the patriotic heart in all Britons. Now, had it been a straight-up Nimrod, people would have decried it as too obvious, too unoriginal. Yet somehow, Zimmer does something to it that is fantastically effective.

Never Surrender 

With our boys finally and safely back in England, we have Churchill’s famous post-Dunkirk speech, the ‘we shall never surrender’ one. But, cleverly, we do not hear it from Churchill’s mouth nor in any way presented in a Churchillian manner, but from the lips of Tommy, who reads it, mumbling, from a newspaper.

I felt a little uncomfortable with the ending – it seemed too upbeat. Alex, the Harry Styles character, fears they will be spat on but despite this caveat the ending felt a little too triumphant. Yes, these 338,226 men had survived but we had failed. Churchill referred to Dunkirk not as a victory but merely a ‘deliverance’. And the French saw it in very negative terms – with the Germans closing in on Paris, they considered the evacuation of Dunkirk not in terms of an heroic rescue, but as a huge betrayal. The British had betrayed them.

On 14 June the swastika was flying from the Arc de Triomphe and on the 22nd, France surrendered to the Germans. Four long years of occupation lay ahead for the French.

I’d been looking forward to this film for a year – and it did not disappoint. But if you want to see it, it’s one of those films for the big screen. Don’t wait for the DVD.

Rupert Colley.

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Born in 1905, Max Schmeling had advanced through the boxing ranks within Germany and Europe and even impressed Jack Dempsey, heavyweight champion, in a friendly fight during the champion’s tour of Europe. But to be a true star of the boxing world, one had to conquer the US. And it was to America, in 1928, the 23–year-old Schmeling travelled.

The Low Blow Champion

It was an astute move, and the young German was soon a sensation winning his initial fights on American soil. In 1930, the reigning heavyweight champion, Gene Tunney, retired and Schmeling was pitted against fellow contender, Jack Sharkey. Schmeling won the fight but not in a manner that he would have liked – Sharkey had knocked the German to the floor but was disqualified for throwing a punch below the belt, leaving Schmeling floored and clutching his groin. Thus, with Sharkey disqualified, Schmeling had become World Heavyweight champion by default. The press derided Schmeling’s victory, calling him the ‘Low Blow Champion,’ a nickname that must have hurt. Sharkey’s team, feeling grieved, demanded an immediate re-match.

As heavyweight champion, the only German to have been so, Max Schmeling dispatched a boxer called Young Stribling, before facing Sharkey again in 1932. This time the fight went to 15 rounds, and Sharkey, to the astonishment of neutral onlookers, was given the fight on points, stripping Schmeling of his title. ‘We woz robbed,’ screamed Schmeling’s Jewish trainer, Joe ‘Yussel the Muscle’ Jacobs. The newspapers, and even the mayor of New York, agreed.

Hitler’s Boxer

The following year, Hitler came to power as German Chancellor, and the persecution against Jews began in earnest. Max Schmeling’s exploits came to the attention of the Nazi Party and they took the young boxer to their breasts as typical of the Aryan ideal. The Nazis enforced a ban on Jews playing any part in boxing, whether as fighter, trainer, promoter or even fan. Schmeling was told to ditch his Jewish trainer, and to Schmeling’s credit, he refused to do so.

New York, with its large Jewish population, associated Schmeling with the new German regime, not helped that Schmeling’s next fight, in June 1933, was against Max Baer. Although himself not a Jew, Baer’s father had been, which, under Nazi classification, made him a Mischlinge. Bauer came into the ring with the Star of David stitched onto his shorts. The fight was seen as good versus evil, with Schmeling cast as Hitler’s representative in the boxing ring. Baer, much to America’s delight, won.

Schmeling v Louis

Despite the loss, Schmeling was offered the chance to fight fellow contender, Joe Louis (pictured). Louis was not only the role model of African-Americans but of Americans everywhere as the embodiment of a rags to riches tale, a man living the American dream.  Against him, Max Schmeling represented the polar opposite, the land of anti-Semitism and oppression. The Nazis were displeased that Schmeling should deign to fight a Negro but the fight went ahead on 19 June 1936. Schmeling, the underdog, floored Louis twice, knocking him out in the 12^th round and winning convincingly. Schmeling was delighted but not overly surprised: ‘I wouldn’t have fought a colored man if I didn’t think I could lick him,’ he told reporters.

Schmeling returned to a hero’s welcome in Germany not by ship but by another symbol of German superiority, the Hindenburg airship. Schmeling’s victory was ‘not only sport’, crowed the Nazi weekly journal Das Schwarze Korps (The Black Corps), ‘it was a question of prestige for our race.’ A new film was released, Schmeling’s Victory: A German Victory, and shown throughout the country. Schmeling was feted as all that was good in Nazi Germany, appearing smiling at the side of Hitler, a fan of boxing, and Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. (Indeed, Schmeling’s wife, Anny, listened to the fight on the radio in Goebbels’s living room). When later quizzed about his meetings with Hitler, Schmeling responded by saying, ‘I once went to dinner with Franklin Roosevelt; that did not make me a Democrat’. But Schmeling did attend Nazi rallies at Nuremberg and supported Nazi charities.

Schmeling returned to New York in May 1937 and had been booked onto the Hindenburg but a last-minute change of plan meant he travelled instead by sea. Thus, by a quirk of fate, Schmeling missed being on the Hindenburg when, arriving in New Jersey, it exploded into flames, claiming the lives of 36.

In New York, Schmeling became a spokesman for Germany, often quizzed about life under the Nazis. For Schmeling, the pressure must have been difficult especially when the pressure came from Hitler himself: ‘When you go to the United States, you’re going to obviously be interviewed by people who are thinking that very bad things are going on in Germany at this moment. And I hope you’ll be able to tell them that the situation isn’t as bleak as they think it is.’ Hence, in one interview, he said, ‘I have seen no Jews suffer… whatever pain they are undergoing they have brought on themselves by circulating anti-Nazi horror stories in New York and elsewhere.’

Schmeling v Louis: the re-match

Having beaten Joe Louis, Schmeling now wanted a chance of regaining the title from the reigning champion James Braddock, but Braddock’s camp feigned injury, not wanting to be involved with the man they considered a Nazi puppet. Instead, Braddock fought Joe Louis and lost. The Brown Bomber was now the heavyweight champion of the world.

The much-anticipated Louis–Schmeling rematch of 22 June 1938 (pictured) was billed as the ‘fight of the century’, with its politically charged rivalry between the land of the free and the land of Aryan racial purity. Among the 70,000 audience were Gary Cooper and Clark Gable. As he approached the ring, Schmeling was greeted with jeers and pelted with rubbish. The fight lasted all of two minutes and four seconds when Schmeling was knocked out. He spent ten days in hospital recovering from his injuries which included a number of broken ribs. Louis had got his revenge and democracy, it seemed, had triumphed over fascism. But ultimately it was about boxing and that on this particular occasion, the American was better than the German.

The German ambassador in America tried to persuade Schmeling to claim foul play against Louis but Schmeling refused. This time, when Schmeling returned to Germany, by humble ship, there was no celebration, no welcome party. Schmeling, now considered a loser, was shunned by the party that had been so keen to embrace him.

Schmeling may have previously appeared as an apologist for the Nazi regime but when faced with its reality, he demonstrated true courage. On the night of 10-11 November 1938, when the Nazis unleashed their battering of Jews and Jewish synagogues and businesses during what became known as Kristallnacht, Schmeling hid two Jewish brothers in his hotel suite for two days, sharing what food he had with them and refusing all visitors, claiming he was ill. Later, Schmeling spirited the boys and family out of Germany. One of them, Henri Lewin, speaking in 1989, paid homage to the boxer, saying that had they been discovered, ‘I would not be here this evening, and neither would Max’.

Private Schmeling

With the outbreak of war in 1939, Schmeling was forcibly drafted into the German army as a paratrooper (pictured) and, as a 36-year-old private, saw action during the Battle of Crete in 1941 where he was wounded. Schmeling believed that the particularly perilous assignment had been the Nazi Party’s revenge on him. No doubt they hoped he would be killed and provide them with a new martyr. When ordered by Goebbels to fabricate tales for the press relating to supposed British barbarity against German prisoners, Schmeling refused. He was promptly court-martialed on the personal orders of the Propaganda Minister.

Post-war, Schmeling, living in Germany and in need of money, fought five more matches, his first fights since before the war. He fought and lost his final fight in 1948, as a 43-year-old. He started working for the German branch of Cola-Cola, eventually running his own bottling plant and becoming very rich in the process. Meanwhile, in the US, Joe Louis fell on hard times, unable to pay mounting tax debts. Schmeling visited his former boxing rival in the US and helped him along financially. When Louis died in 1981, Schmeling contributed towards the cost of the funeral.

After 54 years of marriage, Schmeling’s wife, Anny, died in 1987. Anny, a former actress of Polish-Czech descent, had starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1929 film, Blackmail, Britain’s first talkie.

Max Schmeling died on 2 February 2005, seven months short of his hundredth birthday.

Rupert Colley

Read more in The Clever Teens’ Guide to Nazi Germany, available as ebook and paperback (80 pages) on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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The Bomber Command Memorial, made of Portland Stone and situated in London’s Green Park, has, as its centrepiece, a nine-foot-high bronze sculpture of a typical seven-man crew, five of them gazing into the distance as if waiting for their comrades to return.

Many never did. 55,573 British, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and other Commonwealth pilots and crewmen lost their lives and 8,403 were wounded, a sixty per cent causality rate, far higher than most other forms of armed service during the war. A further 9,838 were taken prisoners-of-war. Allied crewmen who survived being shot down in Germany, if not taken prisoner, were often lynched.

With only one in four aircrew surviving their allocated thirty missions, the attacks were eventually halted. Yet following the war, it took 67 years to officially appreciate what these men did. (The crews were even denied a campaign medal for their dangerous work.)

Designed by architect, Liam O’Connor, the Bomber Command Memorial cost almost £6 million to construct, the funding coming from public donations and private sponsors, such as Lord Ashcroft (a generous man for sure but could be accused of being overly greedy in his purchasing of so many Victoria Crosses for his own collection) and Bee Gee, Robin Gibb, who died in May 2012, but not, it has to be said, the government.

Initially, Dresden, the German city interminably linked with the destruction wrought by Bomber Command, objected to the memorial but an inscription commemorating all the lives lost during the bombing raids eased their concerns. The RAF’s last flying Lancaster Bomber flew over the proceedings releasing a shower of red poppies in a sign of remembrance for the fallen. Some 6,000 veterans and their families attended the ceremony, for whom the occasion was an emotional one.

‘The Few’

So why did it take so long for the Bomber Command crews to have their own memorial? Those involved in the Battle of Britain during the summer of 1940 have longed received recognition for their services rendered in defending the country against Hitler’s Luftwaffe, and London boasts a fine Battle of Britain memorial, unveiled in 2005, on the Victoria Embankment. Their work was noble – dogfights over the English Channel and the fields of Kent, defending our Sceptred Isle. No civilians were directly involved, as men and their machines slugged it out. Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime prime minister, immediately praised their bravery and sacrifice with his immortal words, ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’.

But the work of Bomber Command was different. Their whole purpose was to target civilians, to kill them, to shatter their cities and ultimately their resolve. Hitler had tried much the same tactic, earlier in the war, when London, Glasgow, Birmingham, Coventry and other British cities suffered German bombing. But rather than breaking Briton’s resolve, the Blitz merely hardened it.

‘My name is Meyer’

In 1939, Hermann Goring, head of the Luftwaffe, boasted, ‘If bombs drop on Germany, you may call me Meyer.’ Sure enough, early RAF bombing missions were considered too dangerous by day and too ineffective by night. But later, on 30 May 1942, Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, who was appointed commander of Bomber Command in February 1942, organized the destruction of Cologne using no less than a thousand bombers in a determined act to terrorise civilians. German war production suffered but German anti-aircraft guns and the vulnerability of British planes resulted in high casualty rates for the RAF.

In January 1943, Harris (pictured) joined forces with his American counterpart, Carl ‘Tooey’ Spaatz, in a renewed initiative to bomb Germany. The RAF bombed cities by night in a policy of ‘de-housing’, the express purpose to target and demoralize the civilian population (despite the evidence of the contrary as experienced from the Blitz); while the US Air Force bombed industrial and military targets by day. Residential neighbourhoods were considered prime targets for inflicting greater demoralization. Hamburg was razed in July 1943 by incendiary bombs causing firestorms that engulfed the city, melting cellars, and killing 50,000 people.

Numerous other cities were also targeted. Timed bombs were dropped, programmed to explode a day or two after impact in order to maim as many as possible. Another RAF strategy was to drop their bombs forcing people to run to their bomb shelters where, the RAF knew, they could remain for three hours until conditions inside became too hot, forcing them to re-emerge – and it was at that point the bombers dropped a second wave of bombs. This was no less then ‘terror bombing’.

Dresden

On 13 February 1945, Bomber Harris sent his planes over Dresden, 100 miles south of Berlin and brimming with refugees fleeing the Soviets sixty miles away to the east. Dwarfing the devastation caused in the Blitz four years earlier, Dresden, with only minimal anti-aircraft guns, was obliterated, with ten times the number of bombs dropped and ten times the number of casualties sustained in this one attack than during the whole of the Blitz, and almost double the casualties caused by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945.

The objective was justified in that Britain had to use any and all means to defeat the Nazi foe. But even Churchill began to have his doubts, questioning Harris’ methods of ‘bombing German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror’.

‘Bomber’ Harris, who died on 5 April 1984, has had his own statue near London’s Strand since 1992. Unveiled amidst huge protests and cries of ‘war criminal’, the threat of vandalism meant that the statue had to have a round-the-clock guard during the first months of its existence.

Ultimately, the Bomber Command Memorial is dedicated not to the commanders, the politicians or the strategy but to the young, ordinary men of the RAF that risked so much during the war and have suffered from our uneasy conscience for so many decades since. What these young men had to do, fortunately for most of us, is beyond our imagination. For that at least they deserve our recognition – even if it was 67 years overdue.

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The Allies knew there was a build-up of German troops and equipment around the Ardennes but never believed Hitler was capable of such a bold initiative. Only the day before the attack, the British commander, Bernard Montgomery, told Dwight D Eisenhower, the Allies’ Supreme Commander, that the Germans would be incapable of staging ‘major offensive operations’. Captured Germans spilled the plans but their information was ignored. Thus, the attack came as a complete surprise.

‘Nuts’

Thick snow and heavy fog prevented the Americans from employing their airpower and the German advance of 250,000 men forced a dent in the American line (hence battle of the ‘Bulge’). Germans, dressed in American uniforms and driving captured US jeeps, caused confusion and within five days the Germans had surrounded almost 20,000 Americans at the crossroads of Bastogne. Their situation was desperate but when the German commander gave his American equivalent, Major-General Anthony McAuliffe, the chance to surrender, McAuliffe answered with just the one word – ‘Nuts’.

US soldiers near the town of St Vith were not so lucky and 8,000 of them surrendered – the largest surrender of US troops since the American Civil War 80 years before. Elsewhere, the Germans taunted the Americans, using loudspeakers to ask, ‘How would you like to die for Christmas?’

‘Lovely weather for killing Germans’

US General George Patton appealed for divine intervention – ‘Sir, this is Patton talking’, he said, addressing God in a small Luxembourg church, ‘You have just got to make up Your mind whose side You’re on.’ On Patton’s urging, God must have made up His mind for near Christmas the fog lifted, and the Americans were able to launch their planes. Patton, considering the weather, said, ‘It’s a cold, clear Christmas – lovely weather for killing Germans’. While Patton moved reinforcements into Bastogne and relieved its desperate defenders, Montgomery prevented the Germans from crossing the River Meuse.

The Americans then counterattacked; the Germans ran out of fuel and the bulge was burst. The Ardennes Offensive did delay the Allied advance but on 22 January the Germans began their retreat and by the 28^th the line was back to where it was on 16 December. But at a cost – the US lost over 80,000 men killed or wounded. Amongst the dead, were 101 unarmed American prisoners, murdered by the SS. The Germans lost over 100,000 and, vitally, much of its aircraft and tanks which, at that stage of the war, were impossible to replace. The march on Berlin was back on.

The struggle and conditions at Bastogne are brought to life in the excellent US TV mini-series Band of Brothers. There is also a 1965 film starring Henry Fonda and Terry Savalas, ‘The Battle of the Bulge’, a classic American epic where sometimes historical accuracy takes second place to entertainment but none the worse for that!

Rupert Colley.

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Sunk in the Black Sea, the exact location of the wreck is still a mystery and for years, the question remained – was a hospital ship, identified by a Red Cross, a legitimate target?

A stricken city

Designed for 980 passengers and crew, over seven times that number had surged onto the ship in the Crimean port of Yalta that fateful night of 7 November 1941. The reason was blind panic. The Nazi war machine, which had invaded the Soviet Union less than five months before, had overrun the Crimean peninsula and was bearing down on Yalta. People expected the city to fall within a matter of hours. The only possible means of escape for its stricken population was by sea – the roads outside the city having been sealed off by the Germans.

Built in Leningrad in 1928, the double-decker Armenia began its career as a passenger ship. In August 1941, following the outbreak of war, it was pressed into military service as a hospital ship. The day before its sinking, the Armenia had left the port of Sevastopol having taken civilian evacuees and the occupants of several military hospitals. Crammed with up to 5,000 passengers, the ship made for Tuapse, a town on the northeast coast of the Black Sea, about 250 miles east. But the captain, Captain Vladimir Plaushevsky, received orders to pick up extra people from nearby Yalta.

More civilians and wounded soldiers, some severely, crammed onto the ship amid scenes of chaos and utter panic. No register was taken, no names recorded of these additional two thousand passengers. Captain Plaushevsky then received orders to remain in port until escort vessels were at hand to chaperon him out. The delay frustrated the captain, he had to get going; they were cutting it too fine.

Torpedoed

The next morning, seven o’clock, the Armenia finally set sail, escorted by two armed boats and two fighter planes.

The escorts were unable to prevent a German torpedo bomber, a Heinkel He-111, swooping-in low and firing two torpedoes at the ship. It was 11.29 am, the ship was 25 miles into its journey. The first torpedo missed but the second one scored a direct hit, splitting the ship into two. The Armenia sunk within just four minutes. All but eight of the 7,000 passengers died, the survivors being picked up by a patrol boat.

The tragedy lay in the postponement of its departure. If Captain Plaushevsky had not lost those precious hours, the ship may well have arrived at its intended destination.

Lying at a depth of about 480 metres, the location of the Armenia wreck remains unknown despite the efforts of oceanic explorer, Robert Ballard, discoverer of several historical wrecks including the aforementioned Titanic and Lusitania.

A legitimate target?

Was the Armenia a legitimate target? As a hospital ship, it was clearly marked with the Red Cross, both on its sides and, clearly visible to the German pilots, on the deck. But it had a military escort, and it had two of its own anti-aircraft guns, so under the rules of war, it was a perfectly acceptable target.

But this doesn’t detract from the catastrophe of its sinking and today we should remember, if only momentarily, the forgotten tragedy of the Armenia.

Rupert Colley.

See also the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff.

Read more about the war in The Clever Teens Guide to World War Two available as an ebook and 80-page paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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The words were Winston Churchill’s and the great general he was referring to was Erwin Rommel.

The Desert Fox

Born 15 November 1891, Erwin Rommel was, as Churchill suggests, respected as a master tactician, the supreme strategist who, in 1940, helped defeat France and the Low Countries and then found lasting fame when sent by Hitler to North Africa where, commanding the Afrika Korps, he earned the sobriquet, the Desert Fox. Germany, his nation, adored him, his troops loved him, Hitler treasured him and his enemies respected him. His Afrika Korps was never charged with any war crimes and prisoners of war were treated humanely. When his only son, Manfred, proposed joining the Waffen SS, Rommel forbade it.

In June 1944 Rommel was sent to Northern France to help coordinate the defence against the Allied Normandy Invasion but was wounded a month later when an RAF plane strafed his car. Rommel returned home to Germany to convalesce.

The July Bomb Plot

Meanwhile, on 20 July 1944, Hitler survived an assassination attempt in his Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia, the ‘July Bomb Plot’, perpetuated by Nazi officers who hoped to shorten the war with his removal. Hitler, although shaken, suffered only superficial injuries, and those responsible were soon rounded up and executed. Rommel, although not involved and actively against any plan to assassinate Hitler, did support the idea of having him removed from power. Once his association with the plotters, however tenuous, came to light, his downfall was inevitable and swift.

On 14 October 1944, Hitler dispatched two generals to Rommel’s home in Herrlingen to offer the fallen Field Marshal a bleak choice. Manfred, aged 15, was at home with his mother when the call came. He waited nervously as the three men talked in private, and then as his father went upstairs to speak to his mother. Finally, Rommel spoke to his son and told him of Hitler’s deal.

Manfred’s story

Writing after the war, Manfred described the scene as his father said, ‘”I have just had to tell your mother that I shall be dead in a quarter of an hour… The house is surrounded and Hitler is charging me with high treason. In view of my services in Africa, I am to have the chance of dying by poison. The two generals have brought it with them. It’s fatal in three seconds. If I accept, none of the usual steps will be taken against my family, that is against you.”

‘”Do you believe it?”‘ asked Manfred.

‘”Yes, I believe it. It is very much in their interest to see that the affair does not come out into the open. By the way, I have been charged to put you under a promise of the strictest silence. If a single word of this comes out, they will no longer feel themselves bound by the agreement.”‘

Manfred continues, ‘The car stood ready. The SS driver swung the door open and stood to attention. My father pushed his Marshal’s baton under his left arm, and with his face calm, gave Aldinger (Rommel’s aide) and me his hand once more before getting in the car… My father did not turn again as the car drove quickly off up the hill and disappeared around a bend in the road. When it had gone Aldinger and I turned and walked silently back into the house.

‘Twenty minutes later the telephone rang. Aldinger lifted the receiver and my father’s death was duly reported.’

A loyal German soldier

Having died from ‘the injuries sustained during the RAF attack in France’, Erwin Rommel was, as promised, buried with full military honours, accorded an official day of mourning, and his family pensioned off.

Writing after the war, Churchill wrote that Rommel was deserving of ‘our respect, because, although a loyal German soldier, he came to hate Hitler and all his works, and took part in the conspiracy to rescue Germany by displacing the maniac and tyrant. For this, he paid the forfeit of his life.’

Pictured is Rommel’s memorial at the place of his suicide at Herrlingen in southern Germany, but, since 1968, known as Blaustein. Manfred died in November 2013, aged 84.

Rupert Colley.

Read more about the war in The Clever Teens Guide to World War Two available as an ebook and 80-page paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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Churchill knew that if Germany were to defeat the Soviet Union then Hitler would be able to concentrate his whole military strength on the west. But although tentative plans for a large-scale invasion were afoot, to act too quickly, too hastily, would be foolhardy. Churchill withstood Stalin’s pressure. There would be no second front for at least another year. But, in the meanwhile, Churchill was able to offer a ‘reconnaissance in force’ on the French port of Dieppe, with the objective of drawing away German troops from the Eastern Front. Whether Stalin was at all appeased by this morsel of compensation, Churchill does not say.

Operation Jubilee

Thus, in the early hours of 19 August 1942, the Allies launched Operation Jubilee – the raid on Dieppe, 65 miles across from England. 252 ships crossed the Channel in a five-pronged attack carrying tanks together with 5,000 Canadians and 1,000 British and American troops plus a handful of fighters from the French resistance. Nearing their destination, one prong ran into a German merchant convoy. A skirmish ensued. More fatally, it meant that the element of surprise had been lost – aware of what was taking place, the Germans at Dieppe were now waiting in great numbers.

Pictured: German soldiers defending the French port of Dieppe against the Anglo-Canadian raid, 19 August 1942.

What followed was a disaster as the Germans unleashed a withering fire from cliff tops and port-side hotels. A Canadian war correspondent described the scene as men tried to disembark from their landing craft: the soldiers ‘plunged into about two feet of water and machine-gun bullets laced into them. Bodies piled up on the ramp.’ Neutralised by German fighters, support overhead from squadrons of RAF planes proved ineffectual. Only 29 tanks managed to make it ashore where they struggled on the shingle beach, and of those only 15 were able to advance as far as the sea wall only to be prevented from encroaching into the town by concrete barriers.

The Dieppe Raid, which had lasted just six hours, was a costly affair – 60 per cent of ground troops were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. The operation left 1,027 dead, of whom 907 were Canadian. A further 2,340 troops were captured, and 106 aircraft shot down. An American, Lieutenant Edward V Loustalot, earned the unenviable distinction of becoming the first US soldier killed in wartime Europe.

Lessons learned

Despite the failure of Dieppe and the high rate of losses, important lessons were learned – that a direct assault on a well-defended harbour was not an option for any future attack; and that superiority of the air was a prerequisite. Churchill concluded that the raid had provided a ‘mine of experience’.

In charge of the operation, Vice Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, cousin to King George VI, would later say, ‘If I had the same decision to make again, I would do as I did before … For every soldier who died at Dieppe, ten were saved on D-Day.’ Hitler too felt as if a lesson had been learned. Knowing that at some point the Allies would try again, he said, ‘We must reckon with a totally different mode of attack and in quite a different place’.

Pictured: Canadian prisoners of war being lead through Dieppe by German soldiers.

The attack would come almost two years later – 6 June 1944.

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