Showing posts with label Nazi Germany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nazi Germany. Show all posts

Monday, July 14, 2025

Saturday, July 14, 1945. Verboten und Nicht Verboten

Eisenhower announced the closure of SHAEF.

Eisenhower also eased the fraternization rules between Allied troops and German civilians allowing Allied soldiers to chat and speak to German civilians.  

Nazi German poster recruiting women for for the Reichsluftschutzbund, i.e. civil defense.  Women, and teenage boys, later served on antiaircraft gun crews.  A few months after the end of the war, the same targeted audience was beginning to become friendly to US troops.

By September nearly all of the rules would be removed.

Fraternization in this context does not mean what people commonly assume it does, but it is more in line with the etymology of the word's origins, from Latin through French:  "to sympathize as brothers".  Eisenhower, who was first of all an administrator, and highly intelligent, recognized that contact between the Western Allies, and with Americans in particular, would help have a corrosive impact on Prussianized and Nazified German culture.  Bans on contacts had already been lifted as to contacts with children, which were impossible to prevent between oversupplied American troops and German children anyhow.  The British, contrary to what is often reported in regard to the development in policy, followed suit.

There was really no danger that French troops were going to fraternize to any significant degree with Germans, nor those of any country the Germans had overrun.  And of course in Russian controlled territory, where Eisenhower's orders didn't apply rapine Red Army troops simply terrorize and brutalized civilians, and not only Germans.

Be that as it may, the inevitable problem that existed with American troops in particular fraternizing in the wider sense was already there.  It had been a problem after World War One during which the American Army had taken steps to stop friendly contacts between Germans and Americans with limited success.  At that time, Americans already were noting in letters home that Germany looked more like the US than France did, in that it was more technologically advanced and cleaner.  By the end of World War Two this was much more the case, with Americans being shocked by what they deemed the primitive conditions the French and Italians lived in, and impressed with the more advanced state of German municipalities.  While its often little noted, a non insignificant number of GIs found themselves not really liking the French and outright horrified by the conditions Italians lived in.

With things being the way they are, even before the end of the war the U.S. Army had trouble keeping soldiers away from German women, which is not to say that all such contacts had only one thing in mind.  Having said that, the conditions that followed the havoc of the Eastern Front and the war in general were having a massive impact on German culture even without Eisenhower seeking to step in and direct it.  The German military had been huge with a very large number of German men in it.  Many of them were killed during the war and many were simply missing by 1945.

A vast number of German men were held as prisoners of war as well.  The Western Allies held over 3,150,000 by April 30, 1945.  By the end of the war that number was over 7,614,790,with the 425,000 German POWs in 511 main and branch camps. The Soviet Union also held at least 2,733,739, fewer than a person might suspect, actually, reflecting the nature of the combat in the east.

The Western Allies did not, and could not have, repatriated German POWS immediately.  The US held German prisoners until 1946 in the US, with it notably being the case that many went from disciplined Nazi soldiers to actually enjoying the last year of their captivity.  Reeducation proved unnecessary as they rapidly evolved into democratic Germans in the last months of their captivity.

The point, however, is that with over 10,000,000 German men in captivity, and with millions of German men killed during the war, and with the German citizenry in the east put to flight, nature began to play a role in things very quickly.  Hundreds of thousands of German women were left without support in a country that had largely resisted imposing female labor on its citizenry during the war.  Man young women knew at an instinctive level that the normal path of finding a lifelong mate had been destroyed.  And the collapse of the Nazi system proved to be a bit like tearing a scab off a wound as even the Nazifield population proved capable of abandoning Nazi propaganda pretty rapidly, even if only superficially in some instance.  

Added to this, the war itself had damaged domestic life globally.  This has been noted in the context of World War Two marriages in the US on this site already.  While the German situation was different, it was found that after the war an appreciable number of Germans, both male and female, simply changed identities up to and including abandoning a spouse, missing or not.  In some instances German women became outright disgusted with German men and blamed them for the war and the fate they'd suffered, something that was also the case with Japanese women.

By June of 1944, Life magazine was noting:

There’s one blonde Fräulein with braided hair who always walked past two MPs every day on her way to do shopping, swinging her hips from side to side even more noticeably than usual. As she passed she would look slyly at the MPs, tap one hip and utter the word, ‘Verboten.’ […]

In Germany fraternization is officially a matter of high policy. But for the GI it is not a case of policy or of politics or of going out with girls who used to go out with the guys who killed your buddies. You don’t talk politics when you fraternize. It’s more a matter of bicycles and skirts waving in the breeze and a lonesome, combat-weary solder looking warily around the corner to see if a policeman is in sight.”

Ultimately somewhere between 14,000 to 20,000 German women would marry American soldiers after the war, something that stands in remarkable contrast to the French, as only 6,500 French women married US soldiers.  Between 10,000 and 100,000 Italian women married U.S. soldiers. 70,000 English women did the same.

Late war German poster celebrating Maria Schultz.  The poster states; "A German Girl! 'Germany will endure all suffering and create a new world', said Maria Schultz on the 12.February 1945, awaiting her death sentence"  Schultz, whose actual last name may have been Bierganz, was arrested when her diary was discovered, which was fanatically pro Nazi and full of fantasies about killing U.S. troops, but she was just let go, not executed.  German women would help rebuild Germany, but not in the way she imagined.

If all of this seems a bit odd, it's probably a lot more human than people might suppose.  Germany had been heavily propagandized during the Nazi era, but the era was a lot shorter than people like to recall, which is frightening in that Germany descended into madness so quickly.  Be that as it may, DNA tends to rule at the end of the day and the Japanese and German examples tend to show that, with the German one perhaps being the most consequential.  Nazi Germany had very distinct concepts of what women were to do, which were more than a little perverse.  Germany itself was, of course, a Christian nation which the anti Christian Nazi party was seeking to transform into something else, and which it was surprisingly successful in doing in its short period of rule.  

Recruiting poster aimed at teenage girls for the Hitler Youth.  The female variant of the Hitler Youth, the League of German Girls would prove to be downright perverse, encouraging a radical pronatalist view of their role.

The Nazis were heavily invested in an exaggerated martial concept of manliness which failed.  By late 1944 the Allies were on Germany's doorstep.  Fairly soon German soldiers in the East would outright be fighting to the last man to try to protect German civilians from the Red Army, which is much of the reason that the fighting in 1945 was so much worse in the East than at any time prior to that.  German troops did in fact go down fighting in many instances to attempt to give German civilians, including women, the chance to get away, but to a large degree they failed.  German men, in other words, were unable to protect German women from rape and death in the East.

In the West, the German military failure had less severe physical consequences, but German manhood failed there too.  Cities were destroyed and lives wrecked.  The irony, however, was that in the West, the Allies themselves became the protector, and indeed the liberator, of German women.  By making them temporarily Verboten, they gave them independence in a way that they had not had since 1932, if ever.

Italy declared war on Japan.

The French flag was formally unfurled at the summit of the Victory Column in Berlin.

The monument celebrated the German victory over France in the Franco Prussian War.

Japanese destroyer Tachibana was sunk in Hakodate Bay by aircraft of the U.S. Navy.  The battleships South Dakota, Indiana and Massachusetts, plus two heavy cruisers and 4 destroyers, bombarded the Kamaishi steel works in the first naval gunfire directed against the Japanese home islands.

The Simla Conference ended without a positive result.

Last edition:

Friday, July 13, 1945. Japan seeks a way out.

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Tuesday, July 3, 1945. Don't use the Bomb.

The first draft of a letter by Manhattan Project scientists urging that the Atomic Bomb not be used was circulated.  Hungarian physicist and biologist Leo Szilard was the scrivener.


This version was not sent, as a new one was worked on in order to secure additional signatures.

This is the second such example of such a letter, the other one from Robert Oppenheimer, that I've posted in recent days.  Clearly something was really going on inside the Manhattan Project itself at this time, and what that was, was a debate on whether to use the bomb or not.

Frankly, the views expressed above comport with my own.  Using the bomb was 1) a huge mistake, and 2) deeply immoral in how it was targeted.

It's interesting, however, that this debate broke out at this point.

That the atom could be split and that it could be done in such away that the massive release of energy would result in a huge blast had been known, albeit theoretically, for some time.  The knowledge did not come about during the war itself, but before it.

The war, however, created an enormous imperative to work the physical problems of constructing a bomb out, in large part out of the fear the Axis would get there first.

The Western Allies, the Germans, and the Japanese all had atomic weaponry programs, although its typically forgotten that the Japanese were working on this as well. The German program was enormously feared.

The German program was also enormously hampered by Nazi racism, as it had the impact of causing Jewish scientists, such as the Hungarian Leo Szilard to flee for their lives.  They weren't alone in this, however, as generally the highly educated class of men that were in the field of physics weren't really keen on fascism overall.  Germany had some top flight scientists, of course, but many of the best minds in science in Europe had left or put themselves out of serious research work if they remained. Some of those who remained in Europe and were subject to the Germans somewhat doddled in their efforts in order to retard the advancement of the efforts.

Japan had a program, as noted, and it had some excellent physicists. Their problem here, however, was much like that of the Japanese war effort in chief.  Japan was so isolated that it had nobody else to draw from.

In contrast, the US effort was nearly global in extent, as the US drew in all the great minds, in one way or another, who were not working for the Germans or Japanese, which was most of the great minds in the field.

At any rate, moral qualms about using the bomb didn't really start to emerge until very late in the war, and not really until after Germany had surrendered.  Nearly everyone working on the Manhattan Project imagined it as producing a bomb to be used against Germany.  Japan wasn't really considered.

And there's good reasons for that. For one thing, it was feared that Germany, not Japan, would produce a nuclear weapon and there was no doubt that Germany would use it if they did.  Given that, producing a bomb, and using it first, had a certain element of logic to it.  Destroy them, the logic was, before they can do that to us.

Working into that, it should be noted, was the decay in the resistance to the destructiveness of war that had started to set in during World War One.  The US had gone to war, in part, over a moral reaction to the Germans sinking civilian ships.  By World War Two there was no moral aversion to that at all and unrestricted submarine warfare was just considered part of war.

The Germans had also introduced terror bombing of cities during the Great War, engaging in it with Zeppelins.  Long range artillery had shelled Paris in the same fashion.  Between the wars it was largely assumed that cities would be targeted simply because they were cities, which turned out to be correct.  The Germans had already engaged in this during the Spanish Civil War and would turn to during the Blitz, which the British would very rapidly reply with.  By 1945 the US was firebombing Japanese cities with the logic it drove workers out of their homes, and crippled Japanese industry, which was correct, but deeply immoral.

By July 1945 there were really no more industrial targets left to bomb in Japan, although the bombing was ongoing.  The only point of dropping an atomic bomb was to destroy cities, and the people within them.

That was obvious to the atomic scientists, but that had been obvious about using the bomb on Germany as well. Targeting would have largely been the same, and for the same purpose.  Allied strategic bombing of Germany has actually halted before the German surrender, as there was no longer any point to it, although the concept the Allies had in mind would really have been to use the bomb earlier than the Spring of 1945.  Indeed, had the bomb been available in very early 1945, there's real reason to doubt that the Allies would have used it on Germany, as Allied troops were on the ground and they were advancing.

Still, with all that in mind, there was a certain sense all along that Germany uniquely deserved to be subject to atomic bombs.  Japan in this context was almost an after thought.

Everyone working on the bomb in the US was European culturally.  To those of European culture the Germans were uniquely horrific, and to this day Nazi Germany is regarded as uniquely horrific.  Many of those working on the Manhattan Project, moreover, were direct victims of the Nazis, with quite a few being both European and Jewish refugees.  Contrary to what is sometimes claimed, by late 1944 people were well aware of what was going on in Nazi Germany and that the Germans were systematically murdering Jews.

The Japanese also were incredibly inhumane and horrific in their treatment of the populations they'd overrun, as well as of Allied prisoners of war. But the nature and extent of their barbarity really wasn't very well known.  Indeed, much of it would not be until after the Second World War, at which time the information was suppressed for post war political reasons.  At any rate, in July 1945, the scientists working on the Manhattan Project did not know of Japanese systematic horrors in China.  Very few people did.

And the Japanese were scene, basically, as victims of their own culture, which was somewhat true.  Japan had not been colonized by Europeans at all, making them the only nation in Asia to have that status.  Therefore, European culture, and standards, had really not penetrated very much.  Japan had adopted Western technology, but Western concepts of morality in war had not come in with it very much. To the extent that it did, it seemed to evaporate with the introduction of increasing authoritarianism in Japan after World War One.

But that wasn't really known to the scientific community.

It was, however, to the military community, which had been fighting the Japanese on the ground.

We'll discuss that in the context of the bomb in a later thread.  

The point here is that by this time, many in the non military community, and some within it, who were aware that the Allies were about to produce an atomic bomb were now against using it.

And, indeed, it should never have been used.

Moscow radio announced that the body of Joseph Goebbels had been discovered in the courtyard of the Chancellery in Berlin.

Also in Berlin, the first U.S. troops arrived for occupation duty.

James F. Byrnes became United States Secretary of State.

The first civilian passenger car made in the United States in three years rolled off the assembly line of the Ford Motor Company in Detroit.  The car was a 1946 Super DeLuxe Tudor sedan and was destined for Harry Truman.

Last edition:

Monday, July 2, 1945. Advances on Balikpapen.


Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Monday, May 28, 1945. Memorial Day.

The USS Drexler was sunk in a kamikaze attack.  100 Japanese aircraft were shot down on the same day, bringing to an end the Japanese air offensive.

William Joyce, "Lord Haw Haw", was arrested by the British in Flensburg.

Queen Wilhelmina returned to the Netherlands.

The Royal Navy stopped the convoy system in the Atlantic, Arctic and Indian Oceans.

Admiral Halsey, commanding US 3rd Fleet, took command of American naval forces operating against targets in Japan.

French forces and Syrians engaged in combat against each other.

John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival was born.

It was Memorial Day.

Last edition:

Sunday, May 27, 1945. Reversals of fortune in China.

Friday, May 23, 2025

Wednesday, May 23, 1945. The end of governments.


Winston Churchill resigned as Prime Minister, forming a caretaker government in anticipation of July 5 elections.

The elections would be the first in a decade.

The German Flensburg government is arrested and deposed by the Allies.


Himmler committed suicide.  So did German admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, who became a POW during the British occupation of Flensburg.

Julius Streicher was arrested in Bavaria.

US attacks on Yokohama bring shipping from the city to an end.

The United Nations Conference in San Francisco approved veto rights for China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States on the Security Council.


Last edition:

Tuesday, May 22, 1945. Operation Unthinkable.

Wednesday, May 7, 2025

Monday, May 7, 1945. Germany unconditionally surrenders.

German General Alfred Jodl and admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg signed unconditional surrender documents at 2:41 a.m. at General Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims.  All Allied Powers are represented. Fighting was scheduled to end at 23:00 the following day.  Military operations on the Western Front came to an immediate end.

Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, Leading Minister in the rump Flensburg Government, made a broadcast announcing the German surrender at 2:27 a.m.. 

The U-2336 sank two merchant ships in the Firth of Forth.

This Day in History: Last German U-boat in American waters

Riotous celebrations broke out in numerous places, including in Halifax, Nova Scotia, were they turned truly riotous.

American journalist Edward Kennedy broke an Allied embargo on news of the signing in the afternoon.

The NKVD and Polish anti Communist forces fought in the Battle of Kuryłówka with the Poles winning the battle, but fortunes would reverse the following day.

Spain severed relations with Nazi Germany. . . a bit late.

The British government in India published the report of an official commission of enquiry into the Bengal famine of 1943 finding that it could have been adverted through government action.

"These Army nurses, among the first to arrive on Okinawa, May 3, wash out of steel helmets.
They are, left to right, Lt. Margaret J. Whitton, Chicago Ill., who has seen 14 months service in Italy and Africa; Lt. Ruth Anderson, Rockford, Ill., Lt. Marjorie Dulain, Iron Mountain, Mich., and Lt. Eleanor Kennedy, Judington, Mich. 7 May, 1945.Photographer not credited.Photo Source: U.S. National Archives. Digitized by Signal Corps Archive."

Hard fighting continued on Okinawa.

Last edition:

Sunday, May 6, 1945. Stopping advances.

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Monday, April 30, 1945. Adolf Hitler commits suicide.

A post war PPK, the same type of pistol that Hitler used to end his life.

The man responsible for the deaths of millions in Europe, Adolf Hitler committed suicide with a .32 ACP PPK.  His wife of one day, Eva Braun, also killed herself. Both deaths occurred  around 3.30 p.m..

Their bodies were taken outside of the bunker, liberally doused with gasoline, and burned in a pit.

The Red Army was less than 500m from the Führerbunker.  Soviet troops reached the Reichstag.

Karl Dönitz and Joseph Goebbels took on Hitler's former roles as Head of State and Head of Government of Germany in accordance with his wishes.

Such was the engine of the German state that, even though the Nazis would never have come to power without Hitler, and the war would never have occurred without Hitler, the war nonetheless continued on without him.

The Battle of Bautzen ended in a localized German victory.

The U-879, U-1107 and U-326 were all sunk.

Actors Osvaldo Valenti and Luisa Ferida were killed by Italian partisans due to their links to fascism.

Last edition:

Sunday, April 29, 1945. Dachau.

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Monday, April 23, 1945. Where's Hitler?

German radio broadcast that Adolf Hitler was in the "main fighting line" in Berlin and would "remain there despite all rumors." 

The Allies suspected he was in Bavaria organizing resistance there.

Göring sent a telegram asking for permission to assume leadership of the Third Reich which Hitler regarded as treason, ordering his arrest.

The Flossenburg concentration camp was liberated by the U.S. Army.

The U-183 was sunk off of Borneo by the U.S. submarine Besugo.

The Navy deployed Bat air to ship missiles against Japanese ships in Balipapan Harbor in Borneo, marking their first use.

Those arrested in the Freeman Field Mutiny were released.

"Lt. Richard K. Jones, OIC 3235th Sig. Ser. Det. of Hollywood, Calif., feeds Japanese children found in a tomb 50 yards from front line on Okinawa. 23 April, 1945."

Last edition:

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Sunday, April 15, 1945. Race to Berlin.

The Zhukov-Konev Race to Berlin began.

The British 11th Armored Division liberated Bergen-Belsen under an April 12 agreement to allow the Germans to surrender the camp without resistance.

The 1st Canadian Army captured Arnhem.

A Japanese air raid destroyed many US aircraft on the ground on Okinawa.

Task Force 58 launched fighter sweeps over Kyushu, shooting down 29 Japanese aircraft and destroying 59 on the ground.

Franklin Roosevelt was interred at Hyde Park.

The F-82 Twin Mustang had its first flight.

The U-285, U-1063 and U-1235 were sunk by Allied warships in the North Atlantic.

Joachim Albrecht Eggeling,age  60, German Nazi Gauleiter committed suicide, something that was becoming something of an epidemic amongst Nazi officials.

Gen. Friedrich von Rabenau,  age 60, former German officer and Lutheran pastor was executed at Flossenbürg concentration camp for his minor role in the July 20 plot.  He had been retired due to his Christian beliefs in 1942.

Last edition:

Saturday, April 14, 1945. Operation Teardrop.

Saturday, April 12, 2025

Thursday, April 12, 1945. The death of Franklin Roosevelt

Franklin Roosevelt on April 11, 1945.

Franklin Roosevelt died on this day in 1945.

His death was a surprise to nobody close to him but came as a shock to the nation.  He'd been fading steadily for months.  His final moments came while sitting for a portrait in Warm Springs, Georgia.  His last words were "I have a terrific headache", reflecting that he died of a massive intracerebral hemorrhage.

He was 63 years of age.

Harry S. Truman was inaugurated President.  Immediately thereafter, Secretary of War Harry Stimson and James F. Byrnes informed him of the nature of the Manhattan Project.  He'd been kept in the dark about it previously, in spite of trying to learn of its nature while in Congress.  At noon he met reporters and said “last night the whole weight of the moon and stars fell on me. If you fellows ever pray, please pray for me.”

Much about Truman's approach to things would be different than Roosevelt's, and FRD's death and Truman's inauguration cannot be regarded as a seamless transition.  Roosevelt was politely hostile to European colonialism and did not desire to see European powers return to their former colonial domains where they had been pushed out of them. Truman was rapidly approached by France and the UK and became sympathetic to their positions.  Roosevelt was naive in some ways to the dangers of Communism and while Truman was not really enlightened to them at first, he'd become so after the war, while also being saddled with an administration that had seen significant left wing penetration.  Truman was, also, blunt.

Roosevelt is arguably the last great President of the United States.  The country has certainly had some good ones since then, but none who were great.

Hitler was ecstatic about Roosevelt's death, maintaining it was a sign that German fortunes in the war were turning.

The US 3rd Army took Erfurt. The French took Baden Baden.

The USS Lindsey, Mannert L. Abele and Zellars were severely damaged off of Okinawa by kamikazes.

The Srmian Front was broken by the Red Army.

The Battle of Authion ended in Allied victory.

The Battle of Buchhof and Stein am Kocher ended after one week.

The Royal Navy sank the U-486 and U-1024.

The Berlin Philharmonic gave one of its last Third Reich performances at the Philharmonic Hall in Berlin, with various members of the military and political elite in attendance.  Robert Heger conducted Brünnhilde's last aria (the Immolation Scene) and the finale from Richard Wagner's Götterdammerung, Beethoven's Violin Concerto, and Anton Bruckner's Romantic Symphony.  Members of the Hitler Youth offered cyanide capsules to the audience as they left the building, many of those in attendance being military and political elites.

Thursday, April 3, 2025

Tuesday, April 3, 1945. The Germans began the evacuation of Buchenwald.

The Germans began the evacuation of Buchenwald.

Soviet forces take Wiener Neustadt

Elements of the US 40th Division landed on Masbate to assist Filipino guerillas.

"Pfc. Thomas Powell, North Platte, Nebr., 5th Cav., guards the main street of San Pablo, Luzon, P.I, with his machine gun, and covers himself completely with his poncho in the tropical rain. 3 April, 1945.  Photographer: T/4 Wendinger.  Photo Source: U.S. National Archives. Digitized by Signal Corps Archive."

Kamikazes were active off of Okinawa.

"Men of an antitank company keep on the alert for enemy action atop a hill in Okinawa.
Left to right, Pfc. George Harrington, Brooklyn N.Y., Cpl Joe Irvin, Elgin, Ill., and Pfc Leland Beleme, Merced, Cal. 3 April 1945."

Last edition: