Member Article: Turning East: Hitler's only option
by Thomas Tripp
The invasion of the Soviet Union arguably was the most important military decision Adolf Hitler made in his life.
In just a little under four years, it destroyed the Thousand Year Reich along with tens of millions of innocent lives.
Did this fatal decision go against his belief of avoiding a two-front war or did Hitler feel he had a small window of
opportunity to win a campaign in the East, provided it was swift, while the British remained isolated on their island?
He felt this would bring about a settlement with Great Britain without the risk of a cross channel invasion. Hitler
in one of his last recorded conversations in the Reich Chancellery Bunker in April 1945, stated:
Member Article: The Club Runs: Allied Aircraft Resupply Operations to Malta, 1942
by Brick Billing
By early 1942 the tiny island of Malta, approximately 100 km south of Sicily, was effectively under siege. German and Italian advances in North Africa had transformed the Mediterranean an Axis-held lake, with the nearest Allied bases in Gibraltar on the eastern end and Egypt on the west. The Axis, realizing Malta’s strategic position, subjected the tiny island to daily aerial bombardments. Over the course of two years Malta became one of the most heavily bombed places on Earth as the German Luftwaffe, and the Italian Regia Aeronautica
flew over 3,000 bombing raids in an attempt to neutralize the island .[1] For as
long as Malta remained in Allied hands, British air and sea forces could mount
attacks against Axis shipping, threatening General Erwin Rommel’s supply lines
in North Africa. As early as May 1941, Rommel had warned his superiors that:
"without Malta the Axis will end by losing control of North Africa."[2] Standing
against this Axis threat were a series of fighter, bomber, and torpedo squadrons
based at Malta’s three airfields; Luqa, Hal Far, and Takali.[3]
Interview with a World War II Veteran
by Robert C. Daniels
In preparation for writing a book, tentatively entitled “World War II in Mid-America,” I have conducted oral interviews on 33 people of a small mid-western American community that had lived during and through the war. These people represent a wide and diverse range of those living in that area at the time: male, female, military, civilian, adult, children, farmer, factory worker, etc. These interviews were designed to gather information on how World War II affected the interviewees’ lives. As such, questions were asked during the interviews about their lives prior to, during, and after the war.
Why Arnhem?
by Thomas Leckwold
Operation Market-Garden, the largest airborne operation in history, is a well known failure because of the
inability to capture a bridge over the Rhine River, and the resulting destruction of the British 1st Airborne Division
at Arnhem. Many opinions of the Battle of Arnhem were established by Cornelius Ryan in his book A Bridge Too Far
which became an epic 1977 movie by Joseph Levine and Richard Attenborough. These works provided readers and movie goers
an understanding of the defeat that Allies suffered. However, these works fail in answering the basic question of how
events on the Western Front influenced the decision of choosing Arnhem as the objective for such a daring and risky
operation to force a crossing of the Rhine?
Hell Ship - From the Philippines to Japan
by Robert C. Daniels
U.S. Marine Edmond Babler was forced to surrender to the Japanese Imperial Army in April 1942 with the fall
of the Island fortress of Corregidor in the Philippines. Like many of his fellow POWs, after spending two years
of hard labor under what can only be described as horrendous and savage slave labor conditions in the Philippine
Islands of Luzon and Palawan, he was transported to the Japanese main islands in what would be known to the prisoners
as a Hell Ship. What follows comprises Chapter 7 of 1220 Days: The story of U.S. Marine Edmond Babler and
his experiences in Japanese Prisoner of War Camps during World War II, and is his personal account of that
trip using his vernacular and colloquialisms whenever possible, including the phonetic form in which Ed originally
wrote and remembered several Japanese phrases. It is his views and memories, with no apologies made nor intended
to conform to the modern concept of political correctness. The author has sparingly inserted clarifications and
corroborating information in encapsulated brackets where deemed necessary to give the reader a better understanding
of the ‘overall picture’ of the war in relation to what Ed was experiencing.
“She Hastens Onward Still”: The Battleship USS Oregon And its Place in National Memory
by Dr. Christopher M. Jannings
Ship breakers claimed the vast majority of 19th Pre-dreadnought and 20th century
United States battleships like the USS Oregon upon decommission.[1] Masts,
guns, anchors, smoke stacks, and other elements of the most famous remain on public
display at historic sites, serving as substitutes for full-sized memorials that
require private donations or taxpayer dollars to maintain. The USS Oregon
was the centerpiece for the State of Oregon Marine Park from 1927 to 1942, and seemed
destined for honorable retirement until the outbreak of World War II, but was sacrificed
because of misguided patriotism in the State of Oregon and misappropriation of war
materials and building contracts, particularly involving the use of steel, within
the highest levels of government and industry.[2]
From Liberation to Confrontation: The U.S. Army and Czechoslovakia 1945 to 1948
by Bryan J. Dickerson
In the closing days of World War II in Europe, soldiers of the U.S. Army were welcomed as
Liberators by crowds of Czech civilians exuberant at being freed from six long years of Nazi
tyranny and occupation. Just three short years later, the relation-ship between the U.S. Army and
Czechoslovakia was dramatically different. Instead of allies, they were now adversaries. Due to
the rapidly changing political situation in central Europe and the emergence of a Cold War between the
United States and the Soviet Union, the U.S. Army in Europe underwent a series of major changes in
mission and structure which culminated with it being forced to assume a combat posture against the very
same country and ally that it had helped liberate from the Nazi Germany in the spring of 1945.
In just three and a half years, the U.S. Army performed the roles of a combat force / liberator,
an occupation force / rebuilder, a police or constabulary force and ultimately, a combat force again in rapid succession.
Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust: Fact or Fiction?
by Abigail Pfeiffer
For close to fifteen years after the Holocaust there was little written about the
resistance of the European Jewish population against the Nazis and their collaborators.
According to Michael Marrus in his article “Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust”
the reason for this is “…most Jews had little stomach for myth-making of any kind
about Jewish resistance in the immediate shock of the war. It was all Jews could
do in the first postwar years to absorb the reality of mass murder on an unimagined
scale…”[2] Only after the shock of the attempted liquidation of the whole population
of European Jews wore off did some solid historiography emerge about Jewish resistance.
The trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel also prompted more historians to examine Jewish
resistance, especially outside of Israel and Yiddish speaking populations. Two historians
emerged during this time, Hannah Arendt and Raul Hilberg, with views that the Jews
did not resist, at least not on a scale that would have made their resistance successful.
Member Article: Battle for the Seaports
by Ruud Bruyns
On January 30 1945 there was a remarkable movie premiere in the French seaport of La Rochelle. The latest German war movie ‘Kolberg’ was displayed for the first time to an audience which consisted of more than 20.000 soldiers, who were besieged by Allied forces since August 1944. This movie, which was shot in full color, was meant to boost morale among the German garrison by setting the siege of Kolberg by the French in 1806 as an example. This was necessary because the Germans were trapped there for almost half year, as were ten of thousands other German soldiers in the ports of France, Belgium and Holland during the autumn of 1944. How was it possible that approximately 200.000 German soldiers were locked up in these ports while the German homeland was bound to be attacked by the Allies? Was it coincidence, or was there a plan behind this set-up?
Member Article: A Turn Too Far: Reconstructing the End of the Battle of the Java Sea
by Del C. Kostksa
Attu rises like a jagged stone from the churning waters of the North Pacific. Barren, wind-swept, and shrouded in perpetual fog, the island has little relevance to a world that is barely aware of its existence. Yet in 1943, this obscure wilderness was the scene of an epic battle between resilient Japanese occupiers and an American invasion force who were equally determined to possess the island. It was a battle fought as much against the elements as with an enemy, and where a small and ill-equipped band of US Army combat engineers found themselves squarely in the path of one of the largest Japanese Banzai attacks of World War Two.[1]
Member Article: A Turn Too Far: Reconstructing the End of the Battle of the Java Sea
by Jeffrey R. Cox
The Java Sea campaign has gotten little in the way of analysis in the English-speaking press, and what coverage it has
gotten has largely focused on the role of the crews of individual ships such as the US cruiser
Houston, the Australian cruiser Perth and the British cruiser Exeter, particularly in their futile
efforts to escape the Java Sea, James Hornfischer’s excellent book
Ship of Ghosts being a case in point.
This relative silence is understandable for several reasons. First of all, we lost. Unless the defeat can be used to
bash the United States like Vietnam is, defeats tend to get less play in the media. Furthermore, the territory being
defended was a Dutch colony, which, since the Dutch mainland was under Nazi occupation, was effectively serving as their
homeland, and thus meant much more to the Dutch than the Anglos, who found the campaign small in comparison to their
overall war effort in the Pacific.
Member Article: How Arnhem was Lost around Eindhoven
by Landon McDuff
The Texas Army National Guard has a proud history that has not only influenced but, has come to
define its military culture. It is the purpose of this essay to discuss some of those defining
and controversial moments and remember the heroes that made them so. Texas has traditionally
been committed to the defense of its nation and usually contributes more troops to the U.S.
military than any other state.[i] The Texas Army National Guard traces their beginnings to the
fight for Texas’ independence from Mexico. The spirit of the defenders of the Alamo, and the
victorious men that carried the day on the grounds of San Jacinto, is alive and well in the
hearts of every Texas National Guard soldier and airman. The TXARNG is a state military force
in local operation but trains and fights alongside the federal Army, daubed “Big Army”. They
call themselves “citizen soldiers” because although they have the same training as “Big Army”,
they only serve one weekend out of the month, unless called into active duty.[1]
Member Article: How Arnhem was Lost around Eindhoven
by Ruud Bruyns
A lot of explanations have been written about the failure of Operation Market Garden, better
known as the Battle of Arnhem after the ultimate goal of the operation. In the mainly
English speaking literature there has been very few references to Dutch sources,
while there have been many detailed publications about Market Garden. The most notable are
‘Een andere kijk op de slag om Arnhem’
(Another Perspective on the Battle of Arnhem, 2009) by Peter Berends, and ‘Einddoel Maas’
(End Goal Meuse, 1984) and ‘Brabant bevrijd’ (Brabant liberated, 1993) by Jack Didden
en Maarten Swarts. The latter argue that Market Garden was lost in Brabant. I want underline
their thesis and want to add some new perspectives to this in this article.
Member Article: The Saga of Ormoc Bay - November 10, 1944
by Stuart Goldberg
The battle for Leyte had been raging since an Allied invasion force arrived off the coast of this central Philippine island. From the 23rd of October to the 26th, in a running battle on the sea and in the air, the Japanese attempted to repulse the landing. This titanic military engagement, known as “The Battle of Leyte Gulf,” proved to be the largest naval battle in history and decided the fate of not only the Philippines, but also of the once mighty IJN Combined fleet. During the four-day skirmish, Adm. Halsey’s Third Fleet and Adm. Kinkaid’s Seventh decimated four separate Japanese naval task forces commanded by Admirals Ozawa, Kurita, Nishimura and Shima. When the smoke had cleared, the surviving Japanese ships of Operation “SHO-GO” limped back to Tokyo and the Americans secured the landing beaches. Consequently, despite the stiff resistance by the Imperial Navy and Adm. Onishi’s newly instituted Kamikaze tactics, American ground troops finally stormed ashore.
Member Article: Hunters of the Deep: A
Brief Synopsis of the Contribution of the Silent Service of the Pacific
by Bryan T. Hayes
The English dictionary refers to "Pacific" as an unaggressive or peaceful nature. The Pacific theater in WWII was a direct antonym as American and Japanese forces exercised immense human destruction across the islands and atolls in the central and Southern theaters. American memories of the WWII Asian battles usually dwell at Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and Hiroshima. As such, the majority of Naval dramatic action captured on film and in books occurred on the surface, on the beaches, or in the air, as the era witnessed an incredible shift from the battleship force to the aircraft carrier, its support units and amphibious operations of the Marines and sustaining naval units.
Member Article: Mush Morton and the crew of the Wahoo, War Criminals?
by David Johnston
On 26 January 1943 the submarine USS Wahoo (SS-238), under the command of the indomitable Lt. Commander
Dudley W. "Mush" Morton, engaged in a running gun and torpedo battle with a Japanese convoy consisting of four
ships off the northern coast of New Guinea. It would later prove to be a seminal moment in the history of the
famous Morton and his Wahoo, forever cementing their combined reputation as ace ship hunters. At a
time when the war news was almost universally bad, and when the submarine force was struggling to hit its
stride against the Japanese, Morton and the fighting Wahoo provided a much needed shot in the arm and
morale boost to our Navy and country. Unfortunately, it also would prove to be one of the most controversial
acts committed by one of our submarines during the war, and would later result in whispered back room (and
sometimes open) charges of racism, murder, and official cover-up.
Member Article: Polish Cavalry: A Military Myth Dispelled
by Alexander Zakrzewski
At 2:00 P.M. on September 1st, 1939, Colonel Kazimierz Mastelarz, commander of the 18th Regiment of the
Pomorska Cavalry Brigade, spotted a badly exposed battalion of German infantry in the woods near the
Polish village of Krojanty. He hurriedly assembled his troopers for a sabre charge and fell upon on
the unsuspecting enemy, easily overrunning them. For the Colonel, the short but brief action must
have seemed a fortuitous start to the war for he and his men. Their first encounter with Hitler’s
vaunted Wehrmacht had proven a tactical success at negligible cost. However, his victory would prove
short lived. Before the Poles could reorganize, a column of German tanks and motorized troops appeared
from around a bend and unleashed a devastating hail of fire.
Excerpt from World's Bloodiest History: Massacre, Genocide, and the Scars They Left on Civilization by Joseph Cummins
The Belgian farmer, whose name was Henri Lejoly, was surprised at the nonchalance of the U.S. troops. Standing in the barren field outside of the town of Malmedy on that cold early afternoon in the winter of 1944, they smoked and joked with each other. Some of them had placed their hands on their helmets in a casual token of surrender to the Waffen-SS troops of
Kampfgruppe Peiper—the mechanized task force commanded by the brilliant young German Colonel Jochen Peiper—as it passed by, but beyond that they seemed remarkably unconcerned.
The offhand behavior of the roughly 115 U.S. prisoners may have been because the men came from Battery B of the 285th Field Observation Battery. This was an outfit whose job was to spot enemy artillery emplacements and transmit their location to other U.S. units. It had seen relatively little frontline duty and was filled with numerous green replacements.
Member Article: The Predominance of Confucian Martial Culture over Western Influence in the Far East
by Holly Senatore
Consider a society where equality among men is a foreign concept. Consider a state where democracy is firstly established through removing a military threat through war and reestablishing a viable working government. Lastly, consider a situation where asking the post- war populace to embrace democracy is also asking them to rid themselves of their own centuries long cultural values. This article does not address the invasion of Iraq in 2003, an event in which the military goals were readily accomplished yet the cultural goals of instilling democracy among a hostile people are yet to be seen. Instead, this article examines a similar instance that unfolded during the mid twentieth century when Japan surrendered to United States military forces on September 2nd, 1945. This date marked the end of World War II but established the beginning of a new chapter in Anglo-Japanese relations whereby democracy was grafted upon a stratified and hierarchal civilization ruled by the military class since the Yorimoto Shogunate in the 12th century A.D.
Member Article: Operation Market-Garden: British Ground Opeartions on September 17, 1944
by Thomas Leckwold
Operation Market-Garden was the largest airborne operation ever executed that was coordinated with a simultaneous ground operation. The operation ultimately failed but it was largely not an airborne failure, but a ground force failure that was attributed to a combination of the British operational doctrine and geography. The British operational doctrine was ill suited for the operation that was envisioned because, along with the geography, it emphasized the comparative weakness of the British Army while simultaneously not denying the Wehrmacht many comparative advantages in its defensive efforts. The result was the British Army’s ground forces inability to gain momentum during the first day of the offensive and was a critical factor for the failure of the entire operation.
Member Article: On the Shoulders of Giants: Innovation and Courage - The Legacy of World War II Submarine Veterans
by Daniel T. Rean
The numbers tell a story. They do not lie. According to the United States Department of Veterans
Affairs, approximately 900 World War II veterans die every day. But that number is not the whole
story. We cannot simply consider statistical losses when we look at that number. What we are
really losing is a unique brand of warriors who let nothing stand in the way of the march
toward victory, and no group of World War II veterans typified that never-say-die attitude
better than that of America’s submarine service.
Member Article: Lausdell Crossroads
by Allyn Vannoy and Jay Karamales
During December 17-19, 1944, the Belgian villages of Krinkelt and Rocherath, and the surrounding countryside, provided a setting that would determine whether or not the flank of the U.S. First Army would be rolled up and the German Ardennes breakthrough widened, permitting the Germans to reach their objectives beyond the Meuse.
Member Article: Baptism of Fire: Kasserine Pass, 1943
by Eric Niderost
In the winter of 1942-43 the Allies had every reason to believe that they were on the verge of total victory in North Africa. It started that November, when Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's
Panzerarmee Afrika was decisively defeated by the British Eighth Army at the Second Battle of El Alamein.
Member Article: Momentum Lost: The Battle for the Arnhem Startline
by Thomas Leckwold
After the capture of Antwerp on September 4, 1944, the Second British Army commander, Lieutenant General Miles
Dempsey, ordered its spearhead, the XXX Corps, to halt because it had outrun its "administrative resources."[1]
The order was in response to the supply issues that were constraining the Western Allies offensive, and though
not recognized at the time, the British Army offensive reached its culmination point and was suffering the
effects of strategic consumption.[2][3]
Member Article: Bushido: The Valor of Deceit
by Holly Senatore
As the historian Yuki Tanaka asserted, "The extreme ill-treatment of POWs by the Japanese in World War II was a historically specific phenomenon that occurred
between the so-called 'China-Incident' and the end of World War II."[3]
According to Tanaka, the cruelty committed by Japanese soldiers during World War II towards Allied POWs was an effect of the subordination and the
corruption of the Code of Bushido to the emperor ideology and the 'new' military ideology.[4]
Member Article: Strategic Consumption and British Offensive Operations in Northwest Europe: August - September 1944
by Thomas Leckwold
The Western Allies launched Operation Market-Garden on September 17, 1944 under the overall command of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and his Twenty First Army Group with the intended goal of ending the war in 1944.
The decision to launch Operation Market-Garden, like most military operations, had a causal relationship to the events that had created the current military situation.
Member Article: Sir Winston Churchill: The Man Who Gave Britain Back its Roar
by Carl J. Ciovacco
Never before has there been a leader as determined as Sir Winston Churchill. His determination and perseverance helped to steer Britain through arguably its most difficult time in history. How could a sickly, pudgy, outcast child, transform into the "Savior of the Nation" by leading Britain against the epitome of evil?
Member Article: American Stubbornness at Rimling
by Allyn Vannoy
As the US Seventh Army shifted units to cover the gap created by the departing
Third Army divisions that were being moved into the Ardennes during December
1944, the 44th and 100th Divisions, on the western flank of the Seventh Army,
were extended to cover the front lines. Each division was assigned 17 to 18
kilometers of front. The 44th (Cactus) Division, defending from Welferding to
just west of of the village of Rimling, covered ground that was mostly open,
rolling hills, although the center of its front provided shallow patches of
dense vegetation.
Member Article: The Office of Strategic Services and Greece: The Missing Link of the Mediterranean Campaign
by Panagiotis Dimitrakis
Greece entered the Second World War in October 1940. Fascist Italy invaded the
Northwest frontier but the Greek Army counterattacked reaching Albania. In
April 1941 the Wehrmacht invaded from the Greek-Bulgarian borders. By late May,
Greek and Commonwealth units fought fiercely in mainland Greece and Crete but
eventually they withdrew to Egypt.
Member Article: The True Strategy of Blitzkrieg
by Florian Waitl
The birth of Blitzkrieg is often explained as a direct result of the horrors of
static warfare experienced during World War I. The word Blitzkrieg, meaning
lightning war, is most of the time simply described as the doctrine employed by
the German Army in World War II. But this simple description does not do
justice to the concept.
Member Article: Breaking the Seelow Heights: the Zenith of Combined Arms Warfare
by Major James T. McGhee
Nearly four years after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, the German
Army stood on the verge of annihilation. What Adolph Hitler expected in 1941 to
be a quick victory for National Socialism over its archenemy, "Jewish
Bolshevism", had become a brutal war of attrition. By April 1945, the remnants
of the German war machine had been pushed back into the Fatherland where they
would fight a final battle for survival against the endless masses of the Red
Army.
Member Article: The Rape of Nanking: Reasons and Recrimination
by Walter Zapotoczny
The Japanese generals who took time out to toast the early success of their
China campaign in 1937 drew their jubilation not only from the quick rout of
the numerically superior enemy, but from deep cultural roots. By the very act
of fighting they were fulfilling the ancient role of the samurai – the medieval
warrior whose fate was conquest or death.[1] The Japanese warriors in China
found plenty of both.
Member Article: Small Battle, Big Implications:
Japan Lost the Upper Hand When it Lost New Guinea
by Rob Dean
The Southwest Pacific proved to be Japan's undoing in World War II because the
Imperial Army overreached, stretching its manpower and its supply lines too
far. But beyond issues of men and equipment, the Imperial Army's failure
exposed fundamental weaknesses in military doctrine.
Member Article: Harris Class APA's
by Tom Wade
Military history often overlooks the contributions of those whose efforts are
vital to winning, but don't garner the headlines. World War II could not have
been won without the logistics tail, transporting and supplying the tip of the
spear with everything needed to win. The Harris or 535' Class of Attack
Transports were one of the contributors that have been largely in the
background when the histories of the great campaigns were first written.
Member Article: The Aerial Defense of the Netherlands East Indies
by Michael Gough
Japan and the United States emerged as world powers at the beginning of the
20th Century, and soon challenged European Powers' dominance in Asia and the
Pacific. Japan's challenge was aimed at displacing European powers and
inserting itself as a colonial master.
Member Article: Why the Bulge Didn't Break: Green Troops Grew Up Fast to Become Heroes of Hofen
by Rob Dean
The master story of the Battle of the Bulge is the German breakthrough that
created the bulge in American lines and the U.S. fight to restore the original
line. Not well known is the story of the U.S. infantry that held the northern
flank. If not for the stand by three rifle companies, the bulge may have become
a break. This study focuses on the defense of Hofen through the first-hand
accounts of 12 soldiers who fought there, the combat reports of units in the
field, the analyses of two infantry officers, and the detailed account of the
battalion commander.
Member Article: American Forces in WWII
by Tom Wade
The entry of the United States into World War II was marked by constant
setbacks spanning the Western Pacific beginning December 7, 1941 and into early
1942. After being defeated and pushed back for six months, the U.S. military
machine began to turn out victories that would push back every advancement of
the Axis powers and in 45 months lead to their total defeat.
Member Article: Shadow Warriors - Submarine Special Operations in World War Two
by Daniel T. Rean
The submarine's ability to penetrate a hostile area independently, covertly and
for a long duration, provides a unique tactical advantage. Submarines operating
undetected near the enemy's coastline provide a complete picture of the
undersea, surface and near shore military conditions, including enemy force
dispositions and preparations.
Member Article: Battle of Surigao Strait
by Walter S. Zapotoczny
In late 1944, the Second World War in the Pacific was going badly for Japan.
The American military was determined to retake the Philippines. The U.S.
Pacific fleet had moved to the Mariana Islands in support of General
MacArthur's army, which had landed on the south-west coast of Leyte in October.
The U.S. 7th Fleet, commanded by Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, was near the
Surigao Strait off Leyte.
Member Article: Panzer Brigades
by Ruud Bruyns
The destruction of Army Group Centre in June 1944 and the collapse of the
Western Front following the Allied invasion of France in the same month caused
a major drain of German manpower and materiel. Within two months dozens of
divisions were wiped from the German Order of Battle by the sweeping Russian
offensives in Byelorussia and Ukraine, or bled white in the war of attrition in
the Normandy countryside. During the summer of 1944 the German army was beaten
both in Russia and in Western Europe and fell back in full retreat.
Member Article: Adolf Eichmann
by Bruce L. Brager
Adolf Eichmann was tried in Israel in 1961 for crimes committed during World
War Two. Eichmann, former Obersturmbannfuhrer (lieutenant colonel) in the Nazi
German Schutzstaffen (better known as the SS) was accused of playing a major
role in the Holocaust, the systematic murder of 6,000,000 European Jews. The
Holocaust was the Third Reich's "final solution" to first rid Europe and then
rid the world of what it considered the "problem" of the Jewish people.
Member Article: Interview of a WWII Veteran
by Robert C. Daniels
In preparation for writing a book, tentatively entitled "World War II in
Mid-America," I have conducted oral interviews on 34 people of a small
mid-western American community that had lived during and through the war—two of
these individuals have since passed away. These people represent a wide and
diverse range of those living in that area at the time: male, female, military,
civilian, adult, children, farmer, factory worker, etc.
Member Article: Failure and Destruction, Clark Field, the Philippines, December 8, 1941
by Michael Gough
Ten days after bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant General Walter Short and
Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the Army and Navy commanders in Hawaii, were
relieved of their commands and reduced in rank. Their sin: the Japanese had
caught them by surprise and killed soldiers and sailors, sunk ships, and
destroyed airplanes.
News of Pearl Harbor reached U.S. forces in the Philippine Islands less than
half an hour after the attack (about 2:30 A.M., December 8, in the Philippines,
corresponding to 8:00 A.M., December 7, in Hawaii).[1] Nine hours later,
unopposed Japanese attacks caught U.S. bombers and pursuits sitting on the
ground.
Member Article: Winter Warfare
by Bruce L. Brager
The "Southern Front" in Europe opened on August 15, 1944, when three American
divisions, the 3rd, the 45th and the 36th, invaded the French Riviera beaches.
The American divisions, soon part of the Seventh Army, were joined by French
divisions in the First French Army, the primary French military contribution in
the European theater.
Slow but steady advances continued throughout November -- costly in casualties
and equipment. This was nothing like the early fall "chase" northward, having
gained only about 20 miles since mid September, but also nothing like the
virtual stalemate the 36th Division remembered from the Italian mountains. The
36th Division, after three months fighting, was assigned a supporting role in
the VI Corps late November offensives.
Member Article: Operation Rusty: The Gehlen-U.S. Army Connection
by Geoffrey E. Duin
One afternoon in early June 1945 Captain John R. Boker, an Army intelligence
officer, strode into a loosely guarded villa located in a leafy residential
area in Wiesbaden Germany where some high ranking German POWs were being held
and asked to see Generalmajor (Brig. General)Reinhard Gehlen who was
supposed to be an expert on the Soviet armed forces.
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Polish
Campaign
