Misconceptions of World War II

[martinsantos]

Shangas,


The way you described is correct. The cameras were given to the Jews so they could sell them. It's a beautiful story, IMHO - starting with some sense of humour involved. The Leica camera was a symbol of the german technology - for the nazis, a symbol of the arian technology.

A detail in this story touched me, that it was to be published in 1968. But it was refused by the Leitz family as occurred since 30s - this would be wrong to get publicity over the drama of others. And the story only get knew after the death of the sons of Ernst Leitz. Not a usual proceding today, when people help others looking for a Tv camera...

Hi MartinSantos,

A friend of mine is a camera-afficianado. He told me this story once. He's Jewish, so it probably meant quite a bit to him. The version he told me was that the cameras were given to the Jews not only as 'business samples' but also as something to sell once they reached New York to get some quick 'start-up cash' for their new lives in a foreign country.

 

[The Lonely Navigator]

Edward: True, all German military swore an oath of loyalty to Hitler, but then he was head of state.

This is only partially correct. The Reichswehr oath changed over the years, I have that in my website.

This is copied from my site:

Reichswehr Oath - the oath Gunther Prien took when he joined the Reichsmarine on 16 January 1933:

Ich schwöre Treue der Reichsverfassung und gelobe, daß ich als tapferer Soldat, das Deutsche Reich und seine gesetzmäßigen Einrichtungen jederzeit schützen, dem Reichspräsidenten und meinen Vorgesetzten Gehorsam leisten will.

I swear loyalty to the Reich's constitution and pledge, that I as a courageous soldier always want to protect the German Empire and its legal institutions, (and) be obedient to the Reichspräsident and to my superiors.

The oath changed on 1 December 1933 to:

Ich schwöre bei Gott diesen heiligen Eid, daß ich meinem Volk und Vaterland allzeit treu und redlich dienen und als tapferer und gehorsamer Soldat bereit sein will, jederzeit für diesen Eid mein Leben einzusetzen.

I swear by God this holy oath, that I want to ever loyally and sincerely serve my people and fatherland and be prepared as a brave and obedient soldier to risk my life for this oath at any time.

It was not until August 1934 did it become:

Ich schwöre bei Gott diesen heiligen Eid, daß ich dem Führer des Deutschen Reiches und Volkes, Adolf Hitler, dem Oberbefehlshaber der Wehrmacht, unbedingten Gehorsam leisten und als tapferer Soldat bereit sein will, jederzeit für diesen Eid mein Leben einzusetzen.

I swear by God this holy oath, that I want to offer unconditional obedience to the Führer of the German Empire and people, Adolf Hitler, the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, and be prepared as a brave soldier to risk my life for this oath at any time.

 

[HungaryTom]

„In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success”. - Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander in Chief of the Japanese Navy (1940).

I think the Japanese Genius did summarize what the chances of the Axis were. Little. Even at the outset of WW2.
To knock out a few European nations and they hoped that the USA won't enter too soon - Lend-Lease (Public Law 77-11) begun in 1941.
The other factor is that there weren't Weapons of Mass destruction to stop "The Great Dictator" from daydreaming with the airballoon-globe.
The Western powers were just recovering from the Great Depression and in 1939 they were dwarfs in terms of military compared to what they evolved within a few years.
The rest of the world were either auxiliaries/minor importance or still colonies in 1939 -there were still white spots on the maps; think of Almásy ‘English Patient’ mapping the Sahara, which knowledge was effectively used in WW2- with little to no industry and capacity to equip modern armies. The population of colonies boomed only after WW2 and decolonization.
Britain was getting its armies mechanized – Germany of 1939 had also a few fully mechanized units. The US had only 1700+ airplanes prior to war. French were still thinking WW1 - static Maginot line. Soviet Union was doing forced industrialization yet there were huge gaps in capacities and in military leadership due to the great cleansing of 1938 - Stalin acknowledged this weakness by closing the Molotov/Ribbentropp pact and the delivery of materials for Germany just to buy himself Nazi goodwill and time.
The later Allies were too temptingly weak or asleep - no deterrence.
Axis powers continuously prepared for war - see the militarism, economic programs paramilitary youth organizations, the German “rehearsals” in the Spanish Civil War and the different occupation waves, same goes for Japans occupational wars in China. Italy same - war in Ethiopia. In a smaller scale also Hungary had this pattern with the paramilitary youth organizations, armament programs and different occupation waves taking place between 1938 and 1941. Trained armed forces, ready for war.
o This was the “weather window” for Axis to attack.
Poland’s fate, the lack of help from the West in 1939, clearly showed that they weren’t ready and prepared for a war.
Which was attested by the overwhelming 1940 success in continental Europe. Same goes for the initial success on the Eastern Front and also for Japans initial success. However 'Sitzkrieg' until April 1940 after the 1939 Blitz in Poland and the fact that almost a year passed between conquering Scandinavia, Western Europe, Balkans and Barbarossa in June 1941 shows that Germany wasn't omnipotent even in the beginning and couldn't accomplish things in one go.

The following years showed for how much expansion exactly the forces of each Axis power were enough before they were progressively defeated.
See: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/WorldWarII-GDP-Relations-Allies-Axis.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II


"... but it may be necessary for me to carry a musket in the defense of my native state, Virginia, in which case I shall not prove recreant to my duty". Robert E. Lee

You have no decision in which country you are born - you have to assume this fate and fight for your motherland. Especially after making the soldier's oath. Even if it is for the lost cause or the loosing side.

 

[AmateisGal]

Some of the work of historian Marc Stoller is quite good on dealing with misconceptions and problems in WWII history: http://www.amazon.com/Major-Problems-History-World-War/dp/0618061320

Gerhard Weinberg ‘s work is also useful.

Chasseur - We had the American Revolution book on that series, "Major Problems..." and I found it to be very useful. I'd love to get the WW2 one - but wow, it's pricey (gues it's a college textbook, so why am I surprised? )

Gerhard Weinberg was my graduate advisor's mentor. I'm hoping some of Gerhard's brilliance rubbed off on me, but I'm not holding my breath. LOL

 

[Burton]

That the Japanese were ready to surrender and we did them some kind of great injustice with the atomic bomb. I live very day with the ghosts of Wake Island and think they actually deserved much worse. Semper Fi.

 

[Shangas]

The Japanese were very stubborn, if I remember all my documentaries and readings. They refused to surrender until two Nukes had been dropped on them.

Is it true that if they still refused after that, a third nuke was gonna be tossed on Tokyo?

 

[Burton]

There is a lot of revisionism occuring today that wants to paint us as monsters for dropping those bombs. This is done from the comfort of someones desk who has no real idea of the heinous actions of the Japanese that started the war to begin with. I dont know about the potential third bomb but the first two seemed to get their attention.

 

[The Lonely Navigator]

Some members of my generation have the misconception that the United States entered the war only to put a stop to the Holocaust. But as we know, that wasn't the actual motive since the truth about what was happening in the concentration camps didn't come to light until after the Allies came to liberate the camps. Even most Germans didn't know the full extent of what was happening--the truth was so well-guarded.

I got a book about two months ago, entitled 'Doenitz's Crews' by French L. MacLean and I found evidence to support this. Below is the quotes from the book along with a link to a photo of the letter he mentions.

The Dedication from "Doenitz's Crews" by French L. MacLean


This book is dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of sailors - both naval and merchant marine - of all nations who fought above, on and below the sea around the globe in World War II. More specifically, it is dedicated to the tens of thousands who perished during the conflict.


Quite clearly the book specifically memorializes the many German enlisted men who went to war in the U-boat force - a majority of which never returned to Germany. One might be tempted to say that these young men deserved the cold, painful fate that awaited them; for, in fact, the U-boat men like their brothers-in-arms in the Luftwaffe and Panzer forces were advancing an evil ideology that called for the deaths of tens of millions of innocents and the subjugation of much of the world in virtual slavery.


This author would submit that these sailors, airmen and soldiers were, in their own right, also victims of Nazism. Nazism took away their individual freedoms; it forced them to serve many years in harsh conditions away from their families; it also eliminated any possibility of a negotiated end to the war, which in turn led to massive levels of destruction of German livelihood, the flattening of German cities from aerial attack displacing of millions of Germans from their homes, and fragmented the nation that would last more than forty years after the war.


Perhaps equally as insidious, National Socialism caused the eternal damnation in history of levels of bravery and self-sacrifice that would have been extolled in any other place and time.


But that is only one opinion and that view can be argued between scholars and laymen alike, each with a valid point of view. Perhaps better to illustrate my point, we can refer to Seaman Ernst Heinz Wehner. Ernst was born on February 18, 1922 in Dresden to a twenty-two year old single mother Elsa Wehner. Ernst grew up, went to school, and joined the Kriegsmarine, entering the U-boat service at the beginning of the war. After completing his training, he appears to have served on the U-581 until early 1942 when his boat was sunk by Allied anti-submarine forces. He wound up in a prisoner of war camp in Canada, just shy of his twentieth birthday.


A year before this event Ernst's mother died; she was only fourty-one, but suffered from epilepsy, and appeared to have been in and out of hospitals during her young life. Ernst's grandfather (Elsa's father) Robert Wehner received a letter explaining her sudden death during a stay at one of these hospitals at Hartheim, Austria. The letter read:


February 13, 1941


Dear Mr. Wehner!


We regret that we have to inform you that your daughter Elsa Wehner has died unexpectedly on February 13 due to a severe epileptic attack. Her transfer to our institute represents a measure caused by the war and took place according to reasons in connection with the defense of our country.


Since our institute merely serves as a transit station for those sick persons who are to be transferred to another institute and the stay here merely serves for locating virus-bearers who again and again are among these sick people as is well-known, the respective local police in Hartheim, in agreement with the authorities concerned, have ordered comprehensive protection measures and according to Paragraph 22 of the Order for Fighting Communicable Diseases, the immediate incineration of the corpse and the disinfection of the personal belongings. An agreement by family members, etc. is not necessary in this case.


The remains, after having been disinfected, are retained for delivery to the heir, who must legitimize himself with a certificate issued by the respective authorities.


If you wish to have the urn placed in a particular cemetery - the transfer is being made at no cost - we request that you reply to us by adding the declaration of agreement by the respective cemetery administration. In case you do not send us t his information within 14 days, we will arrange for disposal otherwise, as we would assume that you will forego the remains, if we do not receive information about this within the same time.


We are enclosing two death certificates, which you may use for possible presentation to authorities.


Heil Hitler!


[Signature illegible]

Link to photo of letter


Unfortunately for Ernst Heinz Wehner, Robert Wehner and most unfortunately for Elsa Wehner, Hartheim was not a hospital in the true sense of the word. It was not dedicated to curing patients or relieving suffering; its staff did not subscribe to the Hippocratic Oath.


Hartheim was a euthanasia center; medical, police and SS personnel killed physically and mentally disabled patients by carbon monoxide gassing and lethal injection. Known as "Action T4," the program killed at least 18,269 people at Hartheim and tens of thousands more at several other euthanasia centers across Germany during the late 1930s and early 1940s. These victims were neither nefarious enemies of the government nor convicted of any crimes; their long-term care simply cost the state too much - additionally, Nazi racial experts did not desire that their substandard genetic traits be passed on to future generations. So Elsa Wehner had to die.


We do not know if Ernst Heinz Wehner comprehended the actual circumstances surrounding his mother's death at the hands of the state. What we do know is that while the young sailor was trying his best to defend Germany far from home - while enemy forces were trying to blow Wehner and his boat-mates into oblivion - the political leaders of his country were murdering his helpless mother and lying to his family back in Germany. Was he a victim? I think so.

 

[martinsantos]

Prien,

After reading your text is jsut impossible to disagree with you!

 

[The Lonely Navigator]

Re Martinsantos:

I was actually surprised to find the author went that far with his book. He's the only author that I know of, out of all the books I have, that went so far as to produce actual 'proof'.

 

[Orsini]

...Is it true that if they still refused after that, a third nuke was gonna be tossed on Tokyo?

I am not certain we had another...

 

[Cobden]

The US had three, of which the plan was always to drop two (drop one and the enemy might think it's the only one, drop two and they think there are a lot more) - no plans were made to drop the third, though I'm sure they would have made plans to do so if the first two hadn't succeded

 

[Orsini]

The US had three, of which the plan was always to drop two (drop one and the enemy might think it's the only one, drop two and they think there are a lot more) - no plans were made to drop the third, though I'm sure they would have made plans to do so if the first two hadn't succeded

I see. I really didn't know.

If the third had been used on Tokyo, it may not have been to the benefit of the allied cause. The Emperor most likely would have been killed and thus would no longer have been a "moderating" influence on the military, which, I understand, was prepared to fight on without regard to civilian losses by atomic attack. If so, the invasion would probably have been necessary, with its associated dreadful losses that would have made all that went before in the Pacific pale by comparison. The resulting rancor would have likely affected international relations to this day.

I worked in defense for a long time and I never once met anyone who had anything but the highest regard for the other allies or their efforts. The general feeling was that we were fortunate to prevail and that if we had lost at Midway and the Japanese had occupied the west coast and/or Schicklgruber had let the professionals run the show, the result might not have nearly so much to our satisfaction.

 

[Widebrim]

There is a lot of revisionism occuring today that wants to paint us as monsters for dropping those bombs. This is done from the comfort of someones desk who has no real idea of the heinous actions of the Japanese that started the war to begin with. I dont know about the potential third bomb but the first two seemed to get their attention.

When I was taking a WWII class in college (taught by a USAAC vet), one student who was half-Japanese "argued" with me that since some junior officers were pressing the Emperor to surrender, we should not have dropped the second A-Bomb. At the time Nagasaki was bombed, my father's division (7th ID, USA) was being prepared to be part of an invasion force (Operation Downfall) that would have struck the home islands. I believe that the other Army division tenatively slated was the 40th ID (which I much later served with). Modern estimates of US deaths, had we invaded, are over 250,000.

 

[Cobden]

I see. I really didn't know.

If the third had been used on Tokyo, it may not have been to the benefit of the allied cause

Interestingly enough, the emperors palace was one of the potential targets, along with Kyoto - the former was disregarded for similar reason and the desire to target military targets rather then symbolic ones, and the latter because Henry Stimson had had his honeymoon in Kyoto and admired the city (the destruction of such a culturally significant site may have also had a galvanising effect on the Japanese population).

It's also often forgotten that the Allies did warn of Japan's destruction prior to the bombing as part of the Potsdam Declaration demanding Japans surrender- though no mention of the A-bomb was made, for the obvious yet oft forgotten reason that the bombs may not have actually have detonated nor did they have any real idea of what the effect would be

 

[Orsini]

Interestingly enough, the emperors palace was one of the potential targets, along with Kyoto - the former was disregarded for similar reason and the desire to target military targets rather then symbolic ones, and the latter because Henry Stimson had had his honeymoon in Kyoto and admired the city (the destruction of such a culturally significant site may have also had a galvanising effect on the Japanese population).

It's also often forgotten that the Allies did warn of Japan's destruction prior to the bombing as part of the Potsdam Declaration demanding Japans surrender- though no mention of the A-bomb was made, for the obvious yet oft forgotten reason that the bombs may not have actually have detonated nor did they have any real idea of what the effect would be

That certainly was decent of Mr. Stimson!

The Japanese probably thought that warning was just hot air...

 

[LaMedicine]

At the time Nagasaki was bombed, my father's division (7th ID, USA) was being prepared to be part of an invasion force (Operation Downfall) that would have struck the home islands. I believe that the other Army division tenatively slated was the 40th ID (which I much later served with). Modern estimates of US deaths, had we invaded, are over 250,000.

My father was living/working in Kokura at that time. Kokura was the primary target, Nagasaki the second. Kokura on that day was heavily overcast, and the bombers, after flying around for a break in the clouds an hour or so (at least, that's what my father said, that he heard the drone of the planes in the bomb shelter for an hour or so) before changing directions and moving on to Nagasaki. Had the weather been clear over Kokura on August 9, 1945, I wouldn't be here today.
Also, because of the terrain, so much of Nagasaki was so completely destroyed that the true number of casualities isn't know to this day, though it's been recently computed that the number probably is at least double what's previously been reported.

It's also surprising how many Japanese actually both despised and feared the military. My father had a childhood friend, whom I thought he was good friends with, until one day, he said something to the effect that he didn't really like the person, because he was like "a fox borrowing the tiger's skin" while in the military during the war, and was swaggering around all the time. My mother also surpised me a couple of years ago by telling us that she'd wanted to go to college (she graduated from high school in 1942) but didn't, because she knew that the students were sent to factory lines to help/participate in the war effort, instead of studying, and she hated "gunjin" san (military people) and didn't want to have anything to do with them. Her refusal to work in any environment that even remotely had some kind of relationship with anything military went to the point that it worried all the grownups around her, including her mother (my grandmother) and her high school teachers that she would be targeted by the dreaded secret political police just beacuse she was ablebodied but not working, that everyone scrambled to find her a workplace where she would agree to work. Eventually, she went to work as a receptionist in a dentist's office, to everyone's relief.

 

[Edward]

When I was taking a WWII class in college (taught by a USAAC vet), one student who was half-Japanese "argued" with me that since some junior officers were pressing the Emperor to surrender, we should not have dropped the second A-Bomb. At the time Nagasaki was bombed, my father's division (7th ID, USA) was being prepared to be part of an invasion force (Operation Downfall) that would have struck the home islands. I believe that the other Army division tenatively slated was the 40th ID (which I much later served with). Modern estimates of US deaths, had we invaded, are over 250,000.

My understanding was that the second bomb was not atomic, but rather the hydrogen(?) bomb variety. It is this detail that is cited by those who believe that the secondary purposes of these attacks were to end a message to Moscow as well as to provide a 'live test' of the technology.

Undoubtedly the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs led to a very significant reduction in the number of US military deaths that would have been the inevitable result of a conventional land invasion, though whether, as is often claimed, this significantly reduced total deaths once you include Japanese military and civilian casualties is a completely different matter. I would be inclined to the view that the notion those bombs brought the war to an end with far fewer deaths overall is another of the great misconceptions - the reality is we don't know for sure. I have always suspected there would have been fewer civilian deaths by far, but the civilian casualties were extremely high in the firebombings of Japanese cities prior to the nuclear attacks, so.

 

[dhermann1]

No, no. Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was a uranium based fission bomb. Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, was also a fission bomb, but used plutonium.
Fission is SPLITTING the atom.
The hydrogen bomb is a FUSION bomb. You take some hydrogen atoms and squish them together (using the pressure from a small fission device) and fuse two hydrogen atoms into one helium atom, releasing staggering amounts of energy. The hydrogen bomb wasn't perfected till 1953.

 

[Zemke Fan]

Let's move on from the A-Bomb discussion. (It's been covered before and has led to some nasty knock-downs-dragged-outs.) Back to the original question, please.