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AMERICA AT WAR,1941-1945
Chapter 8 (Part II)
AMERICA AT WAR: EUROPEAN THEATER
NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN Once the United States entered the European theater in
1942, the decision to be made was where to start? A cross-channel invasion of Europe? An invasion of French North Africa?
With Churchill fundamentally opposed to any invasion of Western Europe and Stalin still a political wildcard, Roosevelt could see no alternative to a North African invasion. Once they had fully committed themselves to Operation
Torch, Roosevelt and Churchill appointed Dwight D. Eisenhower to command the operation.
DWIGHT D.EISENHOWERINTERESTING
FACTSIn 1951, Truman endorsed Eisenhower as a presidential candidate and pushed him to run as a Democrat; however, he declared himself and his family as Republicans.
Eisenhower is responsible for the creation of the Interstate Highway System.
The loblolly pine, known as the “Eisenhower Pine,” is located on Augusta’s 17th hole, approximately 210 yards from the Masters tee.
NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN Eisenhower and the British high command agreed to land
along the Atlantic coast in Morocco and Algeria. The U.S. Western Task Force would land at Casablanca,
Morocco. Combined Central Task Force would land at Oran, Algeria. Combined Eastern Task Force would land at Algiers, Algeria.
The Allies tried to convince the French military and naval commanders in North Africa not to resist the landing. This would allow the gain to be quick and bloodless; however,
many of the French officers in North Africa were loyal to the Vichy regime and resisted the Allied landing.
Eventually, the French offered a cease-fire and joined the Allied movement.
NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN Once the Allies landed, they raced to the strategic
position of Tunisia.
A month prior, Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery led a powerful assault on a Nazis garrison at El Alamein sending Erwin Rommel and his panzer divisions reeling to Libya. If the Allies could reach Tunisia, Rommel would be trapped
between them and Montgomery’s troops.
In March 1943, the U.S. II Corps, under Major General George S. Patton, led a coordinated assault with Montgomery on the German Mareth Line.
BERNARDMONTGOMERY
INTERESTING FACTS
Montgomery traveled with his pets: two puppies named “Hitler” and “Rommel” and a cage of canaries.
Montgomery often criticized his wartime comrades, namely Eisenhower, whom he accused of prolonging the war through poor leadership.
Montgomery was stripped of his honorary citizenship of Montgomery, Alabama for his criticisms of Eosenhower.
ERWINROMMEL
INTERESTING FACTS
Rommel earned the nickname the “desert fox” for being the most able commanders of desert warfare in world history.
He is regarded as being a humane and professional officer; Rommel was never accused of war crimes against opposing soldiers, Jewish or not.
Rommel committed suicide with a cyanide pill after being linked to a plot to assassinate Hitler.
GEORGE S.PATTON
INTERESTING FACTS
Patton’s address to the Third Army in 1944, prior to the Normandy Landings, is considered to be the one of the greatest motivational speeches of all time.
In December 1945, Patton was paralyzed in a car accident and died in his sleep of a pulmonary edema.
Patton was laid to rest in Hamm, Luxembourg alongside his wartime casualties of the Third Army.
NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN In early April, American and British forces met and squeezed
the Axis into the northeastern tip of the country.
On May 7, British armor entered Tunis as the American infantry entered Bizerte. Six days later the last Axis resistance in Africa ended with the
surrender of over 170,000 troops.
Though it was a loss, Nazi forces in Tunisia lengthened the Allied operation in North Africa to such an extent that a cross-channel invasion in 1943 was no longer possible. Once again, Roosevelt accepted Churchill’s proposal that the
Allies concentrate on additional offensive operations in the Mediterranean, specifically an invasion of Sicily.
In return, Churchill approved the massive buildup for a cross-channel invasion in 1944.
NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN As the Tunisian campaign came to a close, British
intelligence officers managed to pull off one of the most successful wartime deceptions ever achieved – Operation Mincemeat.
In April 1943, a decomposing corpse was discovered floating off the coast of Huelva, in southern Spain. Personal documents identified the corpse as Major William
Martin of the British Royal Marines and attached to his wrist was a black attaché case.
When Nazi intelligence learned of Martin’s briefcase and British efforts to retrieve it, they did all they could to gain access. Although Spain was officially neutral in the conflict, much of its
military was pro-Nazi, and assistance came from Madrid.
NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN Spanish and Nazi officials found a letter from military
authorities in London to a senior British officer in Tunisia, indicating that an Allied force (mostly American) were preparing to cross the Mediterranean from their positions in North Africa and attack German-held Greece and Sardinia.
The Nazi intelligence network allowed Hitler to transfer troops from France to Greece ahead of what was believed to be a massive Allied invasion. The only problem was that it all was an elaborate hoax.
The “drowned” British Marine was actually a Welsh tramp, named Glyndwr Michael, whose body was obtained in a London morgue by British intelligence officers Charles Cholmondeley and Ewen Montagu.
NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN After creating an elaborate fake identity and backstory
for “William Martin,” Cholmondeley and Montagu got Charles Fraser-Smith to design a special container to preserve the body during its travel. One of England’s leading racecar drivers transported the
container to a Royal Navy submarine, which launched the body off the Spanish coast.
Once the Spanish recovered the body, British authorities began their frantic “attempts” to recover the body, counting on the fact that their efforts would convince the Nazi’s of the document’s validity. As a result of the false intelligence, the Nazis were caught
unaware when 160,000 Allied troops invaded Sicily in July 1943.
THE SICILIAN OPERATION
Hitler fell for the hoax and after having redirected his troops elsewhere, Sicily was left venerable.
Once again, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that Eisenhower would serve as supreme commander of the Sicilian operation. This invasion would be code-named Operation Husky.
On July 9, Patton and Monty invaded the island, one from the southeast and the other from the southwest.
In just over a month of fighting, naval gunfire, infantry counterattacks, and field artillery fire broke all German fortifications. On August 17, the Axis evacuated Sicily. The Allies choose to follow their success up with the invasion of
Italy.
THE SICILIAN OPERATION
The Allies’ control of Sicily led to two vital results. First, the Mediterranean was cleared for Allied shipping and
for an invasion of the Italian mainland. Second, it assisted in Mussolini’s fall from power.
The war was a nightmare for the Duce and the Italians had become disillusioned with his leadership.
On July 24, King Victor Emmanuel III dismissed him as premier and had the police arrest Mussolini. Emmanuel installed Marshall Pietro Badoglio in his place. Badoglio dissolved the Fascist party and formed a
government without political affiliation. He also opened secret negotiations with the Allies for an
armistice.
THE SICILIAN OPERATION
On September 3, negotiations between Badoglio and the Allies concluded in what was nothing short of unconditional surrender. The agreement provided for Italy to hand over its navy, merchant
marines, and air force to the Allies as well as agreed to become a cobelligerent against Nazi Germany.
Days later, German commandos landed gliders on the mountain of the prison, rescued Mussolini, and led an escape by airplane. Hitler installed the Duce as the ruler of the puppet Fascist state in
northern Italy. Allied forces would continue to fight in northern Italy with the help
of Badoglio until 1945.
On April 28, 1944, Mussolini and his mistress were shot to death and their corpses were trampled and spat on in Milan.
PREPARATIONS FOR THE D-DAY INVASION In November 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin
agreed on the basic details of the long-awaited and promised cross-channel invasion at the Teheran Conference. This was the first face-to-face meeting of all three Allied
leaders, the “Big Three.” Teheran was the capital of Iran, which the Soviets and British
had jointly occupied since 1941.
The “Big Three” agreed that a cross-channel invasion in 1944 was top priority and that continued fighting in Italy was of second importance. The code-name for this invasion would be Operation
Overlord and it was here that Roosevelt appointed Eisenhower the supreme commander of the Allied expeditionary forces.
PREPARATIONS FOR THE D-DAY INVASION The Allies chose the coast of Normandy, France as the
site for the cross-channel invasion. Normandy contained two important ports, which would be
extremely valuable for supplying the invading troops. British ports across the channel were larger and could handle
much greater ship and troop concentration.
The Germans expected the invasion to come at Pas de Calais, 200 miles to the northeast but only twenty miles from England across the Strait of Dover. Additionally, this was the launch site for the Nazi V-1 and V-2
rockets, which were still under development.
PREPARATIONS FOR THE D-DAY INVASION Allied leaders underwent massive deception operations to
convince the Germans that the main invasion target was Pas-de-Calais. In addition, they led the Germans to believe that Norway and
other locations were also potential invasion targets.
Many tactics were used to carry out the deception, including fake equipment, supply depots, and railroads; a phantom army commanded by Patton and supposedly based in England; double agents; and fraudulent radio transmissions. The double-agent Juan Pujol Garcia, fed the Germans false
information, indicating that the Allies were going to invade at Pas de Calais.
Garcia was known by the British codename Garbo and the German codename Arabel.
JUAN PUJOL GARCIA
INTERESTING FACTS
Garcia holds the distinction of being the only man to receive decorations from both the sides during the war: the Iron Cross from Germany and an MBE from Britain.
Fearing Nazi retaliation after the war, Garcia traveled to Angola and faked his own death from malaria in 1949; he would live out his life in Venezuela, sunning a bookstore.
PREPARATIONS FOR THE D-DAY INVASION The invasion would be launched by five Allied divisions that
would form the initial seaborne landing force. Of the five landings, the Americans would land at Utah and
Omaha, the British would land at Sword and Gold, and the Canadians would land at Juno.
Shortly before these troops would go ashore, two American airborne divisions (82nd & 101st) were to land to the west of the American beachheads to provide flank cover.
Preparations for such an invasion took months to complete. The invasion required the transportation of 1.5 million American
troops, 600 warships and over 4,000 transports and various landing craft, and 12,000 planes.
This was the greatest invasion Armanda in the history of the world – never to be challenged.
THE CROSS-CHANNEL INVASION The invasion date was set for June 5, 1944, but stormy
weather forced Eisenhower to postpone and threatened to delay the invasion for two weeks.
Eisenhower later received a report that there would be a lull (break) in the weather so he set the invasion for the next morning, June 6.
The D-Day invasion would unfold in three stages. Break-in – the actual landing and joining at the beachhead. Buildup – expand the beachhead and increase the size of the
invasion force. Break-out – punch through German defenses around the
beachhead and head towards the German border.
THE CROSS-CHANNEL INVASION The D-Day invasion is said to have been the most
important day of the Second World War. The Allied landing in Normandy dealt Hitler a significant
psychological blow and accelerated the final defeat of Germany.
The importance of D-Day comes in its relation with the Soviets. Because the German assault on Russia (Operation
Barbarossa) had failed, the Soviets began to push hard towards Berlin.
Had the cross-channel invasion failed then all of Germany and much of Western Europe would have fallen into the hands of the Soviets.
THE LAST TRUMP CARD
Hitler masterminded one last offensive in an attempt to push the Allies back from Berlin. He chose to strike in the Ardennes, recognizing it was a weak
point in the Allied line and France’s Achilles’ heel in 1940.
Operation Autumn Fog, as Hitler called it, was a complete surprise and began on December 16 with a predawn artillery barrage.
The Germans outnumbered the American forces along the 70-mile front but American troops stubbornly defended two roads junctions at St. Vith and Bastogne (101st). This trump card became better known as the Battle of the
Bulge.
THE LAST TRUMP CARD
By January 3, 1945, it became obvious that German forces must withdraw from the Ardennes but Hitler refused to allow retreat.
By the end of January, American troops had eliminated the German forces of the bulge. Hitler had sacrificed his last reserves and greatest
concentration of armor in an operation that never had a chance of success.
The Battle of the Bulge dealt a serve blow to German morale on the Western Front.
HIGH DRAMA IN BERLIN
The greatest drama of the war unfolded in Berlin.
Hitler took refuge in an underground bunker near the Reich’s Chancellery building. The once mighty conqueror had become physically weak: stoop,
suffered from tremors in his limbs, and dragged his left leg when he walked.
Theodore Morell, his quack doctor, had prescribed Hitler with a variety of pills and frequent injections of amphetamines.
In March 1945, Hitler called for a scorched-earth policy where all German bridges, dams, factories, mines, etc… would be destroyed so that they would not be useful to Allied forces.
On April 16, the Red Army launched its final offensive on Berlin.
HIGH DRAMA IN BERLIN
On April 29, Hitler had decided that death was his only course of action. He first married his longtime mistress, Eva Braun then he
drafted his political testament.
The following day, Hitler retired to his suite, where he and his bride committed suicide. Aides burned their bodies immediately.
On May 2, 1945, the last fighting ended in Berlin. The Soviets suffered over 300,000 killed, wounded, or missing. The German causalities are unknown but the 134,000 POWs
were taken and 100,000 civilians lost their lives. Red Army soldiers engaged in an orgy of rape in the
aftermath: 95,000 to 130,000 were estimated victims.
HIGH DRAMA IN BERLIN
The last remnants of Nazi leadership signed an unconditional surrender on May 7, 1945 in a schoolhouse in Reims, France at 2:41 a.m. World War II in Europe was over and Hitler’s “Thousand Year
Reich” had expired only after twelve years.
The Second World War statistics are as follows: 63,185,500 human beings lost their lives in total –
23,620,100 military deaths and 33,833,000 civilian deaths. 416,800 American soldiers gave the ultimate sacrifice;
418,500 (civilian casualties included). Throughout seventeen European and Asian nations,
5,907,900 Jews perished in the conflict.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
From the time that Hitler ascended to power, he was clear in his plan to expel the Jewish population from Germany and any other territory that fell under his control.
The early approach focused on imposing numerous restrictions aimed at making life miserable for the Jews and encouraging their emigrations from Germany.
Some Jews did leave but the majority stayed. Many simply lacked the financial means to flee while others
disliked the thought of abandoning their homeland. The grim reality was that outside nations placed strict
limitations on the number of Jewish refugees they would admit as immigrants, especially the United States.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
Prosecution became more intense on November 9, 1938, when a Jew assassinated a German embassy official in Paris, France. The ensuing wave of terror became known as Kristallnacht,
the night of the broken crystal. On this night over one hundred Jews were murdered and
some 30,000 others were arrested while synagogues were burned and Jewish shops destroyed.
In the aftermath, the Nazis forced the Jewish community to pay a heavy indemnity, seized Jewish businesses, and required firms to dismiss Jewish employees. All of this led to a great increase in emigration in late 1938.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
In early 1939, the Nazis established a special agency to facilitate emigration, but despite their efforts, 350,000 Jews still remained when war erupted in Poland. With the outbreak of hostilities, Jewish emigration became
extremely difficult and the Nazis resorted to deportation.
The initial solution was to capture the island of Madagascar, a French possession off the coast of Africa, and to convert it into a permanent Jewish homeland. In failing to gain control of the island, the Nazis designated
Poland as the official dumping ground for the Jewish population.
The concept of the final solution appears to have taken shape gradually.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
Beginning in 1941, Jews throughout the European continent, as well as hundreds of thousands of gypsies, were transported to the Polish ghettos.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 marked a new level of brutality in warfare. Mobile killing units called Einsatzgruppen would murder
more than 500,000 Soviet Jews and others (usually by shooting) over the course of the German occupation.
A memorandum dated July 31, 1941, from Hitler’s top commander, Hermann Goering, to Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the security service of the SS, referred to the need for an Endlosung (final solution) to “the Jewish question.”
HERMANNGOERING
INTERESTING FACTS
Unable to fulfill his wartime commitments with the Luftwaffe, Goring withdrew and focused on acquiring property and artwork confiscated from the Jews.
Upon hearing of Hitler’s suicide, Goring asked to assume control of the Reich – Hitler considered this act treasonous and Goering was expelled from all Nazi ranks.
REINHARDHEYDRICHINTERESTING
FACTSHistorians regard Heydrich as the darkest figure within the Nazi elite.
Heydrich died in 1942, due to injuries sustained in Operation Anthropoid – the Allied plot to assassinate him.
Two funerals were held in his honor: first in Prague and the second in Berlin.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
In September 1941, every person designated as a Jew in German-held territory was marked with a yellow star, making them open targets. Tens of thousands were soon being deported to the Polish
ghettoes and German-occupied cities in the Soviet Union.
Since June 1941, experiments with mass killing methods had been ongoing at the concentration camp of Auschwitz, near Krakow.
That August, 500 officials gassed 500 Soviet POWs to death with pesticide Zyklon-B (hydrogen cyanide). The SS soon placed a huge order for the gas with a German
pest-control firm, an ominous indicator of the coming Holocaust.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
In late 1941, the Germans began mass transports from the ghettoes in Poland to the concentration camps, starting with those people viewed as the least useful. The least useful were the sick, the old, the weak, and the
very young.
The first mass gassing began at the camp of Belzec, near Lublin, on March 17, 1942.
From 1942 to 1945, Jews were deported to the camps from all over Europe, including German-controlled territory as well as nations allied with Germany. The heaviest deportations took place during the summer and
fall of 1942, when more than 300,000 people were deported from the Warsaw ghetto alone.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
Though the Nazis tried to keep operation of camps a secret, the scale of the killings made this virtually impossible.
Eyewitnesses brought reports of Nazi atrocities in Poland to the Allied governments, who were harshly criticized after the war for their failure to respond, or to publicize news of the mass slaughter. The lack of action was likely mostly due to the Allied focus on
winning the war at hand and the news of the Holocaust was met with denial and disbelief.
At Auschwitz alone, more than two million people were murdered in a process resembling a large-scale industrial operation. A large population of Jewish and non-Jewish inmates worked in the
labor camp there; though only Jews were gassed, thousands of others died of starvation or disease.
JOSEFMENGELE
INTERESTING FACTS
Nicknamed “the Angel of Death,” Mengele performed medical exp. of unspeakable horror at Auschwitz.
Children recall smiling Uncle Mengele who brought them candy and clothing before he mutilated them.
Prior to the Red Army's liberation of the camp, Mengele escaped to South America.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
During the summer of 1944, a large proportion of Hungary’s Jewish population was deported to Auschwitz. As many as 12,000 Jews were killed every day.
By the spring of 1945, German leadership was dissolving amid internal dissent, with Goering and Himmler both seeking to distance themselves from Hitler and take power. In his last will and political testament, dictated in a German
bunker that April 29, Hitler blamed the war on “International Jewry and its helper.”
Additionally, he urged the German leaders and people to follow “the strict observance of the racial laws with merciless resistance against the universal poisoners of all peoples” – the Jews.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
German forces had begun evacuating many of the death camps in the fall of 1944, sending inmates under guard to march further from the advancing enemy’s front line. These so-called “death marches” continued all the way up to
the German surrender, resulting in the deaths of some 250,000 to 375,000 people.
In his classic novel “Survival in Auschwitz,” the Italian Jewish author Primo Levi described his own state of mind, as well as that of his fellow inmates in Auschwitz on the day before Soviet troops arrived at the camp in January 1945: “We lay in a world of death and phantoms. The last trace of
civilization had vanished around and inside us. The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to conclusion by the Germans in defeat.”
THE FINAL SOLUTION
The wounds of the Holocaust were slow to heal.
Survivors of the camps found it nearly impossible to return home, as in many cases they had lost their families and been denounced by their non-Jewish neighbors. As a result, the late 1940s saw an unprecedented number of
refugees, POWs, and other displaced populations moving across Europe.
In an effort to punish the villains of the Holocaust, the Allies held the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-1946, which brought Nazi atrocities to horrifying light. Increasing pressure on the Allied powers to create a
homeland for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust would lead to a mandate for the creation of Israel in 1948.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
Over the decades that followed, ordinary Germans struggled with the Holocaust’s bitter legacy, as survivors and the families of victims sought restitution of wealth and property confiscated during the Nazi years. Beginning in 1953, the German government made payments
to individual Jews and to the Jewish people as a way of acknowledging the German people’s responsibility for the crimes committed in their name.
The initial Jewish population in Europe prior to the war was 9,508,340 and after sixty-three percent was exterminated (5,962,129) only 3,546,211 remained. Hitler also condemned the Roma (gypsies) to a similar fate,
killing an estimated 200,000 of the 700,000 European Roma.
THE ROAD TO NUREMBERG In December 1942, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met to
resolve the issue of how to prosecute those responsible for the violence against the civilian populations. Stalin initially proposed the mass execution of 50,000-
100,000 German staff officers while Churchill discussed the possibility of summary execution (execution without a trial) of high-ranking Nazi officials.
Roosevelt persuaded them that individual criminal trials would be the most effective because they required extensive documentation.
The city of Nuremberg in the German state of Bavaria was selected as the location for the trials because its Palace of Justice was relatively undamaged by the war and included a large prison facility.
THE ROAD TO NUREMBERG The Allies established the laws and procedures for the
Nuremberg trials with the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal.
The charter defined three categories of crimes: Crimes against peace (including planning, preparing, waging
wars of aggression in violation of international agreements). War crimes (including violations of customs or laws of war –
improper treatment of civilians and prisoners of war). Crimes against humanity (including murder, enslavement, or
deportation of civilians on political, religious, or racial grounds).
The prosecutors and defense attorneys were of American and British law but the verdicts and sentences were imposed by a judicial tribunal (panel of judges) rather than a jury.
THE ROAD TO NUREMBERG Over the course of four years, a series of thirteen trials
were carried out in Nuremberg, Germany. The defendants included Nazi Party officials and high-ranking
military officers as well as German industrialists, lawyers, and doctors.
The best-known of the Nuremberg trials was the Trial of Major War Criminals, held from November 20, 1945, to October 1, 1946. Twenty-four individuals were indicted, along with six Nazi
organizations determined to be criminal; for example, the Gestapo or secret state police.
The twelve proceedings to follow included the Doctors Trial (December 1946 – August 1947), the Judges Trial (March – December 1947), and other subsequent trials.
ROBERTJACKSON
INTERESTING FACTS
A “county-seat lawyer,” Jackson remains the last Supreme Court Justice appointed who did not graduate from any law school.
Jackson’s opening and closing arguments before the Nuremberg court are widely considered the best speeches of the twentieth century.
THE ROAD TO NUREMBERG In the end, the international tribunal found all but three
of the defendants guilty. Twelve were sentenced to death, one in absentia, and the
rest were given prison sentences ranging from ten years to life behind bars.
Ten of the condemned were executed by hanging on October 16, 1946.
Hermann Goring, Hitler’s designated successor and head of the Luftwaffe, committed suicide the night before his execution with a cyanide capsule he had hidden in a jar of skin medication.
THE ROAD TO NUREMBERG Although legal justifications for the trials and their
procedural innovations were controversial at the time, the Nuremberg trials are now regarded as a milestone toward the establishment of a permanent international court.
Additionally, the trials saw the introduction of a technological innovation taken for granted today – instantaneous translation. IBM provided the technology and recruited men and women
from international telephone exchanges to provide on-the-spot translations through headphones in English, French, German, and Russian.
