Mark Scott Smith's Blog: Enemy in the Mirror, page 108

Participants in World War II

Allied Powers = dark green
Allies after attack on Pearl Harbor = light green
Axis Powers = blue
Neutral = gray

Most countries in the world participated in WWII.  

The leading Axis powers were Nazi Germany, the Kingdom of Italy, and the Empire of Japan.

The major Allied Powers were the United Kingdom and France and their colonies, China, the Soviet Union and the United States.

Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland remained neutral.  Among the neutral nations, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland aided the Allied Powers by supplying “voluntary” brigades to Great Britain.  Spain, recovering from a calamitous civil war, generally favored the Axis Powers. Ireland generally favored the Allies.

 

 

 

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Brazil Declares War on Axis – August 1942

Brazilian Expeditionary Force in Italy 1944; Wikimedia Commons

Under the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas, Brazil remained neutral in the early months of WWII. Then, due to repeated U-boat attacks on Brazilian ships between February and August, the government of Brazil declared war against Germany and Italy in August 1942.

Brazil went on to play a major role in defense of the hemisphere from Axis powers.

With the understanding that they would be turned over to Brazil at war’s end, several U.S.  airfields were constructed on Brazilian soil.  The largest U.S. airbase on foreign soil was built at Natal and the U.S. Navy Fourth Fleet sailed out of Recife.

The Brazilian Navy also initiated effective anti-submarine patrols  in the South and Central Atlantic Ocean. After losing nine U-boats off the Brazilian coast in 1943, German submarines were ordered to avoid the area.

In 1944, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force and several Air Force groups were sent to join the U.S. Fifth Army in Italy.

Although others declared war on the Axis powers, Brazil was the only South American country to send its military into battle overseas in WWII.

 

 

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Guadalcanal Diary

 

The journalist Richard Tregaskis defined the meaning of the phrase “embedded correspondent” with this classic account of the initial phase of the battle of Guadalcanal .

” …While the firing continued and I could hear the occasional impact of a bullet hitting a nearby tree or snapping off a twig, I debated whether it would be wiser to stay in my exposed spot or to run for a better ‘ole and risk being hit by a sniper and route. I was still debating the question when I heard a bullet whirr very close to my left shoulder, heard it thud into the ground and then heard the crack of the rifle which had fired. That was bad. Two Marines on the ground 10 or 15 feet ahead of me turned and looked to see if I had been hit. They had evidently heard the bullet passing. That made up my mind. I jumped up and dashed for a big bush. I found it well populated with ants which crawled up my trousers legs, but such annoyances are secondary now.”  

- Guadalcanal Diary

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The Battle of Guadalcanal – YouTube

via Battlefield S4/E5 – The Battle of Guadalcanal – YouTube.

This excellent  1 -1/2 hr. documentary is very much worth watching if you have the time.

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Guadalcanal – August 1942

Guadalcanal; Wikimedia Commons

In August 1942, U. S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal, the first stepping stone back toward the Japanese homeland. The bloody campaign, with three major battles on land and seven at sea, lasted six months. The Navy lost so many personnel that they ceased reporting actual numbers to the news media.

U.S. Marines battled in dense jungles, swamps, intense heat, mosquitoes, malaria and dengue against a battle-hardened foe determined not to give up the island. At night, hundreds of sake-stoked Japanese soldiers charged out of the jungle screaming Banzai into the blazing rifles and machine guns of Marines dug into the sand. In the morning, corpses lay stacked against the wire.

On the home front, all that was known came from censored news reports and hearsay.

Read More:

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/guadlcnl/guadlcnl.htm

http://www.guadalcanal.com/battleofguadalcanal.html

http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=9

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Ghost Blimp – August 1942

 

L-8 Blimp; Wikimedia Commons

 

A few hours after leaving for a routine anti-submarine patrol out of San Francisco in August 1942, the U.S. Navy blimp L-8 drifted back empty.

An hour into the patrol the pilot had radioed that they were about to examine an oil slick on the ocean. When it landed, rescuers found the gondola door propped open and the engine set on idle. Two life jackets were missing, but the pilot and co-pilot were never found.

Read more: http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/L-8_crash_site.htm

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M1 Garands & Cigarettes

 

During WWII the  with unsubstantiated claims that Camel cigarettes had the best taste and throat comfort.

This ad suggests that Camels were also the favorite of the soldier who fires the M1 Garand. It  almost seems healthy and patriotic for female “soldiers in overalls” working in “split-second time” just like men in battle, to smoke Camels.

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Eugenics – Not Just Nazi Germany

Wikimedia Commons

This 1936 Nazi propaganda poster saying “We do not stand alone,” shows a  woman with a baby and a man holding a shield inscribed with the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (mandating compulsory sterilization). Behind the couple is a map of Germany and the flags of nations that had or were contemplating considering similar legislation.

Enhancement of the Aryan race (Ubermenschen) was key to to Nazi ideology. Individuals deemed unworthy of life (Lebensunwertes) included criminals, degenerates, dissidents, developmentally delayed, homosexuals, idle, insane and the weak. In an attempt to eliminate these individuals from the chain of heredity, >400,000 people were involuntarily sterilized and 275,000 were killed under the Action T4, euthanasia program.

It is shocking to realize that eugenic practices were carried out by many other nations in the 20th century.  At one time or another, 33 states in the USA had statutes under which more than 60,000 Americans endured involuntary sterilization. The practice of involuntary sterilization of the “feeble-minded” was not entirely eliminated in the USA until the 1970s.

 

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Aryans – Herrenvolk

 

Wikimedia Commons

In the late 19th century, the concept of an “Aryan” race proposed that the descendants of Indo-European language speakers constituted a distinct sub-race of Caucasians. Although originally intended only as a linguistic classification, proponents of white supremacism (e.g. Nazis) claimed that the Aryan race was a master race. In his 1922 book Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes, racial theorist Hans F. K. Günther identified the Aryan race in Europe as having five subtype races: Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric, Alpine, and East Baltic, with Nordics being the highest in the racial hierarchy. Each racial subtype had physical (hair, eye, and skin color, facial structure) and certain emotional traits and religious beliefs. Adolf Hitler embraced the concept of Aryan Herrenvolk (master race) and believed that Jews and the vast majority of Slavs, who had dangerous non-Aryan Asiatic  origins, were Untermenschen (subhumans).

For photos of Nazi Germany home front see my board on Pinterest.

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Lauren Bacall 1924-2014

 

Wikimedia Commons

Lauren Bacall has died at age 89.  Born Betty Joan Perske to Jewish parents in the Bronx, as a teenager she took the Romanian surname of her mother and became the actress Lauren Bacall.  Known for her sultry looks, green eyes and husky voice, she was extremely successful in modeling, the theater and movies. Her breakthrough into movie stardom occurred in the waning years of WWII when she acted with Humphrey Bogart and subsequently married him.  

 

 

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