'Aussie Rick'’s Comments (group member since Jun 12, 2009)

'Aussie Rick'’s comments from the THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP group.

"1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe" - Russian POW's under the Germans:

"Rumors about the vicious conditions in the prisoner camps where more than two million Soviet men died of hunger and disease before the end of the first year, spread quickly, confirming the systematic nature of the Wehrmacht's murderous policies. On any given day in the fall of 1941 more Soviet captives died than did British or American prisoner-of-war over the course of the entire year."

1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe by Peter Fritzsche

"1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe" - The Philippines under the Japanese and the increased rape of local women:

"Brutalities against civilians were so widespread that it was said that 'the Spaniards had built churches in the Philippines, the Americans had built schools, and the Japanese had built brothels'."

1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe by Peter Fritzsche

"1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe" - The need for soldiers in China to fight the Japanese:

"Unfortunate conscripts were in fact sometimes roped together so they would not desert. All in all, more than 40 percent of the 1,167,000 men conscripted in 1943 either died of hunger and disease or deserted before reaching their assigned units in the field. Year after year, half the army simply vanished."

1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe by Peter Fritzsche

"1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe" - The mass movement of people in the United States due to new defence industries:

"Promoted by hearsay, advertisements, and paid recruiters, the pull of work in war industries was so strong that one in give people in the United States moved; between 1940 and 1947 an estimated 25 million migrated across state or county lines. One million Blacks, 1 in 10, left the South for cities of the North and West. Statisticians in the Census Bureau believed that 'never before in the history of the United States has there been internal population movement of such magnitude'."

Great post MR9! I really liked Mike Reilly's account.

I wonder if that GI survived the war and if he managed to marry one of those girls?

"1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe" - Another interesting bit of information:

"In the Wehrmacht's campaign against Moscow in the fall of 1941, the 2nd Panzer Division received 80 tons of mail in addition to 530 tons of regular supplies. Some twelve thousand Wehrmacht personnel sorted through 25 million pieces of mail a day. The army's postal service handled a total of 40 billion letters and packages over the course of the war (the figure for World War 1 had been 28.7 billion). On the other side, five million Red Army soldiers wrote more than 1 million letters each day. The American serviceman wrote a letter home about once a day - more free time was spent on correspondence than on anything else. Censors read a sample of 1,000 letters in a single shift. 'I wouldn't mind so much,' one exclaimed, 'if that damned corporal didn't write five identical letters to five different girls every day'."

"1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe" - Some more interesting information from this book:

"Over the course of the war, an estimated 7,000 military aircraft crashed in Holland, steel nails driven into a bit of ground that encompassed little more than 16,000 square miles. (Some 300,000 planes were lost in World War II, almost half the 800,000 manufactured.) The ocean floor was littered as well. In engagements with Allied forces, the Japanese, largely dependent on oceangoing trade, lost 2,346 merchant and 686 naval vessels; in the Battle of Atlantic, German submarines sunk some 3,500 Allied merchant ships in addition to 175 warships at the cost of 791 of their own submarines with a total loss of more than 100,000 lives."

"1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe" - Some more interesting information from this book:

"Coca-Cola delivered five billion cases to the US military during the war, more than one hundred million bottles; it had sixty-three overseas bottling plants in 1945, up from three in 1939."

1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe by Peter Fritzsche

Welcome to any and all new members. I haven't been able to send out individual messages to each new member due to being on the move for the last few months.

Any member who wishes to start a new thread must first contact me or one of the other moderators for permission. This allows me to try and control the number of threads that keep popping up all over the place and stops the group page becoming a bit messy and hard to navigate.

Any threads started that have not received permission will be deleted.

Mike wrote: "Current ebooks on sale:

$1.99:

[book:The Last Mission of the Wham Bam Boys: Courage, Trage..."

Some more good books at great prices, thanks for the notification, Mike.

Mike, you are right about the potential effects on morale for those German soldiers posted to the Eastern Front after visiting Napoleon's tomb. It would certainly have you thinking about how history has a tendency to repeat itself!

Jerome wrote: "Another:

by Richard Hargreaves
Description:
Drawing upon sources in German, Russian, Italian, Hungarian, Romanian and Englis..."

His book on Operation Barbarossa was a very good read so this one will be on my 'to buy' list for 2026!

"1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe" - Some more interesting information:

"By 1945, there were more than 25,000 army dentists, up from 250 in 1939. Over the course of the war, they 'pulled 15,000,000 teeth and fitted 2,500,000 dentures' in 'the most momentous job in the history of dentistry'."

1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe by Peter Fritzsche

"1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe" - On the German invasion of Russia and Napoleon:

"For Wehrmacht personnel transferred to the eastern front from France, the journey among the ghosts of the Grande Armee had begun at Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides in Paris where the custodian reported that more German soldiers had visited 'the great Corsican' in the first year of the occupation than French visitors had in the previous ten years."

1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe by Peter Fritzsche

I've just started reading my Kindle edition of "1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe" by Peter Fritzsche.

1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe by Peter Fritzsche

Pretty savvy move on FDR's part!

I've just downloaded two Kindle books by Jack Bowsher covering armoured warfare in Burma during WW2.

Forgotten Armour: Tank Warfare in Burma by Jack Bowsher

Thunder Run Meiktila 1945: The greatest combined arms manoeuvre battle of WW2 by Jack Bowsher

Manray9 wrote: "This afternoon I started --

FDR by Jean Edward Smith."

That should be a very interesting read MR9!

Thanks for posting those links, Liz!