Colin’s Comments (group member since Dec 16, 2012)

Colin’s comments from the THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP group.

Admiral Richard Lyon started out as the expansion officer of the UDT's and was present when JFK proclaimed the SEAL's as a legitimate and distinct special operations branch, along with Army Special Forces. Lyon was their first commander of a team. I met him, good chats indeed.

I respect them all, talented, productive and wish them all well.

I met Lee in the Toronto airport in 1998 as I was first leaving for graduate school in the UK. We had a nice long chat. He is a very intelligent person, very caring, and humble as hell. Hats off to all the guys in the band.

I spent 4 years researching the SOE records at Richmond-PRO, Kew Surrey. The declassified material was extensive, especially the Balkans operations, which were declassified first due to the Cold War. Amazing part of the SOE local recruitment files and after action reports, are that they are typed in English, and some in the various languages of the local recruited units, later to be translated.

We have both in North Carolina also, big gators too!

It was Goering who gave Luftwaffe Chief of Staff Milch a "pass" on his Jewish background (Hitler gave Rogge his "pass"), having a new forged birth certificate removing his real father who was Jewish to this mother's employer; ergo making Milch the defact product of an affair which never happened. Amazing. read Bryan Rigg's book Hitler's Jewish Soldiers. he and I worked together on the documentation, interviews and research.

Goering knew that Hertha Rall had helped Jews, like he knew Hans Joachim Marseille and his fellow pilots harbored the black South African POW Mathias, keeping him safe. Exposing either of these openly would be a propaganda disaster for the Luftwaffe, so a blind eye was turned.

Dr. Hertha Rall, the wife of Luftwaffe ace Generalleutnant Gunther Rall helped forge documents for to get her colleagues and their families out of her native Austria, and in Germany before the war. Then after the war, she helped hide many in plain sight by forging birth certificates. She never told Gunther a word about it, so he passed the Gestapo interrogation when they showed up in the USSR at JG-62 asking him about her, as they had suspicions. She was never outed, luckily. That story is in my book The German Aces Speak II.

Steinhoff, Htabak, von Bonin, Galland and others helped cover two of their pilots in a similar fashion. My friend Dr. Bryan Mark Rigg mentioned this fact in his book Hitler's Jewish Soldiers, as I helped him with that research.

The great irony was that Admiral Bernhard Rogge, Field Marshall Erhard Milch and others were classified as half or quarter Jews under the Nuremberg Laws, but Goering and Hitler gave them a pass.

Funny discussion. I have turned down 6 figure job offers because it would have required leaving the warm south. Homeboy does not do cold either.

In one of my books, i argued that had Hitler abandoned the racist/ideological policies that made many Soviet citizens see the Germans as liberators from Stalin, he would have won that theater of the war. Remember that over 1 million Soviet citizens joined the German military, mostly Ukrainians. Point of fact, of the 940,000 Waffen SS troops during the war, only 240,000 were ethnic German. The rest were European volunteers, mostly anti-Communists. Lt Gen Andrei Vlasov and Leon Degrelle (another interview) were a prime examples.

Mark wrote: "Elliot wrote: "I am a little over halfway through The First World War by John Keegan. I'm really enjoying it so far..."

Elliot, Ke..."

I interviewed a few of the old WW I survivors. One was infantry lieutenant and Pour le Merite (the youngest in fact) recipient/author Ernst Junger. He had great respect for American troops, especially the Marines, "Devil dogs" as the Germans called them.

Kettles was friends with my former CO and current boss/coauthor Maj Gen Livingston, also a MOH recipient. I met Kettles once, very humble guy, and he and Bruce Crandall (also pilot/MOH) were always seen together.

Anything Ben writes is good.

Intellectual bankruptcy, the legacy of the liberal mind.

Qaddafi was a brutal bastard, but not even he would damage war graves. Mubarek in Egypt made it punishable by prison terms if anyone was caught damaging grave sites there.

R.J. wrote: "Liz V. wrote: "Hello Mac.

Have added your first book to my TBR list. Given your quandary about the third book, I envision a four-book TBR addition eventually.

Best wishes on your books."

Liz,

I..."

R.J. wrote: "Liz V. wrote: "Hello Mac.

Have added your first book to my TBR list. Given your quandary about the third book, I envision a four-book TBR addition eventually.

Best wishes on your books."

Liz,

I..."

Liam wrote: "Welcome, Mac! That must have been interesting, studying Military History at Berkeley..."

R.J. most were good PLFs, got better after going into free fall with ram airs. Got kicked off a DZ for doing a downwind landing on a dare. We would launch out sometimes doing 4 free fall jumps a day from CH-47s, and take bets on who would be the last to pull the rip cord before the AOD would deploy, or we would just disconnect it. After a few months I ended up driving a new sports car, which made superiors question my "side job" as an enlisted man could never afford one.

Better than me I guess I did US Army 101st Airborne and later served in the US Marines.

Similar events happened in Libya at the Commonwealth War Graves. Some bastards should be retroactively aborted.

Forthcoming in the near future

Mike wrote: "A WWI classic for sale at most of the ebook sites for $1.99:

Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger"

My friend and fellow historian Bryan Rigg both interviewed Ernst Junger, he was one hell of a guy.

I worked for Hew Strachan one semester, great historian