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

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

Depends upon the angle you want to look at. I wrote one on Einsatzgruppen actions and partisan activity, complete with interviews. Focus was upon the legitimacy of these actions according to international law.

Peter Churchill was a well-respected agent, and OSS Col. Aaron Bank knew him, thought highly of him.

Doreen wrote: "Just purchased Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi. Looking forward to reading it!"

That was one of several required readings I gave my Holocaust students at AMU, grad and undergrad tsudents.

The corrective action taken on the torpedoes was finally achieved when the BuOrd seriously accepted the concept (one of many) designed by Austrian turned American actress Heddy Lamar. radio short wave length guidance system with gyroscope.

She was recruited as her parents were from "Greater Syria" or modern Lebanon, and she spoke Arabic, French, English and learned German, played chess and was a wizard at mathematics. I do know that she was one of the few American women to have knowledge of Ultra, with the highest security clearance (rare for a first generation born American back then) but that is about it.

My wife Anne's grandmother is still alive, and she was a US Navy Intel cryptographer and code breaker. Amazing woman who will still not discuss her "secrets".

Many Germans did cower, out of fear of reprisal if they knew anything, although there were a few notable exceptions. Even those who did not know of the murders still knew that they were living in a nation built upon the backs of the unwilling and repressed. Go along to get along.

Galland, Roedel, Neumann, Steinhoff, Luetzow, and the rest of the anti-Goering conspirators were virtually demoralized, once Trautloft confirmed in person their suspicions about the camps after his Buchenwald experience. Roedel and Neumann had discussed Marseille's revelations after he returned from his month long sabbatical and the Berlin visit. According to Roedel, "It all made sense then."

I spent many days at a time, for years with many of these men, as a house guest, and knew their families. I came to know many of them very well. I know they loved their country, but there was a reason why they never joined the NSDAP. The were patriotic although conflicted. A few exceptions existed, and they were disturbing creatures.

I will never fault a man for fighting for his country, only his actions while in uniform. I remember when Reagan sent us places, it was not like we had an option. But we did have choices.

you make good points, and having first hand experience as a soldier and later a Marine in very intense situations, I know full well that in the heat of battle men can do things that they would normally never even consider.

Galland and the others come up cleaner than most, and this was also proofed by my interview with Karl Wolff, who knew ALL the details of Himmler and Goering both tapping Galland's phones, as both wanted him removed, but each for very different reasons. Ironically, Himmler and Goering played a game of cat and mouse tapping each others' phones as well, as they hated each other.

Goering comes out just as bad as Himmler in my opinion for his heavy handed efforts to do many things that violated logic and international law. He deserved the rope at the end of the trials, but as you know he cheated the hangman.

I know for a fact that the German pilots to a man, in varying degrees, had different attitudes when it came to Western Allied versus Soviet opponents, they even admitted it. They all considered the war in the west as a sad reality, fighting against like minded, like educated civilized men, but the war in the east was a grim and necessary reality, a true struggle of national survival, hence the intensity on both sides.

I cannot fault the Poles or the Czechs in the RAF for their fierce bravery and determination. My late friend and ace Francis Gabreski said; "There were no other men on planet earth as determined to kill a German at every chance than the Poles. They knew it was national survival, no quarter asked or given."

Caldwell used that as his reason, yet it was never corroborated. May be true, but of the three units operating in the area, all of JG-27, parts of JG-53 and JG-51 (temporary) I could not find any confirmation through research or interviews. It may have happened, and it could have been an accident, or it may have never happened, we may never know. What did occur was that of all the 12 JG-27 pilots who witnessed Caldwell kill one of their men in a parachute, and who I interviewed who were there (Emil Clade, Friedrich Korner, Ludwig Franzisket, Werner Schroer, Gustav Roedel), they discussed this with Edu Neuman and Bernhard Woldenga, as well as Rommel when he visited, and with Galland during his visit. This is all in my book The Star of Africa.

It was decided that there was to be no similar retaliation on Galland's order, and all but one of those men agreed. This was one of the reasons Goering brought it up to Galland later in Berlin, and Galland refused.

Actually, 8th AF Commander Doolittle ( who disagreed with the policy) admitted, as did Robin Olds and many others, that there was a quiet acceptance of strafing pilots seen to bale out of jets. Yes, it was illegal under Geneva 1929, and it was not a standard practice. However, any US fighter pilot who did so would not be held accountable to his superiors.

The reason was that it was mistakenly believed that jets pilots (whether in Aarados or 262's) must have been highly trained and valuable pilots. That was far from the case, although some of the most experienced pilots were selected to fly and command various Staffel and Gurppe units.

One fact that is irrefutable, is that Galland (and I knew him very well) firmly believed in his defense of the 262 as the method to change the tide in the air war. He based this upon his tenure as General der Jagdflieger, when he coordinated the defenses of the Ruhr, with Black Thursday proving his point of overlapping, concentrated attacks halting daylight bombing for a while.

I disagreed with him simply based upon logistics and comparative production capabilities in both aircraft and pilots. He conceded that if strategic and tactical bombing did choke the pipeline on all required materials, but he still believed that he could altered the course of the air war.

The one saving grace he did concede was that it was better for the world that Hitler was defeated, following the knowledge he gathered in 1944, from many sources, but in particular from Hannes Trautloft in Nov 1944 regarding Buchenwald.

Overall, in fact the Luftwaffe pilots were by in large very upstanding in their conduct of the war, and they mirrored their actions along the lines of the WW I fliers, and admired their RAF counterparts. This was why not a single Luftwaffe officer was ever charged, indicted, let alone convicted of any war crimes related to the air war.

I have dozens of documented acts of chivalry performed by Germans to protect Allied airmen they shot down, corroborated by the Allied pilots themselves. The Luftwaffe, like the U-Boat service lived by a code, sometimes violated, but not tolerated.

However, individual events did happen, in particular on the Eastern Front, and Walter Krupinski was a clear example of one pilot who was chivalrous in his actions throughout the war, but had a breaking point at one time, and after he shot down the enemy, tried to strafe him as payback, and failed.

He was reprimanded by his Gruppenkommandeur (and great friend) Johannes Steinhoff, and his Geschwaderkommodore, Dietrich Hrabak for his attempt to retaliate against a Sovier Yak pilot who did strafe a 190 pilot under his chute.

Both services fell victim to the post war propaganda where rumor was held to be truth, when in fact diligent research proves otherwise. Only the USSR and Japan openly accepted strafing parachuting airmen and the US Fighter Command had turned a blind eye to this activity; nothing to be entered into AAR's upon mission completion. The British RAF pilots stayed clean and chivalrous. However, the Poles on the other hand, became quite a problem on this issue, and long before the jets ever entered service.

This is also the reason why so many former WW II German aces became NATO commanders after the war; their record was clean, such as Rall, Steinhoff, Trautloft, Hrabak, etc. When Goering brought up the idea of strafing the enemy in parachutes as a suggestion in passing, Galland stated, in front of 7 people I interviewed, that he would court martial any of his pilots who did such a thing, and Goering laughed it off and dropped the subject.

From August to December 1944, fighter ace and Knight's Cross recipient Klaus Bretschneider was serving under Oberst Walther Dahl (who I interviewed) in JG-300, the "Rammjaeger", and the successor to Hajo Hermann's JG-300 "Wilde Sau." Hajo had personally recruited Bretschneider into the Wild Boar, and said that he was very aggressive.

Bretschneider's entire family had perished in a bombing raid, and he was assumed to be mentally strained. On 17 Dec, 1944 he shot down a B-24, his 34th and last victory, and Dahl and a few other pilots saw Bretschneider strafing the crew under parachutes after he destroyed their B-24.

He was called off by radio before he did any more damage, and it was not believed that he managed to kill anyone, but he tried. He was identified as he was flying his FW-190A8 at that time marked "Red 1".

On the ground his squadron leader wrote him up on charges for the act, and the Geschwaderkommodore Dahl grounded him, and sent the paperwork up the chain of command. Goering found out and reversed the grounding order.

Trautloft received the report as Inspector of Day Fighters, gave his recommendation and it went to Galland for court-martial. Galland's response was to hold a Luftwaffe trial within two weeks, but before that could happen Bretschneider was KIA by a Mustang on 24 Dec.

Klaus Bretschneider shot down 34 enemy aircraft, 14 of them at night in the FW-190 as a single seat 'Wild Sau). Included in his 20 day-victories were 17 four-engine heavy bombers.

I write all this because the German fighter pilots in their vast majority fought as clean a war as they could, and they were held to a very high standard. My books I wrote based upon the interviews with the pilots from both sides of the war show that, especially The Star if Africa, where this very situation existed with Australian ace Clive Caldwell after his strafing of Germans was witnessed by the guys I interviewed.

I also had two Allied Commonwelath pilots who knew Caldwell and confirmed the stories, and corroborated the discussions the Germans had about his activities.

Excellent family history Pam, and I am in Wilmington, NC and taught at Campbell, UNCW and CFCC off and on.

Can't wait for that one, I interviewed over 30 people who were involved on both sides of Big Week.

You may also like our book, The Me-262 Stormbird, which is a history of the jet, but the primary content are the interviews with many of the jet pilots, and Allied pilots who fought each other. They offered their first person perspectives. I was grateful that Oblt Jorg Czypionka wrote a foreword, as a Me-262 night fighter pilot.

Having worked off and on in the TV and motion picture industries for many years, I came to know many celebrities. Most were self absorbed vapid types. However, a few were very humble and nice people, and a few became friends.

They loved history, such as Harry Hamlin, and his knowledge of medieval history is remarkable, and I remember sitting and smoking cigars as we talked about the Crusades.

James B Sikking was himself a military historian, and loved all aspects of military history. Guys like these were well read, educated and they could sit and talk for hours on all these subjects, and it was quite refreshing.

Gene Simmons is also not just a math wizard but also a lover of history, especially WW II as his mother is a Holocaust survivor.

I agree with Liam on the whole, keep the celebrity crap out of the historical forum as much as possible.

Have to read that, I knew and interviewed a few of those guys, Tex Hill, Dick Rossi, Greg Boyington, et al. Great guys.

I was one of the tactical consultants to Red Tails, and was horrified at the poetic license taken by the Lucas crew on that story. I was actually in discussion with some of the Tuskegee Airmen during the production, and they had concerns. They could have actually used the real names of all persons, stuck to the history, and they had the true events from the American side as some of those pilots were still alive. I had the German side from the those interviews that I conducted, so there was no excuse.

I have been on the Laffey, which is docked next to the Yorktown (2nd carrier with that name, first lost), and the destroyer has a great history.

I knew many of the men who fought there, grueling battle.

See his book on Vietnam as well, I assisted him with setting up meetings with some heavy hitters, especially former USMC commandant Gen Al Gray, and others. he does deep research, and likes to go to the living sources when possible, like me.