Wholesome History Reads Group discussion
War Books
>
Second World War Books
date
newest »
newest »
message 251:
by
Jonny
(new)
Jun 23, 2022 04:39AM
Sounds interesting Rick, a bit off the beaten track, and nice that you got a bit of craick with the author too!
reply
|
flag
Mod
I've got the movie (2020 version) on DVD which isn't too bad so it will be good to read the real story behind this incident.
Mod
The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945 by Richard Overy
I'll be interested to hear what you think Rick; I'm not sure I've ever read one of Mr Overy's books....
Mod
Mod
"The most comprehensive proposal, the French 'Tardieu Plan', presented to the conference in a revised version in November 1932 contained all three: a European Air Transport Union to oversee all civil air transport; the complete abolition of all bomber aircraft; and an 'organically international air force' run by the League of Nations to enforce its regulations with 'immediate intervention'."
The Tardieu Plan:
https://content.time.com/time/subscri...
Mod
"The number of serviceable bombers stood at almost 1,000 at the start of August, but by the end of November was down to 706. That month Kesselring himself witnessed a crash between two Ju88s, one of them a new plane, and berated his crews for 'carelessness'. Figures for the period of poor weather from January to March, 1941 show that out of 216 bombers lost and 190 damaged, 282 were as a result of flying accident. The often poor state of airfields in France and the Low Countries, in some cases lacking solid concrete runways, made landing and take-off especially risky. Over the winter months the German aircraft industry went through a period of crisis, making it harder to replace lost or damaged aircraft or to maintain the supply of filled bombs and mines. The planned output of bombers during the whole period of the campaign was little higher than in 1939, an average of 240 a month. Actual output was even lower, reaching a figure of only 130 bombers in January. The older He111 and Do17 bombers were being phased out, but a new generation of higher-performance aircraft were still in the development stage, facing accumulating technical difficulties, particularly the ill-fated Messerschmitt Me210, which was finally cancelled in April 1942. Plans for a 'Bomber B', a faster high-altitude bomber more suited to a strategic role, were still on the drawing board in 1940. Bombs were also a problem. In March 1941 the Air Ministry technical office warned the air force staff that there was not enough explosive to fill the required bombs and mines, and empty bomb cases were piling up in warehouses. It was recommended filling fewer mines, which took a much larger explosive charge, in order to free explosive for regular bombs."
The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945 by Richard Overy
Mod
"Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickles, in a vicious diary entry, captured the feelings of the general's many opponents: 'MacArthur is the type of man who thinks that when he gets to heaven God will step down from the great white throne and bow him into the vacated seat.' Even those who worked closest with the general, like Eisenhower, suffered under his ego: 'MacArthur could never see another sun, or even a moon, for that matter, in the heavens so long as he was the sun'.
MacArthur's sense of superiority - even destiny - led him to clash with civilian leaders, including his commander in chief. 'He talks in a voice that might come from an oracle's cave,' President Roosevelt once said of him. 'He never doubts and never argues or suggests; he makes pronouncements. What he thinks is final'."
Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila by James M. Scott
Mod
"But the worst would come in the weeks after the battle, when Yamashita ordered the 'severe disposal' of thousands of Chinese, who were believed hostile to his forces. Over several weeks, troops rounded up and transported Chinese residents - mostly military-aged men - outside the city and slaughtered them in what become known as the Sook Ching Massacre. Japan would later admit to killing five thousand, though leaders of Singapore's Chinese community would place the number closer to fifty thousand."
The Sook Ching Massacre:
https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infoped...
Mod
"Even the dead were not safe as thieves dug up thousands of graves to pluck rings from fingers and pry out gold teeth. Cemetery neighbors complained of the nightly pounding of sledgehammers coupled with putrid smells that wafted from open graves. Pestano-Jacinto recalled how a friend with scissors sliced up his deceased mother's clothes before the coffin left the house, explaining that this would hopefully deter grave robbers from touching her body. 'This has never happened in the Philippines before. But happens very often today,' Pestano-Jacinto wrote. 'The dead are being robbed by the living that the living may continue to live. Clothes, jewels, even dental plates can be sold. One must sell something to buy the food that one must eat'."
Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila by James M. Scott
Mod
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war...
https://www.historynet.com/american-p...
Mod
"General Yamashita watched the American landings from atop the 7,400-foot Santo Tomas Mountain near Baguio, on the eastern side of the gulf. He had suspected all along that MacArthur would come ashore at Lingayen, but the landings occurred several weeks earlier than he anticipated, so much so that he initially mistook the American convoys for a much-needed resupply for his own forces. 'We expected rice,' his chief of staff Muto complained. 'We got the American Army instead'."
The Landings at Lingayen Gulf:
https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-...
Not the sort of sightseeing trip he'd expected, I'd imagine. Still, that must have been a fairly impressive sight.
Mod
Indeed :)
Mod
"Others were far more pessimistic about the fate of the citizenry. 'We shall fight to the last man,' Jesuit priest Forbes Monaghan recalled one soldier saying, 'and that means the last Filipino.' Soldiers stockpiling gasoline drums voiced a sinister warning to other residents. 'Very few of you,' troops snickered, 'will live to see the Americans.'
These threats only amplified the lessons residents had learned of the cruel temperament of Japanese troops during the three-year occupation. That experience led Pacita Pestano-Jacinto to make an ominous prediction when MacArthur's forces landed on Leyte. 'Defeat is a bitter pill that the Japanese will not swallow,' she wrote in her diary. 'Defeat is the one thing that can make them turn int beasts'."
Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila by James M. Scott
Mod
"British internee Elsa Colquhoun feasted on a special birthday dinner comprised exclusively of rubbish. 'Such a wonderful meal,' she wrote in a thank you card, 'all gathered from the Japanese garbage dump!' "
And the details of eating toads (properly washed after being retrieved from the latrines!), rats, dogs & cats:
" ... 'I was fond of Whiskers, but when the time came, I simply picked him up and presented him for slaughter,' Robert Colquhoun, who was six at the time, recalled of his cat. 'He tasted very good - rather like chicken'."
And;
"The average caloric intake for the internees in 1944 was 1,323 a day. By December that figure plummeted to 898, only to fall again the next month to just 567. A medical survey conducted by the camp doctors in January 1945 revealed that the average male had lost fifty-one pounds and the average female thirty-two. More than half of that weight was lost just since August 1944. 'I was worried about a lump in my stomach,' Goldthorpe, the nurse, confided in her diary on January 5, 1945. 'Then I found it was my backbone. I never expected to feel that from the front'."
The University of Santo Tomas:
https://historyofyesterday.com/the-un...
That's pretty grin Rick, somewhere in the back of my mind I was thinking that that might be below even the calories given to the German KL inmates.
Mod
I will have to check but you are right, it was pretty grim!
Mod
Soldiers found others hiding in the rocks and caves along the shore, dragged them out, and killed them. “I took refuge in a small crack among the rocks where I remained, all the time hearing the butchery,” Bogue recalled. “The stench of burning flesh was strong.” McDole hid in a rubbish pile, where he could see down the beach as the Japanese soldiers encircled an escaped prisoner. “The American knew his fate and began begging to be shot and not burnt, in such a high voice that I could hear,” McDole later testified. “Then I could see them pour gasoline on one foot and burn it, then the other until he collapsed. Then they poured gasoline over his body and set it off.” Like McDole, Nielsen wriggled under a garbage dump, covering himself with coconut husks swarming with worms. He, too, witnessed troops capture a dozen escapees. Before killing them, the soldiers tortured the men, stabbing them in the stomach and groin with bayonets amid shouts of “banzai.” “The Japanese were cheering,” Nielsen recalled, “just like Americans at a real interesting football or basketball game.”
Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila by James M. Scott
Mod
"Absent concrete intelligence on the enemy's plans, the major general could at least bank on the ferocity of his foe, should his troops encounter him. American forces had experienced that on Leyte, where the Japanese had raped women, mutilated dead American troops, and even sliced off souvenir body parts; several Caucasian fingers were found wrapped in a white cloth in the pack of a dead Japanese soldier. Just three weeks earlier, an American who was gathering bamboo stumbled across the remains of a fellow soldier. 'The head, arms, and legs had been severed from the body and the torso had been cut in half with the two portions lying several yards apart,' reported Technician Fifth Grade Burdett Andrews. 'I searched the area for the head and limbs but could not find them'."
Mod
To San Juan’s horror, the soldiers began to bayonet the children and even the infants, including two-month-old Celia Fajardo, wrapped in a gray flannel sleep suit. “Some of the babies were grabbed from the arms of their mothers and were held by their two hands in mid air by one of the Japanese soldiers,” he later told investigators. “At that instant the executioner would stab them in that position.” The orgy of violence escalated. Hidden in the dark thicket barely eight feet away, San Juan watched a soldier plunge his bayonet into the chest of his five-year-old son, Cresencio. He heard the boy cry out before he collapsed and died. The same soldier then snatched up his infant son Jose. “That baby of mine,” San Juan recalled, “was thrown into the air and then caught with the point of a bayonet.” Soldiers likewise killed his three-year-old daughter Corazon—her name Spanish for Heart—but San Juan did not see it; that was the only mercy he experienced that night. With the children littered on the ground dead, the Japanese pounced on the mothers with blood-soaked bayonets. The same soldier who had tried to cut off his head ran his blade through the belly of San Juan’s pregnant wife. “Oh, how painful!” she cried, her final words echoing those of her father. Then she, too, died. And before the night was over, so would dozens more.
Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila by James M. Scott
Mod
"The general's press statements drew the ire not only of his senior commanders but also of reporters, including Robert Martin, a correspondent with Stars and Stripes and Yank. 'Mop-up is a favorite communiqué word. It sounds like a postscript that doesn't count,' he wrote. 'The battle has been won, the campaign is over, the strategy decisions have been made. All that remains is a mop-up of men who are not afraid to die by men who don't want to die. Mop-up is a tragic word. And who wants to die for it?' "
Sadly Rick, the more I read of Dugout Doug (and his European counterpart, Mark Clark) the more mystified I am about animosity toward Montgomery. Still, thanks for the posts, very sobering reading. One for the Wish List, once I (still) get some general Pacific history under the belt.
Mod
Mod
"Just blocks away inside the cells of Fort Santiago, the Japanese began the slaughter, a process that would run almost nightly for several days, no doubt part of a plan to eradicate males in the ancient citadel who might pose a threat when the walls finally came down. Troops marched into the cellblocks armed with drums of gasoline, tipping them over and letting the fuel flood the floors. Another marine tossed a torch. Prisoners trapped inside yanked on the cell bars. The Japanese machine-gunned those few who managed to escape. A captured Japanese diary dispassionately described the fates of thousands of men imprisoned in Fort Santiago. '150 guerrillas were disposed of tonight,' the unknown diarist wrote on February 7. 'I personally stabbed and killed 10.' Two days later he put pen to paper again: 'Burned 1,000 guerrillas to death tonight.' He concluded his diary on February 13. 'While I was on duty, 10 guerrillas tried to escape. They were stabbed to death,' he wrote, 'At 1600, all guerrillas were burned to death'."
https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-j....
Mod
Private Cleto Rodriguez:
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war...
John Noah Reese Jr:
https://www.honorstates.org/index.php...
Private First Class Reese's official Medal of Honor citation reads:
"He was engaged in the attack on the Paco Railroad Station, which was strongly defended by 300 determined enemy soldiers with machineguns and rifles, supported by several pillboxes, 3 20mm. guns, 1 37-mm. gun and heavy mortars. While making a frontal assault across an open field, his platoon was halted 100 yards from the station by intense enemy fire. On his own initiative he left the platoon, accompanied by a comrade, and continued forward to a house 60 yards from the objective. Although under constant enemy observation, the 2 men remained in this position for an hour, firing at targets of opportunity, killing more than 35 Japanese and wounding many more. Moving closer to the station and discovering a group of Japanese replacements attempting to reach pillboxes, they opened heavy fire, killed more than 40 and stopped all subsequent attempts to man the emplacements. Enemy fire became more intense as they advanced to within 20 yards of the station. From that point Pfc. Reese provided effective covering fire and courageously drew enemy fire to himself while his companion killed 7 Japanese and destroyed a 20-mm. gun and heavy machinegun with handgrenades. With their ammunition running low, the 2 men started to return to the American lines, alternately providing covering fire for each other as they withdrew. During this movement, Pfc. Reese was killed by enemy fire as he reloaded his rifle. The intrepid team, in 2½ hours of fierce fighting, killed more than 82 Japanese, completely disorganized their defense and paved the way for subsequent complete defeat of the enemy at this strong point. By his gallant determination in the face of tremendous odds, aggressive fighting spirit, and extreme heroism at the cost of his life, Pfc. Reese materially aided the advance of our troops in Manila and providing a lasting inspiration to all those with whom he served."
Mod
"The defenders had lined the outer perimeter of the airfield with five-inch naval guns stripped off destroyed warships, prompting one company commander to fire off a note to his headquarters: 'Tell Halsey to stop looking for the Jap Fleet,' he said. 'It's dug in on Nicholas Field.' The battle for the airfield would ultimately drag on until February 13. 'The Japs,' Flanagan wrote, 'defended Nicholas Field as if the Emperor's palace itself were sitting in the center of the runway'."
Nicholas Field:
https://www.uswarmemorials.org/html/m...
Great story Rick, that guy certainly had a sense of humour: "Tell Halsey to stop looking for the Jap fleet, it's drug in on Nicholas Field"
Mod
He did indeed :)
Mod
"Japanese troops compounded the challenge, holing up in schools, cathedrals, and government buildings. Col. Lawrence White, regimental commander of the 148th Infantry, seized a church, only to discover machine guns hidden under the altar. The Japanese likewise planted big guns and snipers in commercial towers and hotels, forcing the Americans to hammer them with artillery before sending in troops. “I can see little hope of saving many of Manila’s famous buildings,” White told a reporter. “This is a full-scale artillery battle and you know what that does to a city.” Assaulting such strongholds proved equally as perilous for the infantry. “The reduction of each large building was a small battle in itself,” noted the 112th Medical Battalion’s report. “Progress for a single 24 hour period was sometimes not more than 300 yards.” American soldiers couldn’t help but marvel at the enemy’s willingness to die. “The only Japs to yield ground,” noted the First Cavalry’s report, “were dead Japs.”"
Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila by James M. Scott
Mod
"The enemy had effectively turned the urban landscape against advancing American soldiers, who were more accustomed to fighting in the jungle than battling house by house and building by building across a major city. Japanese troops dropped Molotov cocktails and even aerial bombs from upper-floor windows and barricaded interior stairwells with broken glass and barbed wire. Their creativity went beyond just obstacles. “A double-barrel shot gun equipped with bayonet,” a 145th Infantry report stated, “is a very dangerous weapon in hallways and room to room fighting.” American forces resorted to twelve-man assault teams armed with bazookas, explosives, and flamethrowers, the latter of which was extremely effective but could ricochet in tight spaces and even suck up all the oxygen in a room. “The heat had glued the Japs to the wall,” one soldier bragged. “They looked like wall paper.”"
Mod
Battlefield as Crime Scene: The Japanese Massacre in Manila:
https://www.historynet.com/worldwar2-...
The Rape of Manila:
https://globalnation.inquirer.net/990...
Mod
"MacArthur likewise visited Battery Wheeler and the destroyed Administration Building, wading through ankle-deep debris for a glimpse of his old office, now redecorated with a gaping shell hole over the area where his desk once sat. “The odor of long dead Japanese,” wrote George Jones of the New York Times, “permeated the route of the general’s itinerary.” Just as bad as the smell were the large bluebottle flies that swarmed the island, flies that had grown fat feasting on a buffet of dead. “They were so thick,” one lieutenant griped, “that they showed up in aerial photos.”"
Mod
"The fight to retake the Philippine capital had resulted in the deaths of 16,665 Japanese, the near total destruction of Admiral Iwabuchi's forces. In contrast, MacArthur's men suffered 1,010 killed and another 5,565 wounded. Filipino civilians, however, paid the largest price. An estimated 100,000 men, women, and children died either at the hands of the barbarous Japanese or under the rain of American shellfire."
The Battle of Manila - Facts & Details:
https://factsanddetails.com/asian/ca6...
Mod
"The battle had destroyed the Philippine National Library and Museum's collection of 550,000 books and pamphlets along with 2,500 paintings, carvings, and sculptures. Gone, too, were the Scientific Library's 320,000 texts and the 20,000 volumes in the Supreme Court Library. The battle had destroyed not only the Manila Observatory's collection or rare barometers and seismographs, but also its extensive historical records of typhoons and earthquakes that dated back to the early time of the Jesuits. The Philippine General Hospital had lost 12,500 volumes of clinical histories comprised of the records of almost three million patients."
Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila by James M. Scott
Those are terrifying figures Rick. Sounds very much like destroying the village to save it.
Mod
Mod
https://www.flickr.com/photos/andryn2...
"The Real Cruel Sea"; Mr Woodman got this spot on; exactly how I was dragged up:If a master’s position aboard his ship depended upon his personality, his situation vis- à- vis the orders of a German U- boat commander was far more isolated. Despite the emanations of mutual esteem evinced on certain occasions, the majority of masters deeply resented being told what to do by the enemy. To the merchant ship- master and the majority of his crew, enemy submariners were sneaky war- mongers who hid themselves and attacked by stealth: ‘The unchivalrous face of the Kriegsmarine’ was what Third Officer A.H. Bird of the Australind thought them.
"The Real Cruel Sea": British piracy in Norwegian waters:The Commander-in-Chief of the British Home Fleet, Admiral Forbes, informed Captain P. L. Vian, then conducting a sweep along the Norwegian coast in the destroyer Cossack with a cruiser and four other destroyers, that his prime duty was to intercept the Altmark. She was eventually located by the British cruiser Arethusa and the destroyers Intrepid and Ivanhoe, part of Vian’s force, but the situation was equivocal: their order to stop was ignored by Altmark, and frustrated by the presence of her neutral Norwegian escorts. The attitude of the Norwegian authorities may have been a consequence of the rumpus caused by their detention of the American ship City of Flint; from whatever motive, the Norwegian warships saw the Altmark in to Jössing Fjord and refused Vian’s demand for the release of any prisoners. The Altmark, they asserted, was unarmed, and had been examined at Bergen the previous day; she had been cleared to proceed south towards Germany under escort, and had no Britons on board. Vian withdrew, and signalled the situation to the Admiralty. After consultation at the highest level Sir Dudley Pound, over Forbes’s head, ordered Vian to intervene. At 22.00 that night, 16 December, Cossack returned to Jössing Fjord and entered the narrow defile at speed, brushing aside both the ice floes and the single unco-operative Norwegian torpedo-boat Kjell, whose commander remained passive despite the Cossack’s violation of his nation’s neutrality. Dau attempted to manoeuvre his ship but Vian, undeterred, laid Cossack alongside the Altmark, and ordered her boarded.I assume the Norwegians changed their tune soon enough.
The Cossack’s first lieutenant, springing over the gap and catching a turn of steel wire rope round a set of bitts on Altmark’s deck, led a party of two officers and thirty men armed with revolvers and cutlasses ‘in the old style’. After a vicious skirmish during which one of the boarding party was wounded and eight German seamen were killed, they rounded up the crew and searched the ship. The incarcerated merchant seafarers suddenly heard ‘an Englishman shouting down to our hatch “Are you British prisoners?”,’ to which the answer ‘Yes’ brought the response, ‘“Then you’re safe. We’ve come to release you.” Then there was a loud burst of cheering.’ Shortly afterwards Vian withdrew, the Cossack crowded with 299 jubilant merchant officers and seamen whom he landed at Leith the following afternoon. Dau was left fulminating over the British violation of Norwegian waters and the damage to his ship.
Hello all,I was reminded during some recent research of Airey Neave, who was in many ways Margaret Thatcher's right hand man until he was murdered by the Irish National Liberation Army. His first book told the story of his escape from the PoW camp at Colditz.
But I was particularly interested in his account of MI9, the impressive War Office section he later joined, which supported escaping PoWs and downed aircrew.
.My brief review is at https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit....
Hello all,I hope you will permit me to mention my own (wholesome) third book on the British WW2 Special Operations Executive, published on 4th April,
. The Amazon link https://mybook.to/Vienna now takes you to the ebook (at a reduced launch price), paperback and hardback formats. Many, of course, do not hold Amazon in high regard, but any book store can order it (ISBN 978-1-9160273-9-8 Paperback, 978-1-915842-00-8 Hardback). And it's in Kindle Unlimited.Return to Vienna is especially for anyone with an interest in history, but according to one 5* editorial review, 'at its heart, this is a human story brimming with emotion, triumph, heartache, and tragedy'.
Of course, I welcome feedback (and reviews!).
Peter
Mod
Kriegies: The Australian Airmen of Stalag Luft III by Kristen Alexander
Wholesome History Reads Group
Books mentioned in this topic
Kriegies: The Australian Airmen of Stalag Luft III (other topics)Return to Vienna: The Special Operations Executive and the Rebirth of Austria (other topics)
They Have Their Exits: The Best-Selling Escape Memoir of World War Two (other topics)
Saturday at M.I.9: The Classic Account of the WW2 Allied Escape Organisation (other topics)
The Real Cruel Sea: The Merchant Navy in the Battle of the Atlantic, 1939–1943 (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Kristen Alexander (other topics)James M. Scott (other topics)
James M. Scott (other topics)
James M. Scott (other topics)
James M. Scott (other topics)
More...
