The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

by Rick Atkinson

  Notwithstanding a BBC announcement: Botting, From the Ruins of the Reich, 94; Gilbert, The Day the War Ended, 98 (“Move along”).

  In Paris, a celebration: Beevor and Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949, 195–97, (Garde Républicaine); Helen Van Zonneveld, “A Time to Every Purpose,” n.d., HIA, 401–2 (“Salut!”); Cooper, Old Men Forget, 352 (all clear); Gilbert, The Day the War Ended, 220–22 (“anywhere to anywhere”); corr, P. B. Rogers to family, May 10, 1945, Pleas B. Rogers papers, MHI (“Battle Hymn”); OH, Richard Collins, 1976, Donald Bowman, SOOHP, MHI, III-26 (Avenue de Paris).

  The rest of the world: Sulzberger, A Long Row of Candles, 259 (U.S. embassy); Dobbs, Six Months in 1945, 203 (tossed into the air); Brinkley, Washington Goes to War, 275 (lights bathed the Capitol); Gilbert, The Day the War Ended, 293–94 (“treacherous Japanese”).

  V-E Day dawned in London: Ziegler, London at War, 1939–1945, 324 (“Wagnerian rain”), 325 (cymbals), 328 (“Not to Be Sold”); Mollie Panter-Downes, “Letter from London,” May 19, 1945, in The New Yorker Book of War Pieces, 472–76; Gilbert, The Day the War Ended, 211 (“We want the king!”); Lewis, The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War II, 461 (Hitler effigy).

  Early in the afternoon Churchill left: D’Este, Warlord, 692–93; Pawle, The War and Colonel Warden, 381; Mollie Panter-Downes, “Letter from London,” May 19, 1945, in The New Yorker Book of War Pieces, 472–76; Gilbert, The Day the War Ended, 199 (“roared ourselves”); Thompson, I Was Churchill’s Shadow, 157–58 (“They expect it”).

  Searchlights at dusk: Ziegler, London at War, 1939–1945, 327; Gilbert, The Day the War Ended, 211 (“your hour”); D’Este, Warlord, 692–93 (“ancient land”); Taylor and Taylor, eds., The War Diaries, 195 (“Hope and Glory”). Churchill would be turned from office less than two months later when his Conservatives took a drubbing at the polls; in 1951, he again became prime minister for nearly four years.

  By the time Japan surrendered: Weinberg, A World at Arms, 894 (Sixty million had died); Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom, 131 (one-third of them soldiers); Snyder, “Walter Bedell Smith: Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff,” Military Affairs (Jan. 1984): 6+ (“great and terrible”); Rosenbaum, “Explaining Hitler,” New Yorker (May 1, 1995): 50+ (“genocide”); Fussell, Wartime, 132, 139 (“unmitigated misfortune”), 268 (“tragic and ironic”).

  “a God all-powerful”: Danchev, 689.

  In Europe, the Western Allies: Battle Itinerary Study, USFET G-3, Aug. 1946, NARA RG 498, UD 583, box 4017, 5; Gerhard L. Weinberg, “D-Day: Analysis of Costs and Benefits,” in Wilson, ed., D-Day 1944, 337.

  A British military maxim: Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 730; Overy, Why the Allies Won, 281 (“centralized, unified”).

  Allied leadership included checks: Overy, Why the Allies Won, 278–81; Roberts, Masters and Commanders, 580–81; Biddle, “Leveraging Strength: The Pillars of American Grand Strategy in World War II,” Orbis (winter 2011): 4+.

  “Our resolution to preserve”: Overy, Why the Allies Won, 324; LO, 477–78; Mansoor, The GI Offensive in Europe, 4–6, 252; “Report of Activities: Army Ground Forces, World War II,” Jan. 1946, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, AGF RTC, box 150; http://www.minneapolisfed.org/ (roughly $4 trillion); Stephen Daggett, “Cost of Major U.S. Wars,” June 29, 2010, Congressional Research Service, 2; Montgomery, “The Cost of War, Unnoticed,” WP, May 8, 2007, D1 (42 million); Millett and Murray, Military Effectiveness, vol. 3, The Second World War, 47, 62; Bynell, “Logistical Planning and Operations—Europe,” lecture, March 16, 1945, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 207, 14 (“digging the Panama Canal”).

  “prodigy of organization”: Weigley, History of the United States Army, 475; “Supply and Maintenance on the European Continent,” n.d., NARA RG 407, E 427, USFET General Board, AG WWII operations reports, 97-USF5-0.30, no. 130, 42 (18 million tons); “Ordnance Diary,” Dec. 1, 1945, NARA RG 498, ETOUSA HD, UD 586, box 1 (vehicles); “Clothing and Footwear,” chapter 56, PIR, Robert M. Littlejohn papers, HIA, 2 (footwear); “U.S. Army in WWII,” 1952, CMH, cited in “Statistical Review,” RefBib, MHI (munitions plants); “Statistical Review,” RefBib, MHI, citing Cavalry Journal, March–Apr. 1946, 21+ (500 million machine-gun bullets); Goodman, ed., While You Were Gone, 23 (“American taxpayer”); Ambrose, Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945, 63 (two-thirds of all ships).

  The enemy was crushed by logistical brilliance: At its peak, the war accounted for 35.8 percent of GDP (Stephen Daggett, “Cost of Major U.S. Wars,” June 29, 2010, Congressional Research Service, 2); Gropman, Mobilizing U.S. Industry in World War II, 107 (smaller proportion), 133; Ellis, Brute Force, 348–49.

  “Warfare like yours is easy”: German POW survey, Dec. 7, 1944, SHAEF, Psychological Warfare Division, RG 331, E 87, 23 782.

  There was nothing easy: Stoler, Allies in War, 227; Willmott, The Great Crusade, 352 (“European supremacy”); Larrabee, Commander in Chief, 631 (“American century”); Brower, ed., World War II in Europe: The Final Year, 63 (“great soul”).

  The war was a potent catalyst: Weinberg, A World at Arms, 915; Weinberg, “The Place of World War II in History,” lecture, 1995, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Spring, Colo., 11 (GI Bill); Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 779 (antebellum roles); MacGregor, Integration of the Armed Forces, 51–53, 56; “The Utilization of Negro Infantry Platoons in White Companies,” NARA RG 330, E 94, soldier surveys, report no. ETO 82, 4–12.

  “Glad to be home”: Reynolds, Rich Relations, 444.

  In battered Europe, enormous tasks: Pyle, Brave Men, 320 (“broken world”); SC, 508–10 (Norway), 499; Margry, “The Flensburg Government,” AB, no. 128 (2005): 2+; J. B. Churcher, “A Soldier’s Story,” n.d., LHC, 80–81 (“Any word”); SC, 512–15; “Activities and Organization of COMZ,” U.S. Senate hearing, May 28, 1945, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #89, 29 (three million strong); Brig. Gen. Alden H. Waitt, “Summary Report of Situation in ETO,” July 5, 1945, NARA RG 337, E 16, GHQ AGF G-3, OR, 210.684, box 2 (poisonous gas munitions).

  “On the continent of Europe”: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 549–50.

  Part of that cleansing: Gill, The Journey Back from Hell, 24; pamphlets, “The Courthouse in Nuremberg” and “The International Military Tribunal,” Oberlandgericht, Nuremberg, author visit, Feb. 13, 1996; Lewis, ed., The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War II, 561–66.

  Individual Allied governments: Weingartner, “Otto Skorzeny and the Laws of War,” JMH (Apr. 1991): 207+; Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 674 (200,000 suspected culprits); “Bergen Belsen,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, USHMM, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005224. Additional Bergen-Belsen defendants were tried subsequently (Margry, “Bergen-Belsen,” AB, no. 89 [1995]: 1+).

  From 1945 to 1948: James J. Weingartner, “Early War Crimes Trials,” in Liberation 1945, 84.

  The path to justice often proved: “Malmedy Massacre Investigation,” Senate Armed Services Committee, Oct. 1949, 4–16, 22–32; memo, judge advocate, European Command, March 28, 1949, CMH, LAW 2–7, 1, 26–30. During Senate hearings into the Malmédy prosecutions, Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the Army of using “Gestapo tactics” (TT, 623).

  Released from Landsberg prison: Weingartner, Crossroads of Death, 238–50, 262–63; “The Death of Joachim Peiper,” AB, no. 40 (1983): 47+; Bauserman, The Malmédy Massacre, 32 (slashed the hoses).

  Eisenhower’s avowed “number 1 plan”: Three Years, 820; Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 573n (“I owe much”).

  “You have completed your mission”: Pogue, George C. Marshall, 583; Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries, 221.

  Ahead lay fifteen more years: Lyon, Eisenhower: Portrait of the Hero, 23 (“Ike!”); Summersby, Eisenhower Was My Boss, 254–59 (“almost speak”).

  On Tuesday, June 12: Miller, Ike the Soldier, 780; Striner, “Eisenhower’s Triumph: The Guildhall Address of 1945,” American Veterans Center, http://www.americanveteranscenter.org/magazine/avq/issue-vi-springsummer-2009/eisenhower%e2%80%99s-triumph-the-guildhall-address-
of-1945/*; Fraser, Alanbrooke, 468 (“I had never realized”); http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/education/bsa/citizenship_merit_badge/speeches_national_historical_importance/guildhall_address.pdf.

  Blood there had surely been: VW, vol. 2, 407; LO, 478; “The Normandy Invasion,” statistical appendix, June 10, 1945, SHAEF, Harold R. Bull papers, DDE Lib, box 1 (12,000 Allied planes). Official casualty figures from various governments rarely agree.

  British, Canadian, Polish: “The Operations of 21 Army Group,” 1946, CARL, N-133331.

  French battle casualties: SC, 544. During the occupation and liberation, more than six hundred thousand French men were killed (Aron, France Reborn, 464).

  Of all German boys: Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 672. The number of German military deaths has long remained in dispute. John Ellis puts the dead and missing at 3.25 million, a widely cited figure (Ellis, World War II: A Statistical Survey, 253). Another recent analysis puts the number at 5.3 million (Rüdiger Overmans, Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg, cited in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#cite_note-R.C5.B1diger_Overmans_2000-4).

  Some 14 percent of the Soviet population: Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom, 131; Stoler, “The Second World War in U.S. History and Memory,” International Historical Congress, Oslo, Aug. 12, 2000; Hastings, Inferno, 427 (killed roughly nine times more Germans). Seventeen hundred Soviet towns were destroyed, plus seventy thousand villages (Dobbs, Six Months in 1945, 225).

  American soldiers bore the brunt: LO, 478; SC, 543; Hynes, The Soldier’s Tale, 281 (“left index finger”); Reister, ed., Medical Statistics in World War II, 23 (1,700 left blind); Fisher, Legacy of Heroes, 8–10 (18,000 amputations), 20 (“their stump”); Cowdrey, Fighting for Life, 321 (hospital in Michigan).

  Seventy-five thousand Americans had been listed: VW, vol. 2, 543; Steere and Boardman, Final Disposition of World War II Dead, 1945–51, 120–21 (isolated graves); Litoff and Smith, eds., Since You Went Away, 236–37 (“Darling, come to me”); Myra Strachner Gershkoff Papers, New York State Library, manuscripts and special collections, SC 20575, http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/msscfa/sc20575.htm.

  No sooner had the ink dried: Steere and Boardman, Final Disposition of World War II Dead, 1945–51, 178–79; L. R. Talbot, “Graves Registration in the European Theater of Operations,” 1955, chapter 26, PIR, MHI. A total of seventy-eight thousand American dead were never recovered; of remains recovered, less than 4 percent could not be identified (Risch and Kieffer, The Quartermaster Corps, vol. 2, 404).

  Within weeks, seven hundred bodies: Steere and Boardman, Final Disposition of World War II Dead, 1945–51, 175, 186–204, 247.

  Even as this search began: L. R. Talbot, “Graves Registration in the European Theater of Operations,” 1955, chapter 26, PIR, MHI; Joseph T. Layne and Glenn D. Barquest, “Margraten: U.S. Ninth Army Military Cemetery,” 1994, 172nd Engineer Combat Bn, NWWIIM, 9 (Dutch citizens).

  “I cried for the joy”: Babcock, War Stories, 212; “4ID Update,” vol. 5, no. 47, June 6, 2011, http://parentsofdeployed.homestead.com/2011Jun06.html.

  In 1947, the next of kin: Joseph T. Layne and Glenn D. Barquest, “Margraten: U.S. Ninth Army Military Cemetery,” 1994, 172nd Engineer Combat Bn, NWWIIM, 11–12. Congress appropriated $191 million for the task, which resulted in 279,869 interments overseas and at home; just under 110,000 of those remained in cemeteries abroad (Risch and Kieffer, The Quartermaster Corps, vol. 2, 404).

  In Europe the exhumations: Joseph T. Layne and Glenn D. Barquest, “Margraten: U.S. Ninth Army Military Cemetery,” 1994, 172nd Engineer Combat Bn, NWWIIM, 13.

  Labor strikes in the United States: Risch and Kieffer, The Quartermaster Corps, vol. 2, 402; Steere and Boardman, Final Disposition of World War II Dead, 1945–51, 351–54 (“tombs”). More than one thousand additional bodies were loaded aboard Connolly in subsequent European ports before she crossed the Atlantic (L. R. Talbot, “Graves Registration in the European Theater of Operations,” 1955, chapter 26, PIR, MHI, 42–43).

  Among those waiting was Henry A. Wright: Steere and Boardman, Final Disposition of World War II Dead, 1945–51, 682.

  Thus did the fallen return: L. R. Talbot, “Graves Registration in the European Theater of Operations,” 1955, chapter 26, PIR, MHI, 42–43; Schuyler Dean Hoslett, “The Army Effects Bureau of the Kansas City Quartermaster Depot,” 1946, CMH, 4-10.8 AA.

  Hour after hour, day after day: Eddy, “Treasure of Our Heroes,” American Magazine (Apr. 1944): 44+, in Schuyler Dean Hoslett, “The Army Effects Bureau of the Kansas City Quartermaster Depot,” 1946, CMH, 4-10.8 AA, appendix, 268–70; “Honoring Those Fallen Who Served,” Aurora (Ill.) Beacon News, Apr. 12, 2005, B2. Horton, in the 32nd Infantry Division, died in December 1942. After reading his final words, his mother, Odessa J. Horton, wrote, “To me the war can never be over and you may know, this letter to us is Gethsemane” (Congressional Record, Nov. 24, 1943, A 5114).

  “The times were full of certainty”: Liebling, Mollie & Other War Pieces, foreword.

  “Never did I feel”: Fussell, Doing Battle, 174.

  “What we had together”: Linderman, The World Within War, 264.

  “We are certainly no smaller”: Fauntleroy, The General and His Daughter, 151–52.

  “The anti-aircraft gunner in a raid”: Moorehead, Eclipse, 305.

  “the living have the cause”: White, Conquerors’ Road, ix.

  “No war is really over”: Kotlowitz, Before Their Time, 192; Atkinson, “What Is Lost?” World War II (Nov. 2009): 32+ (By the year 2036).

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