Second World War, The
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* An argument that was resolved, if not entirely to the Allies’ satisfaction, when the German crews at Scapa succeeded in scuttling their ships in 1919.
* It later transpired that he was suffering from a brain tumour which killed him in 1943.
* Named after Prince Eugen of Savoy (usually anglicized to Eugene), the Austrian general who was a staunch ally of the British and co-belligerent with John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, against the French in the War of the Spanish Succession.
* These were very much staged experiments whereby obsolete unmanned ships moored in calm water in good weather were bombed, with predictable results. In fact, with reasonable anti-aircraft armament a ship that was under way and capable of manoeuvre was very difficult to hit from a conventional bomber – submarines and torpedo bombers had far more success.
* As a brown job, this author is wary of commenting on naval matters, but it does seem in hindsight that the decision might have been better left to the naval commander on the spot, who might not have withdrawn the destroyers. Certainly, the Americans thought so and said so forcefully at the time.
* The duke commanded the Spanish Armada, of 131 ships carrying 17,000 soldiers (and 180 priests), which was scattered by a mix of the Royal Navy’s seamanship and bad weather in 1588 with the loss of perhaps 25,000 Spaniards killed and drowned.
* Windows (‘chaff’ to the USAAF, Dupple to the Luftwaffe) was strips of aluminium foil that were shovelled in huge numbers out of the flare chutes of bombers. German radar operators found it hard to distinguish between a strip of windows and a genuine bomber. The more experienced did, however, learn to spot the difference and subsequent use of windows was less effective.
† American bombers had been designed on the assumption that they would have to operate from the United States without fighter cover and therefore needed a longer range and heavier protective and defensive armament than British or European aircraft. It was, therefore, relatively safer for them to operate by day.
* A very effective weapon of petroleum jelly delivered from the air, it ignites and flows into bunkers and dugouts, incinerating the occupants. The US used it extensively in Vietnam, eliciting much outrage from the usual protesters. The British were swift to claim the moral high ground, saying that they neither possessed nor would ever use it, until the Royal Navy and RAF were told to deal with a major offshore oil leak from a damaged tanker, the Torrey Canyon, and found that only napalm would do. Amazingly, nobody seemed to notice, or, if they did, they considered that owning napalm was a lesser sin than allowing an epidemic of oil-covered seagulls.
* This statistic is quoted in John Toland, Rising Sun, Cassell & Co., London, 1971.Itis perhaps somewhat misleading as all rounds fired are not necessarily aimed directly at an enemy but used as covering fire for movement, or fired speculatively, and in any case wartime conscripts of any nation are not noted for their marksmanship. It remains indicative, nevertheless, of the fierceness of the fighting.
* And quite right too. As someone who as a small boy had to trudge round innumerable golf courses following a golfing father, this author would have sacked him long before.
* Whose wonderful Bugles and a Tiger, read by torchlight, under the bedclothes while at school, motivated this author to seek service with Gurkhas.
* A road surface created by laying logs across a bulldozed track.
† Freight carriages on railway lines pulled by a jeep with its normal wheels replaced by flanges.
* After General Prince Pyotr Bagration, killed fighting the French at the Battle of Borodino on 7 September 1812 during Napoleon’s advance on Moscow.
* Even this is slightly suspect as it includes generals killed in motor and air crashes whilst in the battle area, including Major-General Willans, the Director General Army Welfare and Education, killed in a plane crash while on a visit to North Africa. Only three British generals were actually killed by enemy fire: Hopkinson by a sniper’s bullet in Italy in 1943, Lumsden by a kamikaze attack on his ship in 1945 and Rennie by a mortar bomb during the Rhine Crossing in 1945.
† Hitler suspected that Zeitzler knew about the July bomb plot but did nothing to stop it (he almost certainly did not know) and in January 1945 dismissed him from the army and deprived him of the customary right to wear uniform in retirement.
* In April 1943 the Germans discovered mass graves in the Katyn Forest in Eastern Poland containing the bodies of 4,400 Polish officers. All had their hands tied behind their backs and had been shot in the head. The Germans asked the International Red Cross to investigate and the evidence was overwhelming that this had been done by the Soviets after the occupation of their part of Poland in 1939. The Russians claimed it had been a Nazi atrocity, but in 1990 the Russian government admitted responsibility.
* A small brigade in British terms.
* Which somewhat to the surprise of the British fought rather well!
* After being captured in North Africa, O’Connor had escaped from an Italian POW camp. Had he not been captured, he would almost certainly have commanded Eighth Army instead of Montgomery and much inter-Allied squabbling might have been avoided.
* The paramilitary security police of the Vichy regime, set up in January 1943.
* Sweden was neutral in favour of Germany, but that did not extend to handing over Jews.
* In this author’s village, the proprietor of the local ice cream shop, a fat and jolly Italian who had been there for years but had never changed his nationality, was hauled off and locked up, to the dismay of the villagers. It was widely believed that this had been engineered by his brother, who had British nationality and wanted to take over the business.
* At a recent university seminar based on Angus Calder’s The People’s War, a mature student decried the ‘blitz spirit’ and asserted that her father had been in the London Fire Brigade during the war and had been jailed for stealing from bomb-damaged houses.
† A deserter absents himself with the intention of never returning; to be awol is a less serious offence where the offender does intend to return. A soldier miles away from his unit wearing civilian clothes and claiming to be a merchant seaman on leave would be odds on to be convicted of desertion. A soldier who walks out with a pass, gets drunk and falls asleep in a ditch and misses the next day’s parade is awol.
* Although, according to this author’s father, James Joyce (Lord Haw Haw) broadcasting from Germany got the English racing and football results out faster than the BBC.
* In the late 1930s there was an average of 140,000 cases of tuberculosis a year in the Japanese population. By 1943 this had risen to 170,000.
* The war against Napoleon was the Patriotic War in Russia, so now this one, initially the Great Fatherland War, quickly became the Great Patriotic War.
* As a reward for his help in securing a ceasefire, Wolf was promised by Alexander that he would be permitted to wear badges of rank and decorations as a prisoner of war, which, contrary to the Laws of War, was denied to other captives.
* After the war, General Balck was arrested and put on trial because in November 1944 he had found an artillery lieutenant-colonel drunk on duty and had him shot by firing squad (which seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do). The court claimed that the correct court martial procedures had not been followed and Balck was imprisoned. One wonders why, amongst all the quasi-judicial and extra-judicial death that was being inflicted, Balck was singled out.
* After the war Rundstedt expressed anger that the operation was being described as ‘The Rundstedt Offensive’ as he claimed he had argued against it from the start and had never believed in it. That may be so, but he certainly agreed to it at the time and his final order of the day to the troops before they crossed the start line contained such phrases as ‘Everything for Führer and Fatherland’ and ‘We are now entering a new phase of the war in the West.’
* The American system in the Pacific was to have two admirals and staff for each fleet and they rotated. While one was commanding the fl
eet, the other was planning the next operation. When Halsey was in command, the fleet was titled Fifth Fleet; with Spruance the same fleet became Third.
* Mountbatten had apparently claimed that Slim was ‘tired’, but the real truth is probably that the Supreme Commander did not find Slim an easy or congenial subordinate. In personality and professional attitudes the two were poles apart.
* His family were arrested, but the war ended before they could be executed. Lasch was put in a Russian prison camp and not released until 1955.
* Many Japanese officers’ swords were prized family heirlooms with great cultural and almost religious significance. When Mountbatten accepted the surrender of Field Marshal Count Hisaichi Terauchi in Saigon in November 1945,hesentthefield marshal’s short sword, forged in the sixteenth century, to King George VI (it is now in Windsor Castle) and kept the long sword, forged three centuries earlier, for himself.
* They didn’t manage to burn them all. This author’s regiment has a number on the walls of its various messes, along with a goodly selection of samurai swords.
* Inevitably conspiracy theories as to Patton’s death abound, one of the better ones suggesting that the accident was engineered by General ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, head of the OSS, who arranged for an army truck to drive into Patton’s staff car, while at the moment of impact an OSS operative shot him in the head. It is probably unnecessary (or perhaps it isn’t) to say that there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that the accident was anything more than just that – an accident.
* And, yes, he was in this author’s regiment…
* The nearest equivalent that Germany so far has to an official history translated into English, Germany and the Second World War, costs up to £180 a volume. There are nine volumes – and more to come.