WW2 August 2021 by HistoryNet

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DAY OF TERROR WILD PANIC GRIPS MOSCOW AS THE GERMANS APPROACH

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Black soldiers and their families surround Fort Lee, Virginia, commander George A. Horkan. Thanks to his intervention, the base became a model for race relations in a segregated army. U.S. ARMY COVER: A GERMAN TANK ADVANCES DURING OPERATION BARBAROSSA. AKG IMAGES; PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN WALKER

62 28 2

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AUGUST 2021 ENDORSED BY THE NATIONAL WORLD WAR II MUSEUM, INC.

F E AT U R E S COVE R STO RY

28 MOSCOW IN THE CROSSHAIRS

As German invaders approached, fear grew in the Soviet capital, climaxing in a day called the “Great Panic” JONATHAN DIMBLEBY

38 LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD

Baseball great Jackie Robinson first had to prove himself in the segregated U.S. Army JOSEPH CONNOR

W E A P O N S M A N UA L

46 TOOTH AND CLAW America’s F6F Hellcat fighter

48 MAGIC ACT

How a Wall Street lawyer revolutionized military intelligence, saving G.I.s’ lives NICHOLAS REYNOLDS

P O RT F O L I O

56 THE DROP ZONE

Paratrooper Robert Baldwin’s artwork captured the sights and horrors of his jump into Germany JAMES M. FENELON

62 RELUCTANT ENEMY

The Royal Thai Air Force occupied a unique position during the war—fighting and supporting the same foe TOM YARBOROUGH

D E PA RT M E N T S

8 MAIL 10 WORLD WAR II TODAY 18 CONVERSATION

A resistance fighter and concentration camp prisoner looks back

20 FROM THE FOOTLOCKER 22 NEED TO KNOW 24 TRAVEL

Norfolk, Virginia: General Douglas MacArthur’s “spiritual home”

72 REVIEWS

Max Hastings’s latest; The Light of Days; reporting the Pacific War

76 BATTLE FILMS

The remarkable power of 2017’s Darkest Hour

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79 CHALLENGE 8O FAMILIAR FACE AUGUST 2021

3 6/3/21 11:50 AM

WWII Online WORLDWARII.com

Michael A. Reinstein CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER David Steinhafel PUBLISHER Alex Neill EDITOR IN CHIEF

VOL. 36, NO. 2 AUGUST 2021

EDITOR

Readers intrigued by Nicholas Reynolds’s account of the wartime evolution of military intelligence— “Magic Act,” on page 48—will want to check out a story by another esteemed historian that is essentially its prequel. “Broken and Unbroken,” by Richard B. Frank, appeared in our June 2020 issue; you can find it online as:

Two of World War II’s Greatest Codebreaking Achievements Shared a Remarkable Common Element

Behind the codebreaking success against the sophisticated Japanese “Purple” cipher machine as well as the development of the most secure cipher machine of the war, the United States’ SIGABA, was the same man: William F. Friedman.

KAREN JENSEN Larry Porges SENIOR EDITOR Kirstin Fawcett ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jerry Morelock, Jon Guttman HISTORIANS David T. Zabecki CHIEF MILITARY HISTORIAN Paul Wiseman NEWS EDITOR Stephen Kamifuji CREATIVE DIRECTOR Brian Walker GROUP ART DIRECTOR Melissa A. Winn DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Guy Aceto, Uliana Bazar, Jennifer E. Berry PHOTO EDITORS ADVISORY BOARD

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Cryptologist William F. Friedman

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CONTRIBUTORS JONATHAN DIMBLEBY (“Moscow in the Cross-

hairs”) is a British writer, radio broadcaster, filmmaker, and television host, and the author of books including Russia: A Journey to the Heart of a Land and Its People (2008) and The Battle of the Atlantic: How the Allies Won the War (2016). This issue’s cover story is adapted from his latest work, Operation Barbarossa: The History of a Cataclysm (2021).

JOSEPH CONNOR (“Leveling the Playing Field”)

studied history at Fairleigh Dickinson University and earned his JD from Rutgers Law School. Following a seven-year stint as a newspaper reporter and editor, Connor worked for 27 years as an assistant county prosecutor in New Jersey. An avid New York Yankees fan, Connor laments that he’s too young to have watched the legendary Jackie Robinson play baseball.

BARBARA NOE KENNEDY (“Old Soldiers Never Die”), a former editor at National Geographic Travel Publishing, is a travel journalist who writes about history, art, culture, and food. She grew up hearing stories about Douglas MacArthur from her mother, a prisoner of war in the Philippines, and learned more at various POW reunions, including a 2005 tour of Manila. She and her mother cowrote the 2012 book MacArthur Came Back: A Little Girl’s Encounter with War in the Philippines.

COVER STORY DIMBLEBY

NICHOLAS REYNOLDS (“Magic Act”) first came

CONNOR

KENNEDY

across corporate lawyer-turned-high-ranking intelligence official Alfred McCormack while researching a forthcoming book on the origins of American intelligence during World War II. McCormack ’s story initially caught his eye because he remains largely unknown even after making a significant contribution to the war effort. Reynolds’ most recent book is the New York Times bestseller Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy (2017), about Ernest Hemingway and his journey through the 20th century’s wars.

REYNOLDS

YARBOROUGH

tired Air Force colonel and decorated combat pilot who served two tours in Vietnam as a forward air controller. He later had the chance to research Royal Thai Air Force history as air attaché at the American Embassy in Bangkok. With a PhD in history, he is the author of five books and numerous magazine and scholarly journal articles.

PORTRAITS BY JOHANNA GOODMAN

TOM YARBOROUGH (“Reluctant Enemy”) is a re-

WORLD WAR II

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Torpedoed by the USS Wahoo, a Japanese cargo ship sinks into the Yellow Sea off China in 1943.

MAIL

The other question is: could the campaign have been conducted more effectively? A frequent criticism of the Atlantic U-boat campaign is that the Germans would have been better off if they had focused on sinking Europe-bound cargo ships instead of empty ships headed for North America. “Slaughter at Sea” is the first article I’ve seen that attempts to truly account for the real impact of the U.S. submarine campaign, something we’re only just learning about over 75 years after the war. There is no doubt that we will find that the human cost to the Japanese was even higher, affecting their ability to adequately man and defend their empire—an effect, I might add, that saved Allied lives. John Lopez Jr. University Place, Wash. Author Richard B. Frank responds: John Lopez raises important points. He is correct that the standard—and, typically, only—metrics on effectiveness of the U.S. submarine campaigns have been war and merchant ships sunk, as noted in the article. This fundamentally stems from a lack of comprehensive data available outside Japan on material and human cargoes lost. Some accounts indirectly measure the economic effects of lost cargoes based on falling raw material imports, particularly oil, and the impact of that on war

NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

RICHARD B. FRANK’S ARTICLE about the previously unknown death toll of Japanese troops and others due to American submarine campaigns, “Slaughter at Sea” in your April 2021 issue, instantly caught my attention. I became interested in the Pacific War when I was 12 years old, especially in the U.S. submarine campaign against the Japanese. The holy grail of resources on the topic was the Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee (JANAC) findings, referenced by Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison in his maritime histories and in Frank’s article. In 1973, I located the one and only copy in California—a goldmine of information. After reviewing JANAC, the nagging question I had was: what cargoes were destroyed in all those sinkings and what effect did that have on the war effort? Most sources quantify the submarine campaign’s success based on the number of ships and tonnages sunk. There was never any real analysis that I know of that counted the personnel, equipment, and supplies lost or destroyed. Most publications only make passing references to this. For example: H The numerous oil industry engineers and workers, plus economists and administrators lost in May 1942 when USS Grenadier sank the passenger-cargo ship Taiyo Maru en route to the Dutch East Indies to develop oil fields there. H The early warning radar sets destined for the Gilbert Islands, lost in early 1943 due to U.S. submarine action. H The 544 lives lost aboard the Konron Maru, sunk by USS Wahoo in the Sea of Japan in October 1943. The victims included two Japanese congressmen: Choichi Kato and Keishiro Sukekawa. H Twenty-two tanks and important construction equipment lost en route to Saipan in June 1944 when their convoy was attacked by Captain Leon Nelson Blair’s “Blair’s Blasters” wolfpack. H The tank, artillery, and armored infantry battalions of the Japanese 2nd Tank Division, lost en route to the Philippines in 1944. WORLD WAR II

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FROM TOP: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND (BOTH); COURTESY OF SAM COFFEY

BEYOND MEASURE

AN EXPLOSIVE FIND

Morton

Fluckey

industry output and military operations. Partial data has emerged on select specific instances, notably as Mr. Lopez lists, where sunken vessels directly impeded Japanese ability to fight in various battles and campaigns through loss of troops, equipment, and supplies. We do not have comprehensive data on whether U.S. submarines sank vessels hauling cargo to or from Japan. The Pacific is much larger than the Atlantic, making any interception at sea more challenging. This alone may have precluded selectively targeting ships voyaging one route or the other. In any case, due to Japan’s overall strategic situation, the loss of an outbound or inbound ship could be equally significant to their war effort.

FROM TOP: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND (BOTH); COURTESY OF SAM COFFEY

NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

TAKING NO PRISONERS

Thanks to Richard B. Frank for the article “Slaughter at Sea.” Every surviving U.S. Marine and soldier that fought in the brutal Pacific campaigns owes the “Silent Service” a debt of gratitude; without their attacks on enemy shipping, taking those island bastions would have been many times harder and bloodier. Given that the Japanese destroyed many key records, it’s surprising that documentation of loss was available to the extent Frank provided. However, there is an area of concern as to the campaign’s methods: some U.S. sub skippers, such as Dudley W. Morton of the USS Wahoo and Eugene B. Fluckey of USS Barb, pursued the policy of surfacing near torpedoed troopships and killing surviving passengers with automatic weapons, a violation of the Geneva Convention of 1907. The navy’s explanation was that if rescued by the Japanese, they would be reassigned to fight the U.S. military in future campaigns—hence they were eliminated as a threat. Wayne Long Haverford, Penn.

I recently saw an article where you showed an exact picture of what my wife uncovered doing yard work today [“From the Footlocker,” October 2020]. It was a Japanese navy mortar with lettering on it. Likely used in a cluster bomb, says my buddy who is pretty high-ranking in the air force. We called the sheriff, and officials x-rayed it with a robot that confirmed it was live and had a 500-foot blast radius. Then the air force showed up from Scott Air Force Base and used their robot to pick it up. The deputy told us they were taking it back to their base to detonate it with C4. They had no idea how it wound up in our backyard. You can’t make this stuff up! Sam Coffey Barnhart, Mo.

TIME TRAVEL

I have been so impressed with travel writer Barbara Noe Kennedy’s contributions to World War II magazine [most recently “The Hidden Fight,” April 2021] that I just wanted to write and thank her. Every time I read one of Kennedy’s articles, I am transported not only back in time but to the very place she’s

FROM THE EDITOR Fond of mysteries? We’ve got a particularly compelling one in this issue’s “From the Footlocker” (page 20); a tiny bowl that may well have survived the devastating atomic blast at Hiroshima 76 years ago this August. Was the bowl truly from Hiroshima? Who brought it back and why? Josh Schick, a curator at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, has provided some invaluable clues; perhaps there’s a reader out there who can put the rest of the story together. In the meantime, if you have a mystery object of your own, we’re happy—and ever curious—to take on the challenge. Contact us at: Footlocker@historynet. com. —Karen Jensen

While doing yard work, a reader’s wife unearthed an alarm-inducing war memento.

visiting; she is a gifted writer and storyteller. Like many of your readers, my dad was a soldier in the war. Authors like Kennedy help keep their sacrifices alive for present and future generations. Bill Amaru Cape Cod, Mass. Editor’s note: For another travel piece from Barbara, see page 24.

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9 6/3/21 6:52 PM

WWII TODAY

REPORTED AND WRITTEN BY PAUL WISEMAN

UNDER PRESSURE TO IDENTIFY THE REMAINS of troops lost in World War II and other conflicts, the Department of Defense is considering a tactic that police have used to crack unsolved murders and other cold cases. DOD investigators presently undergo a laborious process of using dental records, military paperwork, and other evidence to narrow down the possible identities of the fallen. They then seek blood samples from likely family members, hoping they match DNA from the remains. But tracking down family members isn’t easy. Siblings and other direct relatives can be long dead. Many of those killed in action were young and left behind no children. The Armed Forces Medical Examiner System is exploring something new: casting a much wider net by running the recovered DNA through every available database in search of matches. The approach has helped identify bodies in mass graves in Bosnia and those who went missing during Argentina’s 1976-1983 “Dirty War”—though DNA from World War II remains is more degraded and harder to analyze. “Switching to DNA-first will be faster, cheaper and produce better results,” Ed Huffine, who oversaw testing of remains for the Armed

WORLD WAR II

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FROM TOP: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; GUY ACETO COLLECTION; JOE GIDDENS/PA IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES

DOD EXPLORING NEW WAY TO ID WAR DEAD

Forces DNA Identification Lab in the 1990s, told the New York Times. DOD will start with its own database of blood samples from relatives of the missing, which it began compiling in 1991. It has samples for 92 percent of those lost in the Korean War and 85 percent of those lost in Vietnam, but for only about 25 percent of those missing from World War II. The DNA-first approach poses new problems. One is developing the science to reliably identify relatives within four generations of the missing service member. Another is privacy: poking around in the genetic record risks exposing family secrets. Validating the new system could take up to two years, though the initial development phase is expected to be completed this summer. Police have used the method to solve old crimes. They enter DNA found at crime scenes into public databases in search of matches that can identify a suspect —an approach that led to the 2018 arrest of the Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo. Eventually, DOD hopes to turn to these open databases. “However,” Timothy McMahon, director of the Defense Department’s DNA operations, tells World War II by email, “this is a number of years off and will require all of the checks and balances” being developed now at state and local crime labs.

U.S. AIR FORCE/SSGT. NICOLE LEIDHOLM

The DOD’s DNA lab at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, may soon turn to public databases to help identify missing service members from the war.

FROM TOP: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; GUY ACETO COLLECTION; JOE GIDDENS/PA IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES

U.S. AIR FORCE/SSGT. NICOLE LEIDHOLM

PACIFIC HERO REMEMBERED THE NAVY IS PREPARING TO HONOR a Black mess attendant nicknamed the “Human Tugboat” for swimming through sharkinfested waters to tow his shipmates to safety in 1942. Stunned that he’d never heard the story, navy veteran and author Malcolm Nance went on Twitter in late April to call for more recognition for Petty Officer Charles Jackson French. Rear Admiral Charles Brown, the U.S. Navy’s chief of information, tweeted back, promising to “look into whether we can do more to recognize Petty Officer French.” On September 5, 1942, the high-speed transport USS Gregory was sunk by Japanese battleships off Guadalcanal; 24 survivors found themselves on a lifeboat, worried they’d drift to shore and be taken prisoner. French, an orphan from Arkansas who learned to swim in the Red River, volunteered to tow them to safety, ignoring warnings that he was jumping into waters teeming with sharks. Using a rope tied around his waist to pull the lifeboat, French swam for more than six hours through the night until they were found and rescued by a U.S. landing craft. “I nearly peed myself when one of them sharks (touched) my feet,” he later said. French’s heroics were recognized at the time: he earned a letter of commendation from Admiral William Halsey Jr. and a Navy and Marine Corps medal. But supporters, including those behind a petition on the grassroots Change.org website, are pushing for President Joe Biden and Congress to give him the Medal of Honor. French died in 1956. Charles French’s wartime heroics were saluted at a 1943 football game (with his sister, top) in Omaha, Nebraska, and on a vintage bubblegum card (left).

DISPATCHES

Military enthusiasts in April unearthed a World War II landing craft buried in English mud for nearly three-quarters of a century. The Buffalo LVT, which did service along Germany’s Rhine River late in the war, had been deployed to help fight a 1947 flood in Crowland, Lincolnshire. Sixteen of the vehicles were lined up as a makeshift dam to withstand rising waters on the River Welland. Instead, five washed away; only one was initially recovered. The Buffalo dug out in April isn’t in operating condition but is surprisingly well-preserved. Volunteers plan to turn it into a flood-fighting memorial.

AUGUST 2021

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ACTORS EXPLORE GRANDPARENTS’ WAR

A new documentary investigates the wartime experiences of forebears of several eminent British actors: (from left, top) Helena Bonham Carter, Mark Rylance, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Carey Mulligan.

Rylance finds out that both his grandfathers were captured by the Japanese during the war. His maternal grandfather—an untrained volunteer enlisted in the doomed defense of Hong Kong—was wounded and taken prisoner on Christmas Day in 1941, surviving a brutal Japanese POW camp. He would suffer a stroke on Christmas Eve in 1980 and die a few days later. The actor was struck by how painful the holidays must have been for his grandfather, bringing back memories year after year of being wounded and seeing half of his colleagues in the volunteer defense corps fall around him. Scott Thomas’s grandfather, an officer in the Royal Navy, rescued thousands of Allied troops at Dunkirk and guided convoys through the Arctic to the Soviet Union. Mulligan’s grandfather survived the first Japanese kamikaze attack on a British ship.

COURTESY OF PBS; OPPOSITE: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

HELENA BONHAM CARTER HAS PLAYED some formidable characters on the big screen—Queen Elizabeth, Ophelia, the Harry Potter villainess Bellatrix Lestrange. But when it comes to real-life drama, the actress’s own grandparents and their World War II experiences are hard to beat. A four-part PBS documentary, My Grandparents’ War, reveals that as a diplomat in the Spanish consulate in Bordeaux, France, Bonham Carter’s maternal grandfather defied his own government to issue visas to Jews fleeing the Nazi invasion of France in 1940. In the documentary, Bonham Carter meets a woman whose descendants were able to escape the Holocaust because of Eduardo Propper de Callejón. My Grandparents’ War, which first aired in April, tracks the wartime family stories of three other distinguished British actors: Mark Rylance (Oscar winner for Bridge of Spies); Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient); and Carey Mulligan (Promising Young Woman). The idea is to use famous faces to get modern audiences to reflect on examples of wartime heroism and endurance and to perhaps encourage viewers to look into their own families’ experiences. “We carry our grandparents and what they did inside us,” Bonham Carter says. “They have a lot to teach.” For example, Bonham Carter learns that her paternal grandmother, Lady Violet, stayed in London during the Blitz as an air raid warden when other aristocrats fled to the countryside. Lady Violet, the actress says, “was very brave…but also completely bonkers going out with bombs flying.” WORLD WAR II

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SHIPWRECK FOUND FOUR MILES DOWN EXPLORERS FOUND, SURVEYED, and filmed the world’s deepest-known shipwreck in March: the USS Johnston, sunk in a valiant against-the-odds clash that kept a larger Japanese naval force from disrupting General Douglas MacArthur’s liberation of the Philippines in 1944. The 377-foot destroyer was 21,000 feet underwater in the Philippine Sea. Reaching the wreck was the research vessel DSV Limiting Factor, owned by the American undersea expedition firm Caladan Oceanic. The Johnston was part of a task force off the Filipino island of Samar that blocked a bigger Japanese force from threatening MacArthur’s amphibious landing on Leyte on October 25, 1944. The ship’s captain, Commander Ernest Evans, repeatedly engaged the Japanese, drawing fire from escort carriers in the task force. With his vessel crippled by Japanese guns, Evans ordered his men to abandon ship; 186 of the Johnston’s 327 crew members died. Among them was Evans, who would become the first Native American in the navy to receive the Medal of Honor.

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DEEP DIVE

The Johnston is located 21,000 feet under the ocean’s surface—the deepest shipwreck ever found. How does that compare with some other notable depths on Earth?

MARIANA TRENCH 36,037 F T.

COURTESY OF PBS; OPPOSITE: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

Outnumbered and outmatched, the USS Johnston (here in 1943) put itself in harm’s way to help ward off a Japanese naval force threatening the Philippines’ liberation. The Johnston, lost with 186 sailors, was discovered in March at the bottom of the Philippine Sea.

MAMMOTH CAVE’S BOTTOMLESS PIT

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IT WAS GRIM WORK at the edge of the world. The seamen who ferried supplies through Arctic waters to an embattled Soviet Union endured frigid temperatures, turbulent waters, and ice that could turn ships top-heavy and unstable. Then there were the German Stuka dive-bombers and U-boats. British prime minister Winston Churchill called it the “worst journey in the world.” WATCH THE From August 1941 to May 1945, 78 convoys departDOCUMENTARY ing from Scotland, Liverpool, and Iceland carried ONLINE four million tons of relief to Murmansk, Archangel, S E A R C H and other seaports in Russia’s far north. The supplies “The Worst Journey in the World: Russian fed the Soviet war machine and helped the Russians turn a German invasion into a retreat. Arctic Convoys” But the price was high. More than 120 Allied freighters and warships sank, and nearly 2,800 merchant mariners and naval personnel perished. On May 9, their sacrifice was honored with the premiere of a 45-minute documentary on the convoys,

streamed from the Facebook page of the Russian Arctic Convoy Museum at Loch Ewe, Scotland, where many of the convoys assembled, and featuring interviews with convoy veterans and dignitaries including Churchill’s granddaughter, Celia Sandys. Among those interviewed is Rolfe Monteith of the HMS Hardy, who had been reassigned from the destroyer when it was torpedoed by U-278 in the Arctic Ocean. “My 12 close mates were written off on the 29th of January 1944,” he said. “That colored my life.” A bigger in-person event had been planned at Loch Ewe last year but was canceled because of COVID-19. The museum hopes to try again in 2022.

DISPATCHES A British wartime academy for assassins is on sale for £2.25 million ($3.15 million). The 12-bedroom Arisaig House in Lochaber, Scotland, was confiscated by the British government in 1940 and turned into a school for commandos, including a Czech unit that carried out the 1942 assassination of key Holocaust organizer Reinhard Heydrich in Prague. The 18-acre estate, which includes a reception hall, a twobedroom gardener’s cottage, and a tennis court, has recently been used as an upscale hotel.

FROM TOP: LT. R G G COOTE/IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS VIA GETTY IMAGES; SAVILLS

FILM HONORS THE “WORST JOURNEY”

Dozens of Allied convoys braved brutal Arctic conditions to help resupply the Soviets from 1941-1945.

WORLD WAR II

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Sh Se

Approximately 100,000 Filipinos died in Japan’s wanton destruction of Manila in 1945.

DISPATCHES

Q: What was the military purpose behind Japan’s destruction of Manila as its soldiers retreated from the Philippines in 1945? —Anthony L. Gregg, Providence, R.I. A: In short, there was no military purpose. None whatsoever.

Manila’s only strategic advantage involved its excellent port, which offered the United States a deep-water anchorage for the navy. Beyond the port, Manila—home at the time to an estimated one million men, women, and children—was a strategic liability. The disastrous three-year Japanese occupation had so wrecked Manila’s economy that starvation claimed hundreds of lives every day while desperate parents abandoned their children to orphanages or even sold them. Grave robbing ran rampant, as hungry residents plundered the dead for eyeglasses, dentures, and even clothing—anything that could be bartered for a fistful of rice. This was the tragic backdrop for the Battle of Manila, which claimed an estimated 100,000 lives, many massacred in widespread atrocities by Japanese troops. It’s important to note that captured battlefield records show that violence against civilians was not random, but rather ordered by Japanese officers, often done in a manner to spare ammunition. Such orders don’t specify a reason why civilians were singled out, but in all likelihood, locals were punished for their continued loyalty to the United States, reflected not only in the guerrilla attacks against the Japanese but also in the general population’s passive resistance. Lastly, General Tomoyuki Yamashita’s orders to the on-the-ground commander, Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, were for his troops to do everything possible to slow the American advance, even if that meant holding them up by as little as half a day. In the end, the urban battle dragged on for 29 days. As the U.S. Army’s historian later noted, the city’s tragic destruction and the slaughter of its people ultimately proved a “most effective delaying action.”

—James M. Scott, author of the 2018 book, Rampage. For more, see Scott’s December 2018 article for World War II, “Battlefield as Crime Scene: The Japanese Massacre in Manila,” at historynet.com. SEND QUERIES TO: Ask World War II, 901 N. Glebe Road, 5th Floor, Arlington, VA 22203 OR EMAIL: worldwar2@historynet.com

WORD FOR WORD “The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.” —Japanese Emperor Hirohito, August 15, 1945, in a radio speech announcing Japan’s surrender.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: CARL MYDANS/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; U.S. ARMY; ULLSTEIN BILD/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES

ASK WWII

A demolition crew sorting through World War II ammunition at Utah’s Tooele Army Depot stumbled across an irreverent wartime artifact in March: on the bottom of a wooden crate of 50-caliber rounds (above), someone had scrawled: “May the contents of this box blow the shit out of Hitler.” The depot sent out a Twitter message apologizing for the “salty language,” but noted that it was a reminder that “we were a nation at war.… We are eager to see what else they find.”

WORLD WAR II

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Subscribe Now! JULY 3, 1863: FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF CONFEDERATE ASSAULT ON CULP’S HILL H

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A Scottish Hero? The Somers Mutiny Ted Williams at War Israel’s Close Call Riding a Torpedo Cedar Creek, 1864

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In one week, Robert E. Lee, with James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson, drove the Army of the Potomac away from Richmond.

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Night of Terror Enemy Commandos Invade U.S. Base

The Fatal Romance of Consumption New Netherland’s Enduring Shadow Dragging Quakers to Abolitionism Lone Star State’s Tent Show King

HOMEFRONT Richard Roundtree becomes John Shaft

Green Berets Dramatic scenes of Special Forces in combat FIRST IN A FOUR-PART SERIES

A U.S. Special Forces leader directs local militiamen atop a hill in Ha Thanh.

Eyes in the Sky The pilots who directed airstrikes to save the troops below

April 2021 HISTORYNET.com

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f-107 ultra sabre: best fighter the USAF never bought?

Fall From Grace Brilliant but star-crossed, Herbert Hoover followed a landslide victory with a landslide defeat

The ’Nam

Marvel Comics enters the war

slow but deadly

the sbd dauntless dive bomber sank japan’s pacific war strategy pan am clippers: when luxurious flying boats conquered the world

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aerial minesweeping: ingenious solution to an undersea menace

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In World War II the famed “Fighting 79th” slugged its way through Nazi strongholds

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The general was a rising star in the Union Army until blamed for defeat at 2nd Bull Run Rebel artillery commanders Plus! feud on the road to Gettysburg Rare 1861 images of 1st Massachusetts Cavalry

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CONVERSATION WITH SELMA VAN DE PERRE BY KIRSTIN FAWCETT

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FOR YEARS, Selma van de Perre was “too busy living” to share her story with the world. She raised a son; taught schoolchildren in London; attended social functions with her husband, BBC correspondent Hugo van de Perre; and later worked as a journalist herself. But thanks in part to her remarkable Van de Perre (at memory, the former Dutch resistance worker home in London, and concentration camp prisoner—who opposite) was 20 when she joined the turned 99 in June—was at last able to write Dutch resistance— her memoirs. The result, My Name is Selma, an especially risky was published in May. move for a Jew. Born into a Jewish family in the Netherlands, Selma Velleman was 17 when, in May 1940, Germany occupied her home country. She dodged deportation, hiding with Gentile friends and later—under an assumed name, Marga, and an identity as that they were short on volunteers, and I an Aryan nurse—joining a resistance group to aid other people in asked if I could help. hiding. In 1944, her luck ran out; she was arrested and eventually imprisoned at Ravensbrück, the all-women concentration camp in What was your role? northern Germany. She’d live to see the war’s end. Her mother and We had a lot of people by that time who had sister, shipped to Sobibor, and her father, sent to Auschwitz, would not. to be looked after while in hiding—not just Jewish people, but also non-Jewish university students who didn’t sign loyalty oaths to How did life change after the German occupation? the Germans, or men who didn’t want to go They were very clever, the Germans. They didn’t want the Dutch to work camps. They had to have ration cards people to be upset and fight against them, so they were careful to introduce measures very slowly. But then, of course, the rules came and false identity cards. So people were in that non-Jews were not to visit Jewish people, and Jewish people needed to become couriers and supply these things. I started by just sending out newspawere not allowed to visit them; Jews were not to have things or be pers the resistance produced. But soon I allowed lots of things. Life began getting very difficult. began carrying suitcases filled with illegal papers to different towns. When did you first realize you were in danger? In 1942, when I was 20, I was called up to go to a work camp. My father said, “No, you don’t go,” and he gave me some chocolate that made me Did you have any close calls? go to the toilet all the time. He called the doctor, who wrote me a note. Several times, yes. Once, I was transporting I soon went to work in a fur factory, making gloves and things for a suitcase on a train. I left to go to the toilet, German soldiers in the East. But then my father got his call-up to go and when I came back I thought I was in the to a work camp. I said to my mother, “We have to go into hiding.” wrong car because I didn’t see it. The woman sitting opposite me was still there, though. When we came to the next station, she How did you get involved with the Dutch resistance? Friends found me a hiding place in Leiden, southwest of Amsterdam, screamed out the window: “This girl has lost with doctors from Leiden Hospital; that was the first time I came her suitcase; it’s stolen!” A German officer standing outside told me into contact with the resistance. One evening they were telling us

LOUIS VELLEMAN, COURTESY OF SCRIBNER

PIECE DE RESISTANCE

“Soon I began carrying suitcases filled with illegal papers to different towns.” What was that like?

It was a big concentration camp for women, 50 miles northeast of Berlin. W hen we arrived, there were loads of female guards with dogs and police with whips and sticks. They shouted and they pushed; it was terrible. I was there for nine months. Many people died. They were gassed and burned. We were liberated on April 23, 1945, by the Swedish Red Cross. We were weak, and so scared when we were taken out of the main camp and left standing outside the gates. We thought we were going to be killed, too, and it was a terrible feeling after all we’d experienced and survived.

Explain your book’s title.

to get off, and he asked what was in the suitcase. I said underwear. He asked several more questions and was then called away. I saw my train leaving and jumped on it. When I had to change trains, the conductor asked, “Are you the girl who lost her suitcase? I think it’s been found.” He came with a little suitcase—one like mine—and he opened it and thank goodness it had underwear in it. After the war, we learned that my suitcase and its contents had been found in the river. A colleague in the resistance laughed, saying that the thief must have had a terrible shock when he opened it and found nothing but papers.

LOUIS VELLEMAN, COURTESY OF SCRIBNER

Eventually you did get caught.

A colleague said he’d make me some bookshelves with hiding places in them because keeping documents in the suitcase, which I kept under my bed, was too dangerous. One day in June 1944, another resistance worker brought the bookshelves to our colleague Bob’s house in Utrecht and showed me how the hiding spaces worked. The front door then opened, and there was Bob; he came upstairs with two German police. We were taken away separately in cars; I was put into a small prison cell with five other women and spent the night there. Soon I was sent with many others to a concentration camp, Vught, in the south of Holland and put to work in a gas mask factory. In September 1944, the women at Vught were transferred to Ravensbrück.

When we arrived in Sweden, we had to stand in a queue to give our names to an attaché from the Dutch embassy. I gave the name I’d been using during the war—Marga—and he wrote that down. Then the women went to lie down, but I just couldn’t rest. I went back, and luckily the attaché was still there. I stood there a long time and finally said, “My name is actually Selma Velleman.” He took his pen out and didn’t say a word, but crossed the other name out and entered my own name. That’s why the book is called My Name is Selma.

You visit Ravensbrück each year. Why? I have a workshop with German students. They are always very emotional; they’re very interested. I ask: “Do you ask your grandparents about the war?” And they all say, “Yes, but they don’t want to talk about it.”

What topic is most important?

How normal people, like their grandparents, could have supported the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. I always think, “How could they?” But it happens all over the world still, doesn’t it? People follow dictators before they know what’s going to happen.

They don’t come to power overnight.

No, they don’t. Then, once people want to rebel, it’s too late. H AUGUST 2021

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TOUCH OF HUMANITY Curators at The National World War II Museum solve readers’ artifact mysteries

I am 81 years old and grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia. When I was in the fourth grade or so, my Sunday school teacher, Wilbert W. Miller, gave me this bowl as an award for perfect attendance. Mr. Miller explained that he was one of the first persons to enter Hiroshima after the bombing. Might you be able to verify his story and the bowl’s origin? For years I have felt it should be part of a museum collection. —Harold L. Stocker, Plainfield, Ind. THIS BOW L SHOWS SIGNS of the distinctive “flash burn” unique to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The destructive forces of the “Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, can be divided into three categories: radiation, heat, and shock wave. The wave of radiation racing from the single atom that started the

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FROM TOP: PRISMA BILDAGENTUR/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY OF HAROLD L. STOCKER

FROM THE FOOTLOCKER

explosion manifested itself as a brilliant flash, its speed fast enough to escape the bomb’s casing before it disintegrated. Within one second of detonation, the heat from a fireball 900 feet in diameter with a temperature hotter than the surface of the sun resulted in flash burn as far as 9,500 feet from the detonation’s center. A relatively slow shock wave followed this searing force, f lattening or damaging buildings out to 8,000 feet. Atomic flash burn is unique because of its duration—just a few thousandths of a second—and its intensity. Because of its short span and high heat, flash burn affected only objects in the direct line of sight of the Hirosh ima ex plosion. Th is resu lted, most famously, in shadows being burned onto surfaces shielded from the explosion by humans and objects. In the case of the bowl, the heat was high enough to discolor it and melt material onto its side and interior but brief enough to not completely destroy it. We have good reason, therefore, to trust Wilbert Miller’s story; specifics about Miller himself, though, are hard to come by. He attended the University of Pennsylvania shortly before enlisting in the U.S. Army; his service number indicates he was a volunteer but does not provide any additional information. And we don’t have enough particulars to place Miller in Hiroshima in any assigned military unit. Perhaps this story will spark someone who knew of him to come forward with more details. Hiroshima was a city of firsts, for all the wrong reasons. Within hours of the blast, people began to stream into the stricken city in search of their families. Some of the very

COURTESY OF HAROLD L. STOCKER (BOTH)

Bearing evidence of atomic flash burn, this tiny bowl—just 2 3/4 inches in diameter—has a big story to tell.

WHICH GROUP DETONATED A BOMB IN THE U.S. CAPITOL BUILDING ON MARCH 1, 1971?

FROM TOP: PRISMA BILDAGENTUR/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY OF HAROLD L. STOCKER

COURTESY OF HAROLD L. STOCKER (BOTH)

U.S. Army officers survey the devastation at Hiroshima (above); Wilbert W. Miller (as a high school student, at left) recounted picking up the bowl shortly after the blast, although exactly when and why he was there is unknown.

first Europeans to appear were Christian missionaries from Germany; they came from the nearby hills looking for countrymen who had been operating a mission near ground zero. Japanese military officials soon began arriving to see if the rumors of apocalyptic destruction were true. Officially the first regular U.S. Army unit into Hiroshima was the 186th Infantry Regiment, 41st Infantry Division, on October 6, 1945, but those troops, in fact, arrived simultaneously with POW repatriation teams, Manhattan Project scientists, and military medical representatives. Following the scientific and mercy missions, Hiroshima over the next few months became somewhat of a tourist attraction and a curiosity for U.S. servicemen on occupation duty, while scientists and journalists came to the city to document its destruction. One of these many visitors may have been West Virginia native Wilbert W. Miller. Today Hiroshima is a symbol of the horror and desperation of war, the terrifying power of the atom, and a hope for peace. One wonders about Miller and why he would have picked up this bowl. Perhaps, amid the total destruction from a terrible weapon, a small serving bowl was the only recognizable piece of humanity left that a person could wrap his mind around. —Josh Schick, Curator

The Symbionese Liberation Army, the Youth International Party (the Yippies), or the Weather Underground? For more, visit WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ MAGAZINES/QUIZ

HISTORYNET.com ANSWER: THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND. OFTEN CALLED THE WEATHERMEN, IN 1969 THE GROUP DECIDED TO “ENGAGE IN GUERRILLA WARFARE AGAINST THE U.S. GOVERNMENT” AND STARTED A BOMBING CAMPAIGN. BY 1976 THE ORGANIZATION HAD ALL BUT DISSOLVED.

Have a World War II artifact you can’t identify? Write to Footlocker@historynet.com with the following: — Your connection to the object and what you know about it. — The object’s dimensions, in inches. — Several high-resolution digital photos taken close up and from varying angles. — Pictures should be in color, and at least 300 dpi. Unfortunately, we can’t respond to every query, nor can we appraise value.

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BY JAMES HOLLAND

TOP OF THE HEAP

I’M GOING TO OFFER A BOLD SUGGESTION—not for the greatest, but for the most decisive aircraft ever built, and by that I mean the aircraft that has had the most impact. For me, it’s the P-51 Mustang. I’d reached this conclusion some time ago, but a few weeks back I had the chance to go up in a converted two-seater P-51D. There’s an adage about aircraft that if it looks right, it probably is right, and the Mustang certainly looks the part: sleek but brawny, not the obvious beauty that is the Spitfire, but sturdier and infinitely more refined than a Thunderbolt or a Hurricane, fighters all. It also seems a generation ahead of early-war fighters in development. As I have learned, it certainly was so in construction, which made it quicker and cheaper to build—a massive advantage in a time of total war. In the air, it was wonderful: effortlessly agile, fast, and rock-solid. For a golden minute, I had the controls and it barely batted an eye despite my ham-fistedness. What a treat. Originally commissioned by the British from North American Aviation in May 1940, the Mustang did not, however, initially live up to its aesthetic promise. Not until October 1942, when Ron Harker, chief test pilot for RollsRoyce, suggested trying it with a Merlin engine instead of the Allison it was equipped with, was its future assured. Any successful aircraft is always a marriage of powerplant and airframe, and it was the Merlin that transformed the P-51. At 10,000 feet, the P-51 could fly at 400 mph; 430 mph at 20,000; and, at 35,000 feet, a stunning 455 mph—70 mph faster than a German Me 109 or a Fw 190 at that altitude. It could dive faster than anything else and had a quicker roll rate, too. But impressive as that was, what really made the difference was its efficient use of fuel and its ability to carry lots of it. With extra fuel tanks in the fuselage and two disposable auxiliary drop tanks under each wing, a Mustang could fly 1,650 miles without refueling. That was a round trip from England to beyond Berlin. And that was a game changer.

ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD MIA

NEED TO KNOW

Why? Because the only way the Allies could successfully invade Normandy on D-Day was if they controlled the sk ies over much of northwest Europe—essential for attacking German supply lines to the front. To do that, they first needed to push back the Luftwaffe and hammer factories and training schools deep in the Reich. And the only way that could be achieved was if U.S. bomber forces had a fighter escort all the way there and back. Only the long-range P-51 could provide that vital protection and destroy enemy fighters at the same time. All through the second half of 1943, the race was on to produce enough Mustangs to make the allimportant difference. Otherwise, the Luf t wa f fe was not going to be defeated. Low-level bombing operations on German supply lines in France and northwest Europe would not be sufficient while the Luftwaffe held the skies. The fate of D-Day hung on whether this air supremacy could be achieved. Mustangs first flew with the U.S. 354th Fighter Group, based in England, in December 1943. Gradually, then rapid ly, their production ramped up. By the end of May 1944— with D-Day set for the following week—the nearest Luftwaffe airfield was 500 miles from the invasion beaches, and all bridges across the River Seine had been destroyed, railway marshalling yards hammered, Luftwaffe factories pounded, and the skies were clear. The P-51’s impact on these operations was immense. As we all know, D-Day was a success; Normandy, then France, was liberated; and then, too, all of Western Europe. After my flight, my 13-year-old daughter went up for a spin—lucky girl—and, watching her hurtle over the airfield then climb into a victory roll, I marveled anew at this stunning little aircraft. Racking my brain, I still couldn’t think of a single aircraft that has had a greater impact than the P-51 Mustang. The most decisive aircraft. Ever. H

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STORY AND PHOTOS BY BARBARA NOE KENNEDY

OLD SOLDIERS NEVER DIE I LEARNED AS A CHILD that Douglas MacArthur was a hero. He had, after all, rescued my mother, Leanne Blinzler Noe (and her sister Ginny and father Lee and thousands of other Allied civilians), from Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila at the end of World War II. My mother wrote a letter of gratitude to the general in 1957, to which he responded briefly but sincerely on his official letterhead—and which she has gifted me. On a recent trip to the MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, Virginia, I tell the chief archivist, James Zobel, about that letter. “Wait a minute,” he says, clacking frantically on his computer. He dashes inside a mammoth vault of boxes containing millions of MacArthur-related documents and pulls one out. He lifts a pile of papers, and there, on top, my heartbeat quickening, I glimpse my mother’s schoolgirl-perfect penmanship. “Dear General,” she had written on July 12, 1957, “Being such a modest man, you probably shy away from praise, but you certainly deserve the highest for your integrity, far-sightedness and keen sense of judgement.” She went on to say: “I was one of the prisoners in Santo Tomas, in Manila, who saw you when you and the First Cavalry arrived in February 1945. Looking back, it certainly was a close call, but we never lost faith in your promise ‘I Shall Return.’” It’s no secret that MacArthur is a polarizing figure: a brilliant tactician, revered for helping to win World War II and overseeing the successful Allied occupation of postwar Japan, but also a man who could be vain, arrogant, suspicious, and insubordinate, to the point of getting fired by President Harry S. Truman in the middle of the Korean War for publicly disagreeing with him. I was curious if the city where he is buried shares my family’s rev-

erence, as I would expect—a reason for my visit today. “Not necessarily,” Zobel says. We are sitting in the memorial’s library, open to the public, with MacArthur’s 5,000 books surrounding us. “We’re trying to get to the truth of everything. That’s what he wanted. He’s always been controversial, but we embrace that, because there’s always two sides to every story.” It strikes me that MacArthur lived all over the world, but never in Norfolk. Why is he here for eternity? “It’s because of his mother that this place is here,” Zobel says. Mary Pinkney Hardy MacArthur grew up at Riveredge, a 20-room brick mansion in Norfolk’s Berkley neighborhood, across the Elizabeth River. There, on May 19, 1875, she married Arthur MacArthur, an army captain and Medal of Honor hero for the Union in the Civil War—two of her brothers refusing to attend because they had fought for Robert E. Lee’s Confederates. The MacArthurs had two children in Norfolk, Arthur III and Malcolm, the latter of whom died at age four and is buried at Norfolk’s Cedar Grove Cemetery. Douglas was supposed to be born in Norfolk as well, but his mother ended up giving birth, on January 26, 1880, at Little Rock

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TOP LEFT: CARL MYDANS/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

TRAVEL NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

TOP LEFT: CARL MYDANS/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

Norfolk’s MacArthur Memorial (opposite) serves as the brilliant but controversial general’s museum, library, archive, and final resting place.

Barracks in Arkansas, where her husband had been stationed. Riveredge is gone, but a small, rat her obscu re memor ia l pa rk remains, with walls constructed from the original house’s bricks and lofty oaks that could easily date back to Mary’s time. When Douglas MacArthur visited Norfolk in 1951 to dedicate the park to his mother, he murmured that he felt Norfolk was his spiritual home. In 1960, town officials remembered that sentiment, lobbying MacArthur with the offer of an archive containing all of his belongings alongside his final resting place. They targeted the grandiose old City Hall, built in 1850, as the memorial’s possible location, and MacArthur said, “‘Yeah, that looks pretty good,’” Zobel says. The city worked with MacArthur to design the interior, including its circular sunken crypt and two marble sarcophagi (for him and his wife, Jean), but he never got to see the finished project. He died on April 5, 1964—nearly 13 years after Truman fired him and just short of the planned Memorial Day dedication. His funeral took place on April 11 at St. Paul’s, a historic brick church two blocks away. When I visit, I see timeworn tombstones scattered about the grounds, and my eyes grow wide as I read the dates, some reaching back to

the 1700s. I catch sight of a small sign: “Cannonball,” and an arrow. A narrow, bush-edged path leads to a side wall of the church where, way up high, a cannonball remains embedded, shot from Loyalist Lord Dunmore’s fleet during the 1776 attack on the city. I imagine the stately, tree-shaded site swarming with MacArthur’s funeral attendees, including prime ministers, ambassadors, governors, and what army officials called the 20th century’s greatest assembly of military men. A procession lined the streets as the general took his final journey by caisson to the memorial. Today, MacArthur lies beneath the memorial’s grand rotunda beside Jean, who died in 2000 (his mother is in Arlington National Cemetery, next to his father). Inscriptions and flags from the general’s military career decorate the walls, along with his long list of accomplishments—from 1903 West Point graduate to commander in chief, United Nations Command. The memorial’s museum portion awaits in the retrofitted hallways nearby, a chronological march through MacArthur’s life in nine galleries showcasing priceless military and personal artifacts in the broader context of 20th-century history. As we walk through the displays, Zobel points out choice bits here and there—a chest of silverware, the only thing that survived from MacArthur’s The archive includes a 1957 letter to MacArthur from the author’s grateful mother, a wartime POW in the Philippines.

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MacArthur Memorial

Episcopal Church

ELIZABETH RI V E R

Mary Pinkney Hardy MacArthur Memorial

N MacArthur’s 1964 funeral took place at Norfolk’s historic St. Paul’s church, where centuries-old gravestones set a tranquil mood.

Manila Hotel residence; his pistol, dug up on Corregidor years after his Philippine escape; General Hideki Tojo’s sword, taken just as he tried to kill himself. Here, too, are the general’s trademark hat, corncob pipe, and Ray-Ban sunglasses. As Zobel indicated when we first met, the displays don’t hold back on their presentation of a complex man. He shows me, for example, MacArthur’s final evaluation report of Dwight D. Eisenhower upon his departure in 1937 as MacArthur’s chief of staff. Zobel notes, “He puts on here, ‘the most brilliant officer.’ They don’t get along personally, but he doesn’t quash his career. That’s the dichotomy.” But there are more personal stories to uncover at the memorial. For example, his love letters—but not to his wife. “All his materials get destroyed in Manila,” Zobel says. “The only thing that keeps popping up are the letters he wrote all these girls throughout his life. One is a 28-page rhyming couplet poem to this girl about how ‘I’m going to die in this monster battle and you’re going to mourn me the rest of your life.’” He points to another photo in the “World War II” gallery. “This one is very telling,” he says. “This is Emilio Aguinaldo, Manuel Quezon, and José Laurel, the first three presidents of the Philippines. These guys were his best friends. He was not a colonial who hung out with the White folks. Quezon was his son’s godfather. In the Spanish culture, that’s the bomb.”

MacArthur has been dead for 57 years, and the World War II and Korean War generations are aged or gone. I ask Zobel how relevant MacArthur is today. “The entire situation in the Pacific is the same as it was when Truman fired him,” Zobel says as we study a map of the South China Sea in the gallery covering the Cold War’s beginnings. “MacArthur said: ‘You don’t deal with this now, you’re going to have everything two generations from now.’ And that’s the thing about MacArthur. Everything he has predicted [about the importance of Asia to America’s future] has come true,” among them China’s aggressive quest to expand power, the strong U.S.-Japanese alliance, and a divisive Korean Peninsula. Zobel shares that members of the Joint Forces Staff College, National Defense University, and Joint Advanced Warfighting School have all come to the memorial’s research center to study MacArthur’s actions and Cold War history in relation to current-day events in the Asia-Pacific region. “MacArthur’s not this person who’s dead and gone,” Zobel says. “He remains relevant.” And Norfolk—and the MacArthur Memorial, with its a rchives a nd resea rch center— remains at the center of it. As I head out of Norfolk, past towering military ships reflecting off the harbor’s placid waters, I am excited that I will return with my mother in May 2022 for a POW reunion of those held in the Philippines during World War II. I can’t wait to show her the letter she wrote to her hero all those years ago—an expression of gratefulness that has become part of MacArthur’s legacy in Norfolk. H

WHEN YOU GO The MacArthur Memorial (macarthurmemorial.org) is located at Norfolk’s MacArthur Square. Check the website for opening hours. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (stpaulsnorfolk.org) is just two blocks away at 201 St. Paul’s Boulevard. The Mary Pinkney Hardy MacArthur Memorial is on South Main Street in Berkley.

WHERE TO STAY AND EAT Glass Light Hotel and Gallery (marriott.com), two blocks from the memorial, occupies a reimagined historic building (1912) featuring exceptional works of glass art. Another Marriott option, Sheraton Norfolk Waterside Hotel, has views across the Elizabeth River to Berkley. Stripers Waterside (striperswaterside.com) and Saltine (saltinenorfolk.com) are the go-tos for Chesapeake seafood. Freemason Abbey Restaurant (freemasonabbey.com), in a church from 1873, has amazing she-crab soup.

WHAT ELSE TO SEE AND DO The Waterside District (watersidedistrict.com) in the heart of Norfolk’s central business district has a lovely waterfront for strolling and dining. Just offshore you can see the Battleship USS Wisconsin (nauticus.org), which served in the Pacific during World War II; it’s open for tours. Explore Naval Station Norfolk with a two-hour narrated harbor cruise (navalbasecruises.com), taking in the sights and sounds of one of the world’s busiest seaports, home to America’s Atlantic Fleet.

MAP BY BRIAN WALKER

LK N O R F OSt. Paul’s

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E H T W IN S R I A SH As German armies ors m u r d n a d e h c a ro p p a flew, citizens of the Soviet capital veered toward mass panic y By Jonathan Dimbleb

Soviet antiaircraft fire and searchlights punctuate the night sky over Moscow. Fear built below, leading to the October 16, 1941, day of the “Great Panic.”

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itler launched Operation Barbarossa, the largest military campaign in history, on June 22, 1941. More than three million men invaded the Soviet Union bent on total victory. Hitler had no doubts: Stalin’s armies would be defeated. Moscow would fall within weeks. From the start, his panzers advanced at such a swift rate and destroyed Stalin’s armies with such ease that much of the rest of the world— America and Britain included—shared the same view. By the middle of September, the panzers were more than halfway to their destination, with the Soviet capital just 250 miles ahead. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin kept his people in the dark about the threat. A diet of lies and half-truths gave the impression that though the fighting was hard, the “fascist hordes” would inevitably be defeated. But the Kremlin’s ruthless suppression of the truth could not prevent rumors seeping through the protective barrier of the official news channels. By October, these rumors were rife. Moscow was in danger.

FROM TOP: AP PHOTO; UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES; PREVIOUS PAGES: NAUM GRANOVSKY/TASS VIA GETTY IMAGES

Russian homes go up in flames in October 1941, as German tanks prowl ever closer to Moscow. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin—depicted steering the ship of state in a propaganda poster, below—initially told citizens little about the threat, feeding rumors in the capital.

AKG-IMAGES/VOLLER ERNST/CHALDEJ

FROM TOP: AP PHOTO; UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES; PREVIOUS PAGES: NAUM GRANOVSKY/TASS VIA GETTY IMAGES

ON OCTOBER 7, 1941, Peter Miller, a British historian working on a project at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, noted: “There is a feeling of approaching catastrophe in the air and endless rumours. The mood is particularly bad today.” Most Russian soldiers at the front, not wishing to alarm their families or fearful of censors, tended to avoid describing the scale of the crisis. But one could not contain himself: “Don’t believe the papers or the radio; the things they say are lies. We’ve been through it all and seen it all, the way the Germans are driving us—our own people don’t know where to run; we’ve nothing to fight with; and when the Germans catch up with us, our men have nothing to escape in. We’ve got no fuel, so they abandon our cars and tanks and run for it.” A Communist Party functionary, Victor Kravchenko, witnessed Moscow’s gradual disintegration. “A city, like an individual, can suffer a nervous breakdown,” he recalled. “Trams and autobuses worked in fits and starts. The shops were mostly empty, but people queued up anyhow. Homes and offices were unheated; water and electric service was intermittent and uncertain. For the first time in twenty years I heard cursing of officialdom.” Fear, deprivation, and a suppressed loathing of the Soviet secret police—the NKVD—and other instruments of a repressive state produced something of a pro-German backlash. Nazi propaganda—intimating the restoration of individual liberties and land ownership once the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy had been destroyed—fell on fewer deaf ears than the Party might have hoped. Alexander Osmerkin, an artist, was so confident all would be well under the Nazis that he rebuked a friend who was seeking to leave Moscow before their troops arrived. “Have you gone off your head?” he demanded. “Excuse my crudeness, but who are you running from? Do you really believe our cheap propaganda? They [the Germans] are after all the most cultured people in Europe. I’m sure they won’t persecute people like you and me.” So anxious was he to secure his own future under Nazism that he emptied his apartment of every compromising pamphlet, book, photograph, and “all the rest of the filthy Bolshevik rubbish.” For the most part, though, even less-than-ardent communists treated the prospect of a Nazi victory with consternation. They disdained the Nazi leaflets that fluttered over the city, courtesy of the Luftwaffe. By implying that Russia would once again flow with milk and honey under the Third Reich’s benign oversight, Nazi propagandists were “signally stupid,” Kravchenko said. Not only was such propaganda “arrogant,” but it made the cardinal error of “confounding love of country with love of Stalin.” At the end of the first week of October, the Kremlin abruptly decided that the official line could no longer be held. Instead of announcements about hard-fought but inevitable victories against the Nazi hordes, the Red Army newspaper, Red Star, suddenly notified the public that “the very existence of the Soviet State was in danger.” On October 9, the newspaper instructed every Soviet citizen to “stand firm and fight to the last drop of blood” to save the nation. That same day, Pravda, the official Communist Party newspaper, enjoined the people of Moscow “to mobilize all their forces to repel the enemy’s offensive” and, on the following day, more darkly, it warned that the enemy was trying “through the wide network of its agents, spies and agent-provocateurs to disorganize the rear and to create panic.” Unsurprisingly such admonitions did not achieve the desired

Muscovites gather before a loudspeaker to listen to Hitler’s declaration of war on the Soviet Union and foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov’s response.

effect. By insistently alarming the public with headlines such as “The Homeland is in Grave Danger,” the media simply stimulated more rumors. A friend told Irina Kreuze, a trainee nurse, that the city’s children were being evacuated from Moscow and that the nation’s leaders had left the capital as well. “Whether this is true or not,” she noted, “the government is silent, and that makes the public depressed. People are feeling completely lost. Yesterday I saw a man in the street who was carrying an empty coffin. An old lady who stopped me a few steps away from him said with conviction: ‘What a lucky person he got this coffin for. He is dead and doesn’t have to worry about fighting.’” TO SABOTAGE THE ENEMY, the first secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party, Alexander Shcherbakov, set about creating resistance groups. The NKVD was to control this underground movement, operated by Party cadres drawn from each city district. Shcherbakov, his office walls covered with detailed maps of the city, took a AUGUST 2021

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Soviet citizens, most of them women, dig an antitank ditch just outside Moscow (top). In case the Germans did reach the city, hundreds of factories were packed up and moved. Above, machinery from a railway car plant arrives at its new home in the Urals, 800 miles to the northeast.

close personal interest in the selection process. Interviewing one candidate, he informed the hapless recruit that Stalin himself had demanded this last-ditch defiance of the enemy. “Do you realize how serious it is?” he demanded. “Yes, I do, Alexander Sergeyevich.” “Do you understand the danger?” “Yes, if I get it wrong, I’ll end up on a German scaffold.” There were even more pressing priorities: the mammoth task of dismantling many hundreds of plants producing military supplies and transporting them hundreds of miles to the relative safety of the Urals, the Volga Region, Western Siberia, Kazakhstan, or Central Asia, to be reassembled and ready for production within 14 days. Within six weeks, 498 enterprises, along with 210,000 workers, had been transported to one or another of those far-flung destinations. By November, more than 1,500 factories—1.5 million train loads— would be thereby salvaged. This was only possible because the Party machine was able to commandeer huge numbers of heroically pliable patriots. In just marginally overstated terms, a Pravda journalist described one typical scene: “The earth was like stone, frozen hard by our fierce Siberian frost. Axes and pickaxes could not break the stony soil. In the light of ARC-lamps people hacked at the earth all night. They blew up the stones and the frozen earth, and they laid the foundations. Their feet and hands were swollen with frostbite, but they did not leave work. Over the charts and blueprints, laid out on packing cases, the blizzard was raging. Hundreds of trucks kept rolling up with building materials. On the 12th day, into the new buildings with their glass roofs, the machinery, covered with hoar frost, began to arrive. Braziers were kept alight to unfreeze the machines. And two days later, the war factory began production.” Plants that could not be dismantled were to be blown up if the panzers swept into the city. Likewise, food stores and refrigeration plants, railway stations, tram and trolleybus depots, and power stations were readied for destruction. Explosive charges were placed under bridges. Nor were the Bolshoi Theatre, the mint, the central telegraph office, or the telephone exchange to be spared. Every significant economic asset was to be smashed beyond use if the Germans breached the city’s defenses. In a last-ditch move to prevent the Ger-

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SOVFOTO/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES (BOTH)

Dated August 4, 1941, a map shows a series of defensive lines snaking around Moscow and environs.

mans from getting that far, three concentric layers of protection surrounding the city— tank traps, ditches, and barbed wire fences— were ordered built. Six hundred thousand Muscovites obeyed the summons to present themselves for the task armed with spades and, if they possessed them, axes, picks, and crowbars. This ramshackle army of laborers— men and women—worked at a frantic pace for little food in deteriorating weather. Piercing winds and pouring rain intermingled with driving snow, along with a lack of heavy equipment, combined to make their task draining. But they persisted. If patriotism was not enough, they knew that shirking duty was not permitted, and that miscreants would face the full wrath of a punitive state.

Stalin’s favorite general, Georgy Zhukov, was particularly impressed by the female laborers: “I saw thousands and thousands of Moscow women, who were unused to heavy labor and who had left their city apartments lightly clad, work on those impassable roads, in that mud, digging antitank ditches and trenches, setting up antitank obstacles and barricades, and hauling sandbags. Mud stuck to their boots, too, and to the wheelbarrows they used to haul earth, and added an incredible load to shovels that were unfamiliar in women’s hands.”

If patriotism was not enough, Moscow’s citizens knew that shirking duty was not permitted.

BY OCTOBER 15, the tension in the capital was palpable. The clump of artillery sounded clearly in the distance. Enemy aircraft droned AUGUST 2021

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nuclear physicist and dissident—pushed his way through the throng to Moscow State University to see if he could be of assistance. The local Party secretary gave the students short shrift. “When we asked whether there was anything useful we could do,” Sakharov wrote, “he stared at us wildly and blurted out ‘every man for himself.’” A few days later, the future Nobel Peace Prize winner was himself instructed to leave by rail for Turkmenistan, where the university was to be re-established. He worked almost all the way of the slow, 2,000-mile train journey to Ashkhabad: “I read Yakov Frenkel’s books on quantum mechanics and relativity [and] suddenly achieved new insights into those subjects.” The already famous composer, Dmitri Shostakovich, was not so sanguine. He had wanted to stay in the besieged city of Leningrad, where he had been serving as a firefighter. In late September, however, he had been instructed to leave his beloved city for the comparative safety of Moscow. No sooner had he arrived than he was once more on the move. On October 16, along with a small army of writers, painters, musicians, and artists, he found himself huddling with his family on the slush-covered platform waiting for the Kuibyshev train. There was a good deal of uncomradely pushing and shoving as Moscow’s cultural elite struggled for places in their designated carriages. Standing with his child’s potty in one hand and a sewing machine in the other, Shostakovich was at a loss. Eventually a place was found for the great man in one of the carriages carrying the Bolshoi Theatre’s props and personnel. Shortly after the train left the station, he realized that he had left two suitcases on the platform— a predicament from which he was only partially saved by the generosity of fellow passengers, who gave him socks and a spare shirt as well as other basic necessities. Unlike Sakharov, Shostakovich was unable to work on the journey. “As soon as I got on the train, something snapped inside me. I can’t compose just now, knowing how many people are losing their lives,” he was recorded as saying. Nonetheless he managed to complete his famous Leningrad Symphony—Symphony No. 7—10 weeks later.

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Future Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov (top) and composer Dmitri Shostakovich (bottom) were witnesses to the flight of citizens from Moscow. Offering to help at the university he attended, Sakharov was told: “Every man for himself.”

above. Rumor piled upon rumor: the Germans had reached the outskirts of the city; their spies were disguised as Soviet soldiers; paratroopers had landed in a nearby forest or in Red Square; the panzers would soon be on Gorky Street; the city was about to fall; Stalin had either been deposed or had already left the Kremlin for an unknown destination. As it happened, the Soviet dictator had been in his Kremlin office since the early hours of that day, locked in meetings with senior members of the Party’s top policymaking body, the Politburo. They agreed that there was no option but to evacuate the government to the city of Kuibyshev (now Samara), 660 miles to the southeast. The British and American ambassadors were summoned to see the foreign minister. Vyacheslav Molotov looked exhausted. “I have never seen him look so tired and ill. He obviously has been up all night, and the decision hurt him terribly as one can see,” the British ambassador, Sir Stafford Cripps, noted. They were told to assemble their things and leave that very night for Kuibyshev. Foreign embassy staff only had time to pack their bags and incinerate any files and papers that might otherwise fall into Nazi hands before hastening to the train station. They found it already clogged with a vast multitude of Russians seeking to escape the capital. Some members of the Bolshevik elite failed to set the kind of example that might have been expected of good communists. Many did not wait for permits before scrambling to join the exodus. The limousines of senior officials and their families thrust their way through a growing stream of heavily laden horse-drawn carts, peasants herding cattle and sheep, and ordinary citizens demonstrating their trust in officialdom by voting with their feet. A British Embassy official wrote that some of these people “must have been in the last stages of fatigue as we saw many fallen or falling by the wayside. The stream of traffic was continuous both through the night and the next day…with cars hooting and chauffeurs cursing in every direction.” Not everyone thought of fleeing. Along with a group of fellow students, 20-year-old Andrei Sakharov—later to become a world-famous

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man-fascist troops” had hurled “against our troops large quantities of tanks and motorized infantry, and in one section broke through our defenses.” Pravda warned that the “Enemy is Threatening Moscow.” Overnight, communist discipline gave way to social anarchy. One shocked observer, Nikolai Verzhbitsky—a journalist who stuck to the Party line when writing for his newspaper—vented his dismay in the privacy of his diary: “There are fights in the queues, people crushing old folks, there are stampedes in the queues, young people are looting, and policemen hang around sidewalks in groups of two [to] four, having a smoke, saying, ‘We don’t have instructions.’” It was as though a dam had suddenly been breached, releasing a resentful flood of loathing toward those bosses and Party members who had left their posts without a thought for their workers. Verzhbitsky was bitter and blamed the authorities: “The hysteria above reached down to the masses. They began to remember and count up all the insults, repression, injustices, pressure, bureaucratic machinations of officialdom, contempt and self-puffery of Party members, Draconian orders, deprivations, systematic deception of the masses, the newspapers braying self-congratulations. It is terrible to hear. People speak from the heart. Can a city really hold out when it’s in such a mood?” For a while, it looked as though it would not. In their anger and resentment, normally law-abiding citizens turned to mob violence.

Red Army soldiers man an antiaircraft gun on the roof of the Hotel Moskva in central Moscow. German aircraft did strike, but the effects were minimal.

Some not only sought vengeance but found convenient scapegoats. There was an ugly outbreak of anti-Semitism—the very existence of which the Party vehemently denied, but which had long lurked beneath the surface of popular sentiment. Nor was it confined to the mob. From time to time, loyal communist cadres, incensed by peers who had fled, gave vent to similar feelings. As a college administrator, it might have been presumed that V. Voronkov did not share such prejudices, but he was outraged on the day of the “Great Panic” when “a crowd of Jewish ‘teachers’ burst into my office in the morning, as well as graduate students, researchers, employees and librarians. Their lips were trembling, they were all white, the scoundrels. They had been very happy to be AUGUST 2021

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making two thousand a month. They were demanding that I sign their papers for evacuation. I turned them down; I was disgusted by this herd of short-legged fat faces.” He directed rage, too, at colleagues who had already deserted the institution: “The director stole the car, chairs of departments left their doors open, with all the students’ papers, unfinished paperwork. Scoundrels, cowards.” By now even basic foodstuffs were scarce. On one occasion Voronkov spent an entire day waiting in a series of food lines, which he described as “as long as giant pythons and angry like a hundred hyenas.” It took him two and a half hours to buy a couple of pounds of bagels; three hours for one pound of meat; and, after an even longer time waiting for butter, he was exasperated when the shop ran out entirely “because of damned women who produced 12-15 ‘workers’ cards and took 2-3 kilos [about four to seven pounds] each. I was ready to bite people.” The Soviet regime’s inability to communicate with its subjects except in language bound to deepen anxiety and distrust was cruelly exposed. Alexei Shakhurin, commis-

sar for the aviation industry, was taken aback when a group of workers—ordered to find their own way to their reassembled factory in the Urals—told him that they had neither been paid nor advised how to find homes, buy food, or educate their children so far from Moscow. Shakhurin did his best to reassure them, but insisted that the priority was to get the new planes built. No one contradicted him, but one woman, distraught to the point of tears, came up to him, crying out: “We thought everyone had left, and you’d abandoned us!” Shakhurin raised his voice above the hubbub: “If you mean the government and the military, then no one has left. Everyone is here. Everyone is at his post, but we are sending the factories to places where they will be able to go on producing modern aeroplanes for our army.” This evidently calmed the atmosphere. Anastas Mikoyan, the Politburo member charged with overseeing the relocation of key industries, was another minister to brave the workers’ wrath while attempting to quell unrest. At a car factory named after Stalin, he found the director and a senior trade union

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At some point during those critical hours, Stalin made it clear that he would remain in Moscow.

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Underequipped Wehrmacht troops struggle in the brutal Soviet winter. German propaganda text on the back of the original photo proclaimed: “Blizzards rage in the East, but cannot break our soldiers’ will.” But the weather proved to be a prepotent adversary.

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official having a furious argument with a crowd of several thousand angry employees. When they saw Mikoyan, the workers turned on him, demanding: “Why has the government run away?” Mikoyan tried to soothe them. “Stalin and Molotov are both here,” he explained, “The ministries have left because the front line has come close to Moscow. Now you must be calm. Please stop attacking the director and go home.” Reassured at last, the crowd dispersed. IN THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH of the panic, Stalin had been advised to leave Moscow. Instead, he took up residence in the bomb-proof security of a Metro station, where an office and living quarters had been prepared for him in a set of cubicles sealed off from public gaze. Meanwhile, on the assumption he would leave the capital, his team readied a special train to take him to Kuibyshev, where a facsimile of his Kremlin apartment had been assembled in an underground bunker near the banks of the Volga. Four Douglas DC-3 aircraft were on standby in case he preferred to get there by air. But, at some point during those critical hours, the Soviet Union’s commander in chief made it clear that he would remain in Moscow. On October 19, Stalin firmly moved to restore discipline, placing the capital under a “state of siege.” The public was reminded that “violators of order will be quickly brought to answer before the court of the military tribunal, and provocateurs, spies, and other enemy agents attempting to undermine order will be shot on the spot.” That was not an idle threat. The NKVD was handed the task not only of defending the city from the enemy but also its own citizens. One of its members, Mikhail Ivanovitch—a sharpshooter charged with defending the Kremlin’s Spassky Gate from a perch on the second floor of the GUM Department store—did not hesitate: “It was necessary, absolutely necessary, to establish order. And yes, we did shoot people who refused to quit shops and offices where food and other goods were stored.” It was merciless but it worked. Irina Krauze was much relieved. On October 20, she noted: “Order is being restored: enterprises are working, police are very focused on checking passports, [and] there is a bit of food in the shops. The newspapers write about the trial of a group of panic-mongers and deserters.”

Chaos and lawlessness did not abate overnight, but within days Stalinist order was restored. The city did not run out of food, shops and kiosks reopened, workers were paid, trams and trains began running more or less on time, and theaters and cinemas reopened. THAT DID NOT MEAN, THOUGH, that the capital felt secure. The enemy was still closing in. But as autumn turned to winter, the Germans’ progress was tortuous, grueling, and blood-soaked. The troops slogged forward in worsening weather. Constant rain turned roads into glutinous quagmires. And when snow arrived, the temperature fell to 20 degrees below zero. For lack of adequate clothing, thousands of German troops succumbed to frostbite. Many died. The weather’s effects were not the cause of the crisis facing Hitler’s frontline commanders, however, but a symptom. By November they faced a critical shortfall in armor, trucks, spare parts, and fuel. They were also losing men—killed, wounded, or taken prisoner—at an alarming rate. Hitler’s hubris had concealed a catastrophic failure of forethought, planning, and logistical organization. Moreover, the closer the Germans got to Moscow, the more desperately the Red Army fought. Coercion played its part—“cowards” were executed in droves—but for the most part Stalin’s men and women fought with the fanatical resolve of patriots who knew that the Motherland’s survival was at stake. That for Russia, it was “do or die.” It is possible that a few German soldiers caught a glimpse of the Moscow skyline in the far distance, but their panzers never got closer than 20 miles from the city. By early December, after five months, three weeks, and six days, Operation Barbarossa reached its fateful terminus. Retreat became inevitable. Moscow would not be threatened again. H Soviet troops parade in Red Square on November 7, 1941; in a symbolic display of resolve, they then marched straight to the front.

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LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD Lieutenant Jackie Robinson offered a glimpse of his greatness to come when he stood up against lingering injustices in the wartime army By Joseph Connor

In 1944, U.S. Army lieutenant Jackie Robinson (right) refused to move to the back of a shuttle bus at an army base in Texas, initiating a series of events that resulted in his court-martial.

n July 6, 1944, Jack R. “Jackie” Robinson, a 25-year-old African American lieutenant w ith the 761st Tank Batta lion, boarded a shuttle bus in front of the Black officers’ club at Camp Hood, Texas, and took a seat halfway down the aisle. Five stops later, the civilian driver ordered him to the back of the bus, as was the custom in states that enforced racial segregation. Robinson refused to move; he was on a U.S. Army base and saw no reason why he couldn’t sit where he wanted. When Robinson didn’t budge, the driver promised to make trouble once the bus reached its destination. He was true to his word. Aided by irate civilians and later by officious army officers, the driver made plenty of trouble for the young lieutenant, as Robinson’s stand against discrimination spiraled into a cause célèbre that threatened his army career. It also jeopardized a future place in history that no Black athlete of his day would have dared dream of. Robinson was familiar with racism. Born in 1919 and raised in a predominantly White neighborhood in Pasadena, California, he had endured insults and racial slurs from his neighbors. Standing 5 foot 11 and weighing 180 pounds, he blossomed into a standout athlete at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), lettering in football, baseball, AUGUST 2021

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basketball, and track. On the gridiron, he won nationwide fame as a running back and punt returner, earning favorable comparisons to Jim Thorpe, the Olympic gold medalist, professional football player, and major league baseball player widely acknowledged at the time as America’s finest all-around athlete. After Robinson left UCLA in 1941, the next stop should have been the National Football League, but the league barred African Americans, so Robinson played minor league football with the integrated Honolulu Bears and Los Angeles Bulldogs until he was drafted into the army on April 3, 1942. The military that Robinson entered was expanding rapidly to fight an all-out war, jumping from 334,473 men and women in 1939 to 3.9 million in 1942 and peaking at 12.2 million in 1945. One of the challenges facing the armed forces was the role of African Americans. Black men had fought in every war since the Revolution, but the armed services didn’t treat them the same as White men, and segregation was the rule. In December 1941, the army had 99,206 Black soldiers serving in segregated units commanded by White field-grade officers. The navy had 5,026 African American sailors,

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A star football player for UCLA, Robinson was already a nationally known athlete by the time he was drafted into the army in 1942.

but until April 1942, Black enlistees weren’t allowed any role other than as messmen serving meals, shining shoes, and making beds for White officers. The Marine Corps had no Black members; it wouldn’t begin accepting African Americans until June 1942. On military bases, post exchanges (PXs) and service clubs were often segregated. Even the American Red Cross, which collected blood for the military, kept Black and White blood donations separate so, it assured the public, “those receiving transfusions may be given plasma from blood of their own race.” The Selective Service Act of 1940 forbade discrimination based on race; additionally, a 1941 executive order from President Franklin D. Roosevelt prohibited government agencies from racial discrimination. However, since 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court had held that segregation wasn’t discrimination, so the military’s practices passed legal muster. Civil rights leaders pushed for integration, but the armed services dug in their heels. In September 1940, the War Department insisted that segregation in the military “has been proven satisfactory over a long period of years” and that any attempt to force integration “would produce situations destructive to morale and detrimental to the preparations for national defense.” A War Department official told African American newspaper publishers and editors in 1941 that “the Army is not a sociological laboratory.” Expediency was used to justify this stance: in December 1941, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall contended that the “settlement of vexing racial problems cannot be permitted to complicate the tremendous task of the War Department.” Integration of the armed services would have to await the end of the war. Soldiers’ views broke down according to race. A 1943 army survey showed that nearly 90 percent of White respondents favored segregated units and service clubs, but fewer than 40 percent of African American soldiers agreed. Off base, local laws governed. These laws varied from state to state, but in the South, they often mandated strict racial separation. The experience of soldiers being shipped through El Paso, Texas, in 1944 showed the farcical way these edicts often played out. Black G.I.s, not allowed to enter a restaurant near the train depot, sat outside eating “cold handouts,” Time magazine reported, while they watched German prisoners inside enjoying a hot meal. Segregationist regulations were called “Jim Crow,” named for a 19th-century minstrel show character that depicted African Americans in a demeaning way. A flashpoint for racial tension was bus service at military bases. Soldiers, both Black and White, relied on buses, usually operated by civilian companies. Shuttles transported soldiers inside sprawling bases, and buses were necessary to travel to the nearest towns, often miles from camp. Civilians working on military bases also rode these buses. In areas where Jim Crow ruled, Black soldiers were relegated to the back of the bus, even on army bases. “The South,” Time reported, was “prepared to back up its Jim Crow laws with force.” On July 28, 1942, in Beaumont, Texas, police officers beat and shot Private Charles J. Reco for refusing to leave his seat in the White section of a bus. On March 13, 1944, a driver in Alexandria, Louisiana, shot and killed Private Edward Green for failing to move to the back of the bus. Violence may have been isolated, but the indignities weren’t. In

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1943, the Reverend James L. Horace, an African American minister from Chicago, conducted his own investigation, riding the buses on and near nine southern military bases. He found the treatment of Black soldiers to be abysmal. At Fort Benning, Georgia, for example, drivers sometimes refused to pick up African American G.I.s, and at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, surly bus drivers “seem to have been urged by the enemy to destroy Negro morale,” Horace wrote. Reporter Orrin C. Evans told of an African American sergeant who said he avoided buses at all costs because he didn’t want to “get my head whipped” by a racist driver. Even the military police (MPs) got involved, arresting Sergeant Joe Louis, the world heavy weight boxing champion, on March 22, 1944, near Camp Sibert, Alabama, for entering a bus depot’s Whites-only section to make a phone call. DESPITE THE MILITARY’S racial policies, Jackie Robinson adapted well to the army. He was selected for Officer Candidate School and commissioned on January 28, 1943. In April 1944, he was assigned to Camp Hood, Texas, and the all-Black 761st Tank Battalion, an outfit that called itself the “Black Panthers.” As a platoon leader, Robinson quickly earned the respect of his men and the admiration of his 36-year-old White battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Paul L. Bates. The 761st was being groomed for combat in Europe, but it wasn’t a sure thing that Robinson would go overseas. In 1937, he had broken his right ankle playing football. The injury had not healed properly, and Robinson had aggravated it on an army obstacle course in 1943. He had bone chips in the ankle, causing pain and swelling. In January 1944, an army medical board had found him fit only for limited duty and recommended against strenuous use of his right leg. He was ordered to McCloskey General Hospital in Temple, Texas, on June 21, 1944, for a final decision on his fitness for combat. On July 6, while still being assessed at the hospital, Robinson traveled to Camp Hood to visit friends at the Black officers’ club. A teetotaler, he arrived at 7:30 p.m. and left at 10 p.m., planning to take a bus to the base’s central station and then hop on another for the 30-mile trip back to the hospital. Robinson boarded a shuttle driven by a civilian, Milton Renegar, at Stop No. 23. Rob-

inson saw a familiar face and sat next to her in the midsection of the bus. She was Virginia Jones, the wife of another Black officer in the 761st and a woman Robinson described as “very fair” and often mistaken for White. Five stops later, at Stop No. 18, Renegar ordered Robinson to the back of the bus. Renegar expected White women to board at the following stops, he said later, and didn’t think they’d want to sit near a Black man. Texas law required African Americans to sit in the back, but Robinson refused to move. He grudgingly obeyed Jim Crow rules while off post, he said, but not on an army base. When Robinson stayed in his seat, Renegar vowed that Robinson would pay for his defiance when they reached the depot. After the bus arrived at the station, passenger Elizabeth Poitevint scolded Robinson.

Robinson entered a segregated U.S. Army of limited opportunities— though he, like the Black soldier at top, was selected for Officer Candidate School. Robinson passed his candidate evaluations and was commissioned in January 1943. Above: Members of the 93rd Infantry Division, the army’s first all-Black combat division of World War II, sit at attention after finishing basic training at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

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told him “a n----r lieutenant” was causing trouble, and another bystander demanded Elwood do something since Whites had been “cussed out by a n----r.” The situation was volatile, and Elwood decided to take Robinson to the camp’s MP guard room to sort things out. Robinson was willing to go because he was confident he could show he had acted well within his rights. As Robinson sat in Elwood’s patrol car, Private Ben W. Muckelrath, a 27-year-old witness to the exchanges, asked Elwood if he had “that n----r lieutenant” in his car. Robinson heard him and erupted, “I’m an officer and God damn you, you better address me as one.” Elwood drove Robinson and Muckelrath to the guard room, and the other witnesses followed later. At the guard room, MP Sergeant William L. Painter asked what had happened, and Muckelrath gave an account that portrayed Robinson as profane and out of control at the depot. “That’s not so,” Robinson said, and he warned Muckelrath that if he ever called him “n----r” again, he’d break him in two. Painter summoned the officer of the day, Captain Peelor L. Wigginton. Robinson told Wigginton how offensive Muckelrath’s racial slur was: “Captain, any private, you, or any general, calls me a n----r, and I’ll break him in two.” Muckelrath denied using the term, and Wigginton seemed to believe him. Wigginton called in Captain Gerald M. Bear, the assistant provost marshal. When Bear arrived, Robinson followed him into the guard room, anxious to tell his side of the story, but Bear told him to stay out.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL BATES, Robinson’s battalion commander, tried to protect the young lieutenant. Known for his loyalty to his men, Bates had recently declined a promotion because it would have meant leaving the 761st. Bates sent Robinson home to California on leave, hoping the matter would blow over if Robinson stayed out of sight. Bates’s ploy didn’t work, and on July 17,

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Until 1942, African Americans in the navy were restricted to mess duties. Here Black enlisted men serve White sailors in Hastings, Nebraska.

“Nobody comes in the room until I tell him,” Bear said. Muckelrath was already in the room and allowed to stay, and Bear seemed to want his account, not Robinson’s. Robinson went into the receiving room, which was separated from the guard room by an open door, and stood by the door. Several times, he interrupted Muckelrath to “get him to correct his statement.” Bear ordered Robinson to sit in a chair on the far end of the receiving room, away from the door, so that he couldn’t interrupt. Robinson responded, Bear claimed, by bowing, saluting sloppily, and saying, “O.K., Sir” in a sarcastic tone. Bear walked to the building next door to call for a stenographer to take statements from Robinson and the witnesses. When Bear returned, Robinson was outside the building chatting with another soldier. Bear saw this as disobedience of his order to stay in the receiving room. It was an odd position to take because Bear later admitted his order was designed only to keep Robinson out of hearing range of the conversations inside the guard room, and standing outside the building certainly accomplished that. Nevertheless, Bear took offense and ordered Robinson back into the receiving room. Bear’s demeanor alarmed Robinson. Throughout the encounter, Robinson later testified, Bear acted “very uncivil toward me; and he did not seem to recognize me as an officer at all.” A stenographer, Mrs. Wilson, arrived at the guard room and took Robinson’s statement. After she had transcribed it, Robinson said, she and Bear became angry when he pointed out errors in the document. Bear, however, said the issue wasn’t with Mrs. Wilson but with Robinson’s conduct while the statement was being taken. After Bear had told Robinson to slow down so the stenographer could record all his words, Robinson had spoken in an unusually slow and mocking manner, Bear claimed. Bear had several MPs escort Robinson back to the hospital in an army truck.

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“Well, listen buddy, you ought to know where you should sit on a bus,” she told him. She worked at a Camp Hood PX and had no love for Black soldiers, later telling investigators, “I had to wait on them during the day, but I didn’t have to sit with them on the bus.” Renegar demanded to see Robinson’s army identification card so he could report him, but Robinson refused to show it. As tempers flared, bystanders gathered, and Renegar told them, “this n----r is making trouble.” Robinson warned Renegar to “stop f---in’ with me,” and Bevlia B. Younger, the depot dispatcher, called the MPs. MP Corporal George A. Elwood arrived at about 10:20 p.m. Younger

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1944, army prosecutors charged Robinson with two offenses, neither of which related to the original incident on the bus. The first alleged that he had acted in an “insolent, impertinent and rude manner” to Bear by “contemptuously bowing to [Bear] and giving him several sloppy salutes.” The second charge claimed he had disobeyed Bear’s order to stay seated “on a chair on the far side of the receiving room.” If convicted, Robinson faced possible dismissal from the army, the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge. For the army, the case came at a bad time. Two days after the incident, on July 8, 1944, the army had formally outlawed segregation on buses at military bases (see “Right of Way,” page 45). “Restricting personnel to certain sections of such transportation because of race,” the directive stated, “will not be per-

mitted either on or off a post, camp, or station, regardless of local civilian custom.” That same day, in Durham, North Carolina, a bus driver killed Private Booker T. Spicely after he had balked at going to the back of the bus. The army was in the awkward position of prosecuting charges against Robinson that arose from the enforcement of a Jim Crow rule that it now condemned and that had cost Spicely his life. One person who realized the case’s volatility was Colonel Edward A. Kimball, commander of the 5th Armored Group, which included the 761st. On July 17, 1944, he phoned Colonel Walter D. Buie, chief of staff of XXIII Corps at Camp Bowie, Texas, and begged him to send an independent investigator. “This is a very serious case, and it’s full of dynamite,” Kimball explained, adding that the bus situa-

Above, left and right: Busing on and around American army bases became a racial flashpoint during the war. In Jim Crow states, White citizens were accustomed to preferred treatment, while Black soldiers often resigned themselves to second-rate facilities and the back of the bus. Below: Robinson’s refusal to passively accept discrimination at Camp Hood, Texas, led to his trial—and acquittal.

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Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, fulfilling the dream of Dodger general manager Branch Rickey (bottom, right) to integrate major league baseball.

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tion at Camp Hood “is not at all good” and that he feared “any officer in charge of troops at this Post might be prejudiced.” Buie refused to help. Kimball was right about the case’s explosiveness. Robinson was a well-known athlete, and civil rights leaders and the African American press were keeping a close eye on Jim Crow incidents on military bases. Truman Gibson, a high-ranking War Department official, told an aide to “follow the [Robinson] case carefully,” and the army fielded

ROBINSON’S COURT-MARTIAL took place at Camp Hood on August 2, 1944, before nine officers, ranging in rank from captain to colonel. The trial transcript gives no detailed information about the judges, but historian Adam Kama has determined that two were African American. Robinson was represented by Lieutenants William Cline and Robert H. Johnson. Because the charges were limited to Robinson’s conduct in the guard room, the judges would hear nothing about the incident on the bus and little about events at the depot. The prosecution called Bear, who described Robinson’s conduct on July 6 as disrespectful and disobedient, and Wigginton, who corroborated Bear’s testimony. Robinson took the stand and denied Bear’s account. He also told the judges just how hateful Muckelrath’s racial epithet was. Robinson said his grandmother, a former slave, had told him that “the definition of the word was a low, uncouth person,” before adding, “I don’t consider that I am low and uncouth…. I am a Negro, but not a n----r.” Robinson had an ace in the hole: Lieutenant Colonel Bates, his commanding officer. Bates testified on Robinson’s behalf and vouched for him as an exemplary officer. Two other officers from the 761st, Captain James R. Lawson and Lieutenant Harold Kingsley, also supported Robinson’s character. The trial began at 1:45 p.m. and ended at 6 p.m., and the judges acquitted Robinson on both counts. Although Robinson had been cleared, his military career was effectively over. Two weeks earlier, on July 21, 1944, army doctors had decided that his ankle injury was permanent, and the 761st would go to war without him. The Black Panthers would fight in Europe from October 31, 1944, through May 6, 1945, and earn a Presidential Unit Citation. With his outfit gone and a bad taste lingering from the court-martial, Robinson asked to be discharged because of his ankle injury. The army sent him to Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky, while his request was processed.

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inquiries about the matter from Senators Sheridan Downey and Hiram Johnson, both from Robinson’s home state of California.

Every April 15, major league baseball players all wear Robinson’s number 42 to honor the man who broke the color barrier.

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AT CAMP BRECKINRIDGE, Robinson saw a Black soldier, Ted Alexander, tossing a baseball, and they struck up a conversation. Major league baseball barred Black players, but Alexander told Robinson there was good money to be made playing in the Negro Leagues, a network of all-Black professional teams. Alexander had pitched in the Negro Leagues since 1938, most recently for the Kansas City Monarchs. Although Robinson had made his name playing football, the idea of professional baseball intrigued him. After he was honorably discharged on November 28, 1944, Robinson wrote to the Monarchs. The team signed him, and he played the 1945 season for Kansas City. Robinson’s play caught the attention of Branch Rickey, general manager of the major league Brooklyn Dodgers. Major league owners had a long-standing agreement to keep baseball lilywhite, but the Dodgers intended to change that, and Rickey was searching for the right player to break the color barrier. In addition to a talented athlete, Rickey wanted a man of unimpeachable character and firm inner strength. He knew that player would have to endure the vilest of racial slurs from fans and opposing players and, in some cities, he would be barred from the hotels and restaurants where his White teammates stayed and ate. Rickey conducted an extensive investigation of Robinson, a probe that undoubtedly included his service record. Satisfied with the results, he signed Robinson to play the 1946 season with the Montreal Royals, a Dodger farm team. Robinson excelled in Montreal and earned a promotion. On Opening Day, April 15, 1947, at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, he was in the starting lineup for the Dodgers, batting second and playing first base, the first Black man to play major league ball since 1884. Surgery after the 1947 season fixed the ankle injury that had led to his army discharge, and he went on to a stellar 10-year career in which he batted .311 and helped lead the Dodgers to six National League pennants and one world championship. Robinson became an inspiration for African Americans, and his success opened the door for other Black players. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. When Robinson sat before the nine judges at Camp Hood, he couldn’t have known just how much was at stake. A conviction would have blemished his record and made him an easy target for those who wanted the major leagues to stay as White as their baseballs. Rickey would have looked elsewhere for his pioneer. But Robinson was acquitted, and the episode revealed a man of courage and conviction with the moxie to stand tall for human dignity—exactly what Rickey was looking for. H

Right of Way When Colonel George A. Horkan took command of Camp Lee, Virginia, in February 1943, the camp had a racial problem, and Horkan knew he had to do something about it. The civilian buses transporting soldiers to and from nearby Petersburg, Virginia, were a major source of friction. Drivers often refused to pick up African American soldiers, and when they did, they sent them to the back of the bus. This second-class treatment grated on Black G.I.s. Of Camp Lee’s 35,000 soldiers, 6,000 were African American. “I knew something had to be done,” the 49-year-old Horkan told a reporter in early 1944. Virginia law required segregation on buses, but Horkan, a Georgia native, came up with a novel solution. He persuaded the bus company to reserve buses for soldiers only, ensuring there would be no civilian passengers to insist that Jim Crow segregation rules be enforced. Horkan also set up an integrated soldiers-only depot in Petersburg to guarantee that buses picked up all soldiers, regardless of race. He wasn’t finished. While stopped at a traffic light in Petersburg, Horkan saw five white sergeants harassing two Black privates, and he took the sergeants’ names. The next day, he called them into his office and handed them a knife with orders to cut the stripes off their uniforms. They were now privates. Word spread, and soldiers at Camp Lee knew Horkan meant business. In early 1944, Orrin C. Evans, an African American reporter for the Philadelphia Record, toured 10 military bases in seven southern states and interviewed scores of Black soldiers. At Camp Lee, he wrote, “I found morale unusually high, and virtually no evidence of race friction.” Evans credited Horkan, by then a brigadier general. The army took notice, and in May 1944, it approvingly sent Evans’s article to base commanders throughout the South. Two months later, on July 8, 1944, the army formally prohibited segregation on buses at military bases. To Horkan, he had simply done his job. “Whenever you find a camp… where there’s constant racial friction,” he said, “you know the man at the top isn’t right.” — Joseph Connor AUGUST 2021

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WEAPONS MANUAL AMERICA’S F6F HELLCAT FIGHTER ILLUSTRATION BY JIM LAURIER

TOOTH AND CLAW DURING THE INITIAL YEARS of the Pacific War, Japan’s A6M “Zero” ruled the skies. America’s carrier-based air fleet couldn’t match the Japanese naval fighter’s speed, climb rate, or maneuverability. Enter the F6F Hellcat—Grumman’s upgraded F4F Wildcat, with heavier armor plating, a more powerful engine, greater range, and more potent guns—a sturdy and dependable single-seat carrier fighter that decidedly tipped the balance of power toward the U.S. The Hellcat entered action in September 1943 and immediately began exploiting the Zero’s biggest weaknesses—its deficient armor and vulnerable fuel tanks. The F6F achieved unparalleled combat success, ending the war with a final kill ratio of 19:1, while 307 navy Hellcat pilots became aces with five or more victories.

The plane’s straightforward design enabled cost-effective and rapid manufacturing; Grumman built 12,275 Hellcats in just two and a half years, including a recordbreaking rate of one per hour during its production peak. The fighter’s steady handling allowed pilots to quickly become proficient in the cockpit—a critical consideration as the U.S. rushed green pilots through training. In mid-1945, the navy replaced the Hellcat with Grumman’s F8F Bearcat as its primary carrier-based fighter. —Larry Porges

IRON CURTAIN

SIX-SHOOTER

Grumman placed a premium on protecting its airplanes’ pilots. More than 210 pounds of armor plating and a bullet-resistant windscreen shielded the cockpit, while two additional large armor sheets flanked the oil tank toward the engine.

Just outside the wing folds were the Hellcat’s offensive batteries: two sets of three Browning .50-cal. machine guns, each boasting a capacity of 400 rounds.

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AMERICAN F6F-5 HELLCAT

Crew: 1 / Length: 33 ft. 7 in. / Wingspan: 42 ft. 10 in. / Max. speed: 386 mph / Ceiling: 37,000 ft. / Range: 1,040 mi. / Max. weight: 15,413 lb. / Grumman produced only two basic versions of the Hellcat, the F6F-3 and—amped up with extra horsepower—1944’s F6F-5.

USS Hornet crewmen move a Hellcat, wings folded, in 1945.

THE COMPETITION BRITISH FAIREY FIREFLY

Crew: 2 / Length: 37 ft. 11 in. / Wingspan: 41 ft. 2 in. / Max. speed: 380 mph / Ceiling: 31,900 ft. / Range: 760 mi. / Max. weight: 15,615 lb. / The versatile carrier-based Firefly two-seater served Britain in both Europe and the Pacific.

JAPANESE MITSUBISHI A6M5

Crew: 1 / Length: 29 ft. 11 in. / Wingspan: 36 ft. 1 in. / Max. speed: 351 mph / Ceiling: 38,520 ft. / Range: 1,194 mi. / Max. weight: 6,025 lb. / Japan’s “Zero” was the first carrier-borne fighter with the range and performance ability to take on land-based opponents.

SEALING THE DEAL The three fuel tanks—an 87.5-gallon one in each of the two wings and a 60-gallon tank under the pilot’s seat—were all self-sealing, increasing the odds a Hellcat could take a hit without a catastrophic explosion. One pilot reported landing with “mostly holes where the airplane used to be.”

IN THE FOLD The Hellcat had the largest wing area—334 square feet—of any singleengine World War II fighter, making slow and safe carrier approach speeds possible. The wings folded up against the fuselage for efficient stowage, a technique that increased aircraft capacity on carriers by 50 percent.

PHOTO: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

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ALPHA HISTORICA/ALAMY; OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF THE GEORGE C. MARSHALL FOUNDATION, LEXINGTON, VIRGINIA

Clad in temporary colonel’s garb in this signed photo, lawyer Alfred T. McCormack acknowledged the huge contribution of William F. Friedman (opposite) to military intelligence. McCormack himself played a significant but little-remembered role in the field.

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MAGIC ACT ALPHA HISTORICA/ALAMY; OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF THE GEORGE C. MARSHALL FOUNDATION, LEXINGTON, VIRGINIA

How a Wall Street lawyer saved G.I.s’ lives By Nicholas Reynolds

he two paragraphs near the bottom of the Washington Post’s July 13, 1956, editorial page were easy to miss. They celebrated the life of a man named Alfred T. McCormack who had just died of cancer at the age of 55. The anonymous writer wanted the public to know that during World War II, “commanders from the man in the White House down to the platoon leader stood in his debt, whether they knew it or not, for that rare and useful tool of war, knowledge of the enemy.” This was a tribute that precious few American intelligence officers ever received. Just who was McCormack, and what had he accomplished? The backstory has “Magic” in it. That is what some called the work of a handful of brilliant codebreakers—mostly civilian mathematicians working for the U.S. Army—who, with few resources other than their own persistence and a little help from their counterparts in the U.S. Navy, broke Japanese diplomatic codes in the 1930s. It was an amazing achievement, one that made it possible for them to read secret traffic between Tokyo and Japan’s embassies overseas. The codebreakers decrypted a few hundred messages a week, which then had to be translated from Japanese to English. Army and navy intelligence officers, who were not codebreakers but generalists, would then decide which messages were worth further processing—usually no more than 25 a day—and distribute them to a handful of senior-most officials, starting with the White House. Each official usually saw nothing but the translated message itself, without any analysis or even any notes, and could not keep a copy to peruse at leisure; he had to absorb the message’s significance on the fly and rely on his memory to compare it to earlier messages.

Friedman led the team that mastered a Japanese cipher machine, revealing secret diplomatic communications.

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IN 1941 THERE WAS NO DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE—only the Department of the Navy and the Department of War, each responsible for its own service. (War was responsible for the U.S. Army and the Army Air Forces.) Frank Knox, the Navy Secretary, reacted to the attack on Pearl Harbor by dashing off to Hawaii to conduct a whirlwind investigation. It was as if the former journalist was still working on deadline. His breathless report started the process of apportioning blame. Secretary Stimson was from a more process-oriented profession: the law, as practiced on Wall Street. He thought about what had happened and what the army should do. One of his priorities in those early days of the war was Magic and how best to harness its full potential. It was, he confided to his diary at the end of the month, “a matter I have had on my mind for some time.” Calling in Brigadier General Raymond E. Lee, the army’s senior intelligence officer, along with his

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Both at the time and in retrospect, Magic was enormously important in the run-up to the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Most readers of the decrypted messages could see that Japan was preparing for war with the United States from the dispatches its foreign office sent to its embassy in Washington. But no one saw any decrypts that indicated exactly when and how the war would start. After the attack, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson wondered how well the codebreakers were doing their work, or if their process was faulty. Today there is a consensus that nothing in Magic pointed to the attack. But in late 1941, the secretary did not know and wanted answers. The resulting inquiry would launch a quiet revolution in military intelligence—one largely directed by Alfred McCormack.

personal advisor and troubleshooter, John J. McCloy, Stimson devoted time to the issue on the last day of the year. Had the army fully exploited Magic before Pearl Harbor? They weren’t sure, but their answer boiled down to “maybe not.” They now wanted to pay closer attention to the intercepts. Stimson had lured McCloy, whom he affectionately called his “imp of Satan,” to serve at his side in Washington—first on an ad-hoc basis and then as assistant secretary of war. Even more than Lee, the cheerful, tireless McCloy was the right man to engage on the issue of Magic. The New York lawyer had a strong interest in intelligence, having dealt with the legal fallout from sabotage by German agents in America during World War I. Like Stimson, McCloy nurtured the belief that it was best to rely on lawyers to take on the most difficult tasks of administration and government. Their training had supposedly sharpened their minds and taught them to see both sides of an issue; they thought of themselves as objective and incorruptible. The lawyers at McCloy’s firm, Cravath, Swaine & Moore, were handpicked from elite law schools. Thanks to the complicated suits they litigated—mostly on behalf of the largest corporations in America—Cravath lawyers were not afraid to roll up their sleeves for 70 hours a week and immerse themselves in oceans of data to find the grains of truth that mattered.

FROM LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; W. EUGENE SMITH/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (left) and assistant secretary John J. McCloy (right) were both powerful New York lawyers with a firm belief in all that the legal elite could achieve. When they needed a man for a difficult job, they turned to one of the managing partners at McCloy’s firm: Alfred McCormack.

REUTERS/ANDREW KELLY/ALAMY

FROM LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; W. EUGENE SMITH/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

Magic had already generated thousands of pages of files; a Cravath lawyer could find patterns and meaning that others had missed. McCloy recommended one lawyer in particular, Alfred McCormack, “who would have the organizing ability…that we wanted.” By the end of the December 31 meeting, Stimson had authorized McCloy to summon McCormack to Washington and offer him a job. HE WAS ANOTHER INSPIRED choice. A Brooklynite, McCormack had received a Phi Beta Kappa key from Princeton and emerged from Columbia Law School as a budding member of the country’s legal elite. After clerking for Supreme Court Justice Harlan F. Stone, he went on to practice law on Wall Street, becoming a partner at Cravath in 1935 and then a managing partner—one of the men who ran the firm. Even during the Depression, a partner at Cravath could not avoid becoming wealthy, and McCormack was no exception. In 1936 he was able to purchase a 250-acre estate in Connecticut. But, while hardly an incubator for the New Deal, Cravath had a tradition of public service. When Stimson and McCloy reached out from Washington early in January 1942, McCormack did not hesitate to make the journey to the capital to hear their proposal. Their exact words are lost to history, but the pitch amounted to: study the problem, come up with a solution, and implement it. McCormack’s partners had long suspected that he was as interested in military history as in the law, and they were not surprised when he resigned from Cravath to do war work he could not discuss. On the first day of his new job, McCloy escorted him to the secretary’s suite in the utilitarian Munitions Building on Constitution Avenue that served as the army’s headquarters until the Pentagon opened one year later. Stimson took the time to welcome the man they had selected to turn what he called “the Magic papers” into “a really useful basis for inferring what the enemy was going to do.” With the title of Special Assistant to the Secretary, McCormack agreed to create a small “Special Section” in army intelligence. Though vague, his title implied that he answered only to the secretary himself—a fact that seasoned bureaucrats would grasp, making them far more likely to cooperate. If McCormack had any second thoughts or doubts about his ability to do the job, he did

not express them. He believed he would succeed as long as he had the secretary’s support. McCormack had the physical presence to match his legal brilliance. Not a small man at about six feet and 220 pounds, he filled out the dark suits he favored. With a full head of brown hair conservatively parted close to the middle of his scalp, he gazed intently through round, horn-rimmed glasses, often with a hint of a smile. Those who matched his brilliance liked him, no matter their own status. Those who did not would be shown the door; McCormack did not tolerate inferior work. Like McCloy, who seemed to never age, the 41-yearold had boundless energy. For the next two months he put in long hours surveying the situation: studying back materials, investigating how the army processed intercepted messages, and regularly conferring with McCloy and military intelligence officers. It was not unlike preparing a complicated legal case. McCormack’s training made him a formidable researcher and a compelling, fastidious writer. He loved words—especially his own words—and enjoyed writing. He even liked reading his compositions back to himself and his colleagues. Three weeks after starting work, he reflected in a thoughtful memorandum for General Lee that Magic enabled Washington to “look behind the enemy’s eyes, into his emotions and his brains” and see “that he is a formidable adversary, cunning, patient, infinitely painstaking, highly intelligent and wholly un-moral.” (In contrast, he thought the United States was “without a clear idea of either its ultimate purpose or its

Still in existence today, McCloy and McCormack’s firm dates to 1819 and prides itself in creating lawyers with a “willingess to work hard,” who are able to give “meticulous attention to the quality of the work.”

McCormack’s partners had long suspected that he was as interested in military history as in the law.

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immediate objectives,” and unprepared to translate “its verbal thunderbolts” into action—biting criticism of U.S. policy from the new hire, clearly not a Roosevelt devotee.) McCormack’s intent was not to point fingers but to puzzle out how to make the best use of Magic going forward. His goals, he said, were to “examine and study the past…for any light it may throw on current and future problems” and “to make sure that the material is used with maximum effectiveness.” He looked at the separation between army codebreakers and the intelligence officers who worked in different chains of command, and the absence of a feedback loop between the two offices. Army intelligence was not telling the codebreakers what to intercept and process.

Instead, it was simply taking in what the codebreakers sent over, having trusted them to decide. McCormack saw the folly of sending raw intercepts to busy decision-makers: “The daily reporting of current messages was only one part of the job; the real job was to dig into the material, study it in light of outside information, follow up leads that it gave, and bring out of it the intelligence that did not appear on the surface.” He knew from years of experience with “masses of material” that you had to comb them “over and over” to glean their true value. Drawing on other sources, checking facts, and identifying trends, research would form the basis for the kinds of reports senior leadership needed. McCormack thought that army codebreaking should stay where it had been for years—as part of the War Department. Nevertheless, he came perilously close to stating that intelligence was too important to be left to most military officers. He thought that regular officers seemed to have “a certain supine attitude toward intelligence” work and “disagreed with the notion that any reserve officer, or [even] any civilian who had been graduated from college was qualified to handle cryptanalytic intelligence.” He wanted men with stronger analytical qualifications—people who could start with a lot of raw data and find trends in it. Like McCloy, he believed the ideal candidates were “topflight young lawyers, trained in research and the preparation of cases.”

U.S. ARMY

Military and civilian codebreakers with the army’s Signal Intelligence Service—here at Arlington Hall, the service’s home for most of the war—concentrated on Japanese codes, including the diplomatic code.

FROM TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; NATIONAL CRYPTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION/NATIONAL ARCHIVES

U.S. ARMY

Lawyers, he wrote, “are better fitted for intelligence work of the type that must be done in the War Department, i.e., what the Army calls ‘strategic intelligence,’ than is any other group in the community….” They could be leavened by “a couple of good economists and people trained in historical research, together with some language specialists.” McCormack’s vision was to bypass the army’s professional intelligence officers by using his new hires to create a standalone analytic unit that would take raw intercepts from the codebreakers and use them to produce finished intelligence. McCormack completed his initial survey in March 1942 and, with Assistant Secretary McCloy’s and General Lee’s approval, prepared to assemble the staff he needed for his Special Section. The outsider started by acknowledging that he needed help from an insider in order to succeed. He was, an associate would say, “beautifully qualified” to stand up and run an elite bureau for analysis—but not a good fit for the army. McCormack would never mesh with army bureaucracy; he remained the foreign object that the military body would keep trying to reject. EARLY ON McCORMACK MET the officer who would offset that shortcoming and become his most important wartime ally. For

some 25 years, Colonel Carter W. Clarke had been a regular officer in the Signal Corps, the organizational home for army codebreaking. Not a West Point man, Clarke had originally enlisted in the army and worked his way from the bottom up. He was trim and fit, and, at six foot two, slightly taller than McCormack and only a bit less energetic. He lacked McCormack’s intuitive knack for grasping the theory of a case, or even any specialized knowledge of intelligence. He openly occupied a point on the far right of the political spectrum— unusual among regular officers, who shied away from expressing their mostly conservative attitudes. But he had common sense and

The Munitions Building (in 1938, top) was home to the War Department until the Pentagon’s early 1943 opening. McCormack believed that army codebreaking (like the Magic intercepts, above) should remain part of the War Department, but proposed bringing in specialists to perform the analysis.

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FROM TOP: KEYSTONE/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; NSA.GOV

Japan’s ambassador to Berlin, Hiroshi Oshima, tours Germany’s Atlantic coast defenses (top). Thanks to the analysis of his decrypted messages back to Tokyo in a Magic Summary, like the one above, U.S. military planners learned the same things he did—a boon to D-Day planning.

good judgment. He was not afraid to use colorful language if it would help get results. Using a polite euphemism for the actual words, McCormack recalled how Clarke described one general’s morning meetings as “rodent intercourse.” In May 1942, Major General George V. Strong—who replaced General Lee as the army’s chief intelligence officer after Lee moved on to command the 15th Artillery Brigade stateside—told Clarke that his job was “to go in there and get along with that fellow,” meaning McCormack. Strong then turned McCormack’s Special Section into the Special Service Branch, soon shortened to

Special Branch, and made Clarke its chief. At Strong’s urging, McCormack accepted a wartime commission and, as the junior colonel, became Clarke’s nominal deputy. But for once seniority did not matter; the two men worked as a team. As they staffed the Special Branch, McCormack and Clarke spent a disproportionate amount of time struggling with military and civil service regulations. It was almost easier to find and commission the lawyers that McCormack wanted as his officers than to bring on the lower-ranking specialists to support them. By painful stages over the next year and a half, the staff grew to a total of some 100 officers and 300 civilians. One of the officers, Thomas E. Ervin, later estimated that an astounding 85 percent of the officers were lawyers, while the remaining 15 percent were academics—roughly the mix McCormack had originally envisioned. There were so many lawyers that Ervin felt that it was like being back at law school and working on the law review. First came the long hours. While other branches of army intelligence kept peacetime hours, the Special Branch was open for business from 7 a.m. (and sometimes earlier) until about 11 p.m.; McCormack’s officers did their best to finish the task at hand before leaving for the day, working 13 out of every 14 days researching, analyzing, and writing reports. Army codebreakers in the Signal Corps still intercepted, decry pted, and translated secret messages to and from Tokyo and Japanese embassies around the world. But now, instead of heading to army intelligence, the products of their work went to Special Branch, where McCormack’s officers would sift through a few hundred messages a week looking for ones that mattered. (That number would go up to a few thousand in 1943 as the army got better at breaking Japanese codes.) The clerical staff would then cross-reference messages and research their context. Finally, the officers would write a report that they would route to McCormack’s desk. Most days the result was a compilation of reports known as the “Magic Summary.” The first summary appeared in spring 1942, double-spaced on heavy 8 1/2 by 11-inch U.S. Government stock, written in plain English, about 10 pages long, and bound in a spiral notebook with a hard cover. In place of what a

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

FROM TOP: KEYSTONE/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; NSA.GOV

reader would have received before Pearl Harbor—a translated enemy message typed onto a sheet of paper—the reader now saw a message in context. Was it a departure from past messages? How did it stack up against other messages from the same day? It was the difference between reading a telegram and reading a research paper or newspaper article on the telegram’s subject. Summaries went to some 11 offices at the War Department, at least two at State, and 10 at Navy. The army and navy agreed to try to limit President Roosevelt’s reading only to Magic Summaries. This was not an attempt to deny him information, but rather to optimize his precious time. It was also an indicator of the summaries’ high value; Magic was the president’s principal source of strategic intelligence. Paradoxically, even though this was more than ever an army operation, it fell to navy officers detailed to the White House to actually carry the reports to Roosevelt. Like everyone else, Roosevelt had to return the read summary to a courier, who might have waited in an outer office. McCormack’s office kept careful notes of who saw what and ensured that all copies—except for those being saved for the record—were incinerated. JUST WHAT DID THE READER find in these wartime summaries? Many of the reports were more important than exciting. Readers could learn about German strategy— as explained by Hitler to Hiroshi Oshima, the Japanese ambassador in Berlin, who sent detailed reports back to Tokyo. This was as close as the United States got to hearing secrets directly from the Führer’s mouth; no American or British spies were reporting from inside the German government. The summaries were also the sole source of information on the relationship between the Soviet Union and Japan. In 1942, the two countries were not at war even though they were on different sides. A Japanese attack on the Soviet Union, or vice versa, would have enormous consequences—as it did in the summer of 1945. What specifically did Magic mean to the average G.I.? He would never hear of McCormack. But, as the obituary writer suggested in 1956, he owed a lot to the lawyer. It was thanks in large part to him

that the Japanese soldiers fighting G.I.s in the Pacific were often ill-equipped and hungry; McCormack’s office played a crucial role in breaking Japanese shipping codes. This gave the navy the information it needed to sink Japanese ships carrying supplies to the front lines. Magic made an even more clear-cut difference at the tactical level in the European Theater. In late 1943, Ambassador Oshima went on a tour of Germany’s Atlantic coast defenses. Intercepted by Allied codebreakers, his reports comprised an invaluable guide to the defenses and helped to shape D-Day plans. On June 6, 1944, casualties were far lower than feared. McCormack’s Magic made it possible for many troops who waded ashore to make it off the beach alive. At the end of the war, McCormack and his lawyers shed their uniforms and went back to their practices, leaving army intelligence to make its own way. McCormack once again found fulfillment in New York law. But he was proud of his wartime service and believed he had made a difference. The army agreed, bestowing a Distinguished Service Medal on him in 1945 for “exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services to the Government of the United States in a duty of great responsibility during World War II.” The continuing need for secrecy made it impossible to describe just how much he had done for the war effort and kept the real value of his work hidden for decades. H

As an obituary writer suggested in 1956, the average G.I. owed a lot to McCormack.

Carter W. Clarke (left), here a brigadier general, presents McCormack with the Distinguished Service Medal in 1945. McCormack returned to law after the war, and died in 1956.

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DOWN TO EARTH Painted from memory the month after his jump, Robert Baldwin’s watercolor depicts his drop zone at the height of Operation Varsity, the airborne operation across Germany’s Rhine River on March 24, 1945. As the German town of Wesel burns in the background, an armada of C-47s peels back toward Allied lines; the paratrooper about to touch down at far left is Baldwin’s tribute to Private First Class Robert Porterfield Jr., a friend and fellow artist killed during the jump.

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Paratrooper Robert Baldwin recorded his war in art By James M. Fenelon AUGUST 2021

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Robert M. Baldwin in the summer of 1945 during the Berlin occupation.

obert M. Baldwin’s life changed forever a few minutes after 10 a.m. on March 24, 1945. The 20-year old’s parachute had just jerked open, and what he witnessed in the few seconds before hitting the ground became seared into his memory: dozens of C-47s droning overhead as his regiment jumped into Germany, flak bursting in black clouds of shrapnel. Surrounding him were the chutes of his comrades; below him was a hornet’s nest of Germans making a last-ditch effort to repel the Allies. Then a blast rocked Baldwin from below. Where his platoon sergeant had been a moment earlier was a drifting, empty parachute. An antiaircraft shell had ignited explosives carried by the sergeant, disintegrating him in an instant. Baldwin didn’t have long to contemplate the tragedy. Crashing to earth, he crumpled under the weight of his equipment and, finding himself in a melee of bullets and mortar fire, struggled to get out of his chute. He joined his company for the successful seizure of their objective—but the day’s sights and sounds made a lasting impression. Even the smell was notable. Writing to his mother, he confessed, “It’s funny, when death is so near one can actually smell it. It may be my imagination, but the minute I got over the first shock of the jump that nauseating odor hit me.” With watercolors and a sketchbook he “liberated” from a house near the drop zone, Baldwin recreated what he’d seen that day, as well as sights from the next few weeks as he, with the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment, fought toward the town of Münster. Several

ALL ARTWORK FROM THE 82ND AIRBORNE MUSEUM COLLECTION; REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION OF MARK BALDWIN; PHOTO (LEFT) COURTESY OF MARK BALDWIN

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BLAZING SKIES AND FIELDS OF FIRE The site of the devastation captured in this haunting painting is unknown: it most likely depicts Essen, as viewed from across the Rhine-Herne Canal in Germany’s Ruhr region. Baldwin’s work in the field, including the two images on these pages, began as pencil sketches with written captions; he added the watercolor later.

ALL ARTWORK FROM THE 82ND AIRBORNE MUSEUM COLLECTION; REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION OF MARK BALDWIN; PHOTO (LEFT) COURTESY OF MARK BALDWIN

CITY OF RUIN As a major industrial center that included the Krupp Steel Works factory, Essen (below) was the target of repeated Allied bombing raids throughout the war. The 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment entered Essen unopposed on April 10, 1945.

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ON SILENT WINGS A pair of just-released CG-4A Waco gliders skims over the landing zone near Wesel (top). BOTTOM: U.S. ARMY

On display in Baldwin’s watercolor are the dangers inherent to combat landings: fences, power lines, farmhouses—even other gliders. Troops in the gliders’ cargo hold could do nothing but hope and wait for the inevitable rough landing.

THE LAST JUMP “First In!” (above) captures the immediate violence of jumping behind enemy lines, the memories of which continued to haunt Baldwin. Of this illustration, he said, “The guy who gets there first is the target.”

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times Baldwin complied with orders from his company commander, Captain Howard “Big Steve” Stephens, to “throw that damned book away!” only to slyly recover it from the trash each time. For Baldwin, Germany’s beauty was in the past: everything in the Reich was in ruin or covered in ash. Discharged in 1946 with two Bronze Stars, he settled in New Jersey to raise a family and launch a successful career as a commercial artist. His World War II service stayed with him, and much of his personal art is military-themed. He completed his most enduring tribute at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1985: “The Airborne Walk,” a series of concrete paths in the shape of jump wings leading visitors by 28 monuments dedicated to airborne units of the past. Recalling the dramatic day he jumped into Germany, Baldwin later admitted, “How I made it I’ll never know.” He lived to the age of 78 and passed away in December 2003. H

LAND OF THE QUICK OR THE DEAD Sprinting across the drop zone toward wounded or dead comrades, a paratrooper (top) navigates the crossfire in enemy territory. In March 1945 the Germans had prepared for a suspected airdrop near Wesel and had the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment’s drop zone well-covered by machine guns and mortars.

WALKING THE TALK Baldwin’s most-viewed artwork is also his largest: “The Airborne Walk” (above)—a key part of the army’s Basic Airborne Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, as the site of its graduation ceremony. Baldwin himself graduated from the school at age 19 in November 1944.

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On November 11, 1944, the skies over northwest Thailand roiled amid a fierce dogfight, as Thai and American pilots tangled. Yet behind the scenes, Thai airmen were helping Americans.

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RELUCTANT ENEMY The Royal Thai Air Force occupied a unique position during the war— fighting and supporting the same foe By Tom Yarborough

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Throughout the 1930s, the United States supplied the Royal Thai Air Force (RTAF) with aircraft—including the varieties below—and trained some of its officers, creating among the RTAF a sense of kinship with the U.S.

Curtiss Hawk III

Curtiss Hawk H-75N (P-36)

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Thailand’s prime minister, Phibun Songkhram, was proJapanese and quick to side with Japan as the conflict escalated.

BY NOVEMBER 1941 the Thai government was certain that war was imminent between Japan and the United States. As the traditional buffer state between British Burma to the west and French Indochina to the east, Thailand resorted to doing what it did best: accommodation. That meant favoring the strongest power in the region, which most Thais viewed as Japan. Yet by training and association, Royal Thai Air Force (RTAF) sympathies rested more with the Americans than with the Japanese. This was in part because throughout the 1930s the United States had supplied almost all the RTAF’s combat aircraft. The best and brightest RTAF officers also trained in the United States at the Air Corps Tactical School, at Maxwell Field, Alabama, for most of the 1930s. There they developed lasting ties with their American counterparts and incorporated American tactics into the RTAF fighting doctrine. Senior air force leaders, therefore, did not share the pro-Japanese sentiment of Thailand’s prime minister, Field Marshal Phibun Songkhram, and key segments within the Thai Army. Phibun, an admirer of fascism, became a supporter of Japan in 1940 when the Japanese mediated the brief war between Thailand and Vichy France. In return for Japan successfully pressuring France to cede Indochina border territories back to Thailand, Phibun became ardently pro-Japanese; he had clearly taken sides. The RTAF, on the other hand, stood ready to fight Japanese forces should they invade. They didn’t have long to wait. At 3 a.m. on December 8, 1941 (December 7, Pearl Harbor time), units of the Imperial Japanese Army began landing along the Kra Isthmus, a narrow strip of land south of the capital city of Bangkok. In response, RTAF pilots from Wing 5, based on the isthmus, prepared to attack

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ollowing a brutal and deadly dogfight in November 1944 with five Nakajima Ki-27b Royal Thai Air Force fighters, a young American P-38 pilot from the 449th Fighter Squadron wrote to his parents: “I didn’t even know we were at war with Thailand. Hell, I didn’t even know what Thailand was—I thought it was called Siam.” His confusion is understandable. In July 1939, Siam had indeed changed its name to Thailand and, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, declared war on the United States. Confusion about Thailand’s role in World War II, however, lingers to the present. Many military history buffs are not even aware that Thailand sided with Japan, nor that Thailand was the target of numerous U.S. Army Air Forces bombing raids, including the first B-29 combat mission. The strange story of the Thai– Japanese alliance during World War II is far more nuanced than the sketchy versions in most historical sources, where aerial battles between Royal Thai Air Force pilots and their U.S. Army Air Forces adversaries are relegated to footnotes or a few obscure paragraphs scattered among dozens of sources. Yet those clashes in the air are as compelling and powerful as any in the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater and add a vital dimension to the traditional CBI story. They’re even more remarkable because the Royal Thai Air Force was a service with a double life—flying on behalf of the Japanese, while also helping to fight Japan as a secret collaborator of the CIA precursor, the Office of Special Services (OSS).

CHINA BURMA LAOS

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THAILAND BANGKOK CAMBODIA

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M A L AYA

the advancing troops. They were quickly overwhelmed: Pilot Officer Maen Prasongdi took off first in a Curtiss Hawk III biplane fighter and, armed with four small underwing bombs, attempted to attack troopships in the eastern harbor before Japanese antiaircraft fire downed him. Another plane, piloted by Flight Sergeant Phrom Shuwong, had barely got off the ground when groundfire forced it to crashland on the runway. As Phrom climbed out of his plane, Japanese soldiers shot him dead. Two more RTAF pilots met a similar fate while trying to get airborne. When Japanese troops and tanks surrounded the airfield, the wing commander ordered his men to burn all buildings on the airfield and fall back into the jungle to continue the fight. Farther north, at the Thai–Cambodia border east of Bangkok, the Japanese Imperial Guards Division smashed into Thailand against token resistance. Overhead, units of the Japanese Army’s 10th Air Brigade covered the advance with 11 Nakajima Ki-27 fighters—“Nate” to the Allies—and nine Mitsubishi Ki-30 (or “Ann”) light bombers. At approximately 6 a.m., pilots from the RTAF’s 43 Squadron spotted the Japanese aircraft overhead; three jumped into their Hawk IIIs to engage. In the brief dogfight that followed, the more-capable Nates—fighters with outstanding turning ability—quickly shot down

Japanese invaders head toward Bangkok on December 8, 1941, having faced little resistance on the ground. Within hours, Thailand capitulated, later declaring war on the U.S. and Britain.

all three Hawk IIIs, killing the pilots. Shortly after 7 a.m., Field Marshal Phibun assembled his cabinet. They quickly concluded that further resistance was futile and, a half hour later, the Thai government announced a ceasefire. With virtually no other options, Thailand capitulated. Furious Wing 5 defenders blatantly disregarded the ceasefire order and continued fighting until noon the following day. The unit lost 38 men killed and 27 wounded; Japanese forces lost 115 killed. An old Thai proverb holds that “the tree that bends with the wind is the tree that survives the storm.” When Japanese troops

Martin 139W (B-10)

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In the face of an invasion, overt threats of war, and the prime minister’s pro-Japanese stance, Thailand bent with the winds of war.

entered Bangkok late that afternoon, the die was cast. In the face of an invasion, overt threats of war, and Phibun’s pro-Japanese stance, Thailand bent with the winds of war. On December 21, 1941, the prime minister signed a Pact of Alliance with Japan and purged all who opposed the alliance from his government. A month later, when British Royal Air Force Buffalo fighters strafed Japanese-occupied airfields just inside the Thai border, Phibun took the unprecedented step of declaring war on the United Kingdom and the United States. That declaration, and the pact with Japan, presented the RTA F with a distressing dilemma. Having just lost aircraft and pilots in battle against the Japanese, most air force leaders had no desire to cooperate with Japan. The RTAF commander, Air Vice Marshal Atueg Tevadej, finally settled the matter by announcing to his men: “You do not have to like the Japanese, but as professionals we must carry out Phibun’s orders.” DURING THE EA RLY months of 1942, British RAF bombers stationed in Burma occasionally sparred with Royal Thai Air Force fighters along the Thai border. After the Japanese 15th Army launched the main ground invasion of Burma from Thailand on January 22, air attacks gradually fizzled out as the Japanese advance left British aircraft out of range. As a result, the RTAF shifted most of its operations to northwest Thailand to support a new mission on behalf of Japan— driving Chinese troops from the eastern Shan States, a rugged, mountainous area bordering Burma, Thailand, Laos, and a small segment of China. On May 10, 1942, the Thai Army began advancing into the Shan States. For the next nine months, the pattern of RTAF operations remained the same: Vought V-93 Corsairs and Curtiss Hawk IIIs handled most close-support missions, while Ki-30 light bombers,

Ki-21 medium bombers, and export versions of the Martin B-10 bomber flew longer-range missions to strike Chinese troop concentrations in larger towns. No air-to-air combat occurred over the Shan States, but RTAF pilots plowed through plenty of ground fire and flak from Generalissimo Chiang KaiShek’s troops. The bombing missions of late January 1943 were typical. On January 24, 17 Ki-30s from two RTAF squadrons bombed enemy positions to relieve the pressure on Thai Army units. Then, on the 29th, a mixed formation of 19 Ki-30s and Ki-21s armed with incendiary bombs attacked the Chinese stronghold at Mong Sae on the Burma-China border, setting buildings on fire and destroying a large arms depot. Both tactically and strategically, the raids were successful; a few days later the Chinese troops withdrew across the border into Yunnan Province. From January 1942 to December 1943, the Royal Thai Air Force upgraded its inventory with new equipment. As Japan’s only ally in the region, Thailand received a dozen updated Ki-27b Nate fighters and 24 Nakajima Ki-43 “Oscar” fighters. Similar to the Mitsubishi A6M Zero in both appearance and performance, the Oscar was light, easy to fly, and admired for its combat performance. It could outmaneuver most aircraft but, like the vaunted Zero, the Oscar lacked armor or selfsealing fuel tanks—meaning it was notoriously prone to disintegrating or catching fire after sustaining light damage. A s the U.S. A rmy A ir Forces gained strength in the CBI Theater in 1943 by adding two new bomb groups and three new fighter groups, strategically important Bangkok moved near the top of the target list. The first raid of the new bombing campaign on the Thai capital occurred on the evening of December 19, 1943, when a force of 27 B-24 Liberator heavy bombers struck the city’s docks. Thai opposition amounted to search-

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Once Thailand sided with Japan, the Japanese provided the Thais with updated combat aircraft, such as the two Nakajima fighters depicted above.

Nakajima Ki-43 “Oscar”

MARCELO RIBEIRO (BOTH)

Nakajima Ki-27 “Nate”

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MARCELO RIBEIRO (BOTH)

lights and antiaircraft fire. A few nights later, on December 23, 26 Liberators bombed Bangkok’s central railroad station. During this raid, the American bombers spotted two airborne enemy aircraft, but neither attacked. On these early missions, the RTAF was unprepared and ineffective. Because they had no radar or early warning system, RTAF fighters didn’t scramble until the bombers were practically overhead. By the time they reached altitude and searched around in the darkness, the bombers had already departed. From its bases in China, the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force—under the command of Major General Claire Chennault, the legendary leader of the Flying Tigers—directed its raids at targets in northwest Thailand, focusing on headquarters complexes and communication centers around the cities of Chiang Mai and Lampang. In a daring unescorted daylight raid on December 31, 1943, a formation of 25 B-24s bombed the railroad marshalling yards at Lampang. Six Ki-27 Nates from the RTAF’s 16 Squadron tried to intercept the B-24s, but the American crews reported that the Thai fighters, in their first encounter with Fourteenth Air Force heavy bombers, initially held back from attacking and jinked away when the B-24s opened fire.

Three days later, two P-38 Lightnings from the 449th Fighter Squadron escorted 28 B-24s on a second mission to Lampang. Again, Thai fighters scrambled but did not attack. The RTAF’s apparent lack of aggressiveness stemmed not so much from an absence of nerve but from scarcity of information. Even in broad daylight, the inadequate forewarning that resulted from a lack of ground radar guidance meant they could do little. Since 400 miles of highways and rail lines linked Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Fourteenth Air Force B-25 medium bombers joined the interdiction battle on March 5, 1944. For the remainder of the spring, the B-25s’ principal targets were those vital roads and rail bridges. Frustrated Thai pilots rarely intercepted the Americans. On one occasion a Hawk 75N pilot scrambled and mounted an attack against B-25s bombing the Ban Dara bridge just south of Lampang. Thai records indicate that the RTAF pilot only made one firing pass; his fighter was too slow to catch up with the bombers. To counter B-25 raids,

A Thai and Japanese pilot compare notes by an “Oscar” fighter (top); the RTAF adopted the elephant insignia in late 1942. One foe they faced: the China-based U.S. Fourteenth Air Force, under Major General Claire Chennault (above).

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DURING THE FIRST HALF OF 1944 two major military operations indirectly put Thailand in the crosshairs of the newest and most technologically advanced U.S. Army Air Forces strategic bombers. In early March the commander of the Japanese 15th Army, Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi, launched “Operation U-Go”—the invasion of India.

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the Thais switched to overlapping daylight combat patrols—none of which were successful. A respite from bombing attacks only occurred during the summer when monsoon rains curtailed Allied operations.

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A new B-29 leaves an even-newer runway in India in June 1944 (top). The first-ever B-29 mission involved bombing railroad yards in Bangkok that month; a total of six B-29s were lost. A battle over Lampang, in northwest Thailand, later claimed the life of P-51 pilot Henry Minco, as noted in a witness statement (above).

Since much of the logistical support for his operation originated in Thailand, the Allied air offensive against Thai targets heated up in spades. Thailand also became an unlikely player in the Allies’ “Operation Matterhorn.” The strategic plan for this operation—approved at the Quebec and Cairo Conferences of 1943— involved stationing squadrons of new long-range Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers in India and China, where they would carry out strategic raids against mainland Japan. Brigadier General Laverne G. Saunders— ironically nicknamed “Blondie” because of his jet-black hair—assumed command of the newly formed 58th Bomb Wing at Kharagpur, India, at a hastily constructed base for the first operational B-29 unit. The commander had his hands full: an unproven and unpredictable brand-new airplane, inexperienced aircrews, and a logistics system unable to supply sufficient fuel or spare parts. To work the kinks out, the B-29s of the 58th Bomb Wing were assigned their first combat mission: a raid on June 5, 1944, against the

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

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railroad yards in Bangkok. A total of 98 B-29s took off on the mission: one crashed on takeoff, killing the entire crew, and at least 20 others aborted for mechanical reasons. The first B-29 to fire a shot in anger was over the target at 10:52 a.m., where heavy cloud cover obscured the railroad yards, forcing half the planes to bomb by radar. Since few crews had received instruction in radar bombing, they by necessity resorted to “on-the-job training.” During the mission, nine RTAF Oscars scrambled to intercept the stream of bombers, with virtually no success. The return trip for the B-29s proved to be considerably more hazardous. One crew ran out of fuel and bailed out, two B-29s crash-landed, and two ditched in the Bay of Bengal. Despite 15 men dead, two missing, and the total loss of six B-29s, XX Bomber Command touted its first combat mission as a success. It glossed over the fact that photo reconnaissance showed that only 18 bombs hit near the intended target. The damage, to quote the tactical mission report, “would cause no noticeable decrease in the flow of troops and military supplies into Burma.” During the Operation Matterhorn B-29 raids on Bangkok, the mission on November 2, 1944, was the only one where RTAF pilots drew blood. On this daylight raid, 55 B-29s attacked the railroad marshalling yards on the outskirts of Bangkok. Opposing them, the Thais scrambled seven Oscars. At the controls of his Oscar, Flight Lieutenant Thorsak Worrasap fired on one B-29, setting the big bomber ablaze. He attempted to follow his prey but return fire from the other bombers hit Thorsak’s fighter, forcing him to bail out. One of the largest documented battles between RTAF and U.S. Army Air Forces fighters occurred nine days later over Lampang in northwest Thailand. On November 11, 1944, nine P-51C Mustangs from the 25th Fighter Squadron and eight P-38 Lightnings from the 449th flew an armed reconnaissance mission into the area. During their initial attack, the American fighters strafed and damaged a locomotive before moving on to a nearby airfield. That brief delay gave five RTAF Ki-27b Nates from 16 Squadron a chance to scramble. The Nates reached their patrolling altitude just as the American fighters strafed Lampang Airfield, destroying one aircraft on the runway. As the RTAF pilots maneuvered to

U.S. bombs strike Lampang Airfield. The wartime caption for the photo noted that the airfield’s buildings and runway had been “neatly pinpointed.”

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attack, the top-cover P-38s rolled into action, each belching 20mm shells from a single cannon and streams of fire from four .50-caliber machine guns. The five Nates immediately split into two groups, with Flying Officer Kamrop Bleangkam and Chief Warrant Officer Chuladit Detkanchorn engaging the P-38s, while the other three Nate pilots tried to fend off the Mustangs. During the furball dogfight that ensued, the nimble Nates for the most part outmaneuvered their adversaries but, badly outnumbered and outgunned, the Thai pilots had little chance in the lopsided fight. Kamrop latched onto one P-38, claiming to have sent it down with its right wing in flames before another Lightning jumped him, forcing him to crash-land. Yet another P-38 downed Chuladit. Armed with only two 7.7mm machine guns, the Nate didn’t pack much of an offensive punch compared to the P-51C’s four .50-caliber AUGUST 2021

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WHILE THESE AIR CAMPAIGNS were going on, an underground resistance movement had been growing since the first days of the war. The Free Thai Movement—or Seri Thai—had arisen immediately after Thailand

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An underground resistance movement had been growing since the first days of the war.

machine guns, but several RTAF pilots put their armament to good use against the Mustangs. As four P-51s climbed to join the P-38s engaging Kamrop and Chuladit, Second Lieutenant Henr y Minco shouted, “I see two below and am going after them.” Diving into the swirling dogfight, Lieutenant Minco, on his 71st combat mission, was never seen again. Much later, stories drifted in from Thai contacts that Minco was dead. They also reported that missionaries buried the American pilot. As the dogfight continued over Lampang, RTAF Flight Lieutenant Chalermkiat Vatthanangkun flew into a wall of .50-caliber tracers, his Nate absorbing multiple hits to its engine. Chalermkiat made a forced landing, after which one of the Mustangs strafed and destroyed his fighter. As the uneven battle ended, P-51s destroyed the two remaining Nates: Chief Warrant Officer Thara Kaimuk was shot down and crashed nine miles from Lampang; Chief Warrant Officer Nat Sunthorn died when his Nate crashed.

declared war on the United States in 1942. The Thai ambassador in Washington, D.C., Seni Pramoj, refused to present the declaration of war to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, instead suggesting to Hull that he might “organize and preserve a government of true patriotic, liberty-loving Thais while my government is in the clutches of Japan.” Washington, wisely, opted to regard Thailand as an occupied—rather than belligerent—nation. Ambassador Seni, a conservative aristocrat whose anti-Japanese credentials were well established, organized the movement with American assistance. Enter the OSS. On March 12, 1942, Seni submitted a proposal to infiltrate a group of Thai students in the U.S. into their homeland for subversive operations. Seni’s staff then met with the OSS’s Lieutenant Colonel Garland H. Williams to arrange for the young volunteers to be trained, equipped, and deployed. The first group of 13 Thais began OSS training on June 12, 1942. Many of the young Thais, trained at the various OSS camps in Maryland and Virginia in 1942, were parachuted into Thailand in 1944 and 1945 for espionage work, to organize guerrilla networks, and to send back useful intelligence. They also helped rescue downed Allied aviators. One of the most dramatic rescues was of a Flying Tigers P-40 pilot, Lieutenant William D. McGarry—an ace with eight victories. On March 24, 1942, McGarry was downed by antiaircraft fire over Chiang Mai, captured, and interned in a compound at Thammasat University in Bangkok, where he was monitored by Thai—not Japanese—guards. Unbeknownst to the Japanese, he was also under the watchful eye of none other than the university’s rector, Pridi Phanomyong—a key leader of the Free Thai movement. After connecting with an OSS-trained Thai national who had been parachuted in on September 9, 1944, to assist him, Pridi informed the Japanese that McGarry had died in captivity; the pilot was then smuggled out of the prison camp in an improvised coffin and hidden in a Thai customs boat with four Royal Thai Air Force officers. McGarry’s escape helped strengthen the United States’ alliance with a reluctant enemy and energized the RTAF’s double life. Although the RTAF had no role in forming the Free Thai Movement, the relationship had been growing since April 1943, when Group

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Thailand’s ambassador in Washington, D.C., Seni Pramoj, refused to deliver the declaration of war against the U.S., instead forming a “Free Thai” guerrilla force (below) to fight the Japanese.

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Captain Tevarit Panleuk took over as the new RTAF commander. Secretly pro-American and a graduate of the Air Corps Tactical School, he was even more sympathetic to the movement than the former chief and allowed Free Thai to use air force facilities and equipment for their underground activities. Beginning in mid-1944 when American OSS agents began parachuting into Thailand, the RTAF offered its aircraft to transport those agents wherever they were needed, providing what amounted to a clandestine airline. The underground airlift became so successful that RTAF aircraft began flying agents directly into Bangkok’s Don Muang Airfield, which it shared with the Japanese. For the Allies, the daunting task of providing supplies and weapons to the growing Thai underground was made easier by having access to secret airfields the RTAF set up in 1944–45. RTAF aircraft could then distribute the supplies around the country, right under the noses of Japanese forces. Additionally, the RTAF provided the Allies with weather information, real-time Japanese troop movements, and potential targets for American fighter/ bomber raids. In one case, an RTAF officer even flew with American bombers on several missions against Thailand to ensure that targets were accurately identified. Continued American air raids against targets in Thailand placed the RTAF in an ethical predicament. Having provided much of the intelligence on Japanese air strength, the RTAF was forced to watch its own men and equipment attacked alongside the Japanese. For example, on April 9, 1945, near the city of Lopburi, about 80 miles north of Bangkok, marauding Tenth Air Force Mustangs strafed the joint Thai–Japanese airfield, destroying 15 RTAF aircraft. As a result, the quandary ate at their guts: how to defend targets when you provide vital intelligence to an enemy bombing those targets? The monsoon’s arrival in May 1945 provided not an answer but a solution, as the rain drastically curtailed the bombing effort against Thailand. Attacks on Thai airfields ceased for all practical purposes, as did clashes between RTAF and Allied aircraft. Subsequently, until the end of the war, the RTAF devoted most of its sorties to supporting the Free Thai Movement. Japan’s surrender brought the Royal Thai Air Force’s double life to an end. The RTAF

had never wanted war w ith the United States. Yet, boxed into a corner by political events, it had performed its duty to king and country as a reluctant ally of the Japanese and as an even more reluctant enemy of the United States. How did they pull this off? A Free Thai Movement member explained: “The Japanese increasingly dealt with Thailand as a conquered territory rather than as an ally. Because of their feelings of superiority and their attitudes toward the Thai, the Japanese could never believe that the friendly Thai among whom they lived could be capable of such skillful subversion.” As a key part of that subversion, the RTAF occupied an unprecedented position during the war—fighting and aiding the same foe. Throughout its double life, the RTAF had the courage and tenacity to work behind the scenes for a virtuous cause much bigger than any alliance with Japan: the Free Thai cause. H

Free Thai agents helped smuggle downed American pilot William D. McGarry (top) out of captivity; his wrecked P-40 (middle) is now displayed in the RTAF museum. Above: A wartime flier distributed in Thailand notes: “The Americans are your friends.”

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The tanker Ohio, wounded by German and Italian fire, nears Malta in August 1942 after carrying 10,000 tons of fuel across the Mediterranean as part of Operation Pedestal.

REVIEWS BOOKS

OPERATION PEDESTAL The Fleet that Battled to Malta, 1942

By Max Hastings. 448 pp. Harper, 2021. $35.

MOST WORLD WAR II BUFFS are aware of the strategic importance of convoy battles in the North Atlantic, especially during 1941-42. These convoys constituted the critical supply chain from the United States that sustained Britain during those harrowing years. Some convoys suffered mightily at the hands of U-boats, especially Convoy PQ-17, which was famously all but annihilated in July 1942 while traveling to the Soviet Union. Far fewer students of the war are aware of another critical convoy battle that took place one month later when the British sought to resupply the beleaguered island of Malta in the central Mediterranean. Small as it was, Malta was of great strategic importance, for it was the link between Gibraltar to Suez, east to west, and Italy to North Africa, north to south. The island was surrounded by enemy bases, and Germany and Italy bombed it day and night for months; by mid-1942, Malta was nearly out of supplies. Rather than abandon it,

the British decided to rescue it. To do that they assembled 14 merchant ships, each loaded with mixed cargo so that the loss of any single one would not prove catastrophic. The exception was the oil tanker Ohio, which carried the precious aviation gasoline needed to keep the Spitfires on the island flying. Underscoring the importance attached to the safe arrival of these ships, the Royal Navy dispatched the largest escort force ever committed to a convoy: four aircraft carriers, two battleships, seven light cruisers, and no fewer than 32 destroyers. It was dubbed Operation Pedestal. In a new account, British historian and journalist Max Hastings tells this convoy’s story. Places, people, and events are sketched with his typical artistry: Malta itself is “a rocky pimple” in the Mediterranean; Admiral Sir Henry Harwood, one of Churchill’s favorites, was “a notoriously stupid officer”; and convoy escorts moved about the endangered transports in a “nautical dance step.”

WAR ARCHIVE/ALAMY

IN DEEP WATER

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Even without Hastings’s wordsmithery, the story itself is gripping. Once the convoy entered the Mediterranean, it encountered German and Italian submarines, aircraft, and motor torpedo boats for more than 1,000 miles from Gibraltar to Malta. Hastings successfully conveys the tension of that voyage, relying heavily on scores of personal stories of those involved. As a result, the reader shares with participants the portentous feeling that something menacing is about to happen—which it generally does. Hastings does not shy away from pointing out when one side or the other makes an error. He argues that Captain Harold Drew of the Royal Navy was properly court-martialed for prematurely abandoning the crippled cruiser Manchester; he is critical of Air Vice-Marshall Keith Park, who failed to provide air cover for the limping tanker Ohio; and he is even more critical of the German high command for devoting resources to attacking the British warships rather than the invaluable transports, including the Ohio. Hastings pays special attention to that tanker, the story of which is worthy of a feature motion picture. Attacked relentlessly and struck repeatedly, its survival was in doubt during the operation’s final days. Indeed, the story of the Ohio’s journey is so fraught that if this were a work of fiction it would be dismissed as not credible. Hastings is a wonderful writer, and he brings to vivid life a little-known story of what was arguably the most intense convoy battle of the war. —Craig L. Symonds is professor emeritus at the U.S Naval Academy and the author of many books on naval history, including World War II at Sea: A Global History (2017).

REVIEWS BOOKS

WAR ARCHIVE/ALAMY

SHADOW WARRIORS IN THE SPRING OF 2007, Canadian author Judy Batalion was perusing London’s British Library for information on Hannah Senesh, one of the few female Jewish resistance fighters from World War II who had been the subject of scholarly THE LIGHT OF DAYS research. Stumbling upon an obscure tome The Untold Story of published in Yiddish, in which Batalion is fluent, Women Resistance she uncovered stories of numerous female Jewish Fighters in Hitler’s Poles active in the resistance movement—some Ghettos as young as 13 years of age. Nearly 20 of these By Judy Batalion. heroines became the subjects of Batalion’s latest 558 pp. William book, The Light of Days, already optioned for film Morrow, 2021. $28.99. by Steven Spielberg. Paring down the number of narratives may be understandably difficult for Holocaust historians; by editing a story out, one is deleting it from collective memory. Still, Batalion’s book would be better served if she had narrowed her cast of characters further. Batalion also invents dialogue between characters, which she footnotes as “elaboration” based on historical documents, but risks undermining the book as a work of pure nonfiction through unnecessary conjecture for such a naturally dramatic story. Regardless, two women’s stories take up an outsized focus in The Light of Days, and for good reason: Renia Kukiełka and (continued on page 75)

AT THE MOVIES

A crop of new films shows how Hitler’s supporters were made, not born, by insidious means.

AMERICAN TRAITOR: THE TRIAL OF AXIS SALLY Directed by Michael

Polish, starring Meadow Williams, Al Pacino. 107 min. Available on iTunes. The stakes should feel higher and the messaging more poignant in this courtroom biopic, which follows the trial of Mildred Gillars, a.k.a. “Axis Sally”—the Nazi propagandist and first woman ever to be convicted for treason against the U.S.

FINAL ACCOUNT

Directed by Luke Holland. 94 min. Available soon on video on demand, following a June 2021 theater run. Director Holland, who passed away before his documentary’s release, interviewed surviving participants in Hitler’s regime, showing how their German youth groups and summer camps gave way to SS careers and concentration camp posts.

SIX MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

Directed by Andy Goddard, starring Eddie Izzard, Judi Dench. 102 min. Available on Google Play. Inspired by a real-life boarding school in England for daughters of the Nazi elite, this quiet drama, set in August 1939, breaks no new ground but provides a humanizing look at one of the Reich’s overlooked casualties: its own children.

AUGUST 2021

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REVIEWS BOOKS

EDGE OF THE WORLD

THE WAR BEAT, PACIFIC The American Media at War Against Japan

By Steven Casey. 395 pp. Oxford University Press, 2021. $34.95.

“THE FIRST CASUALTY when war comes is truth,” California senator Hiram Johnson, a staunch isolationist, famously declared a century ago. It’s hard to read Steven Casey’s The War Beat, Pacific without concluding that even when the reality of war is obscured in a fog of government disinformation and propaganda, a truer picture ultimately emerges, thanks largely to the work of dogged journalists accompanying troops into battle. Combat reporting is always dangerous, but journalists covering World War II’s Pacific campaign faced particularly brutal odds. It showed in the casualty reports. Twenty-three correspondents died while accompanying U.S. forces in the Pacific, compared to 16 killed in the Mediterranean and Western Europe campaigns, according to a War Department list Casey cites. Reporters in the Pacific faced many of the same dangers as the American soldiers, sailors, and Marines they covered: savage fighting, tropical diseases, and kamikazes, to name a few. But they also confronted unique challenges, including the navy’s obsession with secrecy and the difficulty of covering complex sea and air battles spread over hundreds of

miles. Their dispatches then had to run a gauntlet of heavy-handed censors and tenuous communication lines before arriving in the U.S., where developments in Europe— which held more interest for American readers—often squeezed out news from the Pacific. Casey has produced an absorbing account of a small group of reporters whose names—with a few exceptions, such as Ernie Pyle—are mostly lost to history, despite having provided an important service to American citizens. He does an equally thorough job of describing the public relations machine employed by the military, a subject often overlooked in books on war reporting. The line between legitimate security concern and spin is always a blurry one, and the military during World War II often exploited that uncertainty to lower a veil over what Americans saw of the war. It could be maddening for reporters. One journalist covering Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell, who commanded U.S. forces in China and served as an adviser to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, had 492 words cut from his story by overzealous Chinese and American censors, leaving only a single sentence fragment intact. The impulse to censor limited what Americans learned about the war on Japan. “For the first three years,” Casey writes, “it was striking just how little battlefield information Americans received about some of the biggest, most controversial events, from Pearl Harbor and the Bataan death march to the heroics on Guadalcanal.” The U.S. military initially even kept Japanese atrocities out of the headlines. The Roosevelt administration worried that news of Japanese abuses of American POWs would whip up anti-Japanese fervor in the United States and undermine its Germanyfirst strategy. Japan’s early use of kamikaze attacks was also off-limits for reporters. The often-draconian efforts to control the message eventually collapsed late in the war, giving way to a more expansive picture. Several factors contributed to an easing of restrictions: Allied forces started racking up

AP PHOTO

A thatched hut served as press headquarters for these journalists from the U.S. and Australia stationed on Kiriwina Island in 1943.

WORLD WAR II

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victories, the military got better at supporting reporters and transmitting their copy, and editors and reporters never stopped pressing for more information and access. Casey, a professor of international history at the London School of Economics, clearly admires what this small group of reporters achieved in “bridging the huge gap between the battlefield and the home front.” Hiram Johnson was only partly right: governments do resort to propaganda when war breaks out. But Casey’s book reminds us that the press helps set the record straight by providing the American public, which funds the war and pays the heaviest price in lives, with a semblance of truth. —Jim Michaels has covered wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere for several decades as a reporter for USA TODAY and other newspapers. ( Shadow, continued from page 73) Ziv ia Lubet k i n were bot h br ave, resourceful fighters as adolescents, Kukiełka as a courier and Lubetkin as the most influential female leader in the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŹOB), risking their lives to plan and participate in espionage and sabotage of Nazi terror while also supporting covert Jewish efforts to preserve their history and culture. The ŹOB was instrumental in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, a failed attempt that, Batalion astutely notes, is still under-researched because “our collective memory has been shaped by an overarching resistance to resistance,” particularly failed attempts at it. Both Kukiełka and Lubetkin survived the Holocaust and fled to what is now Israel. In the book ’s final section, Batalion focuses on the challenges and victories that Kukiełka, Lubetkin, and other resistance movement survivors faced in their postwar lives. As gripping as their wartime stories are, these women’s myriad ways of coping with lingering trauma and building new lives in the Promised Land as mothers, wives, and workers is equally fascinating and a more subtle, yet no less powerful, aspect of this book. —Mary M. Lane is the author of Hitler’s Last Hostages: Looted Art and the Soul of the Third Reich (2019).

REVIEWS GAMES

MANTLE OF COMMAND WAR ROOM

Nightingale Games, $240.

WORLD WAR II RATING

HHHHH

THE BASICS Released in limited batches since its debut in 2019, War Room is the brainchild of Larry Harris, creator of the seminal Axis & Allies series. The strategy game kicks off in 1942. Two to six participants assume the role of one or more major war power: the U.S., the U.S.S.R., the U.K., Germany, China, Italy, or Japan. THE OBJECTIVE Each country is to successfully direct military strategy and economic production throughout the war. For the Axis powers, that means capturing any two of the Allied capital cities of Moscow, London, or Washington, D.C. The Allies must capture both Tokyo and Berlin. HISTORICAL ACCURACY

Players face nearly identical dilemmas as warring nations did in 1942, from the U.K. struggling to protect its supply lines to Germany’s continued drive toward Moscow. But if any nation suffers too many defeats or losses, it loses morale, which causes that country to be unable to use infrastructure or produce new forces. Eventually, that player’s troops will desert them, leading to inevitable defeat. This aspect of the game is interesting yet unrealistic: no nation during the war lost due to mass desertions, labor strikes, or moral collapse on the home front.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY War Room’s circular map

is gorgeous. Playing-wise, it has an interesting command feature that limits how many units each player can move during their turn, resulting in fun decision-making challenges. The main criticism of the game, however, is combat resolution: nearly every die roll eliminates an enemy unit, which punishes players with large, combined-arms forces by allowing small, less capable forces to inflict outsized losses in combat.

PLAYABILITY

By 1942 the Axis powers were arguably past being able to win, having already made strategic blunders including Germany invading Russia while still at war with Britain and Japan bringing the U.S. into the conflict. At the very least, strategic choices as an Axis player are limited when compared to what might have been possible if the game had begun in 1939. Because of this, it will rapidly fall into familiar patterns.

THE BOTTOM LINE War Room is great-looking and enjoyable—

but for fans of Axis & Allies or similar games, it brings very few new elements to the table. —Chris Ketcherside is a retired Marine, a lifelong wargamer, and a PhD candidate in American history. AUGUST 2021

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BATTLE FILMS BY MARK GRIMSLEY

NEVER! NEVER! “NOW I DON’T KNOW if it happened in just this way,” a Native American shaman once said, “but I know this story is true.” This is the essence of Darkest Hour (2017), the Oscar-winning drama directed by Joe Wright. Pedants could talk for hours about its inaccuracies, but the film is true in a way they fail to grasp. Darkest Hour depicts the first month of Winston Churchill’s tenure as prime minister. He is superbly portrayed by Gary Oldman, a trim actor who, by a tour de force of makeup, is transformed into the obese statesman. A foam bodysuit recreates Churchill’s paunchy torso; prosthetics applied to Oldman’s face, leaving only his lips and forehead exposed, supply him with Churchill’s bulldog look. Churchill becomes prime minister due to a political quirk: he’s the only candidate upon whom both Conservatives and Labour

Party members will agree. In the top reaches of British government, he is widely expected to be ineffective, if not an outright disaster. And a disaster of staggering proportions is unfolding in Holland, Belgium, and France, with Allied forces shredded by the onslaught of a superior German army or trapped against the English Channel. The most influential men in Britain’s War Cabinet, foreign secretary Lord Halifax and ousted prime minister Neville Chamberlain, believe that the only logical choice is to negotiate peace with Hitler. Appalled by Churchill’s naive desire to continue a war that seems already lost, Halifax and Chamberlain plot to remove him in favor of someone who can view the situation realistically. Churchill knows that they might topple him from power or force him into a negotiated settlement. He has courage, yes, but also self-doubt. Then Churchill reaches a turning point, in a scene upon which pedants pounce. Nothing like it occurred historically. But it is true in spirit, and I can seldom watch it without weeping because it literally saved me in one of my own darkest hours. I have bipolar disorder, a defect in brain chemistry that artificially raises and lowers one’s moods. In my case the “highs” are wellcontrolled, but the “lows”—the periods of clinical depression—can all but crush the soul. Medications help, but in the spring of 2019, mine were not working. I slipped ever more deeply into despondency, missing so many classes in a large lecture course I was teaching that my department chair and I mutually decided that another professor should take over for the balance of the semester. Three things pulled me back from the abyss: a loyal friend who came to stay with me for several days, an unexpected ovation from my students when I finished what they thought was my final lecture, and Darkest Hour. When my friend and I slipped Darkest Hour into a DVD player we could soon discern that it was a strong film—well-written, welldirected, and well-acted—but none of those virtues eased the weight of my depression. Then came the moment in which Churchill boards a train in the Underground—King George VI has urged him to talk to everyday

UNIVERSAL

Winston Churchill, inspired by the courage of ordinary Brits, resolves to stand strong against Hitler in Joe Wright’s 2017 film, Darkest Hour.

WORLD WAR II

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UNIVERSAL

Londoners. The experience transforms the embattled prime minister. Churchill already thinks that Britain must fight on, but Halifax and Chamberlain have shaken him. So when he asks the astonished passengers, “If the worst came to pass, and the enemy were to appear on those streets above, what would you do?” the question is not rhetorical. He truly does not know. “Fight,” replies one man, with quiet resolve. The other passengers vocally agree. Visibly heartened, Churchill next informs them that, if the government asked “nicely,” it might receive favorable peace terms from Hitler. “What would you say to that?” “Never! Never!” the passengers erupt. “Never!” cries a little girl. Churchill draws near her. “Then you will never give up?” he asks. “No. Never,” she replies. Churchill’s eyes fill with tears. The subway train reaches Churchill’s stop: Westminster, the location of Parliament. There he goes on to deliver his immortal “We will fight them on the beaches” oration, at the core of which is a simple declaration: “We shall never surrender.” The line is already included in the speech, but after his subway car encounters Churchill now tr u ly believes it. When the speech ends, and thunderous applause erupts from the Members of Parliament, one bewildered Conservative turns to Lord Halifax and asks, “What just happened?” Lord Halifax responds, ruefully but accurately, “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” When that final scene arrived, I was still mentally on that subway car. Something inside me had shifted. Later, I phoned my department chair and told him that I would finish out the WW2-210800-002 Joel Johnson.indd course after all. Churchill’s “mobilization of the English language” had the power to inspire the entire free world through five years of battle. Yet his genius consisted of giving voice to a courage that ordinary people already possessed. And their courage in the film had the power to inspire me through a personal battle when all seemed lost. H

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TODAY IN HISTORY FEBRUARY 14, 1929 KNOWN AS THE ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE, SEVEN MEN WERE SLAIN DURING A FAUX POLICE RAID LIKELY STAGED BY AL CAPONE’S CHICAGO OUTFIT. THE VICTIMS, MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES OF THE RIVAL “NORTH SIDE GANG,” WERE LINED UP AGAINST A BRICK WALL INSIDE A COMMERCIAL TRUCKING GARAGE AND SHOT. BRICKS FROM THE INFAMOUS WALL WERE LATER PURCHASED BY COLLECTORS. MANY ARE ON DISPLAY AT THE MOB MUSEUM IN LAS VEGAS. For more, visit WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ TODAY-IN-HISTORY

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CHALLENGE

BRAVEHEARTS

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS VIA GETTY IMAGES; PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN WALKER

We altered this photo of Scottish infantrymen receiving weapons training to create one inaccuracy. What is it?

Answer to the April Challenge: We inadvertently threw a wrench into this challenge with a typo in the photo description: it should have read “1945,” not “1942.” To make up for that error, we’ve doubled the number of winners this time and included three readers who caught our intended alteration of making the 5-foot-6-inch Churchill (far left) taller than he was, and three others who realized the date was off. Some of you—you know who you are!—impressively got both parts right. There were a total of 179 correct entries, and 84 that missed the mark. No, we did not tamper with Churchill’s hat, Ike’s rings, or any other garments or adornments. Congratulations to the winners: Twayne Howard, Don Kitchen, William Schorndorf, Lanny N. Smith, John W. Tokarewich, and Dennis Winsky Please send your answer with your name and mailing address to: August 2021 Challenge,World War II, 901 N. Glebe Road, 5th Fl., Arlington, VA 22203 or e-mail: challenge@historynet.com. Three winners, chosen at random from all correct entries submitted by August 15, will receive Operation Pedestal: The Fleet that Battled to Malta, 1942 by Max Hastings. The answer will appear in the December 2021 issue. AUGUST 2021

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FAMILIAR FACE

A LIFE IN COLOR

Artist Robert Rauschenberg, whose work influenced the Pop Art movement, owed his career, in a backhanded way, to World War II. Born in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1925, he often sketched as a child but took his ability for granted. Drafted into the navy at age 18, he was assigned to the hospital corps in San Diego; while on furlough, he went to a California art museum and saw original paintings for the first time. “It sounds really corny,” he said, “but my moment of realization that there was such a thing as being an artist happened right there.” Confidence in his skill grew as his drawings proved popular with fellow sailors, and when he left the navy in the summer of 1945, he set out on the new path before him. “You can’t make either life or art,” he once said. “You have to work the hole in between.”

WORLD WAR II

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Time Flies

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