World War II

VICTORY75 The end of World War II

Sunday, Feb. 23, 2020

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A SPECIAL SECTION OF THE

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ABOUT

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Major events of 1945

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Bombing Japan

SECTION

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Horrors on humanity

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Stories from the front

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Siege of Berlin

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Photos

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If Hitler had won

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About The National WWII Museum

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he world was last at war 75 years ago. But at the beginning of 1945, there was no certainty that an end was near. Battles raged around Germany as Allied troops strove to take Berlin and end Hitler’s quest for dominance. The war in the Pacific saw resistance not only from Japanese troops but from millions of civilians prepared to die for their country. Only the most horrible of weapons, it seemed, could ironically stop the bloodshed.

Historians from The National WWII Museum look at the choices made on the battlefield and in the Oval Office to bring WWII to an end. They also look at some “what if” scenarios had 1945 not played out as it did.

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Editor LISA GLOWINSKI Copy editor MICHAEL TOESET Art director TONY FERNANDEZ-DAVILA Cover photo: Lt. Victor Jorgensen took this angle of a famous shot in New York City, celebrating the surrender of Japan. “They threw anything and kissed anybody in Times Square.” [WIKIMEDIA] ©2020 GANNETT CO. INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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U.S. and Soviet sailors in Alaska celebrate V-J Day. [WIKIMEDIA]

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By John Sucich More Content Now

The year that brought an end to the world’s largest war might have also been its most eventful. In the final year of World War II — 1945 — a number of significant events took place.

Here are some of the notable events from a notable year.

The end of the Battle of the Bulge The last major German offensive attack ck on the Western frontt began in mid-December 1944, and in early January, U.S. Army Gen. George S. Patton began a counteroffensive for the Allies. The Battle of the Bulge was ultimately an unsuccessful attempt to push the Allies back from German territory, and though there were about 75,000 Allied casualties, the battle signaled the beginning of the end of Germany’s chances at winning the war.

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American engineers emerge from the woods and move out of defensive positions after fighting in the vicinity of Bastogne, Belgium. [ARMY.MIL/BOTB]

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Soviets liberate Auschwitz: The Soviet army made its way through Poland in early 1945 and on Jan. 27 reached Auschwitz. The Germans had tried to destroy evidence of the concentration camps, and started evacuating Auschwitz’s 60,000 prisoners Jan. 18, but they couldn’t get rid of everything. The Soviet army freed the survivors while revealing to the world the horrific events that had taken place at the camps.

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Prisoners in the German concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland, during liberation by the Soviet army in January 1945. [WIKIMEDIA]

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Yalta Conference The three leaders of the main Allied forces — Franklin Roosevelt from the United States, Winston Churchill from Great Britain and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union — met at Yalta in Crimea.

The main topic of the Yalta Conference was what would happen to Germany and the eastern European countries after the war ended.

It also included negotiations surrounding the Soviet Union’s involvement in the war against Japan, as well as some discussion of the new United Nations.

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British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (from left), U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin met at Yalta in February 1945. [WIKIMEDIA]

Iwo Jima is secured Though the iconic moment where U.S. Marines raised the American flag on the island of Iwo Jima happened in February 1945, it wasn’t until mid-March when the U.S. completely took over the island. The location of Iwo Jima, about halfway between the Mariana Islands and Japan, provided the United States with a strategic base for its fighter jets.

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Flag raising on Iwo Jima. [THE U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES]

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Americans land at Okinawa Conquering the island of Okinawa was the last major step in the U.S. approach toward Japan. Okinawa, part of the Ryuku Islands, was defended by an army of about 100,000 men, and it took until June 22 before the Americans fully secured the island, with many of the Japanese who weren’t killed committing suicide rather than becoming prisoners.

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Soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Inf. Div. (O’Daniel) during the conquest of Nuremberg on April 20, 1945. [WIKIMEDIA]

Advance into Germany Throughout March and into April, Allied forces closed in on Berlin, with the United States-led forces coming from the west and the Soviet Union moving in from the east. Along the way they liberated more than 100 concentration camps. The Soviet Union took over Berlin on May 2.

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U.S. Marine reinforcements wade ashore to support the beachhead on Okinawa on April 1, 1945. [WIKIMEDIA]

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Franklin Roosevelt dies Just a few months after beginning his fourth consecutive term as president of the United States, Roosevelt died of a brain hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia. Roosevelt was succeeded by his vice president, Harry S. Truman, who became the 33rd president of the United States that day.

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Roosevelt’s funeral procession in Washington, D.C., was watched by 300,000 spectators on April 14, 1945. [WIKIMEDIA]

Benito Mussolini dies The former Italian dictator, removed from power in 1943, was captured on April 27 in an attempt to escape to Switzerland. He and his mistress were executed the next day, and their bodies were brutalized by the public in a plaza in Milan before they were buried.

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A cross marks the place in Mezzegra where Mussolini was shot. [WIKIMEDIA]

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Adolf Hitler dies Looking to avoid the same fate as Mussolini, Adolf Hitler killed himself in a bunker where he had set up command since January, sensing defeat in the war. On April 29, Hitler married his girlfriend, Eva Braun, and they both committed suicide the next day. Their remains were burned.

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Germany surrenders With Berlin surrounded

by Allied forces by the end of April, a German surrender was all but official. Berlin fell on May 2, and by midnight on May 8, the surrender was final, and the European phase of the war was over.

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Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel signs the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht at Soviet headquarters in Karlshorst, Berlin. [WIKIMEDIA]

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United States conducts a successful atomic bomb test The first atomic bomb exploded in Alamogordo, New Mexico, a desert 120 miles south of Santa Fe. The explosion was the successful conclusion of the Manhattan Project, which began in discussions as early as 1939 and began to be funded by the United States government in 1940.

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Mushroom cloud of “The Gadget,” seconds after detonation. [WIKIMEDIA]

Potsdam Conference The last meeting of the three leaders of the main Allied forces took place at Potsdam in Germany, outside Berlin. This time the attendees were Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, new American President Harry Truman and Great Britain’s Winston Churchill, with his successor Clement Attlee, replacing him on July 28.

The Potsdam Conference saw put into practice the topics discussed at Yalta, and it included an ultimatum demanding Japan unconditionally surrender, which Japan rejected.

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From left, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Harry S. Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. [WIKIMEDIA]

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Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima When Japan refused to surrender after the declaration from the Potsdam Conference, President Truman decided to use the atomic bomb in an effort to lose fewer U.S. lives than an invasion would likely cause. The B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the weapon on Hiroshima, a city on the southern end of Honshu, the largest of Japan’s main islands. 80,000 people were killed in the blast, with the death toll rising to 100,000 by the end of the year.

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Soviet Union declares war on Japan As agreed upon at the Yalta Conference, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan when the country did not immediately surrender after the bombing of Hiroshima.

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Mushroom cloud after an atomic bomb exploded in Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. [WIKIMEDIA]

Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, this one on the port city of Nagasaki. This bombing killed about 40,000 people, and led to the end of the war.

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Japan surrenders Emperor Hirohito announced over the radio that Japan would surrender at noon Aug. 15. The formal surrender agreement was signed on Sept. 2 on the U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

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Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Instrument of Surrender, on behalf of the Japanese government, on board USS Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945. Lt. Gen. Richard K. Sutherland, U.S. Army, watches from the opposite side of the table. Foreign Ministry representative Toshikazu Kase is assisting Shigemitsu. [WIKIMEDIA]

Nuremberg trials begin The first of the Nuremberg trials lasted almost a year. The trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, in order to bring Nazi war criminals to justice.

Thirteen of the trials were held between 1945 and 1949, and they helped set a precedent for handling war crimes.

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Nuremberg trials defendants photographed in the dock. Front row, left to right: Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Rosenberg. Back row, left to right: Karl Doenitz, Erich Raeder, N I V E Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel and Alfred Jodl. [WIKIMEDIA]

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Sources: biography.com, britannica.com, history.com

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U.S. Army soldiers supported by an M4 Sherman tank move through a smoke-ďŹ lled street in Wernberg, Germany, in April 1945.

[WIKIMEDIA]

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Auschwitz I (the main camp), Poland.

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Horrors on Scholars have shown that the Nazi concentration camp system was much larger than previously thought. We know today that the Nazi system had over 15,000 camps spread across their entire empire, the vast majority of these holding much smaller numbers of prisoners engaged in slave labor. Of special significance were the half dozen extermination camps, also known as killing centers or death camps, located in Nazi-occupied Poland: Chelmno, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor, Belzec and, the largest camp in this system, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

For modern visitors to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the sheer breadth of the site, the immersion in cruelty and inhumanity, and the shocking hatred which culminated in the cold-blooded application of reasoned thought and technology for murder on an industrial scale remain overwhelming impressions.

By Keith Huxen, Ph.D. Senior director of research and history, The National WWII Museum

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n Jan. 27, 1945, the Soviet Red Army reached a complex of camps outside the town of Oswiecim in Poland. Although the retreating Germans had attempted to destroy evidence of the crimes they had committed there, the remains of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the horrors perpetrated within its grounds have come to symbolize the Nazi Holocaust like no other site or event.

Seventy-five years later, the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau remains a key focal point for providing a lasting moral meaning to what was ultimately at stake in World War II.

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The end of World War II A special hell

Within the grounds of Auschwitz II-Birkenau, up to 125,000 prisoners were crammed into 174 wooden barracks, in “roosts” which housed four people, each with a personal space of one square meter to live. Lacking adequate food, clean water, shelter and clothing in such tight conditions, disease flourished.

To the left were directed small children, women, the elderly and any with a perceived physical defect, no matter how slight. Approximately three-quarters of all arrivals were

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Having crossed under the sign into Auschwitz I, arriving prisoners passed by an orchestra staffed by inmates to a series of red brick buildings, or blocks, all surrounded by high barbed wire fences posted on concrete pillars.

Inside the blocks, prisoners lived as slave laborers, deprived of proper food, shelter, clothing and medical care.

Emaciated man sits on a stool at a recently liberated concentration camp, 1945.

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Auschwitz-Birkenau was a complex of three major camps. Auschwitz I was the original camp where prisoners entered by passing under a metal sign which in German informed them “Arbeit Mach Frei,” or Work Makes You Free. In the Nazi mind, while the Final Solution reached at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 meant that virtually all Jews and other racially undesirable peoples would be killed, it was permissible to work the more able-bodied to death.

Having crossed under the sign into Auschwitz I, arriving prisoners passed by an orchestra staffed by inmates to a series of red brick buildings, or blocks, all surrounded by high barbed wire fences posted on concrete pillars. Inside the blocks, prisoners lived as slave laborers, deprived of proper food, shelter, clothing and medical care. In Block 10 medical experiments were performed on women, while immediately outside was a wall for executions. A gallows for hangings and whipping posts were also nearby.

A crematorium featuring three ovens was built in summer 1940, and in August 1941 a group of Soviet prisoners of war were victims of the first gassing with Zyklon B, but the facilities at Auschwitz I were not designed for mass killing.

In 1941 the Germans began construction of the site Auschwitz III at Monowitz in order to exploit slave labor and produce synthetic rubber in a plant run by I.G. Farben. It should be noted that the other sub-camps existed at Auschwitz, and that tens of thousands of malnourished prisoners perished at Auschwitz III. But the camp known as Auschwitz II-Birkenau was a special hell. Construction began in late 1941, and Auschwitz II-Birkenau served dual purposes as both a slave labor and death camp. Trains filled with innocents arrived by rail through the yawning mouth of the brick gatehouse, topped by a glassed-in guard tower.

When the passengers were unloaded, a “selection” process took place conducted by the SS, who separated those deemed able-bodied for work from those condemned to immediate death. Men were separated from women and children, but all those judged healthy enough to work — men, women and children — were directed to the right for registry at the camp.

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doomed to walk the tracks to the four crematoria, numbered II through V, constructed at the end of the rail line. Each of the crematoria contained a dressing room where the victims stripped in preparation for the showers, where the Germans told them they were to be bathed and deloused. In the shower rooms, which in reality were gas chambers, they were murdered with Zyklon B. After the gas was cleared, the Sonderkommandos, work units usually filled with Jewish prisoners laboring

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM

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Pile of corpses at a concentration camp in Europe, 1945.

At Auschwitz-Birkenau today, visitors can see quotes in exhibits which depict the encompassing nature of the Nazi project to pursue racial supremacy and purity. The Third Reich’s Minister of Justice, Otto Thierack, is quoted: “We must free the nation of Poles, Russians, Jews and Gypsies.” The special and complete annihilation of the Jews as a goal can be seen in a quote by Hans Frank, appointed by Hitler to be the Nazi

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11,000 Roma, 3,000 Polish and 1,000 Slavic children. The Red Army liberated only 450 prisoners younger than 15 when they arrived on Jan. 27, 1945. All the rest were murdered, simply for existing.

What remains stunning to the point of incomprehensibility, even to visitors to Auschwitz-Birkenau today, is the reality that behind each of those numbers is the story of an individual. It is impactful to see the piles of personal items such as hairbrushes, shoes and spectacles; it is distressing to view a mound of empty Zyklon B cans. But it is most devastating to view photographs of the victims, with their faces hovering over striped uniforms and their eyes looking from the past to the present, where you can read their name. You can see their names painted on the suitcases they brought to Auschwitz-Birkenau, never to depart: Georg Adler, Heinz Wittkowski, Martha Zaudy, Irene Karpeles, Franz Wolf ...

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Complete lack of mercy

governor general of occupied Poland: “Jews are a race that must be totally exterminated.”

Of the 1.3 million people whom the Nazis deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, over 1.1 million were Jews. Over 140,000 Poles, 33,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and over 25,000 prisoners from other ethnic groups were also deported to the camp. Of all these prisoners, at least 1.1 million were murdered in the gas chambers. Jews accounted for over 90% of the dead; approximately 1 in every 6 Jewish victims of the Holocaust met their end at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Perhaps the most telling, dark and evil aspect of Nazism was the complete lack of mercy bestowed upon the purely innocent. Over 232,000 children passed under the Arbeit Mach Frei sign at Auschwitz I or through the yawning mouth of the brick gatehouse at Auschwitz II Birkenau, including 216,000 Jewish,

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under the threat to their own lives, then went about disposing of the bodies in the furnace rooms. They removed valuables such as gold fillings, jewelry and spectacles, and while the hair of women was shaved before their murder in other death camps, at Auschwitz II-Birkenau the Sonderkommandos shaved the heads of women after death. The bodies were incinerated.

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An emaciated prisoner holds the body of a dead inmate at a concentration camp, 1945.

Why we remember

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Seventy-five years ago, the liberation of Nazi Germany’s most notorious concentration and death camp permanently marked a moral meaning upon the Allied victory over Adolf Hitler’s regime in World War II. For nothing short of a complete Allied victory over Hitler and the Nazis would have stopped the Holocaust: If the Allies had been defeated, the mass murder and genocide that was carried out at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other camps would have continued until Hitler had succeeded in killing all of the people, untold many millions more, that he deemed racially undesirable.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is today a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Its remains and ruins still bear silent witness to the heinous crimes committed there, as well as to the endurance and courageous spirit of those who survived there. It is a memorial to those who perished there, and a monument for the living to teach future generations with the solemn oath: “Never again.”

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The end of World War II The battered Reichstag, former seat of government, Berlin, 1945.

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Siege of Berlin The end of the war in Europe drafting old men and boys — grandfathers and grandsons together — to fill out the ranks.

But that’s the funny thing about retrospect: how clear everything is. Germany tottering? Maybe! But as anyone who has ever swung an axe on a big tree can tell you, you just have to keep hacking away.

Predicting the exact number of strokes you’ll need to finish the job isn’t a precise science. And even the strongest lumberjack finds out that it almost always takes longer than he thought it would.

By Rob Citino Executive director, Institute for the Study of War and Democracy and Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian, The National WWII Museum

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n retrospect, the dawning of the year 1945 saw Hitler’s Third Reich tottering and ready to fall. The Allies had full spectrum dominance in the air, on land and at sea, while the Wehrmacht was reduced to

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM

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The end of World War II This is a good way to think about the situation the Allies faced in 1945. All the signs indicated that they were still a long way from victory.

American forces had seized the German city of Aachen in autumn 1944, but Aachen is nearly 400 miles from Berlin as the crow flies. Soviet armies, too, had their work cut out for them.

From their perch across the Vistula River in front of Warsaw, they stood 350 miles from the German capital. Certainly, the Germans had suffered a mauling in five long years of war, but Adolf Hitler still had millions of men in the field, with sophisticated weapons and a great deal of will. Nothing, it seemed, was going to be easy.

And that renders what happened in the next four months all the more remarkable — a sustained series of Allied blows that chopped down the German army and killed it.

German civilians clear debris from a commercial street in Berlin, 1945.

Speeding, grinding toward Berlin

shaking off the effects of the last great German offensive of the war in the Ardennes back in December 1944. For the Anglo-American armies, January and February were a slow grind, featuring costly battles in the cities and towns of the Rhineland (German territories on the west bank of the Rhine River). Moreover, once they cleared the west bank, there was still the big problem of crossing the river itself.

One of Europe’s great waterways, the Rhine wasn’t something you hopped across on the fly.

You had to prepare for days, perhaps weeks: bombardments, smoke screens, assault craft to cross the river. It promised to be a pain.

Or did it? As elements of Gen. John W. Leonard’s U.S. 9th Armored Division approached the river on March 7, they saw to their astonishment

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The first big blow landed in the east, as the Red Army launched a great offensive across the Vistula. The attack opened on Jan. 12, shredding German defenses along the river, taking Warsaw and driving rapidly to the west. As the Red Army sped across the flat plains of Western Poland toward Germany, thousands and then millions of German refugees took to the road, piling all their possessions on carts, wagons, wheelbarrows. They were fleeing as fast as their feet could carry them, anything to stay ahead of the onrushing Red Army. It was winter, of course — biting winds and blizzards — and conditions on the trek were horrible. Often Soviet tank columns ranging ahead of the rest of the Red Army caught these miserable refugees, and then the slaughter was ghastly. This was not only a military defeat for the German army, in other words; Germany itself was falling apart.

The Soviet drive did not stop until it had reached Küstrin on the Oder River, just 50 miles from Berlin. Here the Red Army paused to rest, regroup and refit, but mainly to catch its breath after one of the most successful winter offensives in history. From their start line outside of Warsaw, Soviet forces had driven forward some 300 miles in a month.

The Soviets may have been rolling, but the Western Allies were still in first gear, still

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that the 1,000-foot-long Ludendorff Railroad Bridge at the town of Remagen was still standing. Hardly pausing for breath, they rushed the bridge. The Germans set off explosives, and indeed eyewitnesses could clearly see the bridge lift off its foundations before settling back down again, still intact. Just that quickly, a terrain barrier that might have held up the Allies for weeks had fallen. Gen. Courtney Hodges (U.S. 1st Army) wasn’t the cheerleading type, but he couldn’t contain himself: “Brad,” he bellowed over the phone to his commanding officer, “we’ve got a bridge!”

Gen. Omar Bradley, commanding the U.S. 12th Army Group, responded with one of the most memorable lines of the war: “Hot dog, Courtney — this will bust him wide open!”

President Truman and dignitaries at an airfield in Berlin, 1945.

And it did. By the end of March, huge Allied forces were driving over the Rhine, heading east. In concert with an attack across the Rhine by Genn. Bernard Law Montgomery, including a gigantic airdrop behind German lines, the Allies encircled an entire German army group in the Ruhr valley — Germany’s industrial heartland.

Nearly 400,000 German troops eventually surrendered, so many that the U.S. Army had a hard time processing them all. The battle of the “Ruhr Pocket” was nothing less than the greatest U.S. military victory of all time.

Chaos in the city And now, for the final blow of the axe, we turn once again to the Red Army. On April 16, 1945, the Soviets launched the last great battle of World War II in Europe: the drive on Berlin. Once again, Soviet mechanized forces slashed through the threadbare German defenses in front of them along the Oder River. Few German units by this point of the war were up to full strength, guns often had only a few dozen rounds, and reserves were non-existent. A certain fatalism had taken root in the German ranks. As one colonel muttered to his officers: “If a few soldiers start to run

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away, then you must shoot them. If you see many soldiers taking off... then you’d better shoot yourself.”

While there would be some hard fighting here and there, the Soviets soon broke into the clear. Two army groups (“fronts,” the Soviets called them), the 1st Byelorussian under Marshal G. K. Zhukov and the 1st Ukrainian under Marshal I.S. Konev, converged on the city and within a week had encircled it.

The final battle was at hand, unprecedented in its ferocity, but foreordained in its outcome. The Soviets held all the advantages: numbers, weaponry, air support. While the German defenders had a city with all its concrete buildings, hideaways and ambush points, their manpower was an arbitrary collection of old men who had last seen action in World War I, boys who were barely shaving, grizzled non-coms fighting their 50th battle and a large contingent of non-German fighters: idealists enlisted in Hitler’s anti-Soviet crusade, Scandinavians from the Nordland Division of the Waffen-SS, a battalion of right-wing Frenchmen from the Charlemagne Division, Latvian infantry. Their commander, Gen. Helmuth Weidling, later recalled being appointed to lead the defense of the city and remembered thinking, “I wish I’d been shot.”

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The end of World War II The final five days have fixed the battle of Berlin in our historical memory. Stark images come to mind: the murderous building-by-building fight, with no quarter granted by either side; the bodies of German deserters hanging from lampposts, executed by their own officers; SS squads prowling the streets, shooting anyone unlucky enough to be caught flying a white flag; the desperate slogans chalked on the walls of a dying city (“Berlin bleibt deutsch!,” Berlin stays German!) and of course millions of terrified civilians huddling in air raid shelters, underground stations or flak towers, awaiting their fate.

By the end of the day on April 28, the two Soviet spearheads in central Berlin were less than one mile apart.

It would take them four full days of fierce fighting to cross that final mile.

The assault on the Reichstag building was the signature moment of the battle — think of a battle raging for the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. The commander of the Soviet 150th Rifle Division, Gen. V.M. Shatilov, wheeled up 90 guns on a 400-meter front and started blasting away at his target. With progress measured in yards, his men fought their way into the Reichstag, defended by a menagerie of sailors, SS and Hitler Youth. The Soviets would need another full day, May 1, to smash resistance in the basement, secure the prize and plant the red hammer and sickle flag on the Reichstag dome.

Hitler’s last days

his communications with the outside world were so sporadic that his staff had to resort to bizarre improvisations to gain even basic intelligence on the fighting, dialing random phone numbers near the front to see whether a German or Russian voice picked up. Hitler was a passive observer in Berlin, in other words, and no wonder. He had long ago decided to kill himself when the end was near, and he did just that on April 30, with Soviet infantry above him, barely a mile away.

The Allies had won the war in Europe.

The big lumberjack had toppled the tree — probably faster than he expected.

That was the good news. The bad? Tens of millions of men, women and children had to die in Hitler’s senseless war.

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By the end of the day on April 28, the two Soviet spearheads in central Berlin were less than one mile apart. It would take them four full days of fierce fighting to cross that final mile.

The assault on the Reichstag building was the signature moment of the battle — think of a battle raging for the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

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It is fitting at this point to call to mind the man who had started it all: Adolf Hitler. He has spent his last days in an underground bunker in Berlin, ranting and raving, issuing nonsensical orders, imposing death sentences on the disloyal. But he had long ago lost control. He spent most of his last days pushing around non-existent divisions on his situation maps, and

Civilians and soldiers pass the bombed U.S. Embassy in Berlin, 1945 .

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How the world would have changed

An American soldier passes a wall with Nazi graffiti in Belgium, 1945.

Translation: “Faithful and iron will leads to victory.”

By Rob Citino Executive director, Institute for the Study of War and Democracy and Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian, The National WWII Museum

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n 1962, famed science fiction writer Philip K. Dick published a little novel titled “The Man in the High Castle.” The book depicts a nightmare world in which Hitler and the Axis powers have won World War II. The United States is occupied territory — the Germans in the East, the Japanese in the West — and Americans are having trouble adjusting to the new regime.

The book offers fascinating insights into the way that history unfolds, as seemingly little things add up

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to big things and eventually shift the historical train onto another track altogether. It was turned into a television program in 2015 for Amazon Prime Video, but the book is still worth reading, one of the classics works of “alternate history.”

Now, let’s be clear. If we view the historical situation objectively, Axis victory in World War II was highly unlikely. All we have to do is to examine the power balance at the time — numbers and resources, strategic position and industrial production — and it soon becomes clear that the Allies were probably going to win the war.

Their advantages, particularly in terms of wealth and economic power, would have been difficult for anyone to overcome, and in the end, the Axis lost the war by a mile.

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Let’s just say the improbable happened, however, and the Allies lost. Perhaps President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies before he fulfills his historic mission of readying the U.S. for war.

Remember, FDR was the victim of an assassination attempt in February 1933, even before he was sworn in as president. The mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak, was hit at his side and eventually died of his wounds. Without Roosevelt, maybe isolationist sentiment hangs on just long enough to hamper U.S. military preparations for war. The country finally starts scrambling to get ready in late 1941, not mid-1940, but it’s too little, too late. As a result, America’s post-Pearl Harbor recovery — remarkably swift, in actuality — takes a lot longer. The Germans are able to solidify the defenses of their European empire, Stalin eventually reaches an arrangement with Hitler, and the Japanese run riot in the Pacific even more successfully than they did in our timeline. The United States, under a president not named Roosevelt, sees the futility of rolling back Axis gains and eventually seeks terms with the Axis.

So, the Axis wins World War II. What then? What is daily life like in Hitler’s new world order?

Well, it’s horrible, in a word. We often treat Hitler as some sort of garden variety “conqueror” who dreamed of ruling a global empire, in the mode of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan or Napoleon. He was much more than that, however. He was a hater, a man with a monstrous racial project in mind, one that included the destruction of entire races whom he deemed to be inferior or “subhuman,” and of course a complete global genocide of the Jews.

In our scenario, Hitler’s realm certainly would be vast enough. The Reich would stretch from the English Channel to the Eurasian steppes, and from the North Cape to the Mediterranean basin (the latter controlled through his lackey Mussolini) and North Africa — all administered from the new capital city of “Germania,” a metastasized version of Berlin, with monstrous domes and boulevards hundreds of yards wide. All in all, Hitler holds power over something like half a billion people.

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Sick and starving inmates liberated from Wöbbelin concentration camp, Germany, 1945.

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like barracks on wheels — would be hauling hordes of slaves to their next destination, perhaps to be worked to death farming the broad farmlands of the Ukraine, or in vast, dimly lit armaments factories, or on the construction site for the massive new German naval base that Hitler was planning for Trondheim in Norway.

Nazi inhumanity would have been accompanied by global instability. If anything, Adolf Hitler was a restless force of nature, never satisfied with whatever victory he had just won, always looking for his next target or victim. As grand as he might have felt winning World War II, it’s hard to imagine him stopping.

In “Man in the High Castle,” author Dick has Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan constantly on the brink of coming to blows. At the very least, both would have continued to arm feverishly, even in victory. Their fascist ideology demanded a constant buildup of arms, nonstop mobilization of the citizenry, and brinksmanship in foreign policy. It’s not difficult to conjure up some future economic crisis leading to a break between the Axis partners. And then, who can say what might have followed? A German amphibious drive into the Indian and Pacific oceans, German grenadiers coming ashore on Iwo Jima in 1957, Japanese ICBM strikes on Hamburg, even a nuclear war engulfing the entire planet — nothing would have been off the table.

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Those unfortunate half-billion would the subjects of a vast experiment, the “total demographic and racial reordering of the globe,” in the words of historian Gerhard Weinberg. That would have meant a cruel fate for many of them: the murder of millions, Auschwitz-scale killing facilities from one corner of his realm to the other, widespread sterilization programs to prevent targeted groups from propagating and, of course, euthanasia on a grand scale against the mentally and physically handicapped, what the Nazis called “life unworthy of life.” We know now that the victims of this last effort would have included hundreds of thousands of badly wounded veterans of the German Wehrmacht, an ironic and horrible note of gratitude from the Führer for their sacrifices on his behalf. Even the subject races of the Germanic empire who were not targeted for total physical extermination — the Slavic peoples, for example — could look forward to a brutish life of serfdom, hard labor and a starvation diet.

For the rulers, of course, things would be different.

The “Aryan” elite of this nightmarish realm would live the life of privileged overlords, whizzing along modern four-lane autobahns to their new estates in the conquered eastern provinces or riding in luxury coaches on the new super-railroads Hitler planned to build.

Beneath these luxury cabins, cruder lodgings — more

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Germany’s own internal politics would have also kept things on the boil. Despite Hitler’s professed love for law, order and discipline, his Third Reich was one of the most chaotically run states in human history. He liked to give three or four officials the same task, let them duke it out in a contest for power, then intervene to choose the winner. His Darwinian view of administration was extraordinarily wasteful, time-consuming and inefficient. That’s why, in real life, things like the design and production of the ME-262 jet fighter took the Nazi state so long to bring to fruition. Hitler’s “survivalof-the-fittest” system also let energetic and aggressive voices come to the fore — however, usually younger men arguing for the most radical policies. That process of radicalization almost certainly would have continued after winning the war. A post-victory Third Reich would have become more murderous, not less, even after Hitler’s death and the rise of his successor. It is just not possible to conjure up notions of a lasting peace in a world ruled by the Nazis.

Finally, how would life change in the United States if the Nazis had won the war? Even if America was not decisively defeated on the battlefield, and remained unoccupied, the need to formulate policy for dealing with the Hitler regime would have changed our democratic way of life. We would have become a much more militarized society. We would stay armed to the teeth — not as in the post-World War II style, where we have relied on more powerful weapons and a fewer number of soldiers.

Instead, we would have no choice but to keep 10 million men under arms; indeed, that figure is lowball. Consumer production, and thus civilian standards of living, would have stayed low. Constant vigilance against new attacks

by Japan and Germany would have been the order of the day. In our real world, the United States lived through a Cold War for 50 years after World War II, and it was bad enough. This alternate version we’re describing would have been “colder” and more tense, but also much more likely to go hot at any time. Remember, we’re talking about Adolf Hitler here.

In the end, “The Man in the High Castle” is a work of fiction. And for that, we should all be eternally grateful.

German civilians exhume corpses from a mass grave, Wöbbelin, Germany, 1945.

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B-29s from 500th BG, 73rd BW of the 20th Air Force dropping incendiary bombs over Japan, 1945.

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There were no ‘good’ options for ending the war in the Pacific

By Keith Huxen, Ph.D.

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Senior director of research and history, The National WWII Museum

ooking back on the D-Day invasion of Normandy 20 years after the event, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower informed an astonished young historian, Stephen Ambrose, that boat builder Andrew Jackson Higgins was the man responsible for victory in World War II. Eisenhower explained that the flat-bottomed landing craft known as LCVPs (Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel), which could carry troops directly onto enemy beaches, had made large-scale amphibious invasions possible. Without the ability to conduct amphibious invasions, the entire American military strategy to invade North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Normandy would not have been possible — much less the over 200 amphibious landings conducted across the Pacific.

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Destruction in Hiroshima after the detonation of the atomic bomb in 1945.

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After the success of the Normandy landings in June 1944, the importance of amphibious operations in Europe receded. But as Allied troops closed in on Berlin in spring 1945, amphibious landings in the Pacific were not only becoming ever more vital to American operations against the Japanese, but more difficult and bloody.

The Japanese Imperial Army had changed tactics, fortifying their defenses further inland off the landing beaches, and fighting with unprecedented intensity and ferocity as the Americans moved closer to mainland Japan. It took the Americans 36 days before victory could be claimed at Iwo Jima, an uninhabited island, at the cost of 6,821 American lives against approximately 20,000 Japanese troops. Imperial fighters vowed that death was preferable to surrender, and only 200 Japanese survived the battle — a fatality rate of better than 99%.

In the ensuing invasion of Okinawa, Japanese territory that was heavily populated, savage fighting, fanatical Japanese resistance and increasing bloodshed characterized the 82-day campaign. By the time the Americans could claim victory on June 22, 1945, over 12,000 Americans, 93,000 Japanese and 140,000 civilians on Okinawa lay dead. Symbolic of the Japanese fighting spirit, kamikaze suicide pilots killed almost 5,000 American sailors off Okinawa, the worst battle death toll suffered by the U.S. Navy in World War II. After assuming the presidency in the wake of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in April, at the conclusion of the Okinawa campaign in summer 1945 President Harry S. Truman asked his advisors a serious query: Was the upcoming American invasion of the Japanese home islands, codenamed Operation Downfall, looking at Okinawa-level resistance from one end of Japan to the other?

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The end of World War II Another year of casualties?

Although American troops had not yet landed in Japan, the war was being felt in the homeland islands by pressure from American sea and air power. First, the American submarine fleet was carrying out a devastating campaign in the sea lanes between mainland China, the Philippines and beyond, sinking Japanese merchant shipping at such a rate that starvation loomed within a year. Second, American B-29 bombers flying from the Mariana Islands were conducting annihilating raids by dropping incendiary bombs from low altitudes on Japanese cities. With the Japanese labor force and workshops spread out in residential areas containing much wooden construction, the firebombing campaign was crippling Japanese industry and urban productivity.

The American strategy to invade Japan with ground

troops, Downfall, was planned in two stages. The first was codenamed Operation Olympic, which would see a massive American and British amphibious force launched from Okinawa to invade the southern Japanese mainland island of Kyushu on Nov. 1, 1945. Then, using Kyushu as a launching point, Operation Coronet would land on Honshu south of Tokyo and drive toward the capital city on March 1, 1946.

For the initial Olympic invasion of Kyushu, it was projected that 14 infantry and Marine divisions would be used from existing assets in the Pacific. Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s staff estimated that the Allies would face six divisions and 300,000 Japanese troops on Kyushu, and projected 125,000 casualties could be expected after 120 days of fighting. When Gen. George Marshall questioned the numbers, MacArthur lowered the estimate to 105,000 casualties.

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Aerial view of the devastation in Hiroshima in 1945.

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The end of World War II People walk through a devastated city after the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945.

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resistance fighters. Propaganda not only portrayed Americans as demonic and inhuman, but called for 100 million to die in “glorious” defense of their Emperor and homeland. Lacking weapons, women and children were drilled to resist the invaders with sharpened bamboo sticks. While the U.S. Navy estimated that the invasion of Kyushu would face 2,500 potential kamikazes, because of the shorter distance overland to reach the landing fleets it appeared that kamikaze aircraft would be able to attack more effectively, and if available trainer aircraft were included and used for kamikaze attacks the potential Japanese air fleet rose to over 10,200 planes.

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What the Americans did not know was the Japanese had anticipated that the invasion would begin at Kyushu, and they moved troops from other parts of Asia there as part of Operation Ketsugo. The actual strength of Japanese forces on Kyushu in August 1945 totaled 14 divisions and over 900,000 men (a subsequent projection on the actual numbers forecast that American casualties would have been over 380,000 — a sobering number for a single campaign, considering that total American combat deaths in World War II were approximately 416,000.

Besides professional forces, the Japanese military sought to enlist the entire Japanese population as

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The end of World War II At 05:29:45 in the morning on July 16, 1945, a plutonium bomb codenamed Trinity was detonated in the desert at Alamogordo, New Mexico, ushering in the nuclear age.

The Manhattan Project was a success: Now, the question remained whether the new weapon would be enough to end the Pacific War.

Various parts of the U.S. government produced casualty estimates in summer 1945, and the general trend among these showed that as estimates of actual Japanese strength rose, casualty estimates also drastically increased. To cite one study conducted by future Nobel Prize recipient William Shockley for Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s office, if the civilian population resisted the Americans would suffer 400,000 to 800,000 dead along with somewhere between 5 million and 10 million Japanese dead before the war could be won. In a memorandum to the president on July 2, 1945, Stimson wrote, “Once started in actual invasion, we shall in my opinion have to go through with an even more bitter finish fight than in Germany. We shall incur the losses incident to such a war and we shall have to leave the Japanese islands even more thoroughly destroyed than was the case with Germany.”

The stage was set for a debate among the highest levels of the American government: Gen. MacArthur wished to push forward with the Olympic invasion, but Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Ernest King disagreed, believing that the costs would be too high. Under these uncertain circumstances, President Truman would have to decide whether to go forward with the planned invasion despite discord among his service branch chiefs.

Choices This was the general situation when Truman departed for the Potsdam Conference in July 1945 to meet with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill over postwar policies in Europe and Germany. Another complicating angle on how best to end the war in the Pacific was Soviet intentions in the region. At Yalta, Stalin had promised Roosevelt that the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan three months after the defeat of Nazi Germany, and the Red Army was preparing a massive blow against the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria.

At 05:29:45 in the morning on July 16, 1945, a plutonium bomb codenamed Trinity was detonated in the desert at Alamogordo, New Mexico, ushering in the nuclear age. The Manhattan Project was a success: Now, the question remained whether the new weapon would be enough to end the Pacific War.

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A Japanese family walks down a bombed city street in Japan, 1945.

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The end of World War II A destroyed factory in Nagasaki, Japan, 1945.

Truman and Stalin had a bland exchange over the news at Potsdam, both men guarded over the extent of their real knowledge of the bomb, before issuing the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945, which called on Japan to unconditionally surrender or face the alternative of “prompt and utter destruction.”

Events moved rapidly. On Aug. 6, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima; on Aug. 8, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and began Operation August Storm, the invasion of Manchuria, the next day; and on Aug. 9, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. It is estimated that with radiation poisoning the two bombs ultimately killed approximately 226,000 people in the ensuing months. After a Japanese reply on Aug. 10 that attempted to subvert Allied rule to the Emperor was rejected, and an attempted palace coup by young Japanese militarists was stopped, on Aug. 14 Hirohito went on the radio. The Emperor told the Japanese that by “enduring the unendurable and suffering what is un-sufferable,” they would secure peace for future generations. The American government accepted the statement as consistent with the Potsdam terms.

Operation Downfall never took place.

The plans for Downfall would have dwarfed the amphibious invasion of Normandy, and the ensuing campaign to pacify the Japanese home islands and population never occurred. No Japanese military unit surrendered during all of World War II, and the signing ceremony aboard the USS Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945, signified the first national military defeat Japan had suffered during the 2,600-year reign of the Showa emperor. A unique combination of events brought about the sudden climax and downfall of the Japanese Empire, and as horrible as those events were, it is most likely that greater tragedy and horrors were lost in the mists of history because of them.

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The end of World War II U.S. Army soldier John Ferrari writes a letter home while in his quarters in Friedberg, Germany, around April 1945. [FLICKR / STATE ARCHIVES OF NORTH CAROLINA, RALEIGH]

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By Kristen D. Burton, Ph.D.

Josephine Baker

The National WWII Museum

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hile predominately remembered for her provocative dances, vaudeville routines and appearances in films, Josephine Baker’s efforts to fight the tyranny of Fascism have received little attention. Throughout her life, the American expatriate-turned-French citizen fearlessly

called out the racism she endured while in the United States.

Her bravery again went on display after her adopted country of France fell to Nazi forces. Baker turned to espionage, using her celebrity status to capture information for the French Resistance.

Born Freda Josephine McDonald in East St. Louis, on June 3, 1906, Baker took to an early life of entertaining and offering performances to neighborhood children when still a small child.

In her teen years, she turned to dancing with vaudeville troupes.

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At age 15, she met Wilcontact with Jacques Abtey, liam Howard Baker, and head of French counterafter a few weeks the military intelligence. Abtey couple eloped. Baker was sought to recruit people who her second husband — could engage in espionage her first, brief marriage to help resistance efforts occurred while she was against the Nazi occupa13 — but he gave Josephine tion. Baker was an ideal the surname that she kept candidate for this work, as for the rest of her life. her celebrity allowed her At 19, Baker accepted an to move easily between offer to join an all-black countries and offered her revue set to run in Paris. enhanced protection.

Unlike the United States, When Abtey approached France did not racially Baker to see if she would segregate public places on take the risk and join the a large scale. When Baker resistance, she said yes. and her castmates boarded Baker housed resistance a train in France, they were fighters at her chateau and surprised to learn they supplied them with visas. could sit anywhere they She attended parties and liked. She was also shocked diplomatic functions, Josephine Baker distributes rations to the citizens of Paris. [THE NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM] to see the costumes creincluding parties at the Italated for her to perform in; ian embassy that brought one consisted only of a bikini bottom covered in flamingo feathher in the orbit of high-ranking Axis bureaucrats. She collected ers. After one performance, Baker quickly took to this kind of information on German troop movements, and what harbors or erotic dancing and became a rising star. Over time, she became airfields were in action. Baker was confident that her celebrity the most successful entertainer in France, transforming from an and connections would protect her, and that no one would susexotic dancer into a film star and opera singer. Throughout these pect her of espionage. She wrote down intelligence on her hands years, it is believed she became the wealthiest black woman alive. and arms, pinning notes inside her underwear. She did so knowIn 1928, Baker departed for a European tour, with the first stop ing she would never face a strip search — and she was right. in Vienna. She had not been aware of the political unrest buildThe Nazis had gotten wind of the resistance activity haping in the region. By that point, Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, pening at Baker’s chateau and visited the estate. Baker had “Mein Kampf,” had popularized racist ideologies that spread been hiding several fighters at the time of the visit. She sucthroughout the region. Before Baker even arrived in Vienna, cessfully charmed the Nazis when they questioned her, but posters around the city denigrated her performance, calling her she took the close encounter as a sign that it was time to a “black devil.” As she rode in a carriage to her hotel, protestleave France. Abtey contacted Gen. Charles de Gaulle, who ers lined the streets. Baker said the scene reminded her of the instructed Abtey and Baker to travel to London via Lisbon, race riots that shook her community when she was a child. which was neutral. The pair carried over 50 classified docuThe start of World War II put Baker’s performances on hold. By ments and secret intelligence. Baker carried hers by writthat time, she had married her third husband, a French-Jewish ing the information in invisible ink on her sheet music. sugar broker named Jean Lion. The couple divorced in 1941, but After D-Day and the liberation of Paris, Baker returned to her in that time, Baker came to represent much of what Hitler and the adopted city wearing a military uniform. She quickly took note Nazis despised. She was a successful, black woman in an interof the terrible conditions many French people endured after the racial marriage with a Jewish man, who was also openly bisexual Nazi occupation. She sold pieces of jewelry and other valuables and had multiple long-term, semi-public relationships with to raise money to buy food and coal for the poor citizens of Paris. other women. When the Germans began to advance on Paris After Germany’s surrender in 1945, de Gaulle awarded in 1940, Baker, like millions of other Parisians, fled the city.

Baker the Croix de Guerre and the Rosette de la RésisShe moved to a chateau she rented in the south of France, where tance. He also named her a Chevalier de Légion d’honneur, she took in other refugees. After the fall of Paris, Baker came into the highest order of merit for military and civil action.

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The USS Indianapolis [COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM]

Harlan Twible

By Seth Paridon

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native of Massachusetts, Harlan Twible was a fresh graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy when he was assigned to the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35) in late June 1945. He had wanted to be assigned to a newer, more glamorous ship, desiring to be either a naval aviator or a submariner. Like any young, confident Academy graduate, Twible wanted to carve a place for himself in history, and he assumed that a cruiser like the Indianapolis, affectionately known as the “Indy” to her crew, would not be that ship. Fate would prove him wrong.

On July 26, 1945, Twible and Indy were sitting dockside on the island of Tinian. Twible, serving as officer of the deck that day, looked out across the pier and noticed an abnormally large contingent of “brass” — high ranking military officers — clustered in large groups on the pier. What Twible did not know at the time was that his ship had transported vital parts for the world’s first nuclear weapon to be used in warfare to scientists on Tinian. The ship’s mission was top secret, so the officers and men alike had no idea of their cargo’s importance or why there were so many high-ranking officers watching the crew unload its vital cargo. “There were admirals ... everything that was of importance on the island of Tinian was there to greet what we later found out was the bomb,” he said.

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After the delivery of her cargo, the Indy was sent to Guam and really for the men, not for myself. My biggest concern ordered to join with other surface forces in the area of Leyte Gulf, was that the people we could save, we saved them.”

Philippines, for further training before the invasion of Japan.

Desperation and fear grew among the men floating in the On the night of July 30, 1945, Indy was sailing alone toward her shark-infested waters. While there were many shark attacks, rendezvous with the fleet at a speed of 17 knots. the exact figure for death by shark among the survivors is Shortly after midnight, the heavy cruiser was struck unknown; there were many survivors who never even saw by two Japanese torpedoes fired from the submaa shark. Twible and his group, however, were not among rine I-58. The first torpedo blew the bow off of the those fortunate men. The sharks grabbed some of the surship while the second struck nearly amidships near vivors who had floated away from the larger groups, so the powder magazine. The resulting explosion litTwible organized “shark watches” to keep the men together erally split the ship to the keel, knocking out all and fend off the sharks when they came in. The sharks power and causing her to sink by the bow rapidly. usually stayed away from the larger groups, which would Aboard the stricken vessel, young Ensign Twible beat and kick them, normally forcing them away. Still, looked around to find no officers taking charge of the the predators took their toll on the survivors in Twible’s chaotic situation. “We knew we were in trouble,” group. Twible insisted on cutting the dead men off of floathe said. “So I took command and I told them to hang ing wreckage they had tied themselves to, then pushing on to anything they could hang on to. ... Then when the dead out to sea so that those who remained would not the tilt became too great ... I gave the order to abanhave a constant visual example of their potential fate. don ship. Nobody abandoned, then I yelled, ‘FolAfter four days and five nights, the survivors were finally low me!’ And the bodies came in so fast it was sighted by a U.S. Navy aircraft on routine patrol. unbelievable.” Twible jumped into the sea and “We tried to keep The pilot radioed the report of “many men in the immediately swam away from the ship. Indiawater,” which alerted a PBY flying boat that in turn the men thinking alerted a nearby destroyer, the USS Cecil Doyle napolis went down in a mere 12 minutes, bringing nearly 300 of her crew down with her. As that they would be (DD-368). Rescuing sailors through the night, the she disappeared beneath the waves, 900 of the PBY and the destroyer were the answer to the sursaved, but there ship’s crew floated in the Pacific Ocean, their vivor’s prayers. Of the 900 men who went into the location and fate unknown to the U.S. Navy. was no way in God’s water, 316 survived to be rescued. The Indianapolis After the ship’s sinking, the next task at disaster remains one of the worst — and most congreen earth that hand for Twible and his shipmates was surtroversial — tragedies in U.S. Navy history. vival on the open sea. Many of the crew, Twible stayed in the Navy after World War II, servI knew we were including Twible, had been wounded during ing through the Korean War, eventually retiring in 1958 gonna be saved. the torpedo explosions, some grievously. due to health issues sustained during his time floating “Everybody was scared to death,” he said.

My fear was really in the Pacific Ocean. He entered the business world “These were all 18- and 19-year-old kids.” and became successful, retiring at age 54 and moving for the men, not Despite their young age, the men were someto Florida with his wife. Like many combat veterans, what calm after they were put into the water. for myself. My big- Twible never talked about the disaster in the years “There wasn’t any fighting, any turmoil,” after the war. He tried his best to forget gest concern was immediately he said. “But everybody was scared.” what had happened, and didn’t discuss the sinking and Many of the crew formed into groups his time adrift at sea, not even with his wife. Initially, that the people for mutual protection as the night wore horrible experience was too much for Twible to we could save, we the on. As the sun rose, Twible conducted a share, but his thoughts eventually changed. He feels head count and realized that he was the that talking about the disaster helps people remember saved them.” only officer in charge of 325 survivors. it and honors those who never made it out of the sea.

As day one wore on to day Reflecting on his decision to order the crew to four, many of the men began to abandon ship, he said, “What decision could I ever lose faith that they would ever be rescued. make that was anywhere near as important (as) the deci“We tried to keep the men thinking that they would sion to tell those men to throw their lives into the water? be saved, but there was no way in God’s green earth that That was one of the biggest decisions I ever made. I was I knew we were gonna be saved,” he said. “My fear was gambling everybody’s life that we were gonna win.”

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Audie Murphy

Richard Merritt

By Tyler Bamford

By Kim Guise

The National WWII Museum

The National WWII Museum

n Jan. 26, 1945, 2nd Lt. Audie L. Murphy was commanding company B of the 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, near the French village of Holtzwihr when six German tanks and several hundred infantrymen attacked his company. Murphy ordered his men to fall back to defensive positions in nearby woods while he covered their withdrawal and called down artillery to slow the German advance.

German fire hit an American tank destroyer nearby and set it on fire. Witnesses later recalled how he “climbed on the burning tank destroyer, which was in danger of blowing up at any moment, and employed its .50 caliber machine gun against the enemy.”

From Murphy’s exposed position on top of the burning tank destroyer, he killed over 20 German soldiers and repelled their attack. For more than an hour, Murphy continued to fire the machine gun, despite being wounded in the leg. He then led his company in a counterattack that killed or wounded 50 more German soldiers.

On April 23, 1945, at the age of only 19, Murphy received the Medal of Honor for his actions. Though Murphy’s heroism on Jan. 26 was extraordinary, it was not the first time Murphy had distinguished himself. He had previously received over 20 awards for valor, including the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Star medals, and Audie Murphy two Bronze Star medals for valor in Italy and France. After receiving the Medal of Honor, Murphy was widely celebrated as the most decorated American soldier in World War II and was featured on the cover of Life magazine.

After the war, Murphy’s national celebrity status brought him to the attention of Hollywood. He went on to have a prolific country music songwriting and acting career, starring in 44 feature films, including the movie adaptation of his autobiography, “To Hell and Back.” Despite Murphy’s stardom and success, the soft-spoken veteran was never comfortable being the center of attention.

Murphy died on May 28, 1971, at the age of 45 in a plane crash near Roanoke, Virginia. He was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

he museum’s collection contains many letters describing some of the war’s pivotal moments as viewed by young Americans who both participated in and witnessed these events. One such letter, a 10-page missive by Sgt. Richard Merritt to his parents, describes London on the days surrounding May 8, 1945, V-E Day. Merritt and his friend had a 48-hour pass to visit London from their nearby airbase at Bury St. Edmunds and were caught up in the city’s celebrations. The two young servicemen, support staff with the 364th Fighter Group, 8th Air Force, had intended to sightsee and take in some plays, but ended up instead becoming ambassadors for the United States and guests at one of the spring’s biggest parties.

Shortly after arriving in London, and after a trip on the Underground, which fascinated him, Merritt and friend Bob Campbell stumbled on a scene he recounted for his parents.

“After a short walk we found a great crowd of people having themselves a time around a large bonfire,” he wrote. “They were dancing and singing and making lots of noise in general. There were no Yanks in the crowd. When the people spied us they grabbed us and started dancing in a circle and kicking and singing ‘Yankee Doodle’ and other such songs like the ‘Marine Hymn,’ ‘God Bless America.’ Etc. ... They talked a brand of Cockney that was quite hard to understand but one old lady said, ‘You Yanks saved us. We’re all terribly grateful to you Yanks for what you’ve done.’ Apparently they were and we had to act as the official representatives of the United States. We had glorious and simple tributes heaped on us from all sides. To say we felt foolish is an understatement but we enjoyed ourselves nevertheless. We had a ‘smashing’ time.”

Merritt’s and Campbell’s V-E Day whirlwind continued in the heart of London, Piccadilly Circus: “Piccadilly was an absolute solid mass of allied humanity. You couldn’t move, you could only sway with the crowd. On the sort of monument in the center of the square, an English sailor sans pants was doing his version of the Highland Fling. It was something for to see. People hung out of all the windows and from the street lights. People were everywhere.

Streamers of toilet paper flapped in the breeze. Flags and bunting of the United Nations covered every building and hung from every wire.

Fireworks were being shot off sporadically. I’ve wondered how many casualties have resulted from the celebrations. Certainly more than a few were crushed or suffocated or severely burned by the fireworks.”

Back at the base, just days later, Merritt was offered an aerial tour of a destroyed Europe in a B-17. He goes on in his letter to describe the devastation as vividly as he did the victory festivities in London. He closes on page 10 with an almost apologetic, “If you struggled through all this, so long. Love from Dick.”

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LIBERATION & BEYOND Historians gather personal stories to conclude museum’s WWII narrative

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cheduled for completion in 2021, the Liberation Pavilion will represent the final chapter in The National WWII Museum’s mission to tell the full story of the American experience in the war that changed the world — why it was fought, how it was won and what it means today — so that all generations will understand the price of freedom and be inspired by what they learn. Exploring the immediate postwar years and its continuing relevance in our lives today, the pavilion’s narrative will be told through the overarching theme of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous 1941 “Four Freedoms” speech, his address citing the four universal rights that all people worldwide should have: freedom of speech and worship, and freedom from want and fear. Galleries will examine themes ranging from the joy of homecoming to postwar technological advances to the Holocaust.

In order to share with visitors firsthand experiences of liberation during and after the war, the museum’s Oral History team has been gathering interviews to feature in kiosks throughout the pavilion’s galleries — accounts from Holocaust survivors, soldiers who liberated concentration camps, participants in war-crime trials, as well as WWII servicemembers who were involved in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.

Hannah Dailey, museum oral historian, is a member of the team gathering these important firsthand accounts. She shared some of her recent experiences in this effort:

Hannah Dailey of The National WWII Museum interviews Holocaust survivor and “Schindler Jew” Rena Finder at her Massachusetts home in 2019. [THE NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM]

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The end of World War II What is the most challenging aspect of obtaining an oral history that will tie into the Liberation Pavilion’s postwar theme, especially when starting a search to identify subjects can be so arduous?

There are so many themes to focus on.

We look for Holocaust survivors, prisoners of war, refugees, faith-in-wartime stories, cost-of-victory accounts, and then postwar themes such as fighting for freedom for minorities, the advent of nuclear power, the changing role of women in the workforce, and international law.

What would others find most surprising about the process of collecting someone’s oral history?

I think people are surprised by the amount of emotional work that goes into collecting an oral history. It’s understood that a lot of research goes into preparing for each individual oral history, but because of the subject matter that is broached during the interviews, there is also a lot of emotional labor. You have to create an environment where the veteran or survivor feels safe enough to open up as you guide them through unusually difficult memories.

If you are interested in doing your own interview about World War II, here are some sample questions from The National WWII Museum: SAM MPLE LE E QUE UE ESTIONS FOR OR R INT TERV RV VIE EWING A WWII VE ETE T RA AN What is your full name?

When and where were you born?

What were you doing before the war?

Were you married or single?

Where were you when you found out about Pearl Harbor?

Did you enlist or were you drafted?

What was your branch of service?

When did you enter service?

Where did you enter service?

Where did you receive your basic training?

Describe basic training.

What weapon(s) did you qualify on during basic training?

What qualification level did you achieve?

What was your military specialty?

Describe the people you trained with in basic training.

When did you deploy overseas?

What theater of operations were you in?

What was your port of embarkation for deployment?

How long did it take for you to reach your theater of operations?

What type of equipment were you issued before you were deployed overseas?

Were you involved in any invasions? (If “yes” please describe) Were you ever taken under enemy fire? (If “yes” please describe) Did you return fire? (If “yes” please describe) What was the food like?

Did you admire your commanding officer?

Did you admire the people you served with?

Were you wounded? (If “yes” please describe) Did you get enough sleep?

Where were you on V-E Day? Where were you on V-J Day?

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What has been your most memorable moment to date while collecting an oral history for the Liberation Pavilion?

The most memorable moment was discovering that there is a “Schindler Jew” living in the United States. I was thrilled to find out that Rena Finder resided in Massachusetts — still alive and more than willing to sit down with me and talk about her war experience. She was incredibly lovely when we met, very well-spoken, and had such an intense story about her and her mother surviving the Holocaust because they worked for Oskar Schindler. It’s rare to find heartwarming stories about the Holocaust, which is why accounts like Finder’s are so valuable. It shows man’s humanity towards one another through Schindler’s protective efforts for his Jewish workforce, a story familiar to many audiences through the 1993 film “Schindler’s List.”

Conduct your own oral history

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When did you return to the U.S.?

How long did you serve overseas?

What are some of your most memorable experiences during WWII? Did your service affect the rest of your life? If so, how?

What lessons for today’s generation would you like to pass on?

Is there anything I forgot to ask you about your service during WWII?

SAMP PLE QUESTIONS UE FOR R IN NTERVIE EWING SOMEONE E FRO R M TH HE HOM ME FRONT ME When and where were you born?

What were you doing before the war?

Where were you when Pearl Harbor was attacked?

Did you have any family members who served in the military?

If so, how did your family life change due to their absence?

What are your memories about rationing?

Did you participate in scrap drives?

What about War Bond rallies?

Did your family or anyone you know plant a Victory Garden?

Did you or anyone you know work in a defense industry?

Do you have any special memories about celebrating holidays during the war?

What are your most profound memories of the war?

What are your memories of D-Day? V-E Day? Where were you and what did you do when you heard the war was over?

How did you feel when the war ended?

What were some of your most memorable experiences during WWII? Did WWII affect the rest of your life? If so, How? What did you do after the war?

What lessons for today’s generation would you like to pass on?

Is there anything I forgot to ask you about your life on the home front?

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Men of 1st Marine Division ямБghting on Okinawa in May 1945.

[WIKIMEDIA]

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The Japanese battleship Yamato explodes after persistent attacks from U.S. aircraft during the Battle of Okinawa on April 7, 1945. [WIKIMEDIA]

American soldiers fighting in the Pacific theater listen to radio reports of Victory in Europe Day on May 8, 1945.

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[WIKIMEDIA]

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Prague was liberated by the Red Army in May 1945.

[WIKIMEDIA]

Celebrating V-E Day in London, 1945.

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Dancing during V-E Day celebrations at Piccadilly Circus, London, 1945.

[THE NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM]

Robert Galloway and a fellow airman hold a newspaper announcing Germany’s defeat, May 1945.

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Crowds greet Eisenhower’s motorcade in Washington, D.C., on June 28, 1945.

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The end of World War II A North American P-51 Mustang (with red markings) and other squadron planes soar in the lobby of The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. [WIKIMEDIA]

About

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The National WWII Museum

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he inspiration for creating The National WWII Museum can be traced to a comment made to a young New Orleans historian by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the mid-1960s, when memories of the fierce world struggle were still fresh.

In a conversation with rising military historian Stephen Ambrose, the former supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force praised the Higgins landing craft and its ingenuous designer, Andrew Jackson Higgins, for making Allied victory possible in World War II. New Orleans manufacturing plants launched by the daring entrepreneur produced many thousands of the landing boats that were desperately needed to deliver soldiers and equipment to invasion beaches in the European and Pacific theaters. Before the war, America had no boats that could accomplish this feat.

Eisenhower’s remark resonated through time and planted the seed of an idea for a special institution-building effort, one that continues today.

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EXPLORING LEGACY the

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he National WWII Museum is hosting a global conference in New Orleans on Sept. 10–12, 2020.

“Memory Wars: World War II at 75” is a presentation of the Museum’s Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, held at the institution’s new Higgins Hotel & Conference Center.

“Memory Wars” will explore World War II’s place in The Pearl Harbor National Memorial reflects how many — but not all — in the public memory U.S. remember and honor WWII today. [COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM] through a global prism, examining how museums, filmmakers, media, memorihold different meanings, for example, for als and historians (both academic and pubdescendants of those Japanese Americans lic) help shape memories of the conflict. who spent the war in internment camps.

We currently stand at a crossroads. The “Memory Wars: World War II” at 75 will generation that fought the war is passexamine a range of provocative questions ing away, and firsthand accounts of World and issues related to collective memory of War II are transitioning from living memory this global conflict. Was World War II really into history. The year 2020, therefore, is a a “good war” for everyone? How do video perfect time to take stock and pose fundagames, films and other forms of popular culmental questions: How is the war rememture shape our memory of World War II? bered today? How do public memories of Which memories of the Holocaust are we the war differ, not only from country to passing on to future generations? And what country, but also within various societies? relevance do these public memories have for To give one example, the attack on Pearl people around the world today? Do the war Harbor remains the foremost WWII event crime trials and the Universal Declaration in U.S. memory — a moment of “infamy,” a of Human Rights still have relevance among crime that dragged a reluctant America out the victors and victims of World War II? of isolationism and into the war. But other We believe that this reflective and forcombatants, such as Germany or the forward-thinking conference will be both mer Soviet Union, do not remember Pearl fascinating and profoundly meaningHarbor in the same way. Japan, too, has a ful. We hope you will join us for it. very different narrative about Pearl HarTo register for the “Memory Wars” conbor and the causes of the war. And even ference, visit nationalww2museum.org/ within the United States, Pearl Harbor may memory or call 1-877-813-3329 x 511.

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Ambrose remembered Eisenhower’s bold assertion about Higgins as he began collecting oral histories and artifacts for his book on the D-Day invasion. Ambrose was dedicated to meeting the nation’s need for a lasting tribute to the military heroes and home front workers.

For years, there was no encouragement from Congressional leaders that a WWII or D-Day museum would ever happen in Washington, D.C. Finally, in 1990, the idea of a D-Day museum in the Crescent City was born in a backyard conversation over drinks between myself and Ambrose; we were close friends and colleagues at the University of New Orleans and immediately decided we would At the onset, we had do it. Long years were spent working to fulfill modest ambitions the vision in the home for the institution’s of Higgins Industries. scale. Overcoming At the onset, we had modest ambitions for many fundraisthe institution’s scale. ing obstacles and Overcoming many funother challenges, draising obstacles and we opened The other challenges, we National D-Day opened The National D-Day Museum Museum on June 6, 2000, a momentous on June 6, 2000, a momentous celebration celebration honorhonoring thousands ing thousands of of WWII veterans WWII veterans. who paraded through downtown. They were joined by hundreds of thousands of spectators. U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Tom Brokaw, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, other state and Congressional dignitaries, and nine NATO defense ministers took part.

We soon discovered that the grand opening was just the beginning of a building story. Visiting WWII veterans appreciated our D-Day treatments but immediately asked why other parts of the war — their WWII, in many cases — weren’t covered.

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One of these individuals, U.S. Sen. Theodore Stevens of Alaska, a veteran of the China-BurmaIndia campaign, offered a daunting challenge.

Telling me and Ambrose that “this was the best museum in America on the war,” he said if we and museum trustees would agree to expand and tell the complete story of the WWII experience — on land, at sea, in the air and on the home front — then he would help obtain startup funding from Congress. We agreed (with some trepidation), and in the next three years, Stevens and his close friend, WWII veteran and Medal of Honor recipient Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, worked with Sen. Mary Landrieu and others in our Louisiana delegation to secure funding to purchase three city blocks and develop a master plan for expansion.

The state of Louisiana and private donors also provided substantial funding help.

With the land purchase and master plan complete by 2003, the museum U.S. Sen. Theodore announced a capital campaign of $288 million to develop a six-acre, Stevens of Alaska, 300,000-square-foot campus. Sens. a veteran of the Stevens, Inouye and Landrieu then China-Burmagained approval of a resolution from Congress in 2004 designating The India campaign, National WWII Museum as America’s offered a dauntofficial museum of the WWII experience. ing challenge: If Ambrose died in 2002, passing the we would agree leadership torch to me, the founding to expand and president and CEO. Since 2000, we tell the complete weathered tremendous setbacks from story of the WWII Hurricane Katrina in 2005, funding challenges and the economic recesexperience, sion of 2008. I worked steadily with he would help the national Board of Trustees and obtain funding. a talented, resilient staff to create extraordinary exhibits and programs.

These efforts were rewarded with dramatic increases in visitation and donations.

The museum’s reputation reached new levels in 2009 when it premiered the 4D multimedia experience “Beyond All Boundaries,” produced by the Hettema Group and narrated by Hanks. Next came the opening of the US Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center, in 2013, followed in 2014-15 by the permanent exhibit galleries “The Road to Berlin” and “The Road to Tokyo” housed in the Campaigns of Courage: European and Pacific Theaters pavilion.

An Opel staff car. [WIKIMEDIA PHOTOS]

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A Sherman tank at the museum.

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Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller is president and CEO emeritus of the National WWII Museum.

His new collection of personal accounts from the Allied invasion of Normandy, “Everything We Have: D-Day 6.6.44,” was released in March 2019 and draws on the museum’s collection of oral histories and artifacts.

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oral histories that can be viewed at ww2online.org — now total roughly 10,000. These accounts include early Ambrose interviews and will always be vital to our mission.

Led by President & CEO Stephen Watson since mid-2017, The National WWII Museum is approaching completion as the premier educational institution for WWII history. We are honoring the millions who served, in distant combat zones and at home, as we explore and teach about an epic time in world history.

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A rendering of the Liberation Pavilion. [COURTESY

“The Arsenal of Democracy: The Herman and George R. Brown Salute to the Home Front” exhibit, which opened in 2017, devotes its galleries to the citizens who supported the war effort in countless ways. By 2017, the museum was ranked by TripAdvisor readers as the No. 2 most popular museum in America.

The museum’s capstone Liberation Pavilion, opening in 2021, will focus on the war’s powerful legacies — one project driving an increase in our capital campaign goal to $400 million. And for distant audiences unable to visit our campus, the museum has established the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy and the WWII Media and Education Center to produce online content. Both are housed in the Hall of Democracy, opened in 2019.

Meanwhile, our collection of WWII personal accounts — including many videotaped

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