There
aren't many old people in Africa, even South Africa. On one of my trips
to South Africa one of my young friends who teaches asked me, as someone who
was around during WWII, to address an assembly at his school regarding the
war. I wrote and delivered the following. I've added to this
discourse from time to time. I think
you'll find a different slant on history.
Dif….er …Mr. Esterhuizen has asked me to speak to you about the Second
World War. Not that I’m a historian…just
that I was alive then. Does anyone know
when WWII began?
That’s right the date we use is September
1939. But was that really the
start? Everyone had been watching the
rise of a very strict government in Germany which persecuted anyone not just
like themselves and had begun attacking the neighboring countries. They always had an excuse. They took over Austria and Alcase-Lorraine
because these were Germanic countries and they marched on Czechoslovakia
because there were Germans there whom they said were being unfairly treated. All of this happened before September 1939
but we let them get away with it because WWI had been so horrible. You almost must know about WWI before you can
understand the thinking immediately before WWII. Maybe you’ve already studied WWI? Do you know the dates? http://tvo.org/video/205436/ep-1-fury
That’s right 1914 to 1918. It was really horrible with men sitting for
months in trenches with people near them being blown up by artillery shells and
then if they survived being ordered out to charge across the open into the fire
from machine guns. My father had been
shot straight through the chest and at first left for dead. No one wanted to start another war like that
so they tried every way to reason with the German leader Hitler. Finally, in September 1939 the Germans
invaded Poland with whom both France and Britain had treaties. The thirties had been a time of economic
depression and most countries had been reducing spending on armed forces except
for Germany who now had a most fearsome army.
Everyone feared to resist them but attacking Poland was the last straw
and finally the British and French declared war.
Ultimately, to understand the cause of WWII
you must know the cause of WWI. Surely
it was not the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, surely that was just the
spark. I think that you here in South
Africa are well placed to appreciate what lead up to WWI. By 1800 each of the European powers had
colonies around the World and could trade around the World visiting just ports
they controlled. The Germans however had
not even joined the little kingdoms together to form a country. Germans who wanted to go out to the colonies
had to go to someone else's colony, U.S., South Africa, Argentina etc. At one point the U.S. was 40% German
speakers. It took the Germans until
1870's to get it together, just in time for what has been described as the
scramble for Africa when every scrap of the continent was claimed by one
European power or another. The Germans
grabbed for the Southwest and East Africa but always somewhat under the control
of the British navy who very much were the bullies of the World. Insultingly, they kept the only really
excellent harbour at Walvisbaai for themselves.
As an act of rebellion against British control the Germans shipped the
famous Long Tom canons and rifles to the Boers through Maputo and many Germans
and Danes actually fought for the Boer Republic in the Second Boer British
War. In preparation for WWI Germany
built as much of a navy as they were able.
You will know that the British had sponsored herders to settle along the
Nossob River so that there would be wells available when they decided to attack
the Germans in the Southwest from behind.
All was set for war, all that was needed was the spark and this was provided
by Gavrilo Princip.
In my opinion WWII actually started in May
of 1939 with the first attack by one of the Allies on one of the Axis powers in the Battle of Khalkhin
Gol.
In renewing my study of WWII, I am forced to a grudging admiration for
Stalin in spite of his cruelties. Beginning with the time of the
Revolution everyone attacked Russia. Thirteen countries including Canada
actually invaded. But the real attack throughout the 20's and '30's was
an attack on Russian attempts to get any materials or co-operation with
industrialization. It was only by selling the wheat and starving the
population that they had a limited success.
The Japanese had been fighting the Russians since their great victory over the Tzarist navy in the battle of Tsushima in 1905. In the lead up to WWII they began forming an alliance with the Germans and Italians. The logical move was for the three to come at Russia from all sides. Stalin concentrated much of his strength in the East and then goaded the Japanese into the battle of Khalkhin Gol on the Siberian Manchurian border, which was the largest tank battle to that date, (May 1939) and in my opinion was the start of WWII. This turned the Japanese south and involved the U.S.
During the several months of the Battle Stalin stalled off the Germans by signing a pact and pushing his Western boundary further west to slow the Germans.
Without the grain sales and these military moves we would have the Third Reich with us yet.
The Japanese had been fighting the Russians since their great victory over the Tzarist navy in the battle of Tsushima in 1905. In the lead up to WWII they began forming an alliance with the Germans and Italians. The logical move was for the three to come at Russia from all sides. Stalin concentrated much of his strength in the East and then goaded the Japanese into the battle of Khalkhin Gol on the Siberian Manchurian border, which was the largest tank battle to that date, (May 1939) and in my opinion was the start of WWII. This turned the Japanese south and involved the U.S.
During the several months of the Battle Stalin stalled off the Germans by signing a pact and pushing his Western boundary further west to slow the Germans.
Without the grain sales and these military moves we would have the Third Reich with us yet.
During WWI, people began to realize that loyalty to the elites (now
termed the 1%) just lead to the elites sending you to your death. The thought of rule by the People (the 99%)
lead to people's parties, labour movements and socialist or communist parties
everywhere. The German elites and later
the Naziis attributed their loss to the 'communists'. Throughout the thirties elites from America
(including Joseph Kennedy) and Britain (including Prince Edward) all trouped
off to visit Hitler. They clearly sided
with Germany and detested the Communists!
Meanwhile the people's groups throughout the World agitated for
power. When a clear fight between
Communists and Fascists broke out in Spain with Germany and Italy arming the
right and Russia arming the left, many Americans and Canadians went to fight on
the side of the 'Loyalists' (i.e. the left)
As I said the 1930’s were a time of
economic depression. In a depression no
one has money to buy anything so no one has a job to produce that which you
want to buy. It sounds like a simple
problem. Everybody go to work and make
what the other one wants but it’s very hard to make it happen. So how did Germany who had had terrible
inflation under the first government after WWI and whose colonies and resources
had been taken, find money to finance their rise to power? At the time, we didn’t know how he was doing
it, but each country has gold to back their currency which they keep in
reserve. Hitler began actually
transferring gold to Sweden, Switzerland and other nations for the material
they needed. As Germany’s gold ran out
they took over Austria and began spending their gold. Later they took over the reserves of
Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Hungary and a dozen other countries. This story is well told in a documentary that
you can see if you visit your own Gold Museum here in Cape Town.
I was only 5 when war was declared but even
children soon knew that our somewhat
older relatives were signing up to fight and it wasn’t so very long before we
heard of deaths. The first I recall is
of a crying young woman being comforted by my family and slowly realizing that
her husband who was also a relative of mine was now dead.
The first really big event of the war, that
even I as a child could understand was when the Germans chased the British out
of continental Europe at Dunkirk. (indicate Dunkirk) They were forced to use every sort of boat
they could find to escape across the channel.
The Netherlands had already fallen and France was soon defeated. By that time the first of the Canadian forces
were already in Britain and we were sure that the Germans would soon cross the
channel and conquer Britain. Remember
that at this time Britain had a huge Empire to defend so they had their troops
and their Navy scattered all over the World.
Lets look at the map. If we had a
very old map the British Empire was always shown in pink and it included Canada
and Newfoundland in America, many places in Africa, Palestine and Egypt in the
Middle East, India, Singapore and Hong Kong in Asia. But the Germans didn’t cross the channel,
probably the British Navy seemed just too formidable but I believe they could
have succeeded and then we would surely have lost the war.
Next the Germans concentrated on an attempt
to bomb Britain into submission. This
period is referred to as the Battle of Britain.
The Germans had designed and built a superior air force and at times
they nearly cleared the RAF, the (British airforce) out of the skies. At the beginning the British were using older
model planes mostly Hurricanes which were no match for the Messerschmitt Bf109s
and Focke-Wulf FW190s of the Germans but
as the older planes were shot down new Spitfire aircraft rolled out of the
factories. Once again we were saved from
certain defeat by a set of circumstances.
Firstly, a British company had gone ahead with designing a new fighter
without orders from the government, so that a tested fighter was available to
be mass produced. Secondly, a British
inventor had invented radar and for an air battle the British knew what was
coming and when it would arrive.
Rudimentary radar had been invented in secret during the 1930s and although
the germans had it too theirs was behind.
Now the job of perfecting it and making it small enough to fit in
aircraft was transferred to Toronto where I lived. My father was an electronics technician and
each day he would use their equipment to try to detect a Mosquito bomber which
would often fly low over our house on its run toward the radar. Many of these same planes were stationed here
at Ysterplaat. Any guess as to why they
would choose one plane over another to test radar? The fuselage of this plane was made entirely
of laminated wood. Only the engines
could be detected using radar.
Because of radar a squadron of Spitfires
could remain on the ground until the last minute, then rise up and fight for
the 10 or 20 minutes that the German bombers were over Britain and then land
again. The Germans had to accompany
their slow moving bombers from bases in France and then back. In order to have the same number of fighters
in the air over Britain they needed twice as many planes as the British. Secondly, the British were aided by the
skilled fliers who had escaped from Poland, France, the Netherlands and later
Norway. Again without the spitfires,
radar and the extra pilots we might have lost.
Even with these we might have lost except for a British strategy which
was to anger the Germans. The logical
tactic for the attacking force is to first eliminate the opposing air
force. They would eventually have
succeeded except that the British managed a single flight into Germany and
bombed Berlin. They hit essentially
people's homes, so-called civilian
targets. The Germans, or maybe just
Hitler, were so infuriated that they gave up attacking the air fields and began
bombing London in retaliation. The
British sacrificed their capital city and tens of thousands of men women and
children to draw the Luftwaffe away from attacks on the RAF which would
eventually have given them air superiority and allowed them to land a force on
British soil. London became hell on
earth for many months. About half the buildings
in the city were destroyed. Every night
people huddled in air raid shelters and many who didn’t make it or who received
direct hits were killed. When they
emerged each morning there would be fires still burning in the houses which had
been flattened that night. In Canada, we
listened every day to hear of the damage and to see whether Buckingham Palace
and St. Paul’s Cathedral had survived that nights air-raids.
At this time, I was living in a village and
as a 6 year old I found myself hoeing a garden.
We called it a 'Victory Garden' and many people who wouldn’t otherwise
be gardening were making their contribution by growing food. We couldn’t get food from warm countries because
ocean shipping was all devoted to the war.
Sugar, butter, meat and fuel were rationed and of course that rationing
was much harsher in Britain than in Canada where I lived.
Everyone was devoted to the war
effort. Before the war women didn’t work
in factories but with all the men enlisting as soldiers the women all worked in
the war industry. In Germany Hitler
wouldn’t hear of German women doing war work.
They were to stay home and raise more pure German children to run this
wonderful new world he was going to set up when he conquered most of the
World. Again, maybe we only won because
of the effort of the women being harnessed to build our much greater amount of
war materiel.
Through all this time the Americans had not
entered the War. Their President
Roosevelt was personally much in favour of entering the war on our side but he
knew his nation would not support him.
The Germans had only been defeated in WWI when the Americans entered the
war and the Germans didn’t want that to happen again. Roosevelt did everything he could to goad the
Germans into declaring war on the U.S. but nothing worked. He sold 50 destroyers to the British without
asking payment, the U.S. navy depth charged German subs and they embargoed
shipments to any country that might sell material on to Germany.
The U.S. was doing the same things to
Japan, stopping fuel and steel shipments.
They also sent an advisor and later trainers to China where the Japanese
had been fighting for many years. In
fact the first attack by the Flying Tigers on a Japanese base occurred just before
Pearl Harbor. Finally, in December 1941, the Japanese made a supposedly
surprise attack on Pearl Harbor the American naval base in Hawaii. I say supposedly surprise because the
Americans were warned by several sources and they had radar which detected the
incoming flight of Japanese bombers and they had removed the critical ships
from the harbor. Clearly the Americans
wanted to be seriously bloodied, so that they could enthusiastically go to war. Presumably, they didn't want to be quite as
bloodied as they were but the radar message was not acted upon and the Japanese
had devised a torpedo quite unlike any known to the Allies which worked in
confined spaces.
The Germans and Italians had treaties with
Japan and they now declared war on America.
Again we were saved from defeat, if Germany had reneged on their treaty
and not declared war on the U.S., Roosevelt would not have been able to
convince the American people to fight in Europe. They would have concentrated on Japan. By this point in the war we were constantly
hearing of the horrors of the bombing in London and defeat after defeat in
North Africa where the British aided by South Africans and Australians were
suffering defeat after defeat. And these
were defeats where we had more men, more guns and more tanks than the
Germans. You may have heard of the
German General Rommel who was so effective against us in North Africa. We seemed doomed. Even with the arrival of the Americans we
couldn’t break our way into Europe.
But at
about this time we were saved again.
June 22nd 1941Germany broke their treaty with Russia and
attacked eastward. (see map). A century and a half before Napoleon having
defeated almost every worthwhile army on earth had tried this and the Russian
winter had defeated him. The Germans
sent the largest invasion force ever assembled on planet
earth to invaded Russia across a one thousand mile front. Three million crack
German troops; 7,500 artillery units, 19 panzer divisions with 3,000 tanks, and
2,500 aircraft rolled across Russia for 14 months.
The Russians had counted on this treaty and
although there were 10 times as many Russians as Germans they had only partly
geared up to make war materiel. The
Germans rolled through them like a knife through butter. Very soon there were so many Russian
prisoners that the Germans just took their guns and told them to go by
themselves to the prison camps. This
lead to one of the first criminal slaughters of the war. The Russians parachuted a few officers and
some weapons to these disarmed soldiers and they did some damage to the German
supply lines. From then on the special
political soldiers or SS who operated in the captured territory summarily
executed any Russian on the loose. A
million were killed.
At his point we were again saved by luck
not skill. If the leader Hitler had listened to his top tank commander General
Guderian he would have concentrated his attack on one objective at a time. Instead, since they were doing so well,
Hitler split the attack into three groups going for the three largest
cities. The Russians fought like the
desperate people they really were after 20 years under Stalin. Their resistance delayed the fight into
winter. At this time we in Canada and
America began shipping arms to Russia.
Much of this went north through Canada and across the Bearing Straits to
Russia. We even built a highway through
difficult wilderness to get the supplies through. This tided them over until their own industry
got into full war production.
The Germans began the war with the best
weapons and kept ahead of us until the end.
Their tanks were superior at the beginning but when they took over the
Skoda works in Czechoslovakia they got the best in designers and manufacturing
facilities. We never did build as good a
tank as the Germans but the Russians did.
Their T34 series of tanks may even have been better but they never did
learn to coordinate an attack. The
Germans were in constant radio contact.
In fact the only way to disorganize the German tank attack was to destroy
their communications tank where the commander would be. But as I said there were 10 times as many
Russians. They built more tanks and
planes than the Germans in every month of the war and begged more from the
U.S. They sent planes out that were
completely helpless if the Luftwaffe showed up but if they could destroy a
single German tank before the Bf109s got them the Russians thought that was a
victory. The Russians were so brave and
desperate that on more than one occasion a pilot remained in his flaming plane
and crashed it into a tank. At the time
we considered a pilot who shot down 4 enemy planes an Ace. We didn’t believe the German claim that their top pilot named
Hartman had shot down 352 planes but now we know it was true.
The first winter in Russia was hell for the
German troops. Their equipment froze
and they were short of cold weather clothing.
The cold only strengthened the Russian fighting ability and by December
of 1941 they could stop retreating and stabilize the front. This was the turning point. It was almost 2 years of horrible fighting
and starvation before the Russians were strong enough to use their advantage of
numbers and begin pushing forward but December 1941 had been the turning point. Interestingly 2 days after the Russian
offensive that stopped the German advance, the Japanese attacked Pearl
Harbor. The Japanese had almost agreed
to turn their forces against Russia but probably the stiffening of the Russians
decided them and they stayed in the Pacific.
Similarly, the Turks had been about to join on Germany’s side and they
too held back.
Early, in 1943 the Russians finally threw
in their Siberian army and overran Stalingrad.
The Russians had patiently withheld this new army waiting for the 40
below zero weather to arrive before throwing their Siberian troops into
battle. The Germans died on the spot or
surrendered, against Hitler’s orders, and then were marched to death. A few straggled back from captivity in
Siberia many years later.
In July 1943, having struggled through 2
winters the Germans began their last offensive culminating in the battle of
Kursk which was the biggest tank battle there has ever been. When the Russians won they were exhausted but
as soon as they could refresh their armies and gather more materiel they began
a relentless push west through all the countries that had been subjugated by
Germany. This and not the landing in
Normandy by the British, Americans and Canadians was the turning point in the war. At the same time the Americans flew desperate
bomber raids into Rumania to cut off the oil from Ploesti. It was an almost impossible mission but this
was the greatest help we could provide the Russians.
As the Russians moved west in every country
there were underground groups who had been conducting guerilla warfare against
the German occupation. It must also be
said that in every country there were groups who welcomed the Germans and
cooperated with them and many who fought in the German army. Remember many agreed that Communism was the
greater threat and many were drawn to serve such a strong leader as
Hitler. Also to many the Germans
represented efficiency and modernity while the Russians were thought of as
backward peasants. As the Russians moved
close the guerillas became very useful in telling the Russians where weak
points were and in sabotage behind the German lines. In the case of the Resistance in the Warsaw
ghetto the Jews there fought to the last person and tied up many German troops.
Meanwhile the Allies because that is what
we called the rest of the World who were fighting against the Germans, Italians
and Japanese whom we called the Axis, were finishing off the Germans and
Italians in North Africa and invading Europe through Sicily and then Italy (refer to map). They made very slow progress and weren’t
taking enough pressure off the Russians.
By that I mean they weren’t doing enough of the job, diverting enough
troops away from the Eastern front. Can
you see by the map why they would be slow?
Firstly, Italy is very mountainous and a
smaller force on the high ground could fend off a much larger force. Secondly, they were a long way from their
supplies in England and their shipping was under attack from the Germans in
France. Thirdly, they didn’t dare remove
troops from England, it seemed they must invade France directly. It is possible
that we could have just stepped up our bombing campaign, continued fighting in
the Mediterranean and let the Russians do almost all the ground fighting. The bombing campaign was very expensive for
us in that hundreds of our planes, some times, whole flights never came
back. Some have said that bombing did no
good because it did not ‘break the will’ of the German people but this is
unreasonable. Consider how much more
armament the Germans could have produced if their factories hadn’t been
bombed. How effective can a worker be
when his house is blown away, the street car lines are gone and his factory has
no roof. Secondly, there were only so
many Germans left over to actually fight and now tens of thousands were doing
anti-aircraft duty and fire fighting. By
the end of the war much of their production had to be done in caves and other
underground factories. I said earlier
that they did not use German women in factories but we learned after the war
that they made slaves of men and women from other countries and worked them to
death in these factories.
The Germans kept coming out with amazing
new weapons. This is another way we might have lost the war. If our bomber force had not succeeded, in
smashing much of German industry they might well have beaten us simply by
building better weapons. We had no
ability to steer a rocket to go long distances and hit a target. The Germans sent over first V1 rockets which
they could direct to London with fair accuracy.
These were countered by fast flying planes but toward the end of the war
they developed the V2 rocket which went into the stratosphere and came straight
down on its target and against this we had no defense. After the end of the war both the Russians
and the Americans rushed to capture The German rocket scientists and they were
the ones who made the Russian and American space programs proceed. America captured Verner von Braun who you may
have heard of in connection with the U.S. space program and maybe from 'Dr.
Strangelove'.
Close to the last days of the war they put
a jet plane into the battle, the ME262.
The south African military museum in Johannesburg has one of these
beautiful planes as well as a British spitfire and a German Bf109. It’s a very good museum so I hope you’ll all
insist on visiting it if you get to Johannesburg. It was so late in the war that they no longer
had experienced pilots and weren’t able to deploy these jets effectively. If the 1300 ME262’s they had in stages of
construction had come out a year earlier they would have taken command of the
skies over Normandy and we would have lost the whole invading force. They could then have turned on the Russians
and we would have lost. They also were
ahead of us in atomic research in the early thirties and might have built the
first atomic bomb. They failed because
of their persecution of the Jewish people.
German universities were leaders in every field of science but a
considerable proportion of the scientists involved were Jewish and when Hitler
made life hell for Jews many fled, so much of what had been German knowledge
flowed to America with Einstein, Teller, Bohr and others and we got the bomb
first.
There are a dozen items without which we might
have lost the war. One fascinating one,
is our capture of a German code machine called the Enigma machine. Even with the machine it was hard to break
the code but with a great many genius mathematicians working on the project at
Blechley Park outside of London many messages were decoded. We often knew where they were moving troops
and materiel and could attack. And we
knew of submarine movements. This
allowed a much more effective use of our forces and without it we might have
lost. There are various stories about
how we got the Enigma machine including that a boarding party got one from a
sub that the Germans attempted to scuttle.
Another story relates that it was stolen from a sabotaged train
somewhere in the captive Baltic states and smuggled through Europe to
Britain. I like to think that it was
stolen by a Jew or Gypsy whom the Germans were persecuting.
The Russians defeated the Germans with a
modicum of help from us in the West, but more and more we are celebrating D Day
as though the Russians were an unimportant factor. Our main contribution was not the Normandy
invasion but rather the bombing of
German cities and industry. Many have
criticized the bombing of cities as inhuman and ineffectual. Inhuman certainly but ineffectual? How productive can a munitions maker be if
his house is gone, the street car can't get him to work and the factory is
damaged? Secondly, vast numbers of
soldiers and guns were kept in Germany to defend rather than being sent east.
The Normandy landings too were a near
thing. If we hadn't had air superiority
there could have been no paratroops, no gliders and no success on the
beaches. Our air superiority came about
when we started using Rolls Royce engines in American P51 long range fighters
in place of the original Allison engines to overcome the formerly dominant
BF109's and FW190's. If the Germans had
had ME262's and pilots we would again have lost air superiority.
When we think about how Russia and we of
the West got together to fight Germany you must remember that all of the
Western nations or at least their governing elites had opposed the communists
as they rose to power in Russia and all feared the communists in their
midst. The desire to free the masses
from the control of the elites is so natural that Communism quickly spread to
every country on Earth, to every labour union and to even the smallest of local
governments including the city council here in Toronto. As horrors emerged from the Russian example,
the elites had justification for vilifying Communism and many normal people
were conned into this same hatred for communism but many of our academics were
in favour and visited Russia and in the late 1930's many went to Spain to fight
for the Communists against the Nazi allied Falangistas. You here in Africa will know that, we, the
colonial powers fought against liberation in every instance. The only outside support that Zanu and Zapu
in Southern Rhodesia obtained was from Russia and China.
Late in WWII there was a fear that a
communist dictatorship might take over all of Europe, if we didn’t invade France and race the
Russians to invade Germany We got an
agreement with Stalin that Europe would be divided along a line partly
corresponding to the Elbe river. When
the Russians finally rolled in they had so many more troops than we and so many
more tanks that apparently some of our Generals feared they wouldn’t stop at
that line and so they attempted to impress the Russians with our air power by
bombing Dresden almost out of existence.
This was a rail centre filled with refugees but of no obvious military
importance at this late stage in the war.
My wife is a refugee from Europe and her aunt and cousins were walking
straight into Dresden when the bombing started.
A similar thing probably influenced the
dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan.
That is we feared the Russians would want to participate in conquering
Japan by way of their Kurile Islands, so impressing the Russians was part of
the terrible decision.
The Americans had not sent as many troops
to fight the Japanese and they suffered heavy losses initially after Pearl
Harbor. The war in the Pacific ranged
over 10’s of thousands of kilometres of ocean so it was won or lost with navy
and air power. At the time of Pearl
Harbor the American aircraft carriers had been sent off on a strange seeming
mission to deliver aircraft. Whether
this was planned, as I suspect, or fortuitous as the history books say is still
cause for speculation. With only a few
carriers between us and defeat we began retreating from such places as Hong
Kong, Singapore, the French from Indochina, the Dutch from Indonesia and
eventually the Japanese were approaching India and Australia in their
attacks. All of northern Australia was
open to bombing and they reached as far south as Perth. As in Canada the Australians had to build a
new road a thousand kilometres to get supplies to the north since the Japanese
could attack shipping. For a moment
Darwin was totally cut off and a crucial shortage of beer developed.
The Japanese submarines got as far east as
the west coast of North America and attacked the Canadian coast with
incendiaries intended to light our forests on fire. The next couple of sea battles at the Coral Sea and Midway Island showed the
American superiority in air and in tactics.
Once superiority at sea was established the Americans and a few
Australians began pushing north island by island. By the time the Germans were defeated the
Japanese could hardly move at sea and their home islands were being bombed to a
smoldering ruin. Japanese homes and even
some factories were made of wood and paper and over a hundred cities were
destroyed with incendiary bombs. Still
they didn’t surrender. They fought to
the death almost everywhere and even the Japanese women with babies in their
arms had leapt off cliffs at Corregidor to avoid capture. By this point the atomic bomb had been
perfected and two were dropped. Now the
Japanese surrendered. But was it really
necessary? The American General MacArthur
who was instrumental in both defeating the Japanese and then in reconstruction
of Japan didn’t think so but the
decision was made by President Truman, a politician, not a soldier. A recent book, 'Five Myths about
Nuclear Weapons' argues that the Japanese surrendered because the Russians had
joined the attack and that the decision was made before the atomic bombs were
dropped.
The public in the west were all convinced
that the Japanese would fight to the last and we held that belief until very
recently when wartime documents became public.
What we didn’t realize was that most of the able bodied Japanese were
stranded in China, Korea and all the other areas they had conquered with no
shipping or aircraft to get them back to their homeland. Secondly, they were fighting ‘for the
Emperor’ and when MacArthur agreed that the Emperor could stay on, he got good
cooperation. At this point the Russians
were poised to invade Korea and China presumably to chase the Japanese out but
Truman thought that the Russians would want to keep those countries in their
grasp. Did we drop the bombs to impress
the Russians? In fact communists did
take over in those countries with Russian help.
Some of what I have told you is a little
personal but essentially this is the
history as it’s written in most books.
It will be very close to what you’ll find in your texts here in
school. But is this really the whole
truth or just our version? It has been
said that history is always written by the victor.
In your museum at Ysterplaat there is a
German trooper’s belt buckle. It is
inscribed, “Got mit uns”. German is a
lot like Afrikaans. Can anyone tell us
what that means?
That’s right ‘God is with us’.
Both sides thought they were in the right
and had God on their side. But both
sides also did some horrible things during WWII and we tend to remember only
those done by the other side. Try to
imagine the same history but told by a 70 year old German instead of a
Canadian.
He would tell you that the war was made
inevitable when our side made such a punitive settlement to WWI. We took all their colonies from them. All the other European powers had colonies
from which they could extract raw materials but now the Germans had none. It was logical for them to strike out
eastward to get resources rather than fight the British at sea. We had forced the Germans to pay reparations
which caused inflation and their money became worthless. They had been accustomed to a strong
government of Princes, Kings and Kaisers.
Parliamentary democracy was a weak bickering sort of government when
applied in Germany. They didn’t like the
politicians and they wanted a strong leader who would make the country
prosperous and powerful. Hitler gave
them a purpose and a pride in themselves.
They gladly joined youth groups in summer camps designed to strengthen
the country’s agriculture and to give them military training. Hitler gave them symbols, the swastika which
was a good luck symbol from ancient Persia.
They used the Imperial eagle and the Roman ax and sticks and proudly
marched. They loved parades it seemed to
unite them. Meanwhile they despised the
Russian communists who were making a mess of their country by taking the farm
land from the peasants and giving it over to state farms. The communists of Russia were aiding left
wing politicians in all the Western countries and were feared by all western governments. Do you understand what is meant by left wing
in politics?
That’s right the side which supports the
state owning everything and state finding ways to give us jobs, houses or
whatever we need. The right wing of
politics is characterized by people who feel that it is best to encourage
people to do everything themselves and believes that a whole population of
people each working selfishly for themselves will be more likely to thrive than
one where government decides. Most of us
are somewhere in the middle, thinking that some things are best done
collectively and some by the individual.
To the Germans it seemed that communism was
a terrible threat and they were much closer to Russia than the rest of us. They were more aware of the famines, which
killed millions, in parts of the Communist empire caused by central
planning. They felt that in fighting
communism and eventually the Russians, they were upholding true western
traditions as seen in past European empires such as the Roman Empire. Many Germans including, at times the
leadership thought that at some point the British might see the error and join
them in attacking Russia. They also knew
that Germany was forging ahead of others in science and engineering. Their tanks and planes were the best
throughout the war and their rocketry, atomic science and guided bombs were way
ahead. Their ability to fight was the
best from the tactics of their Generals to the bravery and initiative of their
soldiers. They had many reasons to think
of themselves as superior and that they were only beaten because there were ten
on our side for every one on their side.
The German would also tell you that we had committed an atrocity after
the war by starving thousands of Germans to death.
And what do you suppose the Japanese
thought? For hundreds of years the
Europeans had been taking over Asian countries and even when they didn’t move
in they still tried to control them. The
Dutch had long held Indonesia. The
French held Vietnam and the British held India, Burma, Singapore and Hong
Kong. The Western countries had
cooperated to embarrass China by forcing them to open their markets to Western
traders and to allow import of opium.
The Japanese had watched all this subjugation of Asian countries with
disgust. They had kept the Europeans out
of their country for centuries. Their
only embarrassment had come at the beginning of the 20th century
when the Americans had sailed into Tokyo and taken over temporarily to force
them to open trade with the U.S. They
immediately set about attempting to modernize their economy and their military
very rapidly. As they gained in strength
and the West was weakened by the depression of the thirties the Japanese began
a campaign to recapture Asia for the Asians.
They proposed to set up a Pacific Co-Prosperity zone. They took over Korea and then began trying to
take over China a country many times larger in area and population than
Japan. As their success grew the U.S.
began opposing them. They aided China
with advice and then instructors for their air force. They embargoed steel exports to Japan and
made moves to cut off their oil supplies.
The Japanese were bloody and harsh with the
things they did to the other Asian peoples but I think you must concede that
they would have felt they were liberating Asia from we colonialists.
If there was an American here they would
immediately say, “we weren’t colonialists.
But they had taken the Philippines away from the Spanish and ruled this
large country much as the Dutch ruled Indonesia. The Americans had participated in the
humiliation of China with the other colonial powers and they had completely
taken over Hawaii from a legitimate Kingdom.
They certainly were colonialists and at the end of WWII they helped the
French to regain their colony in Vietnam by supplying the transport. Yes, in their eyes the Japanese had a just
cause and fought very bravely for their beliefs and for their Emperor.
One of the things the history books may not
impress on you is how close we came to losing.
Do you remember some of the items without which I felt we might have
lost?
1) if the designer of the Spitfire had not
gone ahead without orders from the RAF the British wouldn’t have had a plane to
counter the Bf109s and FW190s
2) if we hadn’t secretly developed radar we
couldn’t have fought effectively over London
3) if the Germans had pushed their
advantage and invaded Britain immediately after Dunkirk they might well have
succeeded
4) if we hadn’t enlisted most of the women
in the Allied nations we might not have produced enough or if the German women
had worked they might have doubled their production
5) if the British hadn’t sacrificed London
the Germans might have overrun Britain
6) if we hadn’t gotten hold of an Enigma
code machine we wouldn’t have been as effective
7) if we hadn’t carried on the bombing
campaign against Germany in spite of huge losses of planes and men they would
have produced more and had more men for the Eastern front
8) if the Germans had invaded earlier in
the year they might have won before the freeze-up
9) if the Germans hadn’t been delayed in
their attack on Russia they might have won
10) if the Japanese or Turks had added
their weight to the German effort we might have lost
11) if Hitler had not wasted time on
Mussolini's adventures in Greece and North Africa he would have had much more
to concentrate on Russia
11) if Hitler hadn’t split the forces
invading Russia they might have won
12) if Hitler had refused to declared war
on America he might have won in Europe
13) if Hitler hadn’t chased out the Jews he
might have had the bomb first
14) if the Germans had concentrated on the
ME262 jet they might have defeated the invasion
15) if the Chinese, Burmese and many other
Asian countries hadn’t preferred us to the Japanese the war in the Pacific
might have gone to Japan in spite of the might of America
We fought hard but we were also so very
lucky!
P.S. It should be obvious in the above that
I disagree with the view of Russia so dominant in our society. The Russian revolution was much more
justified than those that went before in that the Tzar was running the last
feudal society. The sailors of the
Potemkin were central. In 1893 the
imperious Tzar order the Rusalka an iron-clad of the US civil war era, to sail
into a storm regardless of the American experience that such ships inevitably
turned over and sank in rough weather.
In 1905, the Tzar, failing miserably in fighting the Japanese on his
eastern frontier, sailed his Baltic fleet 1800 miles around the globe to take the
Japanese from the rear. His fleet was
demolished in the Battle of Tsushima with only a few ships escaping into
neutral ports. Interestingly, the
Japanese were lent money to form a modern fleet by the Jewry of Western Europe
who opposed the Tzar`s pogroms visited upon their Russian relatives The navy
remembered and in 1918 they were in the forefront of the revolution against the
Tzar, with the immediate cause his having sent his men off to WWI
ill-prepared. As soon as the rest of us
had recovered from the fight with Germany in WWI, we turned on Russia and 14
countries, including Canada sent expeditionary forces. On what grounds? The Russians had more cause to revolt than
had the French or Americans. We must
always defend against outside attack and in every case 'we the people' give up
any control we may achieve to an elite.
In 1918, most of our people were thinking that the men who fought the
war at the behest of the elite should now be better treated. Failure to do so led to the Washington and
Winnipeg uprising and a constant interest in Communism in the '20's and '30's
throughout the World.
The expeditionary forces did not
immediately withdraw with some remote units still on Russian soil 7 years later
- longer than WWI but ignored in our history books.
Throughout the '20's and '30's, the West,
controlled by our elites, did everything they could to thwart imports of
machine tools, technology and materiel.
Stalin sold grain to pay for critical imports with which to build
armament and in sending it away, starved 20 million to death.
By 1939 the Soviet Union had by far the
largest army the World had ever known but maybe the worst equipped and
commanded ever.
When Germany the main threat offered a pact
and the opportunity to push their control west Stalin grasped it and was able
to concentrated for a period on his eastern frontier where he attacked in May
of 1939, 4 months before what we take as the start of WWII.
Subsequent to the war emerging nations had
the unfortunate choice between the worst possible representative of socialism
and the worst possible representative of free enterprise. What a different World it might have been if
the American Republic, after WWII, had welcomed the Soviets as a fellow
republic of a different stripe.
Stalin's fear of the surrounding countries
seems more natural when you remember that American and British elites were
hobnobbing with Hitler.
2012.02.03 Today under the very free
enterprise system now installed in Russia, dozens of Russians have frozen to
death on the streets, (just as they will in Toronto if we have similar
temperatures tonight). If any such thing
had occurred during Communist times, I'm sure it would have been well
publicized in our press.
Today a student goes massively into debt to
get a degree. Civil servants are being
told they are useless and the expenses and
taxes must be cut in the wealthiest countries on earth and in the U.S.
there isn't even guaranteed health care.
There are however lots of billionaires.
The wealthy elites have trained we the masses that communist is the worst
thing you could be and that proposing any common activity is 'COMMUNISM'. Greece
is the ultimate example with the rich having arranged to pay no tax and have
taken the money out of the country.
In Cuba, a very poor country, there is no
starvation, no unemployment, there is universal health care and they have
enough medical professionals to hire them out.
Education is free to the post-secondary degree level. They are poor together with no billionaire
elite.
2014.06 The elites are now being
referred to as the 1%. Of the disposable
wealth (i.e. bank accounts, stocks, bonds but not real estate) the 1% controls
42% up from 39% the year before. When
they reach 50%, the 1% will control as much of the wealth as do all the
99%. There has always been an elite and
the rest of us. When we go to war or
anything else important the elite must convince us to do what they want that is
almost always against out own best interest.
From the time of the Peasants Revolution in 1381 to this day the elites have
felt that they must keep control of we serfs or chaos and revolution will break
out.
Surely there's some way to motivate
entrepreneurs and investors without giving them so much.
Hugh Jones
to Internet
Is there any
form of government that never leads to a dictatorship? The elites have
hated and opposed any move by 'the peasants' to take any power. When we
might have been co-operating with the attempt at people power in Russia we
instead invaded from all sides and then embargoed and hampered the Soviet
attempts to build a modern society. Throughout the '20's and '30's the
only way they were able to industrialize was to take the wheat from the Kulaks
and sell it on World markets. Cruel indeed but we were complicit.
With this industrialization they were in position to fight the battle of
Khalkhin Gol and turn the Japanese south and then come west to defeat the
Germans in spite of all our efforts to thwart their industrialization.
Bill Bonner on
causes: http://thecrux.com/100-years-ago-the-world-changed-heres-the-story-you-havent-heard/
