The World at War (5 page)

Senator, André,
Mayor of Asnelles, Normandy, 1944.

Seney, Private John,
US paratrooper, northern Europe.

Shawcross, Hartley Lord
(1902–2003), Labour MP, Chief British Prosecutor at Nuremberg, Chief British Delegate to the UN and Attorney-General, ennobled 1959.

Shearer, Guardsman,
Scots Guards, Glasgow pub-group interview.

Sherrod, Robert,
American war correspondent who reported on the battles for Tarawa and Iwo Jima.

Sherwood, Lieutenant Robert,
commanded anti-submarine corvette HMS
Bluebell
and frigate HMS
Tay.

Shinwell, Emanuel 'Manny' Lord
(1884–1986), left-wing British trade unionist and Labour politician, refused to serve in the wartime government, held several post-war ministerial posts, ennobled 1970.

Shkavravski, Dr Faust,
Soviet pathologist who performed the autopsy on Hitler's body.

Shoup, General David
(1904–83), Commanding Officer of 2nd Marine Regiment at Tarawa, where he won the Medal of Honor, later Commandant of the Marine Corps.

Sijes, B J,
member of the Dutch Resistance.

Silberstein, Yaacov,
Jewish teenager at Buchenwald and Auschwitz.

Sink, Colonel James,
US 29th Division, Omaha Beach, Normandy.

Slattery, Marine George,
marine at Iwo Jima.

Slot, Dr Bruins,
member of the Dutch–Christian Resistance.

Smith, Seaman George,
flight-deck crewman on USS
White Plains,
Battle of Leyte Gulf.

Smyth, Brigadier Sir John
(1893–1983), Indian Army, won the VC in France 1915, the MC in Waziristan 1919, and commanded 17th Indian Division in Burma 1941–42. Relieved of his command after the Sittang battle, baronet 1955.

Solarczyk, Stefan,
Polish resident in the town of Auschwitz.

Spears, Major General Sir Edward
(1886–1974), distinguished First World War career as a liaison officer with the French (his book
Liaison 1914
is important and atmospheric), Conservative MP and Winston Churchill's representative in France in 1940 and later with General Charles de Gaulle, baronet 1953.

Speer, Albert
(1905–81), Hitler's chief architect, coming to his attention through the 1932 design for a Nazi Party headquarters in Berlin; Minister of Armaments 1942–5. When tried at Nuremberg was the only defendant to admit complicity in Nazi crimes and to express contrition, imprisoned 1946–66.

Stagg, Group Captain James
(1900–75), Chief Meteorological Officer to General Eisenhower, gave crucial advice prior to D-Day.

Stearn, Marine Jack,
marine at Iwo Jima.

Stewart, Brigadier General James M 'Jimmy'
(1908–97), pre- and post-war Hollywood star who volunteered for the Air Force and flew twenty combat missions in B-24s, rising to the rank of colonel and Chief of Staff of the Second Bombardment Wing of the Eighth Air Force. Became a post-war USAF reserve brigadier general.

Stone, Captain Rodney,
Merchant Navy, skipper of SS
Gharinda
sunk 5 May 1943.

Strong, Major General Sir Kenneth
(1900–82), Chief Intelligence Officer to General Eisenhower. His 1969 book
Intelligence at the Top
characteristically made no mention of
Ultra,
the breaking of German cyphers that was the most significant Allied intelligence success of the war, which remained Top Secret until 1974.

Sugita, General Ichii,
Japanese Army, present at fall of Singapore.

Suzuki, General Teichi
(1899–1999), Japanese Army Minister condemned to life imprisonment for war crimes 1948, released and pardoned 1955.

Sweeney, Brigadier General Charles
(1919–2004), pilot of the instrumentation-support aircraft for the atom bombing of Hiroshima and of the aircraft that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.

Tanimoto, Reverend Kiyoshi,
Christian Hiroshima resident.

Thomas, Emily,
Plymouth housewife, whose children were killed in the Blitz.

Thomas, Jimmy,
merchant seaman.

Tibbets, Brigadier General Paul
(b. 1915), commander of the 509th Composite Bomb Group and pilot of the
Enola Gay –
named after his mother – for the atom bombing of Hiroshima.

Tokaty, Dr Grigori
(1909–2003), Ossetian aeronautical engineer, defected to Britain 1947, Professor of Aeronautical and Space Technology at City University, London, 1967–75.

Tokugawa, Yoshihiro
(1906–96), Chamberlain to Emperor Hirohito from 1936, saved the recording of the Emperor's surrender broadcast from rebel army officers.

Tregaskis, Richard
(1916–73), war correspondent who covered the Doolittle raid on Japan, went ashore with the marines at Guadalcanal and stayed for six weeks. His
Guadalcanal Diary
is regarded as a classic of war reporting.

Uno, Edison,
teenage Japanese–American internee and Nisei civil-rights activist.

Ushiba, Tomohiko,
Private Secretary to pre-war Japanese Prime Minister, Prince Konoye.

Valavielle, Michel de,
French farmer, Normandy 1944.

Van der Boogard, Mr,
Dutch factory worker.

Van der Veen, Mr,
member of Dutch–Christian Resistance.

Van Hall, Mr,
Dutch banker who ran an illegal welfare organisation to help victims of the Occupation.

Vaughan-Thomas, Wynford
(1908–87), BBC radio journalist, reported on a bombing mission to Berlin, the invasion of southern France and Belsen extermination camp. Had a distinguished post-war broadcasting career, published an eyewitness account of Anzio in 1968.

Voris, Captain Roy 'Butch'
(1919–2005), US Navy fighter ace in the Pacific War, later founder of the Blue Angels precision-flying team.

Vrba, Rudolf
(1924–2006), Jewish Slovak who was one of only five men to escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau and whose testimony cracked the carapace of disbelief among the Western Allies about the full extent of the Nazi 'Final Solution'.

Wagenaar, Gerbern,
member of Dutch–Communist Resistance.

Warlimont, General Walther
(1894–1976), artillery officer 1914, Wehrmacht (OKW) Deputy Chief of Operations under Alfred Jodl 1939–44, prison 1945–57, his book
Inside Hitler's Headquarters
was published in 1964.

Waterfield, Gordon
(1903–87), British journalist and broadcaster.

Wedermeyer, General Albert
(1897–1989), the first US officer to study at the Kriegsakademie since the First World War, author of the US Army's 'Germany First' strategic plan, later Chief of Staff to Mountbatten and then Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese portion of Stillwell's former command.

Weltlinger, Sigmund,
member of the Berlin Jewish Council set up by the Nazis.

Westphal, General Siegfried
(1902–82), German Operations Officer to Rommel in North Africa, then Chief of Staff in Italy and northern Europe.

Whitmore, Private,
Sherwood Foresters pub-group interview, Nottingham.

Witter, Ben,
Hamburg journalist.

Witzendorff, Lieutenant Commander Ernst von
(b. 1916), commander of
U-121, U-46, U-101, U-650, U-267, U-2524
and
U-1007,
1942–45.

Wolff, Waffen-SS Colonel General Karl
(1900–84), Chief of Staff to Himmler, Governor of North Italy 1943–45, helped arrange German surrender in Italy and was a prosecution witness at Nuremberg. After publishing his memoirs in 1961 was tried and imprisoned by a German court for the mass deportation of Jews to Treblinka concentration camp.

Woudenberg, Dick,
teenage son of a prominent Dutch Nazi.

Wozenski, Brigadier General Edward
(1915–88), US Company Commander on Omaha Beach, Normandy.

Wright, Wing Commander Robert,
Personal Assistant to Air Chief Marshal Dowding during the Battle of Britain and later his biographer.

Yonaha, Momoko,
Okinawan girl conscripted into medical service with the Japanese Army.

Yoselevska, Rivka,
Polish–Jewish survivor of the Hansovic ghetto massacre in Poland, witness at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961.

Yoshikawa, Takeo
(1914–93), Japanese naval officer and spy at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

CHAPTER 1
GERMANY'S HITLER

The 1914–18 war was often known in Britain as 'the Kaiser's War' and, with far more justice, its continuation in 1939–45 deserves to be known as Hitler's War. Its long-term causes may be traced back at least as far as the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, and both Germany's defeat in 1918 and post-war economic collapse helped set its preconditions. It came about because a political party built around blind obedience to a psychopath took control of one of the world's most powerful states, and it was to take an alliance of most other world powers to defeat him. The
World at War
interviews explored the character of only one man – Hitler. Many reasons have been advanced for his meteoric rise, but the ugly fact remains that a party whose uniformed followers chanted, 'Blood must flow, let's smash it up, that goddamned Jewish republic', made sound progress through the democratic process. The Nazis received eighteen per cent of the popular vote in the Reichstag elections of September 1930 and thirty-seven per cent in July 1932. Perhaps even more significant was that in the Presidential election of 1932, with the slogan 'Hitler over Germany' emphasised by his much publicised use of air transport, Hitler received thirty per cent of the votes in the first round and thirty-six per cent in the run-off against the incumbent, the elderly war hero and nationalist icon Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg. Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30 January 1933 and a month later a fire set by a Dutch Communist in the Reichstag building was used to justify an emergency decree banning the German Communist Party and suspending many civil liberties. Surfing a wave of anti-Communist hysteria the Nazi Party won forty-four per cent of the vote in the national elections of March 1933 and the first act of the new Reichstag was to pass the Enabling Act that reduced its functions to simply
rubber-stamping the initiatives of the Chancellor. President Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934 and instead of holding new elections Hitler was invested with the powers of Head of State and Supreme Commander of the armed forces, who swore an oath of loyalty to him. This constitutional coup was approved in a plebiscite by eighty-five per cent of the electorate.

KARL WOLFF

Founding member of the SS in 1931

Hitler's conception regarded
Christianity as a sort of sickness in the natural Germanic nature. He considered it his duty to renew and improve the Germanic race as far as possible where it was still to be found, despite the terribly unfortunate mingling with other influences, but also to renew and improve religion and lead them back, step by step, to a new sort of recognition of God and new forms of worship that broke away from the supranational Christian emasculation, which was opposed to inner Germanic interests. Since there was no example for this, no textbook from which one could learn, paths were followed, some of which were fine and good, and others that were regarded as very controversial and even ridiculous.

ALBERT SPEER

Hitler's Chief Architect and later Armaments Minister

When I was a young man and was joining the Party I missed everything, which was really seriously searching the possibilities of other parties or the programme of this Party. I was just convinced by Hitler's attitude in a speech he made, and in such a comparatively small decision as just joining a Party was already the step to everything which happened afterwards to me. I lost those twenty years of my life when I was quite superficially joining this Party in 1931.

CHRISTABEL BIELENBERG

Englishwoman married to an anti-Nazi German lawyer

I came to Germany in 1932 and that was a period of time I think you can say that the Weimar Republic was dying. They had changed the government – they changed the government in Germany practically every three months – and the government was already ruling by emergency decree. I think the atmosphere of Germany was one of great poverty, there's no doubt about it, it was very distinguishable when one even came from England, which wasn't in a very good way either. There were six and a half million unemployed, every weekend there were political marches taking place between the Nazis on one side, the Communists on the other. Every political party had its military wing, which of course was quite different to England, and they marched around and practically every weekend there were deaths through shootings and so forth. I think the ordinary burgher was absolutely tired of this situation and was on the lookout for someone who could come along to clean up the place. The
emergency laws of course were there. They had [to be], they were on the statute book simply because no government – there were forty-eight political parties altogether I believe – and no government had been able to govern, to get a majority in parliament. That's why those emergency laws were there, and they were on the statute book ready to be used by anybody who wanted to.

HUGH GREENE

Daily Telegraph
correspondent in Berlin

I think that the great bulk of Germans did feel that
Versailles had been a wicked thing and that they had been hardly done by. It had been drummed into them by Nationalist professors in the universities and Nationalist teachers in schools.
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