The World at War (94 page)
Authors: Richard Holmes
U-boats
United Kingdom
'fighting to the last American'
United States of America
USSR
USSR, Invasion of
Western Europe 1944-45
World at War, The
WVS (Women's Voluntary Service)
Yalta conference
The definitive history of the
Second World War
Includes:
- All Original 26 episodes
- 8 Special Presentations
- 3 hour 30th Anniversary Disc containing previously unseen interviews and retrospective interviews with the original production team
- Imperial War Museum Photo Gallery, Biographies, Brief History of The World at War, Episode Summaries, Speeches/Songs & Newsreels/Maps
FREMANTLE
MEDIA
Footnotes
*1
By the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 the Germans accepted war guilt and the obligation to pay reparations.
*2
Martin Bormann (1900–45) became the powerful head of the Party Chancellery and Private Secretary to Hitler.
*3
Frontsoldaten,
front-line soldiers: veterans of the First World War, also name adopted by several organisations formed to combat Communist revolutionaries immediately after the war.
*4
The Night of the Broken Glass, a pogrom against Jewish shops and homes on the anniversary of the birthday of Martin Luther, 10 November 1938.
*5
Theodor Morell (1886–1948), Hitler's private physician, injected him with a cocktail of drugs including some known to cause euphoria, personality changes and psychosis.
*6
On 15 May 1932 a group of young officers assassinated Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai and attacked the home of Marquis Kido's predecessor.
*7
The Tripartite Pact also known as the Axis Pact was signed on 27 September 1940.
**1
Sir Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, 1938–46.
*8
Richard Sorge (1895–1944), German agent of the Comintern who joined the Nazi Party and worked under cover as a
Frankfurter Zeitung
journalist in Japan from 1933.
*9
The Japanese occupied French Indochina in July 1941.
*10
Shigenori Togo (1882–1950), Foreign Minister 1941–42 and 1945.
*11
Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky (1883–1937) was the victim of Nazi disinformation that fed into Stalin's fear that the military might overthrow him.
*12
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947), British Prime Minister 1923–24, 1924–29, 1935–37.
*13
Field Marshal Sir Edmund Ironside (1880–1959), Chief of the Imperial General Staff 1939–40.
*14
Edvard Beneš (1884–1948), President of Czechoslovakia 1935–38, in exile 1940–45, 1945–48.
*15
The pact signed by foreign ministers Molotov and Ribbentrop on 23 August 1939 had secret provisions for 'territorial rearrangements' at the expense of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania.
**2
The
Daily Worker
was the organ of the British Communist Party, which under Harry Pollitt (1890–1960) was the most Moscow-servile of all the European Communist parties.
*16
David Lloyd George (1863–1945), a reformist pre-1914 Chancellor of the Exchequer, was Prime Minister 1916–22 of the most corrupt administration in modern British history.
*17
Edward Wood, Viscount Halifax (1881–1959), Foreign Secretary 1938–40, strongly urged seeking terms from Germany following the Fall of France.
*18
The
San Emiliano
was in fact sunk in 1942; this vivid extract is included here as a generic description of what merchant seamen faced, and knew they faced, every time they put to sea.
*19
Marshal Philippe Pétain (1856–1951), First World War hero for his defence of Verdun who became the head of the collaborationist Vichy regime 1940–44.
*20
Brendan Bracken (1901–58) was widely and falsely believed to be Churchill's illegitimate son. He was Minister of Information 1941–5 and was ennobled in 1952.
*21
The German pilot later died of his injuries.
*22
Holmes calculated that he could sever the thin tail boom of the Dornier 217 with his wing and that his Hurricane would survive the impact. He was right only on the first count.
*23
William Joyce was born in 1906 in New York. A leading figure in the British Union of Fascists, he fled to Germany in 1939 to avoid internment and broadcast for the Nazis to Britain throughout the war. Declared British on a flimsy technicality he was hanged for treason in 1946.
*24
In July 1941 Churchill ordered that Wavell should exchange commands with General Sir Claude Auchinleck, C-in-C Indian Army.
*25
Fritz Todt (1891–1942) joined the Nazi Party in 1922 and was Hitler's first Armaments Minister. Speer became the second after Todt was killed when his aircraft exploded on 8 February 1942.
*26
Sir Stafford Cripps (1889–1952), when Ambassador to Moscow in 1940, found his warnings of an imminent Nazi attack treated with disdain by Stalin. He returned to Britain in 1942 to demand ever greater sacrifices on behalf of the USSR.
*27
Harry Hopkins (1890–1946), Roosevelt's friend and Chief Diplomatic Adviser, was instrumental in getting the $50 billion Lend-Lease programme through Congress.
*28
Lieutenant General Arthur Percival (1887–1966), Commander-in-Chief Malaya 1941–42.
**3
The same day as Pearl Harbor – the International Date Line intervening.
*29
About half the 100,000 Asians and 16,000 of the 60,000 Europeans employed as forced labourers on the Thailand–Burma railway died of overwork, malnutrition and disease.
*30
Edson received the Medal of Honor for his epic defence of the Lunga Ridge with 800 men against an attacking force of about 2,500 on the night of 13–14 September 1942.
*31
The invasion of Kiska in the Aleutian Islands in August 1943 was as described, but in the earlier invasion of nearby Attu the 2,500 Japanese defenders fought to the last man and inflicted 4,000 US casualties.
*32
Colonel Shoup won the Medal of Honor leading the assault on Tarawa.
*33
The defenders under Rear-Admiral Keiji Shibasaki were 3,000 marines, plus 1,000 Japanese and 1,200 Korean Pioneers, of whom 17 Japanese and 129 Koreans survived.
*34
General Sir Claude Auchinleck, C-in-C Middle East July 1941–August 1942.
*35
Of the surrender of Tobruk on 21 June 1942 Churchill wrote, 'This was one of the heaviest blows I can recall during the war. Not only were the military effects grim, but it affected the reputation of British arms. Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another.'
*36
Interview conducted at a reunion of Afrika Korps veterans in Germany.
*37
Actually Arabic.
*38
Recs confessed on his deathbed in 1979 that he had been a Soviet spy in association with the 'Cambridge Five'. Thanks to their activities and those of traitors in the Roosevelt administration, including Alger Hiss, the Western Allies had no secrets from the Soviet dictator.
*39
The first thousand-bomber raid, on Cologne, took place on 30–31 May 1942. Bomber Command itself only achieved a front-line strength of 1,000 bombers in June 1944.
*40
Directive issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in June 1943 'to accomplish the progressive dislocation and disruption of the German military, industrial and economic system and the undermining of the German people'.
*41
Between 24–25 July and 2–3 August 1943 Bomber Command mounted four major raids on Hamburg. More than 40,000 were killed and more than a million survivors fled the city.
*42
Wild Boar, a response to the Hamburg raids, involved German fighters attacking by the light of burning cities or flares dropped by higher-flying aircraft. It was abandoned by the end of the 1943.
*43
The 'Battle of Berlin' ran from November 1943 to March 1944, when Bomber Command came under the command of General Eisenhower in preparation for D-Day.
*44
Ninety-five of 795 bombers were lost during the Nuremberg raid of 30–31 March 1944.
*45
Herget's unique eight kills in one night took place on 20–21 December 1943.
*46
Wolff's words betray him: he states that the SS were not the executioners but then says the commander of the death squad was an SS officer.
*47
Thanks to Morgen, Koch was convicted and executed in April 1945.
**4
Later in the interview Hilse identified the officer as SS Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Höss, hanged on the gallows next to the Auschwitz crematorium in April 1947.
*48
Eaker was well briefed: he knew that Churchill greatly favoured one-page memoranda.
*49
Genera] Lyman Lemnitzer was Supreme Commander of NATO 1963–69.
*50
The British MAUD Committee, drawing on the research of emigré German scientists, produced a report on the feasibility of a uranium bomb on 15 July 1941, an advanced copy of which was sent to Bush. He waited until he received an official version in October before taking it to President Roosevelt.
*51
The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) split from the established American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1938. The two organisations merged again in 1955.
*52
Fritz Sauckel (1894–1946) was Hitler's
tie facto
Minister of Labour.
*53
Speer's acceptance of culpability on the forced-labour count at Nuremberg was sufficiently nuanced for him to avoid the fate of Sauckel, who was hanged.