World War II Journal Entries

***Haile Selassie I

Textbook References: World History, The Human Odyssey: Ch. 28.

Over his lifetime, Haile Selassie (se-LAH-see) became a dominant leader in Africa as the emperor of Ethiopia. His primary goal was to reduce the influence of European nations on Africa and to install himself as the leader of a pan-African community. His dream seemed to be realized when the African nations established the Organization of African Unity in 1963. But his inability to give up his own absolute power or to improve the conditions of the poor led to his removal from the throne.

Haile Selassie was born Tafari Makonnen on July 23, 1892. His father was Prince Makonnen of Showa, first cousin and advisor to Emperor Menelik II, and was said to have been a direct descendent of King Solomon and the queen of Sheba. This distinction was an important claim in a kingdom where Christianity was the official state religion. The boy was educated by French and Ethiopian mission tutors and learned several languages, including French and English. He became a favored member of the court and was named to a governor’s position in 1910. In 1915, he survived a boating accident that caused him to lose face in the government.

Frustrated with his loss of favor, Makonnen was involved in a coup against the emperor and helped to appoint a new empress, Zauditu. For the next ten years, he and Zauditu struggled for power and control until the empress’s death in 1930. Tafari Makonnen’s first priority was to eliminate potential opposition to the government. He was able to build a loyal following among the police forces and the army. He also used his powers to make reforms, expanding education, using foreign advisors for economic modernization, opening a press for the spread of liberal ideas, building a new hospital, establishing solid sources of revenue through taxation, and slowing arms and slave traffic.

In 1930, Tafari Makonnen became emperor of Ethiopia, changing his name to Haile Selassie, which means “might of the Trinity.” The new emperor started his modernization program. He lessened the power of the old landowners and the conservative church through taxation, created a standing army to quash rebellions, and started a civil service program. His most important change was the development of a constitution in 1931. This constitution created a two-house legislature, but did not lessen the power of the emperor. Selassie had changed the face of Ethiopia and was well on the way to making it the most modern of the African states, when the world economy crashed in the 1930s.

In 1935, Benito Mussolini, Fascist dictator of Italy, started an invasion of Ethiopia, in complete disregard of the twenty-year treaty he had signed only seven years earlier. Selassie personally led his troops against the enemy. By 1936, through superior firepower and use of poison gas, Italy defeated and occupied Ethiopia. Selassie and his cabinet fled to England. On June 30, 1936, Haile Selassie gave a powerful speech to the League of Nations asking member nations to aid his country, which they refused. But Italy was forced to move its troops from Africa during World War II.

Reinstalled to power in 1941, Selassie hoped to rebuild his country. He started the emancipation of all slaves, major land reform projects, and a revised constitution that increased voting rights. In an effort to place Ethiopia in the forefront of African global politics, he formed the Organization of African Unity in 1963 and was a mediator in several inter-African conflicts.

But these gains could not outweigh the losses of the people of Ethiopia. While he had increased voting rights and instituted other domestic reforms, Selassie still held complete power over the government. As he grew older, he also grew more and more conservative in his political views. By the late 1960s, political factions, including many intellectuals, students, and young military officers, grew against the emperor. In September of 1974, Haile Selassie was forced to give up his throne. His government had deteriorated into corruption and his domestic policies had failed. He spent his final year under house arrest and died in the capital of Addis Ababa on August 27, 1975.

Haile Selassie had been born of a noble family, and seemed destined to rule. As the last emperor of Ethiopia, he started a process of modernization, but made enemies with his autocratic style. He was successful in starting a movement for pan-African cooperation, and it is through this success that his legacy lives on.

Questions:

1. Why was Haile Selassie’s ancestry important to the people of Ethiopia?
2. What three changes did Selassie make after returning to the throne in 1941?

***Churchill's Response to Munich***

In the parliamentary debate that followed the Munich Conference at the end of September 1938, Winston Churchill was one of the few critics of what had been accomplished. In the following selections from his speech, he expresses his concerns.

I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, and that France has suffered even more than we have...

We really must not waste time after all this long debate upon the difference between the positions reached at Berchtesgaden, at Godesberg, and at Munich. They can be very simply epitomized if the House will permit me to vary the metaphor. One pound was demanded at the pistol's point. When it was given, two pounds were demanded at the pistol's point. Finally, the dictator consented to take 1 pound 17s. 6d. and the rest in promises of good will for the future...

All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness. She has suffered in every respect by her association with the Western democracies and with the League of Nations, of which she has always been an obedient servant...

We have been reduced in those five years from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengeable that we never cared to think about it. We have been reduced from a position where the very word "war" was considered one which could be used only by persons qualifying for a lunatic asylum. We have been reduced from a position of safety and power--power to do good, power to be generous to a beaten foe, power to make terms with Germany, power to give her proper redress for her grievances, power to stop her arming if we chose, power to take any step in strength or mercy or justice which we thought right--reduced in five years from a position safe and unchallenged to where we stand now...

The responsibility must rest with those who have had the undisputed control of our political affairs. They neither prevented Germany from rearming, nor did they rearm ourselves in time. They quarreled with Italy without saving Ethiopia. They exploited and discredited the vast institution of the League of Nations and they neglected to make alliances and combinations which might have repaired previous errors, and thus they left us in the hour of trial without adequate national defense or effective international security...

We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that. It must now be accepted that all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi power. The system of alliances in Central Europe upon which France has relied for her safety has been swept away, and I can see no means by which it can be reconstituted. The road down the Danube Valley to the Black Sea, the road which leads as far as Turkey, has been opened...

From Winston S. Churchill, Blood, Sweat, and Tears (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1941), pp. 55-56, 58, 60-61. Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Ltd., on behalf of the Estate of Sir Winston S. Churchill. Copyright Winston S. Churchill

Questions:

1. What was decided at Munich?
2. Why did Chamberlain think the meeting was successful?
3. What are Churchill's objections to appeasement?

***The Fall of France***

Marc Bloch was France's most distinguished medieval historian in the 1930s. Bloch was born a Jew, but, as he put it, he was "above all, and quite simply, a Frenchman." After the fall of France in 1940, during which he served in the army, Bloch wrote a trenchant analysis of the disaster in which he devestatingly exposed the blunders of the government, the military, and the French middle class. But Bloch strove for "complete sincerity in word and thought," and he did not avoid placing a share of the blame on his own profession, as the selection below shows. Bloch joined the resistance and perished at the hands of a Nazi firing squad in 1944.

Many of us [among the professoriate] realized at a very early stage [in the post-World War I period] the nature of the abyss into which the diplomacy of Versailles and the Ruhr was threatening to plunge us. We knew perfectly well that it would have the double result of embroiling us with our former Allies and of keeping open and bleeding our ancient quarrel with an enemy who we had just, but only just, defeated....Not being prophets we did not foresee the advent of the Nazis. But we did foresee that, in some form or other, though its precise nature was hidden from us, a German revival would come, that it would be embittered by rancorous memories to which our foolish ineptitude was daily adding, and that its explosion would be terrible. Had anyone asked us how we thought a second war would end we should, I doubt not, have answered that we hoped it would end in victory. But we should have been perfectly clear in our own minds that if the terrible storm broke again there was grave danger that the whole of European civilization might well suffer irremediable shipwreck. We did realize that in the Germany of that time there were signs, however, timid, of a new spirit of goodwill, of an attitude that was frankly pacific and honestly liberal. The only thing wanting was a gesture of encouragement on the part of our political leaders. We knew all that, and yet, from laziness, from cowardice, we let things take their course. We feared the opposition of the mob, the sarcasm of our friends, the ignorant mistrust of our masters. We dared not stand up in public and be the voice crying in the wilderness. It might have been just that, but at least we should have had the consolation of knowing that, whatever the outcome of its message, it had at least spoken aloud the faith that was in us. We preferred to lock ourselves into the fear-haunted tranquility of our studies. May the young men forgive us the blood that is red upon our hands!

Questions:

1. What did the university professors see in the future?
2. What subtle signs did they see for hope with Germany?
3. What does Bloch believe should have been done by his academic group?

***Marshal Henri Petain***

Textbook Reference: World History, The Human Odyssey: Ch. 28.

If Henri Pétain’s life had ended after World War I, he would have been considered one of France’s greatest military leaders. But history does not allow people to choose their destiny. As he grew older, Pétain (PAE-ta[n]) was placed into situations that gave many French citizens reason to wonder about his loyalties.

Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Pétain was born on April 24, 1856, near Béthune, France. His parents were peasants. From 1867 to 1875, Pétain was a boarder at the Collêge St. Bertin at St. Omer. In 1876 he entered the military school of St. Cyr, where he was no more than an average student. What he did learn at St. Cyr would be with him for the rest of his life: military virtues and military contempt for civilians and politicians, a mistrust of political education and leftist politics, and a healthy respect for tradition. He entered the military but after twelve uninspired years was only a captain.

After another twelve years in 1900, he was promoted to major and assigned to teach rifle instruction. Within a short time, however, he found himself at odds with the administration over the field-of-fire policy. The accepted military theory of the time was to use riflemen as a group, covering a wide area, but Pétain believed in individual accuracy in warfare. This disagreement caused his removal but showed two important facts about Pétain. First, he was concerned about the individual soldier. Second, he was willing to stand behind his beliefs, no matter the consequences. For the few years, Pétain was either in active military service or serving as an instructor of infantry tactics or shooting. Due to his constant shifting of position, his military rank did not often increase. In 1907, he finally achieved the rank of lieutenant-colonel. From then until the beginning of World War I, Pétain seemed to be preparing for retirement. He gained the rank of full colonel in 1910 and took the command of the Fourth Infantry Brigade in 1914. In an effort to move him along into the ranks of the generals before his retirement, a supporter of Pétain’s asked the War Minister about a promotion. The response was simply put: Pétain had not singled himself out and would retire a colonel.

It was lucky for Pétain that France went to war in 1914. By 1916, he was the commander at Ver-dun, where the German advance was halted. After his successes at Verdun, he was named commander- in-chief of the French forces in 1917. It was a major step for a man who would have retired as a colonel just three years earlier. Pétain received his marshal’s baton in 1918 as France’s leading military strategist and retired from active service, with an eye to governmental positions.

Throughout the 1920s, Marshal Pétain sat on numerous committees, advised on many questions dealing with French defenses, and even returned to active service for a short while. In the 1930s, his political life was his major focus, with a short stint as the Minister of War in 1934. In 1939, he became ambassador to Spain.

The world changed for Marshal Pétain in May 1940. As German forces rumbled across France, Pétain knew that France could not militarily stop the Nazi advance. The only option left, he believed, was to ensure France’s survival. On June 17, 1940, he announced to the country in a radio address that he was taking control of the government and offered his services to the nation. As the Germans established their regime at Vichy (VISH-ee), Pétain felt he was the only man who could lead his country through these trying times. He was eighty-four years old.

In July of the same year, he was named head of the French state, the most powerful position held by one man since the death of Napoleon I. But Pétain’s power was checked by several factors. First was the German presence in France. Second was the division of France into several states. Third were the many interdepartmental conflicts within the Vichy government. Finally, Pétain’s hold on France was dependent on German involvement in the government. As the war started to turn against the Germans, so Pétain’s power started to decline.

After the Allied forces landed in France in 1944, Pétain no longer felt safe in his home country. He quickly moved to Germany and on to Switzerland. He was recalled to France to stand trial for his actions during the war. He refused to acknowledge the right of the provisional government to try him, but was still found guilty of collaborating with the Germans and sentenced to death. His sentence was reduced to life imprisonment, which he served in exile on the Ile d’Yeu until he died in 1951.

Marshal Pétain was the unquestioned hero of the First World War in France, but his armistice and collaboration with the Nazis have clouded his place in history.

Questions:

1. What did Pétain’s dismissal from rifle instruction show about the man?
2. What were the four problems of Pétain’s tenure as the leader of Vichy France?

***Beating the Invader***

***“Blood, Toil, Tears, And Sweat”***

In 1938, the British government, led by Neville Chamberlain, signed the Munich Agreements sanctioning the German annexation of Austria and areas of Czechoslovakia. This was a final bid to avert war with Germany by appeasement. It failed. In March 1939, Hitler occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia, and on September 1 he attacked Poland. At this point, Britain and France declared war. Throughout this period, Winston Churchill warned of the danger Hitler posed to the survival of Britain and complained about Britain's unpreparedness and Chamberlain's policy of appeasement. On May 10, 1940, Chamberlain resigned and Winston Churchill became prime minister. During Britain's “darkest hours,” without allies or defenses and under siege by the Germans from the air, Winston Churchill's eloquent words provided leadership, inspiration, courage, and fortitude for the British people. Rarely have words alone seemed to have so changed the course of events. After the war, Churchill recounted events of the period in a series of books. The selection below consists of three excerpts. In the first, from The Gathering Storm, he recalls his ascent to leadership. In the next, from his first speech to the House of Commons as prime minister, he offers “nothing” “but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” In the third, he pays homage to British airmen who valiantly defended (their country) against unceasing German aerial bombardment.

Text reference: Chapter 28, World History, The Human Odyssey.

A. From The Gathering Storm

The morning of the tenth of May dawned, and with it came tremendous news. Boxes with telegrams poured in from the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Foreign Office. The Germans had struck their long-awaited blow. Holland and Belgium were both invaded. Their frontiers had been crossed at numerous points. The whole movement of the German Army upon the invasion of the Low Countries and of France had begun. … In the splintering crash of this vast battle, the quiet conversations we had had in Downing Street faded or fell back in one’s mind. However, I remember being told that Mr. Chamberlain had gone, or was going, to see the King, and this was naturally to be expected. Presently a message arrived summoning me to the Palace at six o’clock. It only takes two minutes to drive there from the Admiralty along the Mall. Although I suppose the evening newspapers must have been full of the terrific news from the Continent, nothing had been mentioned about the Cabinet crisis. The public had not had time to take in what was happening either abroad or at home, and there was no crowd about the palace gates. I was taken immediately to the King. His Majesty received me most graciously and bade me sit down. He looked at me searchingly and quizzically for some moments, and then said: “I suppose you don’t know why I have sent for you?” Adopting his mood, I replied, “Sir, I simply couldn’t imagine why.” He laughed and said: “I want to ask you to form a Government.” I said I would certainly do so.

I invited Mr. Chamberlain to lead the House of Commons as Lord President of the Council, and he replied by telephone that he accepted and had arranged to broadcast at nine that night, stating that he had resigned, and urging everyone to support and aid his successor. This he did in magnanimous terms. I asked Lord Halifax to join the War Cabinet while remaining Foreign Secretary. At about ten, I sent the King a list of five names, as I had promised. The appointment of the three Service Ministers was vitally urgent. I had already made up my mind who they should be. Mr. Eden should go to the War Office; Mr. Alexander should come to the Admiralty; and Sir Archibald Sinclair, leader of the Liberal Party, should take the Air Ministry. At the same time I assumed the office of Minister of Defense, without, however, attempting to define its scope and powers.

Thus, then, on the night of the tenth of May, at the outset of this mighty battle, I acquired the chief power in the State which henceforth I wielded in ever-growing measure for five years and three months of world war, at the end of which time, all our enemies having surrendered unconditionally or being about to do so, I was immediately dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs.

During these last crowded days of the political crisis, my pulse had not quickened at any moment. I took it all as it came. But I cannot conceal from the reader of this truthful account that as I went to bed at about 3 A.M., I was conscious of a profound sense of relief. At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with Destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. Eleven years in the political wilderness had freed me from ordinary party antagonisms. My warnings over the last six years had been so numerous, so detailed, and were now so terribly vindicated, that no one could gainsay me. I could not be reproached either for making the war or with want of preparation for it. I thought I knew a good deal about it all, and I was sure I should not fail. Therefore, although impatient for the morning, I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams.

Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1948), pp. 662, 665, 666-667.

B. First Speech to the House of Commons as Prime Minister May 13, 1940

On Friday evening last I received His Majesty’s Commission to form a new Administration. It was the evident wish and will of Parliament and the nation that this should be conceived on the broadest possible basis and that it should include all Parties, both those who supported the late Government and also the Parties of the Opposition.

To form an Administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself, but it must be remembered that we are in the preliminary stage of one of the greatest battles in history, that we are in action at many points in Norway and in Holland, that we have to be prepared in the Mediterranean, that the air battle is continuous, and that many preparations have to be made here at home. In this crisis I hope I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length today. I hope that any of my friends and colleagues, or former colleagues, who are affected by the political reconstruction, will make all allowance for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act. I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, What is our policy? I will say: “It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.” You ask, What is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival. Let that be realized; no survival for the British Empire; no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for; no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, “Come, then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”

The Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill C.H., M.P., Blood, Sweat, and Tears (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1941), pp. 275-276.

C. THE WAR SITUATION I The House of Commons August 20, 1940

There is another more obvious difference from 1914. The whole of the warring nations are engaged, not only soldiers, but the entire population, men, women and children. The fronts are everywhere. The trenches are dug in the towns and streets. Every village is fortified. Every road is barred. The front line runs through the factories. The workmen are soldiers with different weapons but the same courage. These are great and distinctive changes from what many of us saw in the struggle of a quarter of a century ago. There seems to be every reason to believe that this new kind of war is well suited to the genius and the resources of the British nation and the British Empire; and that, once we get properly equipped and properly started, a war of this kind will be more favorable to us than the somber mass slaughters of the Somme and Passchendaele. If it is a case of the whole nation fighting and suffering together, that ought to suit us, because we are the most united of all the nations, because we entered the war upon the national will and with our eyes open, and because we have been nurtured in freedom and individual responsibility and are the products, not of totalitarian uniformity, but of tolerance and variety. If all these qualities are turned, as they are being turned, to the arts of war, we may be able to show the enemy quite a lot of things that they have not thought of yet.

The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day; but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, with deliberate careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power. On no part of the Royal Air Force does the weight of the war fall more heavily than on the daylight bombers, who will play an invaluable part in the case of invasion and whose unflinching zeal it has been necessary in the meanwhile on numerous occasions to restrain.

Presently we learned that anxiety was also felt in the United States about the air and naval defense of their Atlantic seaboard, and President Roosevelt has recently made it clear that he would like to discuss with us, and with the Dominion of Canada and with Newfoundland, the development of American naval and air facilities in Newfoundland and in the West Indies. There is, of course, no question of any transference of sovereignty—that has never been suggested—or of any action being taken without the consent or against the wishes of the various Colonies concerned; but for our part, His Majesty’s Government are entirely willing to accord defense facilities to the United States on a 99 years’ leasehold basis, and we feel sure that our interests no less than theirs, and the interests of the Colonies themselves and of Canada and Newfoundland, will be served thereby. These are important steps. Undoubtedly this process means that these two great organizations of the English-speaking democracies, the British Empire and the United States, will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage. For my own part, looking out upon the future, I do not view the process with any misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished; no one can stop it. Like the Mississippi, it just keeps rolling along. Let it roll. Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands and better days.

The Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill C.H., M.P., Blood, Sweat, and Tears (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1941), pp. 342, 347-348, 351.

Questions:

1. What happened on the morning of May 10, 1940, that caused Churchill to be called by the king?
2. Why did Churchill feel “a profound sense of relief” as he went to bed that night? What does he mean by “Facts are better than dreams”?
3. In his speech to the House of Commons, how does Churchill describe what he has to offer, what his policy is, and what his aim is? What phrases in his speech do you find particularly memorable or moving?
4. What differences does Churchill see between World War I and World War II? For what reason does he pay homage to the fighter pilots?
5. What does President Roosevelt want to discuss with the British? Why does Churchill use the reference to the Mississippi (recalling the song “Old Man River” from the 1927 musical Show Boat by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein) to describe the proposed closer relationship between the United States and Britain?

***War in the East: 1939-1944

These six excerpts are taken from the diary of a Polish doctor who survived World War II in eastern Poland. One condensed entry is given for each year of the war.

September 21, 1939:
It was completely weird. This whole mass of people, seized with panic, were going ahead, without knowing where or why, and without any knowledge of where the exodus would end. Large numbers of passenger cars, several official limousines, all filthy and covered with mud, were trying to pass the truck and wagon convoys. Many people were hanging on to the roofs and fenders of the cars and trucks. Many of the vehicles had broken windshields, damaged hoods or doors.

September 1, 1940:
We are exhausted. Life is nerve shattering. We are living in uncertainty about what will happen to us, not in a month or a week, but in one hour. We live under the constant threat of search, arrest, beating, evacuation, and death, with the last one maybe not being the worst because of the treatment of prisoners in German prisons and camps.

October 4, 1941:
Yesterday another transport of Soviet POWs around 15,000, passed through. They all looked like skeletons, just shadows of human beings, barely moving. I have never in my life seen anything like this. Men were falling to the street; the stronger ones were carrying others, holding them up by their arms. They looked like starved animals, not like people. They were fighting for scraps of apples in the gutter, not paying any attention to the Germans who would beat them with rubber sticks.

October 21, 1942:
From early morning until late at night we witnessed indescribable events. Armed SS soldiers, gendarmes, and "blue police" [local law enforcement that cooperated with the Nazis] ran through the city looking for Jews. The Jews were taken from their houses, barns, cellars, attics, and other hiding places. Pistol and gun shots were heard throughout the entire day. Sometimes hand grenades were thrown into the cellars. Jews were beaten and kicked; it made no difference whether they were men, women, or small children. All Jews will be shot.

October 10, 1943:
I spent three days in Warsaw. There is much shooting on the streets. German gendarmes cruise the streets in open cars, carrying carbines and machine guns. Once, while I was riding the streetcar on Narutowicz Place, a shot was fired. Immediately all passengers lay down on the floor. It appears this is a daily routine and people are prepared for it.

July 26, 1944:
At 8 A.M. a Russian officer arrived at the hospital. While talking with him I heard the cry. "Our boys are coming!" I left everything and ran to see for myself. From the direction of Blonie a group of approximately twenty young men approached, all were armed, in uniform, with red scarves around their necks and red and white arm bands on their left sleeves. The people went wild. They were crying, shouting, and throwing flowers.

Source: From Zygmunt Klukowski, Diary from the Years of Occupation, 1939-1944, trans. George Klukowski (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), pp. 16, 114, 173, 219, 284, 353.

Questions:

1. Which excerpt seemed the most terrifying from the author's perspective? Why?
2. Which passage seems to imply that the Nazi occupation had become somewhat routine? Explain.
3. What are gendarmes? "Blue Police"?

***A German Soldier at Stalingrad***

Text Reference, World History, The Human Odyssey.

The Russian victory at Stalingrad was a major turning point in World War II. These words come from the diary of a German soldier who fought and died in the Battle of Stalingrad.

Today, after we'd had a bath, the company commander told us that if our future operations are as successful, we'll soon reach the Volga and take Stalingrad and then the war will inevitably soon be over. Perhaps we'll be home by Christmas.

July 29. The company commander says the Russian troops are completely broken, and cannot hold out any longer. To reach the Volga and take Stalingrad is not so difficult for us. The Fuehrer knows where the Russians' weak point is. Victory is not far away....

August 10. The Fuehrer's orders were read out to us. He expects victory of us. We are all convinced that they can't stop us....

September 4. We are being sent northward along the front towards Stalingrad. We marched all night and by dawn had reached Voroponovo Station. We can already see the smoking town. It's a happy thought that the end of the war is getting nearer.

September 8. Two days of non-stop fighting. The Russians are defending themselves with insane stubbornness. Our regiment has lost many men....

September 16. Our battalion, plus tanks, is attacking the [grain storage] elevator, from which smoke is pouring--the grain in it is burning, the Russians seem to have set light to it themselves. Barbarism. The battalion is suffering heavy losses....

October 10. The Russians are so close to us that our planes cannot bomb them. We are preparing for a decisive attack. The Fuehrer has ordered the whole of Stalingrad to be taken as rapidly as possible....

October 22. Our regiment has failed to break into the factory. We have lost many men; every time you move you have to jump over bodies....

November 10. A letter from Else today. Everyone expects us home for Christmas. In Germany everyone believes we already hold Stalingrad. How wrong they are. If they could only see what Stalingrad has done to our army....

November 21. The Russians have gone over to the offensive along the whole front. Fierce fighting is going on. So, there it is--the Volga, victory and soon home to our families! We shall obviously be seeing them next in the other world.

November 29. We are encircled. It was announced this morning that the Fuehrer has said: "The army can trust me to do everything necessary to ensure supplies and rapidly break the encirclement."

December 3. We are on hunger rations and waiting for the rescue that the Fuehrer promised...

December 26. The horses have already been eaten. I would eat a cat; they say its meat is also tasty. The soldiers look like corpses or lunatics. They no longer take cover from Russian shells; they haven't the strength to walk, run away and hide. A curse on this war!

Questions:

1. What city was the German army trying to take?
2. Why was it important for them to take this city?
3. How accurate was the information received by the German soldiers prior to the attack?
4. At what point in the diary does it become obvious that the German soldier knew he would not return home alive?
5. Do you think the German soldiers still trusted the Fuehrer when they knew they would be defeated? Why or why not?

***The Traitor Who Was Not***

Success in modern warfare hinges on the availability of resources. The country with the greater reserves of oil, gasoline, and other fuel sources will, most likely, be the victor in a conflict.

As the Allied nations saw the power and boldness of Nazi Germany grow in the late 1930s, the availability of oil resources at Hitler’s disposal was of great concern. The Germans had perfected a very expensive process of extracting oil from coal. They were actually creating synthetic oil.

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, an American oil man who was living in Sweden began to support the Nazis openly, extolling Hitler’s virtues and publicly criticizing his Jewish business colleagues. This surprised many of his friends because, until the start of the war, “Red,” as he was called, was known to be an easygoing, friendly man with strong moral convictions. His friends grew tired of his insulting behavior and began to avoid him.

This American oil man was Eric Erickson, and the reason for his change in behavior was that he was trying to attract the attention of Nazi spies in Sweden. He was working for the American State Department in an attempt to learn about the German oil industry. Eventually, he was contacted by the Nazis and recruited to help with Germany’s oil industry.

Before long Erickson was making regular trips to Germany to inspect their synthetic oil facilities and discuss wartime production techniques. He was shocked by the advancements of Germany’s oil production. The Nazis had all the oil they needed to support their war machine.

Erickson suggested to the Germans that he build a synthetic oil facility in Sweden in case anything happened to the plants in Germany. The Germans liked this idea so much that they started providing him with detailed plans of their factories, allowing him to tour all their facilities. Erickson reported this information to the Americans and it was not long before they began to carry out precision bombing raids on the German synthetic oil factories.

The Germans never made the connection between Erickson’s visits and the bombing raids that followed shortly. By 1944 the Nazi’s ability to produce oil was wiped out. There was no oil left for the Luftwaffe’s planes or the Panzer tanks. Erickson’s work was done.

At a dinner in Stockholm, Sweden, he was finally able to announce to his friends that he had been working for the Allies all along. President Dwight Eisenhower, who had been the Allied commander during the war, said that Erickson had “shortened the war by at least two years.” In 1962 a movie was made of his life called The Counterfeit Traitor. Erickson died in 1983.

Questions:

1. What was the country of Erickson’s birth?
2. When did World War II begin?
3. What was the German airforce called?
4. What is synthetic oil made from?
5. How was Erickson able to obtain detailed plans of German oil facilities?
6. Who was the Allied Commander during World War II?

***A Righteous Teen***

It has been said that evil can only overcome if good does nothing. During World War II the world bore witness to a mass murder that occurred not simply because the Nazis were evil, but because those who were not evil allowed it to happen. A few courageous people did refuse to allow the tri-umph of barbarity by placing their own lives at risk to help others. One of these was a Polish teenager named Irene.

Irene Opdyke was a Polish student, separated from her family by the war when the Nazis invaded her town of Ternopol. (During the war Ternopol was part of Poland, but today the territory has been transferred to the Ukraine.) In 1939 Ternopol was a town of 18,000 Jews. The Germans rounded up the Jewish citizens, so by the end of the war fewer than 200 remained. Irene witnessed Nazi brutality firsthand. After seeing people gunned down in the street, she decided, "We are responsible for each other, for helping each other in time of need." Because of her good looks, she was given a job working in a German army barracks. There, she met twelve Jewish slave laborers who worked doing laundry. Her first act of defiance was to steal food from the major in charge to give to the starving workers.

While waiting on the major’s table, she was not only able to get bread and fruit, but also was able find out when the Nazis were going to liquidate the ghettos. Irene told her Jewish friends in the laundry, but knew that she had to do more. “God gave us free will,” she has said, “to be either good or bad.” The next night she moved the Jews into the basement of the major’s house. The people Irene had hidden would help her everyday to prepare for the major’s many parties. When the major returned in the evening, the Jews would hide in the basement, often while Nazi officers reveled upstairs.

One day Irene witnessed the hanging of a Christian family, along with the Jewish family that they had tried to help. The incident so unnerved her that she forgot to lock the door of the major’s house. When he came home early that day, he saw the Jews Irene had been hiding. As the Nazi officer headed for his library to call the Gestapo to take the Jews away, Irene grabbed him by the legs and begged for their lives. Replying that he loved her, the major agreed to allow the prisoners to live if Irene would be his girlfriend. Overcoming her revulsion, she consented.

The twelve people Irene sacrificed for all survived the war. At the war’s end, they wrote a statement describing her bravery. While in a refugee camp, she showed the statement to an American diplomat, who told her that the United States would be honored to have her live in this country. She later married him.

For her courage in taking a moral stand at the risk of her own life, the nation of Israel named her a Righteous Gentile, one of 15,000 non-Jews so honored for their help in saving Jews during the Holocaust. Today, Irene Opdyke travels the country speaking to school children about the importance of making moral decisions and standing by them.

Questions:

1. What is the main idea of this article?
2. Do you think that it is possible that something like the Holocaust could happen again? If no, explain what is different today that would prevent something like this from reoccurring. If yes, explain what combination of events could result in a modern day holocaust.
3. The Talmud says, “He who saves one life, saves the world entire.” Explain how Irene Opdyke’s actions give proof to that proverb.
4. Why do you think that more people did not take the stand that Irene Opdyke did? Do you think that you would have been able to take the risks that she did?

***Millions Disposed of in Minutes: Stalin and Churchill Agree On Their Shares***

This selection is taken from Winston Churchill’s memoirs of World War II. It describes a meeting Churchill held with Stalin in Moscow, at the Kremlin, in October 1944.

Text reference: Chapter 28, World History, The Human Odyssey.

…The moment was apt for business, so I said, “Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans. Your armies are in Rumania and Bulgaria. We have interests, missions, and agents there. Don’t let us get at cross-purposes in small ways. So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, how would it do for you to have ninety percent predominance in Rumania, for us to have ninety percent of the say in Greece, and go fifty-fifty about Yugoslavia?” While this was being translated I wrote out on a half-sheet of paper:

Rumania
Russia 90%
The others 10%
Greece
Great Britain 90%
(in accord with U.S.A.)
Russia 10%
Yugoslavia 50-50%
Hungary 50-50%
Bulgaria
Russia 75%
The others 25%

I pushed this across to Stalin, who had by then heard the translation. There was a slight pause. Then he took his blue pencil and made a large tick [check mark] upon it, and passed it back to us. It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down.

Of course we had long and anxiously considered our point, and were only dealing with immediate war-time arrangements. All larger questions were reserved on both sides for what we then hoped would be a peace table when the war was won.

After this there was a long silence. The pencilled paper lay in the centre of the table. At length I said, “Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, in such an offhand manner? Let us burn the paper.” “No, you keep it,” said Stalin.

After our first meeting I reflected on our relations with Russia throughout Eastern Europe, and, in order to clarify my ideas, drafted a letter to Stalin on the subject, enclosing a memorandum stating our interpretation of the percentages which we had accepted across the table. In the end I did not send this letter, deeming [considering] it wiser to let well alone.

Moscow, October 11, 1944

Winston Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, Volume VI of The Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1953), pp. 227-228.

Questions:

1. How would you explain the way Churchill proposed splitting British and Russian interests?
2. What reasons might Churchill have had to suggest burning the paper on which his proposed division of Central and Eastern Europe was outlined?
3. What reasons might Stalin have had to ask him to keep it?