Subject: WWII-L Digest - 3 May 1993 to 4 May 1993

From: Automatic digest processor <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 May 1993 00:00:43 -0400

There are 12 messages totalling 314 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. GERMAN FORCES (2)
  2. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (3)
  3. Narvik
  4. The Pacific
  5. LOCIS
  6. Addr: The Pacific (2)
  7. VARIOUS
  8. *

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Date:    Tue, 4 May 1993 07:07:52 +0200
From:    JOHN AUSLAND <[email-masked]>
Subject: GERMAN FORCES

  Oslo, May 4.  In reading the message posted by Larry Jewell about
the German forces available on June 6, I am struck by the number of
divisions in Norway.  Fortunately, Hitler had a hangup about Norway,
which led him to have more divisions here than necessary.
  The figure is a bit misleading, however, since the German Army
used Norway as a rest and recreation place for units which had been
on the eastern front.  Hence, not all the eleven divisions were
combat ready.  (I do not know off hand how many were.)
  Hitler's main concern in Norway was Narvik, through which vital
iron ore flowed from Sweden to Germany.  Since the port on the
Swedish coast was frozen during the winter, Narvik was essential.
Hitler is quoted as saying once that, if he were Churchill, he
would sacrifice a million men to get Narvik.  (One of the tragedies
of the war is that the British did not seize and hold Narvik.
It would have been tough and costly, given German control of the
air.  It could, however, have shortened the war.)
  The German Air Force was also interested in using the airfields
in north Norway to attack convoys on their way to Murmansk.
(Ironically, this is one of the main US interests in north Norway,
the airfields, which could be used in a battle for the Norwegian
Sea.  The other is the intelligence facilities in north Norway
in peacetime.)
  As a part of the Allied deception operation as to where we would
land, there was considerable resistance activity in Norway before
the Normandy landing.  Earlier, this had caused problems between
London and the Norwegian resistance.  The latter followed the
normal concept that you reserve your resources until friendly
forces are approaching.  In London, they wanted bang bang, as a
part of the deception.  A meeting was held in London to sort this
out.
  BTW, there was contact between the Norwegian resistance and the
opponents to Hitler in the German Army in Norway.  A friend of
mine, in his late eighties, was the liaison officer.
  My end line again is that I am glad Hitler kept so many forces
in Norway, rather than moving them to Normandy.  We had a tough
enough time with those that were there.
  Regards, John Ausland

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Date:    Tue, 4 May 1993 07:08:20 +0200
From:    JOHN AUSLAND <[email-masked]>
Subject: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

  Oslo, May 4.  I tried to log on to LOCIS as suggested by Bob Pasker
but was told the connection was closed.  Is anyone else having better
luck?  Regards, John Ausland

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Date:    Tue, 4 May 1993 00:21:43 EST
From:    Larry Jewell <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

>
>   Oslo, May 4.  I tried to log on to LOCIS as suggested by Bob Pasker
> but was told the connection was closed.  Is anyone else having better
> luck?  Regards, John Ausland
>
  I've been in and had a quick peak around.  Non-Congressional users will
be bounced out if the "official" users crowd the lines.  We'll have
to take what ever time we can get until they get more lines available.

USE the feedback option if you want to keep this service available!  The
"testing the waters" phase will look for user comments to shape future
services.

BTW, this is not an ftp site, so use "telnet locis.loc.gov" vice
"ftp locis.loc.gov" to gain access.

Larry J

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Date:    Tue, 4 May 1993 00:28:36 EST
From:    Larry Jewell <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: GERMAN FORCES

>
>   Oslo, May 4.  In reading the message posted by Larry Jewell about
> the German forces available on June 6, I am struck by the number of
> divisions in Norway.  Fortunately, Hitler had a hangup about Norway,
> which led him to have more divisions here than necessary.
>   The figure is a bit misleading, however, since the German Army
> used Norway as a rest and recreation place for units which had been
> on the eastern front.  Hence, not all the eleven divisions were
> combat ready.  (I do not know off hand how many were.)

  Chapter 4 of "Cross-Channel Attack" in the United States Army in World
War II series has an interesting discussion on Hilter's philosophy (sic)
on distribution of forces to resist the inevitable invasion and also
on the status of troops in Western Europe.  It was so interesting I'm
digitizing it for uploading to our favorite FTP site.  Watch for it
this week some time.

>   Regards, John Ausland

Larry J

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Date:    Tue, 4 May 1993 15:56:57 -0500
From:    "Wilber Williams, Prentice Centre" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

I tried LOCIS about 0530 GMT 4th May, and got "Connection closed by remote
host" without seeing anything useful.

Wilber.

+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Wilber WILLIAMS                            [email-masked]      |
|Prentice Centre                            Telephone : +61 7 365 4232   |
|The University of Queensland               Facsimile : +61 7 365 4477   |
|Brisbane Qld 4072  AUSTRALIA                                            |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Date:    Tue, 4 May 1993 00:11:46 MDT
From:    Steve Alvin <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Narvik

On Tuesday, 4 May, John Ausland commented on the strategic importance
of Narvik and stated that it was to bad that the British never seized
the city (I accidentally deleted the original post) because it would
have shortened the war.

Often lost in the disaster of the French collapse in 1940, was the
Anglo-French landings in Norway to counter the German invasion.  In
the spring of 1940, 10,000 British & French troops were assembled in
English ports for a possible attempt to help the Finns was instead
dispatched to Norway.  Most landed between 4/14 & 4/19 at Namos &
Andalsnes in an attempt to retake Trondheim.  A smaller force landed
at Narvik.  The attack on Trondheim failed, as the Luftwaffe launched
violent attacks on the troops and ships.  On May 1-2, the allies
evacuated central Norway.

Around Narvik, the allies were more successful.  The Royal Navy, lead
by the HMS Warspite, sank all the German shipping in the Fjord.  By
April 24, the Allied forces numbered 25,000 men.  The Germans in
Narvik resisted stubbornly for over a month before they were forced
to evacuate the city.  But, the allied occupation of Narvik was short
lived.  On June 8, due to the disaster in France, the decision was
made to withdraw.

Both the Royal Navy and the Kriegsmarine suffered during the
evacuation of Narvik.  The Scharnhorst & Gneisenau intercepted the
British carrier Glorious, which was only escorted by two destroyers.
The battlecruisers sank all three, but not before one destroyer
torpedoed the Scharnhorst.  On the way back to Germany, the Gneisenau
was torpedoed by a British submarine.  Both were out of action for
six months.

Steve Alvin
Dickinson State University
[email-masked]
**********************************************************************
*Those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it.--Proverb*
*Those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat my class.-SA*
**********************************************************************

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Date:    Tue, 4 May 1993 13:02:49 +0200
From:    Chris Scogings <[email-masked]>
Subject: The Pacific

After the talk about no monument in the Hurtegen forest, I remembered a book
called "Goodbye Darkness" by William Manchester.  This is an excellent book
and a must for all WWII followers.  He was a Marine Sergeant and fought on
several Pacific islands.  He talks about watching his buddies die on obscure
islands which nobody remembers, like Peliliu, where 800 (?) marines were
killed.

I don't know what landing in Normandy was like, but at Tarawa, the Marines
waded 700 yards (because the landing craft stuck on a reef that the Navy
said wasn't there) through chest deep water towards Japanese machine guns
(which the Airforce said they had destroyed).  One company had less than 20
men left when they reached the shore.  Over 2000 marines died out of 4000.

He visited the old battlefields in 1978 and found a monument on Peliliu,
covered in graffiti, and starting with the words "Lest we fo et".  On Tarawa
there is nothing at all.  His memoirs and his comments while visiting the
battlefields in 1978 are really worth reading.
Chris
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Scogings                      Voice: (27) 331 955645
Computer Science Dept                 Fax: (27) 331 955599
University of Natal
Pietermaritzburg                   E-Mail:[email-masked]
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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Date:    Tue, 4 May 1993 15:16:00 CET
From:    Peter de Lange <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: LOCIS

I tried LOCIS at 15.00 West Eurepean Summer Time and it works good.
Peter de Lange

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Date:    Tue, 4 May 1993 08:41:26 EDT
From:    RICHARD KING <[email-masked]>
Subject: Addr: The Pacific

I got interested in William Manchester's GOODBYE DARKNESS
last year when I was trying to find books written by old
soldiers who have returned to the battlefields of their
youth in a sort of THEN/NOW exploration.I am a charter member of
The James Jones society and started looking for works like
this because Jones wrote an essay in his VIET JOURNAL about
returning to Hawaii and finding the gun emplacements he
and other members of the 25th Division blasted into the rock.
It is interesting that those are the ONLY TWO books of this
type I have found (Jones's work, of course, was shorter). If
anyone knows of any others, I would like to hear about them.
My father, who fought in the 77th Division on such places as
Ie Shima, Okinawa, Leyte, and Guam, did not seem to care much
for GOODBYE DARKNESS, but I'm not sure why (unless it was
Manchester's tendency toward angst and perhaps his Marine bias).
I read Manchester's AMERICAN CAESER (about MacArthur) and liked it
very much. My father said MacArthur was the greatest military
genius America ever produced (yet in the same breath called him
Dugout Doug and said "We never saw ANYONE higher than a 'Bird
Colonel,'" and tended to be rather distrustful of any officers
in general.
***************************************************************
Richard L. King, Reference Librarian, Vincennes (IN) University
[email-masked]

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Date:    Tue, 4 May 1993 09:12:00 PST
From:    Stephen Fox <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Addr: The Pacific

Richard King:

Be sure to read E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa.
ex
********************************************
*       Steve Fox                          *
*       History Department                 *
*       Humboldt State University          *
*       Arcata, CA  95521                  *
*       (707) 826-4788                     *
*       [email-masked]              *
********************************************
It's avail in paperback.

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Date:    Tue, 4 May 1993 19:42:16 +0200
From:    JOHN AUSLAND <[email-masked]>
Subject: VARIOUS

  Oslo, May 4.  I read with interest Steve Alvin's account of the
action at Narvik, which coincides with my understanding of what
happened.  He left out, however, one detail.  When the British
commander launched his final attack, he knew that the British
forces would be withdrawing.  Furthermore, he did not inform the
Norwegian commander.
  Each year the French come to Narvik and celebrate their "victory."
With a few more victories like that, we could have lost the war.
  The best account I have seen of the war in Norway is Francois
Kersaudy's NORWAY 1940.
  Steve, I suppose you know the "proverb" you are quoting has
the following source:

George Santayana
The Life of Reason [1905-1906], vol.I, Reason in Common Sense

   Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. 1  2

For Chris Scogings, After the 4th secured the beachhead, it turned
north to help capture Cherbourg.

As for Manchester, I do not envy those who went to the Pacific.  My
brother and I divided the war.  He joined the Marines and went to
the Pacific.  I joined the Army and went to Europe.  My father,
after serving in the Marines in WWI, was taken into the Army before
Pearl Harbor, to go to China to advise the Chinese on constructing
a railway from Burma to China.  After Burma fell, he served in
Alasks, North Africa, and again in China.

Had it not been for the atom bomb, I also would have served in the
Pacific, since the 4th Division was scheduled for the second phase
of the attack on the home islands.

My father was also a writer, so I have good records of his wars.
Unfortunately, my brother is not a writer, so there is no record
of his adventures.

Regards, John Ausland

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Date:    Tue, 4 May 1993 19:43:03 +0200
From:    JOHN AUSLAND <[email-masked]>
Subject: *

  Oslo, May 4.  Various things, including going out of town for awhile,
will require me to use the NOMAIL option soon.  If you want to contact
me, please do it with EMAIL.  Regards, John Ausland

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End of WWII-L Digest - 3 May 1993 to 4 May 1993
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