Subject: WWII-L Digest - 3 Mar 1995 to 4 Mar 1995

From: Automatic digest processor <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 00:02:58 -0500

There are 14 messages totalling 600 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. ANNOUNCEMENT
  2. TAC: Africa (was: Wha (2)
  3. China/Japan part 8
  4. Endlosung (was:Is it true that they can trace a single document) (2)
  5. Westerly 5 of 5, Phelps summary (3)
  6. INF: 50 Years Ago - 05-MAR-1945
  7. List Active?
  8. QUEST: German Executors (2)
  9. Intelligence on Tirpitz

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 4 Mar 1995 01:41:13 -0600
From:    Monte Turner <[email-masked]>
Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT

Announcing the "Grand Opening" of

***E-HAWK: The Electronic Headquarters for the Acquisition of War Knowledge***
http://kuhttp.cc.ukans.edu/history/ehawk/

        E-HAWK is the Web's most comprehensive information server on topics
relating to the U.S. military.  Its components include:

* U.S. Military Internet Resources: After extensive researching, we have
compiled a huge catalog of all U.S. military internet sites - including Web
pages, FTP sites, Gophers, even Bulletin Boards!  Try us for pointers to any
publicly accessible (and some restricted) sites maintained by the Department
of Defense.
* Current Events: Up-to-date information on events of military interest,
including pointers to some of the best news services on the Web, Public
Affairs gophers, Usenet current-events and military newsgroups, a catalog of
e-mail discussion lists, and upcoming events announcements.
* Military Science: Still under construction, this section will contain a
range of documents on various aspects of the art of war, including
logistics, tactics, strategy, technology, and intelligence.
* Officers' Club: The recreational side of E-HAWK, including a collection of
graphics, veterans' information, and internet utilities.

And presenting:
***MIL-HIST***
http://kuhttp.cc.ukans.edu/history/milhst/

        It's so big we had to make it a separate page! The military history section
of E-HAWK covers everything from the modern day on back. Incorporating *De
Re Militari*, the classical and medieval military history infoserver of the
De Re Militari association, Mil-Hist has an extensive collection of
documents, bibliographies, and pointers to other military history on-line
resources.  We've even got the archives of the DEREMI-L and MILHST-L e-mail
discussion lists, beautifully HTML'ed for your reading and research pleasure!
        Mil-Hist is conveniently organized in chronological format, with the
following divisions:

* De Re Militari: Classical and Medieval periods, to the 16th century.
* Pre-Nineteenth Century: Including the revolutions in America and France
* Nineteenth Century: Including the Napoleonic wars in Europe, but excluding:
* American Civil War: There's so much material on this war, we had to give
it its own page.
* 1900-1919: The War to End All Wars, the Spanish-American War, the
Russo-Japanese War, and more.
* 1919-1945: The Inter-War years and World War Two.
* 1945-1961: The Early Cold War period and the Korean War.
* 1961-1973: The Vietnam and Arab-Israeli conflicts.
* 1973-Present: Grenada, Afghanistan, and the Gulf War.

        We hope that you will find E-HAWK and Mil-Hist convenient, friendly, and
exceptionally useful. If you have any questions, comments, recommendations,
or requests, please e-mail us at:

(E-HAWK) [email-masked] or [email-masked]
        or
(Mil-Hist) [email-masked] or [email-masked]

        Thanks... We hope to hear from you soon!

Monte Scott Turner                                             [email-masked]
                         De Re Militari - Association Manager
 Assosciation for the Advancement of Classical and Medieval Military Studies
                   Discussion List - [email-masked]
Information Server - http://kuhttp.cc.ukans.edu/history/deremil/deremain.html
                            Snail Mail: 2913 University Drive
                                    Lawrence, Kansas 66049

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 4 Mar 1995 05:02:00 UTC
From:    John Cantley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: TAC: Africa (was: Wha

What if the Italian and German air groups had maintained some semblance of
air superiority and choked the area between Sicily and Tunis. They tried to
bomb Malta into submission. They maintained some superiority but not for a
prolonged period. If Rommel was actively supported with needed suplies he
could have done much more. If the Axis forces made the Mid-Med area a death
bed for any British naval force in the area. This could have been a great
boost to the abilities of Rommel.

John Cantley

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 4 Mar 1995 15:57:30 +0700
From:    "Peter E. Beal" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: China/Japan part 8

A small correction.  The first Roosevelt-Churchill conference after the
U.S. entered the war decided that resources would be split 70% (not 90%) for
Europe and 30% for the Pacific.

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 4 Mar 1995 04:59:00 UTC
From:    John Cantley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: TAC: Africa (was: Wha

Re: Why was England not targeted first?

Hilter was a lunatic and hooked on drugs?

John Cantley

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 4 Mar 1995 09:30:51 -0500
From:    James Ray Watkins <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Endlosung (was:Is it true that they can trace a single document)

I'm probably going to regret this... Isn't the problem with German (or
Japanese) guilt that you are trying to assign responsibility to something
that no one person 'did'? In a sense, yes, all of Germany is the guilty
party; and in a sense, too, it was the Nazis. Its difficult to say the
German people 'should' have done this or that, because we know how powerful
the Nazi repression of dissent was. And yet we can't imagine the war being
fought without the 'consent' of the populace. If I may, I would like to
offer another line of investigation from Anthropology.

Its possible to understand 'how it is that a war happens' (and the War, I
think, would include the extermination of the Jews) not only in terms of the
thinking and actions of individuals, but in terms of the thinking and
actions of institutions. It can be hard to get your mind around that idea,
and the analogy to 'individuals' set up by words like 'thinking' is not
quite accurate. This is not to say that individuals are not responsible for
their actions, of course, but to give a particular kind of context to their
choices. The book I am thinking of is called, -How Institutions Think-, by
Mary Douglas (Syracuse University Press, 1986, Syracuse New York).

Douglas even trys to identify (again the analogy is rough) the way
institutions 'forget'- I'm thinking here of what has been called the
'collective amnesia' of Germany. The point is to try to identify a specific
relationship between those organizations whose aims and goals led to the
War, and those others whose aims may have been differant, but didn't, in the
end, stop it. In Douglas' terms, then, there is something much more profound
at work when something like a War happens, something much more dangerous
than the hatred of one group for another. It literally becomes 'impossible'
to 'think' certain things: in Germany, from what these posts have implied,
it was very rare to find anyone, on 'our' side or 'theirs' who could
formulate the notion that the Nazis were actually setting up the
institutions through which they would systematically kill 6 million people.

Consider how difficult it was in the 1800s to find an American who argued
that the US government's policies amounted to genocide, or even that Native
American culture was valuable in its own right. And, in both cases, even
when someone did 'think' the 'unthinkable' (as some did) it didn't become
translated into any of the institutional forms that ressistance might have
taken. Not just 'might' have taken, 'had' to have taken, because just as you
can't fight a war without institutions, no one person could have prevented
the Holocaust, or the destruction of Native American culture. I take the
risk of that last analogy, because I want to point out that it is easy for
us to say that no one in the 1800s could think that way, the anachronism is
obvious. But with soemthing 'closer' to our own time (only 50 years) we tend
to think that the Germans must be held to our standards. And well they
should, but the difficult question remains: what standards can we use?

On the one hand looms relativism and on the other a kind of a-historical and
moral egotism. The failure of the German people was more than the failure of
individuals, it was the failure of individuals to act in concert, a failure
of institutions in the broad sense. I think that what we might do is to
develop an undertanding of the failure of people to take institutional
responsibility. The 'guilt' to be assigned would be the 'guilt' of not
acting in concert; the 'mistake' a problem of our relationships to our
larger organizations. This would enable us to, on the one hand, avoid the
hubris of hindsight, and on the other, to not fall into the trap of ethical
and moral leveling out of responsibility. Clearly cultures and institutions
are not all equal, and just as clearly we have all made our share of
mistakes. The 'right' and 'wrong' we might all agree on is the 'right' and
'wrong' of our actions through and in institutions. Again, this is not to
deny individual responsibility, but to be specific about what you mean by
responsibility.

A couple of points before I duck my head and hide. First, there is some
'common sense' to this idea of institutional responsibilty. The Germans
banned the Nazi party, in part, because there is no other way to get at
banning Nazi thinking. Laws against 'hate crimes' are similar in this way.
And second, I would note that, in some sense, it contiues to be difficult in
some quarters to 'think' that 6 million people (Jews and others) were
sytematically exterminated. That idea, to become 'real' and 'effective' has
had to be, literally, 'institutionalized' in the form of books, museums,
education, television, and so on. Some would argue that, even now, after all
that has happened and all that effort we would still forget unless an effort
is made to prevent it. I agree. And I think that we should judge the
Germans- and ourselves- by the efforts we are or are not making to prevent,
institutionally, this forgetting. And I agree, to end my little speech,
because it is not individuals who are solely responsible for remembering,
but our institutions as well.

My question to this 'institution' of experts and interested listeners like
myself: can you describe for us how instituions of German culture in the
1940s made it difficult to 'think' the 'reality' of the Holocaust?
Ray Watkins
A.I., Department of Rhetoric and Composition
English, University of Texas at Austin

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 4 Mar 1995 16:06:54 -0500
From:    Cheryl Abdullah <[email-masked]>
Subject: Westerly 5 of 5, Phelps summary

Here's an easy-going one to end the "series" with my ubiquitous request to
send corrections and comments to my private e-mail address.  There may be
more summaries posted in the future, who knows.  Again my thanks in
advance for the generous support you folks have given in correcting these.

Cheryl                                    [email-masked]

-----------------
HUBBARD PHELPS, Photographer's Mate, U.S. Coast Guard
Civilian premilitary occupation:  Transport pilot, Northwest
Airlines, until 1939; fashion photographer, partner of Ralph
Rawlings, (New York) until W.W. II

Awards:  American Theater, Good Conduct; also "the one they
took out of the barrel that said World War II."

Military Experience:  Phelps was a "swabbie" who wore bell
bottom pants.  He joined the Coast Guard and was sent to
boot camp at Manhattan Beach.  When he found out that he
would be sent to Cooks and Bakers School, he got a
lieutenant friend of his to arrange for him to become a
security guard instead.  He went to Connecticut State Police
Academy (Bethany) where he took State Police training.  He
also trained to become Watch Officer for the Captain of the
Port in New York, but instead he applied for and was
transferred to Intelligence photo lab, where he worked for
eight months.

Because he was a nonrated officer, officials changed his
status to Photographer's Mate and transferred him to
Washington, DC, where he worked for the Coast Guard Public
Relations Department.  Most of the time he was a passenger
on a coast-wise cutter that, along with three Navy Patrol
Crafts (PCs), escorted convoys between New York and Key
West, FL, and Key West and Galveston, TX.  During this
period he saw no combat but "if you saw something, you took
a picture of it."  Each Navy and Coast Guard ship had one
photographer on board.  "We did an awful lot of the hometown
work, taking pictures of the crew and the officers."  Phelps
got married during 1942.  He was prohibited from defensive
duties or watches by orders of Admiral Washee of the Coast
Guard, but some skippers had him trained in the use of a
20mm or 50 caliber just in case.  His first priority was to
take pictures.  He spent many of the long hours at sea
getting to know people after asking for background
information to accompany their photos.  He did see
submarines, and a friend of his photographed the sinking of
a German sub.  He also rode a Canadian Corvette out of Cuba
or the Azores.

In 1943, he went to Oran where "The harbor was loaded with
ships....You could just tell that they were preparing for
something, but being a little swabbie, you didn't ask
questions."  While stationed in Oran, he bought French
perfume and had his camera checked out.  "Cameras didn't
last too long, they would get damaged at sea and you
couldn't clean them too well."  He otherwise had little to
do in Oran and avoided contact with the natives, whom he did
not trust.  He pitied the Army guys, "They didn't know what
side the French guys were on and when I was there, they
still didn't know."  He met some acquaintances while in
Oran.  One of them, Edgar Marston of Watch Hill, spoke
fluent French and was serving in the French Foreign Legion.
Phelps later sailed aboard a ship escorting the invasion of
Sicily and, upon arrival there, had his only exposure to
combat.   He saw German bombers flying with their bomb bays
open, some of which flew over and dropped bombs toward his
ship--a scary sight that he photographed.  That particular
release of bombs hit two nearby ammunition ships, and "all
hell broke loose."

After the invasion he was stationed for three months in
Rockland, ME, while assigned to the Air/Sea Rescue
Attachment.  "We would go out every day in the middle of
winter and let the boats ice up and see if they break up or
see how much they could take."  For some reason the
government sent a Florida swamp glider up to Rockland and
two Air Corps boys put skis on it and "went tearing down the
main street of Rockland in the middle of the night.  It was
funny, they were doing about 80 mph with no brakes."

He later went to sea again "on the normal back-and-forth
trip."  He was in Naples for two days after it was taken.
He took many pictures of the wreckage in Naples harbor.
While on liberty, he and two friends happened upon an open
warehouse full of German supplies and uniforms.  Phelps
found a German flight jumpsuit that he tried on.  It fit, so
he took it to use when he went back to flying.  His friends
took a machine gun, he stuck a "very nice" automatic pistol
in his pants, they had drinks, and then his friends were
arrested by MPs on the way back.  Phelps later displayed
this German flight uniform, along with a helmet and goggles
he picked up, at the Westerly "World War II Remembered"
exhibit.

Phelps also picked up a lot of SS collar devices which were
actually made of silver thread.  He knew about the silver
because he studied Hitler as far back as 1936, his interest
being aroused because a friend's son enlisted in a German
military school.  The boy, who several times stood 30-40
feet away from Hitler, called home saying "Dad, I have got
to get out of here.  These people are all crazy....They are
not human."  Phelps also took from Naples about 12 or 15 of
the "German ranks and stuff," which were stolen from his
home around 1992.

Photographers had Subsistence in Quarters (S&Q) and he could
pay to eat with the Navy or the Army.  He preferred to eat
in the Army chow.  "I didn't pay half the time because the
cook could have cared less."  He received rank pay, although
he did get combat duty salary when he was overseas.  After
Italy, Phelps came home.

Audio tape interview:     22 February 1994
Interviewer:              Julia B. Kerr
Written History Editor:   Cheryl Abdullah
                          [email-masked]

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 4 Mar 1995 16:24:48 EST
From:    John Davis <[email-masked]>
Subject: INF: 50 Years Ago - 05-MAR-1945

On 05-MAR-1945, the following occurred -

World War II - The Battlefronts
-------------------------------
Western Front - In the U.S. 9th Army sector, the 5th Armoured Division
takes Orsoy on the Rhine as well as Rheinkamp. The XIX Corps reaches
Rheinhausen. The 3rd Armoured Division enters Cologne. Elements of the
104th Division, advancing east towards Cologne, capture Junkersdof. The
three corps of the 3rd Army cross the Kyll at several points. In Germany,
boys 16 and over are to be enrolled in the regular armed forces.

Eastern Front - Units of the 1st White Russian Front take Stargard and
Naugard. Fierce battles contine in East Prussia and on the northern end of
Latvia.

Philippines - The 37th Division is ordered to garrison duty in Manila. In
the XIV Corps area, the 11th Airborne Division begins operations to open
Balayan and Batangas Bays, south of Luzon. In the I Corps area, Philippine
Guerrilla Forces now control the north coast of Luzon west of the mouth of
the Cagayan River as well as the west coast except for Vigan. The 33rd
Division continues northward toward Baguio and San Fernando, threatening to
close pincers on the Japanese between it and the guerrillas. The 25th
Division completes the mop-up of the Puncan area.

Iwo Jima - The VAC remains in place, improving its current position and
reorganizing for a concerted effort on the 6th.

The Homefront
-------------
United Nations Invitations - The United States has invited 39 nations to
attend the April San Francisco conference to draw up a charter for an
international organization to maintain the peace in the post-war world.

=============================================================================

Sources: "United States Army in World War II, Chronology 1941-1945" compiled
by Mary H. Williams, Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of
the Army, "2194 Days of War" by Cesare Salmaggi and Alfredo Pallavisimi,
"Facts On File Yearbook 1945, Person's Index Of World Events" edited by R.L.
Lapica.

Copyright 1995 by John B Davis, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Previous articles are archived at ftp.webcom.com in directory /pub/jbd/www
and can be accessed via the WWW by URL: http://www.webcom.com/~jbd/ww2.html.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Davis                           | [email-masked]
Cary, North Carolina                 | http://www.webcom.com/~jbd/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 4 Mar 1995 17:14:13 -0500
From:    Max Calderwood <[email-masked]>
Subject: List Active?

Is this list, WW2 still in operation?

Please reply to me directly.

Thanks for your help,

Max C.

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 4 Mar 1995 18:54:44 EST
From:    Jonathan Perkins <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Westerly 5 of 5, Phelps summary

Cheryl Abdullah writes:
>
>
> -----------------
> HUBBARD PHELPS, Photographer's Mate, U.S. Coast Guard
> Civilian premilitary occupation:  Transport pilot, Northwest
> Airlines, until 1939; fashion photographer, partner of Ralph
> Rawlings, (New York) until W.W. II
>
> [snip..........]  He was prohibited from defensive
> duties or watches by orders of Admiral Washee of the Coast
> Guard, but some skippers had him trained in the use of a
> 20mm or 50 caliber just in case.  His first priority was to
> take pictures.

Nit-picking: That's properly termed a ".50 calibre", which was the common
term used to represent the standard US heavy machine gun then in service.
This was the Browning M2 and its derivatives, which were usually air-cooled.
In naval service, and in some ground-based anti-aircraft roles, these were
also sometimes water-cooled.  A "50 calibre" (i.e. no decimal point) would
signify a LARGE naval gun.  The 20mm, if you want to be specific, would
have been the ubiquitous 20mm Oerlikon automatic cannon, which was fitted
to naval vessels of all types in either single or twin mounts.

> He spent many of the long hours at sea
> getting to know people after asking for background
> information to accompany their photos.  He did see
> submarines, and a friend of his photographed the sinking of
> a German sub.  He also rode a Canadian Corvette out of Cuba
> or the Azores.
>

Interest: Any idea what the name of the Canadian corvette was?

[snip..........]

Interesting interview, even though he might not have seen as much action as
others you've interviewed.  Do remember: war is 90% (or more) sheer boredom
and 10% (or less) stark terror.....

--
----------
Jon Perkins--Ottawa, Canada
[email-masked]

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 4 Mar 1995 19:16:26 EST
From:    Jonathan Perkins <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Westerly 5 of 5, Phelps summary

Oooops!  Greatest of apologies to all on the list.  Forgot to edit the
mail header before sending my reply out....

--
----------
Jon Perkins--Ottawa, Canada
[email-masked]

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 4 Mar 1995 18:18:22 -0600
From:    Kelvin Brent Luther <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Endlosung (was:Is it true that they can trace a single document)

        You use a very good analogy to describe how the Germans were
drawn into compliance with Hitler and relate it to how he violated the
Versaille treaty again and again.  I agree that he gradually instituted
his programs in order to lull people into acceptance.  I don't know that
I can accept this as an excuse for not doing anything.  When you talk of
him lulling the British and French into acquiescing to his demands you
imply they did not know where he was heading until he became so overt
with his policies that they couldn't miss it.  I believe they knew where
he was headed, they simply were not willing to take the necessary action
at that time to stop him.  They did not have to acquiesce at Munich or
any other point but they did, all the while fooling themselves and hoping
he would stop and knowing that he almost certainly would not.
        We do the same thing today, only we are not risking a world war.
Everyone knew after the brief fighting in Slovenia that Croatia was next,
and that Bosnia would follow.  Everyone knew from Croatia that atrocities
would be committed in Bosnia but we did nothing.  These are political
decisions based on what we are willing to do, not based on our knowledge
of what events are occuring or are bound to occur.  For this reason we
all have some amount of guilt with regards to this (although Europe
should accept most of it) and likewise the Germans must accept guilt for
their unwillingness to speak out before it reached a point where they
couldn't.  This is why I mentioned Kristalnacht.  I simply feel this was
their last chance to give a significant blow to Hitlers Jewish policies
and they missed it by keeping silent.
                                        Kelvin Luther

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 4 Mar 1995 21:48:26 EST
From:    William Lippert <[email-masked]>
Subject: QUEST: German Executors

Hello all,
    I am working on yet another paper - this one for my Abnormal Psychology
class.  It is going to be a hypothetical case dealing with an immigrant
to the US that was part of one of the Einsatzkommandos.  During the war,
he was responsible for the direct liquidation of some 30,000 people in
the East.
   My theory is that this was a difficult thing to do and would inevitably
carry with it lifetime psychological scars - for some people at least.
Anyone have any good sources on the psychological effects - both immediate
and long term - that the EK individuals experienced?  Incidentally, I am
going to be writing about delayed (fifty year, in fact) Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder.
   Anyone familiar with this mental disorder?  There has been a lot of
literature about it regarding Vietnam Vets; its effects magnified because
of the political atmosphere both there and in the US.  Additionally, it
has gone by other names: shell shock in WWI, combat fatigue in WWII.  It
can have many results: loss of memory, anxiety, and even phobias.
   Thanks in advance.
   By the way, is there something wrong with the list?  I haven't gotten
much today.

William Lippert

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 5 Mar 1995 10:24:53 +0700
From:    "Peter E. Beal" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: QUEST: German Executors

I posting this for two reasons.  The first is in response to Mr. William
Lippert's request for informaion of the impact of the activities of the
Einsatzgruppen on their members.  The second is the question of the
culpability and knowladge of the German people as a whole for the
Holocaust.

I suggest "The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation", David
Cesarni, Editor; Routledge, London and New York, 1994.

This is a collection of 17 papers prepared in connection with a
conference on the Holocaust in early 1992, in London.  Almost all the
writers are Jewish scholars of the Holocaust although Mr. Christopher R.
Browning, whose book "Ordinary Men", has been mentioned here, is among them.

For Mr. Lipperts purposes, the notes to each paper contain extensive
references to German and other documents.  I am sure that he can find
some useful things among them.

However, any reader of this book will certainly come to the conclusion
that the German people as a whole, and not just those in the immediate
vicinity of the camps, learned exactly what was happening.  For example,
in a letter that reached the Security Service after it was sent to
Ribbentrop's wife in November, 1944, a private from Saxony asked, inter
alia:

"do you really think we soldiers don't know what bestial murders have
been perpetrated by our SS in Russia?  Where for example are the 145,000
Jews of Lemberg who were there when they were transported little by
little on trucks and shot not far from Lemberg?"

Since at least two thirds of all German soldiers who served in WWII must
have served, at one time or another, on the East Front, it is
inconceivable that if a private knew every else did not know as well.

Regarding the impact the killings had on the members of the
Einsatzgruppen, Himmler visit their operations once and was shaken by
what he saw.  Nevertheless, he steeled himself for the necessary task.

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 4 Mar 1995 23:10:38 -0500
From:    Jodi Berls <[email-masked]>
Subject: Intelligence on Tirpitz

     I've read that the British commando raid against the French port of
Saint Nazaire was conceived and carried out because of fears that the Germans
would move the battleship Tirpitz there to make use of the Joubert drydock.
But I haven't seen anything that indicates whether the Allies had any hard
information that the German navy planned to send it there. Some authors seem
to be suggesting the drydock was targeted on the assumption that Tirpitz very
likely would end up there *some day* because Joubert was the only drydock on
the French coast big enough to handle it.
     So my question is: Did the Allies have any actual intelligence that this
move would be made, or were they just guessing, and if they had intelligence
to that effect, what kind? I would be most grateful if anyone can answer
this, and/or cite sources.

Jodi Berls
[email-masked]

------------------------------

End of WWII-L Digest - 3 Mar 1995 to 4 Mar 1995
***********************************************