Movie Trailer: The Sinking of the Laconia

 

Title: The Sinking of the Laconia
Type: War Drama
Genre: World War II, PoliticsIn September 1942, at the height of WWII, a German U-boat torpedoed the RMS Laconia, unaware that it carried more than 2,000 passengers. What followed is a harrowing true story of heroism, heartbreak, & humanity.

In Books: Fateful Choices

Title: Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed The World (1940-41)
Author: Ian Kershaw
Genre: World War II, History, Politics

The series of events that marked the opening of the Second World War left most of the world in a state of shock. Suddenly it seemed almost anything was possible. For the aggressors there was no limit to what they could do; for their victims a new Dark Age seemed to beckon. Within this hurricane of events, small groups of individuals were faced with a huge range of decisions on which triumph or extinction could turn.

In this gripping book Ian Kershaw re-creates ten critical decisions taken between May 1940 (when Britain decided to fight on rather than surrender) & the autumn of 1941 (when Hitler decided to destroy Europe’s Jews). In London, Tokyo, Rome, Moscow, Berlin & Washington, politicians & generals, often working with very poor information & vast logistical, financial, economic & military problems, had to decide how they were going to exploit or combat the unfolding crisis. These decisions really did determine the future of the world.

Fateful Choices gives the reader an extraordinary sense both of the real constraints within which leaders worked but also of the role of personality: Churchill fighting on in the face of the catastrophe in France, Hitler ordering the invasion of the USSR despite Germany’s failure to defeat Britain, Stalin trusting Hitler & leaving his country wide open to Operation Barbarossa, Roosevelt realizing that the revolutionary idea of lend-lease could keep Britain fighting, the Japanese high command opting to attack the USA even in the face of evidence that it would fail.

Fateful Choices is a remarkable book that looks into the terrible heart of the modern age, & attempts to understand how decisions that changed or ended millions of lives really came about.

Read more about Sir Ian Kershaw @ Wikipedia

Apocalypse: The Second World War

Type: Documentary
Title: Apocalypse: The Second World War
Category: World War II

Thanks to the efforts of a few, private collectors & archivists, these forgotten films have been rediscovered, restored & made available by National Geographic Channel in an extraordinary six-part series: Apocalypse: The Second World War. In addition to stunning footage, the series presents WW2 in an innovative & provocative way, giving audiences an unprecedented sense of the reality of war not conveyed by black & white footage.

Made up entirely of original 35mm, 16mm & 8mm films, Apocalypse: The Second World War includes rare footage of the Polish officers’ massacre at Katyń, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk, the inhumane treatment of French soldiers taken prisoner by the Nazis & the sacrifice of Soviet soldiers at Stalingrad.

By bringing this incredible footage together, Apocalypse: The Second World War provides viewers with a ground-breaking portrait of WW2 that depicts not only its complexity, but the perspectives of both its victims & its victors.

Apocalypse: The Second World War is a six-part documentary consisting of the following episodes:

The Aggression (1933-39): Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V
The Crushing Defeat (1939-40): Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V
Shock (1940-41): Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V
World Ablaze (1941-42): Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV
The Great Landing (1942-43): Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV
Inferno (1944-45): Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

Battle of Britain: The Real Story

Type: Documentary
Title: Battle of Britain: The Real Story
Category: World War II

James Holland presents a fresh analysis into the Battle of Britain, exploring the lesser-told German point of view, & highlighting the role of those who supported the Few during the summer of 1940.

Focusing on the tactics, technologies & intelligence available to both sides, Holland examines the ways in which both Germany & Britain used their resources: from aircraft to air defence, & from intelligence to organization. &, by gaining rare firsthand testimony from German veterans, & access to the untapped diaries & documents we reveal that this was a battle of two sides & many layers.

Note: Released as part of the Battle of Britain season to mark the 70th anniversary.

The Drama of Dresden

Title Das Drama Von Dresden, A Documentary
Director: Sebastian Dehnhardt
Awards: International Emmy (2005) & the Magnolia Award (2006)

The baroque city of Dresden, known as the Florence of the Elb because of its magnificent buildings, was one of the few German cities to have been largely spared Allied bombing during the Second World War, but in just 24 hours the city was reduced to rubble. At least 25,000 people suffered agonizing deaths in the fire-storms which swept the city. The film provides a dramatic account of these tragic events, from the perspective of both the inhabitants of Dresden & also the British bomber pilots who mounted the air raid on the city. They were all part of a tragedy which left nobody victorious.

As described on Broadview TV

WWII Quotes; Neville Chamberlain

This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you that no such understanding has been received & that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1939

Sisters of War

Telemovie Trailer: Sisters of War

Hitler Escapes Explosion In A Beer Cellar

Daily Express, London, Thursday November 9th, 1939

Throughout the war, newspapers on all sides seized on any evidence that the enemy’s leaders lacked public support. As the Express points out, had Hitler followed his usual timetable, he may well have been killed by the bomb planted by George Elser in the beer cellar where once a year Hitler met with his old Nazi comrades. Elser, a communist with profound Protestant sympathies, believed that killing Hitler would stop the war & prevent further bloodshed. Along with a photograph highlighting the absurdity of bureaucracy, half as street in blackout, the other half still lit up, the Express has room to celebrate its own success: such is the general appetite for news on the 68th day of the war that it is selling 2 million copies a day.

6 dead, 60 hurt: Reported attempt with time-bomb

27 Minutes after Hitler ended a hysterical speech in the Bürgerbräu beer cellar at Munich last night – A speech in which he cried that he was ready for a five-years’ war with Britain – the building was shaken by an explosion which killed six members of the “old guard” of the Nazi Party & injured sixty others.

Hitler had already left & was not hurt. He left earlier than he originally intended as he was summoned back to Berlin by important state business.

The identities of the dead & injured are unknown, it is officially states, says the British United Press from Berlin this morning.

Police admitted that the explosion was due to an “explosive body,” not to a defective boiler, as was suggested at first. The official statement says that the outrage was inspired by foreign agents, & a reward of £20,000 has been offered for the delivery of the perpetrators.

From World War II: History In The Headlines 1939-1945 by John Davison

The Ghost of Goebbels

The Ghost of Goebbels: Historical Revisionism & World War II

This article written by Wayne Madsen, political scientist (USA), Strategic Culture Foundation expert, & was published in International Affairs magazine.

An expected outgrowth of the world’s steady descent into total & extreme capitalist control is the increasing tendency by some historians and their accomplices in the media to re-invent certain aspects of history.

Although the history of the Middle East & colonialism have been favorite playgrounds for the historical revisionists, it is World War II & the role played by the Soviet Union in the war that has attracted the attention of most of the alterers of history, both professional & amateur. As we recall the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the 70th anniversary of which we now remember, it is important to note that the “revisionism” of the events of that day began with chief Nazi German propagandist Joseph Goebbels and the disappearance of historical facts “down the memory hole,” as George Orwell put it in 1984, is carried on to this day by Goebbels’s ideological heirs who are mainly funded by the barons of Wall Street through various tax-free right-wing “think tanks” & research institutes in the West.

Although the revisionists claim that the 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact & its secret protocol to divide eastern Europe into respective German & Soviet spheres of influence somehow made Soviet leader Joseph Stalin a “partner” of Hitler, little attention is paid to secret German-British talks in 1939 that would have divided the world into German & British spheres of influence while making common cause against the Soviet Union.

Goebbels’s ideological heirs would have everyone believe that Stalin & German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler were on the same ideological plane & were conniving to jointly conquer the world. This revisionist account is meant to mask the goals of the Western industrialists at the time. Many of the world’s wealthiest capitalists, including the German-descent British royal family, wanted Hitler to stamp out Soviet Communism & had no problem with the Nazis’ “long march East.”

The pandering of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to Hitler at the 1939 Munich Conference, which saw the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, was seen in the eyes of many British & American industrial barons as the remnants of Czechoslovakia being safe from Soviet Russia. That same mind-set would exist as Nazi troops invaded Poland, the Baltic states, Yugoslavia, & then, the USSR, itself. Not until December 7, 1941, & the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, would the western industrial barons decide it was time to support the war effort against the Axis Powers, albeit reluctantly.

Certainly, Britain was not alone in its secret campaign to align with the Nazis against the Soviet Union. U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, who enraged many capitalists & Republicans by establishing diplomatic relations with the USSR after he took office in 1933, found himself almost ousted in a coup d’etat in 1933 arranged by Wall Street robber barons intent on declaring a state of national emergency & placing Roosevelt under virtual house arrest. The plot was discovered by retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler & communicated to the U.S. Congress where details of the plot remained secret until 1970. Among the chief coup plotters was Prescott Bush, the father & grandfather, respectively, of two later U.S. presidents. Prescott Bush was a chief Wall Street banker for German Nazi-owned businesses in the years leading up to & following the outbreak of World War II.

In 1936, U.S. ambassador to Berlin, William Dodd, wrote to Roosevelt to warn him that the threat posed to him in 1934 by the Wall Street-Nazi alliance remained as such two years later. Dodd wrote:

A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime . . . A prominent executive of one of the largest corporations, told me point blank that he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism into America if President Roosevelt continued his progressive policies. Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there. Propagandists for fascist groups try to dismiss the fascist scare.

The words of Dodd: “propagandists for fascist groups try to dismiss the fascist scare” ring true today. Wall Street of the 1930s & 1940s owned the major media outlets, including the large publishing houses, that gave notoriety to the revisionist commentators & historians of their day. The situation remains much the same today.

There is the distinct danger that soon, the historical revisionists will not be content in putting Stalin & Hitler on the same level. With global media in the hands of a select few capitalists, it is forseeable that Stalin will be re-assessed as the reason Hitler had to conquer most of Europe & Hitler will be painted favorably. There are already signs that this historical revisionism is taking place among the right-wing political parties of Europe that are adopting many of the planks of the neo-Nazi movement, including the meme that Hitler had no choice to invade eastern Europe & the Soviet Union to protect the world against Bolshevism. That argument of the capitalists is nothing new but it is one, 70 years after the invasion of the USSR by the Nazis, that should have long ago been discarded into the ash bin of fascist propaganda.

Final Statement

We, the assembled representatives of historical research communities & civil societies of Belarus, Latvia, Moldova, Russia & Ukraine participating in the Sevastopol International History Conference commemorating 70th Anniversary of the outbreak of 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War, regard the War and our Victory as one of the most tragic and at the same time heroic pages in the common history of our nations.

We are increasingly alarmed with the current rise of revisionism of the history of World War II in the West & in several post-Soviet republics where incendiary political considerations outweigh commitment to historical accuracy.

We consider it absolutely unacceptable to draw the Great Patriotic War against fascism as a ‘fight of two totalitarian regimes’, to deny the justified & liberating nature of that war for our nations, to depict the Red Army’s liberation mission in 11 European countries as ‘Soviet occupation’.

We state that the concept ascribing ‘mutual responsibility’ for unleashing the war to ‘the Nazi & Soviet regimes’ lacks any historical & moral foundations. As historians, we are aware that the responsibility for that devastating war rests fully with the Western powers. Until now the diplomatic archives in London keep guarding the secrets of the British-German talks held in June 1939 on the division of the world into Great Britain’s & Germany’s spheres of influence, aimed to deter Soviet Union from taking part in shaping the future of Europe.

While Hitler’s military machine was destined to exterminate Soviet Union as a ‘hotbed of Bolshevism’, today the Nazism is sometimes being portrayed as a ‘natural response to the red threat’. This is an utmost lie contradicting recognized historical facts.

We claim that all civilized nations should officially outlaw any endeavors to justify fascism, Nazi criminals or collaborationists. Any revisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal outright statements condemning fascism are totally inadmissible.

The present round of revisionism is supposed to provide an ideological backing for “anti-totalitarian” appeals like the notorious OSCE Parliamentary Assembly resolution adopted on July 3, 2009 calling for a trial over the Soviet Union’s allegedly ‘criminal past’. Such campaigns, provoking territorial claims against Russia & compensation demands for ‘damages caused during Soviet occupation’ trigger imminent & far-reaching dangerous consequences for the European security, still not adequately assessed by the short-sighted instigators of these campaigns & their blind contractors.

A distorted view on the meaning and the results of World War II & Russia’s Great Patriotic War would pave the way for a new division of Europe & the world with catastrophic consequences. This is why we are calling upon the academic community for a fair & unbiased research of the period of 1941-1945 in the name of historical truth & our common future. The sacrifices of millions of Russians in the defeat of Fascism & the devastation wrought in the war must not be perverted for current political narratives. Such actions only serve to cause division within Europe, & prevent the advancement of peace & unity amongst peoples.

(Views expressed in this article reflect the author’s opinion & do not necessarily reflect those of RIA Novosti news agency. RIA Novosti does not vouch for facts & quotes mentioned in the story.)

World War II Was Stimulus On Steroids

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY Paul Abrams PUBLISHED ON HUFFINGTON POST

The next time someone argues that the New Deal failed, and only the Second World War ended the Depression, as ‘proof’ that government spending does not work, one can respond with the details of economic growth and unemployment reduction up to 1940, or one can ignore the claim & thank them for making your case for massive government spending in a deep, broad recession.

Right wing politicians are loathe to credit the New Deal with any success in hoisting the United States out of the Great Depression, but credit World War II for that achievement, believing that that somehow disproves Keynesian economic theory.

That claim, however, undermines their entire premise. [Read More]

England’s Nazi King

ARTICLE BY Simon Edge PUBLISHED ON A-FE

In December 1940, as war raged in Europe and Britain battled Hitler in lonely isolation, ­American journalist Fulton Oursler received an unexpected summons to the Bahamas. He had been invited to conduct a rare interview with the islands’ governor, the former King Edward VIII, ­officially known since his abdication four years earlier as His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor.

As an officer in the British Army as well as a dignitary of the British Empire and brother of King George VI, the Duke might have been expected to fly the flag for his embattled ­country. Instead he gave Oursler a eulogy to Hitler. The former British monarch told the journalist it would be tragic for the world if the Nazi ­dictator were overthrown. Hitler was not just the right and logical leader of the German people, the Duke insisted, he was also a great man.

As Oursler tried to grasp the ­enormity of what he was hearing the Duke asked him: “Do you suppose that your President would consider intervening as a mediator when and if the proper time arrives?” The American understood that he was being asked to carry a message to President Roosevelt, with whom he was on good terms, but he was not certain what it was. As he was leaving the Duke’s aide-de-camp spelt it out. [Read More]

8. The Blitz

The London Blitz began on Saturday, September 7th, 1940, when the Luftwaffe shifted its focus from the RAF airfields it had been attacking & began bombing civilian London instead. On September 4th, in a major address at the Berlin Sportpalast, Hitler had excoriated the British for bombing Berlin & declared that the Germans would retaliate. “If the British air force drops 2,000, 3,000 or 4,000 kilograms of bombs,” the Führer told a wildly applauding crowd, “then we shall now in a single night drop 150,000, 180,000 & 320,000 kilograms of bombs & more.” Three days later, Hitler made good on his threat.

The Luftwaffe’s September 7th raid began in the late afternoon with the dropping of incendiary bombs. These munitions lit fires that, in turn, gave directional guidance to the squadrons of Heinkel & Dornier bombers that followed & pounded London all night. The all-clear wasn’t sounded until four-fifty the next morning.

Although British censors kept specific details of the bomb damage out of the press, the destruction was obviously extensive, especially in the East End, where most of London’s port facilities were located. Many of the bombs fell on dockworkers’ homes, killing several hundred. Nevertheless, this change in German strategy proved to be a costly mistake. Frustrated with the slow pace of the battle of Britain, Hitler & Luftwaffe chief Göring had concluded that savaging civilian targets would pressure the British public into compelling their leaders to sue for peace. Instead, the terror bombing merely deepened British resolve, & far worse, gave something of a reprieve to the hard-pressed RAF, whose losses had been nearing a critical point.

Whether or not continued bombing of the RAF bases would have won the Battle of Britain is a debatable matter; it quickly became clear; however, that the bombing of civilian targets – targets of questionable strategic value – wasn’t going to win anything, at least not in the short term. Two heavy German raids on September 15th, for example, resulted in such damaging losses for the Luftwaffe that Hitler & Göring decided that their efforts to destroy RAF Fighter Command had failed. Without air supremacy, of course, there could be no invasion, so on September 17th, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely. The bombing of London continued; however, & in November Göring extended the campaign to Coventry & other cities in the industrial Midlands.

7. The Battle of Britain

In all, Churchill made five trips to Paris to stiffen Reynaud’s resolve during the battle for France, but he was never able to give Reynaud what the French leader most wanted: use of Britain‘s remaining fighter squadrons. Churchill knew that if Britain were to carry on alone after the fall of France, it would have to rely upon its navy & the Atlantic lifeline to America. Yet the Royal Navy couldn’t possibly bear up under such a stain unless the Royal Air Force (RAF) also completed effectively for control of the skies.

After France’s defeat, a euphoric Hitler assumed that Britain, now isolated, would submit as well. Yet Churchill surprised the Führer by rebuffing several peace initiatives made through neutral countries, & Hitler instead went to work on a British invasion plan, code-named Operation Sea Lion.

The chief problem that the German planners encountered was that they couldn’t transport large enough armies across the English Channel: The German navy had neither enough troopships to carry sufficient men & equipment, nor enough warships to protect such a fleet, even if one could be assembled. However, eager to shift the focus elsewhere, naval commander in chief Erich Raeder pointed out that, given any invasion scenario, air supremacy over the Channel would be vital. Therefore, while the naval planning continued, Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring to eliminate the RAF.

Goring accepted this task with his usual confidence, bordering on braggadocio. Wiping out the RAF’s Fighter Command wouldn’t be a problem, he told the Führer; in fact, Göring believed that his medium-range Heinkels, Dorniers & Junkers could likely bomb the British into submission without any invasion. The first phase of his air operations over the Channel began on July 10th, focusing primarily on British shipping lanes & thus rarely engaging the RAF. On August 8th; however, the Luftwaffe began attacking the RAF’s southern fighter bases in earnest, marking the start of the Battle of Britain.

As the Germans soon learned; however, the British had several key technological advantages. The Hurricanes & Spitfires that they had been stockpiling since 1937, for example, could outperform most of the German fighters; & the new British radar, which had only recently become operational, now provided the RAF with reliable advanced warning of all incoming German planes. Thus the Luftwaffe could not use surprise, as it had in France, to destroy countless Allied aircraft on the ground.

6. The Fall of Paris

Guderian’s breakthrough at Sedan on May 13th seriously unnerved the French government. At 7:30 in the morning on May 15th, Premier Paul Reynaud awoke Churchill with the desperate news, “We are beaten. We have lost the battle. The road to Paris is open.” Reynaud then confessed that he was considering giving up the fight, but Churchill was able to calm him down, & the next day the British prime minister flew to Paris to meet with Reynaud, Daladier (then defense minister), & General Maurice Gamelin, the French commander in chief.

Gamelin had so badly underestimated the threat posed by Germany’s Panzer divisions that two days after this meeting with Churchill, he was dismissed. Reynaud replaced him with General Maxime Weygand, another aging hero of the First World War, & also brought into his government as vice premier eighty-four-year-old Philippe Pétain (so that the French might be inspired by the memory of Pétain’s courageous defense of Verdun). However, neither Weygand nor Pétain believed that the German offensive could be stopped, & Pétain even used his new position to lobby quietly for a separate peace.

As best he could, Weygand established a new defensive line along the Somme & Aisne Rivers, but with only sixty-one weakened divisions, few tanks, & no permanent fortifications, it simply couldn’t hold. On June 5th, the Germans threw ninety-five divisions against the “Weygand line,” which broke quickly, allowing German armor – flanked by hundreds of Stuka dive-bombers – to speed south nearly at will. On June 10th, Reynaud’s government fled to the French capital for Tours (& later Bordeaux), after which Paris was declared an open city so that it might be spared the torture suffered previously by Warsaw & Rotterdam. The Germans marched in on June 14th.

In Bordeaux, Reynaud wanted to continue fighting from France’s colonies in North Africa, but Pétain & Weygand – along with a majority of the cabinet – insisted on an armistice. Therefore, on June 16th, Pétain replaced Reynaud & early the next morning sued for peace. On June 21st, determined to humiliate the French, Hitler accepted their surrender in the same railway car near Compiègne – removed from a museum for the occasion – in which the Germans had capitulated at the end of World War I. The terms of the armistice, dictated by Hitler, provided for German occupation of the northern two-thirds of France, the remainder of the country to be governed by a new French authoritarian regime led personally by Pétain & headquartered in the southern spa city of Vichy.

The Führer’s Forgers

ARTICLE BY Anthony Horowitz PUBLISHED ON MAIL ONLINE

Of all Hitler’s operations this was surely the most audacious: seconding Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz to forge £135 million in pound sterling & parachuting the notes into Britain.

An August sun was shining through the forest of pines but Wolfgang Löhde was still very glad it wasn’t him wading into the black waters of Lake Toplitz.

He leant against one of the pines & observed the rituals of the frogmen: climbing into their rubber suits, checking oxygen tanks, tapping gauges, swapping technical jargon. Then he saw them slide beneath the surface of the water.

Despite the presence of his camera team, he felt suddenly alone. He looked back for the security of the fleet of squat VW minibuses that had brought them all here.

Each was garishly emblazoned with the white star on a red background of his employers at Stern magazine. He reflected on the emblems of the previous convoy that had come here 14 years earlier at the close of World War II in May 1945: swastikas & SS double-lightning stripes.

Löhde was a highly accomplished reporter for Germany‘s biggest-selling magazine. He sensed he was on the precipice of a major story. Over the previous months he & his editors had pieced together a mosaic of anecdotes from peasants, documents from Nazi bureaucrats & speculation from historians that had convinced them that an El Dorado of stolen Nazi gold lay beneath the 328ft depth of Lake Toplitz’s oxygen-starved water.

In 1945, the Third Reich‘s end-station was on the fringes of this little Austrian lake, nestling appropriately in a range of peaks called the Dead Mountains. Was there gold here? What else could explain the arrival from a burning Berlin of the SS men in a village beside Lake Toplitz on May 5, 1945?

Locals spoke of Nazi troops, Schmeisser machine-pistols draped around their necks, sitting idly on boxes on flatbed Maybach trucks, eyes red-rimmed from fatigue, smoking as their officers barked commands. Peasants were ordered to hitch horses to wagons to transport these same boxes from the place where the VW vans of Stern now stood at the water’s edge. [Read More]