It’s a political animalIt’s a political animal
“The root of all the liberals’ ineffectiveness comes right spang out of the desperate suspension in which they have to hold their minds.” – Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
Category: The Second World War
Negative feedback loopNegative feedback loop
“It was always the men who never got anywhere that did the bitching.” – Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
How we freed the FrenchHow we freed the French
“At Ste.-Marie-du-Mont, a village just beyond Pouppeville, French baker Pierre Caldron had been awakened before sunrise by the sound of gunfire. A German officer had been billeted at Caldron’s home, but had left two days earlier. Looking out his second-floor window, Caldron caught sight of an American paratrooper moving through the yard. The soldier pointed a rifle at Caldron, but fortunately for the Frenchman, he was wearing his white baker’s hat. ‘I think he must have thought I was a medic from my hat,’ Caldron reasoned. The American moved on without firing. At 7 AM, a railway guard from the village rushed into Caldron’s house, kissed him on the cheek, and cried, ‘They’re here! They’re here! They’ve landed, and if you don’t believe me, here’s an American cigarette.’ ” – Roy Morris, Jr., “ ‘We’ll Start the War from Here’ ”
Do this firstDo this first
“Always turn and face the attack.” – Group Captain Adolph Gysbert “Sailor” Malan, DSO, DFC, from “Ten of My Rules for Air Fighting”
Not a job for everyoneNot a job for everyone
“The toughest job in the military is that of infantry platoon leader. The fresh second lieutenant who finds himself in command of 40 other infantrymen is often a newcomer to combat, younger than many of his soldiers and poorly prepared for the rigors of battlefield leadership. In spite of these obstacles, the new lieutenant must come to terms with the fact that the futures and fortunes of his men are in his hands. He must apply his theoretical training to the battlefield and learn fast. Truly, a young person can work under no greater pressure.” – John McManus, review of William L. Devitt’s Shavetail: The Odyssey of an Infantry Lieutenant in World War II
What it was aboutWhat it was about
“On April 19 [1945], we occupied Oranienburg, a city of 25,000 people about 35 miles from Berlin. In the middle of town was a walled compound called Sachsenhausen. Originally built for political prisoners, it was the first concentration camp, older than Dachau. For the first time we came upon survivors—just barely surviving. The majority were women from all over Europe, Jewish and Christian. They were in deplorable condition, incoherent, afraid, crying uncontrollably because they did not know who we were, with our Polish uniforms. I tried all my languages to assure them that they were safe and in good hands now. Some Hungarian women spoke German with an accent, and I told them that we were Polish and that I was Jewish. We gave them food and water from our kitchen and told them that more would be coming. That was very gratifying. I felt that if I died the next day, it was worth it to know that at least I had saved somebody.” – Bernhard Storch (interviewed by Jon Guttman in “Polish Artilleryman on the Eastern Front”)
Orderly genocideOrderly genocide
“You cannot possibly imagine what a devastating impact it had on a front-line soldier, entering those factory-like buildings and discovering that this facility [Majdanek] was a death camp. What I saw upon entering that camp was a large building, and I remember there was a sign pointing to a ‘Bad und Disinfektion’ facility. The inside of that barracks was made of concrete, with benches all around the room. In the next room were large square concrete structures without windows, only a small skylight in the ceiling. I think there were six rooms on each side, with heavy steel doors, each with a small opening for looking in. Between the two large buildings were dozens of light-green barracks, and there I saw clothes sorted out, with all kinds of luggage and other items belonging to adults and children. I had to pass dozens of that same type of barracks to reach a crematorium at the other end—as I recall, half a mile. On the way, I saw warehouses full of boots, shoes and little shoes by the thousands, all sorted out to perfection, German style. Further down the road was an enormous mountain of white ashes with small human bones. At that point, I decided to recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, and a Christian soldier knelt to pray beside me. For the first time since childhood, I lost my composure. All those hardened soldiers cried together. We had orders to rush back to our front-line positions, but there was one last enormous structure that I had to investigate. It turned out to be the crematorium, with six or seven enormous furnaces and factory-style chimneys. There was also a regular wooden house, where the director of the crematorium used to live.” – Bernhard Storch (interviewed by Jon Guttman in “Polish Artilleryman on the Eastern Front”)
If not greater thanIf not greater than
“Peace is not a principle, it is only a desirable state of affairs, and can’t be obtained without a capacity for violence at least equal to the violence of the threat.” – Clive James, “Joseph Conrad: Anticipating Terrorism”
Where you didn’t want to beWhere you didn’t want to be
“All across Hamburg, the firestorm sucked air to feed itself. The fire raged three miles up, and winds were moving at 150 miles per hour. As the heat hit clouds overhead, a greasy, black rain started falling. On the ground, the intense heat set many people afire. Many people saved themselves by diving into canals or taking refuge in open spaces like soccer fields. Others survived in public shelters that had gas- and smoke-tight doors. But there were few of those. In most shelters, the firestorm drew out the oxygen and replaced it with carbon monoxide. Others were felled by flying timbers or falling bricks or were even dragged off into burning buildings by the wind. In all, more than 40,000 people perished in the three-hour firestorm.” – David H. Lippman, “Allied Aerial Destruction of Hamburg”
Sums it upSums it up
“What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to blackguards for petty cash, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps with Albert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere.” – Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Easily doneEasily done
“The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.” – Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Ask ’em, they’ll tell youAsk ’em, they’ll tell you
“It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.” – Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (emphasis in original)
But they’re all great in their own wayBut they’re all great in their own way
“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.” – Joseph Heller, Catch-22
NuttyNutty
“Before I joined the army I’d’ve thought it was certain death to dig a hole in the back garden and live in it for the winter, but that’s what we did. The sergeant said, ‘Well, squirrels do it every year.’ ‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘but they don’t man machine guns as well.’ ” – Unidentified British soldier, The True Glory
Not a menschNot a mensch
“Sure, Adolf Hitler knew how to play the piano (badly), how to type (slowly), how to drive a car (erratically), how to draw (inadequately), how to write (drivel), how to remember (photographically), and how to bombast (beautifully). But bombast isn’t bombing. He was in fact a petty little twerp. A man of such meager means he could only wish the way the weasel wishes it were a looker like the tiger and a lord like the lion. What I wonder about are all of those who weren’t twerps who willed what Hitler wished, who pondered and planned and organized and sacrificed in order to establish the thousand-year Reich, who donned the uniforms and fired guns and made planes and prepared food and forged those famous chains of command, who invented and connived and lied and stole and killed, because they willed what the little twerp wished; they, who idolized a loud doll, who loved the twerps-truths, who carried out the wishes of a murderous fool, an ignoble nobody, a failure so unimportant that failure seems a fulsome description of him.” – William H. Gass, The Tunnel
Playing the trump cardPlaying the trump card
“Who of us has not destroyed our enemies in our heads. Suppose but a whisper of our wishes leaked out and half a continent was ready to rise and do your bidding? Orders are easy. Liquidate the trailer parks. Murder motorbikers. Silence the soaps. Clean up the town. Bust up the trusts. It is the killing—hands-on and nearby—that takes fortitude and commitment.” – William H. Gass, The Tunnel
Rats on a treadmillRats on a treadmill
“What will we do when we lose the war? Prepare for the next one.” – Julius J. Epstein, Cross of Iron
Capital preservationCapital preservation
“The Reichskommissariat Ukraine had certain features in common with Nazi concentration camps such as Dachau: the pervasive terror; the obligation to witness public beatings or executions; the happy music during sad occasions; and the frequency with which captors observed their subjects with disgust or pretended not to see them at all. It is not surprising that the natives themselves often described their situation as one of captivity (plen) or slavery (rabstvo). ‘We are like slaves,’ wrote one woman in her diary. ‘Often the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin comes to mind. Once we shed tears over those Negroes; now obviously we ourselves are experiencing the same thing.’ But the Reichskommissariat was far worse than a slaveholding society. In the vast majority of past societies for which reliable data are available, slaves were treated with some consideration. Slaveholders and other nonslaves realized that in the treatment of slaves, incentives made more sense than punishment. Slaves were supposed to be used as servants—not to be disabled, let alone killed.” – Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair
Murderous tyrannies allMurderous tyrannies all
“Western Volhynia, less than thirty thousand square kilometers, inhabited by 1.5 million people, including 250,000 Poles, experienced in 1943 mass killings of Poles and a Polish-Ukrainian war. At the very least 15,000, and possibly many thousands more, Polish men, women, and children died at the hands of Ukrainian partisans and villagers in one of the most comprehensive cases of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in wartime eastern Europe. Many Poles survived only because they fled across the Buh River to the General Government. These events involved the only Ukrainian partisan force that presented itself as an alternative to Soviet and Nazi rule, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA.” – Karel C. Berkhoff, in Harvest of Despair
German efficiencyGerman efficiency
“Starting in 1942, the predominant Nazi reaction to partisans was to kill and burn, with careful planning and horrible precision. One of the earliest casualties of these assaults in the Reichskommissariat [Ukraine] was the village of Kortelisy near Ratne in Polissia. In May 1942, a partisan unit of some fifty locals and former Red Army soldiers destroyed the local police station. In the summer, a German unit called a village meeting and shot several relatives of partisans and Eastern Worker refugees. Still deeming the village a partisan stronghold, the Nazis dealt it a final blow some months later. One September day, peasants from surrounding villages who owned carts received an order to go to Kortelisy the next day. Early that September 23, a police company and Schuma [police auxiliaries] surrounded Kortelisy. Everybody, including all of the children, had to assemble and had to bring along their money and identity papers. A man said that he needed some time, for his children were not dressed yet and it was cold. A Schuma told him not to ‘waste’ the clothes: the meeting would be short and it would get hot, he said. Disabled villagers were taken to the square on carts. There they saw Kovel District Commissar Kassner, who told everyone through an interpreter that, because of their resistance to the German authorities, he had orders to burn them alive in their homes. But, he said, he had decided instead to shoot them. Somebody read out loud the names of those who would be spared: the village elder, the priest, the local Eastern Labor officials, the local Schuma, and the spouses and children of these villagers; all but the local Schuma were locked up in the school. Then the intruders forced the local men to dig a long and deep ditch and to undress. They started up car engines so as to muffle the sounds to come and started killing, first the men, and then the women and children. Thus nearly 2,900 people were shot with submachine guns and pistols, drowned, or bayoneted to death. . . . While the chosen locals were directed to the town of Ratne, the cart owners from the nearby villages were told to remove the possessions from the homes of those killed. The next day Kortelisy was burned to the ground and ceased to exist.” – Karel C. Berkhoff, in Harvest of Despair
Shoeless JoesShoeless Joes
“Joining an existing partisan group was never easy. Males who wanted to do so were often told to join the auxiliary police, to obtain arms and ammunition there, and then to desert. Newly recruited Red Partisans, as they often called themselves, pledged to serve ‘my motherland, the party, and my leader and comrade Stalin.’ They underwent a harsh probation period. Although partisans, Soviet or not, tended to consume a lot of alcohol, all were subject to severe disciplinary rules, which were enforced with beatings and other punishments by not only the commanders, but also political commissars or (in the large units) special sections of the NKVD. Unauthorized plunder and being drunk or asleep on duty often brought the death penalty. Partisans with a serious illness that endangered the group also could be killed. Female partisans worked as cooks and cleaners. As long as they did not accept a steady boyfriend, the males considered them common property. Pregnancies were usually aborted; babies born often were given away to peasants or killed. Very few partisans had medical knowledge. In all, the partisan life was restless and often brutal, marked by semidarkness, damp cold, dirty water, disease, lice, and shortages of food, tobacco, clothing, and shoes.” – Karel C. Berkhoff, in Harvest of Despair
Beat starving in a campBeat starving in a camp
“The overall quality of the Eastern Worker experience is not entirely clear. The few who worked for farmers were generally satisfied with their treatment and payment, and initially some even wanted to stay in Germany forever. On the whole, the Eastern Workers, who were mostly females, worked much harder than either western European or Balkan foreign workers. In their native Ukraine, women generally worked harder than men.” – Karel C. Berkhoff, in Harvest of Despair
WreckageWreckage
“I hopped off in the Podil [in Kiev] and walked down the Andriïvsky Uzviz, which was lined with beggars all the way. Some of them were whining and begging openly for money, others exposed their amputated limbs in silence. There were other, quiet, intelligent-looking elderly men and women, some with spectacles and pince-nez, standing there; they were professors and teachers of various kinds, like our math teacher who had died. In the case of some of them who sat there you couldn’t tell whether they were alive or dead. There had always been plenty of beggars about even before the war, but now there were so many it was simply frightful. They wandered all over the place, knocking on people’s doors, some of them people who had lost their homes through fire, some with babies, some of them on the run, and some swollen with hunger. It was bitterly cold and the people walked down the streets with grim expressions on their faces, hunching themselves up from the wind, worried, in ragged clothes, in all sorts of strange footwear and threadbare coats. It was indeed a city of beggars.” – A. Anatoli Kuznetsov, Babi Yar
The crop was ripeningThe crop was ripening
“There are almost no eyewitness accounts of public interactions between German and local city dwellers who were not girlfriends of the Germans. A glimpse comes from Jacob Gerstenfeld-Maltiel, a man who escaped from the Lviv ghetto and reached Dnipropetrovsk early in 1943. Despite his experiences as a Jew in the General Government, the way the Germans behaved toward the Slavs of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine (all of whom he misidentifies as Russians) shocked him. It was for him ‘so abysmal that we, who came from the West, simply could not adjust to it. Here the Germans could really feel like the Herrenvolk. The Russians were put on the same level as cattle. It was inconceivable that a German would walk shoulder to shoulder with a Russian. If it happened that a German was obliged to walk with a Russian, he always strode a few paces behind him or in front. Germans sitting down with the locals in a café or a restaurant? The very idea was ridiculous! A German did not stand in line, whatever his rank was. He would commandeer the barber’s chair even if ten people were waiting for a haircut. He had a free ride in the trams and always had the right to a seat. The examples could be multiplied a hundred-fold, and though these were minor irritations, they humiliated the Russian population painfully and unceasingly.’ ” – Karel C. Berkhoff, in Harvest of Despair
Body, tooBody, too
“Passersby could be forced to watch public hangings of ‘saboteurs’ or ‘Jews.’ German onlookers, meanwhile, often took pictures. The victims were left suspended from the balconies or lampposts—there were no public gallows in the cities—for days. In Kiev, the first public hangings, of two ‘arsonists,’ apparently took place in late September 1941. They are also reported for that city in February and March 1942. On at least one of those later occasions, the ropes broke and, as a crowd looked on, the henchmen resorted to shooting the accused. Inhabitants of large cities also saw gas vans (actually, one van per city) speeding by. They called this mobile gas chamber that could hold and kill fifty prisoners the dushohubka—the destroyer of the soul.” – Karel C. Berkhoff, in Harvest of Despair
No winnersNo winners
“Food is given out in the evening. We stand in line, but instead of leading us into the kitchen in an organized fashion, they shout, ‘To the canteen!’ ‘Run!’ The hungry people rush to the kitchen, where there are several dirty barrels with a millet slop. Everybody knows that there is not enough food and tries to get at it first. Jostling starts. Now the ‘order supervisors’ appear and start up . . . a line using sticks, rods, rubber truncheons—anything they can beat you with. The usual results are head injuries, nearly broken arms, or the murder of an emaciated and weak prisoner. The beatings go on for hours. Meanwhile, half the prisoners no longer want to eat . . . They lie down on the damp ground—for there are not enough sheds for all—and sleep until 5 in the morning.” – Motel’e (quoted by Karel C. Berkhoff in Harvest of Despair; ellipses in original)
Special pleadingSpecial pleading
“They were taken away in groups of ten, past the trees. There, the first ten men dug themselves a common grave (the required amount of shovels had been arranged), and a brief volley of automatics rang out. The next ten were ordered to cover the grave with earth and to dig a new one. Thus it went on till the end. All died in silence, only one suddenly fell down with a heart-rending cry. He crawled across the ground to the legs of the soldiers who were coming to get the next ten. ‘Don’t kill me, my mother is Ukrainian!’ he screamed. They booted him hard, kicked his teeth out, and dragged him away under his arms. He fell silent, his bare feet dragging.” – Leonid Volynskii (quoted by Karel C. Berkhoff in Harvest of Despair)
Doing the Lord’s workDoing the Lord’s work
“Of the Ukrainians, the Baptists and Evangelical Christians seem to have helped Jews the most. In Volhynia alone, they apparently saved hundreds. These Protestants felt that their Christian faith allowed for nothing else. Also important was that they were a community in which mutual trust prevailed, so that they could quickly pass Jews from one locality to the next.” – Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair
UndeniableUndeniable
“Everybody is saying now that the Jews are being murdered. No, they have been murdered already. All of them, without exception—old people, women, and children. Those who went home on Monday have also been shot. People say it in a way that does not leave any doubt. No trains left Lukianivka at all. People saw cars with warm shawls and other things driving away from the cemetery. German ‘accuracy.’ They already sorted the loot! A Russian girl accompanied her girlfriend to the cemetery, but crawled through the fence from the other side. She saw how naked people were taken toward Babi Yar and heard shots from a machine gun. There are more and more such rumors and accounts. They are too monstrous to believe. But we are forced to believe them, for the shooting of the Jews is a fact. A fact which is starting to drive us insane. It is impossible to live with this knowledge. The women around us are crying. And we? We also cried on September 29, when we thought they were taken to a concentration camp. But now? Can we really cry? I am writing, but my hair is standing on end.” – Iryna Khoroshunova, October 2, 1941 (quoted by Karel C. Berkhoff in Harvest of Despair)
Nor forgottenNor forgotten
“We still don’t know what they did to the Jews. There are terrifying rumors coming from the Lukianivka Cemetery. But they are still impossible to believe. They say that the Jews are being shot . . . Some people say that the Jews are being shot with machine guns, all of them. Others say that sixteen train wagons have been prepared and that they will be sent away. Where to? Nobody knows. Only one thing seems clear: all their documents, things, and food are confiscated. Then they are chased into Babi Yar and there . . . I don’t know. I only know one thing: there is something terrible, horrible going on, something inconceivable, which cannot be understood, grasped, or explained.” – Iryna Khoroshunova, September 29, 1941 (quoted by Karel C. Berkhoff in Harvest of Despair; ellipses in original)