Remembrance

U.S. sailors killed at Pearl Harbor were buried the following day.

Remembrance ceremonies were held the following year. This photograph, an official photograph of the U.S. Department Of War (long since renamed), is from May 1942 or June 1942. Even the U.S. Navy is uncertain of the date of the photograph.

As a matter of curiosity, I would like to know whether the photograph precedes or follows the Battle Of Midway.

The Battle Of Midway occurred in the first week of June. Only six months after Pearl Harbor, the final outcome of the war in the Pacific was determined at Midway—and both the U.S. and Japan knew, on the spot, that Midway had been outcome-determinative.

Japan, in the final stages of planning and launching its attack on Pearl Harbor, was aware that all U.S. aircraft carriers were at sea. Japan nonetheless carried out the attack, believing that destruction of the great U.S. battleships moored at Pearl Harbor was the more vital objective.

Japan realized its error within weeks if not days, as the U.S. Navy near-instantly recovered from Pearl Harbor. The era of the giant battleship was over; naval operations had become primarily support mechanisms for the exercise of air power.

When Japan lost its carriers at Midway—five incredible, dramatic minutes that changed the course of the war, five minutes so unlikely that a writer of fiction would never dare create such a scenario—Japan’s naval leaders knew, before the enflamed carriers even sank beneath the surface, that the war was no longer winnable.

As soon as Japan’s fleet returned home, the Japanese Admiralty informed the Japanese Army and the Japanese civilian government that the war was lost.

Japan’s Army and Japan’s civilian government concurred.

7 December 1941

The forward magazine of USS Arizona explodes.

A sailor on board USS Solace took color motion pictures of the destruction of USS Arizona; a frame from the sailor’s film appears above.

“The Triumph Of A Genius”

An outtake from “Der Triumph eines Genies”, a 1940 German film released at the height of German conquest.

The film is a biographic depiction of the early years of Friedrich Schiller, more or less ending with his first dramatic triumph, “The Robbers”.

I do not believe the film has an especially poor reputation, although it has never been considered one of the classics of world cinema.

Some cinema scholars have argued that the film was made in order to invite a comparison between the genius of Schiller and the supposed genius of Hitler. Other cinema scholars have argued that the film, in truth, undercut the Nazi regime, celebrating both freedom and free will. Neither side has offered compelling evidence in support of its view.

I suspect the film, most likely, was merely a commercial project, fully in keeping with the biographical films Hollywood churned out by the dozen in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Such films were popular at the time, everywhere, and it may be unwise, in the absence of proof, to ascribe motives to a particular project.

Most German films released between 1933 and 1945 were nothing more than mindless entertainment; in that respect, German cinema was no different than cinema in Britain, Russia or the U.S.

Hans Knappertsbusch At The 1941 Salzburg Festival

Conductor Hans Knappertsbusch in conversation with Hermann Wiedemann during a rehearsal of Richard Strauss’s “Der Rosencavalier” (Wiedemann was to sing the role of Faninal) at the 1941 Salzburg Festival.

The official history of the Salzburg Festival portrays the 1941 season as a grim one:

Audiences consisted mainly of soldiers, whether on leave or recovering from wounds, and workers from German and Italian munitions factories. The Festival functioned as a sort of psychological weapon of domestic warfare and manipulation: as catastrophe loomed ever larger on the horizon, the people’s morale had to be shored up and their worries dispelled.

The official history’s characterization of the period is wrong. It is worse than inaccurate, worse than revisionist, worse than foolish—it is completely fictive.

In August 1941, German forces were proceeding from triumph to triumph in North Africa and throughout Russia. Germany’s advances seemed unstoppable; the high-water mark of German conquest had yet to be achieved. The mood of the populace of the Reich was euphoric. Only in December 1941, with America’s entry into the war and the onset of winter weather halting advances on The Eastern Front, did the public mood in the Reich become restrained.

The 1941 Salzburg Festival in no way reflected wartime conditions or wartime austerity. The Festival that year introduced two new Mozart productions, both conducted by Karl Böhm, to mark the 150th anniversary of the composer’s death: “Le nozze di Figaro” and “Die Zauberflöte”. They were joined by a revival of another Mozart opera, “Don Giovanni”.

A sign that war privations were far, far into the future: the Salzburg Festival was to introduce yet another new production of “Le nozze di Figaro” (directed by Walter Felsenstein) in 1942, the second such new production in two seasons; and the Salzburg Festival was to introduce yet another new production of “Die Zauberflöte” in 1943, the second such new production in three seasons. Lavish expenditures for new productions of the same works, in close succession, do not bespeak a nation yet imperiled by—or even aware of—looming catastrophe.

Eugen Jochum In 1941

Eugen Jochum in 1941.

The photograph may be dated from its appearance in Amsterdam newspapers in November 1941, the month of Jochum’s first appearance with the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam.

The Concertgebouw, during Germany’s occupation of The Netherlands, was forced to engage numerous German conductors. Jochum was but one of many German musicians the Amsterdam orchestra was obliged to accept under pressure.

Jochum’s reception in Amsterdam, however, was markedly different from the receptions accorded other German conductors. Jochum was welcomed by musicians and audiences alike, and Jochum quickly developed a special bond with the orchestra. The bond proved so durable that Jochum was the only German conductor invited to return to Amsterdam after the war ended.

Jochum continued to conduct the Concertgebouw for the rest of his life. One of Jochum’s final concerts, in December 1986, three months before his death, occurred in Amsterdam—forty-five years and one month after his first Amsterdam appearance.

The occasion marked Jochum’s 400th concert with the Concertgebouw.

Aftermath Of The July 1943 Bombings Of Hamburg

The aftermath of the July 1943 bombings of Hamburg.

Work crews—almost certainly comprised of Prisoners Of War from America and Russia—search the rubble on Berg Street after the July 1943 bombings.

Berg Street was more than five miles from the areas in which firestorms developed.

Had Berg Street been caught up in the firestorms, the damage, as seen in the photograph, would have been far, far worse.

11 April 1943: USS Minneapolis Leaves Pearl Harbor

USS Minneapolis departing Pearl Harbor on April 11, 1943.

A heavy cruiser, USS Minneapolis escaped damage at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, because the ship was at sea for gunnery practice.

USS Minneapolis was a participant in many of the greatest naval battles of The Pacific Theater: the Battle Of The Coral Sea; the Battle Of Midway; the Battle Of Tassafaronga; the Battle Of The Philippine Sea; and the Battle Of Surigao Strait.

It was at the Battle Of Tassafaronga that USS Minneapolis suffered grievous damage—in fact, the ship was almost lost. Exceptional damage control (always an American naval specialty) and exceptional seamanship allowed the ship to limp to Pearl Harbor for months of repairs.

The photograph captures the moment USS Minneapolis, after five months in port during which much of the ship was rebuilt, sailed from Pearl Harbor to resume active service.

Pforzheim 1945

The church tower, burned out, still stands, surrounded by total destruction.

Germany 1940: Pforzheim

Early in the war, Pforzheim still displayed its centuries-old charm and beauty.

Nine weeks before the war ended, Pforzheim suffered the most devastating air raid of the entire war on the European front.

On February 23, 1945, 379 aircraft of the RAF attacked the town. In a 22-minute raid, 83 per cent of the town was destroyed and one-third of the civilian population was killed.

To this day, Pforzheim retains its place in history as the victim of the most efficient air raid ever.

After the war, no attempt was made to rebuild Pforzheim in its pre-war form. Even the post-war street grids were drawn from scratch.

Seventy Years Ago Today

On 13 May 1943, the Afrika Korps, along with all other Axis forces in North Africa, surrendered to the Allies.

The above photograph is one of the great Erwin Rommel photographs from the North Africa campaign. The photograph dates from 1942.

Also on this day: The War Of The Bavarian Succession—known in Austria as “The Plum War”—ended in 1779.

Leningrad Under Siege, 1941

Leningrad under siege, 1941.

The photograph was taken at the intersection of Nevsky Prospect and Ligovsky Prospect.

The victims in the photograph had succumbed to German artillery shells, randomly launched from great distance into the city.

Had the photograph been taken one year later, starvation would have been the theme. At least 750,000 Leningraders succumbed to starvation during the siege—some have argued the mortality figure was twice that number—and Russia was as much at fault for the final death toll as Germany.

Well before the siege was underway, Stalin had refused to evacuate or provision the city.

1942: Speer, Hitler And Keitel

Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler and Wilhelm Keitel in 1942.

Berlin: 2 March 1943

Joseph Goebbels and entourage touring the burned-out interior of Saint Hedwig’s Cathedral, victim of an air raid the previous evening.

“A Practitioner Of The Art Of Taking People In”

You will find in politics that you are much exposed to the attribution of false motive.

Never complain and never explain.

Stanley Baldwin

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Stanley Baldwin dominated British politics between World War I and World War II. Three times Prime Minister between 1923 and 1937, Baldwin achieved unprecedented electoral success—because he always told voters what they most wanted to hear. Historian A. L. Rowse, a contemporary of Baldwin, and not an admirer, described Baldwin as “a practitioner of the art of taking people in”.

Baldwin is not viewed kindly by historians. Baldwin’s failure to address the threat posed by a rising Germany in the 1930s caused Baldwin’s reputation to wither little more than two years after leaving office.

Baldwin retired from The House Of Commons in June 1937 at the height of his popularity; by September 1939, with the onset of war, he was viewed as the chief architect of Britain’s imperiled condition as the nation found itself once again at war.

Neither before nor since has a British Prime Minister’s reputation so swiftly and so completely collapsed. For more than two decades after the war, Baldwin’s reputation continued to deflate as Britain engaged in a prolonged series of internal debates, lasting well into the 1960s, examining the question: what had gone so wrong in the 1930s?

The answer, of course, was that Britain had failed to rearm, and thus to thwart a rising Germany before Germany became a legitimate threat to the entire continent.

Winston Churchill had made the correct diagnosis . . . in 1933 . . . and persistently had urged Baldwin’s government to take the necessary measures.

But Baldwin failed to accept Churchill’s advice, and firmly kept Churchill out of his cabinet—because, Baldwin believed, such Churchill-favored policies would prove costly to the Tories at the ballot box.

In Britain in recent years, there has been an attempt—not particularly successful—to rehabilitate the reputation of Baldwin.

American historians have—quite rightly—ignored such foolishness. American historians have always agreed with Lloyd George’s unvarnished assessment of Baldwin, an assessment Lloyd George made one year into the war: “He ought to be hanged.”

Muriel Spark, in her most famous novel, a portrait of Edinburgh in the 1930s, has her heroine repeatedly mock Baldwin for his supposed “reliability” and “safety”. In doing so, Spark plays an ironic, multi-level and delicious game.

Spark’s Jean Brodie is as oblivious to the threat of Fascism as the Prime Minister she holds in contempt—both are practitioners of the art of taking people in—and it is Fascism that proves to be the undoing both of the heroine from fiction as well as the politician from real life.

Imperious assurance, imperious misjudgment, with no thought of inevitable consequence: such are Spark’s themes.

The foolishness of the fictional Jean Brodie led to the death of the fictional Joyce Emily (renamed Mary McGregor in the stage and film versions of the novel).

The foolishness of Baldwin led to the deaths of untold millions of real persons.

Berlin: 15 September 1941

Signs posted on the exterior of the former Soviet Embassy in Berlin warn passersby not to linger—because the building, seized by the German government at the time Germany declared war on Russia (22 June 1941), was undergoing fumigation.

Paris: 26 August 1944

Paris was liberated on August 26, 1944, one day after German occupiers, by agreement, withdrew from the city.

Nonetheless, small bands of French collaborators and German soldiers remained behind—and caused more than a little havoc on the day the Allies entered the city.

This photograph, taken at Place de la Concorde, depicts Parisians running for cover as a sniper opens fire during one of many celebrations throughout the city.

Paris: 1942

A snowstorm in Paris in 1942, two years into the German Occupation.

Palais Garnier, serene and immutable, remains stunning in the winter snow.

Seventy Years Ago

A Metro station on Avenue des Champs-Élysées, 1943.

Katyn

1943: Germans unearth one of the mass graves at Katyn.

The best current estimate is that 22,000 Polish soldiers in captivity were executed in Katyn Forest in 1940 by Russian forces.

Since the Poles were executed one by one, all with a bullet to the back of the head, it took weeks for the Russian occupiers to complete the killings. Prior to the executions, the Poles had been required to dig their own mass graves.

Stalin had never expected the graves to be discovered. The massacre had occurred only twelve miles from the Russian border, and Stalin had anticipated that Russia would be able permanently to control the territory in question—and thus be in position forever to conceal the horrific events of Katyn. The Soviet government was shocked when, in 1943, evidence of the massacre was released to the world—and began a long-term policy of issuing sharp denials.

For the next 47 years, Russia publicly contended that it had not been the perpetrator of The Katyn Massacre. It was only in 1990 that Russia at long last admitted its culpability.

British and American wartime documents released within the last two years establish that neither Churchill nor Roosevelt believed Stalin’s vehement denials that Russia had had any involvement in the slaughter.

“Literature In A Hurry”

William L. Shirer reporting on The Fall Of France on June 22, 1940, from Compiègne (the identity of the man on the left is unknown).

Shirer broke the news of France’s surrender to the world, broadcasting live on CBS radio directly from Compiègne. Germany had not planned to announce France’s surrender until the following day, but Shirer’s live broadcast forced Germany to release the news that evening.