World War II: 70 Years Later Part 2

8/20/2019 World War II: 70 Years Later Part 2

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World War II: 70 Year Later Part 2

"...And so today, in this year of war, 1945, we have learned lessons—at a fearful cost—and

we shall profit by them. We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own

well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away. We have learned thatwe must live as men, not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be

citizens of the world, members of the human community..."

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt on January 20th, 1945 in his Fourth Inaugural Address


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The Axis Powers' begin to Lose

D-Day happened on June 6, 1944. It was planned for months. It came about via Soviet pressure. The WesternAllies on D-Day invaded Normandy on Omaha Beach. D-Day was successful, but a lot of Allied soldiers losttheir lives in the invasion. D-Day’s codename was Operation Neptune. The Allied invasion of Normandywas the largest seaborne invasion in history. The Allies prepared for months for this invasion and tried tomislead the Germans as to the date and location of the main Allied landings (which was codenamedOperation Bodyguard). Hitler made German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to be in command of the Germanforces. Rommel created fortifications along the Atlantic Wall since they knew that the Allied invasion wascoming. Group Captain James Stagg (or the Royal Air Force of the RAF) met with General Eisenhower todiscuss about the best time to invade from a weather standpoint. Before the amphibious landings, therewere extensive aerial and naval bombardments including an airborne assault. The landing of about 24,000British, U.S., and Canadian airborne troops came about shortly after midnight. In 01:00, the first Navy handsare ordered to man battle stations. The landing craft begin to be lowered into the water and paratroopers

cut phone lines and knock down telephone poles. In 0:300, Gliders begin to reinforce the paratroops. 9minutes later, German radar detects Allied invasion fleet so Admiral Krancke of Germany ordered shorebatteries to prepare for invasion. At sunrise in 05:20, bombers drop bombs on German targets. Allied infantryand armored divisions landed on the coast of France at 06:30.

The Allies divided the Normandy coast into five sectors of: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword Beach.When the soldiers landed on the beach, they faced heavy gunfire from the Nazis. Omaha had the mostcausalities. The beach was very dangerous, but courageous men fought the Nazis. Also, the Allies work withthe French Resistance movement (like the État-major des Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur or the Londonbased Forces of the Interior) to fight the Nazis in various locations in France during D-Day too. The Allies hadvictory in Normandy, because German preparations weren’t finished, Germans were confused on what todefend, the Allied had better air fighting resources, and transport infrastructure in France was disrupted (byAllied bombers and the French Resistance. This made it hard for the Nazis to bring up reinforcements andsupplies). In total, D-Day consisted over 160,000 Allied troops and about 30,000 vehicles landing along a 50mile stretch of fortified French coastline. The Allies were victorious. The Germans had 1,000 casualties whileAllied casualties were at least 10,000 human beings with 4,414 confirmed dead. Museums, war cemeteries,and memorials are in the area today to commemorate the sacrifice of the Allies forces on D-Day.


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After reassigning several Allied divisions from Italy, the Allies also attacked southern France. The landingswere successful and this led to the defeat of the German Army units in France. Paris was liberated by thelocal resistance assisted by the Free French Forces, both led by General Charles de Gaulle on August 25,1944. The Western Allies continued to push back German forces in Western Europe during the latter part ofthe year. There was a failed attempt to advance into northern Germany spearheaded by a major airborne

operation in the Netherlands. So, the Western Allies slowly pushed into Germany. They unsuccessfully triedto cross the Rur River in a large offensive. In Italy, the Allied advance slowed down when they ran into thelast major German defensive line. June 22, 1944 was the date when the Soviets started a strategic offensivein Belarus (called Operation Bagration). This caused the almost complete destruction of the Germany ArmyGroup Center.

Soon after that, there was another Soviet strategic offensive forced German troops from Western Ukraineand Eastern Poland. The successful advance of Soviet troops promoted resistance forces in Poland to initiateseveral uprisings. The largest uprising would be in Warsaw where German soldiers massacred 200,000civilians. There was the national Slovak Uprising in the south. It didn’t receive Soviet support and it was putdown by the Nazis. The Red Army used the wise, strategic offensive in eastern Romania. That cut off anddestroyed the many German troops there. A successful coup d’état came about in Romania and in Bulgaria.This caused both nations to join the Allied side. The liberation of Paris by the Allies comes about in August25, 1944. On that day, General Charles de Gaulle leads the victory parade in Paris. German POWs are ledthrough the streets with their hands on top of their heads.

In September 1944, the Soviet Red Army troops came into Yugoslavia and forced the rapid withdrawal of theGerman Army Groups E and F in Greece, Albania, and Yugoslavia to rescue them from being cut off. MarshalJosip Broz Tito led the Communist Partisans in Yugoslavia. What he did was that he led an increasinglysuccessful guerilla campaign against the occupation since 1941. He controlled much of Yugoslavia. His forcesdelayed efforts against German forces south too. The Red Army with limited Bulgarian support assisted thePartisans in a joint liberating of the capital city of Belgrade in October 20. Days later, the Soviets launched amassive assault against German-occupied Hungary that lasted until the fall of Budapest in February of 1945.

There were massive Soviet victories in the Balkans. Yet, there was massive Finnish resistance to the Sovietoffensive in the Karelian Isthmus. There would be no Soviet occupation of Finland, so both sides signed aSoviet-Finnish armistice on relatively mild conditions. Finland would join the Allied side.

In the Pacific, on July 1944, Commonwealth forces in Southeast Asia had repelled the Japanese sieges inAssam. This pushed the Japanese back to the Chindwin River. By July 27, 1944, the Allies liberated Guam. TheChinese captured Myitkyina. In China, the Japanese were having greater successes. The Japanese finallycaptured Changsha in mid-June and the city of Hengyang by early August. Soon after, they further invadedthe province of Guangxi, winning major engagements against Chinese forces at Guilin and Liuzhou by theend of November and successfully linking up their forces in China and Indochina by the middle of December.In the Pacific, the American forces continued to press back the Japanese perimeter. In mid-June 1944 they

began their offensive against the Mariana and Palau islands, and decisively defeated Japanese forces in theBattle of the Philippine Sea. These defeats led to the resignation of the Japanese Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo,and provided the United States with air bases to launch intensive heavy bomber attacks on the Japanesehome islands. In late October, American forces invaded the Filipino island of Leyte; soon after, Allied navalforces scored another large victory during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the largest naval battles in history.


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Historic Conferences and Agreements

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The Axis Collapses and the Allied Victory

By late 1944, the Axis Powers were about to be defeated. Germany attempted its last desperate measure forthe success on the Western Front on December 16, 1944 by using most of its remaining reserves to launchmassive counter-offensives in the Ardennes. The Nazis wanted to split the Western Allies, and then encirclelarge portions of Western Allied troops. In that way, the Nazis would capture their primary supply port at

Antwerp and prompt a political settlement. Yet, the Allies wanted the Axis enemy to have a completesurrender. The Battle of the Bulge lasted from December 16, 1944 to January 25, 1945. It involved onemajor, desperate offensive made by the Nazis in order for them to try to force a treaty with the Allies whilestill fighting the Soviets. The conflict took place in the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallaonia (inBelgium, France, and Luxembourg) on the Western Front. The Americans were happy to liberate Paris andmany parts of France. The Canadians and the English took the port city of Antwerp while the Americans (withGenerals like Patton and Eisenhower) were targeting the Rhone River with German territory just beyond.Hitler wanted to go to the port city of Antwerp and disrupt the Allied front (by disrupting their much neededsupply lines along with way). On December 16th, 1945, the Nazis executed their massive offensive first.German 5th and 15th Panzer armies and the 6th and 7th Army (in about 250,000 Nazi troops and fiverpanzer or tank divisions) attacked the US VII forces in a line between Aachen and Bastogne.

This German surprise attack surprised the Allies. Many contingents like the U.S. 2nd Division at Elsenbornand the 99th Division at Malmedy held their ground. The Nazis push into the Allied lines 50 miles causing abulge. The battle of the Bulge was filled with snow. The Allied and the Axis Powers would fight at the smalltown of Bastogne. The Allied forces were dug in for weeks in strong fighting. U.S. General Omar Bradley sentGeneral Courtney Hodges’ 1st Army and General Patton’s 4th Armored Division to the town to head offfurther German advance. The 101st Airborne was airdropped into Bastogne to aid in its defense. The 82nd


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Airborne took the task in St. Vith. The Allies lines were fractured and independent defenses soon sprungabout.

There were poor weather conditions, so air support would not come immediately. On December 17th, 1944,Allied prisoners of war are executed in cold blood by elements of the 6th SS Panzer Army in the MalmedyMassacre. Over 80 U.S. prisoners of war (from the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion) were killed incold blood by the order of German Colonel Joachim Peiper in the Malmedy Massacre. The Nazis capturedthe town of Stavelot in the same day of the 17th too. 2 days later, 2 components making up the U.S. 106thDivision at the Schnee Eiffel region are surrounded by the Nazis. About 6,000 Allied troops surrendered tothe encircling Germany Army at Schnee Eiffel on December 19, 1944. Then, the U.S. forces use a massivecounter attack and recaptured the town of Stavelot, Belgium on December 21, 1944. The Germans capturedSt. Vith on December 21, 1944. In December 23nd, 2,000 Allied air sorties launched attacks against theGermans on the ground. One day after Christmas 1944, the American 4th Armored Division (underGeneral George Patton) made its way to the beleaguered 101st Airborne at Bastogne and the

situation in the village is stabilized. Hitler refused to retreat at this point.

On December 31, 1944, U.S. troops recaptured Rochefort, Belgium, and the U.S. Army began an offensive

from Bastogne. British General Montgomery’s 29th Armored Brigade met up with the American 2ndArmored Division to hold the point of deepest German penetration in check later on. On January 1, 1945, theGermans begin to withdrawal from the Ardennes Forest in the Belgian-German border region. U.S. forcesmassacred 30 SS prisoners at Chenogne in retaliation for the Malmedy massacre. The German Luftwaffeaircraft failed to defeat the Allied forces. On January 12, U.S. and British Forces link up near La Roche-en-Ardenne. By January 28, 1945, the Nazis are finished pushed out of the Ardennes. The Battle of the Bulge wasthe last of the major German offensives in the war. It was a bloody war. This Battle would cause about89,900 casualties (including 19,000 killed Americans, 47,500 wounded Americans, and 23,000

captured or killed Americans). The British had 1,408 casualties (including 200 British people killed,

969 British people wounded, and 239 British people missing). The Allies gained all the territory they hadin December of 1944. The victory of the Allies in the Battle of the Bulge meant that the war was definitely

soon to be over in a matter of months (with the Axis forces being defeated in Europe).


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These are very heroic black women. The left image has Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Harriet Ida Pickens on theleft side and the Sister to the right side is Ensign Frances Wills Thorpe. They are the first black American

women sworn in WAVES or the United States Naval Reserve (Women’s Reserve) on the date of December 22,1944. 72 black women served in WAVES during World War II. The image on the center is of the woman

Ensign Phyllis Daley. The picture in the middle is from the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper on March 17,1945. She was the first African American nurse in the Navy. The image to the far right shows African

American Women’s Army Corps veteran Violet Hill Askins Gordon. She served during World War II. She livedin Chicago before she served. Violet and her unit was the only all-African American women unit to serve

overseas in England and France during the Second World War. She worked hard in the WAC. She celebratedher 100th year birthday on 2016.


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She was Roza Shanina or Роза Шанина (1924–1945). She was a Soviet sniper during World War II. She wasvery accurate with her shooting and was involved in the Battle of Vilnius. She was the first Soviet woman sniper to

be awarded the Order of Glory and was the first servicewoman of the 3

rd

Byelorussian Front to receive it.

January 27, 1945 was when the Red Army of the Soviet Union liberated Auschwitz. On January of 1945, theoffensive was repulsed with no strategic objectives fulfilled. In Italy, the Western Allies remained stalematedat the German defensive line. In mid-January 1945, the Soviets and the Polish people attacked in Poland.They went from the Vistula to the Oder River in Germany and overran East Prussia. February 4, 1945 was thedate when U.S., British, and Soviet leaders met for Yalta Conference. The Allies forces agreed on theoccupation of post-war Germany and on when the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan via Yalta.On February 1945, the Soviets would go into Silesia and Pomerania. The Western allies finally go intowestern Germany and closed to the Rhine River.


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One of the most brutal war crimes during WWII was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany. Ithappened on February 13, 1945. Germany was in ruins already. Without warning, Churchill ordered U.S.

and British bombers to drop about 3,900 tons of incendiary bombs on the non-combatant hospital city. It had

refugees fleeing from other destroyed cities. The bombs ignited a massive firestorm killing thousands of

human beings. It was a massacre of huge propositions and it was an overt war crime. The first stage of

firebombing stopped in February 15, 1945. The bombing and the resulting firestorm destroyed over 1,600

acres (6.5 km2) of the city center. An estimated 22,700 to 25,000 people were killed. Three more USAAF

air raids followed, two occurring on March 2 and 17 April 17, 1945 aimed at the city's railroad marshaling

yard and one small raid on April 17 aimed at industrial areas. We should never forget Dresden.

On March 7, 1945, the Allies take Cologne and establish a bridge across the Rhine at Remagen. The U.S. 1stArmy soldiers and equipment poured across the Remagen bridge to Germany. They crossed the Rhine River

under heavy German fire and then the Allies succeeded in their actions. By March, the Western Allies crossthe Rhine north and south of the Ruhr. In that way, they encircled the Germany Army Group B while theSoviets advanced to Vienna. On early April 1945, the Western Allies pushed forward in Italy and swept acrosswestern Germany. The Soviet and Polish forces stormed Berlin in late April of 1945. Many Soviet troopsraped women in Berlin, which was evil. Rape is wrong and the rape of Berlin women should always becondemned.


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FDR’s funeral procession was historic in Washington D.C. This picture shows about 300,000 people

watching this procession in D.C. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed away in Warm Springs,Georgia on April 12, 1945. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s passing was a shock to millions of Americans. His life shows us that we will continue to promote the freedom of speech, the freedom ofworship, the freedom from want, and other true democratic rights. He was buried in the Springwood

estate in Hyde Park, New York.

These are Americans and Soviet forces meeting each other in April of 1945.

The American and Soviet forces linked up on the Elbe River on April 25, 1945. On April 30, 1945, theReichstag was captured, which signaled the military defeat of the Third Reich. Many changes in leadershipcame about during this period. On April 12, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed away. HarryTruman is now the new President. Also, on April 12, 1945, Allied forces from America liberate theBuchenwald and Belsen concentration camps. What they saw horrified them. They see massive stacks of


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human bodies being dead and human survivors starving for food. There were a truckload of bodies from theBuchenwald concentration camp. The Nazis were about to burn them, but the troops from the U.S. 3rd Armycame to liberate the camp. One survivor is Elie Wiesel who would be a Nobel Peace Prize recipient in thefuture. He is a great author. In April, the Allies discover stolen Nazi art and wealth found in German saltmines. Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower, along with Generals Bradley and Patton, inspected art

treasures stolen by the Nazis and hidden in underground salt mines. The Reichsbank wealth, SS loot, andBerlin museum paintings that were removed from Berlin to a salt mine in Merkers, Germany. The Nazis alsostole wealth including art from Jewish people too. The Nazis were evil criminals and thieves.

Benito Mussolini was killed by Italian partisans on April 28, 1945. 2 days later, Hitler committed suicide andwas succeeded by Grand Admiral Karl Donitz. German forces surrendered in Italy on April 29. Total andunconditional surrender was signed on May 7, 1945, which was to be effective by the end of May 8th. TheGermany Army Croup Centre resisted in Prague until May 11.

The person to the right is Dan Akee. He is an actual Navajo Code Taker of the Dine Nation. Code

Talkers (or Wind talkers) were Native Americans who used codes (via a secretive language that theJapanese couldn’t decipher) as a means for the Allies to adequately fight the Japanese in the Pacific

theater. He served with the 25th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division from 1943-1945 as a Navajo

Code Talker. Sergeant Major Dan Akee also served at Iwo Jima, Saipan and Tinan, Marshall Islands.

The end of the war in the Pacific was very brutal. In the Pacific theater, American forces worked with thePhilippine Commonwealth forces to advance in the Philippines. They fought in Leyte by the end of April of1945. They landed on Luzon in January of 1945 and captured Manila in March following a battle, whichreduced the city to ruins. There was fighting in Luzon, Mindanao, and other islands of the Philippines untilthe end of the war. On the night of March 9-10, 1945, B-29 bombers of the US Army Air Forces struck Tokyowith incendiary bombs which killed 100,000 people in a few hours. That was an obscene war crime. Over thenext few months, American bombers firebombed 66 other Japanese cities. This caused the destruction ofuntold numbers of buildings and the deaths of between 350,000 to 500,000 Japanese civilians. In May 1945,


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Australian troops have landed in Borneo, over running the oilfields there. By March, British, American, andChinese forces defeated the Japanese in northern Burma. The British reached Rangoon by May 3. Chineseforces started to counterattack in the Battle of Hunan that happened between April 6th and June 7th, 1945.American forces moved towards Japan. U.S. troops take Iwo Jima by March and Okinawa by the end of June.At the same time American bombers were destroying Japanese cities, American submarines cut off Japanese

imports. This reduced dramatically Japan’s ability to supply its overseas forces.The Philippines were liberated by July 5, 1945. July 11, 1945 would bewhen Allied leaders would meet in Potsdam, Germany. Theyconfirmed earlier agreements about Germany and wantedunconditionally surrender for all Japanese forces in Japan. TheJapanese government was conflicted on whether to make peace nowor later. On early August 1945, the United States dropped atomicbombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the past two decades, we havemore than enough research to document how military experts saidthat it was unnecessary to drop atomic weapons in Japan since theJapanese were nearly defeated and the changing of the unconditionalsurrender proposal would have ended the war sooner. Thousands ofJapanese died as a product of the drops of two atomic bombs, whichwas totally evil. Between the two bombings, the Soviets fulfilled theirpromise in the Yalta agreement by invading Japanese-held Manchuriaand quickly defeated the Kwantung Army. That was the largest Japanese fighting force. The Red Army alsocaptured the Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands. By August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered. The surrenderdocuments finally were signed abroad the deck of the American battleship USS Missouri on September 2,1945. This ended the war completely.

VE Day

This was the time when people celebrated the Nazis formally surrendering tothe Allied Powers. The date is on May 8, 1945.

This image shows General DouglasMacArthur landing at Leyte, duringthe Battle of Leyte on October 20,1944.


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The Atomic BombThe dropping of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States were one of the mostcontroversial and devastating actions of World War II. The myth that Japan was not going to surrender hasbeen exposed by documentaries, authors, military generals, and historical scholars especially in the past 20years. Today, we know a greater amount of information about the atomic weapons program and the attacksin Japan. To start, we must begin with the origins of the atomic weapons program of America. Americabegan the program first in fear of the Nazis having nuclear weapons technology, which could be usedagainst Americans, etc. Yet, the Nazis abandoned atomic weapons research early on during WWII. InDecember 1938, German physicists split the uranium atom. Many feared that the Nazis would have thistechnology. Therefore, Albert Einstein, Szilard, and Eugene Wigner wrote letters to President Roosevelt to

create a program to establish an atomic bomb. FDR agreed to start it. Later, Einstein said (to chemist LinusPauling) that he regretted sending Roosevelt a letter in favor of establishing an atomic bomb, because of itssavage nature. At first, the process of creating such a bomb in America was slow. Wartime scienceadministrator James Conant put Nobel Prize winning physicist Arthur Holly Compton to work on the bombdesign. First, scientists have to be called up like J. Robert Oppenheimer (who was a charismatic theoreticalphysicist. He admitted that he had ties to Communist organizations and he was a strong progressive person),Edward Teller, and Hans Bethe. In Met Lab in the city of Chicago, scientists were successful in creating the


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first nuclear chain reaction on December 2, 1942. They were lucky that they didn’t blow up the city ofChicago.

Next, we have the establishment of the Manhattan Project being created by Americans in Los Alamos, NewMexico. This project was headed by Brigadier General Leslie Groves. Groves and Oppenheimer workedtogether, but each man had different personalities. Groves was conservative and Oppenheimer was moreprogressive. Groves had a more angry personality. Groves’ assistant was Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Nichols.When Roosevelt passed away, Truman was President. Truman was heavily influenced by Stimson and otherswho never trusted the Soviet Union. Truman was notified about the atomic bomb development program.Scientists exploded the atomic bomb for the first time on July 16, 1945. It happened in the desert outside ofAlamogordo, New Mexico. The Trinity test exceeded expectation. It was an 18.6 kiloton blast.

Oppenheimer said the following when he thought about the test: “…I am become death, destroyer ofworlds.”

Groves gloated over the test as being great. Truman soon heard word of it. Truman never really trusted theSoviet Union. Truman wanted to use the bomb as leverage against the Soviet Union, so the Soviets would be

subordinate to U.S. interests involving WWII and beyond. The Soviets planned to invade Japan, but theSoviets didn’t trust Churchill who was bellicose against the Soviets for years. Roosevelt was more conciliatoryand moderate when dealing with the Soviet Union, which is why FDR called Stalin “Uncle Joe.” Japaneseleadership desired to surrender only if the unconditional surrender proposal from the U.S. was eliminatedincluding the elimination of the imprisonment of the Emperor of Japan. The U.S. would not budge andrefused any concessions on the unconditional surrender language. Politicians and scientists from Americatried to inspire Truman to not drop the bomb. Truman refused and he decided to drop it. Truman wasinfluenced by Byrnes and Stimson, who were reactionaries on foreign policy matters. Byrnes was an outrightracist and segregationist.

Even Dwight D. Eisenhower and General Douglas MacArthur opposed the decision to drop atomic weaponsin Japan. In 1989, historian Gar Alperovitz reported, “American leaders knew well in advance that thebombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not required to bring about Japan’s surrender;” and later, in his847-page The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (Random House, 1995), “I think it can be proven that thebomb was not only unnecessary but known in advance not to be necessary.” The popular myth “didn’t justhappen,” Alperovitz says, “it was created.” Adm. William Leahy, the wartime Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of


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Staff, wrote in 1950, “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki wasof no material success in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready tosurrender.” Japan by 1945 was on the verge of defeat with their cities and towns being massively bombed. Asimple change in the surrender terms could have caused Japan to surrender much earlier than September of1945. On July 25, 1945, U.S. General Carl Spaatz, Commander of the Strategic Air Force in the Pacific

received directive to drop the atomic bomb in Japan. Enola Gay was the plane that housed the “Little Boy” A-bomb. It was dropped in Japan from 1,900 feet above Hiroshima with a force equivalent to 12,500 tons ofTNT. This act was a crime against humanity and a crime against God. It was totally evil. Both blasts wereoutright war crimes without question. Even I can’t detail the destruction in full detail. Children died instantly.Grown human beings died with the organs dissolved. Many parts of Hiroshima were burned to the ground.The skins of men, women, and children were burned off their flesh. Human death was everywhere. About140,000 people died in Hiroshima by the end of the year. The second bomb was dropped in Nagasaki onAugust 9, 1945. It had about 22,000 of TNT in equivalent. 70,000 died in Nagasaki by the end of 1945 fromthe effects of the atomic bomb. Even to this day, the victims of those atomic blasts suffer illness. The atomicbomb didn’t end world conflict at all. It started the Cold War and the Soviets had atomic bomb technologyfrom a spy working inside of Los Alamos. On August 16, 1945, Gen. Wainwright, a POW since May 6, 1942,

was released from a POW camp in Manchuria. The Soviets dropped their first atomic bomb in August 29,1949. The evil atomic bomb drops in Japan reminds us about how valuable the dignity of human life is and itshows us the destructive nature of war is.

VJ Day (The Axis Powers are totally Defeated)

On September 2, 1945 was the time when Japan officially surrendered.


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I’m glad that fascism was defeated after WWII.

NurembergThe Nuremberg Trials were some of the most important parts of World War II history. On September 15,1944, Colonel Murray Bernays of the War Department’s Special Project Branch proposed part of theframework that will be used in Nuremberg. Bernays proposed treating the Nazi regime as a criminal plot.William Chanler (or a friend of the Secretary of War Stinson) suggested another part of the framework, whichis about waging of a war of aggression a crime. By February 1945 at Yalta, FDR, Churchill, and Stalin all agreethat a prosecution of Axis leaders should follow the expected conclusion of World War II. On April 1945,President Truman asked Samuel Rosenman to approach the Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson andinquire about his willingness to serve as chief U.S. prosecutor in a war crimes trial. Robert Jackson wasappointed as chief U.S. counsel for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals by President Harry Truman on May2, 1945. Hermann Goering surrendered to the Allies on May 6, 1945. He was transferred to Bad Mondorf inLuxembourg. In Flensburg, Germany, the British took many of the Nazis to be tried in the Major War FiguresTrials (like Donitz, Jodl, Keitel, Rosenberg, and Speer. Himmler committed suicide) in May 23, 1945. By June26th of the same year, Robert Jackson departed from Washington, D.C. to meet with his Allied counterpartsin London to discuss the legal proceedings against Nazi officials. There are disagreements on what to do.The Americans and the British wanted the adversarial system while the French and the Soviets desired theinquisitive system. The Allies agreed to prohibit the use of the defense of superior orders, although theyagree to allow its consideration in the mitigation of sentence. When Robert Jackson visited Nuremberg, it’s acity that has been 91% destroyed by Allied bombs. In July of 1945, he goes into the Palace of Justice andrecommended it as a site for the upcoming trials. The Soviets wanted the trial to take place in Berlin withintheir zone of occupation. The London Agreement was signed in August of 1945 that enabled the prosecutionof war criminals.

Major War criminals then are housed in Luxembourg and then are flown to Nuremberg where they areincarcerated in prison adjacent to the Palace of Justice by August 12, 1945. Robert Jackson meet withPresident Truman in September. Truman proposed to name former Attorney General Francis Biddle as theAmerican judge at Nuremberg, but Jackson didn't think highly of Biddle and suggests other people. Yet,Biddle got the appointment. By October, Sir Geoffrey Lawrence (or the British representative) was electedPresident of the International Military Tribunal or the IMT. Major war criminals are indicted in the samemonth too. Robert Ley committed suicide before his trial. Ley was the former chief of the German Labor


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Front. The trial of the major war criminals by the International Military Tribunal started on 10 a.m. inNuremberg, Germany on November 20, 1945. During the next day, all of the defendant plead “Not Guilty.”Goering wanted to make a statement, but he was prevented from doing so. Justice Robert Jackson deliveredhis opening statement for the prosecution.

On November 29, 1945, the prosecution introduced a film shot by Allied photographers in the liberatedareas. The footage is graphic and it describes the Nazi horrors. It caused weeping in the courtroom. Somedefendants appeared shocked by what they see and some seem bored. On December 13, 1945, theprosecution introduces the grisly evidence from Buchenwald concentration camp that shown tattooedhuman skin and the bodies of the victims of the Holocaust. By 1946, people testify including Nazis. InOctober 1, 1946, the verdict comes out against the major war criminals are handed down by theInternational Military Tribunal. 11 of the 21 defendants are sentenced to death. All appeals are rejected.Goering committed suicide by swallowing a smuggled cyanide pill. 10 of the war criminals are hanged inNuremberg on October 16, 1946. More trials will come up too which will sentence Nazi war criminals fortheir evil crimes in the years to come as well.

Operation Paperclip

Operation Paperclip was one of the most controversial actions done by America during the WWII and ColdWar eras. The program has also been called Operation Overcast too. This program, in summary, was aboutthe OSS (or the Office of Strategic Services) getting over 1,500 German scientists, technicians, and engineers(many of whom were Nazi war criminals) from Germany and from other foreign nations (like Argentina) to be

sent to America for employment in the aftermath of World War II. One great, recent book that talks aboutthis issue is Annie Jacobsen’s “Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligent Program that brought NaziScientists to America” which was released in 2014. The program was conducted by the JIOA or the JointIntelligence Objectives Agency. Operation Paperclip was created as a way for the U.S. to prevent the SovietUnion to receive massive German scientific expertise and knowledge. Ironically, the Soviet Union establishedits competing program called Operation Osoaviakhim (which wanted to use German scientists for the samepurpose as Operation Paperclip).


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To start, after the Nazis failed in Operation Barbarossa, the Siege of Leningrad, Operation Nordicht, and theBattle of Stalingrad, Nazi Germany was in a logistical disadvantage. Their resources were depleted and manyNazis knew that there were about to lose the war as early as 1943. The Soviet Union continued in itswestward counterattack which defeated the Nazis ultimately. So, in early 1943, the Nazis got many scientists,engineers, and technicians to work on advanced technology and weaponry to fight the USSR and other

Allied forces. Many of the scientists were in the area called Peenemunde (in northeast coastal Germany).Werner Osenberg, the engineer-scientist heading the Wehrforschungsgemeinschaft (Military ResearchAssociation), recorded the names of the politically-cleared men to the Osenberg List, thus reinstating themto scientific work. The lists of these scientists are found in the Osenberg List. In March of 1945, a Polishlaboratory technician found pieces of the Osenberg List stuffed in a toilet at Bonn University. The list wasreached by MI6, who sent it to U.S. Intelligence. Then, the U.S. Army Major Robert B. Staver or Chief of theJet Propulsion Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the U.S. Army Ordinance Corps used theOsenberg List to compile the list of German scientists to be captured and interrogated. Major Staver’s listincluded Wernher von Braun or Nazi Germany’s premier rocket scientist.

The JIOA’s recruitment of German scientists started after the Allied victory in Europe on May 8, 1945.

American President Harry Truman did not formally order the execution of Operation Paperclip until August1945. Truman’s order excluded anyone “overtly” found to “have been a member of the Nazi Party, and morethan a nominal participant in its activities or an active supporter of Nazi militarism.” Yet, these restrictionswould be rendered ineligible since most of the leading scientists that the JIOA had identified for recruitment(like rocket scientists Wernher von Braun, Kurt H. Debus and Arthur Rudolph, and the physician HubertusStrughold, each earlier classified as a "menace to the security of the Allied Forces”). Also, in order tocircumvent President Truman’s anti-Nazi order and the Allied Potsdam and Yalta agreements, the JIOAworked independently to create false employment and political biographies for the scientists. In that way,the Nazi war criminals could come into America. The JOIA also expunged from the public record thescientists’ Nazi Party memberships and regime affiliated. They were granted security clearances by the U.S.government to work in the United States after their Nazi affiliations were eliminated from the documents.

Paperclip comes from the paperclips used to attach the scientists’ new political personae to their “USGovernment Scientists” JIOA personnel files.

Operation Overcast had Major Staver’s original intent was to just interview scientists. That changed. On May22, 1945, he transmitted to U.S. Pentagon headquarters Colonel Joel Holmes's telegram urging theevacuation of German scientists and their families, as most "important for [the] Pacific war" effort. Most ofthe Osenberg List engineers worked at the Baltic coast German Army Research Center Peenemünde,developing the V-2 rocket. After capturing them, the Allies initially housed them and their families inLandshut, Bavaria, in southern Germany. Starting on July 19, 1945, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)managed the captured ARC rocketeers under Operation Overcast. The program was renamed OperationPaperclip in March of 1946. Despite these attempts at secrecy, later that year the press interviewed several of

the scientists. Regarding Operation Alsos, Allied Intelligence described nuclear physicist Werner Heisenberg,the German nuclear energy project principal, as "worth more to us than ten divisions of Germans." Inaddition to rocketeers and nuclear physicists, the Allies also sought chemists, physicians, and navalweaponeers. Although Von Braun's interrogators pressured him, he was not tortured; however in 1944another PoW, U-boat Captain Werner had been shot and killed while climbing the fence at Fort Hunt.


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The Technical Director of the German Army Rocket Center or Wernher von Braun was jailed at P.O. Box 1142,which was a military intelligence black site in Fort Hunt, Virginia in America. The prison was unknown to theinternational community during that time period. It was operated by the U.S. in violation of the GenevaConvention of 1929, which the United States had ratified.

The Nazi scientists gradually came into America at stages. The U.S. Navy in May of 1945 got Dr. Herbert A.Wagner (or the inventor of the Hs 293 missile) and placed him in custody for 2 years. By 1947, he worked atthe Special Devices Center at Castle Gould and at Hempstead House, Long Island in New York State. Hemoved to the Naval Air Station Point Mugu. In August of 1945, Colonel Holger Tofty (head of the RocketBranch of the Research and Development Division of the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Corps) offered initial one-year contracts to rocket scientists. 127 of them accepted. By September 1945, the first group of seven rocketscientists arrived at Fort Strong in Long Island in Boston harbor. These scientists include: Wernher von Braun,Erich W. Neubert, Theodor A. Poppel, August Schulze, Eberhard Rees, Wilhelm Jungert, and WalterSchwidetzky.

Beginning in late 1945, three rocket-scientist groups arrived in the United States for duty at Fort Bliss, Texas,and at White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico, as "War Department Special Employees.”

In 1946, the United States Bureau of Mines employed seven German fuel scientists at a Fischer-Tropschchemical plant in Louisiana, Missouri. In early 1950, legal U.S. residency for some of the Project Paperclipspecialists was effected through the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico; thus, Nazi scientistslegally entered the United States from Latin America.

Eighty-six aeronautical engineers were transferred to Wright Field, where the United States had Luftwaffeaircraft and equipment captured under Operation Lusty (Luftwaffe Secret Technology). Operation Paperclipadvanced as more German scientists came into America. Throughout its operations to 1990, OperationPaperclip imported 1,600 men as part of the intellectual reparations owed to America and the UK in about$10 billion in patents and industrial processes.


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Reinhard Gehlen was one well known agent of Operation Paperclip. General Reinhard Gehlen was the formerhead of Nazi intelligence operations against the Soviets. He was hired by the US Army and later by the CIAto operate 600 ex-Nazi agents in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany. In 1948, CIA Director RoscoeHillenkoetter assumed control of the so-called Gehlen Organization. With the full U.S. blessing, he createdthe "Gehlen Organization," a band of refugee Nazi spies who reactivate their networks in Russia. Theseinclude SS intelligence officers Alfred Six and Emil Augsburg (who massacred Jews in the Holocaust), KlausBarbie (the "Butcher of Lyon"), Otto von Bolschwing (the Holocaust mastermind who worked with Eichmann)and SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny (a personal friend of Hitler’s). The Gehlen Organization supplied the U.S. withits only intelligence on the Soviet Union for the next ten years, serving as a bridge between the abolishment

of the OSS and the creation of the CIA. However, much of the "intelligence" the former Nazis provide wasbogus. Gehlen inflated Soviet military capabilities at a time when Russia is still rebuilding its devastatedsociety, in order to inflate his own importance to the Americans (who might otherwise punish him). In 1948,Gehlen almost convinces the Americans that war is imminent, and the West should make a preemptive strike.In the 1950's, he produced a fictitious "missile gap." Reinhard Gehlen promoted the Cold War heavily.

It is important to note that these Nazi scientists and doctors were responsible for murder, slavery, andhuman experimentation. Some of them were acquitted of war crimes, some were convicted of war crimes,


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and some never stood trial. These Nazi scientists from Operation Paperclip developed U.S. chemical andbiological weapons programs (as they knew of tabun and sarin). VX and Agent Orange were created inAmerica. Some of these former Nazis were involved in the development of growth of NASA. As more peopleknew about this evil Operation Paperclip program, the American Federation of Scientists, Albert Einstein, andothers urged Truman to end it. Nuclear physicist Hans Bethe and his colleague Henri Sack asked Truman to

stop Operation Paperclip completely. Even Henry Wallace made a big mistake of pushing Truman to hire theNazis as a jobs program. The CIA approved of Operation Paperclip. As we know, the CIA and other U.S.officials enacted sick experiments against human beings in Guatemala. Forced sterilization was once legal inmany states of America long before the end of WWII. The U.S. Chemical Warfare Service took up the study ofGerman chemical weapons at the end of the war as a means to continue in existence. George Merck bothdiagnosed biological weapons threats for the military and sold the military vaccines to handle them. Warwas business and business was huge for a long time to come.

During the decades after WWII, some of the scientists included in Operation Paperclip, were investigatedbecause of their activities during World War II. Arthur Rudolph was deported in 1984 and he wasn’tprosecuted and West Germany granted him citizenship, which was a disgrace. Many scientists from

Operation Paperclip worked in NASA like Arthur Rudolph, von Braun, etc. The scientists in the OperationPaperclip program worked in rocketry, aeronautics, medicine, biological weapons, chemical weapons, humanexperimentation, and human factors involving space medicine, electronics, and intelligence.


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Appendix A: African Americans and World War II

African Americans had a huge role in the events of World War II. To get a great picture of what this time was,we have to explain what was happening. America during WWII was filled with lynchings, racial discrimination,riots, labor strikes, and other serious events. Many black Americans joined WWII for many reasons. Blackpeople were drafted to go into war. Many African Americans felt that if they fight fascism overseas then theywould experience racial justice after the war was over. There were many who opposed the war since theyviewed the war as representative of hypocrisy (since the West was fighting bigotry overseas while blackpeople suffered racism at home). Yet, I’m glad that the Axis Powers were defeated by the Allied Powers. Idon’t agree with the droppings of atomic bombs in Japan though. Back then, the Armed Forces weresegregated by race. So, there were separate black units fighting in Europe and Asia. Black people wereforced to have menial jobs mostly in the Navy. During that time, the Marines had separate units based onrace. In 1776 and 1777, a dozen Black American Marines served in the American Revolutionary War. From1798 to 1942, no black person served in the Marines.

There were many rebellions on U.S. bases worldwide by black people from 1942 to 1945. The reasons arethat black people suffered discrimination, racism, assaults, and murder by racists. Therefore, these rebellionsexisted along with protests made by Brothers and Sisters against racial oppression. There were racial riots inMobile (in Alabama), Los Angeles, Beaumont (in Texas), Harlem, and Detroit in 1943 alone.


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This is one picture of the heroic Tuskegee Airmen.

In October 1940, Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. was named the first African American general in regular Army. OnJanuary 13, 1941, the U.S. Army formed the 78th Tank Battalion. This was the first black armor unit. Thetankers reported to Fort Knox, Kentucky as a means for them to prepare for armored warfare training inMarch of 1941. The 78th was redesigned on May 8, 1941 as the 758th Tank Battalion (Light). This was thefirst of the three tank battalions compromising the 5th Tank Group, which was made up of black enlistedmen and white officers. The other two tank battalions were the 761st and 784th. Initially inactivated onSeptember 22, 1945 at Viareggio, Italy, the 758th was reactivated in 1946 and later fought in the Korean Waras the 64th Tank Battalion. In 1941, the U.S. Army created the Tuskegee Air Squadron who will soon beknown as the Tuskegee Airmen (they were comprised at first of the 99th Pursuit Squadron and later the332nd Fighter Group). The U.S. Army Air Corps trained black pilots in July 19, 1941. They were known forflying P-51 Mustang fighters. The Tuskegee Airmen never lost an escorted plane to the enemy during thecourse of World War II. They were 926 members of the heroic Tuskegee Airmen. They carried out hundredsof escort missions. A. Philip Randolph was supportive of WWII and he wanted civil rights for AfricanAmericans.


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The person on the far right is Jackie Robinson, who was in the U.S. Army during WWII.

A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and A. J. Muste proposed a march on Washington back during the 1940’s

to protest racial discrimination in war industries and propose the desegregation of the American Armedforces. Franklin Delano Roosevelt feared this march and wanted to prevent it. So, he issued the ExecutiveOrder 8802 or the Fair Employment Act (on June 25, 1941), which ending discriminating in the war industries.This caused A. Philip Randolph to end his plans for a March on Washington. Another march will come laterby 1963. Some people felt betrayed because Roosevelt’s order applied only to banning discrimination in thewar industries and not the armed forces. Howard P. Perry was the first African-American US Marine Corpsrecruit following Executive Order 8802. The Fair Employment Act was historic in the fight for AfricanAmerican labor rights. In 1942, there are about 18,000 black people gathered in Madison Square Gardenwhere A. Philip Randolph starts his campaign to fight discrimination in the military, in war industries, ingovernment agencies, and in labor unions. In December 8, 1941, the United States entered World War IIfollowing the attack on Pearl Harbor. Dorris “Dorrie” Miller, (who was an African American hero) was later

awarded the Navy Cross for his heroism during that battle.

During World War II, a massive migration of African American travel from the South to the North, theMidwest, and the West. Some work in factories and some work in other jobs. This migration influenced thedevelopment of the modern Civil Rights Movement in about a decade later. Wilma Beatrice Brown was thefirst black American woman to receive a commission as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. At 31 yearsold, she trained pilots for the U.S. Army Air Forces.

In 1942, Charity Adams Earley became the first black woman commissioned officer in the Women’s ArmyAuxiliary Corps (WAACs) while serving at Fort Des Moines. In 1943, the Naval Academy at Annapolis andother naval officer schools accepted African American men for the first time. Also, in 1943, the Detroit Raceriots happened in June 20-21, which killed 34 people (including 25 black Americans). Other riots wouldhappen in Harlem, Mobile, Alabama, and Beaumont, Texas. The first black cadets graduate from the Armylight School at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama. In the summer of 1943, there were 1400 African Americansoldiers of the 93rd Infantry Division and the 32nd and 33rd companies of the Women’s Army AuxiliaryCorps (with approximately 300 women) being stationed in the Arizona desert at Fort Huachuca for training.They are the largest concentration of black military personnel in the history of America during that time.Entire African American crew in 1943 staffed the two American Navy Destroyer ships, the USS Mason and thesubmarine chaser PC1264.


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The Sister to the left was the late Alberta Martin of Mount Airy in Philadelphia. She was an African

American nurse and a World War II veteran. The Sisters to the right are the first contingent of BlackAmerican Women, or "WACs" to go overseas for the war. They were part of the Women's Army Corps

(WAC). This picture was taken on February 2, 1945.

In 1943, the black 99th Pursuit Squadron or the Tuskegee Airmen fly its first combat mission in Italy. In 1944,there was the Port Chicago Munity. It first happened after a horrendous explosion on an ammunition shipdocked at the Port Chicago Naval Base on San Francisco Bay. The explosion on July 17 killed 320 menincluding 202 African American sailors, who comprise half of the black personnel at the naval facility. When50 black sailors refuse to return to the ships until their safety concerns are addressed, the Navy court-martials them for mutiny. All are convicted and sentenced to prison. It was only after World War II endedwhen most the convicted people were quietly released. In April of 1945, 2 U.S. Black soldiers were killed bymilitary police at a French army camp for allegedly talking to French women employed there. There are tonsof stories of African American soldiers who executed heroism during WWII.

This is a picture of Sister Inez Stroud, who was in WAC. This picture took place in 1943.WAC stands for the Women Army Corps. This image is from the Betty H. Carter Women

Veterans Historical Project. She served in the WAC and in the U.S. Army from 1943 to1969. She played music at Bethel AME Church (as she lived in both D.C. and Greensboro,

N.C.). She was born in Wilmington, North Carolina and lived from 1909 to 1994.


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This man is Charles B. Hall. In 1943, he was the first black fighter pilot to down an enemy aircraft. Hall

was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his valor in this World War II action. His squadron

presented him with its own reward, a chilled bottle of Coke which was a precious commodity in the

Mediterranean theater. Hall was a member of the 99th Fighter Squadron.

The 6th Armored Division and the 80th Infantry Division liberated the concentration camp of Buchenwald.African-American soldiers from Headquarters and Services Co. of 183rd Engineers Combat Battalion, 8thCorps, Third Army arrived at Buchenwald on April 17, 1945. Among these soldiers was Leon Bass. The 183rdEngineer Combat Battalion was attached to the 1126th Engineer Combat Group in April 1945. On April 12,1945, the 1126th Engineer Combat Group was sent to the town of Eisenach. This town was 100 kilometersfrom the Buchenwald concentration camp. Five days later, on April 17, 1945, several black soldiers were sentto Buchenwald to deliver some supplies. For most of the liberated prisoners, this was the first time they hadever seen a black man, and many of them would recall it later in their survivor accounts. Dr. Leon Bass andWilliam A. Scott, III both saw Holocaust victims and both said that they liberated Buchenwald. GuntherJacobs was a survivor of Buchenwald who had spent three and a half years in Nazi concentration camps.

In an interview with Jeff Bradley of the Denver Post in 1989, Jacobs said: “The first Black people I ever saw in

my life were the Black soldiers who liberated us on April 11, 1945.” Jacobs told Bradley that he had neverbeen able to speak out about what happened at Buchenwald, but he wanted to speak now “on behalf of hisBlack liberators” whom he had never thanked. The Black GIs starred at the Holocaust victims and many ofthem cried. So, the prisoners in the Buchenwald concentration camp liberated themselves at 3:15 p.m. onApril 11, 1945 when they took over the camp, killing some of the guards. The rest of the guards fled into thenearby woods. When American soldiers in the 6th Armored Division saw the prisoners chasing down theguards and shooting them, they followed the action to the camp. The next day, soldiers from the 80thInfantry Division arrived in Weimar, five miles from the camp, and saw prisoners roaming around the town.


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The soldiers followed the prisoners to the camp where they joined in as the prisoners beat to death the SSguards who had been captured. According to one account, 76 SS soldiers were killed by the Americans.

In 1945, Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. is named Commander Field, Kentucky. He is the first African Americanto command a military base. Della H. Rainey was born in Suffolk, VA on January 10, 1912. She graduatedfrom Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing in Durham, N.C. She was the first black nurse commissioned as alieutenant in the U.S Army Nurse Corps or ANC during World War II. She served in Fort Bragg, N.C. Sheserved in Alabama and was Chief Nurse at Fort Huachuca. She was promoted to captain in 1945. There wereabout 500 black nurses in the Army Nurse Corps during World War II. Recently, President Barack Obama metwith the oldest living WWII veteran. She is an African American named Emma Didlake of Detroit. Emma joined the Women’s Army Auxillary Corps in 1943. She is 110 years old.

Appendix B: The evil Holocaust

There can be no discussion about World War II without discussion about the evil Holocaust or the Shoah (which means destruction in the Hebrew language). The Holocaust was systemic genocide against humanbeings by the Nazi regime. The Holocaust murdered six million Jewish human beings and millions of otherhuman beings. The word Holocaust has Greek origins meaning “sacrifice by fire.” The Nazis believed in the


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racist lie that Jewish people and people of color (including others) were genetically inferior and they must beexterminated. Racism is always linked to genocide. The racist myth of the superior race was promoted by theNazis from Hitler, Himmler, etc. Not only were the Jewish people murdered. The Holocaust killed Jewishpeople, Roma (or Gypsies), the disabled, those with mental illness, Slavic human beings (like the

Poles, Russians, the Serbs, etc.), black people, socialists, Communists, Jehovah Witnesses,

homosexuals, Freemasons, etc. The Jewish population of Germany was about 566,000 when Hitler wasChancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler used the SA and the SS to oppress people as an auxiliary police. OnMarch of 1933, the Nazis opened Dachau concentration camp near Munich.

Then, came Buchenwald near Weimar in Germany. There was also Sachsenhausen near Berlin in northernGermany and Ravensbruck for women. These camps were opened in March 22, 1933. The Nazis boycottedJewish shops and businesses in April 1, 1933. The Nazis would strip Jewish immigrants of German citizenship.In July, the Nazis forced sterilized people who were found to have a certain illness or condition by July 1933.The rights of Jewish people were stripped. The Nazis passed a law in November to allow beggars, thehomeless, and the unemployed to be sent into concentration camps. Jewish people in Germany were bannedto join unions, banned to join the military, and banned to join Jewish cultural Unions in 1935. Jewish peopleare registered by the Nazis. The Nazis destroyed the synagogue in Nuremberg too on August 11, 1938. TheHolocaust has been promoted in Mein Kampf and it has been called the “Final Solution.” The racist Nazisscapegoated the Jewish people for economic problems and racist caricatures existed in German newspapersand evil posters.

During the war, Jewish people and others were forced by the Nazis and their collaborators into ghettos,transit camps, and forced labor camps. Kristallnacht or the Night of the Broken Glass came about in

November 9-10, 1938 as ordered by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. This event was a coordinated,massive attack by the Nazis against Jewish people all over Germany. It came after Herschel Grynszpan (or a17 year old Jewish person living in Paris) shot and killed a member of the German embassy staff (namedErnst vom Rath). Herschel was against the poor treatment that his father and family suffered at the hands ofthe Nazis. On November 9, the regular German police stood by as Nazi storm troopers along with the SSincluding the Hitler Youth members beat and murdered Jewish people. The Nazis broke into Jewish homesand brutalized Jewish women and children. Jewish businesses and more than 1600 synagogues were burnedand destroyed in Germany, Austria, and other Nazi controlled areas. Some Germans found the violence


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offensive and helped their Jewish friends and neighbors. About 25,000 Jewish men were rounded up andlater sent to concentration camps where they were often brutalized by SS guards and in some casesrandomly chosen to be beaten to death. Worldwide, people condemned Kristallnacht as a racist terroristcampaign. 91 Jewish people were killed. Goring fined the Jewish people one billion marks when it was theNazis who burned buildings, killed innocent Jewish people, and caused the discretion of scrolls. The fire

department didn’t come to put out the fires. Shortly after Kristallnacht, the United States recalled itsambassador permanently. One quote from Nazi newspaper on January of 1941, Der Stürmer, published byJulius Streicher when he said: "Now judgment has begun and it will reach its conclusion only whenknowledge of the Jews has been erased from the earth."

"IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most PowerfulCorporation" is a book by investigative journalist Edwin Black which details the business dealings of theAmerican-based multinational corporation International Business Machines (IBM) and its German and otherEuropean subsidiaries with the government of Adolf Hitler during the 1930s and the years of World War II. Inthe book, Black outlines the way in which IBM's technology helped facilitate Nazi genocide throughgeneration and tabulation of punch cards based upon national census data. The head of IBM back then wasThomas Watson (who met with Hitler in June of 1937 in Berlin. Thomas Watson was a member of theBohemian Grove).

On March 1, 1943, American Jewish people in New York City hold a massive rally at Madison Square Gardento pressure the U.S. government to help the Jewish people of Europe. There were many great Jewishresistance leaders who opposed the Holocaust and Nazi tyranny. There was Mordechaj Anielewicz whowas the leader of the Jewish Combat Organization during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He was killed inaction in 1943. Pawel Frenkiel was a Polish Jewish youth leader in Warsaw and a senior commander of the

Jewish Military Union killed in action defending the JMU headquarters. Abba Kovner, was a founder of theUnited Partisan Organization in Vilna, who coined the phrase: "Let us not go like lambs to the slaughter!" TheFPO was one of the first armed underground organizations in the Jewish ghettos under Nazi occupation.

When the Nazi spread across Europe, the Nazis and their collaborators persecuted Jewish people and non-Jewish people living in other places other than Germany too. Millions of Soviet prisoners of war weremurdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment. Many Polish and Soviet civilians werekidnapped and forced to be involved in forced labor in Germany and in Poland (when it was occupied by the


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Nazis). The Nazis used the Einsatzgruppen or mobile killing units to kill Jewish people, Roma, and Sovietstate and Communist Party officials. The Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS killed more than one million Jewishmen, women, and children. Many Jewish people were kidnapped and shipped to extermination camps allacross Europe. People were gassed, shot, experimented on, and the whole nine yards.

Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Union’s Red Army on January 27, 1945. The death camp was located insouthern Poland. Auschwitz was a place of some of the greatest crimes and horrors of the 20th century.From early 1942 to late 1944, transport trained sent Jewish people from throughout Nazi-occupied Europeto the gates of Auschwitz. The camp had the infamous slogan of “Arbeit macht frei” or Work makes you free.Over 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz. Hundreds of thousands of them were sent to gas chambers.Others were exterminated via starvation, overwork, disease, and hideous medical experiments carried out bypeople like Josef Mengele (who was called the “Angel of Death”). “People forget what Auschwitz was, and itterrifies me, because I know to what kind of hell it leads,” said Roman Kent, 85. He concluded his remarks atthe 70th anniversary remembrance ceremony by stating, “We do not want our past to be our children'sfuture.”

During the end of the war, SS guards moved camp inmates by trained or forced marches to try to prevent

the Allied liberation of a large number of prisoners. Yet, the Allied forces heroically liberated concentrationcamp prisoners. The victims and survivors of the Holocaust would travel worldwide. Between 1948 and 1951,almost 700,000 Jewish people emigrated into Israel including 136,000 Jewish displaced persons from Europe.The last displacement camp (which was used by the Allies to help Holocaust survivors) ended by 1957. Tothis day, people are fighting to find, try, and convict Nazi war criminals.

Appendix C: American Internment Camps

The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was one of the greatest injustices of Americanhistory. A climate of xenophobia, racism, and bigotry has inspired the internment to take place. TheImmigration Act of 1924 denied Japanese people (who even lived in America after 1907) the right to become


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naturalized U.S. citizens. The law also restricted further immigration from Japan. Some racist peopleexpressed paranoid lies about tons of Japanese people wanting to have sabotage during the war, whichwasn’t the case at all. These fears existed even before Pearl Harbor. Then, California Attorney General EarlWarren called for the internment of Japanese Americans. Lieutenant Colonel John L. DeWitt had massiveanti-Japanese racism too. Even the racist FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said to Attorney General Francis Biddle

that mass evacuations aren’t necessary at first. Biddle informed Roosevelt that internment of Japanesepeople wasn’t necessary. There were still racists who questioned the loyalty of Japanese people in America.Later, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who was right on many issues) made one of his greatest mistakesduring his Presidency when he signed Executive Order 9066. This executive order laid the groundwork forthe evacuation and incarceration of Japanese people and Japanese Americans, from California, Washington,and Oregon. Two thirds of Japanese people in America were U.S. citizens by birth.

Between 110,000 and 120,000 Japanese human beings were interned. The internment camps were mostly inthe West Coast, including Texas, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, etc. Most of the camps were in California.Japanese people were told to carry items and leave. Many people stole the resources of the homes andfarms of the Japanese when they went into the internment camps. The conditions of the internment campswere horrible. People worked in the harsh elements. The camps were surrounded by barbed wire. Workerswere paid very less in money. Many Japanese doctors received $228 per year and a white senior medicalofficer earned $46,000 per year. By February 1943, the United States government allowed some JapaneseAmericans to fight in WWII via segregated units. Those who fought were Nisei or second generationJapanese American people. The Issei were first generation Japanese Americans. In June 1943, the SupremeCourt in the Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi v. United States, decision ruled to maintain the application ofcurfews against members of a minority group when the nation was at war.

The defendant, Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi, was a University of Washington student who was accused ofviolating the curfew and exclusion order, designated a misdemeanor by Public Law 503, a Congressionalstatue introduced to enforce Executive Order 9066 and any subsequent military order. The Supreme Courtwas wrong on that issue. It would take decades after WWII for a national apology for the Japanese victims of

interment would occur and the $1.5 billion for survivors of the internment camps. Many German Americans(in the number of a total of 11,507 human beings) and Italian Americans (which lasted from 1941 to 1945)were interned in bases and locations nationwide. In 2001 the US Attorney General reported to Congress on areview of treatment by the Department of Justice of Italian Americans during World War II. In 2010, theCalifornia Legislature passed a resolution apologizing for US mistreatment of Italian residents during the war.

By Timothy


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The Aftermath of World War Two

The following images show the Aftermath of WW2. They include the following:1. The rise of two superpowers being America and the Soviet Union resulting in the Cold War.2. The Marshall Plan being used to rebuild Western Europe and Japan.3. The increase of decolonization leading to the independence of many African and Asian nations like Ghana,Nigeria, and India.4. The establishment of the nation of Israel.5. The existence of the United Nations6. The growth of Communism in Southeast Asian nations like in China (which the Communists won the ChineseCivil War) and Vietnam.7. There will be advanced technological growth, a post War economic expansion in the certain parts of the world

and increased standard of living in many areas of the world.

This work is dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust, to the

resistance movements against the Nazis and against other

Axis fascists, to the Allies soldiers who fought tyranny, to the

innocent victims of the internment camps of America, to other

heroes of WWII, and to the civilians who died during WWII.


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World War II: 70 Years Later Part 2

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Transcript of World War II: 70 Years Later Part 2