MetaFilter posts tagged with worldwarII

Operation Overlord

zarq — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:21:02 -0800

PhotosNormandie is a collaborative collection of more than 3,000 royalty-free photos from World War II's Battle of Normandy and its aftermath. (Photos date from June 6 to late August 1944). The main link goes to the photostream. You can also peruse sets, which include 2700+ images from the US and Canadian National Archives.

To tell the story to someone else...

zarq — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:15:17 -0800

In 1974, Leon Leyson was one of a group of Jews who greeted Oskar Schindler when he visited Los Angeles. It was the first time the two had seen each other since the war. He began to introduce himself, but Schindler interrupted: "I know who you are," Schindler said, grinning at the middle-aged man before him. "You're Little Leyson." On Sunday, the youngest name on Schindler's List passed away at the age of 83. "The truth is, I did not live my life in the shadow of the Holocaust," he told the Portland Oregonian in 1997. "I did not give my children a legacy of fear. I gave them a legacy of freedom." Mr. Leyson was interviewed at a "Day of Remembrance" event in April 2010. (video) He was also interviewed by his daughter-in-law for 89.3 KPCC (Southern California Public Radio) in May, 2011. ("Listen Now" link is on the left.) The list. Also. Mr. Leyson's name was originally Leib Lejzon. Chabad.org: On Schindler's List: Leon Leyson's Story of Survival. "People should know the Nazis did not murder numbers. They murdered individuals," said Leyson. "Somebody's brother , somebody's uncle. Somebody's aunt. Somebody's grandchild. Somebody's grandfather." Leyson saw it as his duty to keep the story of the Holocaust alive, and to highlight the decency of people such as Schindler. "It's not going to be very long before there won't be any witnesses," said Leyson. "And if I tell my story and there are 100 people in the audience and many of them telling the story to somebody else then somebody else will tell the story to someone else."

"God, you owe me a life - a living baby."

the man of twists and turns — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 02:33:31 -0800

Dr. Gisella Perl was a gynecologist living in what is now Sighet, Rumania, when in 1944 she and her family were transported by the Nazis to the death camp at Auschwitz. There, she was forced to work under Joseph Mengele in the camp hospital. After seeing the horrors and abuse leading up to the murder of pregant women, she "decided that never again would there be a pregnant woman in Auschwitz." Gisella Perl: Angel and Abortionist in the Auschwitz Death Camp Dr. Perl was later moved to Bergen-Belsen, and survived the war - her family, except for a sister, did not. Dr. Perl emigrated to the United States and lived there for several years, before finally moving to Israel. Her memoir I Was A Doctor In Auschwitz was later turned into the made-for-tv-movie Out Of The Ashes(IMDB), starring Christine Lahti. It is available on youtube.

"Are we the baddies?"

Artw — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 13:51:07 -0800

Danish author Sven Hassel (Wikipedia, official site) has passed away at the age of 95. (Danish - Translation) Hassel fought for the Germans during WWII and became famous after publishing Legion of the Damned, a semi-autobiographical account of the war. He went on to write thirteen more books following the adventures of his convict battalion, incuding Wheels of Terror which in 1987 was made into the movie The Misfit Brigade staring Bruce Davison and David Patrick Kelly (clip). He will be remembered fondly by all who browsed the bookshelves of charity shops as young men.

Let There Be Light

bluefly — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:56:48 -0800

"A post-World War II documentary, banned by the military in 1946 but lately released online, is one of the earliest depictions of psychotherapy." Let There Be Light, a film by John Huston. The film was restored by the National Archives and released in May. (Archival record here). It is the third of a trilogy of films Huston made during World War II. Report from the Aleutians (containing, at the time, controversial scenes of soldiers' monotonous lives) and The Battle of San Pietro (also controversial for containing scenes of dead soldiers, but defended by General Marshall himself for use as a training film) were the first two.

The Bouncing Basque

Chrysostom — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 21:01:22 -0800

How Jean Borotra won 19 Grand Slams, escaped a Nazi prison, and stole a Davis Cup.

More Dutch men served in feldgrau than in khaki

MartinWisse — Thu, 03 May 2012 12:22:19 -0800

Tomorrow is remembrance day in the Netherlands, as the dead and victims of World War II and beyond are honoured. Each year at the national memorial service at the Dam square in Amsterdam a poem is read by the winner of the school competition organised by the remembrance committee. This year there was controversy as the winning poem was about a Dutch volunteer for the Waffen SS, which was not appreciated by the Auschwitz survivors organisation, which threated to boycott the procedings. In the end therefore the poem was scrapped, but it had already laid bare a sore spot in Dutch history. Auke de Vries' uncle was but one of several tens of thousands of Dutch volunteers fighting for the nazis, most of whom ended up in the Waffen SS fighting on the Eastern Front, in the SS division Wiking, the Freiwillingen Legion Niederlande or the panzer grenadier brigade Nederland. Many of the men that joined up were hardcore fascists, members of the NSB (Nationaal Socialistische Beweging), but quite a few were also genuine "idealists" thinking they could carve out a place for Holland in the new Germanic world order by fighting the Bolshevik menace. Needless to say, this part of WWII history doesn't quite fit with the image that us Dutch would like to have as ourselves as innocent victims of the Nazi occupation, where after the war everybody had been in the resistance. Auke de Vries' poem lies bare this history again, which is one reason it became so controversial. But for many people just the idea of honouring a collaborator at the national remembrance service, especially one who had fought in the Waffen SS, a criminal organisation responsible for countless war crimes and other atrocities, is an insult to every victim of Nazi Germany. Something which is hard to disagree with, even though Auke de Vries' intentions were noble, as he said that "he wanted to show everyone loses during a war, no matter what side they are on": 'How can we learn from our mistakes if we are not allowed to name them', he said. 'I was born in peacetime. It is hard enough for me to make the right choices, so how must it have been for people during the war?'

Never forget, never again

Artw — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 11:36:01 -0800

We Japanese Americans must not forget our wartime internment - George Takei on the the treatment of Japanese-Americans during WWII and Allegiance, his new musical. Previously.

James Gould Cozzens' "Guard of Honor"

Trurl — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 19:44:23 -0800

Noel Perrin, "The Best American Novel about World War II": Guard of Honor is a classic (I think), but it is a hard one to put in an American literature course. Why? Because [James Gould] Cozzens was not a romantic. ... Its rightful place is as one of the greatest social novels ever written in America. Cozzens came through as a conservative pessimist with the cool, unillusioned view of human nature I find strongly appealing—as in Somerset Maugham, or indeed Trollope. There is no trace of sentimentality, not even of the kind that hides itself behind literary tricks—fake irony or “colorful” minor characters. ... Here is an elegant, honest, fastidious writer, swept to oblivion by changing tastes, by a national turn to the sentimental narcissism he loathed.

"Those are not cats or kneeling cats on the bank note"

filthy light thief — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:26:47 -0800

Cartoon images of "worshiping cats" on the Chinese 100 yuan RMB banknotes, "the equivalent of the 'Eye of Providence' on the US dollar," probably weren't designed as cartoon cats. A coin expert noted that there were no cat's whiskers on the bank note, as shown on the "clarified" image. But if you're looking for hidden images in Chinese currency, World War II era Chinese currency has many cases of hidden messages and over-printed propaganda (part 2 of a series on WWII Allied banknote propaganda).

"Black Glasses Like Clark Kent"

thermonuclear.jive.turkey — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 09:55:02 -0800

In 2004, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. Author Terese Svoboda's uncle checks into a pyschiatric ward. Her uncle Don - a successful, prosperous and charming extrovert, in the golden years of life - has plunged into a deep depression, triggered apparently by the publicity surrounding Abu Ghraib. Terese Svoboda's father begins to illuminate the situation: her uncle was an MP in occupied Japan, working at a military prison housing wayward GI's. Although she views it as a nusiance, she agrees to try to write his story. Her uncle then begins sending her audio recordings on cassette, of his memories of his time in occupied Japan. The final tape is blank, save for recorded exerpts of a radio program on Abu Ghraib. Her uncle then puts a shotgun into his mouth. Ms. Svoboda then beings to dig: her uncle has planted a secret, and she is driven to try to find out what was really going on over there, to confirm the details he provided, to try to understand what drove him to suicide. The resulting book is entitled Black Glasses Like Clark Kent. When all is said and done, the smoking gun is ephemeral. What emerges is a picture of the occupation, where allied soliders conducted themselves with carte blanche capacity to do anything they saw fit to do, under a blanket of press censorship; of one where military justice was asymmetrically applied to african americans; one where executions were quietly carried out and largely undocumented.

Best single-volume histories of WWII

stbalbach — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 09:50:41 -0800

Best single-volume histories of WWII, a survey by Edward Kosner 1987: Robert Leckie, Delivered from Evil [LT][AZ] 1989: John Keegan, The Second World War [LT][AZ] 1989: Martin Gilbert, The Second World War [LT][AZ] 1994: Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms [LT][AZ] 2010: Gordon Corrigan, The Second World War [LT][AZ] 2011: Max Hastings, Inferno [LT][AZ]

World War II is grand opera—a sprawling epic of power, anguish, loss and death. The great episodes in the war are like arias, familiar but so enthralling that they can be savored over and over, long after their first performance. Working from essentially the same material, Max Hastings and the authors of these and other works about the great war tease fresh meaning and insight from the score and find previously unheard grace notes that give perpetual life to this bloody extravaganza.

World War II in Photos

bru — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 09:03:56 -0800

World War II in Photos "A retrospective of World War II in large-size photo stories. 900 photos in all, over 20 chapters, telling many of the countless millions of stories from the biggest conflict and biggest story of the 20th century." [via mefi projects] "I wanted to tackle larger, serial stories, and I dove right in with a historical one, World War II, as my first project. I started planning it back in May, published the first weekly installment in June, and just posted the last one on Sunday, four months later. I looked over more than 25,000 photos, selected 2,500 for first drafts, and edited down to 900 total - 45 per chapter." Previously: Part 1.

The literature of the Siege of Leningrad

Trurl — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 18:57:02 -0800

I am not going to try now to open the eyes of the world to the Leningrad Blockade. What I will write about here is less ambitious and somewhat more promising: the literature of the siege. First, though, I should make it clear that my use of the word "hell" in relation to besieged Leningrad, and particularly the first siege in the winter of 1941-1942, is in no way metaphorical. If hell exists anywhere, then it must literally be that: eternal coldness, darkness, unrecognisable scraps of music and news emerging from loudspeakers, marching for hours on foot with the principle means of transport used under the siege, children's ice-skates. Frozen corpses strewn on the roadside. And at home, the corpses of family members which could not be buried for days on end (of course the rest of the family would try to use up their ration cards).

Alain Resnais' "Night and Fog"

Trurl — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 05:40:07 -0800

Alain Resnais' Night and Fog (1, 2, 3) There are those who look at these ruins today As though the monster were dead and buried beneath them. Those who take hope again as the image fades As though there were a cure for the scourge of these camps. Those who pretend all this happened only once, At a certain time and in a certain place. Those who refuse to look around them, Deaf to the endless cry.

No more "Shikata ga nai."

scody — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:53:44 -0800

Nearly seventy years ago, 10,000 Japanse Americans were forcibly relocated to Heart Mountain, just outside Cody, Wyoming; they were part of a larger group of more than 120,000 men, women, and children incarcerated in War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps due solely to their ancestry. This past weekend, about 100 survivors of the camp -- led by the delightfully named Bacon Sakatini -- returned to this remote corner of Wyoming to celebrate the grand opening of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center. Of the ten WRA camps, Heart Mountain had the only organized resisters movement, which was started in 1944 by seven men who formed the Fair Play Committee to protest the drafting of Japanse American men while their families remained imprisoned -- leading to the largest draft resistance trial in U.S. history.

Minter's Ring

Horace Rumpole — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 16:52:47 -0800

Smithsonian Magazine's new blog Past Imperfect has already told some interesting stories in its first weeks, but none more compelling than that of Lt. Commander Minter Dial's Annapolis class ring.

World War II: Before the War

kirkaracha — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 17:07:39 -0800

World War II: Before the War. Part 1 of a forthcoming weekly 20-part retrospective of World War II from The Atlantic's In Focus.

The Post-War Expulsion of Germans From Eastern Europe

jason's_planet — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 20:13:42 -0800

A Time Of Retribution: Paying For the Crimes of Nazi Germany

And the entire marvelous panorama of the war passed before my eyes

beisny — Mon, 16 May 2011 16:39:22 -0800

Christopher Hitchens reviews the letters of Rosa Luxemburg, the Polish-born German political radical, intellectual, and author.

U-853

AugieAugustus — Fri, 06 May 2011 09:02:28 -0800

"ALL U-BOATS. ATTENTION ALL U-BOATS. CEASE-FIRE AT ONCE. STOP ALL HOSTILE ACTION AGAINST ALLIED SHIPPING. DÖNITZ." "The order was to become effective at 0800 the following morning. However, of the 49 boats then at sea, several were submerged and would not receive the message. Among them was the U-853." Sixty-six years ago today, off the coast of Rhode Island, the last German U-boat in American waters was sunk at the Battle of Point Judith. "Built in 1943 [...] the U-853 had been a recent addition to the German Navy. [...] She was nicknamed Der Seiltaenzer (Tightrope Walker) by her crew and had reached her operating position off of New England late in the month of April 1945."

Tibet, 1942, on film!

mareli — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 06:39:31 -0800

Tolstoy's grandson visits the Dalai Lama. Enjoy!

Who is J.C. Owsley? and why did he pay a 69% tax rate back in 1941?

yeoz — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 13:10:14 -0800

Think your taxes are high now? A list of the top ten salaries in the US in 1941, and the taxes they paid (spoiler: 65-73% tax rate! but, still doesn't include total compensation, though, which makes it a little sketchy). Interestingly, the NYTimes couldn't figure out two of the names, C.S. Woolman (who is probably C.E. Woolman, one of the founders of delta airlines) and another mysterious name, J.C. Owsley, that seems to be unidentifiable...

An Army of Green

Chinese Jet Pilot — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 20:49:27 -0800

I played with them like most boys, but I had no idea there are formal gaming rules for plastic army men.

PanzerBlitz

Joe Beese — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 20:14:20 -0800

PanzerBlitz is a tactical-scale board wargame of armoured combat set in the Eastern Front of the Second World War. The game is notable for being the first true board-based tactical-level, commercially available conflict simulation (wargame). It also pioneered concepts such as isomorphic mapboards and open-ended design, in which multiple unit counters were provided from which players could fashion their own free-form combat situations rather than simply replaying pre-structured scenarios. (related)