The Second World War.

[rupertramjet]

At risk of coming across as an arsehole, I would like to explain the complexity of being an officer, especially one held in the huge esteem that Rommel was by his troops, I am sure Dr P and Harold would agree, it is a complex position to be in. We have previously discussed leadership and command, and as stated then the two are often alien to each other, command is given, leadership is earned. Rommel earned the respect of his men, and was both commander and leader, they knew he had been there and they also knew he would fight their corner, leadership is about trust, a Padre once told me he was 'pissed off' with the RSM,(his words!) because the men went to him, and not the Padre. The RSM was a veteran massively respected, and the lads knew if they were genuine he would fight like hell for them. Leadership in the true sense!

Scounds mentions Rommel routinely ignoring the Commando order, and the honour of the Dessert War, this was no accident, Rommel knew that by his example his men would respect prisoners, and therefore would be treated with respect by the allies, interestingly his example was followed by both Model and the SS Commander Bittrich at Arnhem. Bittrich had let the Florian Geyer SS Cavalry Division in Russia, involved in anti partisan warfare, so was a little bit hard bitten, yet fought this battle as if in a different war.

To defend Rommel and his fighting for the Third Reich, thus Hitler, as officers we may disagree with the war, you all know my views on Blairs wars, but as a commander, and leader what is the choice, to demoralise the young soldiers who look up to you and say this is wrong, refuse to fight and claim the Nuremberg Defence? Great, they are still going on active service, they will still have to fight and put their lives on the line, how much harder is that going to be with the massive doubt in their minds that the men they look up to do not believe in what they are doing?

Whatever your personal view point, you go to war with the simple ambition of doing the job effectively, leading the men with enthusiasm, not ever showing your true view and the fervent deeply held prayer that you are going to march them off the square at the return with out any gaps in the ranks, daft but they are to you your family and like all parents there is no way you are going to let them down!

Yep I get were Rommel was coming from!

[scoundrel]

A point worth noting is that even though he was already a silent partner in the plot to assassinate Hitler, Rommel pursued his duties as sector commander in Normandy (Army Group B) with great diligence and doing his utmost to first prepare for the invasion and then fight against it when it arrived.

The defences on the Atlantic Wall were much stronger in 1944 than in 1943, simply because Rommel inspected them, assessed their shortcomings, gave orders to fix them and kept coming back, booting arse whenever he saw that local garrison commanders weren't following his orders. In 1943, when Rommel first visited, there were no invasion obstacles at all on Omaha Beach and the infantry company stationed there were playing football every day at low tide. Less than a year later, Omaha Beach was a killing ground. Rommel did that.

I think that Rommel was able to make the distinction so many Germany officers could not make, between Hitler and Germany. German soldiers swore the Hitler oath, which personified Hitler as the object of loyalty. Rommel decided to set that oath aside and serve Germany; so while on one hand he participated in a conspiracy to kill Hitler, on the other hand he fought with all his might to defend Germany. He will probably have hoped that if he could defeat Britain and America in France, and then kill Hitler, he could give Germany an edge in later peace talks. But he will also have felt the duty to lead his men as well as possible and try to keep them alive and undefeated.

[scoundrel]

The Normandy headquarters of the Atlantic Wall project was located in the town of Caen, captal of the Calvados prefecture.

Caen was also the home of a self-employed painter and decorator called Rene Duchez.

Duchez was quite well known as a "character" - he drank red wine rather a lot in a local pavement cafe, and when the wine bottle was well down he used to start boasting about his various exploits for the Resistance. When sober he was a pretty good painter and decorator; but he drank a lot and when drunk he was loud and indiscreet. He was also a bit "simple" - conspicuously below average intelligence; not quite moron level, but certainly a blockhead. He got slapped a few times for talking out of turn against Vichy, but the local Milice and Gestapo thought he was the sort of Walter Mitty type no genuine Resistance cell would ever allow anywhere near them. In fact, Rene Duchez was a member of the Centurie spy network in Caen; his wife Odette was the group's resident forger of official documents. On top of their role as spies they were a major link in the Normandy network for smuggling Allied airmen and escaped POWs out of France. His drunken evenings in the cafe were an extremely audacious double bluff.

In 1942, Duchez was roped in as a sub-contractor when the Todt offices in Caen were extended. One of his skills was conjuring and he succeeded in removing a set of plans from a German officer's desk while showing him samples for choosing the colour of the paint. He hid the plans elsewhere in the office and waited to see what the reaction would be when they were missed; worst way they could "turn up" and nothing worse than a bit of fuss because someone had mislaid them. But when the job was finishing and no one had reacted to the missing plans, Duchez took the plunge and smuggled them out of the building.

The plans showed the position of all the shelters, underwater obstacles, beach barriers, passages, phony and genuine mine fields, gun batteries and so on in the Seine Bay.

It was over many additional months that the British and Americans gradually realised that the Germans were not changing their layout, as you would expect when such secret information is known to have gone missing. Rommel came along afterwards and added to the defences, but changed nothing already prepared. It turned out after the war that the local Todt senior management simply copied the missing plans and pretended nothing had happened. They preferred not to volunteer for the Eastern Front or worse - personally I don't blame them one little bit.

Duchez's wife got caught in November 1943 and spent nearly 18 months in Ravensbruck but mercifully she was tough and she made it to end of the war. She eventually passed away in 2005 - a brave and remarkable woman in her own right. Duchez was never rumbled, but would have been sent to Ravensbruck as well just for being married to the notorious Resistance forger. However, when the Gestapo came, Madam Duchez was embroiled in a vociferous argument with one of Rene's customers, who was complaining about the quality of the work being done; the Gestapo told the loud mouthed idiot to shut up and go away and let them talk to Madam Duchez. And so Rene was able to fade into the background. He continued the work until the Liberation. In November 1943 he must have felt conflicted, knowing he was more likely than not never going to see his wife again; but he stuck with it anyway.

Sadly, it was his fate to die young, in 1948, aged only 45. But he did not waste his life.

[Ernesto75]

The Resistant René Duchez was the inspiration of a movie by Marcel Camus, Le Mur de L'Atlantique in 1970.
The actor Bourvil played his role.

[Ernesto75]

The prewar period from 1933 to 1938

The Todt Organisation was a civil and military engineering group in the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945, named after its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior Nazi figure.

The construction of the Autobahn network became one of the show pieces of the Nazi regime.

The OT ( was able to draw on conscripted (i.e., compulsory) workers, from within Germany through the Reich Labour Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst, RAD) from 1935.

The second period lasted from 1938, when the Organisation Todt group proper was founded, until February 1942, when Todt died in a plane crash.

From 1938–40, over 1.75 million Germans were conscripted into labour service. From 1940–42, Organization Todt began its reliance on Gastarbeitnehmer (guest workers), Militärinternierte (military internees), Zivilarbeiter (civilian workers), Ostarbeiter (Eastern workers) and Hilfswillige ("volunteer") POW workers.

The third period lasted from 1942 until the end of the war in 1945, when Albert Speer succeeded Todt in office and the OT was absorbed into the renamed and expanded into the Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production.

Approximately 1.4 million labourers were in the service of the Organisation. Overall, 1% were Germans rejected from military service and 1.5% were concentration camp prisoners; the rest were prisoners of war and forced labourers from occupied countries. All were effectively treated as slaves and existed in the complete and arbitrary service of a ruthless totalitarian state. Many did not survive the work or the war.

There were several kind of contracts between OT and the OT contractors. The most important were:
- Cost reimbursement contract, where the materiel and labor was supplied by the firm. It allowed a commission of 4½% as the profit of the contractor.
- Efficiency output contracts, where the materiel and labor was supplied by the OT. The profit was computed on the basis of the wages paid to the contractors own staff. This was the dominant form of contract from late 1942.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisation_Todt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsautobahn

[Ernesto75]

Theoritically the Atlantik Wall was very impressive.

It had begun during 1942 and it covered several countries, all German occupied.

It consisted of numerous bunkers which were intended as an impassable barrier.

Marshall Rommel improved it very much during 1942 in occupied France.

Many 'Invited workers' (GuestArbeiters) died from exhaustion on the various sites.

All this for nothing, just to satisfy the whim of Hitler and his acolytes.

But when looking more precisely into it, we can see the horrible aspect of the collaboration.
The Germans alone could not succeed in realising all these bunkers without the help (more or less willing) of the local populations.
So that was collaboration from numerous enterprises not Germans alone but also French, Belgium and Hollander.

Very few were made to pay for their collaboration simply because almost all was destroyed and they were badly needed.

I take only one example: Freyssinet collaborated and now is a respectable enterprise, a very performing one.

[scoundrel]

The Third Reich ran on slavery from quite an early stage. It was not only for economic gain, but also a hostile act against occupied countries, intended to undermine them socially and culturally, and make them permanently subservient.

Though they were implementing Nazi doctrine and policy rather than inventing it, the two lead villains in this sordid story are Albert Speer and Fritz Sauckel. Speer's hunger for forced labour was insatiable - for him, productivity was King and the consequences for little people were of no importance whatsoever. Sauckel was the supplier of slave labour, his job title was General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment, and in this role he organised the wholesale enslavement of 5 million people. Many of these people died directly from the brutal and inhuman way they were beaten, grossly overworked and starved of food. Sauckel died on the gallows on 16 October 1946, protesting with his last words that he was innocent and being unjustly treated. I imagine he is still complaining in Hell that it is all a mistake and he should be twanging a harp upstairs.

Speer managed to talk his way out of being hanged, partly by shuffling off blame for the forced labour program onto Fritz Sauckel. Sauckel lay down with dogs and got up with fleas, but the only thing to be sorry about is that Speer wasn't hanged as well.

[Reclaimedwg]

I was watching the Bogart movie Sahara about a U.S. tank crew in North Africa, during the dates before Operation Torch.

So I decided to do some research thinking it's another Hollywood historical inaccuracies goof like they did with Objective, Burma! and nope, it's not:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gazala#cite_note-3

I didn't know about this.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by wildtig2013

I was watching the Bogart movie Sahara about a U.S. tank crew in North Africa, during the dates before Operation Torch.

So I decided to do some research thinking it's another Hollywood historical inaccuracies goof like they did with Objective, Burma! and nope, it's not:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gazala#cite_note-3

I didn't know about this.

The Battle of Gazala led directly to the calamity of the fall of Tobruk on 20 June 1942, which was both bad in itself and a PR disaster after the superb defence of the Tobruk perimeter in 1941 had made Tobruk into a symbol of Allied resistance. Over 30,000 British Commonwealth forces were captured, a terrible loss of both men and material and a big loss of face. It was the catalyst which prompted a very dangerous attempt to depose Churchill, the Vote of Confidence debate of 2 July 1942.

It so happened that Churchill was visiting Washington on 20 June 1942 and was forced to give the news of the Tobruk humiliation to FDR in person. It must have been agony for a proud man like Churchill to be forced to admit to such a national failure, and it was part of the chain of events which led to Britain surrendering her superpower status to the United States. But it was almost certainly for the best, because FDR responded in a really humane and supportive way. His first words after being told the worst were: "How can we help?"

The first help was that FDR stripped a US tank division of its brand new Shermans and sent them to Egypt, where they arrived in time to equip participate in the build up to the Second Battle of El Alamein. Four British armoured brigades of Sherman tanks fought at El Alamein, including the 9th Armoured Brigade, which was attached to the New Zealand division, which suffered heavy losses - the German 15th Armoured Division were equipped with Panzer Mark IVs carrying 75mm high velocity cannons and these were equal in quality to the Sherman, and they had the better firing positions on 2 November 1942. But over a battle fiercely fought for nearly three weeks, the Shermans played a key part in defeating the Axis side. Over 250 Shermans were used in the battle.

[Ennath]

Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., commander of the American tanks at Gazala, had a distinguished post-war career. Coming from a distinguished and wealthy Boston family, he was elected to the Senate as a Republican in 1936 and was still a serving senator when he fought in North Africa. He resigned from the Senate in 1944 and fought in Italy and France. He remained in the Reserves after the war, rising eventually to the rank of Major General.


He returned to Senate in 1946. In 1952, he led the Draft Eisenhower movement and served as Ike's campaign manager. In 2953 he was made US ambassador to the United Nations and was Nixon's running mate (unsuccessfully) in 1960. He was ambassador to South Vietnam in 1963-64 (supporting the coup against Diem) and 1965-67. In 1973, he led the US delegation that signed the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam, dying in 1985.