The Second World War.

[scoundrel]

The size (and draught) of landing craft was a major issue in the first phase of the Battle of Tarawa as I recall. Tarawa is now part of the Kiribati island nation, the most low-lying country on earth (no point is over 5 metres above sea level). In 1941, when the Japanese invaded, the island group was called the Gilbert Islands.

Tarawa is a classic coral atoll - a ring of small coral reef islands around a central lagoon. To land on the islands the US Marines first needed to get past an outer reef and they had not accurately predicted the tides, despite being warned by a New Zealand military adviser who was from the pre-war British colonial administration and knew the local conditions. The USM assumed that the low tide days would see a high tide of 5 feet and refused to postpone for 14 days until the spring tide was due. The New Zealander warned them that the tidal range on 20 November 1943 would be only three feet - the USM ignored him.

Sure enough, the high tide was only three feet and the USM landing boats could not cross the reef - they drew four feet. Getting across the reef of the first day became a major and costly issue, achieved using small unarmoured amphibious vehicles intended only for transport, most of which were lost with heavy casualties as they made repeated lagoon crossings in the teeth of heavy Japanese crossfire.

In three days, the USM lost as many men as they lost in the whole of Guadalcanal (7 months). Many were lost in the lagoon trying to get ashore. The New Zealander, Major Frank Holland, had been vindicated, but I strongly doubt if this fact gave him any satisfaction at all.

[rupertramjet]

Off topic, but I hope an amusing tale of abuse of landing craft! The British Army had small landing boats during the seventies, which could be loaded into a four tonner, payload, not weight!, we were sent to Gareloch in Scotland for a training week.

It is a lovely spot, but the camp is, as any who have been would agree, err a shithole! As Paras we took one of these assault boats with us, and my troop decided that we should go fishing on the Loch, so away we went, we were idlley floating about when a heavily armed gentleman on a motor launch with POLICE written all over it, requested to know who we were and what the hell we thought we were doing. We had forgotten that we were a bit close to the ,then, Polaris submarine base! The final line is that the following day, we went to the aforementioned base to use their swimming poll.

We caught nothing by the way!

[Rogerbh]

Has anyone heard of this Canadian Leo Major? His wiki reads like the script of a Tarantino movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léo_Major
http://www.badassoftheweek.com/leomajor.html The Wiki seems to be written in the same style as the bad ass of the week post - and it made me doubt if it was true. However there does seem to be supporting evidence, like the sign post in Zwolle. His second DCM was won in the Korean War, where Canada had seen fit after only ten years to promote him to Corporal and set him loose to do his thing again.

I love the part in WWII where he refuses to be decorated with the DCM because the General who was to award it - Bernard Law Montgomery - was in Major's words "incompetent" and "in no position to be giving out medals." Private Major had a huge set of balls.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4178944/l...lle-liberated/ The hanging art work is interesting to me because what I guess is a Bren gun has the handle pointed in the wrong direction and the magazine missing while he is apparently aiming it.

An amazing soldier.

[Reclaimedwg]

I just watched The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951) which got me thinking again.

After all these (46) years of reading and studying about World War 2 and after just watching this movie and be reminded of it again, I still think Rommel had nothing to do with the July 20th, 1944 assassination attempt of that crazy drugs addicted delusional and insane Bohemian corporal.

Rommel was told about it by several people who wanted him to join them but I think that's as far as he knew about the assassination plot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel#Plot_against_Hitler

There was no need for Hitler to make him commit suicide and then still give him a military funeral with honor if that idiot was really convinced his best General was involved and part of the failed assassination attempt.

It made no sense.

Do they give a parade to inmates that were found guilty of their crime and are sent to death rows before they are gassed or electrocuted?

Nope!

[haroldeye]

Keeping quiet was the same as supporting the attempt. Hitler couldn't admit that any of his Generals wanted to kill him, hence the deceit.

[Rendell]

Originally Posted by haroldeye

Keeping quiet was the same as supporting the attempt. Hitler couldn't admit that any of his Generals wanted to kill him, hence the deceit.

The keeping quiet part is actually more relevant to Von Manstein, Kluge and Rundstedt.

Actually, it turns out that there have been some recent discoveries on this particular topic. This is an excerpt from the wiki page on Rommel, "Plot against Hitler" section:

The role that Rommel played in the military's resistance against Hitler or the 20 July plot is difficult to ascertain, as people most directly involved did not survive and limited documentation on the conspirators' plans and preparations exists.[273][274] The strongest evidence that points to the possibility that Rommel came to support the assassination plan was General Eberbach's confession to his son (eavesdropped by British agencies) while in British captivity, which stated that Rommel explicitly said to him that Hitler and his close associates had to be killed because this would be the only way out for Germany.[275][276][277] This conversation occurred about a month before Rommel was coerced into committing suicide. Other notable evidence includes the papers of Rudolf Hartmann, one of the surviving leaders of the military resistance (alongside General Hans Speidel, Colonel Karl-Richard Kossmann, Colonel Eberhard Finckh and Lieutenant Colonel Caesar von Hofacker). These papers, accidentally discovered by historian Christian Schweizer in 2018 while doing research on Rudolf Hartmann, include Hartmann's eyewitness account of a conversation between Rommel and Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel in May 1944, as well as photos of the mid-May 1944 meeting between the inner circle of the resistance and Rommel at Kossmann's house. According to Hartmann, by the end of May, in another meeting at Hartmann's quarters in Mareil-Marly, Rommel showed "decisive determination" and clear approval of the inner circle's plan.[278]

After von Stülpnagel's failed suicide attempt, in his delirium, he mentioned Rommel's name repeatedly, implicating him in the plot. This was further strengthened by a confession wrung out of Caesar Hofacker and a list of potential Reich President candidates written by Carl Goerdler.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by wildtig2013

There was no need for Hitler to make him commit suicide and then still give him a military funeral with honor if that idiot was really convinced his best General was involved and part of the failed assassination attempt.

It made no sense.

Do they give a parade to inmates that were found guilty of their crime and are sent to death rows before they are gassed or electrocuted?

Nope!

It made perfect sense to cover up Rommel's role in the bomb plot. Germany was entering the end game of WW2 and the regime needed to encourage unity and staunchness in the face of external danger. Rommel was a national hero and to have it known that he had betrayed the Fuehrer would have been very demoralising.

This is why the regime made the deal with Rommel. He had to play along by taking poison, so that they could tell the world that he had died of wounds, and no one would ever need to know any different. In return, his family got treated as the family of a national hero who died for the Reich, and no one else had to pay the price except Rommel himself. Rommel was a very decent man and it was like him to lay his own body down in order to shield his loved ones.

He went consenting, or else he was no king... It was no man's place to say to him, 'It is time to make the offering.' ~ The King Must Die by Mary Renault.

[Mal Hombre]

One shouldn't overstate the decency of men such as Rommel who served the Nazi Reich faithfully and well during the years of victory,Only deciding Hitler was an evil dictator when the tide of war had turned against Germany..

[Rendell]

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

One shouldn't overstate the decency of men such as Rommel who served the Nazi Reich faithfully and well during the years of victory,Only deciding Hitler was an evil dictator when the tide of war had turned against Germany..

I think thats too simple and clear cut an explanation Mal though I can understand why you may think that.

Certainly there are those individuals to whom that certainly applies – General Erich Hoepner and Arthur Nebe being two names that immediately spring to mind. Undoubtedly, there will be many more that fall in to this category too.

However, it must also be stated that there were many who'd been planning a coup since the Czechoslovakian crisis of 1938 – and only didn't go through with it when Britain caved AND MI6 failed to give them any support.

There were several attempts on Hitler's life during the years before 1944, even when the Third Reich was at the zenith of its power. This is especially important because it shows that there were individuals who realised just what Hitler and the Nazis represented and were prepared to act even if they'd be branded traitors by their own people.

German resistance did not begin in 1944, nor did it start with Sophie Scholl.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

One shouldn't overstate the decency of men such as Rommel who served the Nazi Reich faithfully and well during the years of victory,Only deciding Hitler was an evil dictator when the tide of war had turned against Germany..

When your country is fighting in a war, you need to know whose side you are on. It is very extreme indeed to take the enemy's side in a war and for an honourable man (or woman) to do this would require a huge emotional and spiritual revolution. It could only happen on the basis of really shattering factual knowledge - and by 1944, Rommel would have known a lot more than he knew in 1940, and I do not speak only of defeat.

I think if it had been only about being defeated, Rommel would have fought to the bitter end; I'm sure he would have agreed with Churchill and disagreed with Halifax on 28th May 1940, if he had been British and been a party to that discussion. He will have known a lot about the scale and severity of Germany's many crimes, even if he did not know all the details. He knew about the Commando Order and routinely ignored it; he was important enough to be able to get away with that. I'm sure he knew a lot about the holocaust - though quite possibly he learned a great deal after returning from Africa in 1943. The North Africa campaign was very unusual in WW2 for the degree to which both sides fought with honour - Rommel had a lot to do with this, and that is one of the reasons why I hold his name in respect. Coming back to Europe meant coming back to a very different war in a very different world.

In 1944 Rommel was doing what he knew he needed to do. The bomb plot failed, and the rest is history. To act as he did, Rommel first needed motive, and it will have been after his return from Africa that he would have become fully disillusioned, even though he was already showing signs in October 1942, when he first disobeyed a Fuehrer order and retreated from El Alamein while he could still salvage something with which to continue the fight.

Then, having decided that Hitler had to go, Rommel would have needed opportunity. The bomb plot was the opportunity.

Most Germans never fought against their own side and why should we be critical, when we consider British people who bear arms against Britain as the very lowest of the low?