The Second World War. - Page 855

crinolynne · March 18th, 2019, 09:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wildtig2013

Came across this while I was searching for something else.

53 young lives, British and Canadian flight crew, wasted.

According to WIKI it had no effect on the German war effort plus all the civilians (and POW that the Nazi had in the area) that died from the surging flooding dam water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operat...ect_on_the_war

53? Well, you could do the same sort of sums on the useless unprovoked and illegal attack on Poland but hey, who's counting...

**scoundrel** · May 26th, 2019, 09:45 AM

Cliveden House is a 19th Century stately home built in the Italianate style by architect Charles Barry for the 2nd Duke of Sutherland, whose father was a notorious Highland Clearance brute. I'd quite like to think that the history of the house and its associations with political intrigue and debauchery reflects a curse on the 2nd Duke's family.

Cliveden House is conveniently sited in the Chiltern Hills near the village of Taplow and two miles north of Maidenhead on the River Thames, only 90 minutes away from Westminster; and ever since it was built it has been a lodestone for politicians of a rather unsavoury breed. Cliveden House has played host to various scenes in our national decline, such as the sex parties where John Profumo consorted with Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. It belongs now to English Heritage, who lease it as a 5 star hotel; even The Spectator disdainfully remarked that it is "a museum of snobbery". There is a case for dynamiting it, but why tell lies about the past? I would merely open it to the public with a visitors centre explaining all the goings on, starting with the odious history of the Sutherland family and taking it from there.

On our thread topic, Cliveden House in the 1920s and through to the 1950s was the family home of Lord Waldorf Astor and therefore of Lady Nancy Astor. Her circle of friends are for this reason remembered as "The Cliveden Set" - it is a label of shame. They were key drivers of appeasement, almost all the way to WW2; pro-German and ripe to have been our Quislings, had we been defeated. The main players in the Cliveden Set were -

Lady Astor.
Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, Lord Halifax. He was the one who wanted Britain to sue for peace in May 1940 - may his name live in shame forever.
Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times (then owned by the Astor family; Lord Astor himself was proprietor of The Observer). Geoffrey Dawson was a leading pro-German, pro-appeasement, anti-rearmament opinion former, who only changed course after the annexation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. A true worm in the apple.
Phillip Kerr, Lord Lothian - another leading and influential appeaser in the fatal locust years of the mid 1930s. Of the Munich Agreement, Lord Lothian commented that Neville Chamberlain was

Quote:

the only man who steadfastly refused to accept the view that Hitler and the Nazis were incorrigible and would understand nothing but the big stick.

Lady Astor was also a good friend of Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, slightly odd given her fierce anti-Catholic prejudices (she was a Christian Scientist) and she had other very doubful characters in her circle of friends.

Was she a Nazi sympathiser? Joe Kennedy certainly was, and full of anti-semitic shit as well; and Nancy Astor was certainly one of that breed, who induced her husband not to hire any Jews or Catholics on The Observer. As late as 1963, Brendan Behan had a job offer cancelled on The Observer when he disclosed he was born Catholic, even though he was in adult life an athiest. Lady Astor approved of Hitler for a long time as a potential solution to the "world problem" of Communism and Jews. Nice.

There is some good in most people if you look carefully, and Lady Astor did do good things in her politicial and social life as well. During and immediately after WW1 she made Cliveden House into a convalescent home and hospital for wounded Canadian soldiers. As a Christian Scientist, she took no part in the medical care but befriended many soldiers who were recovering from wounds and surgury - the experience of meeting survivors of chemical and gas attacks informed her appeasement views later. She also had some progressive views, and campaigned with some success to improve access to nursery school education and to raise the legal age for drinking alcohol from 14 to 18. She was also skilled in verbal cut and thrust, for example giving Churchill as good as she got - and indeed Churchill rather respected her as a verbal opponent. Churchill himself liked and repeated in conversation her riposte to his first, chauvenistic and sneering reaction when Nancy Astor turned up as Britain's first ever female MP. He told her that her arrival as a woman in Parliament was like having a strange woman intrude on him in the bathroom, to which she replied:

Quote:

Don't be afraid, Winston. You're not handsome enough.

Later. when they were both to attend a fancy dress ball, Lady Astor commented "No need to dress up, Winston - just come sober."

But she was mostly a bad influence, before and during the war. She ardently denied ever having referred to the British Eighth Army in Italy as the "D Day Dodgers"; but unfortunately it was just the kind of offensive and erratic public comment she used to make all the time and no one believed her denials. She also made (or is alleged to have made) sneering remarks against British soldiers serving in Burma. She claimed to have seen the error of her ways when war broke out in 1939 but it was far too late to be talking like that. In 1945, the Conservative Party asked her to stand down and not contest her seat and, with very ill grace, she was quietly ushered out of British political life.

No one misses her.

**stardust2003** · June 11th, 2019, 07:52 PM

Cliveden a magnificent house and estate dating a lot further back than
the 19th cent.... the first house there was built in 1666 for the
2nd duke of buckingham

now its no longer the Astor home but a very upmarket Hotel

It was of course later the setting for the christine keeler profumo scandal
that kicked off around the time the Beatles were becoming famous.

**Paddy Bog** · June 13th, 2019, 02:41 AM

Here is Tommy Atkins' response to Lady Astor's "D-Day Dodgers" comment sung to the tune of "Lilly Marlene."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBaAja7VmOo

**scoundrel** · July 6th, 2019, 05:43 PM

The Second World War has often been described as a "Peoples War" (the BBC did an interesting series on this theme) because it affected most people then alive in the world, and because much more testimony from ordinary people about their war experience exists than survives from earlier world conflicts, including WW1.

Even the smallest and most insignificant people involved experienced it as an extreme and vivid event, wholly outside their usual lives. But some people experienced it as a really bizarre series of freakish adventures, some horrible, some magnificent, and all quite impossible except in the context of a whole world war.

One such case was Staff Sergeant Joseph Beyrle, a demolition expert trained as such after he enlisted as a paratrooper in the 101st US Airborne Infantry Division.

Sergeant Beyrle had been to France twice already before D Day - sent on secret missions in cooperation with the French resistance. He was a paratrooper and adept at blowing things up - one surmises that he may have been sent to accompany certain supplies to the French resistance and train people how to use them.

The paratrooper landing in the night of 5-6 June 1944 was famously scattered and chaotic, which had both advantages and disadvantages. Joe Beyrle blew up various telephone poles and a power station, but never succeeded in linking up with a large American unit and was captured by the German Army on 10th June. The Germans stole his dog-tags and used them to disguise one of their own, who wound up dead as an infiltrator caught in the act. This led to his parents and girlfriend being notified by the War Department that Joseph Beyrle was killed in action in Normandy. Of all people, it was the Russian government who eventually corrected this mistake. Here's why.

Joe Beyrle was one of those people who didn't want the war to be over for them. He escaped twice, the second time falling out of uniform into the custody of the Gestapo, which had already murdered 50 of the great escapers by then. Luckily, the local Wehrmacht learned of him and seized him from the Gestapo, who had literally lined up his firing squad. The Gestapo didn't want to hand him over, but apparently the case had reached the ears of a senior Army general who explicitly ordered his soldiers to shoot those Gestapo fuckers dead if they had to. Since in fact they were the ones breaking the rules, and since there were enough German army soldiers present to do what the general had said, the Gestapo gave in and Beyrle was handed over. The Army then stuck him in a cooler for thirty days to punish him for escaping, without enough room to lie down and sleep - they didn't save him because they were nice guys.

He escaped a third time, this time from Stalag IIIC, which was located in Silesia, now part of Poland. He and two friends smuggled themselves out by hiding in a horse and cart, but a wheel fell off when they had only just cleared the gate. They ran for the trees but two of them were shot and killed; Sergeant Beyrle was wounded but still able to run and managed to get away. He knew where he was, and realised that the chances of getting through Czechoslovakia, Hungary or Germany were laughable. But the Eastern Front was a lot nearer and the chances of linking up with the Red Army were a little bit more realistic.

Joe Beyrle's luck had to change sometime - the only lucky break he had had up to now was that he wasn't dead. The Red Army Vistula-Oder Offensive commenced on 12 January 1945, the same day Joe Beyrle escaped from Stalag IIIC. It meant that German forces couldn't give priority to a manhunt for Joe Beyrle and it meant that conditions became very confused, and that the Russian were coming towards him, in effect coming to his rescue (though they didn't know about him of course). After a few days on the run, he encountered his first Russians - tankers driving American Shermans and led by an extremely tough and competent female officer, Major Aleksandra Grigoryevna Samusenko. In later years, Joe Beyrle always referred to her simply as "The Major" - she became his new CO.

Initially, once the political officer was satisfied that he really was an escaped American POW, Joe Beyrle was accepted as a supernumerary. The Russians cleaned and patched up his bullet wound and did not demur when he asked to be allowed to fight the Germans alongside them; they were rather pleased. They soon found out he was trained in demolitions, and it turned out they had plenty of work for him, including the demolition of Stalag IIIC, liberated by Major Samusenko and her battalion. He also fought as a machine gun operator on a Sherman and mended and serviced the tank radios. He lasted about five weeks and did a lot of fighting in those weeks because the Russian Army were in the middle of a major offensive to sweep the Germans out of Poland and Silesia. During that time, he bonded with his new Russian colleagues and was always afterwards proud of having served under Major Samusenko, for whom he had the deepest regard and respect.

It ended when Sergeant Beyrle's tank was knocked out by a Stuka and he was severely wounded. He didn't want to leave his new friends but they told him he had to go to hospital and it wasn't about what he wanted. So he was sent by ambulance to a field hospital in Gorzow, Poland (formerly Landsberg am de Werthe in Silesia). He was of course the only US soldier there and was soon much talked about by the medical staff, who found his story pleasing and worthy of respect.

Then Marshall Zhukov visited him.

Marshall Zhukov wasn't big on soft-heartedness. But despite his ruthless and callous reputation, he liked to know his wounded men were being treated well and visited field hospitals regularly to keep them honest. He heard that they had an American soldier among the patients at Gorzow and went to see for himself. Through an interpreter, Zhukov enquired and found out Sergeant Beyrle's whole story. He thanked him for fighting as a Russian and complimented him on his bravery, but then told him that he had done his share and should return with honour to his own people. As Sergeant Beyrle had no dog tags, Marshall Zhukov gave him letters of transit and put him on the next transport of wounded soldiers back to Moscow.

Back at the US Embassy in Moscow, Sergeant Beryle was a ghost. It was seven months since he had been reported dead, and there had even been a big funeral for him in his home town. He was held prisoner until the Army identified him from his fingerprints, which took so long that he tried to escape because he was fed up and wanted to rejoin Major Samusenko's unit and fight the Germans again - but he was recaptured very quickly, being still wounded. When he was confirmed as Sergeant Joe Beyrle, the Ambassador had to tell him about the funeral and about how his friends and family had been told seven months ago that he was dead. That was when he accepted that it was now his duty to go home.

His luck was still improving. Even though she had been told he was dead and had attended his funeral, his girlfriend had kept the faith and had not formed any new relationship. They were married in 1946, in the church where his funeral was held and by the priest who had given his funeral service. He died in 2004, 59 years after leaving the Red Army, the only American known to have served in both the US and the Red Army in WW2. He even received a Russian medal, the Order of the Red Banner - which is not something you got in cornflake packets. He also received the Croix de Guerre for his work with the French Resistance before D Day. From his own team he only got a WW2 campaign medal and a purple heart, but so what? A man with Joe Beyrle's CV doesn't need medals to prove he is a hero - the facts tell it all.

In one last pleasant twist of the tale, Joe Beyrle's son, John Beyrle, became US Ambassador to Moscow in 2008 to 2012, appointed by President Obama. It's a pity Joe Beyrle didn't live long enough to see that - I am sure he would have relished the irony.

**palo5** · July 6th, 2019, 06:24 PM

A fascinating and touching story, scoundrel. Thankyou!

**stardust2003** · July 9th, 2019, 07:45 PM

I once read that of all the leaders at the time of the second w w
only Hitler was voted in by popular mandate.....

not sure if thats really true.... surely Rosevelt was voted into office ?

**haroldeye** · July 9th, 2019, 08:29 PM

Hitler wasn't. He blagged it.

Roosevelt certainly was and Joe Stalin had 150% of the popular vote.

**palo5** · July 9th, 2019, 09:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by haroldeye

Roosevelt certainly was and Joe Stalin had 150% of the popular vote.

Hitler never had a majority for his party at elections, but was backed by the conservatives, and that's how he got power. After that, he abolished democracy. Americans don't actually elect their president, the electoral college does. But I'm sure Roosevelt had a majority of the vote anyway. Stalin was elected by the Party, not the people. Churchill probably didn't have a majority for his party, but he formed a national coalition, so it's likely his government represented a bigger majority than all the above

All that can be fact-checked. If I'm wrong, please educate me

**scoundrel** · July 9th, 2019, 09:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stardust2003

I once read that of all the leaders at the time of the second w w
only Hitler was voted in by popular mandate.....

not sure if thats really true.... surely Rosevelt was voted into office ?

Hitler did win the 1933 German election with just under 44% of the vote, but there was widespread violence and voter intimidation and despite that he didn't get the 50% plus vote he wanted. It's clear he enjoyed huge popular support but the election was neither free nor fair so I wipe my arse on his "popular mandate". In 1945, Britain, the USSR and the USA and various others combined to wipe our collective arse on his mandate.

The democratic countries participating in WW2 were Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa (apartheid came later); then of course, and very ironically, Finland, which was at war with the USSR and Britain.

July 6th, 2019, 05:43 PM	#8545
scoundrel Super Moderator Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: England Posts: 26,239 Thanks: 162,401 Thanked 278,503 Times in 26,184 Posts	Staff Sergeant Joseph Beyrle The Second World War has often been described as a "Peoples War" (the BBC did an interesting series on this theme) because it affected most people then alive in the world, and because much more testimony from ordinary people about their war experience exists than survives from earlier world conflicts, including WW1. Even the smallest and most insignificant people involved experienced it as an extreme and vivid event, wholly outside their usual lives. But some people experienced it as a really bizarre series of freakish adventures, some horrible, some magnificent, and all quite impossible except in the context of a whole world war. One such case was Staff Sergeant Joseph Beyrle, a demolition expert trained as such after he enlisted as a paratrooper in the 101st US Airborne Infantry Division. Sergeant Beyrle had been to France twice already before D Day - sent on secret missions in cooperation with the French resistance. He was a paratrooper and adept at blowing things up - one surmises that he may have been sent to accompany certain supplies to the French resistance and train people how to use them. The paratrooper landing in the night of 5-6 June 1944 was famously scattered and chaotic, which had both advantages and disadvantages. Joe Beyrle blew up various telephone poles and a power station, but never succeeded in linking up with a large American unit and was captured by the German Army on 10th June. The Germans stole his dog-tags and used them to disguise one of their own, who wound up dead as an infiltrator caught in the act. This led to his parents and girlfriend being notified by the War Department that Joseph Beyrle was killed in action in Normandy. Of all people, it was the Russian government who eventually corrected this mistake. Here's why. Joe Beyrle was one of those people who didn't want the war to be over for them. He escaped twice, the second time falling out of uniform into the custody of the Gestapo, which had already murdered 50 of the great escapers by then. Luckily, the local Wehrmacht learned of him and seized him from the Gestapo, who had literally lined up his firing squad. The Gestapo didn't want to hand him over, but apparently the case had reached the ears of a senior Army general who explicitly ordered his soldiers to shoot those Gestapo fuckers dead if they had to. Since in fact they were the ones breaking the rules, and since there were enough German army soldiers present to do what the general had said, the Gestapo gave in and Beyrle was handed over. The Army then stuck him in a cooler for thirty days to punish him for escaping, without enough room to lie down and sleep - they didn't save him because they were nice guys. He escaped a third time, this time from Stalag IIIC, which was located in Silesia, now part of Poland. He and two friends smuggled themselves out by hiding in a horse and cart, but a wheel fell off when they had only just cleared the gate. They ran for the trees but two of them were shot and killed; Sergeant Beyrle was wounded but still able to run and managed to get away. He knew where he was, and realised that the chances of getting through Czechoslovakia, Hungary or Germany were laughable. But the Eastern Front was a lot nearer and the chances of linking up with the Red Army were a little bit more realistic. Joe Beyrle's luck had to change sometime - the only lucky break he had had up to now was that he wasn't dead. The Red Army Vistula-Oder Offensive commenced on 12 January 1945, the same day Joe Beyrle escaped from Stalag IIIC. It meant that German forces couldn't give priority to a manhunt for Joe Beyrle and it meant that conditions became very confused, and that the Russian were coming towards him, in effect coming to his rescue (though they didn't know about him of course). After a few days on the run, he encountered his first Russians - tankers driving American Shermans and led by an extremely tough and competent female officer, Major Aleksandra Grigoryevna Samusenko. In later years, Joe Beyrle always referred to her simply as "The Major" - she became his new CO. Initially, once the political officer was satisfied that he really was an escaped American POW, Joe Beyrle was accepted as a supernumerary. The Russians cleaned and patched up his bullet wound and did not demur when he asked to be allowed to fight the Germans alongside them; they were rather pleased. They soon found out he was trained in demolitions, and it turned out they had plenty of work for him, including the demolition of Stalag IIIC, liberated by Major Samusenko and her battalion. He also fought as a machine gun operator on a Sherman and mended and serviced the tank radios. He lasted about five weeks and did a lot of fighting in those weeks because the Russian Army were in the middle of a major offensive to sweep the Germans out of Poland and Silesia. During that time, he bonded with his new Russian colleagues and was always afterwards proud of having served under Major Samusenko, for whom he had the deepest regard and respect. It ended when Sergeant Beyrle's tank was knocked out by a Stuka and he was severely wounded. He didn't want to leave his new friends but they told him he had to go to hospital and it wasn't about what he wanted. So he was sent by ambulance to a field hospital in Gorzow, Poland (formerly Landsberg am de Werthe in Silesia). He was of course the only US soldier there and was soon much talked about by the medical staff, who found his story pleasing and worthy of respect. Then Marshall Zhukov visited him. Marshall Zhukov wasn't big on soft-heartedness. But despite his ruthless and callous reputation, he liked to know his wounded men were being treated well and visited field hospitals regularly to keep them honest. He heard that they had an American soldier among the patients at Gorzow and went to see for himself. Through an interpreter, Zhukov enquired and found out Sergeant Beyrle's whole story. He thanked him for fighting as a Russian and complimented him on his bravery, but then told him that he had done his share and should return with honour to his own people. As Sergeant Beyrle had no dog tags, Marshall Zhukov gave him letters of transit and put him on the next transport of wounded soldiers back to Moscow. Back at the US Embassy in Moscow, Sergeant Beryle was a ghost. It was seven months since he had been reported dead, and there had even been a big funeral for him in his home town. He was held prisoner until the Army identified him from his fingerprints, which took so long that he tried to escape because he was fed up and wanted to rejoin Major Samusenko's unit and fight the Germans again - but he was recaptured very quickly, being still wounded. When he was confirmed as Sergeant Joe Beyrle, the Ambassador had to tell him about the funeral and about how his friends and family had been told seven months ago that he was dead. That was when he accepted that it was now his duty to go home. His luck was still improving. Even though she had been told he was dead and had attended his funeral, his girlfriend had kept the faith and had not formed any new relationship. They were married in 1946, in the church where his funeral was held and by the priest who had given his funeral service. He died in 2004, 59 years after leaving the Red Army, the only American known to have served in both the US and the Red Army in WW2. He even received a Russian medal, the Order of the Red Banner - which is not something you got in cornflake packets. He also received the Croix de Guerre for his work with the French Resistance before D Day. From his own team he only got a WW2 campaign medal and a purple heart, but so what? A man with Joe Beyrle's CV doesn't need medals to prove he is a hero - the facts tell it all. In one last pleasant twist of the tale, Joe Beyrle's son, John Beyrle, became US Ambassador to Moscow in 2008 to 2012, appointed by President Obama. It's a pity Joe Beyrle didn't live long enough to see that - I am sure he would have relished the irony. __________________ To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

June 11th, 2019, 07:52 PM	#8543
stardust2003 Vintage Member Join Date: Aug 2010 Posts: 1,446 Thanks: 19,899 Thanked 13,920 Times in 1,351 Posts	Cliveden a magnificent house and estate dating a lot further back than the 19th cent.... the first house there was built in 1666 for the 2nd duke of buckingham now its no longer the Astor home but a very upmarket Hotel It was of course later the setting for the christine keeler profumo scandal that kicked off around the time the Beatles were becoming famous.

June 13th, 2019, 02:41 AM	#8544
Paddy Bog Vintage Member Join Date: May 2011 Location: Beyond the Pale Posts: 959 Thanks: 44,544 Thanked 56,840 Times in 1,013 Posts	Here is Tommy Atkins' response to Lady Astor's "D-Day Dodgers" comment sung to the tune of "Lilly Marlene." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBaAja7VmOo

July 6th, 2019, 06:24 PM	#8546
palo5 Former Staff Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 16,579 Thanks: 452,836 Thanked 222,658 Times in 16,567 Posts	A fascinating and touching story, scoundrel. Thankyou!

July 9th, 2019, 07:45 PM	#8547
stardust2003 Vintage Member Join Date: Aug 2010 Posts: 1,446 Thanks: 19,899 Thanked 13,920 Times in 1,351 Posts	I once read that of all the leaders at the time of the second w w only Hitler was voted in by popular mandate..... not sure if thats really true.... surely Rosevelt was voted into office ?

July 9th, 2019, 08:29 PM	#8548
haroldeye Moderator Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Halfwitistan Posts: 5,716 Thanks: 113,527 Thanked 59,965 Times in 5,707 Posts	Hitler wasn't. He blagged it. Roosevelt certainly was and Joe Stalin had 150% of the popular vote.