293. Battleground '45 Your Questions Answered
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Hello and welcome to Battleground 45 with me, Saul David and Patrick Bishop. Well, we've been getting a lot of questions about the last year of the war, and as we haven't yet had time to answer them, we thought we'd devote a whole episode to doing just that. Well, let's kick off with David in Norway, who says it was good to hear about wars in the East. My grandfather, Arthur, fought far away in Burma.

They recruited troops from Africa and went to Burma. He never spoke of their time there, too horrific with disease and the weather, the fighting too. He shared these things with my grandmother, but he goes on to say, David, we can't remember us devoting much time to the Brits

in those jungles on your rather brilliant podcast. Well, thanks for the compliment. We have done a fair bit, haven't we, on Burma, for example, Saul? Yeah, we have. We're going to do a little bit more, actually. I mean, we've got the end of the war coming up, VJ Day, and I thought we'd take the opportunity to...

recover some ground. And that is the famous Battle of Mektila. So we're going to be speaking to Jack Bauscher, who's written a book about that in the not too distant future. So anyone who is interested in Burma, we do get the endless messages saying more on Burma, please. There's obviously a, you know, a group of keen acolytes out there, we will be talking about the Battle of Mektila, which was, as I mentioned before, and I will say again, probably the finest

British battlefield victory of the Second World War I, of course, by Field Marshal Bill Slim. Now, we have a really nice contribution here from Andreas Prokop, who is a professor at the University of Manchester in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health. And he's very kindly passed on a PDF copy of

of a booklet that was prepared for British soldiers going to Germany prior to the actual arrival in Germany after the crossing of the Rhine. I think it was actually issued in October 1944. This was passed on to him by some friends of his, I think one of whom had a grandfather who was actually serving with the invasion force.

And he says, I'm sure you already know about this already, but enjoy the read, which fits quite well with the time you've now reached in your history series. Well, it is very timely and it is absolutely fascinating. I hadn't seen it before.

I don't know whether you have saw it. It's extremely well written. The sentiments and the history that goes with it are both sensible and pretty well judged, I would say. And the advice it gives to troops about how to interact with Germans, what to think of Germans, what to expect when you get there, seems very sage. I'll just give you a couple of

snippets from it. The booklet says, long before Hitler, German writers of great authority have steadily been teaching the necessity of war and glorifying it for its own sake. So the message is, it wasn't just the Nazis who started all this. It's actually in the German DNA or the recent DNA anyway. And it concludes, the Germans have much to underline

unlearn. It goes on, they've also much to atone for. Never has murder been organised on so vast a scale as by the German government.

and the German army. It also actually doesn't lack sympathy. It doesn't lack a kind of human understanding of what war did to the Germans. For example, it says you will see bombing, which is much worse than anything you might have witnessed in Coventry or Bristol or London, where you might have seen the effects of the German blitz. Prepare yourself.

for something much more dramatic and devastating, and also for actual human suffering, for extreme poverty, hunger even. But warns don't get sentimental about all this. Although there'll be no brutality about a British occupation, there'll also be no softness either.

I was struck by something that is obvious, really, I suppose, in retrospect, but fraternization was against the regulations. You were not allowed to interact with the local population unless it was actually in the course of your duties. And, of course, the idea of actually having a relationship with a German woman or even get married to her, that was outlawed too. Of course, it was a very forlorn home. That was actually...

be strictly adhered to. But in the usual way to try and discourage any hanky-panky between the British soldiers and the Frauleins and Frauds of Germany, he points out that according to the information they got, every fourth person

they will encounter in Germany between the ages of 15 and 41 will have a venereal disease. It's great stuff, isn't it? And quite a contrast, of course, to the behavior of the Soviets that we've already mentioned, of course, came in and the idea of non-fraternization simply didn't apply to them. But it's a fascinating booklet. I mean, very useful kind of primer on Germany. It's kind of the makeup of the

country, the geography, where the industry is, but also its history. I mean, it goes all the way back to, you know, the creation of Germany in 1871, the rise of Hitler, the various different arms of the Nazi state, the SA, the SS, the Gestapo, Mein Kampf, it talks about, it gets on, of course, to why the Germans, some of them are anti-Semitic and have a kind of domineering attitude to the rest of the world. I mean, this is a really useful little booklet, which, you know, I've had a quick look at it, and I'm sure there are errors there, Patrick.

Well, thanks, Andreas. That was a real little gem. Thanks for posting it on. Okay, moving on. We've got a message from Ben, who's in Delft in the Netherlands. Two very different stories. He's got his great-granddad on the Finnish side who fought in the Winter War and lost one of his brothers. And that war, writes Ben, I think is interesting because the nation that had been divided by an appalling civil war 15 years earlier was able to unite and fend off the Soviets. And he makes the comparison, of course, with

Ukraine now. But even more interesting for our 45 series, writes Ben, was the fact that his other great-grandfather served in the RAF and was captured by the Japanese in Singapore. That would have been, of course, early 1942, which meant that he was condemned to three years as a prisoner of the Japanese. He was presumed dead, writes Ben, but when the war ended, he came home very emaciated. Because he had been missing, presumed dead, his wife and

had moved on with someone else, resulting in him having a hatred of the Japanese as a result. I doubt this is not the only story like this. A 45 podcast on the returning POWs would be fascinating. And, you know, we can talk about German atrocities

Patrick, and in many cases, they were fatal for the people who came into their hands. But actually, if you were a Brit and you were captured by the Germans, you were treated reasonably in inverted commas well, not so if you were captured by the Japanese. I mean, we've referred to this briefly, I think, in some of our previous pods on the Japanese in the Second World War, but their treatment of

prisoners of war, both civilian and military, was particularly brutal. This idea that it was a shameful thing to surrender. And indeed, very few Japanese servicemen did actually surrender in the Second World War, a few more towards the end of the war. But that in no way excuses their appalling treatment of the prisoners of war, one of whom was Ben's great-granddad. And how tragic is that, Patrick, that we have his health and his psychological state affected by the war,

Yeah, no, that is a grim story. We have actually focused on the POW experience at the hands of the Japanese with the story of my neighbor Simon de Water's

Bar, though, was a medical officer of the British Army who was incarcerated after the fall of Singapore and had a ghastly but fascinating experience. But the idea of actually looking at the experience of returning prisoners of war, I think, would be an interesting one, something we should have a look at at some point. Yeah.

I've got one here from Mike in the USA who says, I enjoyed your 1945 series immensely, but after listening to the episode on the final days of Berlin, it struck me that Germany still had troops who could fight but were scattered about Europe. In particular, I was thinking about the troops in Norway. Someone alluded to them in the podcast, but the idea was dismissed immediately.

with a chuckle. Why didn't Hitler bring them back along with their equipment to help defend Berlin? Was it simply a logistical problem? I don't think I was a party to that particular podcast. So what was who, was it you who dismissed the idea with a chuckle or was it Roger or what? Probably both of us. I mean, of course, you know, technically speaking, Mike, you could have brought everyone back to a kind of final last stand, but the timing would have been incredibly difficult.

I mean, one of the reasons they're in Norway is because they still want to hold on to as much of Europe as they can. And indeed, Hitler had been ordering, you know, no one to retreat. This was the whole point of our episode on Paris, wasn't it? And the sort of double game played by von Scholtzitz, the German commander, on the one hand, he had to at least

pay lip service to the orders he was getting from Hitler to defend Paris and destroy it if necessary. And on the other hand, he was thinking of saving his own skin after the war and maybe even thinking a little bit about, you know, the cultural preservation of Paris. But clearly there was never an opportunity to bring all the troops back to Germany at the same time. I mean, Hitler had this delusion that somehow something was going to turn up and he was going to be able to continue in control of his empire. And Norway was an important part of that. So yes, it's true that there was a large garrison there.

in Norway right to the end and Holland and elsewhere. But there was never really a practical way they could have brought them back to fight for Berlin because of the logistics. I mean, getting them back, the freight, a means of moving all those men and equipments through what was, of course, towards the end, the battlefield.

Okay, we've got another here from David in the UK. And this is about escaping Nazis. Do we know, he asked, how many Nazis actually managed to flee at the end of the war? Was it just a few dozen to South America? Or was it more sizable than that? And how did they manage to get there? Was there an organized network? Well, we really need Roger for this. But actually, I know that you've got a bit of information about this, Patrick.

haven't you? We've all heard about the network that got people to South America. We've watched the film The Odessophile. I mean, was there anything in, for example, the idea that some people went through the Vatican? Yeah, there was, actually. Well, not through the Vatican per se, but certainly through Catholic networks. Now, we're talking about

Rat Lines is the popular name for them. And very large numbers of Nazis, German Nazis, other fascists managed to flee Europe from 1945. Almost mostly in the direction of North and South America. Argentina, a very popular destination for your ex-retired Nazi, but also Paraguay, Brazil, Peru,

Guatemala, Ecuador, Bolivia, but don't forget also the United States, Canada, Spain, lots of fascists and Nazis in Spain, and Switzerland. And I think the connection, I speak as a Roman Catholic, with various Catholic prelates and organizations is very real and shameful.

The most notorious examples are the Austrian Bishop Alois Hudal and a Croatian priest, Kuleslav Draganovic. But the US intelligence was also partly responsible for this. It used existing rat lines to move Germans, Nazis, who were actually useful to them, particularly scientists.

So, yeah, it is something that I think that the Catholic Church has a lot to answer for. These are not just people who are unwittingly helping what they see are victims who are just acting out as sort of Christian charity. These are people who are actually pro-Nazi. Houdal, in particular, never made any excuses for his role. He had sort of complicated explanations for it, but he was pretty much unrepentant.

And the Croatian Franciscans also, they were very much hand in glove with the Ustasa fascist movement, who, it is said, shocked the Germans even by their brutality, their sadism really towards their opponents, particularly the Serb opponents. So, yeah, a pretty grim chapter in the history of the church. Is there a rough estimate at how many Nazis might have escaped, Patrick? I mean, it sounds to me like it must have been in the thousands.

I think we're talking about something like 10,000 altogether known ones. Yeah, extraordinary. Including some, of course, of the most senior who got to South America. We know that Mengele got there and actually was never tracked down by the Israelis, although they attempted to do so. And rather more famously, Eichmann, who was tracked down and brought back and executed in Jerusalem in 1963, I think it was.

Yeah, and even concentration camp commanders, Franz Stengel, who was in charge at Treblinka, Gustav Wagner, who commanded the Sobibor extermination camp,

Oh, and Alois Brunner, who died not that long ago, he was based in France, had a terrible record there of murdering Jews or getting them sent off to the death camps, who then moved on, of course, to Syria, ended his life in Syria. Okay, moving on to Charles Matesian. I think we've had messages from Charles before, because I made the point that he's almost certainly Armenian, as am I, or at least Armenian descent. And he asked a question about Project Valkyrie or Operation Valkyrie, which of course was the

July bomb plot to kill Hitler? If it had succeeded, would it have allowed for the creation of another stab in the back myth in Germany? I mean, it's a very interesting question, isn't it, Patrick? Because if we play parlor games, the most obvious one is what would have happened if the plot had been successful, if they had indeed killed Hitler? Well, what would have happened is the replacement of the Nazi regime with another, mainly of quite

far right German nationalists, including Stauffenberg himself, and they would have attempted to do some kind of deal with the Allies. Well, the Allies would have refused to do a deal. It would still have remained as unconditional surrender. But certainly it would have muddied the waters towards the end of the Second World War and muddied the idea that, you know, the Nazis were responsible. They were defeated at the end and there's an end to it.

Would it have allowed for the creation of a stab in the back myth in Germany? Well, possibly, but only from the Nazis, in my view. I don't think ordinary Germans are going to be saying the attempt to kill Hitler was really, you know, the reason we lost the war. But it's an interesting question, isn't it? It is, yeah. I mean, this, of course, is a Valkyrie was a sort of post-coup plan, practical plan for governing Germany, wasn't it? So it's like...

what, you know, we're going to take over the control of German cities, disarm the SS, arrest Nazi leadership and free German soldiers from their oath to Hitler. This was a big thing, wasn't it? In the testimony of captured senior soldiers

German Wehrmacht officers and all the rest of it, they often say, well, you know, I'd taken this oath to Hitler. We seem to think of it as a bit of a kind of fig leaf to cover their various misdeeds, but it was clearly something actually in the German military, wasn't it? It predated Hitler. If he was serving, you know, say, the Prince of Saxony or something, you were expected to take an oath of personal loyalty to him. So Hitler had picked up on an existing tradition. Anyway,

This would allow units or commanders with honor to actually come over to their side. So I think there is something in that. We certainly would, as you say, have created a problem for the Allies. These are people who are doing your work for you. But then you say, well, actually, we don't want anything to do with you. It's still, as you say, unconditional. So I think, of course, that was the right thing to do. And as we both know, some of the leaders of the anti-Hitler plots were involved.

indeed ideological, moral, upstanding and very brave characters, but a lot of them had blood on their hands and they'd certainly been enthusiastic Nazis prior to the change in Germany's wartime fortunes, not least them, of course, Klaus

Klaus von Stauffenberg, who you know a lot about, don't you, Saul? Yeah, exactly right. I mean, if you look at some of his letters home to his wife during the Polish campaign, for example, he's all for it. You know, the Poles, the only thing they're good for is agricultural serfs. I mean, you know, he was a racist. He was an extreme German nationalist. He'd believed since the end of the Second World War that, you know, Germany needed to be made great again. And while Hitler was making that

He was right on board. Was he ever a Nazi? No, he was never a member of the Nazi party. But he was a German nationalist who was a supporter of the Nazi project until, interestingly enough, things began to change in 1942 and 1842.

he recognized, I think this needs to be mentioned, that the killing of the Jews was a step way too far. And he did object to that early and often, and then try and recruit a lot of senior people who said, you know, what you're doing is incredibly dangerous. I mean, it's fascinating, Patrick, that he's eventually sent to Tunisia. I think we spoke about this before on a previous pod in 1943 to get him out of the way. And it's when he's in Tunisia that he actually gets his

hand and eye badly damaged by an ally's strafing attack. And that's one of the reasons why he's not actually able to prime the bomb effectively enough to kill Hitler. So, you know, great irony in all of that. But yes, the idea that all of these resistors of Hitler were good people, I'm not entirely sure about that. Okay, time for a quick break now. Do hang on, we'll be back in a moment.

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Rules and restrictions may apply. Welcome back. Got one here from Tom in Ontario who says, great to have Patrick back. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Tom. And he goes on, even though I have a bone to pick with him. Surprise, surprise, as we said before, a compliment followed by the rap on the knuckles. Well, actually, I'm very happy to read this one out. He says in episode 278, you wax eloquently about the growth and sophistication of the RAF by the end of the war. And I heartily agree. Your only error was by omission.

In the bombing raid on Hitler's Berghoff, he mentioned the heroics of a Canadian pilot who selflessly kept his crippled bomber in the air long enough for three of the crew to jump and save their lives. And he says, that's when my mind said, hey, Patrick, let's give Canada some more credit here. That fabulous evolution and the prowess of the RAF surely had something to do with a British Commonwealth Air Training Programme.

program, did it not? Well, this, of course, is the way that British air crews were able to use the sunny skies of the old empire to, or in dominion, should I say, in the case of Canada, to get their training done in peacetime circumstances, essentially, before coming back to the fight. And then Canada did indeed provide a huge service to

to the RAF in that respect, as well, of course, as supplying a huge chunk of the manpower, the air crews in particular, that flew those very, very dangerous missions, the Bomber Command and other branches of the RAF. So, yeah, chapeau to the Canadians. I always try and give them their due whenever I can, having written that book on Dieppe, where, of course, Canadians made up the biggest force and took the biggest losses there.

and also took, well, the Canadian commander took the rap unfairly, in my view, for that. So yeah, never for a moment doubting Canada's contribution to the British war effort. Okay, moving on to Mark, who writes about the atom bomb. Your part two on the Battle of Okinawa was especially insightful as regards the battle's influence on Truman's decision-making. And it wasn't just the troops in the Pacific who were spared the grinding, horrendous combat that would have occurred had an invasion of the home islands been necessary.

My father was a US Army First Lieutenant who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day plus 12 and fought in Europe through the German surrender. But this was not enough to earn him the points required to be shipped home. By August 1945, he was in Heidelberg, Germany, awaiting his next orders, which he'd been told would be to the Pacific for the invasion. Hundreds of thousands of others were similarly situated throughout Europe. It was not until the A-bombs were dropped and the Japanese surrendered that he could rest assured the war was over.

was over for him. He firmly believed the estimates which held that over 1 million casualties would result from an invasion of Japan. As you can imagine, given there's a good

a good chance I'd never have been born had my father been sent to Japan. I have little patience with those who, 80 years later, claim that Truman and the US acted immorally in making that decision. Yeah, he does add an amusing anecdote, actually. He says, on a recent trip to Hiroshima, we saw a fellow American tourist repeatedly and theatrically apologise to our Japanese tour guide for the bomb. Our tour guide seemed embarrassed by it all and said, no apologies.

when necessary. I could just picture some right on American embarrassing, not only his Japanese tour guide, but probably the rest of the party as well. So yeah, thanks very much for that. Yeah, he adds another note to say the measured approach you've all taken on Ukraine as well stands in welcome contrast to the shrill rhetoric we hear from all sides these days. And if it wasn't for Battleground, I'd never have learned so much about Bill Slim. I already mentioned him earlier. Indeed, one of the great generals that hardly anyone knows about anymore. So good to hear that.

Thanks so much. Another message about the atom bombs from Glenn McGrath in Sydney, Australia. He writes, my father fought as a commando in the Australian campaign in New Guinea for nearly two years when the news of the atomic attacks on Japan broke. He was serving in intelligence in Melbourne, but was fully expecting to be sent back to Borneo or Bougainville to fight in endless mopping up campaigns. He too saw the bombs as his ticket away from death and into his future.

No regrets from him.

of Mussolini's Last Days. It's called The Last Three Days of Mussolini. Now, we've been a bit remiss on Mussolini, haven't we? We haven't really paid enough attention to him. But we'll try and make amends a little bit here. You've read this, The Last Three Days of Mussolini, didn't you? It's by B. Lada.

and it's in the Atlantic magazine. Yeah, so very contemporaneous, dated December 1945. So obviously it's a few months later. But Lada Makarska, interestingly enough, was a member of the OSS. He'd been commissioned into the army earlier in the war in 1941, joined the OSS, which of course is the forerunner of the CIA, and was therefore operating in Italy at the time. And it's an incredibly detailed and very interesting account of the last three days of Mussolini's

And very useful for me, Patrick, because I'm currently working on my forthcoming book, Twilight of the Gods, which will include the death of Mussolini because it covers the war in Europe from 1944 to 1945. And so this is a very useful source for me. But one of the fascinating things that I didn't realize is that after Mussolini had been captured and then executed, the local communist movement,

Partisans in Milan, where he was actually strung up, were trying to prevent the violation of his body. But the crowd, which was very angry with Mussolini, not least because he'd executed, or at least his regime, his fascist regime in the north, the so-called Sailor Republic, had executed a few people locally just a couple of days earlier. They would not be deterred by the local government.

communist partisans, took law into their own hands. So it was effectively a lynch mob. Admittedly, Mussolini was already dead, but the violation of his body and that of his mistress, Clara Patacci, was carried out against the wishes of the local communist authorities. I think we've all maybe seen those pictures, those grisly pictures of them hanging up by their heels, I think in the forecourt of a petrol station, if I'm

Another corrective here from Mike Morris Jr. in Andover, Massachusetts, and he writes in brackets, and no, I certainly did not vote for the man, exclamation mark. I think we all know who he's talking about there.

And he says, far be it for me to question either of you, given my admiration and respect for your knowledge of history. Thank you very much, Mike. The statements that the Japanese government didn't understand that Hiroshima was an atomic weapon until the 9th or 10th of August obscures the fact that the U.S. President Truman issued a statement on August the 6th, 1945, i.e. three days earlier, that it was in fact an atomic weapon equivalent to 20,000 people.

tons of TNT. He says, I'll concede that the Japanese military leaders were often capable of deluding themselves throughout the war, and they might have refused to believe that statement, but there was more than ample evidence available to them that something horrendous had just occurred. And then he reproduces

Truman Statement in Fall Below. This is in your wheelhouse, as you would say, Saul. So what do you make of that? Yeah, I don't think it's an absolutely sort of, you know, fundamental element of the sequence of events and why they happened and the fact that the Japanese didn't entirely know for sure that an atomic bomb had been used. I mean, it's certainly true that in the Truman Statement, which he reminds us of, that was on the 6th,

directly after Hiroshima, that they'd spoken about a bomb with the power of 20,000 tons of TNT, as you just mentioned, Patrick, 2,000 times the blast power of the British Grand Slam, which we've spoken about before, which was the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare. So this is a new weapon, whether it's an atomic bomb or not, it clearly has enormous destructive power. And that's the message they're trying to send to the Japanese. Did they know it was an atomic weapon?

it doesn't really seem to me to be that relevant. But the other point he makes is that, you know, people often claim that the Americans only use the atomic bomb to prevent the Russians from coming into the war. Well, the reality is that they'd already come into the war before the second bomb was used. And as I think I said on a previous podcast, it's likely that Russia coming into the war was the trigger for the emperor actually telling the doves in his war cabinet that it was time to negotiate with the Americans first.

rather than the shock of the second nuclear weapon, which is often used as an argument. But clearly, the effect of the first atomic bomb, even if they knew it was an atomic bomb, had a big influence on the Emperor too. Okay, just a couple of little fascinating facts that have been sent in to round off with. One comes from Aaron.

who said we were talking apparently in one episode to how the war changed people's eating habits. And he says about 10 years ago, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, now under control with pills. Good to hear that. This sparked his interest in learning a bit more about diabetes. So Aaron checked out a few books from Denver area medical libraries, including one on the history of diabetes.

And one of the historical lessons that stuck with me, he says, is that during wartime, incidence of diabetes goes down because of famine near famine and wrestling. Well, there are beneficial effects of having a much simpler diet, which is imposed on you per force by wartime conditions.

So that was certainly the case, I think, in the Second World War, wasn't it? I mean, people were forced to eat what they could grow, so they were getting essentially organic food. And people lost weight. And as long as you had a diet that was going to sustain you,

There are certainly quite a few pluses to those privations. And of course, people now pay to undergo. They actually buy books, they watch TV programs, they listen to podcasts on doing exactly this, but without actually having it forced on you by wartime conditions.

And the final point is made by Tristan McLean, and he refers to the Hitler assassination. We did an episode, of course, on that with Roger. And it was a mention that the reason the bomb didn't go off in Hitler's aircraft, and this was the attempt just prior to the July bomb plot when they tried to blow him up as he was visiting the central group of armies in Smolensk.

And we mentioned on the podcast that this was related to the altitude. And according to Tristan, this is very close to the truth because the time pencil for the bomb relies on a chemical reaction to eat away at a steel wire, which holds back the hammer from hitting the fuse. The baggage compartment of the Ju-52 in which Hitler was flying is unheated and prevented the reaction from happening at the required pace. Hitler, writes Tristan, was a remarkably lucky man.

Okay, well, that's it for us. Thank you so much for all those questions and observations and stories and anecdotes. All wonderful to hear and a real treat, I think, for all the other listeners. So keep them coming if you've got a story to tell or an interesting observation to make. Don't hold back. So join us again on Friday for Battleground Ukraine. And of course, we'll have another episode of Battleground 45 the following Wednesday. Goodbye.