by Kathryn Hadley,
In February last year, the French council of state, the Conseil d’Etat, recognised for the first time the responsibility of the French Vichy government in the deportation of Jews during the Second World War. Peter Allen reported on Wednesday, June 30th, in the Telegraph and Mail Online that police reports from the time are now due to be digitised and published online. The files dating from 1940 will be made public in 2015, as soon as the 75-year official secrecy order issued by the post-war government expires. Archives from the following four years will subsequently also be made public from 2016 to 2019. Since the liberation of Paris on August 25th, 1944, the documents have been kept in the archives of the Musee des Collections Historiques de la Prefecture de Police in Paris. They include police logs from stations across France, details of fines, arrests and interviews, as well as information passed on to the Nazis.
In the Guardian, Nabila Ramdani explains how the online publication of the names of ‘second world war collaborators’ will force the country to reconsider official versions of the history of the German occupation and the ‘myth of the resistance’ developed in the aftermath of the liberation. ‘If a beloved great uncle was caught slipping some black market camembert to the Bosch in 1940, then the whole world will be able to read about it from 2015’.
It is not that simple, however. Can giving a German soldier a camembert really be defined as an act of collaboration? How indeed does one define collaboration and what crimes did one have to commit to be classified as a collaborator? When times were hard, queues for food were never-ending and people were hungry, can selling cheese on the black market to have a little extra cash really be defined as a crime? The history of occupied France is not black and white and the lines between collaboration and resistance were often blurred. People could, for example, superficially collaborate with the Germans in order to cover up more active acts of resistance against the Nazi regime. On the whole, the majority of the French population primarily sought to survive and carry on with their daily lives as unaffected as possible by the occupation. The publication of archives from the time will, above all, raise many complex questions about historical memory and issues of responsibility.
Showing posts with label second world war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label second world war. Show all posts
Friday, 2 July 2010
Friday, 18 June 2010
70 years ago de Gaulle said 'Non'
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, celebrated with British Prime Minister David Cameron today, June 18th, the 70th anniversary of de Gaulle’s broadcast appeal rallying the French to pursue the fight against Nazi Germany. It is the first time that a French president has travelled to London to mark de Gaulle’s historic ‘appel du 18 juin’.
The full text of de Gaulle's speech:
‘To be sure, we have been submerged, we are submerged, by the enemy’s mechanised forces, on land and in the air.
It is the Germans’ tanks, planes and tactics that have made us fall back, infinitely more than their numbers. It is the Germans’ tanks, planes and tactics that have so taken our leaders by surprise as to bring them tot he point that they have reached today.
But has the last word been said? Must hope vanish? Is the defeat final? No!
Believe me, for I know what I am talking about and I tell you that nothing is lost for France. The same means that beat us may one day bring us victory.
For France is not alone. She is not alone! She is not alone! She has an immense Empire behind her. She can unite with the British Empire, which commands the sea and which is carrying on with the struggle. Like England, she can make an unlimited use of the vast industries of the United States.
This war is not confined to the unhappy territory of our country. This war has not been decided by the Battle of France. This war is a worldwide war. All the faults, all the delays, all the sufferings do not do away with the fact that in the world there are all the means for one day crushing our enemies. Today we are struck down by the mechanised force; in the future we can conquer by greater mechanised force. The fate of the world lies there.
I, General de Gaulle, now in London, call upon the French officers and soldiers who are on British soil or who may be on it, with their arms or without them, I call upon the engineers and the specialised workers in the armaments industry who are or who may be on British soil, to get in contact with me.
Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not and shall not go out.’
In our June 2010 issue, Jonathan Fenby goes in-depth to explore the historical background and impact of de Gaulle’s historic speech.
Thursday, 27 May 2010
70 years ago today: Operation Dynamo
by Kathryn Hadley
Today marks the 70th anniversary of Operation Dynamo and the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk. Following the rapid advance of German troops during the Battle of France, French and British soldiers became trapped in a small pocket around Dunkirk. It is estimated that between May 26th and June 5th, 1940, over 300,000 soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk to Britain (approximately 200,000 British and 110,000 French).
Memory of the evacuation diverges on both sides of the Channel, however. The 70th anniversary is featured on the front pages of most of today’s British newspapers; it is not covered, however, in the French news. Whereas Dunkirk is viewed in Britain as one of the most significant episodes of the Second World War, in France, the evacuation was on the whole a humiliation, which has been largely forgotten. In May 1940, Operation Dynamo also caused disputes between the French and British generals, when Gort disagreed with Weygand’s plans to organise a counter-attack on Arras.
What happened to the French soldiers who briefly sojourned in Britain and later returned to France? In Dunkirk: Paradise After Hell Rhiannon Looseley uncovers the forgotten history of the evacuation of over 100,000 French soldiers from Dunkirk to Britain.
Another forgotten episode of June 1940 is the sinking of the British ship Lancastria, on June 17th 1940, in the concluding phase of an operation to bring home British troops left in France after Dunkirk. In Dunkirk: For Those in Peril Jonathan Fenby asks why the greatest maritime tragedy ever to affect Britain was hushed up at the time and has remained a virtually untold story for sixty-five years.
Today marks the 70th anniversary of Operation Dynamo and the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk. Following the rapid advance of German troops during the Battle of France, French and British soldiers became trapped in a small pocket around Dunkirk. It is estimated that between May 26th and June 5th, 1940, over 300,000 soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk to Britain (approximately 200,000 British and 110,000 French).
Memory of the evacuation diverges on both sides of the Channel, however. The 70th anniversary is featured on the front pages of most of today’s British newspapers; it is not covered, however, in the French news. Whereas Dunkirk is viewed in Britain as one of the most significant episodes of the Second World War, in France, the evacuation was on the whole a humiliation, which has been largely forgotten. In May 1940, Operation Dynamo also caused disputes between the French and British generals, when Gort disagreed with Weygand’s plans to organise a counter-attack on Arras.
What happened to the French soldiers who briefly sojourned in Britain and later returned to France? In Dunkirk: Paradise After Hell Rhiannon Looseley uncovers the forgotten history of the evacuation of over 100,000 French soldiers from Dunkirk to Britain.
Another forgotten episode of June 1940 is the sinking of the British ship Lancastria, on June 17th 1940, in the concluding phase of an operation to bring home British troops left in France after Dunkirk. In Dunkirk: For Those in Peril Jonathan Fenby asks why the greatest maritime tragedy ever to affect Britain was hushed up at the time and has remained a virtually untold story for sixty-five years.
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Saving Haiti's Cultural Heritage
The Fight to Save Haiti’s ArchivesMembers of the International Council of Archives (ICA) in Haiti have formed a crisis cell entitled ‘Heritage in danger’ on the fringes of the official commission for the evaluation of buildings and reconstruction. They have recently issued a statement listing some of the most urgent requirements in order to save the country’s archives and cultural property. Wilfrid Bertrand is the National Archivist of Haiti and Jérémy Lachal is the Executive Director of Libraries Without Borders, who is currently on mission in Port-au-Prince. Both stressed the pressing need for tarpaulins in order to protect the records that are currently lying on the ground and risk being destroyed during the forthcoming rainy season.
ICA explained that it is urgently trying to get these materials out to Port-au-Prince. It is also working with the Blue Shield Network, the cultural equivalent of the Red Cross, which was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War to protect cultural heritage during armed conflicts. The two organisations are currently trying to collect hard information as the basis for an initial report on damage to cultural property in Haiti. The report is due to provide an indication of the resources that will be needed to safeguard the country’s cultural heritage.
For further information, visit the websites of the ICA (http://www.ica.org/) and Blue Shield (http://www.ancbs.org/).
Bhutan: An Eye to History
More than 80 photographs charting the history of Bhutan were on display until the end of last month at The National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi. The images included photographs of Rinpung monastery in Paro taken in 1864 and of the King and Queen of Bhutan at the Red Fort during their first state visit to India in 1954. There is a slideshow of some of the photographs on the website of the BBC.
Hitler’s secret relationship with Eva Braun
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper concluded that Eva Braun was ‘uninteresting’. However, the first academic biography of Eva Braun: Life With Hitler by the Berlin historian Heike Görtemaker and published at the end of the month by CH Beck refutes traditional views of Braun and Hitler’s relationship.
In Der Spiegel Online Klaus Wiegrefe provides an insight into the realities of the couple’s secret relationship. The article also features a slideshow of images of Eva Braun and Hitler.
Kate Connolly also reports in The Guardian.
Light on Japan’s ‘Unit 731’ experiments
In 1989, a mass grave was discovered during construction work in Tokyo’s district of Shinjuku. The grave contained human remains which are believed to have come from ‘Unit 731’ where the medical research team of the Imperial Japanese Army carried out gruesome human ‘experiments’ on more than 10,000 people per year. Authorities in Tokyo recently announced plans to study the remains in an effort to address this dark, and previously ignored, page of Japanese history.
Julian Ryall reports in The Telegraph.
Friday, 12 February 2010
Wannabe cavemen in the United States
Wannabe cavemen in the United StatesPhilip Bethge reports in Der Spiegel on the development of a Stone Age subculture in the United States. In the belief that men lived healthier lives in prehistoric times, members of the New York based group promote what they term ‘Evolutionary Fitness’. They practice leaping and sprinting as if they were still threatened by mammoths and wild animals and follow a strict diet of lean meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts.
For further information, visit our Prehistory focus page.
The history of the Berlin International Film Festival
The Berlin International Film Festival was introduced to West Berlin by the US military administration in the aftermath of the Soviet blockade. The first festival was celebrated in 1951 and was designed as ‘showcase of the free world’, a propaganda tool to bring glamour to West Berlin. Der Spiegel reports. The article is illustrated with a slideshow of images charting the history of the Berlinale.
Death of the inventor of the Frisbee
The Frisbee was invented by Walter Frederick Morrison in 1948. He died on Tuesday, February 9th, aged 90, at his home in Utah. The BBC reports. The article also features a slideshow of images revealing 60 years of the history of the Frisbee.
65th anniversary of Dresden bombing
Every year, since the 1990s, the German far-right has traditionally staged a march to commemorate the bombing of Dresden between February 13th and 15th, 1945. This year, anti-right-wing activists including leftist politicians and celebrities have sought to oppose the march. Steffen Winter reports in Der Spiegel on how the anniversary has raised complex issues about commemoration and how memory is exploited for political propaganda.
In Dresden Plus 93 Days the British veteran Dick Sheehy recalls his experience caught up as a POW in the Alllied bombing of Dresden.
In Sowing the Wind James Barker charts the RAF's wartime bombing campaign of Germany.
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
First Impressions: Ministry of Food at IWM London
By Derry Nairn
The Second World War, which Britain and her empire fought from 1939 until 1945, offered up to history the enduring founding myths of the post-imperial period. The Blitz; the Battle of Britain; Dunkirk; VE Day: the conflict’s major commemorative events were all the result of military and material challenges, overcome by leader, soldier and ordinary housewife alike.
From food rationing, to the donation of tin pots for military hardware, an entertaining exhibition tells how the Second World War was experienced in the most immediate sense by ordinary people. At the war’s outbreak, the shipping of colonial imports such as Canadian wheat and Caribbean coffee, sugar and bananas came to a swift end. As this reality set in, the government attempted to quell public fears and raise morale through co-ordinated propaganda campaigns - the ‘Dig for Victory’ poster being one of the most well-known.
Outcomes were many and various. Mountains of food waste were saved. A wholesale conversion from cattle to arable farming came about. Alternative and ingenious methods of feeding hungry families were developed, often spontaneously, and on a local level. The domestic production of potatoes, oats, orchard fruits and root vegetables was encouraged. Recipes accordingly took account of wartime shortages, with ingredients such as mock cream (sweetened, whipped margarine), mock goose (a mixture of potato, apple, cheese and sage), and potato biscuits (made with oats and mashed potato).
Other surrogate staples were not so successful. Snoek, a cheap, pungent and hugely unpopular South African canned fish, made its inauspicious culinary debut. American imports such as Spam fritters, Wrigley’s chewing gum and Kellogg’s breakfast cereals had been available prior to 1939. However, the only successful 20th-century invasion of Britain - that of GIs - permanently popularised these dubious additions to the food arena.
'Ministry of Food' is not limited, however, to the compact first floor exhibition space. The Imperial War Museum’s café has been transformed, by Company of Cooks, into ‘Kitchen Front’ for the duration of the show. The menu reflects the realities of wartime diets. This is no bad thing, as the menu would feel more at home in a gourmet South Bank restaurant, than lifted from the pages of a rationing book. Alongside the obligatory mock cream and potato biscuits, sit delicious baked potatoes with Stilton and walnuts, marinated herring with red cabbage and miniature vegetable pies.
It is illuminating to query the motivations behind the Imperial War Museum’s choice of exhibit. A clue arrives with the opinions of TV gardener and environmentalist Monty Don, invited to speak at the exhibition launch of how the Second World War helped to redraw society’s attitudes to food sources. By 1943, six million British families grew their own vegetables. Urban pig-rearing societies had a 100,000-strong membership. Allotment space doubled over the course of four years. For Don, these are not flat historical facts. For him, and the green movement as a whole, the story of food production and consumption in wartime Britain has helped to inspire their vision for a brave new world of sustainable eating habits.
The historical parallels are difficult to ignore. Just as in 1939, Britain today relies as never before on cheap, imported food. In the same way as the merchant navy had to do battle with U-Boats, suppliers to UK supermarkets now have to fight rising fuel prices and volatile environmental factors. Reflecting these realities, any appraisal of recent government policy and media coverage will show a developing trend towards discussion of food policy and politics. A pronounced nod to the green bandwagon underpins the Imperial War Museum’s new exhibition.
70 years ago, however, the changes in how the nation ate, shopped, farmed and gardened were relatively immediate. By contrast, gestures towards a greener way of life in contemporary Britain are gradual and, a cynic might say, rather superficial. The island is not currently blockaded by submarines. The capital’s soil is not being ploughed nightly by doodlebugs. The trend for more sustainable, ‘ethical’ foods remains just that: a trend. It both limits itself strictly to wealthier supermarket customers, and extends to such anomalies as air-freighted, but organic, tropical fruit. Factor in the embedded status of such post-war trends as fast food chains, TV dinners and intensively-farmed agriculture, and the green lobby sounds more like a minority voice in the debate over food.
Monty Don, like it or not, is the poster child for a decidedly middle-class approach to food: one based on commoditised pleasure and the arbitrary concept of 'ethics', rather than enforced austerity. It may be stating the obvious, but the wartime populations of London, Manchester and Glasgow did not write to their MPs, demanding that their beloved banana shipments be torpedoed. A sad reality which the green movement must face is that tectonic social change does not tend to come about except through necessity. The message to learn from the Ministry of Food exhibition, and from history, is that until this country is forced to move away from its addiction to food convenience – be that, as in the past, through military aggression or environmental catastrophe - there is very little that can be done to change it.
Thanks to Doreen J Barber for the images of the exhibition.
'Ministry of Food', the exhibition opening on 12th February at London’s Imperial War Museum, deals with one of the most unsung but vitally relevant of these heroic victories: the revolution in culinary and dietary habits forced upon Britain by shortages in the island’s staple foodstuffs.
From food rationing, to the donation of tin pots for military hardware, an entertaining exhibition tells how the Second World War was experienced in the most immediate sense by ordinary people. At the war’s outbreak, the shipping of colonial imports such as Canadian wheat and Caribbean coffee, sugar and bananas came to a swift end. As this reality set in, the government attempted to quell public fears and raise morale through co-ordinated propaganda campaigns - the ‘Dig for Victory’ poster being one of the most well-known.
Outcomes were many and various. Mountains of food waste were saved. A wholesale conversion from cattle to arable farming came about. Alternative and ingenious methods of feeding hungry families were developed, often spontaneously, and on a local level. The domestic production of potatoes, oats, orchard fruits and root vegetables was encouraged. Recipes accordingly took account of wartime shortages, with ingredients such as mock cream (sweetened, whipped margarine), mock goose (a mixture of potato, apple, cheese and sage), and potato biscuits (made with oats and mashed potato).
Other surrogate staples were not so successful. Snoek, a cheap, pungent and hugely unpopular South African canned fish, made its inauspicious culinary debut. American imports such as Spam fritters, Wrigley’s chewing gum and Kellogg’s breakfast cereals had been available prior to 1939. However, the only successful 20th-century invasion of Britain - that of GIs - permanently popularised these dubious additions to the food arena.
'Ministry of Food' is not limited, however, to the compact first floor exhibition space. The Imperial War Museum’s café has been transformed, by Company of Cooks, into ‘Kitchen Front’ for the duration of the show. The menu reflects the realities of wartime diets. This is no bad thing, as the menu would feel more at home in a gourmet South Bank restaurant, than lifted from the pages of a rationing book. Alongside the obligatory mock cream and potato biscuits, sit delicious baked potatoes with Stilton and walnuts, marinated herring with red cabbage and miniature vegetable pies.It is illuminating to query the motivations behind the Imperial War Museum’s choice of exhibit. A clue arrives with the opinions of TV gardener and environmentalist Monty Don, invited to speak at the exhibition launch of how the Second World War helped to redraw society’s attitudes to food sources. By 1943, six million British families grew their own vegetables. Urban pig-rearing societies had a 100,000-strong membership. Allotment space doubled over the course of four years. For Don, these are not flat historical facts. For him, and the green movement as a whole, the story of food production and consumption in wartime Britain has helped to inspire their vision for a brave new world of sustainable eating habits.
The historical parallels are difficult to ignore. Just as in 1939, Britain today relies as never before on cheap, imported food. In the same way as the merchant navy had to do battle with U-Boats, suppliers to UK supermarkets now have to fight rising fuel prices and volatile environmental factors. Reflecting these realities, any appraisal of recent government policy and media coverage will show a developing trend towards discussion of food policy and politics. A pronounced nod to the green bandwagon underpins the Imperial War Museum’s new exhibition.
70 years ago, however, the changes in how the nation ate, shopped, farmed and gardened were relatively immediate. By contrast, gestures towards a greener way of life in contemporary Britain are gradual and, a cynic might say, rather superficial. The island is not currently blockaded by submarines. The capital’s soil is not being ploughed nightly by doodlebugs. The trend for more sustainable, ‘ethical’ foods remains just that: a trend. It both limits itself strictly to wealthier supermarket customers, and extends to such anomalies as air-freighted, but organic, tropical fruit. Factor in the embedded status of such post-war trends as fast food chains, TV dinners and intensively-farmed agriculture, and the green lobby sounds more like a minority voice in the debate over food.Monty Don, like it or not, is the poster child for a decidedly middle-class approach to food: one based on commoditised pleasure and the arbitrary concept of 'ethics', rather than enforced austerity. It may be stating the obvious, but the wartime populations of London, Manchester and Glasgow did not write to their MPs, demanding that their beloved banana shipments be torpedoed. A sad reality which the green movement must face is that tectonic social change does not tend to come about except through necessity. The message to learn from the Ministry of Food exhibition, and from history, is that until this country is forced to move away from its addiction to food convenience – be that, as in the past, through military aggression or environmental catastrophe - there is very little that can be done to change it.
The exhibition, however, is excellent, and comes highly recommended.
Ministry of Food
Imperial War Museum London
Lambeth Road
London SE1 6HZ
United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7416 5320
Web: food.iwm.org.uk
Nick Cullather explains how the USA made food an instrument of foreign policy, in American Pie: the Imperialism of the Calorie
Ministry of Food
Imperial War Museum London
12th February 2010 - 3rd January 2011
Lambeth Road
London SE1 6HZ
United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7416 5320
Web: food.iwm.org.uk
Nick Cullather explains how the USA made food an instrument of foreign policy, in American Pie: the Imperialism of the Calorie Thanks to Doreen J Barber for the images of the exhibition.
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
Ride in one of the last Second World War high-speed motor boats
by Kathryn HadleyPortsmouth Historic Dockyard announced this morning, February 9th, the recent purchase by Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust (PNBPT) of two of the last remaining fully operational high-speed motor boats, MGB 81 and HSL 102, from the Second World War. The acquisition cost £750,000 and was largely made possible thanks to a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund.
At the time they were built, the two boats represented outstanding examples of British naval engineering and were amongst the fastest boats of their type in the world. They were designed and built at Hythe (near Southampton) by the British Powerboat Company, founded by the aviation and powerboat pioneer Hubert Scott-Paine (1891-1954). The company later went on to build the Supermarine Spitfire. The boats were known as Spitfires of the Seas. However, they were made only of plywood and had no real armament. With 3,000 gallons of fuel in their tank, they were also particularly vulnerable and exploded immediately if they were hit in the fuel tank.
MGB 81 was used during the US landings at Omaha Beach. After the war, she was disposed of by the Royal Navy and bought by a private owner. The motor boat was later used as an accommodation barge for a sailing school and then as a house boat. MGB 81 was restored in 1988. HSL 102 is the only surviving example of the 100 class high speed launch. She was stationed at RAF Calshot during the Battle of Britain and retrieved wounded soldiers from the sea. As a whole, HSL vessels are believed to have saved a total of 10,000 airmen of many nationalities throughout the duration of the war. In two months, HSL 102 is recorded as having saved 38 men from the North Sea, including the crews of two German bombers. She was restored in 1996 and re-launched by HM Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
Both motor boats have now been restored to their working condition and are currently on display at Gunwharf Quays Marina in Portsmouth. Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust plan to make at least one of the boats available for charter so that people can experience something of their power and speed.
http://www.historicdockyard.co.uk/
In The Spitfire Legend Taylor Downing and Andrew Johnston seek the truth behind the legend of the Spitfire.
The History of British Surnames
Louise Tickle reports in The Guardian on the upcoming launch of a research project into British surnames at the University of West England. The project will provide a publicly available, online database of the meanings and origins of up to 150,000 family names.
More on the murderous founders of British obstetrics in the Times Archive
The Times Archive Blog features classified advertisements of The Times in its early days, in which Dr Smellie is mentioned as the inventor of some female pills and Man-Midwifery.
Monday, 1 February 2010
Understanding the Holocaust Today
by Kathryn HadleyOn Wednesday January 27th, Holocaust Memorial Day, a panel of leading historians of the Holocaust, including David Cesarani, Dan Stone, Zoe Waxman and Peter Longerich, gathered at the Imperial War Museum London to discuss the historiography of the Holocaust over the past ten years. The event marked the tenth anniversary of the museum’s Holocaust exhibition and the founding of the Royal Holloway, University of London, Holocaust Research Centre.
All four historians are in some way investigating a previously unexplored aspect of the Holocaust and each began by introducing his, or her, particular area of research. Whilst Longerich’s research is focused on both the perpetrators of the Holocaust and how existing thematic and geographic studies can be integrated into the general history of the Third Reich, Waxman is primarily interested in the ‘lived experience of those who suffered’. Waxman’s research seeks, in particular, to explore and integrate issues of testimony and gender into studies of the Holocaust. David Cesarani is currently researching the historiography of the Holocaust in the years immediately after the Second World War, and Dan Stone is writing a book about the history of Holocaust historiography.
How have studies of the Holocaust evolved since the end of the Second World War? More specifically, how has historiography changed over the past decade? Furthermore, how is research set to evolve in coming years?
It is generally assumed that studies and public commemoration of the Holocaust largely developed over the past decade. During the 1990s, historical studies came to focus increasingly on the victims of history. Rather than writing the history of the ‘great’, historians sought to redress the imbalance and to give a voice to those who had suffered and had been largely silenced. Increased commemoration of the Holocaust was a core feature of this general trend. On November 1st, 2005, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7 designated January 27th as an International Holocaust Remembrance Day. January 27th has been celebrated as Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK since 2001.
However, the perceived contrast between the considerable attention paid to the Holocaust by contemporary politicians compared to that in the years after the Second World War may be no more than an illusion. According to Cesarani, in the aftermath of the Second World War, there was a big drive to research the Holocaust and considerable efforts to gather testimonies and commemorate its victims. Jews dominated British politics, in part as a result of the campaign led by Holocaust survivors to emigrate to Palestine. Although research into the Holocaust was later sidelined, this was, in Cesarani’s view, largely a reaction against its ‘over-commemoration’ in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. In the United Kingdom in particular, attention had been focused on the Jewish population for years and there was a sense that the British public had had enough.
Efforts to research and commemorate the Holocaust may be no more widespread today than sixty years ago; nevertheless, studies of the Holocaust have undoubtedly evolved. The changing shape of Europe since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, in particular, has been a major influence on views of the Holocaust. According to Dan Stone, the effects of the collapse of communism and of European integration have been twofold, both positive and negative. On the one hand, the collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe has given rise to far-right parties such as the Yobbik in Hungary, which were silenced during the communist era. On the other hand, there is also a sense in eastern European countries of an obligation to carry out national investigations into the Holocaust in their bid to join the European Union.
There remains considerable research to be carried out, especially in Eastern Europe, and views of the Holocaust will continue to change. Dan Stone highlighted important voids in Holocaust studies on the ‘micro level’, once again, in particular in Eastern Europe. Archives in Eastern Europe have only been opened in recent years and remain understudied. These untapped and unexplored archives are notably expected to reveal a great deal about mentalités in eastern European countries at the time and may help historians to understand what led to collaboration in some countries. However, a major obstacle to the study of eastern European archives is that they are mostly written in eastern European languages or in Yiddish. Interestingly, there has been a drive in recent years, in American universities in particular, to train historians in Yiddish. Nevertheless, according to David Cesarani, the future direction of Holocaust studies is clear: ‘the centre of gravity of writing history will shift eastwards’.
All four historians are in some way investigating a previously unexplored aspect of the Holocaust and each began by introducing his, or her, particular area of research. Whilst Longerich’s research is focused on both the perpetrators of the Holocaust and how existing thematic and geographic studies can be integrated into the general history of the Third Reich, Waxman is primarily interested in the ‘lived experience of those who suffered’. Waxman’s research seeks, in particular, to explore and integrate issues of testimony and gender into studies of the Holocaust. David Cesarani is currently researching the historiography of the Holocaust in the years immediately after the Second World War, and Dan Stone is writing a book about the history of Holocaust historiography.
How have studies of the Holocaust evolved since the end of the Second World War? More specifically, how has historiography changed over the past decade? Furthermore, how is research set to evolve in coming years?
It is generally assumed that studies and public commemoration of the Holocaust largely developed over the past decade. During the 1990s, historical studies came to focus increasingly on the victims of history. Rather than writing the history of the ‘great’, historians sought to redress the imbalance and to give a voice to those who had suffered and had been largely silenced. Increased commemoration of the Holocaust was a core feature of this general trend. On November 1st, 2005, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7 designated January 27th as an International Holocaust Remembrance Day. January 27th has been celebrated as Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK since 2001.
However, the perceived contrast between the considerable attention paid to the Holocaust by contemporary politicians compared to that in the years after the Second World War may be no more than an illusion. According to Cesarani, in the aftermath of the Second World War, there was a big drive to research the Holocaust and considerable efforts to gather testimonies and commemorate its victims. Jews dominated British politics, in part as a result of the campaign led by Holocaust survivors to emigrate to Palestine. Although research into the Holocaust was later sidelined, this was, in Cesarani’s view, largely a reaction against its ‘over-commemoration’ in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. In the United Kingdom in particular, attention had been focused on the Jewish population for years and there was a sense that the British public had had enough.
Efforts to research and commemorate the Holocaust may be no more widespread today than sixty years ago; nevertheless, studies of the Holocaust have undoubtedly evolved. The changing shape of Europe since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, in particular, has been a major influence on views of the Holocaust. According to Dan Stone, the effects of the collapse of communism and of European integration have been twofold, both positive and negative. On the one hand, the collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe has given rise to far-right parties such as the Yobbik in Hungary, which were silenced during the communist era. On the other hand, there is also a sense in eastern European countries of an obligation to carry out national investigations into the Holocaust in their bid to join the European Union.
There remains considerable research to be carried out, especially in Eastern Europe, and views of the Holocaust will continue to change. Dan Stone highlighted important voids in Holocaust studies on the ‘micro level’, once again, in particular in Eastern Europe. Archives in Eastern Europe have only been opened in recent years and remain understudied. These untapped and unexplored archives are notably expected to reveal a great deal about mentalités in eastern European countries at the time and may help historians to understand what led to collaboration in some countries. However, a major obstacle to the study of eastern European archives is that they are mostly written in eastern European languages or in Yiddish. Interestingly, there has been a drive in recent years, in American universities in particular, to train historians in Yiddish. Nevertheless, according to David Cesarani, the future direction of Holocaust studies is clear: ‘the centre of gravity of writing history will shift eastwards’.
For more information on some of the controversies surrounding Holocaust Memorial Day read our article, Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain.
For an insight into the general debate surrounding the commemoration of historical disasters, read The Memory of Catastrophe.
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Chamberlain’s 1938 plane ticket to Munich sold for over £9,000
by Kathryn HadleyTwo weeks ago today, we reported on the upcoming auction of Neville Chamberlain’s British Airways plane ticket to Munich. He flew out on September 29th, 1938, at 8.30am. The following day, Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier signed the Munich Agreement. The ticket was auctioned by Mullock’s on Tuesday January 19th. It was expected to fetch between £5,000 and £7,000.
The final selling price was considerably higher than expected. The ticket sold for £9,280. Richard Westwood-Brookes from Mullock’s Auctioneers was unable to tell me the name of the buyer, but confirmed this morning that he was a private individual. It is also believed that the British buyer purchased the ticket with the view to donating it to a British museum. More to follow…
Above is a photograph of the ticket and the envelope belonging to George William Denny MBE, one of the founders of British Airways, inside which it was recently discovered.
The final selling price was considerably higher than expected. The ticket sold for £9,280. Richard Westwood-Brookes from Mullock’s Auctioneers was unable to tell me the name of the buyer, but confirmed this morning that he was a private individual. It is also believed that the British buyer purchased the ticket with the view to donating it to a British museum. More to follow…
Above is a photograph of the ticket and the envelope belonging to George William Denny MBE, one of the founders of British Airways, inside which it was recently discovered.
Friday, 9 October 2009
Roger Moorhouse in conversation with Tom Carver
by Roger MoorhouseEarlier this week, I had the honour of interviewing Tom Carver, former BBC correspondent in Washington and elsewhere and the step-grandson of Field Marshal Montgomery. His book Where the Hell Have You Been? was published in the UK last week.
I began by asking him what the book was about and what had prompted him to write it:
Tom Carver: It is a story about fathers and sons, about my relationship with my father and my father’s relationship with his (step)father who was Field Marshal Montgomery. Because Monty’s fame loomed so large in my childhood, my father never talked about his own wartime experiences. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered he had been captured at El Alamein after being sent on a suicidal mission by his stepfather, and that he had escaped from a prison camp and walked 400 miles down Italy and had lived for some time in a cave hidden by a very brave Italian family.
So at its heart, it is a surprising adventure story. But I also wanted to try to understand that Second World War generation who did such extraordinary things but rarely talked about them afterwards.
Roger Moorhouse: How did you come to uncover your father's story?
TC: When I was 11 years old, my father took us on a family holiday to Italy. It was the first time I had ever been abroad. We did the usual sightseeing but then suddenly he drove us up to an imposing looking building and announced that this had been his prison camp. It was the first time I was aware that he had been a prisoner and that day he told me a couple of extraordinary stories, including the account of how 600 prisoners managed to escape from the camp without a single one of them being caught.
After that whenever I asked him about the war, he would tend to dismiss the conversation, saying what he did “wasn’t much”. He was acutely aware – as many of the survivors of the war were – that so many others had suffered much more than he. It wasn’t until many years later, long after he had retired, that he began to open up. One day as I was sorting out his papers, I came across a battered looking tin in his study which contained a tiny compass made out of a safety pin and a metal coat button. He told me how he had built it in POW camp and used it to navigate his way down Italy back to the Allied lines.
RM: What do you recall of Monty when you were a child?
TC: I have very clear childhood memories of Monty – I was 15 when he died and formed part of the honour guide at his funeral at St George’s chapel as part of my school cadet force. When I was 9 and 10 I used to be taken by my parents to visit him. I remember one lunch being told to play in the garden and coming across the two caravans that Monty had used as his command posts throughout the war. I lay down on his bunk and stared at the portrait of Rommel that Monty kept on the wall throughout the desert campaign. There was also a large map of North Africa which I could see still had his battle-lines on it from the battle of El Alamein. Once I confess I took a chinagraph and added a couple of lines of my own going out into the Mediterranean! Fifty years later when I and my father went to visit the caravans in the Imperial War Museum, I noticed that the lines were still visible!
RM: What was your father's experience growing up with Monty as a stepfather?
TC: My father’s true father was killed at Gallipoli right out of Cambridge and until the age of 11 my father was brought up by his mother Betty. Then in 1926, Betty met a colonel by the name of Bernard Montgomery. At that stage of course he was just another officer in the British imperial army. They were married for 10 years very happily – I think it was probably the happiest period of Monty’s life – but in 1938 Betty died very suddenly from an insect bite which she got on a beach in Devon. Monty had a huge amount of energy and would always join in on any activity that my father and his brothers were doing, and Monty had a great deal of affection for my father – the fact that he wanted him nearby during his great test as Eighth Army commander was an indication of this. But Monty also had a very dominating personality and I think my father would probably not have stayed in the army after the war if Monty had not been so insistent.
RM: How did he manage to escape from the POW camp?
TC: On September 7th 1943, Italy pulled out of the Second World War. At that moment there were 80,000 Allied POWs in Italian camps. MI9, a branch of military intelligence, had sent a coded message to these camps telling the prisoners to stay put, which had disastrous consequences for the camps which obeyed the order – 50,000 troops were needlessly rounded up by the Germans and shipped by train to Germany when they could have escaped.
Fortunately in my father’s camp PG49, the Senior British Officer decided to ignore the order. The camp was also lucky to have a compassionate commandant who had fought alongside the British in the First World War. Two hours before the Germans arrived to take over the camp, he cut the wire to give the prisoners a head start. The instinct was to run as fast as possible but a number of the senior officers, including my father, decided instead to hide the prisoners right next to the camp where the Germans would least expect to find them. And for two days and nights, 600 men hid in a huge drainage ditch while the Germans drove around and around wondering where they all gone! It was a very risky thing to do but it worked!
RM: What was it like going back to find the family who looked after him in the war?
TC: It was an extraordinary moment. After my father died I decided to track them down; the only thing I knew was their name – the de Gregorios – so I trawled through the Italian phone directory calling every de Gregorio I could find, asking them if they remembered sheltering a British prisoner in the war called Richard Carver. Eventually one man said yes – he turned out to be Alfonso, who had been a boy of 14 at the time and had actually been the member of the family who found my father. He had been intending to ambush and shoot a group of Germans who had stolen the family’s only pig when he tripped over my father hiding in a bush! He was now in his 70s but still living in the same village in the Abruzzi. He laid on a huge celebration lunch for me and my family and we walked up into the woods where he showed us the cave where my father had lived for several weeks.
At one stage I toasted Alfonso, saying “thank you for saving my father’s life”. “No,” he replied, “you don’t understand. He saved ours. Had I actually shot the German patrol, the Germans would have destroyed my family’s home and executed my family.” This caught me completely by surprise but it was because the Germans in Italy used the old Roman system of suppressing the local population – kill ten of them for every one soldier killed by civilians. “Stumbling across your father” he said, “turned out to be an intervention from God.” It was a very humbling moment.
RM: What do you think drove the de Gregorio family to protect him?
TC: The contadini (peasant farmers) of the Abruzzi have always displayed a fierce sense of independence throughout Italian history, so I think it was partly that they liked anyone who was bucking the system or on the run. Had the tables been turned and Germans were fleeing from a British occupation, I suspect they may well have assisted the German POWs. In addition to that, they were motivated by a curious symmetry: several times my father was stopped by people and told that they had a son who was a POW in England and they hoped that if they looked after my father then somehow their son would be well looked after in the UK. Finally, the elderly in particular retained some affection for the British army, having fought alongside Britain against Germany in the First World War. In fact, the commandant of my father’s POW camp (PG49, the same one that Eric Newby was in) had fought in the First World War.
RM: What new aspects do your book, and your father's experience, tell us about Monty?
TC: I think it reveals a compassion in Monty that does not come through in the history books. After El Alamein when he became a household name Monty allowed his ego to run away with him which made him insufferable in many ways. But before the war, when he was raising a family and was an unknown officer, my father remembered him as a fun-loving and engaged parent. He was very much in love with Betty (my grandmother) and when she died suddenly, in 1937, he was heart-broken. I found in my father’s papers a very moving letter written by Monty to my father on the day of her death in which he talks about breaking down and being unable to go on. You see a very different man there than the common image of Monty.
RM: The title of the book Where the Hell Have You Been? is the first words that Monty said to your father when he returned from captivity. Could it also be seen as your own question to a father who was largely peripheral in your life?
TC: Yes. It could indeed. After being captured at El Alamein, my father escaped from the POW camp and walked 400 miles down Italy towards Monty who was advancing slowly up from Sicily. In December 1943, more than a year after he had disappeared, he finally stumbled back into Monty’s HQ and Monty’s first words to him were “Where the hell have you been?” which was his rather curious way of showing affection for his stepson! But the phrase does also refer to my father who was not very present in my childhood. He struggled with life after the war was over; I think he was rather overwhelmed by having to look after six children and couldn’t find a career he enjoyed. He also never talked about the war, conscious of the huge shadow cast by his stepfather. It wasn’t until late in his life when he was retired that I became close to him and he started to open up.
RM: It strikes me from reading your book that perhaps your father was most at home – and perversely at his happiest – whilst on his Italian odyssey. Do you think that is a fair assessment?
TC: Well, he never said it like that – on the surface he saw it as strictly duty, the need to return to one’s own lines as fast as possible and get back into combat – but for much of the way he travelled with another prisoner who was a wonderful epicurean figure and who loved the experience of being in this beautiful countryside and meeting amazing figures. And I think he helped my father to appreciate the moment and the uniqueness of the experience. And in later years I think those weeks of being on the run took on a sort of dreamlike quality for him – the consequence I suppose of being in disguise and living a life utterly different from the norm.
RM: Tom Carver, thank you very much.
Where the Hell Have You Been? is published by Short Books.
I began by asking him what the book was about and what had prompted him to write it:
Tom Carver: It is a story about fathers and sons, about my relationship with my father and my father’s relationship with his (step)father who was Field Marshal Montgomery. Because Monty’s fame loomed so large in my childhood, my father never talked about his own wartime experiences. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered he had been captured at El Alamein after being sent on a suicidal mission by his stepfather, and that he had escaped from a prison camp and walked 400 miles down Italy and had lived for some time in a cave hidden by a very brave Italian family.
So at its heart, it is a surprising adventure story. But I also wanted to try to understand that Second World War generation who did such extraordinary things but rarely talked about them afterwards.
Roger Moorhouse: How did you come to uncover your father's story?
TC: When I was 11 years old, my father took us on a family holiday to Italy. It was the first time I had ever been abroad. We did the usual sightseeing but then suddenly he drove us up to an imposing looking building and announced that this had been his prison camp. It was the first time I was aware that he had been a prisoner and that day he told me a couple of extraordinary stories, including the account of how 600 prisoners managed to escape from the camp without a single one of them being caught.
After that whenever I asked him about the war, he would tend to dismiss the conversation, saying what he did “wasn’t much”. He was acutely aware – as many of the survivors of the war were – that so many others had suffered much more than he. It wasn’t until many years later, long after he had retired, that he began to open up. One day as I was sorting out his papers, I came across a battered looking tin in his study which contained a tiny compass made out of a safety pin and a metal coat button. He told me how he had built it in POW camp and used it to navigate his way down Italy back to the Allied lines.
RM: What do you recall of Monty when you were a child?
TC: I have very clear childhood memories of Monty – I was 15 when he died and formed part of the honour guide at his funeral at St George’s chapel as part of my school cadet force. When I was 9 and 10 I used to be taken by my parents to visit him. I remember one lunch being told to play in the garden and coming across the two caravans that Monty had used as his command posts throughout the war. I lay down on his bunk and stared at the portrait of Rommel that Monty kept on the wall throughout the desert campaign. There was also a large map of North Africa which I could see still had his battle-lines on it from the battle of El Alamein. Once I confess I took a chinagraph and added a couple of lines of my own going out into the Mediterranean! Fifty years later when I and my father went to visit the caravans in the Imperial War Museum, I noticed that the lines were still visible!
RM: What was your father's experience growing up with Monty as a stepfather?
TC: My father’s true father was killed at Gallipoli right out of Cambridge and until the age of 11 my father was brought up by his mother Betty. Then in 1926, Betty met a colonel by the name of Bernard Montgomery. At that stage of course he was just another officer in the British imperial army. They were married for 10 years very happily – I think it was probably the happiest period of Monty’s life – but in 1938 Betty died very suddenly from an insect bite which she got on a beach in Devon. Monty had a huge amount of energy and would always join in on any activity that my father and his brothers were doing, and Monty had a great deal of affection for my father – the fact that he wanted him nearby during his great test as Eighth Army commander was an indication of this. But Monty also had a very dominating personality and I think my father would probably not have stayed in the army after the war if Monty had not been so insistent.
RM: How did he manage to escape from the POW camp?
TC: On September 7th 1943, Italy pulled out of the Second World War. At that moment there were 80,000 Allied POWs in Italian camps. MI9, a branch of military intelligence, had sent a coded message to these camps telling the prisoners to stay put, which had disastrous consequences for the camps which obeyed the order – 50,000 troops were needlessly rounded up by the Germans and shipped by train to Germany when they could have escaped.
Fortunately in my father’s camp PG49, the Senior British Officer decided to ignore the order. The camp was also lucky to have a compassionate commandant who had fought alongside the British in the First World War. Two hours before the Germans arrived to take over the camp, he cut the wire to give the prisoners a head start. The instinct was to run as fast as possible but a number of the senior officers, including my father, decided instead to hide the prisoners right next to the camp where the Germans would least expect to find them. And for two days and nights, 600 men hid in a huge drainage ditch while the Germans drove around and around wondering where they all gone! It was a very risky thing to do but it worked!
RM: What was it like going back to find the family who looked after him in the war?
TC: It was an extraordinary moment. After my father died I decided to track them down; the only thing I knew was their name – the de Gregorios – so I trawled through the Italian phone directory calling every de Gregorio I could find, asking them if they remembered sheltering a British prisoner in the war called Richard Carver. Eventually one man said yes – he turned out to be Alfonso, who had been a boy of 14 at the time and had actually been the member of the family who found my father. He had been intending to ambush and shoot a group of Germans who had stolen the family’s only pig when he tripped over my father hiding in a bush! He was now in his 70s but still living in the same village in the Abruzzi. He laid on a huge celebration lunch for me and my family and we walked up into the woods where he showed us the cave where my father had lived for several weeks.
At one stage I toasted Alfonso, saying “thank you for saving my father’s life”. “No,” he replied, “you don’t understand. He saved ours. Had I actually shot the German patrol, the Germans would have destroyed my family’s home and executed my family.” This caught me completely by surprise but it was because the Germans in Italy used the old Roman system of suppressing the local population – kill ten of them for every one soldier killed by civilians. “Stumbling across your father” he said, “turned out to be an intervention from God.” It was a very humbling moment.
RM: What do you think drove the de Gregorio family to protect him?
TC: The contadini (peasant farmers) of the Abruzzi have always displayed a fierce sense of independence throughout Italian history, so I think it was partly that they liked anyone who was bucking the system or on the run. Had the tables been turned and Germans were fleeing from a British occupation, I suspect they may well have assisted the German POWs. In addition to that, they were motivated by a curious symmetry: several times my father was stopped by people and told that they had a son who was a POW in England and they hoped that if they looked after my father then somehow their son would be well looked after in the UK. Finally, the elderly in particular retained some affection for the British army, having fought alongside Britain against Germany in the First World War. In fact, the commandant of my father’s POW camp (PG49, the same one that Eric Newby was in) had fought in the First World War.
RM: What new aspects do your book, and your father's experience, tell us about Monty?
TC: I think it reveals a compassion in Monty that does not come through in the history books. After El Alamein when he became a household name Monty allowed his ego to run away with him which made him insufferable in many ways. But before the war, when he was raising a family and was an unknown officer, my father remembered him as a fun-loving and engaged parent. He was very much in love with Betty (my grandmother) and when she died suddenly, in 1937, he was heart-broken. I found in my father’s papers a very moving letter written by Monty to my father on the day of her death in which he talks about breaking down and being unable to go on. You see a very different man there than the common image of Monty.
RM: The title of the book Where the Hell Have You Been? is the first words that Monty said to your father when he returned from captivity. Could it also be seen as your own question to a father who was largely peripheral in your life?
TC: Yes. It could indeed. After being captured at El Alamein, my father escaped from the POW camp and walked 400 miles down Italy towards Monty who was advancing slowly up from Sicily. In December 1943, more than a year after he had disappeared, he finally stumbled back into Monty’s HQ and Monty’s first words to him were “Where the hell have you been?” which was his rather curious way of showing affection for his stepson! But the phrase does also refer to my father who was not very present in my childhood. He struggled with life after the war was over; I think he was rather overwhelmed by having to look after six children and couldn’t find a career he enjoyed. He also never talked about the war, conscious of the huge shadow cast by his stepfather. It wasn’t until late in his life when he was retired that I became close to him and he started to open up.
RM: It strikes me from reading your book that perhaps your father was most at home – and perversely at his happiest – whilst on his Italian odyssey. Do you think that is a fair assessment?
TC: Well, he never said it like that – on the surface he saw it as strictly duty, the need to return to one’s own lines as fast as possible and get back into combat – but for much of the way he travelled with another prisoner who was a wonderful epicurean figure and who loved the experience of being in this beautiful countryside and meeting amazing figures. And I think he helped my father to appreciate the moment and the uniqueness of the experience. And in later years I think those weeks of being on the run took on a sort of dreamlike quality for him – the consequence I suppose of being in disguise and living a life utterly different from the norm.
RM: Tom Carver, thank you very much.
Where the Hell Have You Been? is published by Short Books.
Friday, 2 October 2009
The only existing film footage of Anne Frank
by Kathryn HadleyOn Wednesday (September 30th) the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam launched the official Anne Frank Channel on YouTube. The channel features the only existing film footage of Anne Frank made during her neighbour’s wedding in Amsterdam. It dates back to July 22nd, 1941, and shows Anne Frank leaning out of a window to watch the bride and groom.
Other videos include an interview with Miep Gies, who handed Anne’s father, Otto Frank, her diaries and was with him when he heard the news of his daughter’s death in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The channel also contains a video of Nelson Mandela describing the strength he derived from Anne Frank’s diary during his imprisonment on Robben Island.
The house, which was turned into a museum in 1960, was the hiding place of the Frank family between July 1942 and August 1944 and where Anne wrote her diary. The Anne Frank Foundation was established in 1957 to raise funds for the preservation of the house and its transformation into a museum. For further information, read our article Anne Frank, Forty Years On
Anne Frank House
Amsterdam
Telephone: 00 31 20 5567100
http://www.annefrank.org/
Other videos include an interview with Miep Gies, who handed Anne’s father, Otto Frank, her diaries and was with him when he heard the news of his daughter’s death in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The channel also contains a video of Nelson Mandela describing the strength he derived from Anne Frank’s diary during his imprisonment on Robben Island.
The house, which was turned into a museum in 1960, was the hiding place of the Frank family between July 1942 and August 1944 and where Anne wrote her diary. The Anne Frank Foundation was established in 1957 to raise funds for the preservation of the house and its transformation into a museum. For further information, read our article Anne Frank, Forty Years On
Anne Frank House
Amsterdam
Telephone: 00 31 20 5567100
http://www.annefrank.org/
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Hitler’s skull: did the Fuhrer really commit suicide and die in the bunker in Berlin?
by Kathryn HadleyHitler's skull is that of a woman. Maybe Hitler and his wife Eva Braun did not commit suicide. Maybe they did not die in the bunker in Berlin where they retreated to at the end of April 1945 as Soviet troops closed in on the German capital. Maybe they instead hid in Germany, or fled to South America alongside many other Nazi officials. These are just some of the questions that have recently resurfaced following the latest research by experts from the University of Connecticut.
As part of the filming of a new series on The History Channel, Nicholas Bellantoni, Linda Strausbaugh and Dawn Pettinelli from the University of Connecticut investigated what happened to Hitler’s remains in the aftermath of the Second World War. They concluded that the fragment of a skull with a bullet wound discovered by Russian scientists in 1946 and believed to have belonged to Hitler in reality belonged to an unknown woman. The skull has been on display in Moscow since 2000.
The general consensus is that Hitler shot himself after taking a cyanide pill on April 30th, 1945, to avoid capture. Witnesses in the bunker at the time claimed that his body was thereafter burnt and buried. In May 1945, after the Soviet army took control over Berlin, a Russian forensic team dug up what was presumed to be Hitler’s body and post-mortem examinations and dental records revealed that the body was that of the Fuhrer.
However, part of the skull was missing, allegedly as a result of the gun shot, and Stalin sent out a second team of scientists to investigate further. It was during this second mission that the skull fragment was discovered. Stalin thereafter imposed a secrecy order on all matters relating to Hitler’s death and the body was secretly buried in Magdeburg in East Germany. It was not until 1970 that the body was dug up and cremated. All that remained was the jawbone, the skull fragment and bloodstained remnants from the sofa where Hitler and Eva Braun were believed to have died, which were preserved in the archives of the Soviet intelligence.
Nicholas Bellantoni recently inspected the remains at the Russian State Archive. He collected DNA samples which were thereafter examined by geneticist Linda Strausbaugh. The results revealed that the skull fragment belonged to a woman under the age of 40; Hitler had just turned 56 at the time of his death. Bellantoni explained in an article published on the webiste of the Daily Express:
‘The bone seemed very thin and male bone tends to be more robust. And the
sutures where the skull plates come together seem to correspond to someone under
40.’
Could the skull instead belong to Eva Braun who was 33 when she died? Bellantoni claimed in an article published on MailOnline that it was unlikely:
'There is no report of Eva Braun having shot herself or having been shot
afterwards. Many people died near the bunker.'
Since the end of the Second World War there have been several claims that Hitler did not die. Stalin was convinced that Hitler did not die and instead escaped to Spain or Argentina. In 1947, Eisenhower was also allegedly handed a secret dossier compiled by CIA agents, which claimed that Hitler was in hiding Heidelberg. Soldiers thereafter raided the area; however, nothing was found.
The recent research has paved the way for similar theories to be suggested once again.
A video of Nicolas Bellantoni and Linda Strausbaugh explaining their research is available on the website of the University of Connecticut.
Monday, 7 September 2009
Churchill: a liability to the free world
by Kathryn Hadley
‘Churchill was more a liability than an asset to the free world’. That was the motion defended, on September 3rd, by Patrick Buchanan, Norman Stone and Nigel Knight at the Methodist Central Hall Westminster.
Buchanan, Stone and Knight failed to convince the 1,700-strong audience. However, they had to a large degree already failed before the debate began. Prior to the debate, a mere 118 voted in favour of the motion; 1167 voted against; and 422 ‘did not know’. Their arguments convinced just 63 people, with 181 votes against the motion in the aftermath of the debate, and the majority of those who did not know were swayed by the opposition. At the end of the evening, 1194 voted against the motion and just 34 still ‘did not know’.
Buchanan, Stone and Knight condemned Churchill’s economic policies as Chancellor of the Exchequer (from November 1924 to June 1929), his military strategy during the Second World War and the British bombing of German cities in 1945 and blamed him for the loss of the British Empire. According to Nigel Knight, Churchill’s decision to reintroduce the Gold Standard in 1925 severely weakened the British economy, which was consequently hit even harder by the Great Depression. The effects of the Great Depression, in turn, hampered British rearmament and meant that Britain was inadequately armed at the time of the outbreak of the Second World War. Knight also criticised Churchill’s military tactics of delay and dispersion, partly blaming him for the 10 million losses in the last year of the war. When the British army was victorious, at El Alamein for example, he attributed the victory to Montgomery rather than to Churchill, explaining that the British only won because Montgomery refused to follow Churchill’s proposed strategy. Norman Stone accused Churchill of losing the British Empire. Buchanan went so far as to blame Churchill for the outbreak of the Second World War, arguing that he should have instead sought to compromise with Hitler by dividing Europe into spheres of influence. Finally, Buchanan claimed that, at the Yalta conference in 1945, Churchill had given his ‘benediction’ to the Stalinist regime and had supported over 40 years of repressive rule in Eastern Europe.
However, their arguments lacked coherence and consisted above all of a list of individual mistakes which Churchill had allegedly made throughout his 64-year-long political career. Buchanan, Stone and Knight's only consistent argument was that Churchill’s achievements were a myth.
Churchill is indeed, on the whole, viewed as a hero in popular imagination. His statue on Parliament Square alone, just a few metres outside the Methodist Central Hall, is testimony to his heroic legacy. In the shadow of his statue and mythical place in popular imagination, Buchanan, Knight and Stone’s task to persuade the audience that Churchill was, above all, a liability to the free world was almost impossible.
Nevertheless, it seems highly unlikely that this myth was built on thin air alone and just a few of the opposition’s arguments were enough to reassure me that Churchill’s reputation was indeed built on solid foundations. Andrew Roberts, Anthony Beevor and Richard Overy all acknowledged that Churchill made mistakes over the course of his 64-year-long career. However, in Roberts’ words, placed in the wider context of his career and of the time, these mistakes were mere ‘pimples’. Although Churchill’s military tactics of dispersion may not have been entirely effective, they were in keeping with a strong British military tradition and, until the United States entered the war, Britain did not have the necessary forces for a more ‘full-on’ attack.
Above all, one of Churchill’s main strengths was his ability to take advice. His plans for El Alamein may not have been realistic; however, he was able to take advice from Montgomery and the battle was ultimately won. Britain was not a dictatorship and Churchill was not the sole decision maker. In this respect the debate seemed almost pointless: Churchill was not, and could not be, the only person to blame or to praise. Richard Overy described him as ‘largely a spectator’. Roberts, Beevor and Overy all agreed that Churchill was a ‘champion to the free world’ (Roberts) and issues of liberty and freedom formed the core of his set of values and beliefs. Churchill was, and remained throughout his career, a defender of the rule of law and of parliamentary government.
He reaffirmed the necessity to fight for justice and freedom at the end of his last major speech in the House of Commons in March 1955:
For Paul Addison’s view on the ‘Churchill Question’ read, Makers of the Twentieth Century: Churchill
For an insight into how Churchill dealt with his political rivals, read our article Churchill and his War Rivals
For information about his attitude to black peoples, read our article Churchill and Black Africa
In Churchill as Chronicler: The Narvik Episode 1940, Piers Mackesy suggests that Churchill was particularly skilled at writing his own version of history. He explains how Churchill made his father, General Mackesy, the scapegoat for the allied failure to recapture Norway in 1940.
For further information on the Second World War, visit our Second World War focus page.
Buchanan, Stone and Knight failed to convince the 1,700-strong audience. However, they had to a large degree already failed before the debate began. Prior to the debate, a mere 118 voted in favour of the motion; 1167 voted against; and 422 ‘did not know’. Their arguments convinced just 63 people, with 181 votes against the motion in the aftermath of the debate, and the majority of those who did not know were swayed by the opposition. At the end of the evening, 1194 voted against the motion and just 34 still ‘did not know’.
Buchanan, Stone and Knight condemned Churchill’s economic policies as Chancellor of the Exchequer (from November 1924 to June 1929), his military strategy during the Second World War and the British bombing of German cities in 1945 and blamed him for the loss of the British Empire. According to Nigel Knight, Churchill’s decision to reintroduce the Gold Standard in 1925 severely weakened the British economy, which was consequently hit even harder by the Great Depression. The effects of the Great Depression, in turn, hampered British rearmament and meant that Britain was inadequately armed at the time of the outbreak of the Second World War. Knight also criticised Churchill’s military tactics of delay and dispersion, partly blaming him for the 10 million losses in the last year of the war. When the British army was victorious, at El Alamein for example, he attributed the victory to Montgomery rather than to Churchill, explaining that the British only won because Montgomery refused to follow Churchill’s proposed strategy. Norman Stone accused Churchill of losing the British Empire. Buchanan went so far as to blame Churchill for the outbreak of the Second World War, arguing that he should have instead sought to compromise with Hitler by dividing Europe into spheres of influence. Finally, Buchanan claimed that, at the Yalta conference in 1945, Churchill had given his ‘benediction’ to the Stalinist regime and had supported over 40 years of repressive rule in Eastern Europe.
However, their arguments lacked coherence and consisted above all of a list of individual mistakes which Churchill had allegedly made throughout his 64-year-long political career. Buchanan, Stone and Knight's only consistent argument was that Churchill’s achievements were a myth.
Churchill is indeed, on the whole, viewed as a hero in popular imagination. His statue on Parliament Square alone, just a few metres outside the Methodist Central Hall, is testimony to his heroic legacy. In the shadow of his statue and mythical place in popular imagination, Buchanan, Knight and Stone’s task to persuade the audience that Churchill was, above all, a liability to the free world was almost impossible.
Nevertheless, it seems highly unlikely that this myth was built on thin air alone and just a few of the opposition’s arguments were enough to reassure me that Churchill’s reputation was indeed built on solid foundations. Andrew Roberts, Anthony Beevor and Richard Overy all acknowledged that Churchill made mistakes over the course of his 64-year-long career. However, in Roberts’ words, placed in the wider context of his career and of the time, these mistakes were mere ‘pimples’. Although Churchill’s military tactics of dispersion may not have been entirely effective, they were in keeping with a strong British military tradition and, until the United States entered the war, Britain did not have the necessary forces for a more ‘full-on’ attack.
Above all, one of Churchill’s main strengths was his ability to take advice. His plans for El Alamein may not have been realistic; however, he was able to take advice from Montgomery and the battle was ultimately won. Britain was not a dictatorship and Churchill was not the sole decision maker. In this respect the debate seemed almost pointless: Churchill was not, and could not be, the only person to blame or to praise. Richard Overy described him as ‘largely a spectator’. Roberts, Beevor and Overy all agreed that Churchill was a ‘champion to the free world’ (Roberts) and issues of liberty and freedom formed the core of his set of values and beliefs. Churchill was, and remained throughout his career, a defender of the rule of law and of parliamentary government.
He reaffirmed the necessity to fight for justice and freedom at the end of his last major speech in the House of Commons in March 1955:
‘The day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice
and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth triumphant from
the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never
weary, never despair.’
For Paul Addison’s view on the ‘Churchill Question’ read, Makers of the Twentieth Century: Churchill
For an insight into how Churchill dealt with his political rivals, read our article Churchill and his War Rivals
For information about his attitude to black peoples, read our article Churchill and Black Africa
In Churchill as Chronicler: The Narvik Episode 1940, Piers Mackesy suggests that Churchill was particularly skilled at writing his own version of history. He explains how Churchill made his father, General Mackesy, the scapegoat for the allied failure to recapture Norway in 1940.
For further information on the Second World War, visit our Second World War focus page.
Thursday, 3 September 2009
Memories of the Second World War
by Kathryn Hadley
Over the past few days, headlines have been filled with news of events and ceremonies to remember the outbreak of the Second World War. Seventy years on, from those who saw action in Europe and the Pacific, to those who stayed behind and fought to preserve a semblance of normality in their lives shattered by war, and to the children who were sent away from their families, memories of the Second World War are extremely diverse. To mark the anniversary, many newspapers have published memories of the Second World War on their websites. Here is a small selection…
In the international online edition of Der Spiegel, former German President Richard von Weizsäcker discusses his memories of the Second World War and the role of his father, Ernst, as a senior official in the Foreign Ministry.
In an article published on the website of The Telegraph, six women who lived through the conflict remember how it affected and changed their lives forever.
In ‘Watching the start of World War II’ published on the website of the BBC, Ignacy Skowron recalls his experience of the German attack on Danzig on September 1st 1939, as a 24 year-old soldier defending the military transit depot on the Westerplatte peninsula.
In 'Child evacuees relive their WW2', three former child evacuees describe their memories of the evacuation.
The BBC has also published some of the quotes of world leaders, including Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin, David Miliband, Donald Tusk and Barack Obama, during the ceremonies on Tuesday in Poland to remember the German invasion.
In the international online edition of Der Spiegel, former German President Richard von Weizsäcker discusses his memories of the Second World War and the role of his father, Ernst, as a senior official in the Foreign Ministry.
In an article published on the website of The Telegraph, six women who lived through the conflict remember how it affected and changed their lives forever.
In ‘Watching the start of World War II’ published on the website of the BBC, Ignacy Skowron recalls his experience of the German attack on Danzig on September 1st 1939, as a 24 year-old soldier defending the military transit depot on the Westerplatte peninsula.
In 'Child evacuees relive their WW2', three former child evacuees describe their memories of the evacuation.
The BBC has also published some of the quotes of world leaders, including Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin, David Miliband, Donald Tusk and Barack Obama, during the ceremonies on Tuesday in Poland to remember the German invasion.
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
‘First to Fight’ Book Launch
by Kathryn Hadley
First to Fight was launched yesterday, September 1st 2009, 70 years after the German invasion of Poland. The new book is part of a project to promote the recognition of the role of the Polish armed forces in Britain’s war effort. Contributors to the book and supporters of the campaign include leading British statesmen and military leaders such as Baroness Thatcher, General The Lord Guthrie, former chief of the Defence Staff, HRH The Duke of Kent, Winston S. Churchill MP, grandson of the wartime Prime Minister, and Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s official biographer.
Based on the personal stories of Poles who fought on various fronts, in the air, on the land and at sea, First to Fight recalls Poland’s six-year struggle against the Nazi forces. It also features a number of texts which are published for the first time, including the English translation of Stalin’s signed order to execute 14,736 of the Polish Officer Corps at Katyn Forest in 1940.
Approximately 500,000 Poles fought under British command during the Second World War. More Poles died as a percentage of Poland’s population than any other country and in the aftermath of the war, as Poland was incorporated into the Soviet Union, over 120,000 veterans settled in Britain. However, at present there is no memorial dedicated to the Polish Forces who lost their lives during the Second World War.
As the second part of the memorial project, a new memorial to these Polish Forces will be inaugurated at the National Memorial Arboretum near Litchfield, Staffordshire, on September 19th. The Polish Forces Memorial will be officially unveiled by HRH The Duke of Kent. The National Memorial Arboretum comprises 150 acres of woodland and memorials dedicated to the fallen servicemen and women from both World Wars and other conflicts of the 20th century.
Yesterday, to mark the launch of First to Fight, Baroness Thatcher recalled the contribution of the Polish Forces during the Second World War:
For further information on the new Polish Forces Memorial, visit The Polish Armed Forces Memorial website http://www.polishforcesmemorial.com/
For further information on the training, discipline and Blitzkrieg tactics of the German army and the invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939, read our latest article by Andrew Roberts published in the September issue of our magazine Second World War: The Storm of War
Based on the personal stories of Poles who fought on various fronts, in the air, on the land and at sea, First to Fight recalls Poland’s six-year struggle against the Nazi forces. It also features a number of texts which are published for the first time, including the English translation of Stalin’s signed order to execute 14,736 of the Polish Officer Corps at Katyn Forest in 1940.
Approximately 500,000 Poles fought under British command during the Second World War. More Poles died as a percentage of Poland’s population than any other country and in the aftermath of the war, as Poland was incorporated into the Soviet Union, over 120,000 veterans settled in Britain. However, at present there is no memorial dedicated to the Polish Forces who lost their lives during the Second World War.
As the second part of the memorial project, a new memorial to these Polish Forces will be inaugurated at the National Memorial Arboretum near Litchfield, Staffordshire, on September 19th. The Polish Forces Memorial will be officially unveiled by HRH The Duke of Kent. The National Memorial Arboretum comprises 150 acres of woodland and memorials dedicated to the fallen servicemen and women from both World Wars and other conflicts of the 20th century.
Yesterday, to mark the launch of First to Fight, Baroness Thatcher recalled the contribution of the Polish Forces during the Second World War:
‘Today, as we mark the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Poland and the
subsequent outbreak of World War II, we remember the unique contribution of the
Polish armed forces towards the freedom of Britain, of Europe and indeed of the
world. Poland fought alongside us from the first day of the war to the
last. Her people showed extraordinary bravery: many giving their lives as
the ultimate sacrifice. But the freedoms for which they fought were to be
cruelly denied them in the post-war world. Those who remained in exile could
only look on as a new wave of oppression engulfed their country. Some would
never achieve their heart-felt goal of returning to their homeland. But,
finally, after more than four decades under communist tyranny, the people of
Poland were able to set their own destiny.
In Britain, we remember the
steadfastness of the Polish people; we treasure the bond of history which ties
our peoples together; and we look forward to a flourishing friendship which will
serve our nations well into the future.’
For further information on the new Polish Forces Memorial, visit The Polish Armed Forces Memorial website http://www.polishforcesmemorial.com/
For further information on the training, discipline and Blitzkrieg tactics of the German army and the invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939, read our latest article by Andrew Roberts published in the September issue of our magazine Second World War: The Storm of War
Thursday, 27 August 2009
The Liberation of Paris 65 Years On
by Kathryn Hadley
Paris liberated itself. The French people, the Parisian police, members of the resistance and the French army rose in unity and fought together for the liberation of their capital city, which was, and remains today, a symbol of France. Such is the view of many French people, the view taught in French schools and the view put forward by Nicolas Sarkozy in a speech at the Paris prefecture of police on Tuesday to mark the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Paris.
In Sarkozy’s words, the liberation of Paris was a French victory. It was the victory of an entire people and the victory of a common national will (la victoire de la volonté nationale). The French people united under common national values, forged during the French Revolution, in the belief that, together, they were strong enough to change the course of France’s destiny. Moreover, this victory marked a new beginning, it was the dawn of a new era during which nations would come together to ensure that the mistakes of the past would never be made again. Lastly, Sarkozy compared the challenges faced by France under the yoke of German occupation to current challenges, in particular those caused by the financial crisis, and stressed the need for a rebirth and new economic order.
But did Paris really liberate itself? What about the 4th US infantry division which marched towards Paris alongside the French 2nd armoured division, the 2eme division blindée, led by General Leclerc? Would the liberation of Paris been at all possible without the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day?
Despite the heavy criticism met by this fervently patriotic version of French history, such a rewriting, or rewriting, of French history was understandable in the light of the traumatic French experience of the Second World War. The creation of a myth of a regenerated and new France was key in order to overcome the humiliation of the French defeat and four years of German occupation.
During the occupation, France and the French people had become to extent divided: some had resisted the German occupying forces; others had collaborated. The reality was, however, far more complex. The lines between collaboration and resistance were blurred and there was a predominance of ‘grey areas’, in which people both collaborated and resisted in an effort to pursue their daily lives and survive as best they could. Nevertheless, people had been forced to take sides and Jews in particular had been singled out with many being deported to concentration camps. France had been divided; but France was now united, once again, by the jubilation of victory and by the desire for a new start. The idea of rebirth was also important for de Gaulle in order to legitimise his leadership and to secure a place for France in the new world order, amongst the victorious nations at the end of the Second World War.
More interesting is that fact that, 65 years on, President Sarkozy is advocating the same myth of the liberation and history of the postwar period.
Paris correspondent for The Times, Charles Bremner, notably commented on Sarkozy’s speech.
The full version of Sarkozy's speech is available on the website of the Elysée Palace.
For further information on France during the Second World War, visit our French history page.
Here is also a selection of articles about France’s attitude to its history during the Second World War and in the postwar period
- The First War Baby to be Granted German Citizenship
- Is France still haunted by its past?
- French recognition of responsibility in deportation of Jews
- International colloquium sheds new light on denunciation in France during the Second World War
In Sarkozy’s words, the liberation of Paris was a French victory. It was the victory of an entire people and the victory of a common national will (la victoire de la volonté nationale). The French people united under common national values, forged during the French Revolution, in the belief that, together, they were strong enough to change the course of France’s destiny. Moreover, this victory marked a new beginning, it was the dawn of a new era during which nations would come together to ensure that the mistakes of the past would never be made again. Lastly, Sarkozy compared the challenges faced by France under the yoke of German occupation to current challenges, in particular those caused by the financial crisis, and stressed the need for a rebirth and new economic order.
But did Paris really liberate itself? What about the 4th US infantry division which marched towards Paris alongside the French 2nd armoured division, the 2eme division blindée, led by General Leclerc? Would the liberation of Paris been at all possible without the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day?
Despite the heavy criticism met by this fervently patriotic version of French history, such a rewriting, or rewriting, of French history was understandable in the light of the traumatic French experience of the Second World War. The creation of a myth of a regenerated and new France was key in order to overcome the humiliation of the French defeat and four years of German occupation.
During the occupation, France and the French people had become to extent divided: some had resisted the German occupying forces; others had collaborated. The reality was, however, far more complex. The lines between collaboration and resistance were blurred and there was a predominance of ‘grey areas’, in which people both collaborated and resisted in an effort to pursue their daily lives and survive as best they could. Nevertheless, people had been forced to take sides and Jews in particular had been singled out with many being deported to concentration camps. France had been divided; but France was now united, once again, by the jubilation of victory and by the desire for a new start. The idea of rebirth was also important for de Gaulle in order to legitimise his leadership and to secure a place for France in the new world order, amongst the victorious nations at the end of the Second World War.
More interesting is that fact that, 65 years on, President Sarkozy is advocating the same myth of the liberation and history of the postwar period.
Paris correspondent for The Times, Charles Bremner, notably commented on Sarkozy’s speech.
The full version of Sarkozy's speech is available on the website of the Elysée Palace.
For further information on France during the Second World War, visit our French history page.
Here is also a selection of articles about France’s attitude to its history during the Second World War and in the postwar period
- The First War Baby to be Granted German Citizenship
- Is France still haunted by its past?
- French recognition of responsibility in deportation of Jews
- International colloquium sheds new light on denunciation in France during the Second World War
Friday, 14 August 2009
Harry Patch and the currywurst
by Kathryn Hadley
I tried and tried, but could not find a link between the following two new exhibitions. Their tone alone is completely different, but I felt that they were both worth a mention nonetheless.
Harry Patch’s medals went on display at the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry Regimental Museum in Bodmin this week. Patch, who died on July 25th, aged 111, was a machine-gunner with the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. His eight medals include the British War Medal, the Allied Victory Medal and two French Legion d’Honneur awards. They were brought to the museum by the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall, Lady Mary Holborow, after Patch’s funeral last Thursday, August 6th, and will form the centrepiece of a display until October. The medals will thereafter be displayed alongside other awards belonging the veterans of the same regiment.
Major Trevor Stipling, curator of the museum, was quoted on the website of Legion, the official magazine of The Royal British Legion:
The Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry Regimental Museum
The Keep, Bodmin
Cornwall PL31 1EG
Telephone: 01208 72810
http://www.lightinfantry.org.uk/
On a lighter note, a new museum devoted to the currywurst is due to open in Berlin tomorrow, August 15th, to mark the 60th birthday of the German speciality. Currywurst is a chopped up fried sausage which is then covered in tomato ketchup and sprinkled with curry powder. A section of the new exhibition notably describes the history and cultural significance of the snack and addresses some of the legends and controversies surrounding it, including the place of its birth. The exhibition thus refutes the claim that the currywurst originated in Hamburg and presents Berlin as the sausage's true home. The snack was allegedly first created in the western Berlin district of Charlottenburg in 1949 by a woman called Herta Heuwer.
No matter how excessive the concept may seem, the museum curators have take the new exhibition seriously. Museum director Birgit Breloh was quoted in an article on the Spiegel Online International website:
Deutsches Currywurst Museum
Schützenstraße 70
10117 Berlin
Telephone: 00 49 30 88718630
http://www.currywurstmuseum.de/
I tried and tried, but could not find a link between the following two new exhibitions. Their tone alone is completely different, but I felt that they were both worth a mention nonetheless.
Harry Patch’s medals went on display at the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry Regimental Museum in Bodmin this week. Patch, who died on July 25th, aged 111, was a machine-gunner with the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. His eight medals include the British War Medal, the Allied Victory Medal and two French Legion d’Honneur awards. They were brought to the museum by the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall, Lady Mary Holborow, after Patch’s funeral last Thursday, August 6th, and will form the centrepiece of a display until October. The medals will thereafter be displayed alongside other awards belonging the veterans of the same regiment.
Major Trevor Stipling, curator of the museum, was quoted on the website of Legion, the official magazine of The Royal British Legion:
‘We're very pleased and very proud […] He wanted [the medals] to go on permanent
display for the public to see - that was Harry's wish rather than being put away
at the back of a drawer where nobody would see them.’
The Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry Regimental Museum
The Keep, Bodmin
Cornwall PL31 1EG
Telephone: 01208 72810
http://www.lightinfantry.org.uk/
On a lighter note, a new museum devoted to the currywurst is due to open in Berlin tomorrow, August 15th, to mark the 60th birthday of the German speciality. Currywurst is a chopped up fried sausage which is then covered in tomato ketchup and sprinkled with curry powder. A section of the new exhibition notably describes the history and cultural significance of the snack and addresses some of the legends and controversies surrounding it, including the place of its birth. The exhibition thus refutes the claim that the currywurst originated in Hamburg and presents Berlin as the sausage's true home. The snack was allegedly first created in the western Berlin district of Charlottenburg in 1949 by a woman called Herta Heuwer.
No matter how excessive the concept may seem, the museum curators have take the new exhibition seriously. Museum director Birgit Breloh was quoted in an article on the Spiegel Online International website:
‘no other German national dish inspires such excitement as the currywurst.’
Deutsches Currywurst Museum
Schützenstraße 70
10117 Berlin
Telephone: 00 49 30 88718630
http://www.currywurstmuseum.de/
Thursday, 13 August 2009
60th anniversary of Geneva Conventions
by Kathryn HadleyThe Geneva Conventions were adopted 60 years ago, on August 12th 1949. Yesterday, to mark the anniversary, Jakob Kellenberger, the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), addressed a diplomatic gathering in Geneva and various commemorative events were organised across the world. A one-day seminar on international humanitarian law was notably held in Beijing, there was a presentation on the relevance of the Geneva Conventions in Contemporary Armed Conflicts in Addis Ababa, a public forum was held in Manila to mark the anniversary, and a conference with the American Red Cross was organised in Washington.
Jakob Kellenberger began his address with the following words:
‘We gather here to mark a significant coming of age. Sixty years ago today, the
Geneva Conventions were adopted. This defining event played a central role in
expanding the protection provided to victims of armed conflicts. It also
expanded the ICRC's humanitarian mandate, and facilitated our access as well as
our dialogue with States.’
He continued to outline the evolution of armed conflict over the past 60 years, how international humanitarian law had adapted to the changing nature of warfare and the new challenges which it faced today. Statistics quoted in an article on the website of the BBC revealed a considerable increase in the number of civilian casualties from the First World War to the Second World War. During the First World War, it is estimated that ten soldiers were killed for every civilian; during the Second World War, the ratio of soldiers to civilians killed increased to 50 to 50. Today it is estimated that the figures are almost reversed: ten civilians are killed for every one soldier.
To mark the anniversary, the ICRC notably commissioned Ipsos to carry out a survey on what people in countries affected by war consider acceptable behaviour during hostilities and on the effectiveness of the Geneva Conventions. The research is entitled ‘Our World. Views from the Field’ and was carried out in Afghanistan, Columbia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Georgia, Haiti, Lebanon, Liberia and the Philippines. The ICRC’s director for international law, Philip Spoerri, presented the results of the survey:
‘Most of the roughly 4,000 people surveyed across the eight countries – 75% –
say there should be limits to what combatants are allowed to do in the course of
fighting. But when asked if they had ever heard of the Geneva Conventions,
slightly less than half said they knew such rules existed. Among them, around
56% believe the Conventions limit the suffering of civilians in wartime.’
The Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols form the core of the international humanitarian law (IHL), the body of law that regulates the conduct of armed conflict and seeks to limit its effects. They are aimed specifically at the protection of those who are not taking part in the hostilities (civilians and aid workers) and those who are no longer able to fight such as wounded and sick soldiers and prisoners of war. The 1949 Geneva Conventions are divided into four parts.
The first Geneva Convention protects wounded or sick soldiers on land during war and also provides for the protection of medical and religious personnel. The second Geneva Convention protects wounded, sick and shipwrecked military personnel at sea during war. It is similar to the first convention in terms of structure and content but applies specifically to war at sea. The third Geneva Convention applies to prisoners of war and the fourth Geneva Convention provides for the protection of civilians, including in occupied territory.
The history of the Geneva Conventions does not begin with the Second W
orld War. Various conventions to protect those involved in armed conflict were adopted from the mid-19th century onwards. The first Geneva Convention, for example, is the fourth version of the convention on the sick and wounded which was initially adopted in 1864. However, the conventions adopted before 1949 were restricted to combatants and did not apply to civilians. The Second World War had revealed the disastrous effects of war on civilian populations and the consequent need for adequate protection. The existing conventions were thus expanded and formalised in the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The 1949 Geneva Conventions also include Article 3, which is common to all four conventions and, for the first time, made all the essential rules of the four conventions applicable to conflicts of a non-international character. Three further protocols were added to the Geneva Conventions in 1977 and 2005.The Geneva Conventions entered into force on October 21st, 1950 and ratification grew steadily from then onwards. In the 1950s, 74 states ratified the Conventions; 48 states did so during the 1960s; 20 States signed on during the 1970s; and another 20 States did so during the 1980s. Twenty-six countries ratified the Conventions in the early 1990s, largely in the aftermath of the break-up of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and the former Yugoslavia. Since 2000, seven new states have ratified the conventions, bringing the total number of ratifications to 194 and making the Geneva Conventions universally applicable.
Despite their universal ratification, the Geneva Conventions are not always respected and considerable obstacles remain.
To mark the anniversary, further events are planned worldwide over the coming months. For more information, visit the website of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
http://www.icrc.org/
Pictures:
- Geneva. Diplomatic conference for the revision of the Geneva conventions, 12/08/1949 (copyright ICRC/WASSERMANN, M.)
- ditto (copyright ICRC/CADOUX, J.)
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
The First War Baby to be Granted German Citizenship
by Kathryn Hadley
66 years after his birth, Daniel Rouxel was granted German citizenship at the end of last week. Rouxel, who was humiliated as a child for being the ‘son of a Boche’, was the first to sign up to a German scheme to recognise war children born in France, which was launched last February when German authorities agreed to grant joint citizenship to those fathered by German soldiers during the Second World War. He collected his new identity papers from the German consulate in Paris on August 5th.
Rouxel was born to a French mother and German solider in occupied France in 1943. His mother was employed in a German airbase canteen in Brittany when she met Lieutenant Otto Ammon. Ammon was later killed during the Allied invasion of France and Rouxel was brought up by his grandmother in a village in Brittany. He remembers how his grandmother forced him to sleep in a henhouse and how, aged six, he was publicly humiliated by the local village mayor. He is quoted in an article published on the BBC website.
Rouxel described how:
It is estimated that as many as 200,000 French children may have been born to illicit liaisons during the German occupation. In the aftermath of the war, neither the French nor the German authorities recognised the parentage of these war children. The children were registered as ‘father unknown’.
Ms Nivoix-Sevestre is the president of the French association Amicale Nationale des Enfants de la Guerre (ANEG), or the French National Association of War Children. She too was born to a French mother and German soldier in 1942 and described how in the worst cases some children were even forced to eat cockroaches or to drink their own urine. Ms Nivoix-Sevestre’s mother was killed during the Allied bombardment of Caen during the summer of 1944. She was brought up by a foster mother and discovered her father’s identity when she was 13. She first began trace her father in 2003. She is still searching and believes that her father died on the Eastern Front.
The ANEG was founded in 2005 to provide support to war children and their descendants and to help them retrace their families in Germany or Austria. It currently has 384 members and has helped over a third of them to locate their paternal families in Germany. The association works closely with the Deutsche Dienststelle, the Wehrmacht Information Office for War Losses and Prisoners of War (WASt), which was opened in Berlin shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War and currently holds some 18 million index cards on Second World War German soldiers.
One of the main tasks of the WASt was to register and process German Wehrmacht casualties. The organisation was transferred to Thuringia in central Germany in August 1943. From April 1945 onwards, following the occupation of Thuringia, it worked under the supervision of the American Military Commission and was moved, once again, to Furstenhagen near Kassel in the north of the state of Hessen. The WASt returned to Berlin at the end of January 1946. In June, the Allied Control Commission declared that the WASt was to carry on its work and its administration was taken over by the French section of the Control Commission.
66 years after his birth, Daniel Rouxel was granted German citizenship at the end of last week. Rouxel, who was humiliated as a child for being the ‘son of a Boche’, was the first to sign up to a German scheme to recognise war children born in France, which was launched last February when German authorities agreed to grant joint citizenship to those fathered by German soldiers during the Second World War. He collected his new identity papers from the German consulate in Paris on August 5th.
Rouxel was born to a French mother and German solider in occupied France in 1943. His mother was employed in a German airbase canteen in Brittany when she met Lieutenant Otto Ammon. Ammon was later killed during the Allied invasion of France and Rouxel was brought up by his grandmother in a village in Brittany. He remembers how his grandmother forced him to sleep in a henhouse and how, aged six, he was publicly humiliated by the local village mayor. He is quoted in an article published on the BBC website.
‘Which one of you knows the difference between a swallow and a Boche?’ The mayor
asked. ‘I'll tell you. When the swallow makes its babies here in France, it
takes them with it when it leaves. But the Boche - he leaves his behind.’
Rouxel described how:
‘I wept and wept […] I was so ashamed that I ran and hid under a bridge for the
whole night. I even thought of doing away with myself.’
It is estimated that as many as 200,000 French children may have been born to illicit liaisons during the German occupation. In the aftermath of the war, neither the French nor the German authorities recognised the parentage of these war children. The children were registered as ‘father unknown’.
Ms Nivoix-Sevestre is the president of the French association Amicale Nationale des Enfants de la Guerre (ANEG), or the French National Association of War Children. She too was born to a French mother and German soldier in 1942 and described how in the worst cases some children were even forced to eat cockroaches or to drink their own urine. Ms Nivoix-Sevestre’s mother was killed during the Allied bombardment of Caen during the summer of 1944. She was brought up by a foster mother and discovered her father’s identity when she was 13. She first began trace her father in 2003. She is still searching and believes that her father died on the Eastern Front.
The ANEG was founded in 2005 to provide support to war children and their descendants and to help them retrace their families in Germany or Austria. It currently has 384 members and has helped over a third of them to locate their paternal families in Germany. The association works closely with the Deutsche Dienststelle, the Wehrmacht Information Office for War Losses and Prisoners of War (WASt), which was opened in Berlin shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War and currently holds some 18 million index cards on Second World War German soldiers.
One of the main tasks of the WASt was to register and process German Wehrmacht casualties. The organisation was transferred to Thuringia in central Germany in August 1943. From April 1945 onwards, following the occupation of Thuringia, it worked under the supervision of the American Military Commission and was moved, once again, to Furstenhagen near Kassel in the north of the state of Hessen. The WASt returned to Berlin at the end of January 1946. In June, the Allied Control Commission declared that the WASt was to carry on its work and its administration was taken over by the French section of the Control Commission.
Alongside the launch of the German scheme to grant citizenship to children born to German fathers during the occupation in France, there were also moves in France in February towards increased recognition of some aspects of its difficult and controversial past during the Second World War. On Monday February 16th, the French council of state officially recognised, for the first time, the responsibility of the Vichy government in the deportation of Jews during the Second World War.
Have these recent measures put an end to the fights for increased recognition fought by some of the victims of the Second World War and German occupation of France? The answer is far from simple and for many the battle of historical memory continues.
For further information on some of the recent debates in France over resistance to the German occupation, read our article The Aubrac Controversy
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Anthony Blunt memoir available in British Library Reading Rooms
by Kathryn Hadley
Last Thursday, July 23rd, the manuscript memoir of Anthony Blunt became available for study in the Manuscripts Reading Room at the British Library. The manuscript was given to the British Library in July 1984, just over a year after Blunt’s death, by a donor who wished to remain anonymous and on the condition that the manuscript be withheld from public access for 25 years. Anthony Blunt began to write his memoir in 1979, after his public exposure as a spy.
Anthony Frederick Blunt (1907-1983) studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was named Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures and oversaw the opening of the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace in 1961. He was Professor of History of Art at the University of London and Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art from 1947 to 1974. During the Second World War and until 1951, he worked for MI5 and was knighted in 1956 for his work.
Blunt was also a Russian spy. He joined the Communist Party at Cambridge and was initially recruited by the Russian NKVD, as a ‘talent spotter’, in 1937. Following a series of interrogations by British security forces in the 1950s, he was independently identified as a spy in 1964. He was granted immunity from prosecution and the British government agreed to keep his spying career an official secret for 15 years in return for a full confession. In the 1970s, however, he was identified as the ‘Fourth Man’ of the Cambridge Five, a group of spies including Kim Philby, Donald Duart Mclean, Guy Burgess and John Cairncross who worked for the Soviet Union during the Second World War and into the 1950s. In 1979, he was publicly named a spy by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons. He was stripped of his knighthood and was removed as an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College.
Frances Harris, the British Library’s Head of Modern Historical Manuscripts, described the manuscript:
Dr Klaus Fuchs was a British nuclear physicist and spy who helped the Soviet Union develop the atom bomb. In May 2003 MI5 released files on Fuchs. In our article Radioactive Leak Andrew Cook compares the MI5 files with Russian intelligence files held in Moscow.
Last Thursday, July 23rd, the manuscript memoir of Anthony Blunt became available for study in the Manuscripts Reading Room at the British Library. The manuscript was given to the British Library in July 1984, just over a year after Blunt’s death, by a donor who wished to remain anonymous and on the condition that the manuscript be withheld from public access for 25 years. Anthony Blunt began to write his memoir in 1979, after his public exposure as a spy.
Anthony Frederick Blunt (1907-1983) studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was named Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures and oversaw the opening of the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace in 1961. He was Professor of History of Art at the University of London and Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art from 1947 to 1974. During the Second World War and until 1951, he worked for MI5 and was knighted in 1956 for his work.
Blunt was also a Russian spy. He joined the Communist Party at Cambridge and was initially recruited by the Russian NKVD, as a ‘talent spotter’, in 1937. Following a series of interrogations by British security forces in the 1950s, he was independently identified as a spy in 1964. He was granted immunity from prosecution and the British government agreed to keep his spying career an official secret for 15 years in return for a full confession. In the 1970s, however, he was identified as the ‘Fourth Man’ of the Cambridge Five, a group of spies including Kim Philby, Donald Duart Mclean, Guy Burgess and John Cairncross who worked for the Soviet Union during the Second World War and into the 1950s. In 1979, he was publicly named a spy by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons. He was stripped of his knighthood and was removed as an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College.
Frances Harris, the British Library’s Head of Modern Historical Manuscripts, described the manuscript:
‘The manuscript survives in two versions: a draft, partly typewritten and partly
in Blunt’s handwriting, and a typewritten fair copy of it. It begins with
Blunt’s birth in Bournemouth in 1907, and continues with an account of his life
and career until his public exposure in 1979. In the preface he states that he
had written it for the benefit of the friends who had stood by him and for those
members of the public who wanted to have his own version of events. In the
course of his own narrative he makes frequent and specific comments on the
accuracy or otherwise of earlier published accounts. Although it contains no
revelations, the memoir is important as an account of Blunt’s life and motives
in his own words and with his own emphasis, composed not under interrogation or
pressure of events, but with time to reflect and when he must have realized his
health was failing and this would be his last opportunity. It is the one central
document bearing on this long, complex and controversial episode in recent
history which has been known to exist, but has not hitherto been accessible. The
lifting of restriction on public access means that it can now be considered
alongside the many records and commentaries from other sources. The time that
has elapsed and the information that has come to light since it was written mean
that it can now receive a more considered and knowledgeable assessment than
would have previously been possible.’
Dr Klaus Fuchs was a British nuclear physicist and spy who helped the Soviet Union develop the atom bomb. In May 2003 MI5 released files on Fuchs. In our article Radioactive Leak Andrew Cook compares the MI5 files with Russian intelligence files held in Moscow.
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