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Free Republic University, Department of History presents World War II Plus 70 Years: Seminar and Discussion Forum
First session: September 1, 2009. Last date to add: September 2, 2015.
Reading assignment: New York Times articles and the occasional radio broadcast delivered daily to students on the 70th anniversary of original publication date. (Previously posted articles can be found by searching on keyword “realtime” Or view Homer’s posting history .)
To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by freepmail. Those on the Realtime +/- 70 Years ping list are automatically enrolled. Also visit our general discussion thread.

Selections from West Point Atlas for the Second World War
Southern Okinawa: Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru, 1945 – XXIV Corps Operations, 9 April-6 May 1945
Okinawa, Ryukyus Islands, 1945: Japanese Thirty Second Army Defensive Dispositions, 1 April 1945
Luzon, P.I., 1941: Final Operations on Luzon, 3 February-20 July 1945
Southeast Asia, 1941: Final Allied Offensives in the Southwest Pacific Area 19 February-1 July 1945
Germany, 1944: Reduction of the Ruhr Pocket and Advance to Elbe and Mulde Rivers, Operations 5-18 April 1945
Northern Italy, 1944: Allied Plan of Attack, 1 April 1945, and situation 20 April, Showing Gains Since 2 April
China, 1941: Operation Ichigo, 1945 and Final Operations in the War
Southern Asia, 1941: Third Burma Campaign-Allied Victory, April-May 1945

Bob Dole was wounded during this Italian Campaign. Not sure but I think it was in mid-April he was wounded.

"Halt at the Elbe Laid to Logistics."

Uh huh. And I'm the queen of England.

5.56mm

Otto Tolischus was in Tokyo for the NYT on Dec. 7, 1941, and was arrested and tortured until he returned to the US in a prisoner exchange. His early research, pointing to evidence that Japan indeed intended to rule the world, was, I suspect, quickly swept under the rug, in the rush to the Cold War and the switcheroo of making Japan our ally and Red China our enemy, in favor of Reichshauer's "militarists took over the government and fooled the Emperor." That narrative is still heard among intellectuals today, even though that was blown out of the water by numerous studies since, including David Bergamini's Japan's Imperial Conspiracy and later work by Edward Behr and Herbert Bix, among others.

As was noted both yesterday and today, Ernie Pyle perishes today during the fight for Okinawa. In addition to this column, which he presumably meant to be published after the German surrender, there are two columns not published before he died that will come out in the days after his death, and will be posted accordingly.

______________________________

This column was never completed. A draft of it was found in Pyle's pocket, April 18, 1945, the day he was killed by a Japanese machine-gunner on the island of Ie Shima.

On Victory in Europe

IU Archives

Pyle with an Army Jeep driver.

http://mediaschool.indiana.edu/erniepyle/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2015/01/victoryeurope.mp3

And so it is over. The catastrophe on one side of the world has run its course. The day that it had so long seemed would never come has come at last. I suppose our emotions here in the Pacific are the same as they were among Allies all over the world. First a shouting of the good news with such joyous surprise that you would think the shouter himself had brought it about.

And then an unspoken sense of gigantic relief-and then a hope that the collapse in Europe would hasten the end in the Pacific.

It has been seven months since I heard my last shot in the European War. Now I am as far away from it as it is possible to get on this globe.

This is written on a little ship lying off the coast of the Island of Okinawa, just south of Japan, on the other side of the world from Ardennes.

But my heart is still in Europe, and that’s why I am writing this column.

It is to the boys who were my friends for so long. My one regret of the war is that I was not with them when it ended.

For the companionship of two and a half years of death and misery is a spouse that tolerates no divorce. Such companionship finally becomes a part of one’s soul, and it cannot be obliterated.

True, I am with American boys in the other war not yet ended, but I am old-fashioned and my sentiment runs to old things.

To me the European War is old, and the Pacific War is new.

Last summer I wrote that I hoped the end of the war could be a gigantic relief, but not an elation. In the joyousness of high spirits it is so easy for us to forget the dead. Those who are gone would not wish themselves to be a millstone of gloom around our necks.

But there are so many of the living who have had burned into their brains forever the unnatural sight of cold dead men scattered over the hillsides and in the ditches along the high rows of hedge throughout the world.

Dead men by mass production-in one country after another-month after month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer.

Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous.

Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them.

Those are the things that you at home need not even try to understand. To you at home they are columns of figures, or he is a near one who went way and just didn’t come back. You didn’t see him lying so grotesque and pasty beside the gravel road in France.

We saw him, saw him by the multiple thousands. That’s the difference.

We hope above all things that Japan won’t make the same stubborn mistake that Germany did. You must credit Germany for her courage in adversity, but you can doubt her good common sense in fighting blindly on long after there was any doubt whatever about the outcome.

Source: From handwritten Pyle original, which belongs to Albuquerque Public Library, but in October 2013, it was on loan to Santa Fe. Also published on the front page of the Pittsburgh Press, Sept. 24, 1945.

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After reading about all the atrocities committed by both the Krauts and Japs, I just can't find one iota of sympathy for Dresden, the firebombing of Tokyo and other cities, Hiroshima, Nagasaki or any other act of war we prosecuted against them.

My dad had gotten posted to Okinawa in late '49 or early '50, and when he arrived, there were still signs of what had happened on the island in WWII, and plenty of people who could give him an idea of just how bad taking it had been. After having been there a while, he was detailed to go with a detachment to Ie Shima to staff a radar installation. This was a duty that nobody wanted, as Ie Shima was universally considered a "s**thole" (dad's term) that the native Okinawans said was crawling with poisonous snakes ("Habu! Habu!").

There is a long story I won't tell about how dad managed to stay off the snake-infested outhouse - it was one of two absolute freaks of fortune dad had while on Okinawa - but the result was that dad did not go to Ie Shima. Nonetheless, when he tells the story and mentions Ie Shima, he always, ALWAYS, mentions it as the place where Ernie Pyle was killed.

Mr. niteowl77

[April 18, 1945], HQ Twelfth Army Group situation map.

http://www.loc.gov/resource/g5701s.ict21318/

No more Rose pocket.

Very full Allied prisoner of war enclosures.

http://marshallfoundation.org/library/digital-archive/to-major-clifton-s-brown/

General George C. Marshall To Major Clifton S. Brown, April 18, 1945
1945

Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Date: April 18, 1945
Subject: World War II
Collection: Papers of George Catlett Marshall, Volume 5: The Finest Soldier

Summary

To Major Clifton S. Brown

April 18, 1945 Washington, D.C.

Dear Clifton,

I received a V-mail from you and have read a number of yours to your mother.1 You seem to be having an interesting time and I suppose with its moments of excitement.

Your mother is well, also Molly and the children. We hope to get down to Leesburg late this afternoon so that I can get in some of the later vegetables before it is too late. Henry has attended to the planting at Myer but it is rather difficult to manage it down at Leesburg.

I broke my rule about dinners last night and went to the British Embassy for a dinner of six, Anthony Eden being the reason. He is coming over this morning at 9:15 to hear the resume of the war situation before starting off for the meeting at San Francisco.2

I have ridden very little of late because I have gotten my exercise in field work or gotten no exercise at all. President Roosevelt’s death involved us in a great many formalities which took practically all our time for three days. The final interment at Hyde Park was very impressive particularly as there was a clear blue sky and all the spring blossoms were out. The West Point cadets made a picturesque background for the ceremony. I flew up, taking Admiral King with me, and we spent the night at West Point, flying back the next morning immediately after the services. We were supposed to go up on the special train but that would have been too time-consuming in view of the momentous happenings which have to be attended to almost from hour to hour.3

I hope the spring has found you in Germany and that the mud is drying up and you will soon be complaining about the dust.

With my love,

Affectionately,

Document Copy Text Source: Research File, Family Folder, George C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, Virginia.

Document Format: Typed letter.

1. Marshall’s stepson’s message is not in the Marshall Papers.

2. British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Anthony Eden had attended President Roosevelt’s funeral service at the White House on April 14 and was preparing to attend the United Nations Conference on International Organization scheduled to convene in San Francisco on April 25. On April 18 Eden recorded: “Up early and motored with Edward [Halifax] to War Department where Marshall showed his maps and graphs. This is a function that takes place every morning and it is very well done by specially trained young staff officers. Better than any map room.” What interested Eden most was the chief of staff’s view of the Far East campaign. “Marshall’s stern report forecast a prolonged struggle in the Far East, if conventional weapons only were used. The sober reserve with which he recited his appraisal made it all the more disturbing. He was, I knew, no alarmist.” (The Reckoning: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon [Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965], pp. 610-14.)

3. For more information regarding President Roosevelt’s death, see editorial note #5-095, Papers of George Catlett Marshall [5: 141].

Recommended Citation: ThePapers of George Catlett Marshall, ed.Larry I. Bland and Sharon Ritenour Stevens(Lexington, Va.: The George C. Marshall Foundation, 1981- ). Electronic version based on The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 5, “The Finest Soldier,” January 1, 1945-January 7, 1947 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 150-151.
Digital Downloads
5-103.doc

Collection
Papers of George Catlett Marshall, Volume 5: The Finest Soldier

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006167

...During the fierce battle for Leipzig, the 69th Infantry Division uncovered Leipzig-Thekla, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, on April 19, 1945. The camp had been established in September 1943 to supply labor for the German war effort. At its height, Leipzig-Thekla held approximately 1,400 prisoners.

On April 18, 1945, the SS guards had set fire to the barracks housing some 300 inmates and shot those who attempted to escape the flames. Upon arriving at the camp, the 69th immediately began providing for the 90 to 100 survivors. Days later, US Army Signal Corps photographers arrived at the site to document this atrocity. On April 28, 1945, a US Army Protestant chaplain reported that 325 male prisoners, who were too ill or weak to continue working for the German war effort, had been forced into oil-soaked barracks, which were then set aflame. Prisoners who attempted to escape the conflagration were shot by the guards or electrocuted on the electrified fences. According to the report, the swift advance of the 69th prevented the SS guards from committing a similar atrocity at a nearby camp housing some 250 women.

On April 24, the newly installed Allied military government in Leipzig ordered the local German mayor to provide 75 caskets for the dead prisoners, floral wreaths for each coffin, crews of workers to bury the inmates at the entrance of the town cemetery, and 100 prominent citizens from Leipzig, representing the “City Government, Clergy, Civic organizations, Chamber of Commerce, and Educational Institutions including the University of Leipzig to attend the funeral services” on April 27, 1945. That day, the US Army supervised the funeral, supplying Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant chaplains to perform the service. A guard of honor composed of survivors of the camp; 100 displaced persons bearing flags of the Netherlands, Belgium, France, the Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia; Allied officers; and 1,000 German civilians attended the ceremony.

The 69th Infantry Division was recognized as a liberating unit by the US Army’s Center of Military History and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1993.

Casualty figures for the 69th Infantry Division, European theater of operations
Total battle casualties: 1,506
Total deaths in battle: 384

Division nickname
The 69th Infantry Division gained the nickname the “Fighting 69th” during World War II. The name has no heraldic significance, but simply conveys the esprit de corps of the division.

Okinawa Island Bombardment, 04/18/1945

https://archive.org/details/NPC-11447

Tanks of the 5th Canadian Division moving through Putten, April 18, 1945. (Library and Archives Canada PA-50417)

The 3rd Canadian Division, on the Corps' left flank, was charged with clearing the area adjoining the Ijssel River and after several days of stiff fighting occupied the historic town of Zutphen. Then, pushing forward, they captured Deventer, Zwolle and Leeuwarden and reached the North Sea on April 18.

http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/second-world-war/canada-netherlands