Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel earned his infamous moniker “Desert Fox” in the sand dunes of North Africa, where he served as commander of the German 5th Light Division (later redesignated the 21st Panzer Division). On 21 June 1942, Rommel laid siege to British-held Tobruk, which was strategically important for its inland harbor. its geography made it ideal for defense, although the British failure to stave off the German onslaught suggests otherwise. It was for Rommel’s success in taking Tobruk on this day 70 years ago that Hitler personally awarded him the title and symbolic baton of the rank of Field Marshal. Tens of thousands of Allied prisoners were taken, but more importantly, so were thousands of tons of supplies including the liquid gold of war: gasoline.
Tobruk
The Luftwaffe over Tobruk, Libya. Images are a gift in memory of Lt. Bernard L. Horowitz, 2010.225
Rommel attempted to replace the might of his tank corps with aerial bombardment by the Luftwaffe, with the intention of preserving the tanks for a further drive east once Tobruk was secure in German hands. This goal wasn’t reached, however, and the battle to take Tobruk cost Rommel dearly in terms of men and armor, ultimately denying him the ability to secure victory at El Alamein in the following months.
Today marks the 70th anniversary of Bernard W. Robinson becoming the first African American Naval officer, commissioned in the US Naval Reserve. Robinson attended Harvard Medical School and became a prominent radiologist after the war. Dedicated to the care of veterans, Robinson served in the Veterans Administration Hospitals system for the remainder of his career, interrupted only by his re-enlistment in the Navy from 1953-55. Robinson passed away suddenly in his Allen Park, Michigan home on August 23rd, 1972.
Robinson’s commission marks one of many firsts for African Americans during WWII, despite unfavorable odds. African Americans were not only fighting for victory abroad, but also victory at home against racial prejudice. On the Home Front and the battlefronts, blacks encountered restrictions solely based on the color of their skin. The military was segregated and African Americans struggled to find jobs in defense factories. If they did manage to secure work, it was usually at a much lower pay than their white counterparts.
Robinson’s experiences mirror other successes, acts of courage, and achievements of African Americans throughout the war. The Tuskegee Airmen became the first black pilots of the war, with a stellar flying record. The Montford Point Marines, who served in the Marshall Islands, Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, became the first African American Marines in the Corps’ 167 year history. The all-black 761st Tank Battalion spent 183 days in continuous combat, far surpassing the average of 17 days in continuous service.
Recognizing the accomplishments and sacrifices of returning black veterans, Harry Truman desegregated the military in 1948. Proving their skill and leadership on the battlefield, former servicemen like Ralph Abernathy, Whitney Young and Medger Evers began to fight for the second part of the Double Victory campaign – Victory at Home- as they returned to the United States at the war’s conclusion.
The Liberty ship, SS Benjamin Contee was launched seventy years ago today on 15 June 1942 by Delta Shipbuilding Co. in New Orleans.
On 16 August 1943, while transporting 1800 Italian POWs to Oran, she was hit by an aircraft torpedo off of the North African coast. Although 250 Italian POWs were lost in trying to abandon ship in the panic of the attack, the Benjamin Contee sailed to Gibralter for repairs under her own power. She returned to New York and then back to Southhampton to ready for her final mission. Shortly following D-Day, almost two years following her launch, the Benjamin Contee joined nine other ships who were scuttled to form “Gooseberry 1,” part of the Mulberry Harbour off of Utah Beach. The Mulberry Harbour was a type of British temporary harbour created to be able to offload cargo to supply the Allied advance in the initial days after the Normandy invasion. The scuttled ships were to form sheltered waters. Most of the scuttled ships, the Benjamin Contee included, were completely abandoned following destruction in severe storms on 19-22 June 1944.
Post by Curator/Content Specialist Kimberly Guise.
“On Friday, June 12th, I woke up at six o’clock and no wonder; it was my birthday.”
-Anne’s first diary entry, June 14, 1942
Just 22 days before going into hiding with her family and neighbors, Anne Frank was celebrating her thirteenth birthday much like any other young girl. She woke up early, too excited to sleep, and unwrapped presents like board games, chocolate and the journal that she would use to write one of the most prolific and influential accounts of the Holocaust. Published in more than 60 languages, Anne’s account of the two years she and her family spent in a neighbor’s sealed-off annex reveals a human side to the suffering that has become required reading for schoolchildren around the world.
Anne was born in Frankfurt and was a German national, though her family moved to the Netherlands in 1933 after the Nazis rose to power. Early in 1940, the Franks found themselves trapped in Amsterdam under increasingly oppressive anti-Semitic laws; Anne and her sister Margot were removed from their classes and enrolled in the Jewish-only school; their father, Otto, had to give up his businesses in order to save them from going under entirely; Anne, who dreamed of being an actress, found herself banned from something as simple as going to the movies. In 1941, they lost their German citizenship.
On July 5, 1942, Anne notes in her diary that her father is planning to evacuate the family in anticipation of Nazi orders to do so. For several days, there are no journal updates, and on July 8, Anne reveals that the family received a notice ordering Margot to report to a work camp. They wait until morning to make their escape, wearing layer upon layer of clothing to avoid carrying conspicuous luggage. This was the last time Anne would be outdoors until the family was found and arrested two years later. She died just weeks before the liberation of Bergen-Belsen during a typhus epidemic that would claim roughly 17,000 prisoners.
The publication of Anne’s diary allowed for those far away from Europe to feel a human connection to the atrocities. Many survivors joined relatives in countries like the United States, and Anne’s story served as an important tool in understanding the trauma these survivors had been through. In my hometown of Queens, NY, I lived amongst a large survivor population that still could not talk about what happened to them forty years later. When I asked my grandmother what the numbers tattooed on her neighbor’s arm meant, she walked over to her bookcase and pulled out my mother’s copy of Anne’s diary.
Anne never intended to become one of the most powerful symbols of one of history’s worst tragedies, writing:
“It’s an odd idea for someone like me to keep a diary; not only because I have never done so before, but because it seems to me that neither I – nor for that matter anyone else – will be interested in the unbosomings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.”
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the creation of the Office of War Information (OWI). Its purpose was to centralize the many information services of the United States government and create a single line of communication about the war to the American public. The OWI created and distributed posters, booklets, photographs, radio shows and films designed to improve morale and boost patriotism, encourage people to participate in the war effort and, most importantly, control all information Americans received about the war.
The Office of War Information created a propaganda machine that controlled all war-related information given to the public. Images and news reports were censored. Propaganda was created. Government approved ideas were included in films, radio and advertising. Anything that negatively impacted the war effort or damaged morale was removed from public consumption.
Photographers were sent across the country to document Americans doing patriotic work. They photographed workers at factories and on farms, children gathering scrap for the war effort, men and women in uniform, and social change in the form of positive images of women and African Americans – everyone “doing their bit” for the war effort.
Propaganda posters were everywhere. They encouraged Americans to join up, plant a Victory Garden, stay quiet, work in factories and on farms, watch out for the enemy (everywhere) and, most of all, support the war effort. A spokesperson for the OWI said, “People should wake up to find a visual message everywhere like news snow – every man, woman and child should be reached and moved by the message.”
Images distributed by the Office of War Information. Click to enlarge.
Instructions for loading propaganda shell with leaflets
Office of War Information
Safe conduct pass created by OWI/PWD (Psychological Warfare Division)
Propaganda Poster of Nazis Stabbing the Bible
African American worker at the Richmond Shipyards
Young boy uses ration book for first time.
Radio programs, newsreels and films were an essential part of this propaganda machine. Elmer Davis, the OWI Director in 1942, said of this process, “The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized.”
This war of information was not limited to US shores; enemy troops in Europe and the Pacific were also targeted. Leaflets, newspapers in foreign languages and magazines were used to demoralize enemy soldiers and encourage them to surrender. The Psychological Warfare Division (which worked with OWI and the Office of Strategic Services) also distributed soap, matches, sewing kits and seed packs with anti-Axis messages and pro-American images.
Many in Congress did not like the operation of the Office of War Information on US soil and by 1944 most of its work was done overseas. It was shut down in September of 1945. Many Americans were never aware that their war was fought not just on the battlefield but at the movies, in their favorite magazines and on the factory floor.
German attempts at sabotage and espionage in North America led to several arrests without the successful completion of any of the objectives.
Most people think of the U-boat as only being a highly efficient ship-killer, but it also supported espionage, intelligence gathering and sabotage operations throughout the war. These missions were carried out at points throughout Europe, on the coast of Africa, within the Arctic Circle and even in the Americas. Before the end of the war, U-boats made landings in North America on six separate occasions.
The first landing occurred on May 14, 1942, when U-213 put Abwehr agent Alfred Langbein ashore near the village of Saint John on the Bay of Fundy coast of New Brunswick. Langbein spent the next two years in hiding without doing any spying at all before finally turning himself in to Canadian Naval Intelligence in Ottawa in September 1944.
Before dawn on June 13, 1942, U-202 put four saboteurs ashore near the village of Amagansett, Long Island as a part of Operation Pastorius. Three nights later, U-584 landed another group of four saboteurs near Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. The two groups were to use explosives to destroy railroad bridges, defense plants and factories crucial to US military aircraft production. The Long Island Group made their way to New York City where the team leader George John Dasch decided to turn himself in. Because of his cooperation the FBI was able to round-up the remaining saboteurs. All eight men were convicted of espionage by a military tribunal in Washington, DC. Six were executed by electric chair on August 8, 1942. The other two were ultimately deported back to Germany in 1948.
The fourth landing occurred during the night of November 9, 1942, when U-518 surfaced in Chaleur Bay in eastern Quebec and put Abwehr agent Werner von Janowski ashore near the village of New Carlisle. With his unusual clothing and foreign accent, Janowski stood out among the Québécois like a sore thumb, resulting in his arrest by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police the next day.
The fifth and perhaps most interesting landing began early in the evening of October 22, 1943, when U-537 anchored in Martin Bay just south of Cape Chidley on Canada’s Labrador Coast. The following morning, personnel from the U-Boat assembled an automated weather station on a hill overlooking the bay. The station functioned for only a day before mysteriously falling silent.
The final North American landing occurred when U-1230 put ashore Abwehr agents Erich Gimpel and William Curtis Colepaugh at Hancock Point on Frenchman’s Bay, Maine shortly after midnight on November 30, 1944. Gimpel and Colepaugh (a native born American) were given the ambitious task of infiltrating the aviation industry and the Manhattan Project. The agents made their way to Portland, Maine and then on to New York City where Colepaugh lost his nerve and turned himself in to the FBI. Gimpel was arrested soon thereafter bringing Germany’s final attempt at espionage in North America to an unsuccessful conclusion.
A view of U-537 anchored in Martin Bay on the Labrador Coast of northern Canada
The Army War Show was a Provisional Task Force established in late May 1942 with the aim of showing the general public the military might of the Army while raising money for the Army Emergency Relief Fund. The first live show was seventy years ago, on 12 June 1942, in Baltimore. Audience were asked to come witness the “Battle of Baltimore.” The show incorporated weapons firing, tank manuevers, cavalry riding, and tactical formation demonstrations. There was even a jeep comedy routine and a jeep jamboree. The Army War Show toured eighteen US cities for the latter part of 1942, ending just before Christmas in Atlanta. The shows were seen by sellout crowds, even in enormous stadiums. 81,000 people attended the show at Cleveland Municipal Stadium in September. Who wouldn’t want to see a tank crush a car?! The New Orleans shows from 27 November-2 December, were held at City Park Stadium, the scene of the photograph above. The National Archives image taken on 27 November 1942 is so spectacular that we might have to bring it out again in November!
Post by Curator/Content Specialist Kimberly Guise.
When the Empire of Japan attacked the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese thought that they had scored a great victory. In truth, the Japanese had sealed their fate and assured their defeat by not completing the job of destroying the Pacific Fleet. While it is true and undeniable that the Japanese did deal the Pacific Fleet a hard blow, that blow was hardly decisive. The Japanese aviators that attacked Pearl Harbor that morning left the job unfinished. While the battleships lay smoking and sinking in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor, the American aircraft carriers were either at sea ferrying aircraft to far flung Pacific bases, or back home, safe in the continental forty-eight. The failure of the Japanese to eliminate the threat of American aircraft carriers would come back to haunt them 6 months later off Midway Island.
The Japanese Plan of Attack
Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto knew that in order for Japan to have a free hand in the Pacific, what was left of the American Pacific Fleet, especially its aircraft carriers must be destroyed. Yamamoto first hatched his Midway plan in March. His plan was to lure the American aircraft carriers out of Pearl Harbor so that the Japanese carrier strike force could destroy them in one final decisive battle on the high seas. Yamamoto decided that the Japanese objective should be a place that put Hawaii in imminent danger. Surely, the Americans would come to the defense of an island that put their most precious remaining base in jeopardy. Yamamoto settled on the island of Midway as the objective of his attack.
Admiral Yamamoto devised that the Japanese carrier strike force would eliminate Midway’s island-based air power, allowing his army to invade and occupy the island rapidly. Once word of the attack on Midway reached Hawaii, the island would already have been captured and the Japanese carriers would be waiting for the American carriers to come to Midway’s rescue. In the ensuing battle, the Japanese carriers would destroy what was left of the Pacific Fleet. On May 27, 1942 the Japanese first carrier strike force, known as Kido Butai, weighed anchor at Hashirajima Harbor and set off for what they thought would be the deciding victory in their war with the United States.
On 27 May 1942, the first of seven films in the series Why We Fight was released. Entitled “Prelude to War,” the piece was directed by noted filmmaker Frank Capra who had by then already gained fame with his work on films It Happened One Night and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and would go on to direct the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life. For his contributions to the war effort, Capra earned the Distinguished Service Medal in 1945.
An immigrant from Sicily, Capra served in the US Army during World War I and became naturalized shortly thereafter. He reenlisted after Pearl Harbor, offered a commission as a Major at the age of 44. Under normal circumstances, the Signal Corps would have likely been assigned the creation of these films, but with a talent like Capra available, Chief of Staff George Marshall bypassed the Signal Corps and assigned Major Capra the job of creating seven films that would be seen less as propaganda pieces, and more as the inspiring films Capra had proven himself more than capable of making.
The first of the series introduces itself as a film “to acquaint members of the Army with factual information as to the causes, the events leading up to our entry into the war and the principles for which we are fighting.” Prelude to War won the 1942 Academy Award for documentary feature. Many of the subsequent films in the series would use the enemy’s own propaganda films, namely Leni Reifenstahl’s infamous Triumph of the Will. What Germans saw in her film as inspiring and patriotic, Capra turned on its head to show as a frightening force against which America must fight.
Recognizing the accomplishments and sacrifices of returning black veterans, Harry Truman desegregated the military in 1948. Proving their skill and leadership on the battlefield, former servicemen like Ralph Abernathy, Whitney Young and Medger Evers began to fight for the second part of the Double Victory campaign – Victory at Home- as they returned to the United States at the war’s conclusion.
