SOE resistance in WW2

Here is an extract from BBC History website:

SOE’s first headline success came in June 1941 when agents blew up the Pessac power station in France with a few well-placed explosive charges. The precision blast crippled work at a vital U-boat base in Bordeaux, and brought the all-electric railways in this region to an abrupt halt.

News of this triumph reverberated throughout Whitehall and put SOE firmly on the map – proving that you did not need a squadron of bombers to disrupt the German war machine.

This operation led to hundreds more in Europe and in the Far East against the Japanese.

• Czechoslovakia 1942 – an SOE hit squad assassinated Himmler’s deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, with a grenade.

• Greece 1942 – SOE agents blew up the Gorgopotamos rail bridge, which carried vital supplies for Rommel’s desert army.

• Norway 1943 – SOE agents destroyed the heavy water plant at Vemork, ending the Nazi atomic bomb programme.

Often SOE operations resulted in reprisals against the local population. After the killing of Heydrich, the SS exterminated 5,000 men women and children in two villages near Prague.

To avoid retribution, SOE carried out ‘invisible sabotage’, which left no trace and implicated nobody. One example is the sending of a supply train, loaded with tanks, to the wrong destination – using only a forged document.

The reason I have chosen to publish this on my blog is that I often have a look at the soldiers that fought in the front line. I feel that it is important to recognize the work that the resistances did to assist the Allies.

To continue reading about the SOE, click here

Eye Witness account on Edith Cavell

Here is part of an article that I found on a fellow bloggers website:

Then I said “Good-by,” and she smiled and said, “We shall meet again.”   The German military chaplain was with her at the end and afterwards gave her Christian burial. He told me: “She was brave and bright to the last. She professed her Christian faith and that she was glad to die for her country.” “She died like a heroine.”

This blog post is about the last few days of Edith Cavell’s life according to a journalist that was with her at the time.

Edith Cavell was part of the SOE resistance that helped the allies. To learn more about Edith and her life, visit my Edith Cavell Blog post.

To read the full article, featuring an eye witness accound of the last few days of her life, click here

Suvivor of the Bombing of Darwin

“The harbour was on fire and badly burnt bodies were washing ashore just below our position,” Mr Heckenberg said.

Eighty-eight-year-old Ray Chin was working in his grandfather’s store next to Christchurch Cathedral when the bombing started. He had just had breakfast with the 20 other staff when the explosions began.

“They came in from the east and I thought they were friendly,” he said.

“Then the bombs dropped like match sticks and I told everyone to get into the shelter.”

Here is a passage from a news article that is written about survivors of the Bombing of Darwin.

To read, please click here

 

Hitler Facts:

Here are some facts that I found on a website called Fact Slides and they are about Adolf Hitler:

1. Hitler never visited a single concentration camp
2. Hitlers first love was Jewish
3. Hitler suffered from chronic flatulence and took 28 different drugs to aid him.
4. Hitler led the first anti-smoking campaign in modern history
5. During WW1, a British soldier save the life of a wounded enemy. That enemy was Adolf Hitler
6. Hitler bombed his nephew’s house in Liverpool, so he joined the US navy to fight his uncle
7. Hitler was a vegetarian
8. Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1939
9. Hitler was afraid of cats
10. When the D-Day forces landed, Hitler was asleep. His general were not allowed to sent re-reinforcements without Hitler’s permission but no-one dared to wake him

Awesome conspiracy theory!

Here is a post from The Historical Diaries about a theory that Hitler did not commit suicide in the bunker but instead fled to another country.

To read the post click here. Also, if you are looking for some information on anything historical, please follow The Historical Diaries for more information.

Treblinka Thoughts

Treblinka was a concentration camp that was separated into 2 parts. The first part of the camp, known as Treblinka I, was a forced labour camp for Jews and Poles who had disobeyed the orders of the Nazis. Both Polish and Jewish inmates, imprisoned in separate compounds of the labour camp, were sent to a grave pit to undertake many hours of harsh labour. Imagine throwing bodies of friends, family and even aquaintances into a pit. It would be heart-breaking. Later on in July 1942, the Operation Reinhard authorities completed the construction of a killing center, known as Treblinka II, approximately 1 mile from the labour camp. Treblinka II was camouflaged by trees and wood and SS guards told Jews that they were at a transit camp and they were going to the ‘showers’. The saddest thing for me is it is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were killed in the Treblinka II gas chambers. I can understand that Hitler saw Jews as ‘imperfect’ but to try and kill them all of is inhumane. Living in Australia, we don’t have sites that we can go and visit to remember the atrocities of the Nazis but so many people share stories about what happened so that the younger generation, such as myself, can remember the past. Here is a part of an eye-witness account from a man who was transported to Treblinka:

“One of the most efficient systems in the world is the German system. There are authorities upon authorities, departments and sub-departments. And, what is most important, there is always the right man in the right place…. Men can always be found who are ready to destroy and kill their fellow men. I never saw them show any compassion or regret. They never evinced any pity over the fate of innocent victims. They were automatons who perform their tasks as soon as some higher-up presses a button.

Another amazing characteristic of the Germans is their ability to discover, among other peoples, hundreds of depraved types like themselves, and to use them for their own ends. In camps for Jews, there is a need for Jewish executioners, spies, stool pigeons. The Germans managed to find them.”

In conclusion, Treblinka was a mass killing center where over 700,000 jews were exterminated.

To read more of the eye-witness account click here.

Facts about War

Here are some sites that have some interesting facts:

Holocaust: http://www.factslides.com/s-Holocaust 

World War 1: http://www.factslides.com/s-WWI

World War 2: http://www.factslides.com/s-WWII 

Auschwitz: http://www.factslides.com/s-Auschwitz

Anne Frank: http://www.factslides.com/s-Anne-Frank

Adolf Hitler: http://www.factslides.com/s-Hitler

Suffragettes

Interesting website on the suffragettes:

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/the-role-of-british-women-in-the-twentieth-century/suffragettes/

The White Mouse

Here is a great website on ‘The White Mouse’:

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-heroes/white_mouse.htm 

Tsutomu Yamaguchi

Tsutomu Yamaguchi died from stomach cancer.  The cancer part perhaps isn’t surprising given that Yamaguchi is currently the only person officially recognized by the Japanese government as having lived through the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Note: There were actually well over a 100 or so others as well, perhaps as many as 165; they just have never been officially recognized by the Japanese government to date.)  What is surprising, given that history, is that Yamaguchi avoided the disease for so long, not dying until January 4, 2010, at the age of 93. At the age of 29, Yamaguchi was on his way back home from a three month long business trip to Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.  At the time, he was an engineer for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries- specifically, working as an oil tanker designer. On his way to the train station to head back to his home in Nagasaki, he noticed he’d forgotten his travel permit and went back to get it while his colleagues, Akira Iwanaga and Kuniyoshi Sato, went on. He picked up his pass and was on his way back to the station when, at 8:15 a.m., he saw a bomber flying over the city and “two small parachutes”, then a rush of blinding light, sound, wind, and heat knocked him to the ground. Mr. Yamaguchi had the misfortune of being approximately 3 km from a nuclear blast.  The immediate effects of this were his ear drums rupturing, temporarily blindness, and burns over much of his upper body. After his initial disorientation, and in spite of his injuries, Tsutomu managed to make his way to an air-raid shelter where he met up with his two colleagues who had also survived the blast. He spent the night in the shelter and in the morning he and his co-workers headed back to Nagasaki via train as originally planned.  When he arrived, he received bandage treatments from a local hospital, and even felt well enough to report for work on August the 9th, just 3 days later… (Now I feel like a bit of a pansy about taking a full week off while I had the flu.) Of course, Yamaguchi had to explain his burns to his coworkers. His boss was in disbelief over his claim that it was a single explosion that destroyed much of Hiroshima. “You’re an engineer,” he said to Tsutomu, “calculate it…how could one bomb destroy an entire city?” The boss spoke too soon. According to Yamaguchi, during this conversation the air-raid sirens went off and then, once again, he saw a blinding white light. He dropped to the floor immediately; he was familiar with the drill. Yamaguchi stated, “I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima.” Both bombs exploded near the city centers and both, interestingly enough, were just about 3 kilometers away from Tsutomu’s position at the time.  Despite this explosion being slightly more powerful than the one at Hiroshima (21 kilotons vs. 16 kilotons at Hiroshima), thanks to the city’s uneven terrain and the fact that many parts of the city were divided by water, which prevented the extensive fire damage that happened in Hiroshima, there wasn’t nearly the amount of overall infrastructure damage. Yamaguchi himself experienced no immediate injury from this second explosion, though of course was exposed to another high dose of ionizing radiation and medical supplies to treat his existing burns were now in short supply.