Category Archives: World War Two

Vera Inber – Leningrad Siege

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Born 10 July 1890, Vera Inber was a Soviet poet and writer whose greatest legacy, Leningrad Diary, described daily the sufferings and deprivations suffered by the city during the 900-day siege of 1941 – 1944.

Vera Inber’s father, owner of a publishing house, was an older cousin to the future Bolshevik revolutionary, Leon Trotsky. As a nine-year-old, Trotsky lived in the Inber’s Odessa household at the time Vera was still a baby.

Inber worked as a journalist and lived in Paris and Switzerland before returning to the Soviet Union, first to Odessa and eventually settling in Moscow.

In 1941, with the outbreak of the Second World War in the Soviet Union, Inber joined the Communist Party. Together with her husband, Inber lived in Leningrad and recorded what she witnessed in a diary, published in 1946. In it, she wrote of the daily suffering of herself and people she saw around her. She described the hunger, the cold, and the struggle to survive. Inber, herself, came close to dying from starvation.

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Christine Granville – The Spy Who Loved

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Last year I was on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Women’s Hour’, writes Clare Mulley, talking about the remarkable Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, not only the first woman to serve as a special agent for Britain in WWII, but also the longest serving and one of the most effective.

Despite having a life expectancy of only a few months during her operational missions, Christine volunteered to serve in three different theatres of war. From Hungary she skied across the Tatra mountains in blizzards of minus thirty, taking money and propaganda into occupied Poland, and arranging to smuggle men and information – the latter hidden inside her gloves – back out. In Egypt, where a British SOE memo notes that her ‘admittedly libelous’ code name was ‘Willing’, she filled a useful role in information gathering. However she earned her highest decorations for her extraordinary work helping prepare the way for the Allied liberation of France, having been the only woman dropped in by parachute from Algeria, in July 1944.

Kindness Led to Murder

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The Bomber Command Memorial – heroes remembered at last

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Yesterday, writes Rupert Colley, I visited the new memorial in London’s Green Park dedicated to the memory of those who fought and lost their lives for Britain’s Bomber Command during the Second World War. Opened last week by Her Majesty the Queen, the memorial, made of Portland Stone, has, as its centerpiece, a nine-foot-high bronze sculpture of seven crewmen, a typical Bomber Command crew, five of them gazing into the distance as if waiting for their comrades to return.

A swarm of people, of all ages and nationalities, had come, like me, to view the Bomber Command Memorial – old boys with medals pinned to their jackets, elderly women, several in tears, schoolchildren and tourists, all moving silently around the pavilion, gazing up at the bronze giants in their flying gear.

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The Bomber Command Memorial – 67 years overdue

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On 19 December 2012, British Prime Minister, David Cameron, announced a special Royal Air Force clasp for the crews of Bomber Command, whose veterans have long complained of unequal treatment when compared to members of Fighter Command who fought the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. Of Bomber Command, the PM said they ‘have been treated inconsistently with those who served in Fighter Command.’

Here, from six months ago, is History In An Hour’s article on Bomber Command and the Bomber Command Memorial opened in June 2012 in London’s Green Park…

On 28 June 2012, the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, unveiled a new memorial, the Bomber Command Memorial, to the airmen of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command who fought during the Second World War.

The Bomber Command Memorial, made of Portland Stone and situated in London’s Green Park, has, as its centerpiece, a nine-foot-high bronze sculpture of a typical seven-man crew, five of them gazing into the distance as if waiting for their comrades to return.

Many never did. 55,573 British, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and other Commonwealth pilots and crewmen lost their lives and 8,403 were wounded, a sixty per cent causality rate, far higher than most other forms of armed service during the war. A further 9,838 were taken prisoners-of-war. Allied crewmen who survived being shot down in Germany, if not taken prisoner, were often lynched.

With only one in four aircrew surviving their allocated thirty missions, the attacks were eventually halted. Yet since the war, during these intervening 67 years, our collective conscience has shied away from recognizing what these men did and the crews were even denied a campaign medal for their dangerous work.

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The Fall of France – a summary

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On 11 November 1918, the French and British allies accepted Germany’s surrender and, between them, signed the armistice that ended the First World War. The signing took place in a railway carriage in the middle of the picturesque woods of Compiègne, fifty miles north-east of Paris. The humiliation of that event ran deep into the psyche of Germany, and none more so than in Adolf Hitler, at the time a corporal in the Imperial German Army.

Hitler in ParisOn 22 June 1940, Hitler, now the German Führer, got his revenge – it was the turn of the French to surrender, and Hitler made sure that it was done in the most demeaning circumstances possible – in exactly the same carriage and in the same spot as the signing twenty-two years earlier

The Fall of France

Following the 1914-1918 war, the French built a defensive 280-mile long fortification, the Maginot Line, all along the Franco-German border as protection against a future German attack. The Battle of France began on 10 May 1940. The Germans rendered the Maginot Line obsolete within a morning by merely skirting round the north of it, through the Ardennes forest. Because of its rugged terrain, the French considered the forest impassable. Reaching the town of Sedan on the French side of the Ardennes on 14 May and brushing aside French resistance, the Germans pushed forward, not towards Paris as expected, but north, towards the English Channel, forcing the French and their British allies further and further back. In 1916, the Germans had failed to take Verdun despite ten months of trench warfare; in May 1940, it took them but a day.

Elsewhere, Hitler’s armies were enjoying victory after victory – the Netherlands capitulated on 15 May, followed two weeks later by the surrender of Belgium. Allied forces, with their backs to the sea in the French coastal town of Dunkirk, were trapped. But the Germans, poised to annihilate the whole British Expeditionary Force, were inexplicably ordered by Hitler to halt outside the town. Between 26 May and 2 June, over 1,000 military and civilian vessels rescued and brought back to Britain 338,226 Allied soldiers. But not without scenes of panic, broken discipline and soldiers shot by their officers for losing self-control. Meanwhile, Hitler’s generals watched, puzzled and rueing an opportunity missed.

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Georgy Zhukov – a summary

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Georgy Zhukov achieved fame as perhaps the most famous Soviet military commander of the Second World War. In the post-war Victory Parade in Moscow’s Red Square, Zhukov stole the show, inspecting the troops mounted on a white stallion. Adored by the public and respected by international opinion, Zhukov’s position was always going to be vulnerable given Stalin’s innate jealousy. Sure enough, in 1946, Zhukov, heavily criticised for being ‘politically unreliable’, was dismissed and dispatched to a position of diminished responsibility in Odessa. On arrival, he suffered a heart attack, probably brought on by the stress of his ordeal.

Known for his uncompromising discipline, Georgy Zhukov placed strategic objective far above the safety of the men he put into battle. Yet, despite his toughness, he could be rendered a wreck by a single harsh word from Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin. During the early days of the war, he was once reduced to tears by an angry Stalin and had to take the handkerchief offered by Vyacheslav Molotov.

Zhukov first saw action during the First World War, where, renowned for his bravery, he was twice decorated. He then fought with the Red Army against the Whites during the Russian Civil War of 1917-23 and quickly rose through the ranks. He survived Stalin’s great 1930s purge of the military to command an army during the Soviet-Japanese Border Wars of 1938-39.

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Kliment Voroshilov – Defender of Leningrad

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During the 900-day siege of Leningrad, the man initially charged with the city’s defence was one of Stalin’s old favourites, Kliment Voroshilov, born 4 February 1881. Rupert Colley summarises his efforts.

During the Second World War, the city Leningrad (modern-day St Petersburg) was in the midst of a devastating 900-day blockade that lasted from September 1941 until January 1944. The German army had laid siege to the city, bombarded it and cut off all supplies in its attempt to ‘wipe it off the map’, as Hitler had ordered.

The men in charge of the defence of Leningrad were Andrey Zhdanov and 60-year-old Kliment Voroshilov, one of Stalin’s old favourites. During the Russian Civil War, Voroshilov, working closely with Stalin, had gained a reputation for his fierce defence of Tsaritsyn (renamed Stalingrad in 1925).

Utterly reliable 

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Battle of Stalingrad – a summary

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On 2 February 1943, in what is considered the turning point of the Second World War in Europe, the final remnants of the German Sixth Army surrendered at the Battle of Stalingrad.

Stalin’s City

The city, originally called Tsaritsyn, was renamed Stalingrad, Stalin’s city, in April 1925, in recognition of Joseph Stalin‘s leading role in saving the city from the counterrevolutionary ‘Whites’ during the Russian Civil War. (The fact that Leon Trotsky was more instrumental in saving Tsaritsyn was quietly forgotten). Considered important because of its supply of oil, the symbolic significance of Stalingrad, bearing the name of the Soviet leader, soon outweighed its strategic importance.

‘Not One Step Back’

Friedrich von PaulusThe Germans started their attack on Stalingrad, Operation Blue, on 28 June 1942. Led by the Sixth Army, Germany’s largest wartime army commanded by General Friedrich Paulus (pictured), the Germans were fully expecting a total victory as they pushed the Soviet forces back.

The swift German advance alarmed Stalin so much, he issued his infamous ‘Not One Step Back’ directive of 28 July, ordering execution for the slightest sign of defeatism. Behind the Soviet frontlines roamed a second Soviet line ready to shoot any retreating ‘cowards’ or ‘traitors of the Motherland’. As Georgy Zhukov, one of Stalin’s top generals, said, ‘In the Red Army it takes a very brave man to be a coward’.

By 23 August, the German advance had reached the outskirts of Stalingrad and, with 600 planes, unleashed a devastating aerial bombardment. Entering the city, the Germans, along with their Axis comrades, comprising of Italians, Romanians and Hungarians, fought the Soviets street for street, house for house, sometimes room for room. This, as the Germans called it, was rat warfare, where a strategic stronghold changed sides so many times, people lost count, where the front lines were so close one could throw back a grenade before it exploded, where snipers took their toll on the enemy, and where a soldier’s life expectancy was three days – if lucky.

Stalin charged Zhukov to defend the city and formulate a plan to repulse the invader. (It’s worth noting here the difference between Stalin and Hitler as military leaders. After a series of blunders earlier in the war, Stalin, although he always like to take the credit, learnt to defer and listen to the experts, men like Zhukov. Hitler however always insisted he knew best and only canvassed the opinion of others if they agreed with him.)

StalingradOn 19 November 1942, the Soviet Red Army launched Zhukov’s meticulously-planned counteroffensive, attacking and sweeping in from two separate directions, a pincer movement. Within four days, the two-pronged Soviet attack had met in the middle and had totally encircled the beleaguered German forces. Their objective was achieved so quickly that the Soviet camera crews missed the moment, and battalions of soldiers had to re-enact the essential scenes for the benefit of the cameras.

The Soviets squeezed the 250,000 Germans and their Axis comrades tighter and tighter. As the feared Russian winter set in and temperatures dropped to the minus forties, starvation, frostbite, disease and suicide decimated the Germans. Medical facilities were, at best, crude.

Unshakeable confidence

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The British wartime submarine, sunk off the coast of Malta, found after almost 70 years

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It was the early hours of 8 May 1942, seven miles off the coast of Malta. A British submarine, the HMS Olympus, hit a mine and sunk. All but nine of its 98 crew and passengers were killed. It was a wartime tragedy of epic proportions for the Royal Navy but the exact location of the wreck has always remained a mystery – until now.

The British-controlled island of Malta had become a focal point in the North African campaign of World War Two. Blockaded and pounded constantly by the might of the German and, to a lesser extent, Italian air force, the 120 square-mile island was of vital strategic importance to the British.

Homeward bound

HMS Olympus, had just gone out to sea, attempting to leave the British Naval Base in Malta’s Grand Harbour. The 283-foot submarine was heading to Gibraltar, and from there to home. The thought of escaping the ravaged isle must have been an intoxicating prospect for its war-weary crew. In the previous six weeks, three subs had been sunk, all whilst in harbour, by Italian bombers or the Luftwaffe. Continue reading →