Delusions: Popular and Otherwise

October 30, 2022 Written by Timothy Boyce
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At 8 o’clock on the evening of October 30, 1938, millions of Americans were settling in by their radios.  It was the golden age of radio, and they were looking forward to hearing one of the most popular programs, NBC’s Chase and Sanborn Hour.  Among the highlights of the variety show was ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his sidekick dummy, Charlie McCarthy.  (Charlie had been carved in the image of a Chicago newsboy Bergen knew.)

Meanwhile, over at CBS, a low-budget upstart program featuring the 23-year-old prodigy Orson Welles (not to be confused with Sumner Welles) was still trying to make a name for itself.  Welles had first appeared in show business a few years earlier as the voice of Lamont Cranston, otherwise known as The Shadow. Thereafter he quickly became involved in acting, directing and producing.

A Young Orson Welles

Welles’s four-month-old “Mercury Theatre on the Air” staged dramatic presentations of popular literature for its Sunday evening broadcasts, including such works as Treasure Island and Jane Eyre.  With the approach of Halloween, and with the world still jittery from the threat—narrowly averted—of war over Czechoslovakia weeks earlier, Welles decided that a presentation of H.G. Wells’s 1898 science fiction fantasy, The War of the Worlds, would be just the ticket.

But how to dramatize a work about a Martian invasion of Great Britain?  And accomplish this in less than one week?  On October 27, with only three days to go, Welles’s theatre troupe was still struggling with their adaptation, which, everyone agreed, had the makings of a terribly dull show.

Finally, someone had a brainstorm.  Why not make the show sound like a simulated news broadcast of a current event, complete with “news bulletins” breaking in on the “regular programming.”  The Martian invasion would also be moved from Victorian England to nearby New Jersey—Grovers Mill to be exact.

Despite subject matter that was so far-fetched that it would seemingly need no further disclaimers, Welles’s program duly began with an explanation that the events depicted in the forthcoming show were purely fictional.  And this disclaimer might have been sufficient were it not for one idiosyncrasy of the listening public.

As noted, the Mercury Theatre couldn’t hold a candle to the Chase and Sanborn Hour.  NBC’s variety show boasted a listening audience estimated at almost 10 million, compared to a paltry 1 million who tuned into the Mercury Theatre.  As William Manchester writes in The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932—1972, “when it came to a choice between great theater and listening to [Edgar] Bergen talk to himself, most Americans preferred Bergen.”

So, at precisely 8:00pm Bergen and Charlie McCarthy opened the show for NBC, while Welles opened his show—complete with disclaimer—to a much smaller audience.

Then, something unexpected happened.

The Mercury Theatre on the Air at work

At precisely 8:12pm McCarthy and Bergen finished their opening skit.  What followed was either a musical act or a commercial for Chase and Sanborn coffee (accounts vary).  According to Manchester, millions of listeners in response spun their dials to CBS to hear what was playing there, and broke in on what appeared to be live reporting of some strange goings-on in New Jersey.  The “reports” became ever more dire until an anguished announcer blurted out:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make.  Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable conclusion that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars.”

Two-thirds of the way through the program there was a break (instead of the more typical break at 30 minutes), where the disclaimer was once again repeated to the audience.  But, according to Manchester, “that didn’t matter anymore.”

“Before the break hundreds of thousands of screaming Americans had taken to the streets, governors were begging their constituents to believe that martial law had not been declared, and the churches were jammed with weeping families asking for absolution of their sins before the Martians came to their town.  ‘For a few horrible hours,’ [a later Princeton University study] concluded, ‘people from Maine to California thought that hideous monsters armed with death rays were destroying all armed resistance sent against them; that there was simply no escape from disaster, and that the end of the world was near.’”

Grovers Mill–Still Standing

Of course, all this panic seems rather preposterous in retrospect; we can all enjoy a chuckle at the gullibility of Orson Welles’s listeners 84 years ago today.  As critic Alexander Woollcott later wrote to Welles, “This only goes to prove . . .  that the intelligent people were all listening to the dummy, and all the dummies were listening to you.”  But on a more serious side, American sociology professor Theodore Abel, writing in his journal only three days after the event (November 2, 1938) concluded:

“[I]t is amazing that thousands have apparently not reflected at all as they listened in. . . .  Thousands saw flames, heard firing, and smelled gas. . . .

It was demonstrated that:

1. Theatrical demagoguery has appalling dangers and is enormously effective.

2. Popular education is a failure in the life of individuals.

3. Thousands are incredibly stupid, and lack nerve.

4. It is easy to start a mass delusion.

5. Primeval fears lie under the thinnest surface of the so-called civilized man.”

Are we any less susceptible to popular delusions today?  Millions of Americans proudly boast of their belief in QAnon.  As I write this, the husband of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives had his skull fractured from someone steeped in conspiracy theories. A man is in prison for firing an assault rifle in a Washington, DC pizza parlor in the misguided belief that it was the site of a child abuse ring.  A former correspondent for the CBS news show 60 Minutes has alleged that the current administration is participating in the trafficking of children, and has compared Anthony Fauci to Josef Mengele.  And haven’t we all heard preposterous claims regarding the efficacy of COVID vaccines?

It’s hard not to conclude that many Americans today are as deluded, if not more deluded, than any of those gullible radio listeners 84 years ago.

If that is not truly scary to contemplate this Halloween, then I don’t know what is.

PS: Despite a firestorm of criticism from government officials and embarrassed listeners, neither the New York Police Department nor the FCC could find where Welles had broken any law.  In fact, his prank catapulted Welles overnight to fame—and a Hollywood contract.  Less than three years later Welles would write, produce, and star in Citizen Kane, considered one of the most famous movies of all time.

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Profiles in Courage: Tom Hudner

September 25, 2022 Written by Timothy Boyce
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Thomas J. Hudner

Never heard of Thomas Hudner?  You’re about to learn a lot more about him and his exploits very soon (more on that later).

The story of Tom Hudner is really the story of two men: Thomas Hudner and Jesse Brown.

In many ways the two men followed similar career paths.

Tom was born in 1924; Jesse in 1926. Tom graduated from high school in 1943, where he was a standout athlete, captaining the track team while also playing football and lacrosse. Jesse, graduating in 1944, was also a three-sport athlete: track, basketball and football.  Tom served as a high school class officer and in the student council; Jesse was the salutatorian of his class. Tom attended college (the U.S. Naval Academy); Jesse studied at Ohio State.  Tom earned his wings as a naval aviator in 1949; Jesse in 1948.

That’s where the similarities end.

Tom was white; Jesse black.

Jesse’s father was a sharecropper. Tom’s father owned a series of grocery stores, and helped found a country club.

Jesse’s family of eight lived in a tin-roofed shack in Lux, Mississippi, near Hattiesburg.  The home, located near train tracks, lacked a phone, plumbing, electricity, and central heat. The family had no car. Tom’s family of seven lived in a three-story Victorian, complete with Irish maid, in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Tom’s family dressed for dinner; Jesse and his siblings wore shoes only for Sunday church services.  Tom attended the prestigious Phillips Academy prep school, as had his father and uncle before him; Jesse moved in with an aunt in Hattiesburg in order to attend a better, but still segregated, public high school.

Tom reluctantly applied for flight school after some urging from his friends; Jesse dreamed of being a pilot ever since his father brought him to an air show as a child.*

And yet, in 1949, Tom and Jesse ended up in the same Fighter Squadron, VF-32, based on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Leyte, flying F4U Corsairs.  And despite their very different backgrounds, Tom and Jesse, the first African American carrier pilot in the U.S. Navy, bonded, professionally and personally.

Jesse Brown and Tom Hudner

When Jesse and Tom reported to their squadron aboard the Leyte the world was technically at peace but the Cold War was becoming increasingly warm.  The Berlin Airlift had just recently ended; China was in the throes of a civil war; and Stalin and the USSR were becoming increasingly belligerent.  But it was in faraway Korea that things quickly heated up in June 1950.

Without warning, North Korean forces overran the unprepared and undermanned armed forces of South Korea.  Things looked bleak until a hastily assembled United Nations force, led by the United States, not only stopped the onslaught, but went on the offensive, driving North Korean forces north of the 38th parallel, the dividing line between North and South Korea. Then China entered the war, and a stalemate ensued.  Meanwhile, the Leyte’s training cruise in the Mediterranean was cut short and the carrier dispatched to the Korean peninsula for air support.

By December 1950, 30,000 US Marines (and some Army units) found themselves surrounded during the coldest winter in memory by approximately 130,000 Chinese troops near the Chosin Reservoir.  All available UN planes were tasked with protecting the beleaguered Marines, a process hampered by the wintry weather and often poor visibility.

On December 4, Jesse, Tom, and eight others took off from the Leyte on their 20th combat mission.  Although Tom outranked Jesse, Jesse had more flight time, and so Tom served as his wingman. Their mission was to fly low behind enemy lines in the mountainous area north of the Chosin Reservoir, looking for targets of opportunity and scouting enemy strength.

The raid was uneventful until Jesse’s Corsair was hit by small arms fire, causing an oil leak.  As his plane’s engine began to seize up, Jesse, too low to bail out, spotted an open patch of snow-covered ground high atop a nearby mountain.  Without power, he crash-landed his plane there.  Tom, fully aware of Jesse’s predicament, witnessed the landing, and while circling over the crash site, saw that Jesse had survived the landing, but appeared unable to exit his plane.  With smoke beginning to rise from Jesse’s engine, Tom feared the worst for Jesse: burning to death in his plane; or freezing to death in the subzero weather; or dying at the hands of the Chinese.

Ignoring standing orders not to risk another plane when attempting to assist a downed pilot, Tom elected to crash land his own plane on the same plateau.  Despite incurring a back injury on landing that would take years to fully heal, Tom exited his plane and made his way through the snow to Jesse in the fading afternoon light.  Jesse was conscious, but his right leg was crushed between his instrument panel and the damaged fuselage, and even with Tom’s help he could not be pulled from the cockpit.  Tom radioed for helicopter help, requesting a fire extinguisher and an ax to help cut Jesse free.

Chinese troops were known to be in the area, and undoubtedly were aware of the crash; only the circling US fighters provided any deterrence. While waiting for the helicopter Tom had time to contemplate whether, if attacked, he would save his last two bullets for Jesse and himself rather than risk capture and torture at the hands of the enemy.**

It was late in the afternoon when the rescue helicopter finally arrived, and even the ax proved useless; Jesse could not be extricated, nor could his leg be amputated.  By now, in shock and exposed to freezing temperatures, Jesse was slipping in and out of consciousness.  But his last words were for his wife: “Tell Daisy how much I love her.”  Inasmuch as the helicopter was not equipped for night flying, Tom and the helicopter pilot were reluctantly forced by approaching nightfall to abandon their rescue efforts and leave Jesse behind.  It is believed he perished soon thereafter.

Jesse Leroy Brown was 24 years-old when he became the first African-American naval officer killed in the Korean War.  He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and a Purple Heart.  Having successfully overcome so many challenges in his young life, who knows what Jesse Brown could have accomplished had he survived.***

Jesse L. Brown

Tom returned to the Leyte grief-stricken and convinced he faced a court-martial for his actions.  Instead, he was nominated for a Medal of Honor, our nation’s highest military award, for conduct above and beyond the call of duty. The captain of the Leyte later wrote: “There has been no finer act of unselfish heroism in military history.” Jesse was given a warrior’s funeral when, three days later, napalm was dropped over his crash-site to prevent any desecration of his body by the Chinese.

On April 13, 1951, President Harry S. Truman presented Tom with the Medal of Honor, the first Medal of Honor awarded during the Korean War.  Jesse’s widow, Daisy, had been invited by the White House to attend the award ceremony as well.  Amazingly, when she travelled to Washington, DC she was unable to find a hotel room, as DC hotels still refused to serve Black guests.  Despite losing a husband in the service of his country, despite a personal invitation from the President of the United States, despite the passage of 174 years since the Declaration of Independence declared all men to be equal, Black citizens of this country were treated—in our nation’s capital no less—as if they still lived in the antebellum South.

Daisy Brown, President Harry S. Truman, and Thomas Hudner (wearing the Medal of Honor)

Both Jesse and Tom would eventually have Navy ships named after them.   On March 18, 1972 a Knox-class frigate, the U.S.S. Jesse L. Brown, was launched, the third US ship to be named after an African American.  Jesse’s widow Daisy was the sponsor, his daughter Pamela the maid of honor, and Tom gave the christening address.   On April 1, 2017 an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, the U.S.S. Thomas Hudner, was christened in Boston harbor; Jesse’s family attended the ceremony along with Tom.

In July 2013 Tom, one month shy of his 89th birthday, returned to North Korea in an attempt—ultimately unsuccessful—to locate and return Jesse’s remains.

Tom and Daisy remained close friends until her death in July 2014.

A feature length movie version of Tom and Jesse’s story, entitled “Devotion,” is set for general release on November 23, 2022.  It is based on a book of the same name, written by Adam Makos.  Makos’ writing could have been better, but the story is so powerful that the overall work still packs a punch.  I was in tears several times while reading final 75 pages.

Several years ago I attended a history conference, and as I waited in a long line to register at the hotel’s front desk, I realized that I was standing directly behind Thomas Hudner, one of the event’s featured speakers.  I introduced myself; we chatted for a bit, and he signed the book I had with me, about Medal of Honor recipients.  I’ve never forgotten his graciousness.

Tom Hudner’s signature and card

Thomas Jerome Hudner, Jr. passed away on November 13, 2017, age 93.  Among the high points of my life, one that I will always cherish was the chance to shake Tom Hudner’s hand.

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* Jesse also avidly read about the exploits of black pilots as a paperboy delivering the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the leading African American newspapers of its day.

** 38% of American POWs died in captivity during the Korean War.  This compares to 34% in Japanese POW camps during World War II, 14% in North Vietnamese camps, and 4% in German internment camps.

*** Just as Jesse chose to attend Ohio State because his childhood hero, Jesse Owens, had, his life and example inspired Seaman Apprentice Frank E. Petersen to become the first African American Marine Corps aviator, flying over 350 combat missions, and, in 1979, the first African American Marine Corps general. In 2010 Petersen was appointed to the Board of Visitors to the U.S. Naval Academy, Tom Hudner’s alma mater.

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Ukraine and the Blitz

September 7, 2022 Written by Timothy Boyce
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As we watch with horror the events unfolding in Ukraine, it is clear that when and how it will all end remains unknown.  It is equally clear that no one, including perhaps even the Ukrainians themselves, ever thought they could resist the armed might of Russia for so long and so effectively.

Perhaps the Blitz, which began 82 years ago today, offers some insights.

Less than five months after the precipitous fall of France (June 25, 1940), and the debacle at Dunkirk (May 5—June 4, 1940), Great Britain faced the German juggernaut, alone, and practically defenseless.  Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for War, admitted that only one division was up to strength and fully equipped in the entire British Isles.  Of the Royal Navy’s fleet of 200 hundred destroyers, only 74 were fit for duty (due in part to Dunkirk).  Most frightening of all, the entire coast was defended by only 500 cannons, some borrowed from museums.

Since Britain nevertheless refused to see reason and capitulate, Hitler ordered planning to begin for an invasion of the British Isles (Operation Sea Lion), conditioned, importantly, on achieving air superiority over the Channel and the British mainland.  Thus began the Battle of Britain.  While the British possessed certain advantages (radar, effective ground control, fighting over their own land, etc.), and its pilots generally outfought their German counterparts, in the ensuing war of attrition, Britain was headed for ultimate defeat against the numerically superior German air force.

The third phase of the Battle of Britain (which began on August 24, 1940), focused German attacks on the British airfields themselves and, with one thousand sorties being launched each day, seemed certain to finally destroy what was left of the RAF.  In just those two weeks Britain lost a quarter of its pilots.  According to William L. Shirer, “A few more weeks of this and Britain would have had no organized defense of its skies.  The invasion would almost certainly succeed.”

Then Hitler and Herman Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, miscalculated.

Impatient with Great Britain’s refusal to concede, mindful of worse weather approaching in the fall, and most importantly, in retaliation for a British bombing raid on Berlin, Göring on September 7, 1940, switched tactics and ordered massive bombing raids against British cities, primarily London.  Göring hoped this would draw the RAF out in defense, leading to a final, conclusive battle for air supremacy.  Failing that, such raids were aimed at breaking Britain’s civilian morale.  On September 15, 1940, the Luftwaffe launched one of its largest raids against London yet, and suffered crippling losses.  Accordingly, the Luftwaffe made its second miscalculation: it switched to nighttime raids instead.

These two errors spared the RAF.  Its pilots could catch some sorely needed rest; its airfields could be restored; its battered planes repaired.

The Blitz would continue for another eight months, until May 16, 1941, wreaking devastation, killing 43,000 civilians and injuring another 51,000.  But Hitler never achieved his goal of air superiority.  On September 17, 1940, he indefinitely postponed Operation Sea Lion.

This in turn led to Hitler’s third miscalculation.  As historian Gerhard Weinberg notes:

“Far from discouraging Hitler [recognition that Britain would not withdraw from the war] had the opposite effect of making [Hitler] all the more determined to attack the Soviet Union.  In his eyes, the British were staying in the war in expectation of the Soviet Union and United States replacing France as Britain’s continental ally. . . .  The quick destruction of the Soviet Union would . . .  remove . . . these hopes.”

And we know how that decision turned out.

In summary, in the words of my favorite CBS reporter, Eric Sevareid:

“The Germans gave up their mass daylight raiding when, in the middle of September, they lost around two hundred planes on one day.  They did not know that on that day which broke their courage, the back of the Royal Air Force was also broken and that hardly a complete squadron remained in reserve in all the British Isles.  Had they been able to continue mass raiding a few more days, it is quite possible that they would have torn an irreparable breach in the barricade of the sky which would have laid England open for successful invasion, altering, perhaps fatally, the outcome of the war.  But the Germans lost their nerve; the British did not, and so they won out.”

Keep up your nerve, Ukraine.

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September 4: Read All About It!

September 4, 2022 Written by Timothy Boyce
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Today, September 4, is a special day on the calendar: It’s National Newspaper Carrier Day.

Several months ago, I posted a blog which related my own experience as a paperboy (The Cinnamon Cruller).  That blog generated more feedback from my readers than any other blog I’ve written over the years.  Who knew there were so many paperboys (and girls) out there in my reading audience?

My many blog respondents weighed in with their own personal tales of woe and strife—and occasional enjoyment.  Many related—like me—that paper carrying was not a voluntary career choice, but rather a mandate from on high (parents).  Many remembered brutal weather and miscreant dogs too.  And without exception, everyone described collections as the worst aspect of the paper carrier experience.

Benjamin Day

How did paper carriers get their own day of recognition? Apparently, almost 200 years ago, Benjamin Day, the publisher of The New York Sun, placed an advertisement in his own newspaper as follows: “A number of steady men can find employment by vending this newspaper.”  On September 4, 1833, Barney Flaherty, who was not a “steady man” at all, but rather a 10-year-old Irish immigrant, answered the ad, impressed Day, and was hired.  And so history was made.  Soon, young boys (and a few girls) were hawking newspapers from every street corner in New York City. [Flaherty later became a famous actor, stage name Barney Williams, and died in 1876 “one of the wealthiest actors in America.”]

Barney Flaherty

In 1960 The Newspaper Carrier Hall of Fame was established “to recognize former newspaper carriers who have achieved national prominence.”  Its ranks include: Warren Buffet, Martin Luther King, Jr., Walt Disney, John Glenn, Jackie Robinson, Carl Sandburg and Harry Truman among many other luminaries.

Although I would most likely have chucked the whole newspaper enterprise at the time if I could have (miraculously) exercised my own free will, I now realize in retrospect that newspapering did begin, however fitfully, to instill the rudiments of responsibility, time management, finance, and diplomacy (sweet-talking those dogs, as well as the neighborhood bully).

My “earnings” never seemed to trickle down to my possession, but my tips were all mine.  Those tips enabled my book addiction, an addiction which still shows no signs of abating.

It was that addiction which impelled me to purchase Tom Buergenthal’s A Lucky Child in 2010, and which in turn led me to purchase Odd Nansen’s From Day to Day the same year. Even my parents couldn’t have foreseen that outcome when they issued their edict back in 1967.

So, if you still have a paperboy or papergirl (a dying breed), or run into any other youngster trying to earn an honest dollar, please remember to be generous, on September 4, and always.

After all, you may be launching the career path of a future Buffet, or Disney, or Truman, or MLK.  Or, at the very least, a budding book addiction.  And who knows where that might lead?

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Steinbeck Article Published

July 28, 2022 Written by Timothy Boyce
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MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History has just recently published an article I wrote about John Steinbeck and his World War II novel, The Moon Is Down.  I have previously written (here) about the number of parallels between Steinbeck and Odd Nansen.

The article, entitled “Piéce De Résistance,” describes Steinbeck’s transition from successful novelist to successful propagandist.  How successful?  One critic called The Moon Is Down “easily the most popular piece of propaganda in occupied Western Europe.”  It was translated and secretly circulated (at great personal risk) by underground resistance movements in virtually all the occupied countries of Europe (as well as China).  Winston Churchill found time at the height of the war to read it, and found it “a well-written story.”  (Perhaps it takes one to know one: both Churchill and Steinbeck would in later years receive the Nobel Prize for Literature).  Moreover, Steinbeck was treated like a hero wherever he traveled in Europe after the war.  It’s truly a fascinating story.

Here’s the link to the full article.

Enjoy!

The Norwegian WWII version of The Moon Is Down  (translation: Moonless Night)

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In Memoriam: Odd Nansen (12/6/01–6/27/73)

June 27, 2022 Written by Timothy Boyce
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Odd Nansen’s grave marker

Odd Nansen died forty-nine years ago today, age 71.

The anniversary of his death always seems like an appropriate time for remembrance and reflection. (See my previous observations on this date in 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016).

Recently I finished reading No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin.  In it, Goodwin describes the difficult, often painful, and yet highly productive, marriage between Franklin and Eleanor, and how bereft she felt at Franklin’s sudden death in Hot Springs, GA on April 12, 1945.

In her nationally syndicated newspaper column “My Day”* written just two weeks later, on April 26, 1945, Eleanor quoted a little verse sent to her by a friend she had not seen in a long while: “They are not dead who live in lives they leave behind: In those whom they have blessed they live a life again.”  According to Goodwin, those simple lines inspired Eleanor to make the rest of her life worthy of her husband’s memory.  “As long as she continued to fight for his ideals, he would continue to live.”

Eleanor, an awkward and often lonely child, certainly proved herself worthy of her husband’s memory.  In December 1945, she accepted President Truman’s invitation to join the American delegation to the new United Nations.  In doing so, she was “setting forth on a new journey into the field of universal human rights that would make her ‘the most admired person in the world’—and an important figure in American public life for nearly two more decades.”

What better way, on the anniversary of Odd Nansen’s death, to honor his memory, than to continue the fight for his ideals, and thus prove ourselves worthy of his legacy as well.

Odd Nansen with Eleanor Roosevelt at the UN. Roosevelt was accepting the first UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award (1954)

*Eleanor wrote about Fridtjof Nansen several times in her My Day column, but that is a matter for a future blog.

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The Saga of U-505 (Part II)

June 19, 2022 Written by Timothy Boyce
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When we last left U-505 (here), it was being towed by the U.S. Navy to Bermuda, the first enemy ship to be captured on the high seas since the War of 1812 (which, incidentally, began 210 years yesterday).

During the War

The capture of U-505, far from being widely publicized, was kept in the strictest secrecy, lest the Germans realize that all their Enigma codes had been compromised.  All of this secrecy ended eleven months later, with Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945.  On May 16, 1945, the Navy finally put out a press release revealing the dramatic capture by Task Group 22.3 the year before.

Now what would become of U-505?

Initially, the submarine was pressed into service as an attraction for a war bond drive that was then underway.  The boat traveled to cities up and down the Eastern seaboard.  The public was encouraged to visit this unlikely war trophy—which they could actually tour, but only if they purchased a war bond.  According to one historian “U-505 was a smash hit.”

With the surrender of Japan in September 1945, war bonds were no longer needed, and U-505’s role as a lure for war bond purchasers ended.  It was quickly deactivated at Portsmouth, NH, to join other German U-boats which had recently arrived.

As part of their capitulation agreement, the Germany Navy had been required to surrender their entire existing submarine fleet of approximately 156 U-boats (by the end of the war Germany’s surface fleet had for all intents and purposes ceased to exist).  These U-boats were to be delivered to the Allied Powers (U.S., Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union) with the understanding that each country would either scrap their share of the boats or else tow them out to sea and sink them within 2 years.

After the War

U-505 would have undoubtedly have been included in this mass sinking but for two important factors: 1) Captain Daniel V. Gallery, who was the commander of Task Group 22.3 which had captured U-505, and who was a native of Chicago, and 2) the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.

As the 2-year deadline approached, Gallery learned that U-505 was indeed slated to be taken out to sea and sunk.  As a lawyer, I admire the argument Gallery raised to save this special sub from its intended demise.  The terms of the capitulation, he argued, applied only to ships “surrendered” to the Allies, not to ships which had been “captured.”  Ergo, the U.S. was entitled to do whatever it chose with its hard-won prize.

So, U-505 was spared for the time being, but to what end?

Gallery relates in his own memoir, Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea:

“I had no immediate plans in mind for the sub at this time, but my boys had gone to a lot of trouble to prevent that U-boat from sinking off the coast of Africa, and I took a dim view of scuttling her now.”

Here’s where the Museum of Science and Industry, and its unique origins, comes into play.

The museum was established and endowed in 1926 by Julius Rosenwald, a noted Chicago philanthropist and Chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Co.  In his gift, Rosenwald had explicitly requested that the new museum be patterned after the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany.  Rosenwald had visited Deutsches Museum in the 1920s, and was impressed by its “hands-on” approach to capturing the interest of young museum-goers.

The Museum of Science and Industry opened its doors to the public on March 1, 1933, in the former Fine Arts Palace of Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Exposition.  Its first exhibit was a replica of a working coal mine—similar to just such a coal mine exhibit in the Deutsches Museum.  Among its other featured exhibits, the German museum also contained a cutaway presentation of Germany’s first U-boat, U-1.  Not surprisingly, the Chicago museum also hoped to get its hands on a submarine—a dream that had gone unfulfilled for years.

According to Captain Gallery, it was his priest-brother, John Gallery, who first broached the idea of finding a permanent home for U-505 in Chicago:

“Father John [a naval reserve chaplain] observed that there were monuments all over the country for the land battles in every war that this country had fought, but naval memorials were few and far between.  Father John asked himself, ‘Why not bring the U-505 to Chicago and make it a memorial to the thousands of seamen who had lost their lives in the two great Battles of the Atlantic?  These were two of the crucial battles in our history, and what could be a more appropriate monument to these battles than one of the very submarines around which the battle centered.’”

On to Chicago

While the museum was very receptive, much remained to be done.  “It involved acquiring title to the U-boat, making it seaworthy, towing it [3,000 miles] to Chicago, dragging it out of the water and hauling it across the busiest thoroughfare in the city [Lake Shore Drive] to the Museum, restoring it to presentable condition, and installing it as a permanent addition to the Museum’s main building.”  Nonetheless, with support from Chicago’s citizens and the Gallerys’ perseverance (both Dan and John), the necessary funds were raised, the task accomplished, and the museum’s dream come true.

U505 being towed to Chicago

On September 15, 1954, over ten years since its capture, and after years of effort, U-505 was dedicated as a memorial to the 55,000 Americans who lost their lives at sea during World War II.  In a little over a decade 7.8 million visitors had toured the U-boat.  By 1989 it was designated a National Historic Landmark.  In 2004 U-505 was moved to a more permanent, sheltered, pavilion, at the museum, where it today stands on display.

The interior of U-505. Not for the claustrophobic!

If you ever get to Chicago, I highly recommend you visit U-505.  You will not be disappointed.

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Personal Note: I have often written about serendipitous events connected with Odd Nansen, and my connection to his story [here, here and here].  The visit to U-505 was no exception.

Shortly after my trip to Chicago this past May, I traveled to West Haven, CT for my 50th high school reunion.  While there, I told several of my classmates about my fascinating day at the Museum of Science and Industry, including an old friend and classmate, Jimmy Bednarczyk.

At this point I will quote from a memoir written by Hans Goebler, a crewman aboard U-505, entitled Steel Boats, Iron Hearts. Dealing with the aftermath of the boat’s capture, he writes:

“The Americans found out that one of the boys in our crew, Ewald Felix, was half-Polish.  They tried to use that fact to get him to talk.  One of the members of the American boarding party that had captured our sub struck up a conversation with Ewald in Polish. Once they confirmed his mother was indeed from Poland, Captain Gallery had Ewald separated from us and interrogated him personally.”

The member of Gallery’s Task Group who conversed with Ewald Felix in Polish?  Jimmy Bednarczyk’s uncle, Leon Bednarczyk.

U505 on display

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Today is Anne Frank’s Birthday

June 12, 2022 Written by Timothy Boyce
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Anne Frank

Today is Anne Frank’s birthday.  Had she lived, she would be 93 years old.  The exact date and cause of her death are unknown, although it is now believed that she succumbed in late February, 1945, probably to a disease such as typhus.

Anne, her family, and the other inhabitants of the secret annex in Amsterdam were discovered and arrested on August 4, 1944.  Thereafter she was sent to Westerbork, then Auschwitz (sharing the camp with Thomas Buergenthal who was also there at the time) and finally, in October 1944, to Bergen-Belsen.

Despite considerable differences in age and experience, there are numerous parallels between Odd Nansen and Anne Frank.  Most obviously, they were both famous diarists. Moreover, their diaries were not a mere afterthought, they were central to their respective lives.  When the Frank family received a call-up notice and decided to go into hiding, “I began to pack some of our most vital belongings into a school satchel [and] the first thing I put in was this diary,” wrote Anne.  Similarly, Nansen writes in his Foreword “Paper and writing materials were the last things I put in my knapsack before going off with the district sheriff and his henchmen.”  Anne describes as one of her “worst moments” the time her family discussed burning the diary, lest it fall into the wrong hands and implicate their helpers; Nansen called his diary “such a blessed help to me, such a comfort.”

Both diaries survived by the slimmest of margins.  Nansen faced the constant threat of detection in prison, and relied on all sorts of channels while in Norway to smuggle the diary pages to his wife, including, at one point, a Wehrmacht driver that even he called “ungovernable [and] frankly dangerous.”  Anne’s diary, seemingly safely hidden in a briefcase, was unceremoniously and unwittingly dumped on the floor of the annex on the day of her arrest by a Gestapo official who wanted to use the briefcase to collect any family jewelry and cash he could find in the apartment. After the Gestapo left, Miep Gies collected everything she could find on the floor for safekeeping.  As a result, as Francine Prose has pointed out in her book Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, “There is no way of knowing if any, or how much, of Anne’s writing was lost.”

This was not the only danger both diaries faced.  Upon his evacuation from Germany (along with his secret diary) at the hands of the Swedish Red Cross, Nansen heard, to his dismay, that the prisoners’ every possession, without exception, was burned upon arrival in Denmark, presumably to prevent the spread of disease.  Miep Gies, holding Anne’s diary until her return, later wrote that, had she read the diaries “she might have felt compelled to burn them, out of concern for her colleagues.”

Once the war was over, both diaries had difficulty getting into print.  Nansen’s diary was rejected by the first publisher it was submitted to, before being taken up by Dreyers Forlag.  Similarly, the manuscript collated and prepared by Anne’s father Otto Frank was rejected by every Dutch editor to whom it was submitted.

Once finally published, Nansen’s work was faster out of the gate, becoming a bestseller in Norway when it appeared in 1947; that same year Anne’s book had a small initial print run (1500 copies) in Holland, and was out of print by 1950.  Nansen also had an easier time breaking into the U.S. market; by 1949 an English translation was available through G.P. Putnam’s Sons.  Anne’s diary, on the other hand, received a skeptical reception.  One major publishing house called it “a dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances and adolescent emotions.”  The book was already on Doubleday’s reject pile when an assistant to the director of its Paris bureau picked it up in 1952, started reading, couldn’t stop, and thus rescued it.

When both diaries ultimately appeared in America, they each met with an enthusiastic response.  Meyer Levin, writing in the New York Times Book Review, was smitten by Anne’s writing; it “simply bubbles with amusement, love [and] discovery” he wrote.  The New Yorker said of Nansen’s diary: “[I]t will surely rank among the most compelling documents to come out of the recent [war].”

Even the moneys generated by the books have followed a similar course.  According to Prose, Otto Frank decided to channel some the book’s profits into human rights causes.  Odd Nansen chose to give all the proceeds of the German edition of From Day to Day to German refugees.  And one hundred percent of the speaking fees and royalties from the sale of the new edition of From Day to Day are earmarked for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies .

Of course, the subsequent publication trajectories of The Diary of Anne Frank and From Day to Day have been much different.  Millions of copies of The Diary of Anne Frank are now in print.  As Prose explains, “Good fortune and serendipity appeared, at every stage, to arrange Anne’s diary’s American success.”  Out of print, and all but forgotten in America for over 65 years, perhaps good fortune and serendipity will someday smile equally on Nansen’s diary, and it will join the ranks of seminal works on the Holocaust, along with Anne’s diary, Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz and Elie Wiesel’s Night.

Most importantly, now that From Day to Day is back in print, let us hope that it will also provide the same inspiration that Francine Prose attributes to Anne’s eloquent diary: “Anne Frank’s strong and unique and beautiful voice is still being heard by readers who may someday be called upon to decide between cruelty and compassion.  Guided by a conscience awakened by [the diary] one . . .  may yet opt for humanity and choose life over death.”

The above is a revised and updated version of a blog which first appeared on June 12, 2016.

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June 4, 1944: U-505 Captured

June 4, 2022 Written by Timothy Boyce
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On this date in 1944, U.S. Naval Task Group 22.3 captured German U-boat U-505 on the high seas near the Cape Verde Islands.  It was the first successful capture by the Navy of an enemy ship on the high seas since the War of 1812.

USS Guadalcanal alongside the captured German U-505

I first became aware of U-505 while doing research on Odd Nansen’s diary, From Day to Day.  On September 19, 1943, Nansen describes the following somber scene: while reading an old newspaper, one of Nansen’s fellow prisoners, Ole Iversen, learns that his son, Magnus Iversen, age 25, died months earlier when his ship was lost at sea.  By Googling “Magnus Iversen,” I discovered the ship on which he served was the M/T Sydhav, an oil tanker.  By Googling “Sydhav” I discovered that it was torpedoed off the coast of west Africa on March 6, 1942, with the loss of 12 of the ship’s crew, by U-505.  Nansen relates: “Poor Iver. . . .  [H]e took it fearfully hard.  He just went and lay down on his bunk, lay down and shook with sobs.”

By June 1944 the so-called “Battle of the Atlantic,” the effort to keep the sea lanes open on the Atlantic Ocean, especially the critical routes between America and Great Britain, had long since turned in favor of the Allies in two respects: 1) the total tonnage of merchant shipping—Britain’s lifeline—lost to U-boats began to fall below the amount of new ship construction, and 2) the number of German U-boats destroyed began to outpace the rate at which new U-boats were being added to the fleet.

Thereafter, the combined effects of: 1) better Allied convoying; 2) better airborne reconnaissance of potential U-boat activity; 3) increased merchant ship construction; 4) better technologies, such as high frequency direction finding (aka HF/DF or Huff/Duff) ; and finally 5) the Allies’ ability to read the German’s top secret Enigma Code, all spelled doom to Germany’s attempt to starve England into submission.

Task Group 22.3 consisted of one escort carrier, USS Guadalcanal, and five fast destroyer escorts: USS Pillsbury, USS Pope, USS Flaherty, USS Chatelain and USS Jenks.  The Task Group was known as a “hunter-killer” group.  Its sole function was to chase down and destroy German U-boats.  Its leader, the skipper of the Guadalcanal, was Captain (later Admiral) Daniel Gallery.  A 1920 product of the U.S. Naval Academy, Gallery came from a family of high achievers: two of his younger brothers also became admirals. (Another brother, John Gallery, might also have reached that rank had he not chosen to become a priest instead—where he settled for being a Navy chaplain.)

Capt. Daniel V. Gallery

Gallery was nothing if not an independent thinker. [Fridtjof Nansen would have loved him.]  His task group became the first to successfully pioneer night-time carrier landings.  Until then, using carrier-based aircraft, for combat or reconnaissance, was strictly a dawn-to-dusk operation.  At the time German U-boats needed to periodically remain on the surface to recharge the batteries which powered them while submerged.  By 1944 the U-boats had long since learned to surface and recharge only at night.

By implementing 24-hour, round the clock aerial surveillance, TG 22.3 took away the U-boats’ last refuge.  Indeed, on the first night of aerial patrolling, the Task Group tracked down U-515 and sank it.  On the very next night it located U-68 and destroyed it as well.

But Capt. Gallery was after bigger game. He wasn’t content to merely hunt and destroy; Gallery wanted to capture a U-boat intact.  Accordingly:

“We . . . determined, in case opportunity arose in this cruise, to assist and expedite the evacuation of the U-boat by concentrating anti-personnel weapons on it, to hold back with weapons that could sink the sub, and to attempt to board it as soon as possible.   This was discussed at the departure conference of all Commanding Officers before sailing, and all the ships were ordered to draw up plans for capture and to organize boarding parties.”

In June 1944, with the aid of Ultra (the Allies’ reading of the Enigma Code), Gallery was notified that U-505 was nearby, close to the Cape Verde Islands.  Despite being very low on fuel and overdue for refueling in Casablanca, Gallery decided to take up pursuit.  Sure enough, planes from the Guadalcanal soon discovered U-505 and both they and the destroyer escorts attacked with depth charges, forcing the damaged and leaking ship to the surface.  U-boat captain, Harald Lange, soon gave the order: “Abandon ship!”

In the ensuing melee no one aboard U-505 thought to open all the seacocks to scuttle the boat.  As one writer points out: “The Germans . . . considered the capture of a U-boat at sea so unlikely training for such an event would have been a waste of time.”  Only one young sailor, Hans Goebeler, had the presence of mind to open one strainer valve to flood the ship. [Goebeler would ultimately move his family to America after the war, where he wrote a memoir of life in a German U-boat.]

While U-505’s crewmembers were bailing from the boat to save their lives, a boarding party, especially trained for just such an event, was speeding from USS Pillsbury to the stricken ship.  The head of the American boarding party, Lieutenant (j.g.) Albert David, had no idea, as he clambered down the main hatch, if 1) the boat was booby-trapped to explode, 2) there were armed German sailors still aboard to contest any takeover, or 3) whether he could even stabilize the damaged and alien craft before it sank and took him and his boarding party down with it.  David would later receive a well-earned Medal of Honor for his heroics, the only Medal of Honor awarded in the Atlantic Fleet during World War II.  Two Navy Crosses and a Silver Star were also awarded to crew members for their actions that day.  Gallery received a Distinguished Service Medal and the Task Group a Presidential Citation.

Captured U-505, now flying the U.S. flag

David and his crew succeeded in closing the strainer, stabilizing U-505, and attaching it to a tow line from the Guadalcanal.  Thus began the tedious return journey (together with all but one of the members of U-505 crew–now as POWS) across the Atlantic Ocean to Bermuda.  Once there, the Enigma machine and all the invaluable code books seized from the sub were immediately flown to the US mainland for cryptographic analysis.

Capt. Gallery had done the near-impossible—what a PR coup for the U.S. Navy!  There was but one big hitch: By publicizing the capture of U-505, the Allies would also be disclosing to the Germans that their top-secret Enigma codes were now also in Allied hands, compromising all of their important communications.  Once so notified—or even if only suspected—the Germans would instantly change all their Enigma settings.  Inasmuch as the capture of U-505 occurred 48 hours before D-Day, the ambitious cross-channel amphibious assault on Normandy, France, any changes to Enigma would have been an enormous potential setback. 

So the triumph of TG 22.3 had to be kept secret for the time being.  The sailors aboard the Task Group were required to sign an oath of silence, “on penalty of death.”  U-505 was quickly repainted and rechristened the USS Nemo (with a tip of the hat to Jules Verne) to avoid any nosy questions.

The German POWs were confined to a specially built camp in Louisiana, and, contrary to the provisions of the Geneva Convention, were not allowed to notify their families of their status. Such families were naturally forced to conclude that U-505 had been lost as sea, an increasingly common occurrence for German U-boats in the summer of 1944. It was not until the war ended that these families learned for the first time the miraculous news that their loved ones were actually alive and well.

The capture of U-505 is an amazing adventure tale.  But its capture is only one-half of its incredible career.  For rather than being junked by the U.S. Navy after the war, the boat ended up on display at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.  On a recent trip to Chicago to speak to the Norwegian-American Chamber of Commerce, I had a chance to tour the U-505.

How this deadly German warship ended up on display in Chicago is another amazing tale.  But that is a tale for another day!  Stay tuned!

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Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day

April 28, 2022 Written by Timothy Boyce
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Today marks Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.  We vow never to forget, and never to let it happen again.

Today also happens to be the 77th anniversary of the final entry in Odd Nansen’s diary, From Day to Day:

“What on earth am I to write?  It’s as impossible today as on all the other days that have passed in one long whirl of unreality and fairy tale.  I am no longer in Germany!  I am in Denmark, at a country house; Møgelkær is its name, outside Hortens, and I’ve already been here more than a week!  It’s unbelievable.  And what have I not experienced in that week? Only it seems so hopelessly impossible to describe.  Where am I to begin, where am I to stop, what am I to write?”

Only a week earlier Tom Buergenthal experienced his own liberation, although he approached it much more cautiously:

“I saw some soldiers get off a military vehicle and walk towards the center of the Appellplatz [roll call plaza] in the direction of the big gong.  They did not look like the SS and wore uniforms I had never seen before.  But I was still afraid to move.  Then I heard the sound of the camp’s gong.  One of the soldiers was striking it as hard as he could, while another was yelling: ‘Hitler kaput! Hitler kaput!’ They threw their caps in the air and performed what looked like a wild dance.

…..

“The Soviet soldiers who first entered Sachsenhausen had told us that we were free, that we had been liberated.  I could not quite grasp what that meant.  I had never really thought of liberation as such.  My sole concern had been to survive from one day to the next.

….

“After the Russians had left, all of us who had greeted them around the camp gong started for the SS kitchen.  I followed very slowly, some fifteen or twenty yards behind, always ready to take cover. I still could not believe this supposed liberation was real and not some trick concocted by the SS.  They probably staged this liberation in order to draw us out of our hiding places.

….

“Maybe we really have been liberated, I thought as I climbed on the desk and pulled down Hitler’s picture.  I threw it on the floor, shattering the glass and the frame.  I spat on it and stepped on his face so hard that my feet began to hurt, but still I went on until the picture was torn to pieces.”

For both Odd Nansen and Tom Buergenthal the last week of April marked the start of yet another journey before liberation would mean anything.  In Nansen’s case, it would still be several weeks before he was reunited with his family in Oslo (June 9, 1945).  Tommy’s purgatory would last much longer: more than 18 months before he was miraculously reunited with his mother (December 6, 1946).

Recently I was laid up for a while with a (thankfully mild) case of COVID.  I decided to spend the time curled up with a good history book, and I chose Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 by one of my favorite authors, Max Hastings.  If there is one theme that runs throughout the book, it was the German people’s collective belief, until the very final days of the war, and despite all evidence to the contrary, that Germany would still somehow emerge victorious.  As Hastings writes:

“At the summit of the Nazi leadership, fantasy still held sway.  At one of Hitler’s conferences in February [1945], [Albert] Speer drew [Admiral] Dönitz aside and sought to persuade him that the military situation was now hopeless, that steps must be taken to mitigate the catastrophe facing Germany.  ‘I am here to represent the Navy,’ responded the Grand-Admiral curtly. ‘All the rest is not my business.  The Führer knows what he is doing.’  Even at a much humbler level in the nation’s hierarchy, fantastic delusions persisted.  After Cologne fell [early March 1945], Sergeant Otto Cranz . . . was surprised to hear one of his comrades insist mechanically, yet with utter conviction: ‘My Führer must have a plan.  Defeat is impossible!’”

Indeed, Hastings is at something of a loss to explain how Josef Goebbels’s propaganda could “pervert[ ] the reasoning processes of one of the best-educated societies on earth.”  As of 1939 German doctors, chemists and physicists had garnered far more Nobel Prizes in their respective fields than any other country in the world. German culture was the envy of the world.

And yet, lest we scoff at the insanity described by Hastings, let us remember that people today deny the Holocaust—I’ve met them; that people deny the Sandy Hook school shootings—I’ve met them (and Alex Jones has yet to face the consequences of his actions almost 10 years later); people deny the efficacy of vaccines (my wife and I, fully vaccinated and boosted, recovered quickly.  A friend in our town—educated, successful—who was militantly anti-mask and anti-vaccine, was found dead in his home last fall, Ivermectin by his bedside); and the list goes on.

As Primo Levi was at pains to remind us:

“It happened.  Therefore, it can happen again.”

But it can only happen if we, like the majority of Germans in 1945, lose sight of the truth.

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