Posts tagged WWII

April 15, 1945: Roosevelt Buried

Share

Franklin D. Roosevelt

On this date in 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the longest serving president in U.S history, was buried at Springwood, his family home in Hyde Park, New York.  Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, GA at 3:35 pm. on April 12 of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.  He was 63.

Roosevelt, who shook off a debilitating illness which left him at age 39 totally and permanently paralyzed from the waist down, had the burden of guiding the country through two of the most cataclysmic events in its history: the Great Depression and World War II.  Through it all the U.S. emerged stronger, more prosperous, and freer, than at any time in its history.

Like Lincoln, Roosevelt died within weeks of realizing the final fruits of the war he had led, with “the unbounded determination of [its] people” since its inception.  Like Churchill, his contemporary (whom I have written about here), he was a complex man, whose complexities, accomplishments and contradictions have fascinated and challenged historians and biographers ever since.   In all events, historians and political scientists consistently rank Roosevelt, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln as the country’s three greatest presidents.

On the centennial of FDR’s birth, George Will wrote:

“Anyone who contemplates this century without shivering probably does not understand what is going on. But Franklin Roosevelt was, an aide said, like the fairy-tale prince who did not know how to shiver. Something was missing in FDR. . . .   But what FDR lacked made him great. He lacked the capacity even to imagine that things might end up badly. He had a Christian’s faith that the universe is well constituted and an American’s faith that history is a rising road. . . .  Radiating an infectious zest, he did the most important thing a President can do: he gave the nation a hopeful, and hence creative, stance toward the future.”

Roosevelt almost never had a chance to fulfill his historic role.  On February 15, 1933, between his first election to the presidency and his inauguration, Roosevelt gave an impromptu speech in Miami, Florida.  In the crowd was Giuseppe Zangara, who fired off five shots at the president-elect.  FDR was not hit, but Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago, who was standing next to him, was fatally shot, and four other bystanders injured.

Winston Churchill almost met a similar fate as well, when, on December 13, 1931, while visiting New York City, he exited a cab in the middle of Fifth Avenue, and looking left, saw no traffic.  He forgot that in America, unlike England, cars drive on the right.  He proceeded to step in front of an oncoming car approaching from the right and was hit and dragged several yards. [Churchill later wrote: “I do not understand why I was not broken like an eggshell or squashed like a gooseberry.”]  He escaped with a serious scalp wound and two cracked ribs.

The great historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., was fully mindful of these two events when he later observed:

“One might invite those who believe that individuals make no difference to history to tell us what would have happened to the world a decade later had the automobile killed Winston Churchill on Fifth Avenue and the bullet killed Franklin Roosevelt in Miami.  Fortunately, the two men survived to find each other and to save us all.”

Recently I described the German invasion of Norway, beginning with a famous speech from FDR (here).  Norway was immensely grateful for both the inspiration Roosevelt gave to resistance fighters in Norway with his remarks, and for the hospitality the Roosevelt family extended to Crown Princess Märtha (the King’s daughter-in-law) and her family.   She and her children (including the current King of Norway, Harald V) initially stayed in the White House upon arriving in the country, and lived out much of the war in nearby Maryland, and where she was a frequent guest at the White House.

After the war, the Norwegian government dedicated a statue to Roosevelt, prominently displayed in Oslo harbor, adjacent to City Hall, close to Akershus Castle and other important landmarks of World War II.  Eleanor Roosevelt attended the dedication.

Statue of FDR in Oslo

M/T Sydhav Postscript: The Fate of U-505

Share

Recently I wrote (here) about the role of Norway’s merchant marine during World War II, and the ill-fated M/T Sydhav, sunk on March 6, 1942, killing 12 of its crew, including Third Mate Magnus Iversen.  Iversen was the son of Ole Berner Iversen, a fellow prisoner with Odd Nansen in Grini and Veidal camps.  I wrote of the particularly painful way Iversen learned of his son’s death—six months earlier—via an old newspaper circulating in Veidal.

The German submarine which torpedoed the Sydhav, U-505, was also ill-starred in many ways.  She experienced casualties as well—both self-inflicted and from enemy fire, and suffered an ignominious end.

After an initial shakedown cruise, U-505 engaged in 11 combat patrols.  During her career she sank eight ships totaling 44,962 tons.  Her most productive patrol was her first, where she sank four ships (including the Sydhav).  On her second patrol she sank three, which included a three-masted schooner, and on her third, only one ship, for 7,173 tons.

That same third patrol was cut short when U-505 was surprised on the surface by a patrol aircraft of the Royal Air Force near Trinidad, and severely damaged in a low-level attack—so low that the resulting explosion also destroyed the plane, killing all of its crew.  U-505 barely survived the attack and somehow made it back to its home base in Lorient, France.

After six months of repairs, U-505 was again ready for action, but she would never sink another ship in her fighting career. This failure had several causes: sabotage by increasingly restive French workers in Lorient, and improved anti-submarine methods—both tactical (better convoying) and material (more and better ships, planes and technology).

The net result was that U-505 was hunted almost as soon as she left port, and often had to return to Lorient to fix enemy bomb damage or sabotage.  This latter included faulty welds, pencil-sized holes drilled in her diesel tanks (which would leave a telltale oil slick in her wake), and other equipment failures.

On her ninth combat patrol, a British destroyer spotted U-505 east of the Azores and initiated a depth-charge attack. During the height of the attack, the sub’s skipper, Captain Peter Zschech, killed himself by a shot to the head in front of his crew.  This is the only known instance of a commanding officer committing suicide while in battle.

Her next, and final, patrol began March 6, 1944, exactly two years to the day since the Sydhav had been sunk; perhaps the ghosts of the Sydhav were dogging her path as she set forth.  By 1944 the tables had been almost completely turned in the battle for control of the seas.  By now, Allied “hunter-killer” task groups prowled the oceans using high-frequency direction finding, and aerial and surface reconnaissance, to locate and destroy U-boats.

One such group, Task Group 22.3, sailed from Norfolk, VA on May 15, 1944.  It consisted of an escort carrier (USS Guadalcanal) and five destroyer escorts (Chatelain, Flaherty, Jenks, Pillsbury and Pope), under the overall command of Captain Daniel V. Gallery.  It is a measure of the Allies’ complete naval dominance by this time that on June 4, 1944, when TG 22.3 and U-505 collided, the U.S. Navy could devote all of these vessels to search and destroy missions in the Atlantic when the greatest amphibious assault ever attempted—the Normandy landings—was scheduled to occur the same week.  [D-Day involved 6,939 ships: 1,213 warships, 4,126 landing craft, 1,736 ancillary craft, and 864 merchant vessels.]

Captain Daniel Gallery

Capt. Gallery’s task group had already sunk two U-boats on a previous deployment, one of which, U-515, was forced to the surface and destroyed with gunfire.  The significant effort needed to eventually sink the sub gave Capt. Gallery the idea that it might be possible to board, and capture, a German submarine before she was scuttled or destroyed, and he drew up plans and began training accordingly.

When TG 22.3 picked up U-505 on sonar, the task group immediately went into action with depth charges and hedgehogs.  Within minutes the sub was forced to the surface, heavily damaged, and her skipper ordered all to abandon ship.  However, her crew failed to take all the measures necessary to quickly scuttle her, and a boarding party from the Pillsbury, led by Lieutenant (j.g.) Albert David, entered the slowly sinking deserted ship, and secured her.

Lieutenant Albert David

The sub was towed to Bermuda, to be intensively studied by U.S. Navy intelligence and engineering officers.  It was the first capture by the Navy of an enemy vessel on the high seas since the War of 1812.  The entire capture was filmed, and can be found on YouTube (here).

U-505 captured (note U.S. flag)

This feat, however, was not considered an unalloyed success at the time.

One of the most closely guarded secrets of the war was the Allies’ ability to crack the Enigma code, and thereby read Germany’s most important communications.  The capture of U-505 included of course its code books, with the latest Enigma settings.  If the Germans learned of U-505’s capture, they would be able to deduce that the Allies now had the means of deciphering Enigma, which the Germans had hitherto felt was impregnable.  This in turn might lead to the use of an entirely new code.  The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Ernest King, even contemplated court-martialing Capt. Gallery for not sinking U-505 instead.

To protect the secret regarding Enigma, the capture of the sub was never publicized, U-505’s crew was interned in a separate camp, their existence was never acknowledged, and they were denied access to the Red Cross.  To further confuse the enemy, U-505 was painted to look like a U.S. submarine, and christened USS Nemo.  The German Navy ultimately concluded that U-505 had been lost at sea, and the crew’s families were notified that they were dead.

With the secret of Enigma still safe, Capt. Gallery, rather than facing a court-martial, was instead awarded the Navy Distinguished Service Medal.  Lt. David, who had led the boarding party, received the Medal of Honor—the only Atlantic sailor to receive such a distinction during World War II.  Unfortunately, Lt. David did not live long enough for the medal to be presented to him.  He suffered a heart attack fifteen months after his heroic action, and died on September 17, 1945, age 43.   TG 22.3 received a Presidential Unit Citation.

But the saga of U-505 was not yet over.

After the war, with no further use for the sub, the Navy decided to use U-505 for target practice.  Daniel Gallery, now a rear admiral, suggested instead that Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) might be interested in it.  Established by Chicago businessman Julius Rosenwald (an early co-owner of Sears, Roebuck and Company), MSI was indeed interested.  Private subscriptions paid for towing and installation of the boat.  On September 25, 1954, she was officially donated to the City of Chicago and dedicated as a permanent exhibit.

In 1989 U-505 was designated a National Historic Landmark.

Even enemy submarines sometimes have second acts.

U-505 on display at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry

 

ADRESSAT UNBEKANNT [ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN]

Share

It amazes me that, after years of immersion in the field of World War II and the Holocaust, I can still discover works of which I was totally unaware.  I had one such experience recently.  While reading The Borrowed Years 19381941: America on the Way to War by Richard Ketchum (an excellent book, by the way) I learned of a short story titled “Address Unknown.”  Written by Katherine Kressmann Taylor in September 1938, the story first appeared (appropriately enough) in the magazine Story.  It created a literary sensation; never in the magazine’s seven-year history had any story generated so much comment.  It was reprinted in the January 1939 issue of Reader’s Digest, and then reprinted in book form the same year, where it sold 50,000 copies.  Soon it was on the Reichskommissar’s list of banned books.

The story is told entirely through the exchange of 19 letters between close friends and business partners Max Eisenstein and Martin Schulse, and covers 16 tumultuous months, from late 1932 to early 1934.  You can read it in less than an hour. Its very brevity adds to its impact.

In the first letter (dated November 12, 1932), Max, who is Jewish, writes to Martin, who is not.  Martin has just relocated to Munich, Germany, the country of origin for both men.  Once an impecunious artist, Martin has become sufficiently successful through their jointly owned art gallery in San Francisco that he can return to his homeland with his wife and three boys, leaving Max behind to run the Schulse-Eisenstein Galleries.

Writing the day after the 14th anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I, Max rejoices about the  “long way we have travelled, as peoples, from that bitterness,” as well as the fact that the “democratic Germany” to which Martin returns has been purged of “Prussian arrogance and militarism.”

On a personal note, Max reveals he has just heard from his younger sister, Griselle (living in nearby Vienna), an aspiring actress who, we learn, once had a torrid love affair with Martin.  Does Max have Martin’s permission to notify Griselle that Martin is back in Germany?

Martin’s reply (December 10, 1932) depicts a poor and downtrodden Germany—so poor that Martin is able to purchase a 30-room house on 10 acres and employ 10 servants.  Martin comments on the political turmoil prevailing in the country, even under the presidency of Paul von Hindenburg, a fine liberal that Martin much admires.

As for Griselle, by all means give her Martin’s address, so she can know a home for her is close at hand.  After all, “for Griselle I keep a tenderness that will last long.”

By January 21, 1933, Max waxes lovingly about his deep friendship with Martin, but inquires, with concern, about “this Adolf Hitler” who is rising toward power.

Over the course of the next few months, Max expresses growing concern about conditions in Germany, while Martin, who initially expressed ambivalence toward Hitler, becomes increasingly dogmatic in his replies.  At first, he expresses distaste for the Jew-baiting he sees, but calls it the “little surface scum when a big movement boils up.”  By July, Martin is explaining that scapegoating Jews “does not happen without a reason,” and further asks Martin to stop writing to his home address.  Under the strict censorship rules, correspondence with a Jew is anathema to a Nazi official, which Martin has become.  Better to write, if at all, in care of the bank where Martin works.

By September 1933, Max, “of necessity” sends a brief message to Martin at work.  It concerns Griselle.  She has joined a theater company in Berlin, oblivious to the danger, and Max is worried about her safety—will Martin watch out for her?  No response.

When Griselle subsequently disappears, Max becomes desperate and writes again—can Martin try to find and help his old lover?

Martin finally responds—prefacing his reply with a “Heil Hitler.”  He informs Max that Griselle is dead.  She came to Martin’s home with stormtroopers at her heels, and Martin turned her away.  He simply could not “risk being arrested for harboring a Jew and . . . los[ing] all I have built up here.”

Hearing the news, what can Max do now?  He is thousands of miles away, a Jew, and his erstwhile best friend will never face justice in a Germany awash in anti-Semitism and besotted with a fanatical leader.  (Martin has since had a fourth child, a boy naturally named Adolf).

But Max does have one way to exact revenge and achieve justice.  Less than a month after Martin’s startling revelation of the depths of his heartlessness, Max begins to pepper Martin with letters—now written to his home address.  These letters are sprinkled with overt references to “the Fleishmans,” “Uncle Solomon,” and “Aunt Rheba,” implications that they share a Jewish grandmother, as well as cryptic instructions to prepare “the following reproductions: Van Gogh 15 by 103, red; Poussin 20 by 90, blue and yellow; Vermeer 11 by 33, red and blue.”

Martin responds—once—in desperation, in a letter smuggled out of Germany with an American acquaintance, begging Max to stop.  The authorities want to know what “the code” means.  Martin is losing his job, his son is no longer welcome in the boys’ corps, his wife is snubbed on the street.  Won’t Max have pity, and stop?

Yet Max persists, and his final letter (March 3, 1934), which ends with the injunction that the “God of Moses be at your right hand,” is soon returned by the German postal authorities with a simple stamp, in bold Gothic letters: Adressat Unbekannt [Addressee Unknown].

Katherine Kressmann Taylor

The back story to Address Unknown is almost as interesting as the book.  Katherine Kressmann was born in 1903 in Portland, Oregon.  She later married Elliott Taylor, worked as an advertising copywriter and wrote for literary journals in her spare time.  The inspiration for Address Unknown came from two sources, according to her son.  Shortly before the war some “cultivated, intellectual, warmhearted German friends” of Taylor’s returned to Germany after living in the U.S.  Within a short time, they became devoted Nazis, “refused to listen to the slightest criticism of Hitler,” and during a return visit to the U.S. turned their backs on an old, dear friend of theirs who happened to be Jewish.

More importantly, around the same time Elliott noticed a small news article about some American students studying in Germany.  Their fraternity brothers thought it would be funny to write them letters poking fun at Hitler.  They wrote back: “’Stop it.  We’re in danger.  These people don’t fool around.  You could murder one of the Nazis by writing letters to him.’”  Katherine took the idea of a letter as a weapon, and wrote Address Unknown.  Interestingly, the editor at Story magazine thought the tale was “’too strong to appear under the name of a woman,’” and shortened her byline to the more neutral sounding “Kressmann Taylor,” the pen name she used for the rest of her life.

In 1944 Columbia Pictures turned Address Unknown into a movie directed by William Menzies (of Gone With the Wind fame), which received two Academy Award nominations (Art Direction and Music Score).    But, much like From Day to Day, her story fell into obscurity following World War II.

After the war Taylor continued to write, and taught journalism and creative writing at Gettysburg College for almost 20 years (where she was the first woman to earn tenure).  To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps, Story Press reissued the book once again in 1995.  Address Unknown has since been translated into 20 languages and has been a bestseller in Israel and France (where it sold 600,000 copies).  A BBC radio dramatization is available on YouTube (here).

Katherine Kressmann Taylor died in July 1996, age 93, almost sixty years after the publication of her short story; long enough to see it recognized the world over as a classic.

[For reasons that I have been unable to uncover, the title of the story and the book was Address Unknown, rather than Addressee Unknown, which is the correct translation of Adressat Unbekannt.]

 

The Sinking of the Sydhav

Share

Do you know what happened seventy-six years ago today (March 6, 1942)?

I didn’t think so.

After all, it was not one of those iconic dates associated with World War II: December 7, 1941 (Pearl Harbor); June 6, 1944 (D-Day); February 23, 1945 (Flag raising on Iwo Jima); August 6 and 9, 1945 (Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki); May 8, 1945 (V-E Day); August 15, 1945 (V-J Day).

No, March 6, 1942 was just another typical day in the war.  Which is to say it was intense, bloody, and widespread.  Germany and Russia were locked in mortal combat on the Eastern Front.  The Battle of Java Sea had just concluded (on March 1, 1942), a major U.S. naval defeat.  The first deportation train from Paris to Auschwitz was being readied for departure (March 11, 1942).  The Japanese were days away from capturing Rangoon, Burma (March 8).  On March 6 alone, twenty-three ships of all nations were sunk, scuttled, mined, bombed, or collided.  Several ships were torpedoed by enemy submarines, off the coasts of Bermuda, Iceland, and Delaware.

One such ship was the M/T (Motor Tanker) Sydhav.  It had departed Curaçao on February 17, and was heading to Freetown, Sierra Leone, a major port city on Africa’s west coast, with 11,400 tons of oil, where it expected to meet up with a convoy for the journey north.

Motor Tanker Sydhav

The Sydhav had been part of Norway’s merchant marine fleet.  Comprising 1,300 vessels totaling more than 4.4 million gross tons and manned by 30,000 seamen, Norway’s merchant fleet was the world’s fourth largest, and most modern, at the start of the war.  Like most of that fleet, the Sydhav was at sea when Germany invaded Norway on April 9, 1940.  Also, like most of the fleet, it ignored German calls to head for Norway, or other German-occupied ports, and instead placed itself at the service of the Allies.  At one point the Norwegian fleet was transporting nearly 60% of Britain’s oil and half of its foodstuffs.  One British official observed, with perhaps only slight exaggeration, that the fleet was worth more to England “than an army of a million men.”

The Sydhav never reached Freetown.  On the morning of March 6, it was spotted by U-505, a recently commissioned German submarine operating as a lone wolf on its first combat patrol off Africa’s west coast.

U-505

Struck by two torpedoes, Sydhav exploded and sank within three minutes.  A crewmember aboard U-505, Hans Goebeler, who emigrated to the U.S. after the war, later published a memoir of his wartime experiences in Steel Boat, Iron Hearts: A U-Boat Crewman’s Life Aboard U-505.  Here is how he described the attack:

“A sharp explosion was followed immediately by a deafening roar.  A moment later, a gigantic shock wave hit us, knocking us off our feet and rocking the boat like a baby’s cradle.  Huge waves blocked the periscope’s vision for almost two minutes.

“When the periscope view finally cleared, all that could be seen was an enormous plume of white smoke.  The tanker, which had evidently been loaded with gasoline, had exploded like a bomb when the torpedoes hit.  Inside the sub we could still hear low, rumbling explosions several minutes after the first detonation.”

The Sydhav’s crew had no chance to lower any lifeboats, and jumped into the water to save themselves, where they were pulled under by the ship’s suction.  Twenty crewmembers surfaced; eleven did not, including Captain Nils Helgesen, First Mate Hans Hansen, and Third Mate Magnus Iversen.

News of the sinking of a small oil tanker traveled slowly in wartime Europe.  A maritime hearing was held a month later in London, but such events were not highly publicized, both for reasons of morale and wartime security.  Nonetheless, the sinking was eventually reported in Norwegian newspapers.  Not surprisingly, those held in Nazi custody were even slower to receive any such information.  But eventually even they did, too.

Here is part of Odd Nansen’s diary entry for Saturday, September 19, 1942, over six months after the event:

“Newspapers arrived [in camp] as well.  Old indeed, but with one or two things of interest in them.  When the food was consumed and the hut cleaned up for the evening, the chaps sat on, full, lazy, and contented, reading the newspapers round the tables.  As we’re sitting like that, [Andreas] Onstad shoves his paper across to [Ole] Iver[sen], our waiter, and asks him: Isn’t that somebody you know?

“And he points to an item about seamen from Haugesund who have lost their lives while sailing for the Allies.  That was how Iver learned that his son was dead.  Among the lost was his name, Magnus Iversen, mate, aged twenty-five.  Poor Iver.  And he took it fearfully hard.  He just went and lay down on his bed, lay and shook with sobs.”

Before the war ended, 706 Norwegian ships would be lost, representing almost half the nation’s total tonnage at the beginning of 1940.

“Forty thousand sailing Norsemen,
One and all they chose the battle,
Homelessness and lonely ocean,
Chose to die from horrid gangrene
Or in flames on burning tankers,
Chose to drift on slender raft boards
Thousands of miles from help and care—
Deathless honor shall be theirs.”
Nordahl Grieg

Upcoming Events

Share

Book Signings

  • April 11, 2024: Our World, Kiawah, SC
  • May 5, 2024: Hadassah, Stonebridge, Monroe Twp, NJ
  • June 2, 2024: Yiddish Club, Monroe, NJ
  • June 3, 2024: Wilton, CT Public Library
  • September 28, 2024: Swedish American Museum of Chicago (Virtual)

People are talking


"Thank you for the fantastic program. It was a great pleasure to have you at the museum."

- Eric Nelson Executive Director/CEO Nordic Museum Seattle, WA

For more posts please see our archives.

Archives

On This Date

< 2019 >
September
SMTWHFS
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     
Legend
  Previous/Upcoming Engagements
  This day in history