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1. On April 10, 2025 at 4:30 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:

   If you want to know the complete story underlying the Wannsee Conference and the “Final Solution,” apart from the obvious – Fuhrer Adolf Hitler himself – it must also include at least two other names than Heinrich Himmler: Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) and Amin al-Husseini (1897-1974). Both figures – through their influence at the conference and in other ways – had prominent roles in setting the direction of German state policy following the Wannsee Conference of January 1942.

   Reinhard Heydrich was one of the most-senior members of the Schutzstaffel (SS), and the protege of SS head Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. He held the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei, as well as the title of Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia (formerly of Czechoslovakia). A part of the fanatical inner-circle surrounding Hitler, Heydrich was a ‘true believer’ in national socialism who advocated not just resettlement (deportation) of the ‘enemies of the Reich’ (Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, communists, dissidents, etc.) but their liquidation – views he promoted strongly at Wannsee in early 1942.

   Heydrich was morally-wounded on May 27, 1942, when his chauffeured motor car was attacked by a team of SOE-trained Czech operatives, as the Reichsprotektor was driven to his office.
   Enraged at the assassination of one of his favorites and the likely successor to Himmler, Hitler ordered that the strictest and most-draconian of measures be used to “punish” those responsible.

   After a brief manhunt, the SOE team members were cornered inside the crypt of a church where they had taken refuge. SS troops lowered machine guns into the tomb and killed the entire group. The Nazi high-command, believing that the people of the villages of Lidice and Ležáky were responsible for aiding the Czechs, ordered the inhabitants shot or sent to concentration camps, and both villages to be razed.

   Hitler ordered a commemorative coin struck, one side of which bore a likely of Reinhard Heydrich, and the other which bore the word “Rache,” which in German means “Revenge.”

   Hajj Amin al-Husseini, a Palestinian by birth, was the influential Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and perhaps the leading figure in the Pan-Arab movement of the first half of the 20th century. Husseini despised the British, whom he saw as occupiers, and the Jews – with equal ferocity.

   Active in the various Arab uprisings in the Middle East between the wars and into the early years of WW2, Husseini eventually grew infamous-enough that he had to go on the run to avoid arrest by the British and French, both of whom saw him as a threat to regional stability. Even when France flipped to being Vichy (occupied) France, he still had to leave North Africa/Middle East for sanctuary first in fascist Italy, and ultimately in Berlin, where he arrived in November, 1941 as an honored guest of the party.

   Grand Mufti al-Husseini was seen by the German state as a means of cultivating allies and influence in the Arab world, much of which was contained within the British Empire. If the millions of Muslims therein could be convinced to ally themselves with the Axis powers, it would materially harm the Allied war effort – or so it was hoped.

   Meeting the inner circle around Hitler and then the Fuhrer himself, Husseini was feted as an honored guest and provided with a monetary stipend, lavish home and chauffeured automobile, plus a small staff of servants. He began hosting a radio broadcast in Arabic, aimed at his potentially vast audience in the Arab world. And in due course, he took part in the discussions surrounding the fate of the Jews and others declared to be enemies of the Reich.

   Indeed, Husseini won a certain degree of notoriety for his rabid hatred of all things Jewish, going so far as to make periodic inquires of the SS as to the status of the liquidations, and exhorting them to “go faster…”

   Although he should have been tried at Nuremberg, al-Husseini was ultimately spared when British and French military authorities arranged for him to slip the dragnet and escape from Europe back to the Middle East, where it was theorized that he might provide a degree of stability. How wrong they proved to be, as events later proved!

   Husseini resumed his activities and station in Arab and Palestinian society, his ideological commitment and religious fervor undimmed. Before dying of natural causes in 1974, Husseini witnessed his grand-daughter marry one of the founders of the PLO-Fatah terrorist/direct-action group “Black September” and that group’s assault upon the Munich Olympics of 1972.

   Heydrich and Husseini are two of the attendees at Wannsee who pushed the hardest for the liquidation of the eventual victims of the Holocaust. Himmler was fully-committed to the project, but these two subordinates/associates pushed every bit as hard for it.

2. On April 12, 2025 at 7:02 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:

   “Inside the B-17 Flying Fortress”

   FYI, Herschel, I am having trouble getting the link to run… is it trouble on my end or something with the link?

   For those with the interest, time and money, the Collings Foundation offers aviation/WW2 enthusiasts the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go up in a resorted B-17.

   The Collings Foundation are a group of history buffs and aviators who barn-storm across the country doing “living history” exhibits of notable aircraft from the war. When I last attended one of their events, they had a B-17, a B-24 “Liberator” heavy bomber/patrol aircraft, and a North American P-51 Mustang piston-engine fighter modified to allow a passenger behind the pilot.
   All of these “exhibits” can be toured on the ground for a nominal fee, or you can – for a much stiffer fee – go for a ride in one of the aircraft. Fifteen or so years ago when I did it, it cost me $300 for a twenty minute ride in the B-17. Absolutely worth the money!

   United States Army Air Force doctrine in the late 1930s and into the early years of WW2 was that the B-17 “Fly Fortress” was sufficiently armed with a dozen or so .50-caliber machine guns, such that it and its squadron mates could defend themselves on missions without outside help, should enemy fighters be encountered.

   By flying in a tight “box” formation which provided mutually-supporting fields of fire for the guns, the thinking went that a wall of .50-caliber rounds would be enough to see off any attackers.
   But there was another complication: The U.S.A.A.F. intended to fly their missions over occupied Europe (and eventually Germany) during the daylight hours, not at night as the British Royal Air Force planned to do – and in fact did.

   And it was on that basis that the U.S.A.A.F. began raids into occupied Europe during the summer of 1942. Massed formations of B-17s flying at high altitude, during the day, accompanied by fighter escorts only as far as the limited range of those fighters permitted. Most of the time spent aloft and in harm’s way was spent without the benefit of Allied fighter protection.

   If you have seen the HBO miniseries “Masters of the Air,”you know what happened next: The bombers met and engaged masses of enemy fighter and fighter-bombers plus anti-aircraft fire (Flak) alone, suffering catastrophically-high losses on many raids.

   It was on those early missions that the B-17 proved its nearly miraculous ability to sustain heavy damage and yet remain airborne. Damage that would have downed or destroyed a lesser aircraft.
   That said, no aircraft in existence could stand up to the kind of punishment they were taking, not even the stalwart Flying Fortresses – and losses in machines and men were high.

   The men of those crews were learning as they went, and so were their senior and staff officers back in the U.K.

   Ultimately, fighter escorts were the answer – and soon American P-47 “Thunderbolt” single-engine fighters and twin-engine Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighters were escorting the bombers deep into occupied Europe – as far as their fuel could take them. The arrived a new technology – detachable “wing tanks” which could be jettisoned after use. By using the fuel in the wing tanks first, the fighters could extend their range considerably, and still have enough fuel left to avoid getting their feet wet in the English Channel or elsewhere by ditching their out-of-gas aircraft.

   The German Luftwaffe shifted its tactics to massing their fighters on those portions of missions farthest from Allied air bases, i.e., beyond which the fighters could go. As the raids pushed deeper into Germany as the war dragged on, German resistance – if anything – stiffened. They were now fighting to defend their homeland, in their own airspace and over their homes and countrymen.

   The nail in the proverbial coffin came when the superb North American P-51 Mustang came onto the scene in large numbers, especially those versions equipped with the powerful Rolls-Royce ‘Merlin’ engine. Its sleek fuselage and canopy, as well as its highly-efficient laminar-flow wing, gave it superb fuel economy and range… range enough, using drop tanks, to reach deep into Germany and still have fuel for the return leg of the flight.

   The P-51 was a superb fighter, the equal or better of anything the Germans could put into the air until the advent of rocket and jet aircraft. And when they appeared over Berlin on the first daylight bombing raids to hit the Germany capital city, Luftwaffe chief Reichsmarshall Herman Goering later admitted, he knew the war was lost.

   The B-17 had a deadly, sometimes fatal flaw, which cost some brave but unlucky men their lives: The “ball turret” mounted on the belly of the aircraft, aft of the bomb bay doors, and armed with twin .50-caliber machine guns, was intended to help protect the aircraft’s vulnerable belly and underside rear. Manned by a single enlisted man, the turrets were electrically-operated. The crewman of the turret had to be installed into it something before reaching the target, by means of a hatch into the main compartment above him. Fatefully, however, unlike the B-24, the turret could not be withdrawn up into the fuselage as it could be in the Liberator.

   War correspondent Andy Rooney, then a cub reporter for “Stars and Stripes,” later wrote of the horror he felt seeing a ball-turret gunner go to his death. A badly-damaged B-17, barely airworthy and on fire, was setting up to land back in England. Its landing gear had been damaged, and the plane had to do a wheels-up, belly landing. The crewman in the ball turret was trapped, however, due to battle damage jamming the escape hatch closed.

   The plane had to land then and there; it couldn’t go around again in the pattern without falling apart mid-air. The pilots knew it, the crew in the rest of the plane knew it – and so did that brave man, who died in order to save his comrades.

   The horrors those brave men experienced, most of us will never know or comprehend. As for the aircrew of the B-17s and B-24s which flew over Europe during the war, they belonged to one of the most-dangerous military occupations, alongside the combat infantryman, submariners, and FMF corpsmen and army combat medics. Those were some courageous men indeed….

   Post-war studies and ones done on a confidential basis during the war by the medical corps, found that by the time a combat pilot was in his mid-twenties, he was already too old – and too cautious – to do some of the most-hazardous combat missions. This “rule” was of course not hard and fast, but it did illustrate why so many daring-do pilots were young men of 18-20 years of age.

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