Citizens of London is a new title by author Lynne Olson.  It takes a look at some of the prominent Americans living in England during WWII during 1941.  It’s hard to imagine now but in 1941, especially during the first six months of that year, England was on the verge of being defeated by Germany.  Alone, without any allies, fighting the strongest power in Europe it seemed only a matter of days or weeks before England would surrender.  Olsen looks at three prominent Americans Edward Murrow, Averell Harriman, and John Gilbert Winant who shared the burden of raising English morale at the same time as they tried to persuade the Americans to intervene in WWII.

The book is focuses heavily on the shadow period of Jan-Dec 1941 when victory for Nazi Germany was a very real possibility.  I for one was fascinated with John G. Winant and the important and trusted role he played as American ambassador.  In one incident Winant was asked to intervene in a British coal mine strike, highly irregular for an official of a foreign country.  Itshowed the level of trust and respect the British had for him and his importance in the fostering the unique alliance between the two great English-speaking powers.  As a student of history Olson was able to keep my attention by her clear, concise writing.  She loses steam after the US enters WWII but nonetheless does a fine job looking at some less well-known, but equally important, figures who helped lead the struggle against Nazi Germany.

Verna Krone is the character based on Taylor’s grandma, and The Blue Orchard begins in 1954 with her arrest for assisting a prominent Harrisburg physician, who happens to be African American, with performing illegal surgeries.  Flash back to 1920 and young Verna is being forced to quit school and take a live in job with a neighboring family in order to help support her own.   She works long hours and is subjected to inappropriate attention and eventually rape by her employer, who fires her when he realizes she is pregnant.  Thus begins a pattern of lousy jobs and worthless men.

Strong-willed and hard-working, Verna eventually earns herself a nursing degree and finds employment with Dr. Crampton, a central figure in Harrisburg, PA politics and a provider of illicit abortions in the pre-Roe era.  This arrangement worked well for them both;  she was conscientious in her post-operative care and had tremendous respect for her boss, and he held her in high regard and paid her a satisfactory wage.  Eventually, though, the political climate soured on him and they both fell into public disgrace for the work they were doing.

This was a good read for several reasons.  Jackson Taylor has an excellent command of the language, and his sentences read nicely, almost lyrically.  He’s also a good story-teller;  right from the beginning I was hooked and wanted to know how this scrappy little daughter of Irish immigrant farmers wound up involved in “that” line of work, and whether everything turned out alright.  Lastly, I took a personal interest in this story because my own parents grew up in the Harrisburg area during that timeframe, and nearly all the little towns that were mentioned were familiar to me from  family anecdotes.   I can picture Harrisburg, the small towns and the countryside – even the pear orchard to which Verna eventually retired.

Five minutes.  Five minutes is all it took to dramatically change the War in the Pacific during World War II.  The event was the Battle of Midway, the date was June 4, 1942.  Midway is considered one of the most important battles fought during World War II.  It was said that “Before Midway, Japan experienced only victory; after the battle, they met a succession of defeats.”

The Rising Sun Rampant

Once Japan entered World War II they were able to easily defeat the weakly held forces of the Allies in the Pacific.    Wake Islands, Hong Kong, Guam, the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, and the Philippines are just a few of the areas that were overrun by the victorious Japanese.  The Japanese navy under Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto hoped for final decisive victory over the United States that force the US to the peace table.  Despite the great tactical success achieved at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese many of the ships sunk during the Pearl Harbor attack were able to be raised from the shallow depths of the harbor and refitted and rearmed to the great alarm of the Japan.  Japanese intended to sink the greater the part of the American fleet in the vast depths of the Pacific Ocean were they could never be raised and reused.  Instead of crippling the American fleet, they instead destroyed the cream of the Japanese fleet.

This another excellent book in the Campaign Series about World War II.  It quickly but thoroughly gives the history leads up to this crucial battle and talks about  principle commanders involved,  and the ships and airplanes used.  Of particular note to history buffs are the illustrations of the ships sizes, dimensions, armaments, and tonnage.  Anyone interested in learning more about the Battle of Midway and wanting a quick, crisp read (96 pages) will appreciate this book.

Then, he’s hired to investigate two seemingly unrelated cases.  One is the death of Michael Balfour, a wealthy merchant who squandered his fortune, but whose death seems tied to Benjamin’s father’s death.  The other is a simple request from Sir Owen Nettleton to retrieve a stolen item, but there’s much more to this case than what’s on the surface.  Both these cases bring him into the stock-jobber world.  A world his father knew very well and may have cost him his life.  Thrown into this mix are romance (between Benjamin and Miriam, his cousin by marriage), anti-Semitism, class structures, and prejudices of the time.

The story is based on real events and characters such as the South Sea Bubble of 1720, gangster Johnathan Wild, and his henchmen Abraham Mendez and Quilt Arnold.  While the character of Benjamin is fictional, he is based on real-life boxer Daniel Mendoza.

This is the first in three books with Benjamin as the main character.  The other two are:  A Spectacle of Corruption and The Devil’s Company.  If you like action, well-written characters, and a sense of well-researched history, then David Liss and Benjamin Weaver are for you.

Based on David McCullough’s best selling biography, this fabulous miniseries brings to life an influential but often overlooked  founding father in entertaining, informative detail.  It starts with the Boston Massacre (where Adams defends the accused British soldiers), carries on through the American Revolution and the founding of the United States, and ends with the death of the second President.

Paul Giamatti as John and Laura Linney as Abigail head an excellent cast.  They bring to life the time period and historical characters.  One of the most interesting details is the relationship between the two.  Abigail really was a partner to John and advised him on many issues.

For more information on our second President, check out the following from The Library of Congress.   Read his actual papers, learn about his family tree, read about his contemporaries, find other resources, etc.

http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/presidents/adams/index.html

http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/presidents/adams/external.html

http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/presidents/adams/bibliography.html

I recommend this series, book, and links to anyone interested not only in U.S. history and the founding fathers but also in a good story that happens to be true.

The Third Reich was going to last a thousand years.  Certainly its creator and his accomplices, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party thought (and hoped) so.  How else could they hope to escape justice for the crimes they inflicted upon a prostate Europe ?

I recently watched a fascinating German film called “Downfall” that deals with the last days of the Third Reich.  Filmed mostly in the claustrophobic bunker that Hitler lived his remaining days it gives a realistic look at the upside down dream world that Hitler and his main supporters (Joseph and Magda Goebbels, Eva Braun) lived in as Germany’s vengeful enemies, in particular the Russians, tightened their grip on Berlin and prepared to destroy the Nazi regime.

You see Nazi officials having parties and celebrating a mere mile away from the front line’s as soldiers died to protect them.  And as Hitler has staff meetings where he is ordering around non-existent armies in the hopes of averting the oncoming Russian armies.  Easily the most chilling moment of all is when the Goebbels decide to die with the Führer and poison their six children rather than let them live in a world without the Nazi’s and Hitler.

While it easy to dismiss Hitler has a wild eyed lunatic it must be remembered that he almost destroyed the world.  A fate that is not nearly accomplished by lunactics.  Instead he was an evil genius who could inspire intense loyalty (such as the in the Goebbels) even in the face of overwhelming defeat.  The world can only take a deep breath and rejoice in his death and the complete and utter defeat of his ideals.

I recommend this movie for those who want a heavy dose of reality in their historical fiction.

Hanging on my bedroom wall I have an old picture of my Grandpa in his World War I uniform, looking serious and handsome and older than his seventeen years. When I think of that war I always think of Grandpa and how he lied about his age to join his brothers in the “good fight.” I wish I’d asked him about the war, but he died when I was a young girl, and chances are he wouldn’t have talked much. My own dad doesn’t share a lot about the horrors he experienced in the next big war. He likes to tell about the good times after the war ended and they rode through France celebrating with roasted chickens that they had liberated from their barnyards. But not so much the ugly parts.

James Carl Nelson, who wrote The Remains of Company D, also had a grandfather who spoke little of his military service. He did refer often to being left to die in a wheatfield at Soissons, and it is this mental image that seeds the desire and need to travel across the world and try to find out exactly what had happened to his grandfather and the rest of his infantry company on that faraway battlefield.

At the beginning of the book the author is visiting with his grandfather in a retirement home on his 100th birthday; he is struck by how tiny and frail his grandpa’s frame looks in the sea of sheets and blankets, and he wonders about the names on the pile of birthday cards by his bed. He also thinks about whether his grandpa is remembering the war, the names and faces of the boys he fought beside and left behind.

It is the following year, when he inherits his now deceased grandfather’s dog tags, purple heart, and a few post cards, that Nelson decides he needs to write the story of his grandfather’s infantry unit and its service in World War I. An experienced journalist, Nelson travels to the sources to find original newspaper stories, government records, and descendants of the soldiers who fought beside his grandfather in those horrific battles at Cantigny, Soissons and in the Meuse-Argonne. The tales he relates are fraught with sadness and frustration, and like any war story leave you a feeling of futility and wasted youth.

Nelson’s research is meticulous and his rendering of the story also leaves the reader with a deep appreciation for these brave and humble men who endured carnage and battle unlike any before or since. There is one veteran of “the Great War” still alive in the United States. He is 109 years old and lives in West Virginia.  If he wanted to chat about the war there’s a Canadian vet who was in but saw no action,  a female UK vet who was a waitress, and a British seaman who lives in Perth, Australia (also 109 years old).   Those are the end of the line.  It’s a good thing that people still care enough to write about what they did, and that others read and think about it.

The Senate created a joint group consisting of the Armed Forces and Foreign Relations committees to hold the hearings.  The Chairman of this group would be Senator Richard Russell, head of the Armed Forces committee.

While forgotten by many today, Richard Russell was among the most prominent and distinguished American senators from the 1930’s-1970’s.  Besides a towering intellect, Russell was know for being fair minded (aside from race relations) and even handed.  Among the many decisions made in these hearings was to not allow reporters or any radio or televisions inside the committee room.  This was done in the interests of national security, despite the objections of some of the members of the group.  As a compromise measure copies of what was being recorded in the hearings would be released to reporters every half hour or so after all “top secret” information had been carefully removed from them.  The first witness called was General MacArthur himself.

He presented his case to a room overflowing with Senators and committee staff.  For over six hours MacArthur defended his positions and articulated his problems with the Truman administration.

It quickly became apparent as the testimony went on that MacArthur’s ideas on the situation in Korea, bombing Chinese Manchuria, sowing mines in Chinese rivers, and using the U.S. navy to land Nationalist Chinese forces on the Chinese mainland would have dramatically escalated the war.  Some members of the committee asked logical questions that MacArthur seemed unwilling or unable to answer.  If there was a huge upswing in materials and forces sent to Korea to battle China how would that effect the position of the US in Western Europe?  Wouldn’t the Soviet Union take advantage of the situation and push deeper into Western Europe?  MacArthur replied that as the theater commander of Korea he could not answer what the Soviet Union might do in Western Europe.  It was not his responsibility.  But that was the point that was being made by the Truman administration. charged the Senator questioning him.  Truman had to look at how reinforcing and upgrading the conflict in one area of the world might have ramifications for another part of the world.  MacArthur only cared about victory in Korea, while Truman saw that victory in Korea would be more than balanced out by the loss of Western Europe to the Soviet Union.  MacArthur also could not answer if escalating the fight with China would bring in the Soviet Union and lead to World War III.

After MacArthurs testimony ended other notables such as the Secretary of the State and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were called to testify. One by one these experts were called and refuted charges made by MacArthur.  MacArthur had said that his views and the Joints Chiefs were nearly identical on Korea.  But one Senator asked “didn’t the Joint Chiefs of Staff call for reconnaissance flights over Manchuria while MacArthur called for bombing raids over Manchuria?  “Yes.” replied the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Wasn’t there a significant difference between reconnaissance and bombing?”  Again the reply “Yes.” Finally in some of the most damaging testimony, General Omar Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs, stated that when called to testify about MacArthurs desire to escalate the Korea War it was “The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.”

For many weeks the hearings continued under Senator Russell and were acclaimed for their fairness and nonpartisanship.  Yet, slowly bit by bit as the words of MacArthur were reported, recorded, and scrutinized it began to dawn on the many defenders of MacArthur what his ideas entailed.  Certainly World War III and perhaps a nuclear holocaust would shortly follow.  Would that be worth trying to achieve total victory in Korea?  Support for MacArthur began to taper off, the flow of telegrams, phone calls, and letters in support of MacArthur to the Congress slowed down and finally stopped altogether.  From the New York Times came this “The script had become repetitious, the audience was getting that glazed look: it was time to end. This week the curtain came down on the MacArthur hearing.” “The official transcript totaled 2,045,000 words—more than twice the wordage of the Bible.”
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,815037,00.html#ixzz0adNcr1FN

By the time the hearings were offer the vast majority of Americans no longer believed that Truman had made a mistake in removing MacArthur from his position.
In mid 1951 MacArthur for President seemed a done deal.  There was no way anyone either Democrat or Republican could defeat him in a general election.  It seemed that there had never been such an outpouring of support as had been seen for MacArthur.  Because of the hearings MacArthur’s judgment was now being called into question.  The great majority of people no longer believed that he had been unfairly removed from command with victory in his grasp.  Instead they saw that removing MacArthur had saved them from an even more terrible outcome.  Rather than an all conquering hero returned from the battlefield, he looked like a warmonger willing to destroy the world for an elusive victory.  People’s opinion of MacArthur had been shaken by the extremism of his views.

When the  kickoff to MacArthur’s presidential bid was called in a stadium in Texas, MacArthur the man who had recently attracted seven million people to a parade in New York,  could only fill half of forty thousand person stadium.  The once great crowds who had so  recently listened to his every word were now gone.  The MacArthur for President Campaign died a quiet death.  The money and support everyone had thought would appear never materialized.

In 1952 The United States did elect a war hero from WWII.  It was not MacArthur; instead it was Dwight Eisenhower Supreme Allied commander who became President.

The what if’s of history are always fascinating.  What if MacArthur’s escalation ideas had been acted on by Truman?  Would any of us be alive today?  Or would there only insects and cockroaches rooting through the once great ruins of the vanished human species?  On a less dramatic note would everyone in Western Europe now be speaking Russian?  Also, what would have happened if a coup d’état led by MacArthur had overthrown Truman?  The overthrowing of a democratically elected government by the military would have been precedent setting measure that would have changed our government forever.  Civilian control over the military would have vanished forever and every generalissimo with the backing of a segment of the military would have fought and scratched his way up to try to win ultimate control of the government.  This great country would have become an unhappy land rife with violence and destruction as civil war after civil war racked its people.  Whatever MacArthur’s previous achievements perhaps none were as important to the future well being of this country as was his decision to not use the American’s people anger at his dismissal for his own gain by a violent overthrow of the government.  President Franklin Roosevelt once called MacArthur “[H]e was one of the two most dangerous men in America.” The other man being the demagogue Senator Huey “Kingfish” Long   By not attempting to overthrow the government MacArthur proved Roosevelt wrong and showed the pre-eminence of the civil over the military control that continues to be the guiding light of our country today.  It was one of the last great services MacArthur performed for his country.