Likin 1945

A World at the End of War
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80399-916-6
Verlag: The History Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten

1945 is a fresh look at the final year of the Second World War. Evoking the disorienting strangeness of the end and aftermath of war, it narrates the lives of fifty protagonists caught in the ruins of warfare. From world leaders, artists, writers and musicians to housewives, servicemen and -women, concentration camp victims and children, Max Likin traces their stories through a momentous twelve months. Fast-moving and dynamic, 1945 is a powerfully evocative and often surprising narrative, showing how chance and fortune impacted different people at different times. This is a must-read for anyone with an interest in history or military history, and will astonish many with its fascinating juxtapositions of places and people.

MAX LIKIN is a Lecturer in History at the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound (FEPPS), which provides a rigorous college program for incarcerated women. Having previously taught at Harvard University, he was a Fulbright Scholar at Yale University. He has taught the Second World War from opposite viewpoints and is a specialist on human rights.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Likin, Max

Leseproben

January

On New Year’s Day, the ice groans and shrieks under the tracks of J. Ted Hartman’s tank in the Battle of the Ardennes. That same day, Adolf Hitler bestows the highest military medal to the most fanatical Stuka bomber pilot the world has ever seen. As they shake hands, the ace pilot starts to protest.

In what remains of Budapest, diplomat Raul Wallenberg slips on the ice in front of the Swedish hospital. Not far from the Alsatian border, a combat surgeon questions the value and veracity of anatomy drawings. In Buchenwald, a blind French Resistance fighter is locked up with ‘the crazies’, crawling like worms across the concrete floor.

Accompanied by his daughter, Sarah, Winston Churchill lands in Malta trying to catch his breath before the ‘Big Three’ Yalta Conference.

Red Army signals operators have no words to describe liberated Auschwitz.

In Mexico City, the weather is delightful. Frida Kahlo sits at her easel painting a bouquet of creamy magnolias. Light-hearted swing jazz music fills the courtyard. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter, is three months pregnant and she has just moved into the lavish House on the Embankment.

In Kunming, underground Viet Minh soldiers sitting at the Café Indochine are waiting for OSS operatives to show up.

Big guns boom in the bitterly cold Battle of the Ardennes. On New Year’s Day, US tank driver J. Ted Hartman is ordered to attack the village of Chenogne, located south of Bastogne. Trees are blanketed in thick snow and houses are pockmarked with craters, leaving a clearing for German bazookas. The ice-coated roads moan under the tracks.

A fortnight earlier, in the predawn darkness and fog of 16 December 1944, the Germans caught the Allies by surprise. They had secretly marshaled 410,000 men and kept radio silence, thereby eluding the vigilance of the Ultra codebreakers. Hitler’s personal gamble is to cut the Allies’ logistical lines of communication by taking the transportation centers of Liège and Antwerp, to bring the Western leaders to the bargaining table. The attacking German force of twenty-four divisions extends some 50 miles deep and 70 miles wide.

Situation 12 hours, 27 December 1944, Battle of the Bulge. (NARA NAID: 16681813 Maps and Charts)

As a simple conscript, J. Ted Hartman wants to be a good soldier. He enlisted in the Army Reserves at a recruiting station in Des Moines, Iowa, in May 1943, right out of high school. After six months of training, he was declared fit for service overseas in Europe. His point of embarkation on the East Coast was Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. At the pier, Red Cross girls gave donuts and coffee, and an army band played popular tunes.

On the night of 19 December, Hartman sailed from England to Cherbourg Harbor. At Soissons, he learned that his unit had become part of the US Third Army, under the command of General George S. Patton – wear a tie at all times and a helmet outside the tank.

At around eight o’clock on Christmas night, Hartman’s tank left Soissons on a 90-mile blackout march. A French woman invited the Americans in for some hot chocolate. She refused payment but said, ‘’, when offered cigarettes.

Frost has formed over the interior of the thick steel walls and Hartman tries to keep his feet dry to avoid frostbite. He has cut a wool army blanket into strips 3in wide, and he changes the wrappings every few hours. On this day, his second day of action, he sees his first dead American soldier lying near his tank and wonders how humans can stand the sight.

By the end of New Year’s Day 1945, the Americans are able to hold on to the village of Chenogne, which by now has lost twenty-nine of its thirty-one homes and the church. Late the next day, unexpected mortar fire explodes and Hartman sees one of his friends lifted off the ground in a standing position and fall dead on his back.

US infantrymen move along a road through Beffe, Belgium. (NARA NAID: 12010150 RG 111)

M-4 Sherman tanks lined up in a snow-covered field near St Vith, Belgium. (NARA NAID: 16730735 RG 111)

American soldiers of the 289th Infantry on their way to cut off the St Vith–Houffalize road in Belgium. (NARA NAID: 531244 RG 111)

It’s a fairly long drive through dark patches of pine woods. Stuka pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel is driven past several guard posts. With close to 2,000 successful missions, Rudel is by far the best Luftwaffe pilot of all time. Wing Commander von Bülow welcomes him at the Führer’s Western HQ and offers him a cup of coffee, during which the two discuss the Eastern Front.

To be on the ground is a complete waste of time, in Rudel’s opinion. When landing his Stuka airplane at an airfield, his only wish is to discuss the next target for the day with other pilots and listen to a flight sergeant reporting that the airplane is refueled, repaired, and ready to go. After some desultory small talk about the situation in Hungary, Rudel follows von Bülow through several rooms and suddenly is face to face with the commanders. His mind draws a blank when he sees Hitler, except for the thought that he should have changed his shirt.

The top brass is grouped around a long table studying an oversized map. Reichsmarschall Göring is beaming. Admiral Dönitz, Field Marshal Keitel, and Colonel General Jodl scrutinize Rudel with intense curiosity. The Luftwaffe pilot should long ago have fallen from the sky, disappearing somewhere over the Eastern Front.

A corpulent Göring wedges himself forward in line with his rank of Reichsmarschall. He has a bloodthirsty grin on his face. He is a former ace fighter pilot, the recipient of the coveted , known as the ‘Blue Max’. Right after Dunkerque, he promised Hitler that the Luftwaffe would win the war from the air and rain down fire on Britain. However, his lifelong opium addiction got much worse, and he now often dresses up in a Roman toga at his country residence at Karinhall. Built in the manner of a hunting lodge, his retreat is filled with priceless, plundered art from national museums in occupied Europe. has a weakness for masterworks depicting female nudes in mythical settings. He possesses one of the two largest art collections in the Third Reich.

The Führer offers his hand to Rudel. In recognition of his last operation, he is awarding him the very highest decoration for bravery: the Gold Oak Leaves with Swords and Diamonds. Ace flyer Rudel is promoted to the rank of group captain. In his left hand Hitler holds a black velvet-lined case. The lights in the room make the diamonds sparkle in a blaze of prismatic colors. ‘Now, you have done enough flying. Your life must be preserved for the sake of our German youth and your experience.’

Rudel loudly clicks his heels, ‘My Führer, I cannot accept the decoration and promotion if I am not allowed to go on flying with my wings.’

No one ever contradicts Adolf Hitler. The smile vanishes from Göring’s face. The generals freeze, wondering what will happen next. The Führer looks at the ace flyer gravely, then his expression changes, ‘All right, you may go on flying.’ Everyone offers congratulations. We need more soldiers like him.

On 13 January, Russian boots kick open the trap door in the Benczúr Street cellar. Raul Wallenberg shows his Swedish diplomatic papers, saying he must reach the highest Soviet authorities. There is now a glimmer of hope that Jewish families will no longer be rounded up. The Russians want to know why he is still in rubble-filled Pest when all the diplomats stayed in Buda. This goes on for an hour. In deserted apartments nearby, axes are hacking open parquet floors and smashing up antique furniture to collect firewood and live another day.

Raoul Wallenberg. (Pressenbild, Wikimedia Commons)

The Swedish diplomat’s Russian is actually rather good. Belonging to a distinguished Swedish family of bankers and industrialists, Wallenberg studied Russian in high school and then architecture at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. As First Secretary of the Swedish Embassy in Budapest, he lost no time in designing a Swedish ‘protective passport’. Printed in blue and yellow and bearing the Three Crowns heraldry in the center, these official-looking documents spark tears of gratitude when they change hands. With the help of hundreds of volunteers, the Legation saved between 30,000 and 100,000 people from certain death. Some 700 Jews are now squatting on the premises of the Legation.

One day, Wallenberg will appear on commemorative stamps and street names, on scholarships, on study halls and in ritual academic debates. To be sure, war is the defeat of diplomacy. There is no room here to analyze the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), whose leaders for a long time thought the Third Reich had won the war. Thus, they did not protest when trains packed with mothers and children were headed east to some unknown destination. Red Cross women in various capitals sent alarmist telegrams to the ICRC, demanding to know the cattle cars’ final destinations. At one moment or another, Wallenberg was creating such a stir that the ICRC felt compelled to act. By that time, however, 1 million children had been murdered.

Wallenberg is driven in his blue Studebaker to the Russian headquarters on Erzébet Királnö (Queen Elizabeth), where he spends the night. The next day, he makes a brief appearance at the Swedish Legation, where he doles out money to his Hungarian...