After patterning its army on the French model, Bavaria became an important French ally. Later, as the largest military contingent in the Confederation of the Rhine, the Bavarian Army participated in all of Napoleon’s major campaigns, contributing significantly to the victory at Wagram in 1809. Based on its new military power, Bavaria remained a kingdom after Napoleon’s abdication.

As part of the Holy Roman Empire, Bavaria fought as a member of the First Coalition. Four regiments of infantry and one of cavalry, serving with the Army of the Upper Rhine, laid siege to Mainz (1793) and shared in the victories at Friedelsheim, Battenberg, Herzheim, Monsheim, and Zell (1794). Later, they garrisoned Mainz until the Treaty of Campo Formio (1797). Maximilian Joseph I, Bavaria’s new elector (as Maximilian IV Joseph), reluctantly yielded to Austrian pressure to join the War of the Second Coalition. Bavaria’s two brigades, composed of thirteen infantry battalions and one cavalry regiment, suffered defeat with the Austrians at Hohenlinden (13 December 1800) and provided the rear guard that protected the Allied retreat. Maximilian signed a separate peace, allying Bavaria with France (24 August 1801), and began reforming his army along French lines.

Before the Second Coalition, Maximilian abolished the purchasing of commissions and adopted a new Bavarian blue uniform with the distinctive Raupenhelm helmet. From this time on, Napoleon’s Bavarian troops would be identified by the tall black leather helmet, named after its high peak crested with a black tuft of wool or bearskin resembling a caterpillar. After the war, the elector introduced general conscription, reduced the number of offenses subject to corporal punishment, and began promoting officers based on merit. General Bernhard Deroy redesigned the army to include smaller battalions and new skirmish units.

In 1805, 25,000 Bavarians, commanded by General Karl Philipp Freiherr von Wrede, served with the corps under Jean-Baptiste-Jules Bernadotte and protected the left flank of Napoleon’s army during the Battle of Austerlitz. Napoleon rewarded their efforts by making Bavaria a kingdom, but he also required Maximilian to provide 30,000 troops to the newly formed Confederation of the Rhine (12 July 1806). During the Prussian campaign (1806–1807), the Bavarians fielded three divisions under generals DeRoy, Wrede, and Ysenberg. Their siege operations captured the towns of Plassenburg, Grossglogau, Breslau, Brieg, Kosel, Glatz, and Neisse.

During the War of the Fifth Coalition against Austria (1809), the Bavarians formed VII Corps of the Grande Armée under Marshal Françoise Lefebvre. Their three divisions, with Napoleon commanding, defeated the Austrians at Abensberg (20 April), and Wrede’s division participated in the final attack, which broke the Austrian line and forced Archduke Charles’s retreat (6 July). During the campaign, several Bavarian units opposed the uprising of Andreas Hofer in the Tyrol.

For the Russian campaign, VI Corps, commanded by Marshal Laurent Gouvion St. Cyr, comprised two Bavarian divisions, totaling 30,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry. Guarding the northern flank of the army, they won a minor victory at Polotsk (18 August). General Maximilian von Preysing’s cavalry division served with the advance guard under Eugène de Beauharnais and suffered heavy losses at Borodino. Only 20 percent of the Bavarian troops returned from Russia.

A reconstituted Bavarian army fought with the French VI Corps during the Allied invasion of Saxony in 1813. Shortly before the Battle of Leipzig (16–19 October), however, Maximilian joined the Allies in exchange for recognition of his title. Two infantry divisions and three cavalry brigades suffered heavy losses attempting to block Napoleon’s retreat at Hanau (29–31 October). During the invasion of France in 1814, the Bavarians besieged several French cities and participated in the battles of Brienne, Bar-sur-Aube, and Arcis-sur-Aube.

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An engagement that took place in the early phase of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia when a Russian army commanded by General Peter Graf Wittgenstein attacked a French force defending the town of Polotsk. After the first day the Russians were in a strong position and Marshal Nicolas Oudinot had been wounded. However on the second day of the fighting General Laurent Gouvion St. Cyr (generally known as St. Cyr) took command of the French and launched a vigorous counterattack driving the Russians back.

In early August Oudinot had been given the task of forcing Wittgenstein back toward St. Petersburg, thus securing the left flank of the Grande Armée. However, after crossing the river Drissa, Oudinot was pushed back by Wittgenstein’s army, and he chose to withdraw to the town of Polotsk. On 15 August Oudinot’s troops were reinforced by the arrival of St. Cyr’s Bavarian corps.Wittgenstein was unaware of these reinforcements and advanced to attack the Franco-Bavarians. On the sixteenth his advance guard clashed with enemy outposts to the north of Polotsk. Oudinot still believed that he was heavily outnumbered and, concerned about his line of retreat, decided to place the bulk of his forces on the far bank of the river Dvina and defend against the Russian attack with only St. Cyr’s corps and another division. The defense was based around a convent about 2 miles to the north of Polotsk.

The initial Russian attack on the convent was beaten back by the Bavarians, but the Russians regrouped and launched a further assault that resulted in the capture of some of the outlying buildings. Oudinot now brought forward some reinforcements over the Dvina and personally led them in an attack on the enemy center. Oudinot was wounded and handed over command to St. Cyr. By now General Friedrich Wilhelm von Berg had taken the convent for the Russians and the French center fell back onto the outskirts of Polotsk. Fortunately for them night intervened, and this allowed St. Cyr to withdraw his wounded and baggage train over the Dvina, while bringing up fresh reserves. He ordered that a second bridge should be built to help in bringing troops forward or to act as a second line of retreat in case of defeat.

The following day Oudinot awaited a fresh Russian attack, but none was forthcoming as Wittgenstein was awaiting further reinforcements. St. Cyr decided to launch an attack late in the afternoon. His troops quickly advanced on the Russians, and with the support of his guns in the center, St. Cyr pushed the Russian first line back. The Russians, however, rallied and General Erasmus Deroy, commanding a Bavarian division, was killed. General Karl Freiherr von Wrede steadied the Bavarians, and the attack was resumed. St. Cyr’s cavalry had defeated the enemy to their front and were now threatening the rear of the Russian position. Wittgenstein now prepared to withdraw, having around 4,000 casualties. St. Cyr had snatched victory from defeat and as a result was rewarded with a marshal’s baton.

A second battle at Polotsk, near Smoliani, took place in October when Wittgenstein attacked St. Cyr in his entrenched camp at Polotsk. The Russian attacks were beaten off, and Wittgenstien for a short time was a prisoner. However, the French knew their position to be untenable and withdrew, leading to a third engagement at Smoliani, near Polotosk, on 14 November, involving Marshal Claude Victor and Wittgenstein.

British rule in Palestine was formalized when the League of Nations approved a British mandate for this former Ottoman possession in July 1922. The key clauses of the Balfour Declaration were incorporated into the mandate. This allowed the Yishuv to develop extensive educational and welfare services and to acquire large parcels of land from Arab landowners, absentee landlords, and peasants. Landmark institutions, such as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, were opened and the Histadrut, the General Federation of Hebrew Workers in Palestine, was established. This body played a central role in rapidly developing the construction, industrial, and agricultural sectors in a period of rising Jewish immigration. A 1922 census estimated the total population of Palestine at 752,048, of which Muslims numbered 589,177 (78 percent of the population) and Jews numbered 83,790 (11 percent of the population). By 1947 the Jews comprised 31 percent of a total population of over 1.7 million.

This rise in the Jewish population was largely a result of an influx of Jews escaping Nazi persecution in Europe. However, Palestine’s Arabs viewed Jewish immigration into Palestine as a political rather than a humanitarian issue. In 1921, 1930, and 1936 Palestinian Arab delegations visited London to express opposition to Zionism and continued immigration. There were also riots in 1920 and 1921 and a violent attack on Hebron’s Jewish residents in 1929.

Haj Amin (Amin al-Husayni; 1893–1974), a member of a leading Palestinian Arab family, dominated Palestinian Arab politics during this period. Appointed grand mufti (expounder of Muslim law) by the British in 1921, he also headed the Arab higher committee, the de facto Arab leadership in Palestine. He played a key role in the Arab revolt against British rule that began in 1936. He also led Arab opposition to the July 1937 recommendation of the royal commission on Palestine (the Peel Commission) that called for the abrogation of the mandate and the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states with a permanent mandate for Jerusalem.

In November 1938 the Woodhead Commission, set up to examine the feasibility of partition, rejected the Peel proposals as unworkable. In May 1939 the British government introduced the Palestine White Paper. This document severely restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine to a maximum of seventy-five thousand between April 1939 and 1944, after which time ‘‘no further Jewish immigration will be permitted unless the Arabs of Palestine are prepared to acquiesce in it.’’

Following the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the Palestinian Arab community showed little interest in opposing the Nazi menace and the mufti’s position as Arab Palestine’s most popular political leader was not diminished by his cooperation with Nazi Germany during the war. The Yishuv contributed greatly to the struggle against Nazism, but the war years saw a severe breakdown in relations between the Zionists and the British government over the White Paper policy, which was viewed as a subversion of the Jewish national revival in Palestine and the abandonment of European Jewry to their Nazi persecutor.

As such, in May 1942 the mainstream Zionist leadership for the first time officially endorsed the call for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, as opposed to a Jewish national home. At the same time extremist Jewish groups like the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang increased their attacks against British targets in Palestine, the most notorious of which was the 1946 bombing of the British military headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that killed ninety-one people.

In 1947, in the face of Jewish insurgency and Arab hostility, Britain turned the Palestine problem over to the United Nations. On 29 November 1947 the United Nations approved (by 33 votes to 13 with 10 abstentions) a plan calling for the partition of Palestine into two independent states—one Jewish, the other Arab—linked in an economic union, with Jerusalem placed under an international regime.

In World War II Norway again declared its neutrality, but this time the country was involved in the warfare. In April 1940 Great Britain laid mines in the Norwegian waters. On April 9 German troops invaded Norway and occupied the major cities. The German attack, operation Weserübung, also included the occupation of Denmark the same day. After a month of combat, mostly around Narvik in the north where an Anglo-French expeditionary force supported the Norwegian Army, Norway had to capitulate. The court and the government fled to London where a government-in-exile was established. The Norwegian merchant fleet (4.8 million tonnage in 1939) was only outnumbered by the British and American fleets. Thanks to the government’s control of the merchant fleet, Norway could make an important contribution to the Allied cause in the war. However, the price was high. Half of the fleet was lost during the war.

In a radio broadcast the leader of the pro- Nazi National Unity (Nasjonal Samling or NS) Party, Vidkun Quisling (1887–1945), with the support of Adolf Hitler (1889–1945), proclaimed himself head of a ‘‘national government.’’ After a couple of days the Germans changed their minds. However, the reichkommissar Josef Terboven (1898–1945) failed to gain support for other forms of collaborationist governments, and Quisling was reinstated as ‘‘minister president’’ in 1942. Despite this imposing title and the nominally independent government, Quisling and his NS ministers were totally under the control of Terboven. The Nazification process was met by strong opposition from church leaders, teachers, universities, and various civic organizations. Although the German rule in Norway was milder than in other parts of Europe, many people were tortured or executed. At times innocent civilians were killed as retaliation for resistance actions. An illegal press and small groups of armed resistance were built up by the home front (‘‘hjemmefronten’’), in close cooperation with the government in London.

In 1944 Soviet troops occupied an area in the north of Norway. The rest of the country was liberated when the German troops capitulated to the home front in May 1945. A widespread settlement with the collaborationists took place. Eighteen thousand of them were sentenced to imprisonment and twenty-five executed, among them Quisling and two of his former ministers. After the liberation a coalition government was formed, but after the election in 1945 it was replaced by a Labor government with Einar Gerhardsen (1897–1987) as prime minister.

Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg (1620–1688). He was succeeded by his son, Frederick, who proved to be one of William of Orange's most loyal allies.



The Low Countries c. 1700: the principal theatre during the Nine Years' War.


Map of European borders as they stood after the Treaty of Ryswick and just prior to Louis XIV's last great war, the War of the Spanish Succession.

The international role of Frederick III was blurred with contradiction. As Elector of Brandenburg he was a natural adversary of an ambitious Emperor. Yet he also believed in the idea of a universal Christian Empire, and, like his grandfather, George William, he felt a certain moral commitment to support the Emperor, so long as this policy coincided with the interests of Brandenburg-Prussia. As the head of the Calvinist Hohenzollerns, he saw himself as a leader of Protestantism, but in 1688 the principal threat to European peace and stability came not from the Habsburgs but from another Catholic power, France. An anti-French policy was already in place when Frederick succeeded the Great Elector. A series of defensive alliances tied him to the imperial camp and to the maritime powers of Sweden, England and the Dutch. Fear of French expansionism kept him within the anti-French coalition throughout his reign.

The German princes were outraged when in 1688 Louis XIV exploited his sister-in-law’s claim to the Palatinate by sending his army to occupy the Rhineland electorates of Mainz, Trier, Cologne and the Palatinate. Frederick was concerned whether the Empire was militarily prepared. He urged his fellow princes of Saxony, Hanover and Hesse-Kassel to mobilize under the banner of the ‘Magdeburg Concert’. A combined army of 22,000 men was posted to the central Rhinelands, while the main Brandenburg force protected the Lower Rhine, enabling Frederick’s cousin, William of Orange, to lead his invasion of England from the Netherlands. The league’s defensive measures were a partial success but they could not prevent the French from devastating Mannheim and Speyer in the Palatinate.

These events opened what came to be known variously as the Nine Years War, the War of the League of Augsburg, or the War of the Palatine Succession. In 1689 the Grand Alliance of Vienna, comprising the Empire, England, the Dutch Republic, Bavaria and Brandenburg-Prussia, was in place: Spain and Savoy were also to join in 1690. The Allies were bent on forcing Louis to give back all the territories he had seized since 1660 and to reaffirm the Peace of Westphalia. When fighting started, Frederick committed his troops to the capture of Kaiserwörth (1689) and the siege of Bonn (1689), which helped to liberate the middle Rhine from the French. Later, Prussian soldiers fought at Steinkerk (1692) and Neerwinden (1693) in the Netherlands. Frederick also sent valuable contingents to help the Emperor on his second front against the Ottoman Turks, and Brandenburg troops were prominent at the battles of Salankemen, Belgrade and Zenta (1691–7).

In the west the Nine Years War soon developed into a war of attrition which inflicted siege and counter-siege on the towns of the Low Countries. By 1692 the more ambitious German princes, including Frederick, had grown sceptical of the value of a conflict from which they stood to make no gains. His father-in- law, Ernest Augustus of Brunswick-Hanover, set about creating a ‘third party’ of German states that could mediate between France and the Allies. The Emperor intervened to dissuade Duke Ernest Augustus by bribing him with an electoral title. Frederick noted this, hoping it might be a precedent for exploiting Brandenburg’s contribution to the war effort. While Ernest Augustus entered on secret negotiations with the Emperor, Frederick was set on persuading Leopold to grant him a royal title. From this time the desire to be recognized as king became Elector Frederick’s primary goal and it coloured his relations with the Emperor throughout the 1690s.

In 1697 the Peace of Ryswick brought the grim conflict of the Nine Years War to an end. For some time Frederick had felt aggrieved that the Allies treated him as a mere ‘auxiliary’ of the Emperor rather than as a sovereign member of the Grand Alliance. Brandenburg received no territorial gains in the Ryswick settlement, merely the Allies’ thanks for his support. If this were not enough, the Elector was additionally vexed when his rival, Augustus II of Saxony, was elected King of Poland (1697). He pressed Leopold to approve his claim to a royal title, but the Emperor was not inclined to make concessions. Habsburg prestige was riding high as French expansionism had been checked. By 1697 Hungary had been reconquered from the Turks and Leopold’s son had been elected both King of Hungary and King of the Romans. For Frederick III there was only diplomatic rebuff and humiliation.

The Nine Years War - A Variant for Volley & Bayonet

Although the war turned into a world-wide conflict, King Frederick I’s concern was with events in Germany. In addition to the protection of his own lands, he saw it as his duty to honour his treaty commitments by supplying troops to the Allies. Prussian forces fought on three fronts. Under Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau they played their part in Marlborough’s victory in 1704 at Blenheim in the Danube valley. Another contingent took part, under the imperial commander, Prince Eugene, in the capture of Turin in Italy in 1706, while at Oudenarde and Malplaquet in the Low Countries, the Prussian infantry, watched over by the Crown Prince, made its mark in 1708 and 1709 respectively, in two of the fiercest battles of the war. The new king bathed in the reflected glory of his disciplined fighting machine.

However, the Nine Years War had taught Frederick that he could not rely on the largesse of his allies. He saw the army as a bargaining counter for subsidies to swell his war treasury. He might hope for territorial rewards as well as part of his contribution to the Allied war effort, but he knew that only his military strength would give him political credibility. During the fighting on the Rhine, therefore, he diverted his troops to annex certain counties belonging to the House of Orange: Moers (1702) and Tecklenburg (1707) in the vicinity of Cleves, and Lingen (1702) on the River Ems. He also acquired the principality of Neuchâtel on the borders of Switzerland and Franche-Comté in 1707 when its French ruling family became extinct. At the same time, as heir to the childless William III, who had died in 1702, he did his best to push his dynastic claims to the Orange inheritance. Sometimes, however, he aimed too high and found himself being snubbed. For example, he nursed hopes of being the Allied Supreme Commander but failed to convince the maritime powers (1702). He was also deeply offended when the Emperor later appointed his rival, the Elector of Hanover, to command the armies of the German states.

Although he saw himself as a loyal prince of the Empire, these disappointments caused Frederick to respond from time to time to French diplomatic overtures: thus he acquired a reputation for double-dealing. In 1702 Louis XIV tried to entice him from the Grand Alliance with offers of the cities of Liège and Cologne. In 1704 the Allies feared he might strike a deal with the Elector of Bavaria (who had opted to join the French side), by taking up an offer to occupy Nürnburg and Franconia, the fertile Main basin. Concerned about the effect Prussia’s defection would have on the Allied war-power, the Duke of Marlborough twice visited Berlin, in 1704 and 1705, to mollify Frederick with increased subsidies. But as Allied unity began to founder after 1707, the Prussian king felt isolated. There were rancorous exchanges with Hanover, the Dutch and the Emperor over financial arrears, and in self-defence he resumed negotiations with the French in 1709. Diplomatic manoeuvring between Paris and Berlin continued until the peace negotiations at Utrecht in 1712.

Despite an army touching 40,000 men, Frederick’s bargaining capacity was weakened by three factors. First, the vulnerability of his western lands, which Marshal Boufflers demonstrated by invading Cleves in 1702; second, his lack of ruthlessness and diplomatic dexterity, which kept him morally bound, yet subordinate to the principal powers of the Grand Alliance; and third, his reluctant involvement in the Baltic conflict. In view of these limitations, he did well to protect his lands from the devastation of war and, on the positive side, to secure his title and achieve territorial gains at the peace. The Treaty of Utrecht, signed shortly after his death in 1713, gave universal recognition to the Prussian king, who was allowed to keep the Orange lands in his possession, together with Upper Guelderland in the Spanish Netherlands as compensation for the part of the Orange inheritance lost to France.

A dedicated microsite, 1940: Britain’s Finest Hour (www.iwm.org.uk/1940), outlines the key events of 1940, featuring archive photographs and film to tell the story of this momentous year, and includes up-to-date information on the events and exhibitions that are happening to mark the anniversary as well as newly commissioned films and interactive features.
- The breathtaking Battle of Britain Air Show at IWM Duxford (4 & 5 September 2010)
- A re-enactment of Winston Churchill's famous ‘The Few’ speech, followed by a fly-past (20 August 2010)
The IWM Twitter, Facebook and Flickr accounts are used to communicate the latest information on the IWM’s 1940 activity, and these channels offer the opportunity to interact and to get in touch with the IWM directly.

1940: Britain’s Finest Hour

Two problems plagued the coming campaigns. The first was the indefinite nature of the command relationships, which reflected differences in national objectives. In the China-Burma-India theater the British aimed at maintaining control of India and using amphibious operations to outflank the Japanese forces in southern Burma; they saw no reason to use scarce forces to support a moribund Chinese Nationalist government that wanted to end British influence in Asia. The American position, however, was that northern Burma had importance as an overland route to China. The fact that Stilwell held complementary positions as both a Chinese and American commander and was arbiter of U.S. Lend-Lease supplies in the theater complicated Anglo-American differences. His personal distaste for both Chiang and Chennault made his position even more difficult—at least for others—and he showed little respect for the British. Roosevelt had made Chiang believe that he was a critical leader in the Allied coalition, even ensuring that Madame Chiang and her brother, T. V. Soong, received the royal treatment in Washington, where Soong at one time held the dual posts of foreign minister and ambassador to the United States. The question of how to deal with China strained Anglo-American planning.

In the South Pacific, the command relations were just as tortuous, although they turned on service issues. As American commander in the Southwest Pacific theater, MacArthur was answerable to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and only through them to the Combined Chiefs of Staff. In reality, however, MacArthur made himself de facto field marshal of the Australian armed forces through his personal influence with Prime Minister Curtin. Although MacArthur appointed a genuine war hero, General Thomas Blamey, as the Allied ground force commander, MacArthur’s theater staff remained largely American, and he routinely formed task forces of American troops outside Blamey’s command. As the campaign developed, the Australian Army wondered why it consistently received unpleasant assignments with virtually no recognition or American support. The reason was that Curtin valued MacArthur’s political connections.

MacArthur had his eye on other matters, particularly blackmailing the U.S. Navy into greater reinforcements in the South Pacific. If Marshall sometimes wearied of dealing with MacArthur, King did not, and he made sure that Nimitz, who was commander of Pacific Ocean Areas as well as commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet, made the critical decisions on the allocation and employment of American naval forces. With King’s approval, Nimitz created a subordinate command, the South Pacific theater, outside MacArthur’s direct command but geographically a neighbor and responsible for the southern Solomons. Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley and then Vice Admiral William F. Halsey held this command.

With “Germany First” as the coalition strategy and with forces gathering for an invasion of North Africa, the Pacific commanders cried poor. Their litany of woe overlooked several factors which indicated that they could not have used greater forces than they already had—forces which, in any event, approximately equaled the number of men (roughly 300,000), ships, and planes (except bombers) that went to Europe through mid- 1943.

The first factor the Pacific commanders overlooked was the primitive transportation infrastructure in the South Pacific and the burden of weather and terrain. In rough terms, one American soldier required 4.5 tons of material to deploy abroad and one ton a month to maintain; the gasoline demands of combat vehicles and aircraft measured from 50 to several hundred pounds a day, and battleships and carriers consumed oil at a rate of 6–9 tons per hour. Yet the South Pacific had no ports and air fields to support this kind of supply effort outside of Australia and New Zealand. The war in the Pacific required more engineers, port management units, aviation service troops, stevedores, and truck drivers than infantrymen and pilots.

In addition, a second factor—the dampness, heat, and abundance of disease- carrying insects—made the South Pacific the worst medical risk of the war for Americans. Burma was no different, and in both locations nonbattle casualties outstripped combat casualties. The medical situation only compounded the third factor overlooked by the American commanders: operational problems. Planners could predict the supply constraints, even if operational commanders sometimes pretended they did not exist. The Allies could also expect that in some classes of weapons, mostly aircraft and naval ordnance, they would face some technological inferiority. What they did not admit—and the generals and admirals were the most at fault—was that they did not know how to fight at the operational level. The battles of the Coral Sea and Midway underlined for naval aviators how much they had to learn; their army peers, especially bombardment squadrons, still believed they could bomb enemy warships. Army and Marine Corps divisions shared a similar lack of experience in infantry-artillery-armor coordination in jungle operations. Much of the combat leadership in all the services had to learn on the job; even World War I veterans (and there were precious few) had to learn how to command divisions through staffs, not battalions through personal charisma.

Some officers proved incompetent and cowardly, as they do in all armies, but the more serious problem was simply moving from a peacetime mindset to the harsh realities of war. Reflecting the operational inexperience of U.S. and Commonwealth forces, naval surface units, for example, did not fight their Japanese counterparts with reasonable effectiveness until late 1942 and suffered avoidable losses well into 1943. Night actions sorely tested the competence of the Allied navies, although never their courage. The same conditions applied to aerial combat and night ground defensive actions. The Asia-Pacific war of 1942–1944 gave the Japanese plenty of opportunity to see whether the Allies had the seriousness of purpose that the Japanese called makoto.

After the Japanese naval defeats in May and June 1942, the Asia-Pacific war drifted toward a limited, extemporized conflict of opportunism and attrition. Like a Pacific typhoon, the war swirled in upon itself with increasing violence, sucking in men and machines. The Anglo-American strategy of Germany First and the Soviet strategy of Germany Only prevailed, but the temptation to take limited offensives against Japan reflected political pressures that even Eurocentric statesmen could not ignore. The Allies emerged from this 18-month trial in better shape than Japan, but not by much.

For Japanese Army and Navy planners in Tokyo, the setbacks at the Coral Sea and Midway only accelerated plans to assume a strategic defense along the frontier of the 1942 conquests. Japanese intelligence estimated that the Allies would not undertake offensive operations until 1943, a date determined by the arrival of new carriers and battleships for the U.S. Pacific Fleet. On the Asian mainland, the Soviets would remain neutral as they struggled with the Wehrmacht, and the British-Indian army and the Chinese, with their large but poorly trained and equipped armies and inadequate air support, could not mount a serious challenge.

Moreover, the Indian Army faced the prospect of continued upheaval on the home front; in the middle of defeat in Burma, the Congress Party, led by Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, declared India free of the British raj—an announcement which set off widespread urban rioting and communal violence. The other surviving Commonwealth bastions, Australia and New Zealand, had sent their expeditionary forces to the Middle East. With only one battle-worthy division (the 7th) in Australia, Prime Minister John Curtin asked Churchill to return the 9th Division to Australia. When Churchill argued that the British could not spare the 9th Division, and the Australians heard that it might be sent to Burma instead, they felt, once again, that they could not entrust their safety to the Commonwealth alone.

The Coming Campaigns
The Japanese did indeed have designs on Australia since it provided the Allies with a base from which to attack the Netherlands East Indies and Malaya, essential components of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. Fearing they faced a protracted war and the prospect that Germany might not defeat the Soviet Union, the Japanese planned to continue the slow advance against New Guinea, the southern Solomons, and the Franco-American islands to the east that protected the lifeline from Australia to North America and Hawaii. Although the Japanese shelved plans for expeditions against Samoa and New Caledonia, they established strong army and navy headquarters (the Seventeenth Army and Ninth Fleet) at Rabaul to direct operations against Port Moresby, develop new bases in the southern Solomons, interdict Allied shipping in the South Pacific, and bomb Darwin, the only developed base on Australia’s north coast.

Far to the north, they planned to use the newly seized islands of Attu and Kiska to blunt any American movement along the western Aleutians. These offensive plans, however, did not change the overall conviction that the Southern Army had served its purpose and could release half its divisions for service in China or a strategic reserve in Japan. Army and navy aviation as well as the surface and submarine fleets would guard the approaches to the Western Pacific from the new island bases—“unsinkable carriers” to the optimistic planners.

Disturbed by the Japanese punitive campaign in north China that followed the Doolittle raid, Chiang Kai-shek feared that the loss of the Burma Road and the demands of other theaters would cut Lend-Lease programs for China. His short-term concern was the expansion of the Japanese occupation into western China; his strategic goal was to strengthen the Kuomintang and Nationalist Army against the Communists. Chiang’s special problem was the senior American officer organizationally at his side but physically in India, Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell. As early as 1942 Stilwell found himself at odds with Chiang over the reform and employment of the Chinese Army. Stilwell had 2 divisions with him at Ramgarh, India (X Force), and he believed he controlled 12 more divisions in Yunnan province, China (Y Force). After the Burma campaign, none of these divisions had more than half their manpower, and they lacked weapons and training. Chiang did not view either force as adequate for his needs.

Instead, he presented an ambitious plan to Roosevelt in June 1942. The Three Demands, drafted by Brigadier General Claire L. Chennault, argued that China held the key to defeating Japan with land-based air power. Chiang could not wait for Stilwell to reopen the Burma Road with a new extension from Ledo in northern India. Instead, the United States should send three divisions to undertake this mission while Chennault built an American air force of over 500 aircraft in China. This force would employ heavy bombers that would attack Japanese supply lines and bases along China’s coast. Until the Burma Road reopened, air transports from India would supply the air force in China. Chiang demanded an airlift capacity of 5,000 tons a month, an incredible figure, since the designated transport, the twin-engine C-46, had only a four-ton load capacity. At the time of the Three Demands, Chennault’s 130 aircraft required 2,000 tons of supplies per month, which meant a 500-aircraft force would probably need 10,000 tons a month, not 5,000. Moreover, who would guard the air bases? The Chiang-Chennault plan said that an elite, American-armed Nationalist Army (Z Force) would perform this mission, which sent the logistical requirements even higher.

Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs of Staff knew they could not meet the Three Demands, but they could not ignore the fact that the Nationalists might tie down much of the Japanese Army. A military renaissance in China, built around 30 elite Nationalist divisions, would protect the air force Chennault wanted. Despite British skepticism about China, Roosevelt promised to do something about getting money and Lend-Lease supplies to Chungking. He did so for several reasons: a sincere conviction that China might become a regional power; his optimistic expediency in military affairs; and his sensitivity to the China lobby, which included influential members of his own cabinet as well as Republican senators and media moguls. When Roosevelt concluded in June 1942 that the Allies could not open a second front in Europe that year, he provided his military chiefs with an opportunity to argue that offensive action against Japan would be possible, if it did not endanger the invasion of North Africa. Admiral Ernest J. King, chief of naval operations, had consistently argued for an immediate naval campaign in the Pacific; the army now advocated a similar plan. From Australia, MacArthur demanded reinforcements, especially air and naval forces, while submitting a plan for a lightning campaign against the Japanese air and naval bastion of Rabaul. The strategic arguments bounced from Washington and Honolulu to Melbourne and back; it soon became clear that King would not give an army theater commander (namely, Mac- Arthur) control of his carriers. He agreed only to a slow, steady campaign northward, not a charge toward Rabaul. On 2 July the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a definitive directive that the isolation of Rabaul would begin with the capture of Santa Cruz and Tulagi, then spread from the Solomons to New Guinea. Finally, an air-ground expeditionary force directed by Mac- Arthur would besiege Rabaul itself.

(1) The 'Polybian' legion consisted of five elements - the heavy infantry hastati, principes, and triarii; the light infantry velites; and the cavalry equites. Each was equipped differently and had a specific place in the legion's tactical formation. Its principal strength was the 30 maniples of its heavy infantry, the velites and equites acting in support of these. Its organization allowed it only one formation: the triplex acies, with three successive, relatively shallow lines o f t e n maniples each. These fighting units, supporting each other to apply maximum pressure on an enemy to the front, were in simple terms divided 'horizontally' into three lines, and 'vertically' into maniples. When deployed, each maniple may have been separated from its lateral neighbour by the width of its own frontage (c. 18m), though this is still a matter of some debate. Livy tells us simply that the maniples were 'a small distance apart' (8.8.5). Moreover, the maniples of hastati, principes and triarii were staggered, with the more seasoned principes covering the gaps between the hastati in front, and likewise the veteran triarii covering those between the principes. Modern commentators call this formation the quincunx, from the five dots on a dice-cube.

The legion was a force designed for large-scale battles, for standing in the open, moving straight forward and smashing its way frontally through any opposition. Polybius (2.24.13, 6.20.9) puts its nominal strength at 4,200 legionaries; however, in times of particular crisis larger legions were raised, as was the case at Cannae, and the number might be increased to as many as 5,000. He says (6.21.9-10) that when this happened the number of triarii remained the same at 600, but the number of hastati, principes (and velites) - the less experienced legionaries - increased from the usual 1,200; consequently the size of a maniple of hastati or principes could step up from 120 to 160 men. Of course, this applied when a legion was first formed, and before its numbers were whittled away by combat deaths, injuries, disease and desertion.

(2) After the velites had withdrawn through the gaps the maniples of hastati would naturally have to re-form to close the gaps before advancing to contact. If the gap really was equal to the frontage, and the maniple was drawn up two centuries deep, the centurio posterior might move his centuria to the left and forward, to form up alongside the centuria of the centurio prior in the front line (Keppie, 1998: 38-39).

(3) The classic sequence of advancing to hand-to-hand contact: first light and then heavy pila are thrown, then the legionary draws his gladius and rushes at the enemy facing him, punching with his scutum and stabbing around its edge.

Note: in this plate, the use of colours to distinguish the hastati (yellow - 3), principes (blue - 2) and triarii (red - 1) is purely diagrammatic, not historical.

The term manipulus, 'a handful', derived from the handful of straw suspended from a pole as a military standard, and hence meant soldiers belonging to the same unit. With the adoption of the manipular legion the maniple became the basic fighting unit of the Roman army, organized into two centuries (centuriae). Each maniple carried its own standard (signum), and each centuria was led by a centurion (centurio). Each centurion was supported by four subordinates: a second-in- command (optio), standard-bearer (signifer), trumpeter (cornicen) and guard commander (tesseranus). The standard-bearer and trumpeter must have stood close to the centurion to hear his commands, and the optio stood at the rear of the centuria to keep the men steady and in place. The tesserarius supervised the posting of the nightly sentries and was responsible for distributing the daily watchword, which he received inscribed on a token (tessera). Polybios writes that centurions 'choose from the ranks two of their bravest and most soldierly men to be the standard-bearers for each maniple' (6.24.5); as there was only one signum per maniple, however, one of the signiferi was evidently a substitute should anything befall the other. He also says each maniple had two centuriones so that the unit 'should never be without a leader and commander' (6.24.6). As the maniple rather than the century was the tactical unit, the centurio prior, the first of the two to be appointed, was responsible for commanding the maniple as a whole in battle, the centurio posterior only taking over if the senior man fell.

Centurions were either appointed by the military tribunes or elected from amongst the ordinary soldiers (milites). They were usually chosen from experienced and proven soldiers, steady rather than especially bold men, but they had to be literate. Though centurions were of the same social background as the men they led, the senior centurion of the legion, commander of the first maniple of the triarii and ranked centurio primi pili, was included ex officio along with the tribunes in the consul's war-council. Such men might be very experienced indeed.

With 60 heavy legionaries to a centuria there are only three practical formations: in files three deep, six deep, and 12 deep, each formed by halving the frontage of the previous formation. We show the second, with spacing of about one pace between files and about two paces between ranks, giving a century a frontage of about 18 metres and a depth of at least 12 metres (or 6 metres, for the smaller centuria of triarii). The basic six-ranks-by-ten-files formation is confirmed by the normal marching order of six abreast. When the 20 velites light skirmishers attached to each centuria are added, we arrive at the standard of eight men to a file (cf. Greek system of using multiples of eight). Known as a contubernium, 'a tentful', the members of a file shared a tent, and living in close proximity for long periods would have promoted solidarity and comradeship - what modern academics call 'small-group dynamics'.


The basic unit of the Roman army was the legion, which was composed of five elements: cavalry, light infantry and three types of heavy infantry. The most prestigious were the cavalry or equites, recruited from the wealthiest citizens able to afford a horse and its trappings. Many young aristocrats began their political career by making a name for themselves in the cavalry. They were equipped with a round shield, helmet and body armour, and armed with a sword and one or several javelins. Roman cavalry were enthusiastic and brave, but better at making a charge on the battlefield than patrolling or scouting. The most serious weakness of the Roman cavalry was that there were not very many of them. Each legion had only three hundred horsemen, divided into ten troops (turmae) of thirty each, commanded by three decurions.

The heavy infantry, like the hoplite phalanx, was composed of all those citizens able to afford the panoply. Unlike the phalanx they fought in three separate lines, membership of which was determined not by wealth but by age and experience. The youngest soldiers or hastati formed the front line. Behind them came the principes, men in their late twenties or early thirties, the age considered by the Romans to be the prime of life, and in the rear were the older veterans, the triarii. All wore a bronze helmet and carried a long, semi-cylindrical body shield, constructed of plywood and covered with calfskin to give it an effective mixture of flexibility and resilience. The wealthier men wore a mail or scale cuirass, but some made do with a simple bronze plate strapped in place over the chest.

All Roman infantrymen were first and foremost swordsmen, and by the last quarter of the third century at the latest, this sword was the famous gladius hispaniensis or Spanish sword. With a blade less than 60 centimetres (2 feet) long, the gladius was well balanced for both cutting and thrusting, and its manufacture from high-quality steel allowed it to preserve a wickedly sharp edge. The triarii carried a long hoplite spear, but the other lines already used the pilum, the weapon which, with the gladius, was to be the trademark of the Roman legionary. The pilum had a wooden shaft about 120 centimetres (4 feet) in length, topped by a 60-90-centimetre (2-3-foot) narrow iron shank leading to a short pyramidal point, which with all the weight of the weapon behind it was designed for maximum armour penetration. The long narrow shank gave it the reach to cause a wound after punching through a shield. The barbed point made it difficult to withdraw from a shield, so that the enemy was forced to drop it. Modern experiments with reconstructed pila have suggested a maximum range of about 30 metres (100 feet), but an effective range of about half that. Polybius tells us that each man carried two pila, one significantly heavier than the other, but it has proved difficult to categorize the archaeological remains so precisely.

Each of the three lines was divided into ten maniples, those of the hastati and principes consisting of 120 to 160 men apiece, whereas the less numerous triarii formed maniples of sixty men. In battle formation, the triplex acies, or maniples, were deployed in a chequerboard or quincunx, the units of principes covering the gaps between the maniples of hastati, while the intervals in their own line were covered by the maniples of the triarii. The triarii provided the legion's ultimate reserve and spent most of a battle waiting at the rear, kneeling behind their shields, with their spears braced against the ground. They only became involved if the battle was particularly hard fought, and the Roman proverb 'It's down to the triarii' was used to describe any desperate situation. The maniple of two centuries was the lowest independent sub-unit of the legion, but each century still carried its own standard, or signum, and was led by a centurion. Each centurion was backed up by two subordinates, the signifer, or standard-bearer, and the second-in-command, or optio, who stood behind the rear rank and kept the men in formation. At least at the beginning of this period centurions were elected by the legions, but appointed their subordinates. The senior centurion stood on the right of the maniple.

The last element of the legion was the light infantry, or velites. There were normally 1,200 of these armed with a small round shield, a bundle of light javelins and, at least by the early second century, a gladius. They were recruited from the poorer citizens in the state and also those of the higher property qualification who were not yet considered old enough to join the hastati. The velites do not seem to have been divided into any formal units and fought in support of either the heavy infantry or the cavalry depending on the situation.

This gave the Polybian legion a total of 4,200 infantry and 300 cavalry.  In times of particular crisis the number of infantry might be increased to 6,000, but this was done without ever varying the number of triarii. The sixty centurions and thirty decurions were overseen by six military tribunes, two of whom held overall command of the legion at any one time. The tribunes were elected, usually from young aristocrats in the earliest stages of a political career. A consul was normally given an army of two legions, but in times of crisis this was increased to four. In addition to the Roman legions, each army included a similarly sized contingent of allies. About 4-5,000 infantry and 900 cavalry formed an ala, which was commanded by officers known as prefects who were invariably Romans. In battle, a consular army formed with the two alae on either side of a centre composed of the Roman legions, so that they were usually referred to as the 'Left' and 'Right' alae. A special body of troops, the extraordinarii, was detached from these and placed at the immediate disposal of the consul. Often used as shock troops, in an advance these formed the vanguard, while in a retreat they brought up the rear.
The Roman army in this period was a curious mixture of a citizen militia and a professional force. In many ways it had much in common with the conscript armies raised in Europe after the French Revolution. All citizens possessing property above a set level were eligible for service. They served for the duration of a conflict and then returned to civilian life; they were obliged to serve the state in this way for up to sixteen campaigns. While enrolled in the army, citizens were paid and fed by the state and agreed to subject themselves to a very harsh system of discipline, binding themselves at a formal parade by taking the solemn military oath (the sacramentum) to obey the consuls. This discipline not only dealt with their behaviour in battle, but regulated every aspect of their service life. Serious crimes, such as neglect of guard duty, theft from comrades or homosexual acts, were punishable by death, with lesser misdemeanours resulting in a flogging. If a whole unit disgraced itself in battle it was liable to decimation, the execution of one man in ten. The survivors lived on in public disgrace, forced to camp outside the defences of the main camp and fed on barley, not wheat. All the many legal defences a Roman citizen possessed against the arbitrary exercise of power by a magistrate in peacetime he lost on entering the arm~ Many of the institutions of the later professional army already existed by the second century BC at the very latest. The army's discipline was reflected in one of its most famous practices, the construction of a marching camp at the end of each day's march. Polybius describes at great length the procedure for marking out the camp, always built to set dimensions with a uniform plan of roads and tent lines so that it resembled an ordered city. One story claimed that Pyrrhus first realized that he was not facing mere barbarians when he saw a Roman army camped for the night.

The draconian discipline formed only part of the picture. The soldiers were drawn from the same citizen body that elected the army's commanders. There seems to have been a strong sense of shared duty to the state among both The strict Roman discipline and the institutions of apparent professionalism should not conceal the fact that Roman armies were impermanent and of very varied quality. The longer an army served, the more efficient it became. Some of the legions enrolled during the Punic wars served for decades and reached the highest state of efficiency.  An extreme case was the two legions formed .from the survivors of the disaster at Cannae in 216 BC, who served throughout the rest of the conflict and fought with great distinction at Zama in 202. Some of these men were still on active service in Macedonia and awaiting discharge more than twenty years after their original enlisting. Yet once an army was discharged, its accumulated experience disappeared. Individual soldiers were likely to serve in the army again, but they would not do so in the same units. Therefore each time a Roman army was raised, the process of training and disciplining it began afresh. Although each levy included men with prior experience, this facilitated the training process but did not make it unnecessary. A wise commander took great care to prepare his army for battle, training them and gradually giving them confidence by providing minor victories. Hannibal won his greatest victories over Roman armies that were under-prepared for battle. The temporary nature of each Roman army meant that they lacked a cadre of technical experts, the trained professionals who provided the siege engineers in Hellenistic armies. If the Romans failed to take a fortified city by surprise assault or treachery, they were not skilled at prosecuting a formal siege and usually had to rely on starving the enemy into submission.

By DORIS MILBERG

The new century is upon us and films about World War II are still being made. Even with the horrific event of September 11, 2001, and the never-ending war in which we are, at this writing, currently engaged, it is interesting to note that we Americans have an ongoing fascination for this earlier period of history, aided and abetted by obliging Hollywood and foreign film companies. If the pattern holds, students in the twenty-first century will be learning as much about those war years from a body of films as they would from their textbooks.

The events of the early 1940s are repeatedly brought back to us in movie theaters and on television. Through public television and The History Channel, events and personalities of the war years are brought back to us in living color as well as in black and white while we are comfortably seated in our living rooms.

Also, for World War II veterans and students of history, there is the National World War II Museum, envisioned by the late writer-historian Stephen Ambrose, located in New Orleans, which gives its visitors a panoramic view of the war via films and exhibits. This generation and those of the future will be able to have a feeling for those foot soldiers who fought their way through the steamy jungles and waters of the Pacific theater of war, the cold waters in the battle of the Atlantic and finally the triumphant march on the road to Berlin.
Some very interesting viewing has been part of this first decade of the twenty-first century, and not only at your neighborhood theater.

A fascinating TV-movie from Italy is Mussolini and I (2003). Produced by Film Alpha Productions, the film traces the complex relationship between Il Duce and his son-in law, Count Galeazzo Ciano, and his equally complex relationships with his daughter, Countess Ciano and with Hitler, in war-torn Italy in the years before its surrender.

Powerful performances are given by Sir Anthony Hopkins as Ciano, Susan Sarandon as Edda Ciano and Bob Hopkins as Il Duce, torn between his love for his daughter and son-in law and his fear and admiration of Adolf Hitler.

Band of Brothers was a project co-produced by Steven Spielberg and actor Tom Hanks for Home Box Office. The ten-part mini-series premiered in September of 2000 and is still being aired on other television channels. Based upon the book Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest by the aforementioned Stephen Ambrose, the series depicts the men of Easy Company, a group of paratroopers, from their training site to the invasion of Normandy, to their involvement in the Battle of the Bulge.

The events portrayed in the series are based upon interviews by Professor Ambrose with actual Easy Company veterans. Both Hanks and Spielberg placed a strong emphasis on accurately depicting the conditions under which these men lived and died. The series was nominated for nineteen Emmys, winning six, the most important of which was Outstanding Mini- Series. It also won a Golden Globe and an American Film Institute Award.

Band of Brothers is the story of the heroic men who fought in combat with guns and bullets. They were Ike’s boys—General Dwight Eisenhower, who headed the European theater of war. Ike: Countdown to D-Day, a 2004 TV-movie, stars Tom Selleck as the general who needed to make the momentous 1944 decision to invade the European continent. As previously noted, not until that “Longest Day” turned out to be one of triumph, did Ike destroy the communiqué he had written had the operation failed.

Ultra was the name used by the British for obtaining intelligence which came from the decoding of coded German radio communications in World War II. The few people with clearance for Ultra information were given the code name “bigots.” Those with this clearance could, without humor, ask the question, “Are you a bigot?”

Ultra intelligence was derived from the Germans sending out secret messages (“cipher traffic”) mainly generated on an electro-mechanical machine called Enigma. The Polish government had been given one of these machines by an anti–Nazi. It was reconstructed and given to the French and British governments in 1939.

Outside of London was a little-known compound known as Bletchley Park. It was there that hundreds of personnel, mainly cryptographers, worked day and night to decode the German Enigma traffic. Bletchley Park remained top secret throughout the war and even beyond.

The film Enigma (2001) is a collaborative effort of the United States, Great Britain and Germany. People in Bletchley Park discover that the German navy has changed the code used to communicate with their subs at sea. Those in charge enlist the help of a brilliant young man to aid in the breaking of the code. Featured in the cast are Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet as two of the people living and working at Bletchley. General Dwight Eisenhower, then Supreme Allied Commander, was quoted at war’s end as saying that Ultra had been decisive to the Allied victory.

Christian Bauer, in 2006, chronicled in a documentary the not well-known but true story of The Ritchie Boys. In the 1930s, seeing the future of Jews in Europe, many German Jews fled the land of their birth and made their way to the United States. With the advent of World War II, many such refugees volunteered for the armed services. Several were sent to the little-known Camp Ritchie in Maryland. Thus was born a unique intelligence unit made of German-speaking recruits. Their fighting was not with guns and bullets, but with their knowledge of the language and culture of the country from which they had emigrated. They were used to interrogate German POWs and much useful information was gained as a result.

Over in the Pacific, momentous events had occurred. Bloody battles had ensued with the cost of many lives. Okinawa, Midway, Tarawa, New Guinea, the Philippines, Guadalcanal—these were only some of the names Americans had heard for the first time. One of the bloodiest took place on the volcanic island of Iwo Jima. It was, as many believe, the pivotal battle of the Pacific war. Actor-director Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers (2006) retells the story of the ultimate capture of the island and the raising of the American flag over Mount Suribachi.

The snapshot of the flag-raising by six American soldiers is arguably the most famous wartime photo of World War II, though the fighting continued for a little over a month after the taking of the strategic hill with many more lives being lost on both sides. The event was photographed twice to maximize its impact.

The film follows the account by the son of one of the soldiers as to what happened after the photo was seen around the nation and the effect it had upon the three soldiers who survived the battle. The trio is flown back to the States and sent around the country to sell war bonds. This disquiets them. They do not think of themselves as heroes and in the case of one, an American Indian Ira Hayes, these feelings are certainly instrumental in his subsequent suicide. The film is an honest recreation of the times, of the adulation given to our returning veterans and, as seen in the 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives, the pondering of their futures once the adulation had faded away.

Months after the release of Flags of Our Fathers came Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima (2007). Letters looks at the events that took place on the island from the Japanese side of the conflict. Unlike the earlier films of World War II which painted the Japanese soldiers as fanatical barbarians, here they are portrayed as individuals who, like their American counterparts, have families back home. The focus of the film is on General Kuribayashi, sent to command the island in preparation for the invasion they know is coming. Eastwood learned about a book of letters written by the general, some written before Iwo and some from the island before his death. With his knowledge of the United States, having lived there while completing his education, Kuribayashi realized that the Japanese warlords had awakened a “sleeping giant.”

Both this film and Flags of Our Fathers are a credit to Eastwood, who has emerged as one of the finest filmmakers of recent times.

By DORIS MILBERG

A film released in 2005 shows the barbaric side of the Japanese military during World War II. Benjamin Bratt (a former actor on the Law and Order television series) and Joseph Fiennes star in The Raid, which is based on fact. In the early years of the war, after the Americans have been defeated in the Philippines, stories get out about the harsh and inhuman treatment given the prisoners by their Japanese captors. The American command sends Bratt and his group of Rangers on a daring mission to free these captives. With the help of Filipino guerrillas, the Americans are successful.

The year 2006 brought to the screen a powerful film from the Netherlands. Black Book, a Paul Verhoeven vehicle, follows the struggles of a young Jewish woman (excellently portrayed by Carice van Houten) trying to survive in Nazi-occupied Holland towards the end of the war. She joins the Dutch underground, meets a German officer, gets a job in his office and obtains important information for her Resistance group. An ill-fated love affair ensues between the woman and the German. He dies and she goes to Israel. The world premiere of the film took place at the Venice Film Festival on September 1, 2006, sixty-seven years to the day after Hitler’s march into Poland—the day which began World War II.

Other World War II–related films released during the first decade of this new century include Enemy at the Gates, a German-British-American 2001 collaborative effort, which stars Ed Harris, Jude Law and Bob Hoskins. Stalingrad is the setting for this story of a Russian sharpshooter pitted against his German counterpart. The Grey Zone, a 2002 Tim Blake Nelson film, takes place in Auschwitz where a Jewish doctor is forced to help a Nazi doctor in order to save his own life. The Nazi medical man was the infamous Joseph Mengele, who, under the guise of “science,” performed monstrous experiments on camp inmates. Hart’s War is a Gregory Hoblit 2002 film starring Bruce Willis and Colin Farrell, wherein an American POW matches wits with the German commandant of the camp. Safe Conduct (French, 2000) documents the true story of two men who struggle to continue working in the French film industry under German supervision. The obvious question is, did they have the chance to emigrate to another country as did others who saw the writing on the wall and fled? Many of the latter came to the United States before Pearl Harbor and had illustrious careers in Hollywood.

Before we end our journey through the years with the event that began it all for America, four films released in 2008 need to be added to this last chapter. Very different in scope, two are factual; the others, though works of fiction, are based upon events that took place during and just after the war.

Several abortive attempts upon Adolf Hitler’s life had been made, beginning in the late 1930s. Always, sometimes by sheer luck, Der Führer managed to elude his fate. After the war began, many who were beginning to see the Nazis in their true light became involved in plots to destroy a regime that had dehumanized their beloved Fatherland. The most famous came on July 20, 1944, led by Count Klaus von Stauffenberg. Code-named Valkyrie, this last attempt on Hitler’s life is the basis of a Brian Singer film aptly titled Valkyrie.
Tom Cruise stars as the brilliant but doomed Stauffenberg, who places a bomb under Hitler’s conference table. Thinking that he has succeeded, he flies to Berlin only to find out that the Führer is still alive. The bomb had detonated, but had been pushed away from where the Nazi leader was seated. Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators are killed, he and some others executed by firing squad, others hung on meat hooks. Defiant in death, the real Stauffenberg was reviled by fanatics who followed Hitler unto death, and honored by realists who looked around them.

Heroism of a different kind is the theme of Edward Zwick’s Defiance (2008). Starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber, it tells the true and amazing story of the Bielski brothers, partisans who, through cunning, courage and resilience, were able to survive, living and moving from day to day in the forests of Belarussia, while rescuing hundreds of Jews and fighting the Germans whenever possible.

The real Bielski brigade was born when the parents (and also the wife and the daughter of one of the brothers) were slaughtered by the Nazis. Throughout the war, the brothers and some three hundred others employed non-stop guerrilla tactics against the enemy, ambushing enemy patrols, derailing troop trains and blowing up bridges and electric stations. Most of this is detailed in the film. Many of the people involved lived to see the end of the war; some are still with us. It is a triumph of the will that this band of disparate people formed a community based on the need to survive under insurmountable odds.

Enemies of the state were either shot or sent to concentration camps—this included Jews like the Bielski brothers, Gypsies and all others who didn’t conform to the dictates of “The Thousand Year Reich.”
At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials held in 1946, the accused tried to justify their actions by saying that they were “just following orders.” This, in part, is the premise of The Reader. The 2008 Steven Daldry film stars Kate Winslet, David Cross and Ralph Fiennes. The centerpiece of the screenplay is Winslet’s performance as a former guard in a death camp, on trial for crimes against humanity.

She is seen by a law student, observing the trial, who, as a teenager, had a brief but passionate affair with her. She always wanted him to read to her. He now knows her secret: She is illiterate. She goes to prison and laboriously learns to read, aided by the tapes her former lover has sent her. Shamed by his reluctance to see her, she commits suicide, leaving money she has earned to a former inmate of the camp. Winslet received an Academy Award for her searing performance as this ignorant and amoral woman who was “only following orders.”

It is estimated that the Nazis established over fifteen hundred concentration camps in Germany and in its occupied countries during their deadly reign of terror. The setting of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, a 2008 film by Mark Herman, is a concentration camp. Although the name is not mentioned, we know that it is the infamous Auschwitz. A young German child, the son of the commandant of the death camp, befriends a Jewish boy of his age, a prisoner on the other side of an electrified fence. The German boy wants a pair of striped pajamas which the other boy gets for him.

Wearing the pajamas, the German child digs a trench in order to be able to play with his friend, is caught and is killed along with him. The film suggests that the family of the commandant did not know or did not want to know about the “ethnic cleansing” that was going on in the camp, just as in real life the townspeople of Auschwitz denied knowledge of what was taking place only a few miles away from them until General Eisenhower forced them to go to the camp to see what they had “known nothing” about.

We end our journey through the years with the event that began it all for America. Pearl Harbor (2001), a Michael Bay film, recounts the bombing of the naval base. With a cast of familiar faces including Ben Affleck, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Jon Voight, Dan Aykroyd and Alec Baldwin, the film is a sweeping saga telling the story of individuals stationed at Pearl and ending with the recreation of the battle scenes that made “December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.”