Armageddon (110 page)
“after September 1944, no one”: Michael Sherry,
The Rise of American Air Power
(Yale University Press: 1987), pp. 221, 250.
“Richard Overy, among others”: See Richard Overy,
War and Economy in the Third Reich
(Oxford University Press: 1994),
Why the Allies Won
(Cape: 1995), passim. Overy’s analysis has caused me to modify some of the views I adopted in my earlier book
Bomber Command
about the scale of damage inflicted on the German war economy by bombing between 1942 and 1944.
“[it] actually works in our favour”: David Irving,
Hitler’s War
(Viking: 1977), pp. 574–5.
“I felt that again our efforts”: Tedder, op. cit., p. 607.
“In bright sunlight, even with”: Carl Fyler,
Staying Alive
(J. H. Johnson: 1995).
“Each time I close”: Knoke, op. cit., p. 164.
“Returning from bombing oil refineries”: Arthur M. Miller, unpublished MS, SA.
“Staff-Sergeant Delbert Lambson”: Delbert D. Lambson,
When I Return in Spring
(Delzona Press: 1995).
“I can go out on a mission”: Robert Burger, unpublished MS, SA.
“Major Jack Ilfrey said”: AI Jack Ilfrey.
“Nice day, but nothing for us”: Unpublished MS, IWM, 92/26/1.
“Dear Mom”: Harry Conley and Stuart G. Whittelsey, unpublished MS, “No Foxholes in the Sky,” SA.
“We had to hang around the Halifax”: Unpublished David Sokoloff MS, SA.
“Eddie Lovejoy, a navigator with”: Eddie Lovejoy,
Better Born Lucky Than Rich
(Media: 1986), pp. 85–6.
“Other people in the squadron”: AI Bill Winter.
“made you feel as if they had cleaned”: Unpublished Richard Burt MS, SA.
“I thought a lot about our guys”: AI Ira Wells.
“We were the Lindbergh generation”: AI Harold Dorfman.
“We never thought about what”: AI Bill Winter.
“Sergeant Jack Brennan”: AI Jack Brennan.
“Our gunners never fired”: AI Bill Winter.
“There would be seconds”: Lloyd O. Kreuger,
Trials and Tribulations of a Lady
(Canyon Lake: 2001), p. 37.
“The flak was brutal”: AI William Leek.
“Ammunition began to explode”: Unpublished Teresa K. Flatley MS, SA.
“We just wanted to get it over”: AI Ira Wells.
“Bledisloe had spent almost two”: Marvin Bledisloe,
Thunderbolt!
(Van Nostrand Reinhold: 1982).
“Yet Major Jack Ilfrey”: Jack Ilfrey,
Happy Jack’s Go Buggy
(Schiffer Military: 1946).
“The landscape looked just like”: Richard Hough,
One Boy’s War
(Heinemann: 1975), p. 137.
“You sometimes saw too much”: Ibid., p. 146.
“They
are
shits”: Paul Richey,
Fighter Pilot
(Guild Publishing: 1990), p. 108.
“that we are the barbarians”: Eaker to Spaatz 1.1.45 quoted Ronald Schaffer, “American Military Ethics in World War II,”
Journal of American History
67, September 1980, p. 328.
“CLARION hit people”: AI John Zimmermann.
“I could see the cannon strikes”: Hough, op. cit., p. 147.
“We sometimes thought the Allied”: AI Helmut Lott.
“you feel as if you are flying”: Jack Pitts,
P-47 Pilot
(Pitts Enterprise: 1997), pp. 74, 86.
“I felt sorry for the German”: AI Tony Mann.
“There were four men unloading”: Pitts, op. cit., p. 88.
“that it would be good to fight”: Hansen Diary, op. cit., 9.21.44.
“an appeal to the chivalry”: Guderian, op. cit., p. 418, 3.6.45.
“The sky became black”: AI Helmut Schmidt.
“It was a war of despair”: Von Stemann MS, op. cit., p. 153.
“I’ll describe to you today”: Second Army MD.
“We spend most of our lives”: Ibid.
“At 4 o’clock, I arrived”: Ibid.
“Everyone is convinced that no opposition”: PRO, WO106/5922.
“We discussed why the Germans carried”: Von Stemann MS, op. cit., p. 154.
“The Berlin diarist ‘Missie’ ”: Vassiltchikov, op. cit., pp. 120, 148.
“We lived in a dark world”: AI Klaus Fischer.
“during this period of vast”: Mathilde Wolff-Monckeberg,
On the Other Side
(Pan: 1982), p. 119.
“I came to live in a fantasy”: AI Vilda Geertz.
“The streetcars don’t run”: Second Army MD.
“When Joyce Kuhns fled”: AI Joyce Kuhns.
“Hans Moser was the sixteen-year-old”: AI Hans Moser.
“Lieutenant Henry Docherty”: PRO, WO309/1621, WO309/291.
“On 28 February 1945”: PRO, WO309/106.
“Bud Lindsey, a nineteen-year-old”: Al Lindsey,
A Soda Jerk Goes to War
(privately published: 2001).
“That everything was dissolving”: Von Stemann MS, op. cit.
“all around us was the manmade”: Ibid., p. 150.
“I had a lot of imagination”: AI Gotz Bergander.
“We walked slowly, for I was now”: Klemperer, op. cit., pp. xvi, 500–10.
“It was terrible, the bodies”: Ibid., p. 502.
“The bombing of Dresden”: AI Gotz Bergander.
“Yet when a nation had tolerated”: AI Henry Kissinger.
“The smell is nauseating and clings”: Vassiltchikov, op. cit., p. 260.
CHAPTER TWELVE: MARCHING ON THE RHINE
“friendly and intimate co-operation”: Tedder, op. cit., p. 638.
“If the field-marshal had not been”: Weigley, op. cit., p. 575.
“So far as I can see”: PRO, CAB106/1070.
“lit out so vigorously that he carried”: Quoted Forrest Pogue,
Marshal: Organizer of Victory,
vol. iii (Viking: 1973), p. 516.
“to express his full dislike”: Alanbrooke, op. cit., p. 653, 2.1.45.
“An unsatisfactory meeting with”: Ibid.
“We must make certain”: Alfred D. Chandler,
Papers of Eisenhower,
vol. iv (Johns Hopkins University Press: 1970), p. 2438.
“The Germans appear to be beaten”: Gavin Diary, op. cit.
“Poor discipline was reflected”: “Trench Foot,” USAMHI, D769AZ no. 94 c.3.
“On 6 February, the Wehrmacht”: BA, RH2/8496.
“Our battery was still fully equipped”: AI Karl Godau.
“Panzer Lehr Division found”: Helmut Ritgen,
Die Geschilhte der Panzer Lehr Division im Western 1944–45
(Stuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag, 1979), p. 276.
“We had to blow them up”: Helmut Günther,
Von der Hitler-Jugend zur Waffen SS
(Coburg: Nation Europa Verlag, 2001), p. 252.
“It was ‘subsistence warfare’ ”: AI George Schwemmer.
“It is essential that the change”: BA, RH2/328.
“When I reported back to my commander”: Helmut Schmidt,
Kindheit und Jugend unter Hitler
(Berlin: Siedler, 1992), p. 233.
“My flashlight revealed his greatly”: Howard M. Randall,
War Chronicle
(Sunbelt Media: 1999), p. 7.
“Yet Lieutenant Tony Moody”: AI Tony Moody.
“The casualties themselves”: Brenda McBryde,
A Nurse’s War
(Chatto & Windus: 1979), pp. 149–50.
“Tell them to go to hell”: Martin Blumenson,
The Patton Papers,
vol. ii (Houghton Mifflin: 1974), p. 629.
“Private Charles Felix was at a battalion”: Felix, op. cit., p. 65.
“He overdid it”: Gay Diary, op. cit., 2.1.45.
“A few of the men we had to put”: DuPuy, op. cit.
“Lieutenant William Devitt of the 330th”: Devitt, op. cit., p. 128.
“Sergeant Tony Carullo’s”: AI Tony Carullo.
“When the U.S. 90th Division”: NA, RG492–332, box 10.
“There was something a bit scary”: Interview with John S. D. Eisenhower,
World War II,
May 1994.
“For a victorious army”: NA, RG492–332, box 10.
“Everybody hated Veritable”: AI Field-Marshal Lord Carver.
“Private David Williams of the 104th”: David Williams MS, IWM, 98/3/1.
“It has been quite bloody”: Turner-Cain MS, op. cit.
“Private Frank Rumph dashed”: Frank Rumph, unpublished MS, SA.
“The Reichswald was the nastiest”: AI Field-Marshal Lord Bramall.
“at the last stage before frostbite”: Len Stokes, MS Diary, IWM.
“What’s up, Frank?”: Dai Evans, MS, IWM, 92/37/1.
“It is tough going”: PRO, CAB106/1071.
“It was the bravest thing”: AI Cliff Pettit.
“Every night, we kept wondering”: AI John Langdon.
“Bomb craters and fallen trees”: Captain J. L. J. Meredith,
The Story of the Seventh Battalion, the Somerset Light Infantry
(no publisher: 1945), p. 132.
“any action deserving of the VC”: Sir Arthur Harris to the author, 8.7.77.
“As usual, the rough plan”: Peter White,
With the Focks
(Sutton: 2001), p. 199.
“one young German still firing”:
War History of the 4th Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers
(Halle: 1946), p. 143.
“of nuisance value only”: White, op. cit., p. 219.
“There was never an easy way”: AI Cliff Pettit and
The Regimental Journal of the Cameronians,
1997.
“I do loathe all this destruction”: General Sir David Fraser,
Wars and Shadows
(Penguin: 2002), p. 250.
“The reputation of the Waffen SS”: NA, RG492–332, box 4.
“Twenty-two-year-old Katharina Minniger”: AI Katharina Minniger.
“They were in a terrible state”: AI Hildegarde Platten.
“the farmer went into a spiel”: Evans MS, op. cit.
“undue acceptance of parental authority”: PRO, WO106/5924, CI, Newssheet no. 17.
“this was the one period of my life”: AI Henry Kissinger.
“Helmut Lott, a fifteen-year-old”: AI Helmut Lott.
“on 16 March Dr. Alfred Meyer”: PRO, WO106/5924.
“I was dismayed to look out”: AI Lord Carrington.
“I’m going to end up defending”: AI Karl Godau.
“Those who weaken must be”: AI Rolf-Helmut Schröder.
“Lieutenant Tony Saurma’s loader”: AI Tony Saurma.
“Most German soldiers realize”: RMDA, vol. xv 4/5, p. 28.
“I have four divisions, facing 22 Soviet”: BA, RH2/333.
“On 13 March, the Luftwaffe’s”: Ibid.
“The whole cavalcade looked like”: Henry Metelmann,
Through Hell for Hitler
(Spellmount: 2001), pp. 185–6.
“Since the issue”: Second Army MD.
“Likewise Lieutenant Hummel”: RMDA, vol. xv 4/5, p. 64.
“It fills me with utter gloom”: Fraser, op. cit., pp. 248–9.
“I am here to represent”: Speer, op. cit., p. 434.
“Most people are still”: Von Lehndorff, op. cit., p. 38.
“ ‘Mind you,’ said the gunner amiably”: Colin McInnes,
To the Victors the Spoils
(Penguin: 1966), p. 176.
“It just means moving the catastrophe”: Heiber and Glantz, op. cit., p. 681.
“what we were doing was no longer”: AI Walter Schaefer-Kuhnert.
“The casualties to glider pilots”: PRO, WO106/4348.
“wonderful spirit of the men”: AI David Tibbs.
“Also, that as a young man”: Downward MS, op. cit., p. 107.
“but then as we were about six or eight feet”: Goldman, op. cit., p. 124.
“It was chaos”: Quoted Denis Edwards,
The Devil’s Own Luck
(Leo Cooper: 2001), p. 221.
“Peter Downward was overwhelmed”: Downward MS, op. cit., pp. 109–10.
“One of the stranger cargoes”: IWM, HS6/704.
“I honestly believe that he would”: Alanbrooke, op. cit., p. 678, 3.26.45.
“ ‘With hindsight,’ observed Kurt”: Kurt von Tippelskirch,
Geschichte des Zweiten Weltkriegs
(Bonn: Athenäum-Verlag, 1951), p. 558.
