The History Buff's Guide to World War II (52 page)

Remnants of the December 7, 1941, air assault traverse Oahu, but the event is encapsulated in the somber, bone-white monument resting near the
Missouri
. Constructed in 1961, the USS
Arizona
Memorial straddles the fated battleship’s submerged hull; only the iron base of Gun Turret Number 3 rises from the water. Containing the bodies of more than eleven hundred sailors, the
Arizona
entombs half the military dead of Pearl Harbor.

Along with this poignant alpha, Oahu possesses many stories in between. Within the harbor is the USS
Bowfin
Submarine Museum, which pays tribute to the thirty-five hundred U.S. submariners killed in World War II. A tour through the
Bowfin
is highly recommended. Launched a year after the attack, the three-hundred-foot-long submarine scored forty-five kills in nine missions.

Excellent overviews of Hawaii's military history and the Pacific War can been seen at the Fort DeRussy U.S. Army Museum, seven miles east in Honolulu, just behind Waikiki Beach. Also just east of Honolulu is the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, a.k.a. “the Punchbowl.” Situated in the mouth of an extinct volcano, the cemetery holds the graves of thirty-three thousand servicemen and the names of eighteen thousand missing from World War II. It is the largest U.S. military resting place outside Arlington National Cemetery.

Transportation, hotels, guides, and group tours are abundant in this tropical paradise. For the more adventurous, a few organizations offer scuba excursions to sunken World War II boats and planes away from the naval base. Excellent in its convenience and accommodations, Pearl Harbor is supreme in its vivid illustration of the American purpose, victory, and price paid.

Of all the historic sites in the Hawaiian Islands, the most visited is the National Memorial Cemetery at Honolulu.

3.
AUSCHWITZ–BIRKENAU

From Yad Vashem in Israel to Washington, D.C., there are twenty and counting major museums and memorial centers to the Holocaust. Though these facilities can induce chilling reminders with photographs, graphic text accounts, and somber audiovisual displays, they are subdued and tepid in comparison to a walk through a death camp. Forty miles west of beautiful Krakow, Poland, near the town of Oswiecim, stands the remnants of the largest and deadliest of the six major extermination centers of the Third Reich. Here, through hard labor, starvation, disease, medical experiments, shootings, and gassings, ten thousand Russians and other nationalities, well over one hundred thousand Poles, and at least one million Jews perished between 1942 and 1945. Initially a labor and incarceration facility, Auschwitz eventually grew into a leviathan of forty subcamps designed to kill and cremate. Today the two largest sections, Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II–Birkenau remain relatively intact and are open for public viewing.

Miles of barbed-wire walls, guard towers, and a dead-end rail line greet visitors to this cold, still, colorless landscape. Auschwitz I is the nucleus, holding the commandant’s and SS quarters, medical facilities, and prison barracks. Situated two miles to the west is Birkenau, where most exterminations took place. The gas chambers and crematoria lay in ruins, destroyed by SS guards just before Soviet liberation of the camp in January 1945. Still standing are rows upon rows of buildings, mostly barracks, which once housed skeletal inmates stacked like cordwood upon hard, cold shelves.

Guides are available. During the warmer months bus shuttles run hourly between the two former camps. A few moderately sized hotels are available in Oswiecim, but Krakow forty miles to the east has better accommodations. Take a car or bus from Krakow to reach the site. Rail service stops within a mile of the facility; unlike during the Nazi era, trains do not enter the camps.

Auschwitz–Birkenau averages about two thousand visitors per day. At their peak, the four Birkenau gas chambers could “process” six thousand prisoners per day.

4.
LONDON

Winston Churchill made it a point to call the Allies “the United Nations.” Bitter differences over war aims and resources tested this union, but without doubt the city of London served as its capital. The monarchs of Belgium and Denmark, the elected heads of Poland and Czechoslovakia, and a host of other governments in exile came to call London their wartime home. Thousands of Commonwealth soldiers also converged there. In early 1944 more American men bivouacked in and around the English city than resided in Nebraska.

For all that was done in and to the city during the war, very little external evidence remains of a struggle. London's World War II history resides mostly in display cases, museums, and hangars. Fortunately, the city has easy access to a multitude of such sites and is one of the most tourist-friendly regions on the planet.

The mother of military collections is the Imperial War Museum. Focusing primarily on the First and Second World Wars, its highlights include Marshal Montgomery’s command tank for the African campaign, remnants of Rudolf Hess’s plane, a Spitfire, intact V-1 and V-2 rockets, numerous tanks and artillery pieces, visiting authors and displays, and a section of track from the India-Burma rail line built by Allied POWs.

Anchored in the Thames within the shadow of London Bridge is the HMS
Belfast
. The Royal Navy cruiser ran support missions for arctic convoys and laid down fire support off the Normandy beaches on D-day. A self-guided tour reveals almost the entire inner workings of a fighting vessel—its main guns, hospital, mess, communications, and its three-story pipe-labyrinth of a boiler room. Unfortunately, much of the ship is inaccessible for people with physical disabilities.

Among other sites are the National Army Museum and the Cabinet War Rooms. The latter (thirty feet below King Charles Street near Number 10 Downing) was the actual bunker from which Churchill and company directed the country during the war.

Hotels are abundant, as are restaurants, historic and entertainment attractions, and tour packages. If time is available, travel fifty miles north of the city to Duxford Imperial War Museum. It boasts perhaps the finest collection of historical military aircraft in the world and features every major type of fighter, bomber, and cargo plane used in the Second World War.

When traveling through London, the Underground provides quick and easy access to nearly every place of interest. The Tubes are important to see for another reason—the subterranean stations served as bomb shelters during the war.

5.
CORREGIDOR

On Christmas Eve 1941, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Philippines president Manuel Quezon, and supporting troops left besieged Manila and headed for the safety of Corregidor. Three and a half miles long, crowned with artillery, and veined with underground tunnels, the mountainous island fortress and its thousands of soldiers were poised to protect vital Manila Bay and the Bataan Peninsula.

Though no explosive could penetrate the deep man-made caverns, hope was limited. MacArthur and Quezon left for Australia in February 1942. By April, Bataan had fallen, allowing the Japanese to bomb and shell Corregidor almost continuously. In May, the Japanese landed. Short of food, water, and ammunition, Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright and eleven thousand troops and civilians surrendered, facing years in Japanese internment.

Today, the island is dedicated to the preservation of the fortress and to the memory of its defenders. A day tour is available, though the traveler is at the mercy of its tight schedule. A wiser use of time is an overnight trip, with a stay at the island’s hotel or resort (both operated by Sun Cruises). Several gun emplacements, memorials, caves, old barracks, monuments, and scenic ocean views are within reach of rigorous walks, jeepney rentals, and open-air bus rides. The island’s pièce de résistance is eight-hundred-foot-long Malinta Tunnel, which served as arsenal, headquarters, and a thousand-bed hospital for the Allies and the Japanese.

A night tour of Malinta Tunnel is amazing but not for the claustrophobic or squeamish. In 1945, Japanese soldiers killed themselves in the tunnel rather than capitulate to the returning Allies.

6.
THE ARDENNES

Scattered and diminutive monuments, comparatively small museums, and a dearth of road markings make this region a touring challenge, to say the least. But here the landscape becomes the story.

Covering southern Belgium and northern Luxembourg and consisting of tightly folded hills, carpets of fir trees, thin and wandering roads, and deep vocal rivers, the Ardennes appear to be impassible for a logging truck, let alone a panzer division. Viewing the area as a natural barrier, the French did not bother to extend the Maginot Line behind it. But through this vast tank trap Hitler launched his two major western offenses in 1940 and 1944. On both occasions he caught his opponents by complete surprise for obvious reasons.

As stated above, museums are few. Principal among them are the small but impressively equipped December 1944 Museum in La Gleize, Belgium, with a rare Tiger tank parked outside; the Musée D'Histoire 1944–45 in Diekirch, Luxembourg, hosting numerous tanks, artillery pieces, and life-size military dioramas; and the Historical Center in Bastogne, Belgium, with an average collection of weapons and uniforms, a superior film showing footage from the actual Battle of the Bulge, and the three-story outdoor monument called Mardasson, touching in its sheer gratitude to the American liberation of Belgium.

Less visited and more important are the American, British, German, and Polish cemeteries in the area, and there are several. The Bulge was the bloodiest battle of the war for the United States, with nineteen thousand dead, most of whom are buried near Neuville en-Condroz and Henri Chapelle, Belgium, and just outside of Luxembourg City, Luxembourg.

In recognition of the courageous American defense of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, every major road entrance into the city is “guarded” by a Sherman tank turret.