Author: weber.899

The Land of Infamy

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Germany: the ubiquitous “they” throughout this trip, these classes, and all World War II dialogue I had come across prior to this year. The country that annexed the Sudetenland, invaded Poland, blitzed Great Britain, conquered France, and persecuted millions. The other countries that we visited on this trip were, for better or worse, “on our side” throughout the conflict that came to be known as World War II.

My bias-sensors were primed as we started our tour of the German Historical Museum but during my time there I was unable to find any data, opinions, or coverups that went against what I had been taught this school year. The German museums, in my humble opinion, were the most matter-of-fact of any that we visited and did nothing to sugar coat the errors they made and atrocities they committed from 1938-1945. The existence of a Soviet-German War Museum and the Soviet graffiti on the walls of the Reichstag proves how far Germany has come and how willing they are to come to terms with their past. The Reichstag was a particularly fascinating example of how moderate, conscious, and inclusive Germany truly is. Instead of tearing down the building that was set ablaze to bring Germany under military rule, that was nearly destroyed during Operation Clausewitz and the Battle of Berlin, and was vandalized by the victorious Soviets after Berlin fell in May 1945. The post-war 1960’s German government chose to cover these marks of defeat up, but recent movements and reconstruction have chosen to uncover the Russian lettering and make it an integral part of the German parliament building.

Some countries may chose to ignore their past, blur its’ edges, or even re-write their entire national history. It is with great admiration that I conclude that Germany is not one of those nations and has chosen to bravely meet its past head-on, and use it to make their modern state a better place. While it can be argued that Germany had no lee-way to sugar coat their wartime actions during its extensive post-war occupation by foreign powers, I still admire their courage to tell parts of the story that many of the “victors” choose to omit.

 

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

German Teens on Holiday, 1938. Displayed at German Historical Museum.

Nazi Death Camps

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Going into this trip, I figured that Poland was going to be the most unique stop on our trip. Poland is the eastern-most stop on our trip, the least tourist-y, and the most conservative. In January 2018, the Polish government passed a “Holocaust Bill” that criminalizes any mention of Poles “being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich.” Specifically, referring to Nazi concentration camps as “Polish death camps.” I wondered how our visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau would be effected by this new law and if my comrades would need to be wary of prying ears while giving their reports on Polish history.

Our visit to Auschwitz was profoundly austere and chilling. It was my first time at any of the Nazi death camps that I have read so many horrible things about. The tour was conducted by a Polish speaking tour-guide and an English translator. Our guide made a point of calling the camp a Nazi-death camp and explained repeatedly that the Polish town of Oświęcim (“Auschvenken”) was Germanized to Auschwitz.  The Nazi’s eventually evicted the town’s inhabitants evicted in 1940 when the Nazi’s decided to make it a prison for political prisoners, and later into a major site of the Nazis’ Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Throughout the camp there were statistics and data regarding the persons who had been sent to and murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau compound. Something that stood out to me was that the numbers of Poles and the number of Jews killed here were kept separate, and our tour guide continued to mention Poles and Jews, but never once said Polish Jews. Yet surely, of the 1,100,000 European Jews that were murdered here, a large portion of them were Polish citizens. Many of my comrades mentioned that they noticed this phenomenon as well during our class discussion.

Our tour guides never once said anything in their guides that put their government nor their countrymen to shame. Was this a result of fierce national loyalty, common knowledge, or reflective of the new holocaust law? As a first-time visitor to Poland, it is impossible to say. And yet, one thing that remains clear is the obvious effort by the Polish people to absolve themselves of blame regarding the years of occupation. During our studies here there was no mention of the multitude of anti-Jewish progroms conducted by Polish peasants, an utter split between “Poles” and “Jews” during the war, and an obvious desire to drive home the point that the death camps in Poland were Nazi death camps, a distinction that I always thought was common knowledge.

Memorial plaque in Birkenau

Remnants of the barracks

Americans in Bayeux

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In the months leading up to my departure to Europe, countless well-traveled persons told me “French people just don’t like Americans, don’t take it personally.” Yet, upon arrival in Bayeux, France the first thing I laid eyes on was a sign in a café window that read “We welcome our liberators.” I continued to encounter this paradox throughout my nine day stay in France. Bayeux, where we spent our first six days on French soil, is in the lower Normandy region of France. It is a quaint town that boasts a rich history as the home to the Bayeux tapestry, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England, an imposing Romanesque-Gothic cathedral consecrated by William the Conqueror’s half-brother Odo of Bayeux in 1077, and, most recently, is known as the first major town liberated by the Allies during Operation Overlord in June 1944. The Norman peoples of this town, and indeed, the Normandy region, are a rather quiet, serious bunch. The looks that my fellow American comrades and I received while walking about, dining, and relaxing showed that they are not used to the clamor we Yank’s tend to make. Some of my group and I went to a football game one night in Caen, Normandy, and there were a few times that I noticed I was the only person in the entire section standing up and cheering. And yet I never felt uncomfortable, and especially not hated, by the French people.

However, what made me uncomfortable was the awkward way that the people, museums, and businesses of the area handled American involvement, invasion, and presence in and around Normandy during World War II. St. Mere Eglise, the landing spot of many Allied paratroopers landings in the early hours of 6 June 1944, had a dummy-paratrooper strung from the church tower. We watched a D-Day video at Arromanches that showed French toddlers and kittens back to back with Allied bombings of French towns and German armaments. At the end of this was a montage of French landscapes and attractions and in between flashes of Mont St. Michel and the Notre Dame was a quick image of the American Cemetery in Normandy. There were countless advertisements for an impending D-Day festival. Many of the memorials and museums overplayed France’s involvement in various military efforts during the war and downplayed American and British aid. The Caen memorial seemed to put the blame of collaboration on the backs of Phillippe Petain and Pierre Laval, leaving out the fact that collaboration was widespread during the German occupation and these men received great amounts of support at one point in time. In a shop window in Paris, a decal read “We are all collaborators.” This was the first time I saw these events glorified and the first time I saw the war being explained from the French point of view.

As a business student, I found the storefront advertisement particularly strange. The French typically chose to ignore or whitewash their collaborationist experiences during the war, yet here is a prominent advertisement using the idea of collaboration as a marketing device! And as an American citizen, compatriot to many of the men who fought and died to liberate France and greater Europe, I was shocked by the commercialization and celebration of D-Day and the Normandy landings. I believe that such promotions and statements are damaging to the memory and valor of those men. My comrades and I had a round-table discussion about these problems prior to entering the British War Cemetery. I understand that a nation must explain their history one way or another. The United States has a hard time of it ourselves, with our nation’s many historical shames. In my report on Charles Glass’s book American’s in Paris, I put forth the idea that it is easy to scoff at collaborators as a nation that has never experienced invasion and occupation. And so there must be a kind of middle ground between the American and French explanations of France during occupation and Operation Overlord that explains what truly happened. Yet, the French people need to come to an agreement on how they promote their national history. Were they a nation of helpless kittens, a nation of wily resistance and military valor, or do they simply seek profit from whichever history they see fit?

Storefront advertisement – Paris, France

Memorial at Angoville Church. “In honour and recognition of Robert E. Wright (a Buckeye!) Kenneth J. Moore Medics… 101st Airborne Division for Humane and Life saving care rendered … in this church in June 1944”

We Shall Defend Our Island

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In both of my World War II classes this year, I learned that this enormous struggle was a “People’s War” for Britons. They fought in the skies, on the beaches, in the streets, and defended their island for over five years, standing alone against the Third Reich for much of that time. Personal dedication is evident in all the sites we visited in London. Upon entering the Churchill War Rooms, I could feel the nervous, fast-paced energy of the place where British subjects worked turned a forgotten basement into a well-oiled machine that would help them win the war. The RAF memorial was dedicated not just to the British boys who volunteered at the call to arms to defend their island but also to the civilians, of all nationalities, who perished in the bombings of 1939-1945. Bletchley Park is a testament to the women and men who swore themselves to secrecy and put their lives on hold for years to ensure Allied success.

On our last scheduled day in London our group traveled to the Imperial War Museum. Situated in the heart of London, this museum successfully conveyed the reality of life in the United Kingdom during World War II. The museum created displays with artifacts such as the gas masks issued to every UK citizen in 1939, a row boat that was used to evacuate British and French troops from Dunkirk in 1940, ration booklets and ration recipes, and even scraps of metal from downed Luftwaffe aircraft, the kind of debris that young British boys would collect and take to school to compare with their friends. The war permeated all areas of life for English families.

The exhibit that resonated the most with me was the “A Family at War,” which showed the war experience through the eyes of the average London family during the war. The Allpress family had 8 children. The father was a train conductor, whose work was deemed “critical” to the war effort so he was not drafted. The oldest son served in the North African campaign and the middle brother was with the forces evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940. He then returned to France on 6 June 1944 in the initial wave of the D-Day invasion. The youngest son, age 10 in 1940, was sent to the countryside for a time to live out the Blitz in safety. The mother and daughters stood in lines to collect rations, mended clothes, and toiled in their family’s victory garden of carrots, peas, parsnips, and potatoes to augment their rationed food supply. The younger daughters without children of their own served as volunteer fire-girls during air raids and found work in military factories.

A quotation of the oldest sister read, “We were one of the lucky families. All of our brothers came home.” After reading this a second time, I realized that Eva Allpress was talking about all three of her brothers. She was not only referring to her two oldest brothers serving as combat-troops fighting hostiles, but also her kid-brother who had to survive on the home front during the five years of German’s bombing London. This struck a chord with me, as a sister. It is easier to process worry for an enlisted loved-one fighting in some foreign land. It is harder still to have that worry along with living in constant fear that you might wake up to a call that your family’s house was bombed the night before and your little brother and sisters are dead. While many Americans lost a son, brother, husband, or cousin during the war, American civilians were never “at war” with an enemy above them. But British men, women, and children lived and died through nightly bombings and never gave up. They defended their island against the threat of German invasion for half a decade and eventually returned to continental Europe to destroy the threat at its source.