War Stories III Read online

Though President Franklin Delano Roosevelt viewed developments in Europe and Asia with growing concern, he was unable to convince Congress not to pass a series of five “Neutrality Acts” between 1935 and 1939.

  These laws effectively prohibited the United States government or its citizens from becoming a party to either side in the overseas conflicts by banning the shipment of war materiel and restricting travel abroad by U.S. citizens “except at their own risk.” FDR—who favored opposing German, Japanese, and Italian aggression—walked a tight line. He wanted to soften the country’s isolationist position, but at the same time didn’t want to alienate Congress by vetoing any of the neutrality bills. He was unwilling to jeopardize legislation that he wanted passed which he believed would help ameliorate the effects of the Depression.

  But just weeks after FDR signed the first Neutrality Act in 1935, Hitler’s National Socialist Party passed the Nurenburg laws—revoking the citizenship of German Jews. The Nazis then forbade marriage between Jews and “pure-blooded” Germans. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, many Jews living in Germany decided to leave the country. But America, like most other countries, turned them away.

  The U.S. had tightened immigration policies some ten years earlier, and lawmakers were unwilling to ease those restrictions—after all, America was still deep within the Depression and many unemployed Americans were afraid that a flood of refugees would make it even harder to find a job. Polls showed that three-fourths of the country opposed raising refugee quotas.

  The international response to the Jewish refugee situation was no better. The matter was debated in European capitals, but none volunteered to open the doors to the Jewish refugees. That only encouraged further Nazi oppression of the Jews in Germany. In 1938 Hitler arrested 17,000 Jews of Polish citizenship—many of whom had been living in Germany—and relocated them in “work camps” on the Polish border after Poland refused to take them back.

  In November 1938, violence organized by the Nazis erupted in what became known as Kristallnacht—the “night of broken glass”—and over 7,000 Jewish shops and a hundred synagogues and homes were ransacked, robbed, and burned. In the aftermath, more than 25,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps.

  In 1939, several hundred Jewish refugees sailed on the liner St. Louis from Hamburg for Havana, Cuba. On board were 937 Jews fleeing Nazi persecution after the horror of Kristallnacht the previous November. Each passenger of the St. Louis carried a valid visa providing for temporary entry into Cuba.

  However, as the ship neared Havana, the Cuban government announced that the visas were no longer valid and denied entry to the nearly one thousand passengers. The St. Louis then sailed for the United States but the American government—adhering to its strict immigration policy—also denied them entry and even refused to let the ship dock. After weeks of futility and pleas for asylum, the St. Louis returned to Europe, docking at Antwerp, where the king and prime minister permitted 200 passengers to enter Belgium. The British, French, and Dutch governments finally agreed to grant temporary asylum for the refugees, but by then the passengers had disembarked at Amsterdam. When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940, many of the Jews from the St. Louis were still there—and found themselves once again in Hitler’s clutches. For most, their hapless and hopeless story finally ended in a Nazi death camp as part of Hitler’s “Final Solution.”

  In 1939, President Roosevelt called Congress into special session to amend the earlier neutrality acts. FDR presented them with a plan he called “cash-and-carry,” which permitted Americans to sell arms and munitions to “democratic countries” able to pay for them in cash and carry them away from American docks in their own ships. Some isolationists in Congress protested the plan, but the Neutrality Act of 1939 finally allowed Britain and France to buy American weapons and war materiel. It was not until March 1941 that Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act—permitting the president to “sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of,” war materiel to other governments deemed “vital to the defense of the United States.” FDR was authorized to provide up to $1 billion to England in such aid.

  But all of this military aid would come too late for the Dutch, Belgian, British, and French armies that had to face the German onslaught in May 1940. Within days of the Dunkirk evacuation, the president asked for Congress to authorize more funds for America’s own national defense—and for the Selective Training and Service Act—the first U.S. peacetime military draft. This bill, considered by isolationist opponents to be “jingoistic,” and too “provocative for a neutral nation,” would eventually make it possible to recruit more than sixteen million Americans—but it had to be reauthorized the following year. Accordingly, the number of infantrymen who were assigned to specific organized U.S. Army units actually decreased between mid-1939 and the start of 1940 to a total of just under 50,000 men. It wasn’t until 12 August 1941 that the law was amended, authorizing U.S. military conscripts to be sent overseas. It passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a single vote.

  By then, it was becoming apparent to most Americans that it wouldn’t be long before the country would be called upon to do more than simply provide arms and munitions in what was fast becoming a global conflagration. One of those who saw it coming was a young U.S. Army aviator from Florida named John Alison.

  SECOND LIEUTENANT JOHN ALISON, USAAF

  Moscow, Russia

  2 July 1940

  I was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the field artillery of the United States Army in 1935. When I graduated in June of ’36, I went almost directly to the Army Flying School in Randolph Field. I had to resign my commission in order to enroll as a flying cadet, and attend the Army Flying School at San Antonio, Texas. I completed my training and was assigned in 1937 to Langley Field, Virginia, flying a PB-2A.

  At this time America was antiwar. I don’t think we had really one ready division in the United States Army at the beginning of World War I. And now, just before World War II, we were only a little better off. The country just didn’t want to prepare for war. If we’d had the level of preparedness for the beginning of World War II that we had two years later, the war would’ve much shorter. And cost far less. And we would’ve saved the lives of a lot of really good kids.

  I’d been flying for two years when General Claire Chennault asked me to demonstrate a new P-40 fighter aircraft for some Chinese who were buying the planes for China to use against the Japanese, and right after that, I was sent to England with the P-40s to help the RAF assimilate this new American aircraft under the Lend-Lease Plan.

  I think our greatest help was as a morale booster, giving them hope that the Americans were going to come in and help them fight this war. But we only flew over Britain. When we left General “Hap” Arnold pointed his finger at us and said, “Look . . . you know, the antiwar sentiment that’s going on in the United States today. Your RAF friends are going to say, come on, fly over France with us. If you do, I’m not going to court martial you—I’m going to have you shot! If an American officer is shot down over France and we’re not at war, the antiwar sentiment and the active press that we’ll be getting, if you’re shot down, it’ll do us tremendous damage. So don’t you dare cross the channel!” So, of course we took that seriously.

  Then Hitler invaded Russia. The president was interested in keeping Russia in the war because he anticipated that later on, we were going to be involved too. When the Germans attacked the Russians, the president sent his assistant Mr. Harry Hopkins and me to Moscow.

  We tried to find out from the Russians what they really needed most but they were very secretive. As matter of fact I never saw one act of genuine cooperation between the Russians and our side. I met with the Russian generals and Hopkins met with Stalin; we tried to find out about their tanks—whether we could improve on them; The flat answer was, “We have a good tank.” Artillery pieces—“We have good artillery.” Airplanes? “We have good airplanes.” But finally it was agreed that we would send
the P-40s to Russia. They didn’t need much training but we put together a system to supervise the assembly of the airplanes. And my partner and I test-flew every airplane before we delivered it to the Russians.

  I was in Moscow when the Germans got to the city in October. We had to evacuate. The provisional capital had been moved from Moscow to the Caucuses. I requested that I be relieved of my assignment in Moscow and sent back to my unit in the United States—because I knew by now that America was getting ready for war. It hadn’t happened yet, but I knew it was coming.

  When the war in Europe began, the American army was the seventeenth largest in the world—just behind that of Romania. What troops we had were issued the old “bell style” helmets left over from World War I, and the men drilled with wooden guns. That didn’t dismay many of those who were suddenly “called up.” In the midst of the Great Depression, joining the Army paid a dollar a day, and provided a bunk and three square meals a day. That sounded pretty good to a lot of people.

  Seventeen-year-old Joe Boitnott, a fresh-faced high school dropout, needed work, and by his own account, “a little discipline in my life,” so he decided to join the Iowa National Guard for that dollar a day that they paid for every drill. Joe told his friend, a farm boy named Duane Stone, “Why don’t you join? It’s a dollar a drill. And we’re gonna go to Minnesota for twenty-one days. And that’s $21.” And $21 was big money for a teenager in Depression-era Iowa.

  Angelo Montemaro grew up in Brooklyn during the Great Depression and after graduating from high school was one of the lucky ones to find a job. He became a bellhop for the Hotel Commodore on Lexington and 42nd Street in New York City. One of the perks of being a bellhop was that he occasionally got to hear the Big Band sounds of an orchestra playing in the hotel ballroom. For this young teenager, life—despite the Depression—seemed good, and war was something he scarcely thought of.

  JOSEPH BOITNOTT

  Des Moines, Iowa

  2 July 1940

  I joined the National Guard December 21, 1939. At that time, my father and mother had been divorced and I was living with my sister, in Des Moines, Iowa. So, I joined the National Guard, to gain both discipline and money. In the summer of 1940, we went to Camp Ripley, Minnesota, on maneuvers. We had come back from that twenty-one-day encampment, and we settled in to do more training, in our armory there in Des Moines.

  And later, we were mobilized from the National Guard of Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota into the Army of the United States, and were sent to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, for a year’s training. We trained on forced marches, ten-mile marches, with full field pack. And we had to dig foxholes and let a tank go over, to make sure we got that training. We had no amphibious training or desert training.

  We trained with very old World War I equipment. Our rifles were 1903 Springfield rifles. We had some Colt .45s, but revolvers—not the automatic pistols. The Army Air Corps would “bomb” us during the maneuvers—they’d drop flour bags as bombs. And some of our units had wooden guns. And our bayonet training, and hand-to-hand combat, was very limited.

  But in the meantime, they started the Selective Service. We received these Selective Service draftees into our unit. We then trained at Camp Claiborne throughout the summer on basic maneuvers. Later in the year the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, in December. We were alerted, and sent to guard different structures in Louisiana and along the Texas border.

  And then, we come back, and were ordered to get on a troop train. Our destination was unknown. We later found out we were going to Fort Dix, New Jersey. There we waited to be shipped out. Every day we marched around the field, or ran around the perimeter of Fort Dix doing calisthenics. And it was cold, living and sleeping in those tattered tents. We were scheduled to leave on the USS Normandy. But the Normandy caught fire and burned. So we were delayed two or three weeks, until another ship could be refitted for troops. They used these luxury liners, and refitted them for us. Everything was done in a hurry. And before long we sailed on the Mariposa.

  When we boarded the ship and sailed, our convoy rendezvoused at Nova Scotia. We picked up other ships for the crossing. And we still, at that point, didn’t know where our destination was. But we landed in Ireland, and after six or eight months, we were transferred to Scotland where we trained some more without the proper weapons and equipment.

  DUANE STONE

  Des Moines, Iowa

  2 July 1940

  My friend had joined the National Guard and asked me to join too. He said, “It’s a dollar a drill. And we’re gonna go to Minnesota for twenty-one days of maneuvers.” Well, that seemed like big money in the middle of the Depression.

  My family and I lived on a farm. My dad worked as a laborer, for the farm. My older brother and I got work shocking wheat and oats. But, for fifty cents a day, it wasn’t much money. So, the opportunity came along to enlist. And we were paid—every three months we got twelve bucks. It paid for a lot of little things here and there. In fact, it paid for my graduation suit when I graduated in May of 1940.

  My cousin always believed that we were going to have trouble with Japan—not Germany. I mean, he wasn’t a college graduate, but he was well-educated enough from reading the papers and books that Japan was going to be our enemy. And we weren’t at war with either Japan or Germany then. But France and England were. And the U.S. was trying to supply them with ammunition, weapons, and war equipment. That was what we were supposed to do—help France and England. But not get into the fighting.

  Well, most Americans realized what the situation was. I think our parents back then—a lot of them had sons in the service—they had to know what was going on. They had to realize that their sons would soon be involved with the war.

  ANGELO MONTEMARO

  Brooklyn, New York

  2 July 1940

  I was working then at the Hotel Commodore as a bellhop. I had been doing that for three years. The Depression was terrible—that’s when Franklin Delano Roosevelt started the WPA. I had three brothers on the WPA. When Hitler went into Poland, the U.S. started mandatory conscription, and you had to go into the service. That’s why my brother Joe was in the service already.

  I graduated high school in 1937. I wanted to go to college but I couldn’t go because my family was pretty poor. So I got my higher education at the Hotel Commodore. When the war finally started, I got my draft notice about six months later. Now we were five brothers in the service, and our folks were pretty proud. My brother Mike was in the Marine Corps. He went to Iwo Jima. My brother Vincent was a doctor, and a colonel in the Army Medical Corps. My brother Joe was with an artillery unit and my youngest brother, Peter, was in the Army Air Force. I was in the infantry.

  I had ninety days in Camp Cross. Then they took us to Fort Mead, Maryland. From there we went to Fort Kilmer, and then to Camp Miles Standish in Boston. From there we went across the North Atlantic in a convoy that took us twenty-three days to get to Plymouth, England. They were really happy to see us.

  Following his 1940 reelection, President Roosevelt declared that the United States should become “the great arsenal of democracy.” In August 1941 FDR and British prime minister Winston Churchill announced new Allied goals for dealing with Hitler’s aggression, presented in what they called the Atlantic Charter. Britain and America each pledged to respect “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.” Both also promised a free world without war “after the final destruction of Nazi tyranny.”

  By then, the Royal Air Force had all but won perhaps one of the most lopsided and revolutionary series of engagements in the history of warfare—the “Battle of Britain.” As America slowly mobilized to confront the great peril of Hitler’s aggression, the Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffe were dueling in the skies over the British Isles. The 10 July–30 October 1940 aerial battle made it possible for Britain to survive. Winston Churchill characterized it as “their finest hour.”

  CHAPTER 2

  THE BATTL
E OF BRITAIN AND THE LONDON BLITZ JULY–OCTOBER 1940

  The fall of France on 22 June 1940 presented Hitler with a new strategic dilemma: what to do about the British Isles. Still hoping that Churchill would come to some kind of accommodation with Germany, the Nazi leader decided to pressure the pesky Brits by ordering highly visible preparations for Operation Sea Lion—the invasion of England.

  Brushing aside the anxieties of his General Staff, Hitler directed that a fleet of barges, tugs, and landing craft assemble at captured Dutch, Belgian, and French ports. And then, to ratchet up the pressure, on 10 July, he ordered the first significant cross-channel air raids against British shore defenses, merchant ports, and naval installations on the south coast of England.

  The Battle of Britain had begun. Its outcome would determine Great Britain’s survival as an independent nation.

  For six days, groups of twenty to thirty German Dornier 17s, Heinkel 111s, Junkers 87 (Stukas) and Ju-88s, escorted by Messerschmitt 109s and twin-engine Me-110s, flew from hastily repaired French and Belgian airfields. This amazing aircraft armada flew into the teeth of well-prepared British defenses. When these limited attacks produced no softening in Churchill’s resolve, the Reich chancellor issued Führer Directive No. 16, ordering accelerated preparations for Operation Sea Lion. Hitler correctly surmised that without total control of the air over the Channel and the invasion beaches, any attack on England would be doomed to failure.

  “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

  The Luftwaffe was ordered to both prepare the way for Wehrmacht assault forces and “prevent all air attacks” by the Royal Air Force. But now, for the first time since German aggression began in 1938, Hitler learned that just because he ordered something didn’t necessarily make it so.