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"America's Shame - The First Thirty Days"

Very few Americans know the untaught tale of this conflicts infancy. Large flags, music and parades instead walk us down a hallway of U.S. triumph and glory in a war we almost never entered. Our downfalls are not laid bare, our moral shortcomings never addressed. One is almost treated to an All-American legend detailing an almost single-handed supreme effort by the morally and militarily superior U.S. government.

I do not invalidate these stories, for in the main, they are true. Indeed, great sacrifice, heroism, personal effort and national pride was shed on foreign shores during that, the greatest of human conflicts. However, I offer a more stark and unrepentant look at the years of her inaction and what grief our impassivity laid upon the shoulders of Allies we would not have.
Of nations who in a throaty, tear choked cry struggled vainly to reach the ears of a nation who would not hear them. Of honor, courage and valor expressed by women and children who never carried a gun and never wore a uniform in patronage to a nation. Of men who never knew a country, of dreams which will never be. Of horror undreampt of in waking nightmares.

I begin with the words of Winston Churchill broadcasted on a bleak afternoon into the dark homes of 4 million listeners of the BBC. "Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo… we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be… We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in Gods good time, the New World, with all it's power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old."

The New World Churchill so gallantly referred to was the United States of America, Britain's ally and economic paramour. But underneath the skin of wartime rhetoric and poetry, was the U.S. so reliable an ally?

History is our judge. Read on.

The Second World War was the most destructive human conflict in recorded history. After the guns fell silent in 1918 and the body count became known, the world was stunned into saddened disbelief. 18 million dead and millions more wounded by the most dreadful means known to man. Such sorrow as had never been imagined, much less realized.

Oh… the Great War… the war to end all wars.

World War II would outdo it's parent by paralyzing numbers. During the 2,174 days of war, 47 million would perish, many under the most horrible and unimaginable cruelties ever devised by human minds. Over 3 times the destruction of World War I.
By far and large, they were unknown by name or face except to those few who loved them. The offspring of the Great War inherited the awful rage of it's most abhorrent and wayward son. Adolph Hitler.
On the bitter morning of 1 September, 1939, murder reincarnated itself in another form. In retaliation for a trumped up Polish 'attack' on the Gleiwitz transmitter, German forces advanced into the Polish frontier to meet a valiant, yet antique army of cavalrymen and riflemen.
Operation Himmler, named for the SS chief that designed the faked Gleiwitz attack, would bring a noble and courageous people to the brink of lunatic madness and human depravation in a campaign of nothing less than genocide against her native peoples and the Jews that dwelt within her borders. As the Blitzkrieg, or lightning war, swallowed Poland whole, only two countries were moved by the supremely human struggle that raged within the walls of Poland.
On 3 September, Britain and France simultaneously declared war on Germany. However, Hitler did not immediately appreciate the threat that their declarations represented. Unfortunately, neither did Britain or France.
They both agreed that "immediate military action" was necessary to "ensure Poland's survival", but neither could agree upon what that meant. The course of British retaliation would take form in Western Air Plan 14, the dropping of anti-Nazi leaflets over Germany. 13 tons of leaflets boldly declared to the German people, "Your rulers have condemned you to the massacres, miseries and privations of a war they cannot possibly hope to win."
The following day, 10 Blenheim bombers attacked the German naval base at Wilmshaven. No damage was done and half of the bombers never returned. The beginning looked bleak indeed. On 5 September, spirits were to change as the HMS Ajax saw action against two German merchant transports, sinking them. But all of this accomplished nothing. Britain was restricted to a paper war while France shuddered under the thought of a second German invasion in 20 years. The awesome ingenuity and military brilliance of the German war machine was undaunted by their declarations.
The Germans that left the railheads in Germany painted signs on their train carriages, one such sign reading, "We're off to Poland to thrash the Jews." Indeed, that is the business they directly set themselves to upon arrival. Hitlers Death's Head Regiments were carving for themselves a new page in antiquity.
At Wieriszow, 20 Jews were ordered to assemble in the village marketplace, among them Israel Lewi, a man of 64. When his daughter, Leibe, ran up to her father, a German SS officer told her to open her mouth for "impudence". He then fired a bullet into it. The 20 Jews were then summarily executed.
In the weeks that were to follow, such atrocity was commonplace. The vagaries of war would know no bounds. On 6 September, German SS officers rounded up Polish soldiers in the fields outside Mrocza and shot them dead. They were unarmed and had already surrendered, most of them under 20 years of age.
The war was 1 week old. The Polish city of Cracow, a city of more than 250,000 inhabitants was under German control. Few in Hitler's entourage knew exactly what he had in mind for Poland and it's Jewish population. On 9 September, Colonel Eduard Wagner noted in his diary, "It is the Fuhrer's intention… to destroy and exterminate the Polish nation. More than that cannot even be hinted in this writing."
For the Allies, which at this time composed Britain, her Commonwealth States and France, few opportunities for military action to assist Poland in any way could be seen. However, on 7 September, French military units crossed the German border at three points, near Saarlouis, Saarbrucken and Zweibrucken meeting no serious opposition. The Western Front was quiet.
German military leaders had invested ¾ of her military power in Poland. Meanwhile, France had gathered against her borders a stunning 64 Divisions, 6 times the number the British had hoped to have ready by 1941 and almost the strength of the entire German Army. Was an opportunity lost? Could WWII have been prevented? We will never know.

Committees were formed in Britain to discuss land action, but England was not prepared for serious engagement. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty was blatant in his arguments. "We must take our place in the line… if we are to win the war."
That day, near Lodz, a German SS officer noted in his diary the action of the day. "The Poles launched yet another counter-attack. They came storming over the bodies of their fallen comrades. They did not come forward with their heads down like men in heavy rain - and most attacking infantry do - but they advanced with their heads held high, like swimmers breasting the waves. They never faltered." In the ensuing battle of the Bzura, 170,000 Polish soldiers were taken prisoner.
At Bedzin, SS troops pushed 200 Jews into a synagogue and then set it aflame. They all burned to death. One eye-witness to the killing of civilians was Admiral Canaris, head of the Secret Intelligence Service of the German Armed Forces. On 10 September he had traveled to the front to watch the German Army in action. Wherever he went, his Intelligence officers told him of an "orgy of massacre." 2 days later, he went to Hitler's headquarters train, the Amerika, in Upper Silesia, to protest. He first saw General Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Armed Forces High Command.
"I have information," Canaris told Keitel, "that mass executions are being planned in Poland and that members of the Polish nobility and the clergy have been singled out for extermination." Keitel urged Canaris to take the matter no further. Canaris returned to Berlin, his faith in Hitler deeply shaken.
The Polish Army, still fighting tenaciously, was in ordered retreat all along the Polish frontier, it's routes to the east bombed without respite. Soldiers were strafed and bombed by aircraft while on the road, driven before the German Army "like unto the wrath of Heaven" wrote a Polish officer. The Polish Army had high hopes of regrouping in the countries eastern regions, particularly around Lvov, the principal city of Eastern Galicia. But in the early hours of 17 September these hopes were crushed.
Unknown to the Poles, to even Hitler's generals, a secret clause of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 23 August 1939, created a demarcation line across Poland, east of which the Soviets could take control.
The Poles, so desperately engaged in a fight for their lives against the German onslaught, had no means to resist the Soviet drive into Poland. 2 Soviet Army Groups moved into Poland and up to the demarcation line. Polish troops were ordered to lay down their arms and then promptly marched off into captivity in the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers were captured by Red Army Divisions and likewise marched into captivity. Their lives were to only become harder.
That night, in the Atlantic Ocean, the British suffered their first naval disaster when the aircraft carrier Courageous was torpedoed by the U-29 off the Irish coast, going down with 518 sailors. In Britain, sympathy for their Polish allies was at an all time high, but they felt helpless. Hitler felt confident that no British or French move would impede the progress into Poland.
By 19 September, Warsaw had been under military bombardment for 10 consecutive days. But her valiant defenders held out. So many thousands of Poles had died from aerial and artillery bombardment that the city parks were used for burials.
Tenaciously, the Poles struggled to hold the city's perimeter. The German and Soviet forces now faced each other all along the demarcation line. By 25 September, the strength of Warsaw's defense had weakened.
That day, 400 bombers dropped 72 tons of incendiary bombs on the Polish capital creating widespread havoc as fires and destruction roamed through the city. Their determination was at an end. 140,000 Polish soldiers could not sustain their spirits against 4 times that number.
At 2 o'clock on the afternoon of 27 September, Warsaw surrendered; the 140,000 soldiers, more than 36,000 of them wounded were taken into captivity. That same day, an SS report submitted to Heydrich claimed satisfactorily, "of the Polish nobility in the country, only a maximum 3 per cent still present."

The news of the fall of Warsaw numbed the English and French, deeply shocked and saddened by the courageous, but ultimately futile, struggle of the Polish people. Anger transfused into action and Britain stepped up her preparation for war.
Immediately, a fear of the Blitzkrieg being turned against the West prompted a panic in England. It was largely unwarranted due to an unsung triumph of British Intelligence. So quickly were the Nazi spies rounded up by MI5 that even Germany had no idea that their puppets in England were no more. This 'trump card' would continue to benefit British Intelligence efforts for the remainder of the war.
While the British enjoyed a small victory in the realm of the unseen, Germany and the Soviet Union lent to the finer points of map-making. They divided up Poland. From the line River Vistula to the River Bug east was occupied by the Soviets. Germany got the rest.
That same day, 30 September, the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee saw action in the Baltic against the British merchant ship Clement. This brought the total Allied shipping losses to 185,000 tons in less than a month.
Also on the 30th, a Polish General, Wladyslaw Sikorski, set up a government-in-exile in Paris. As he did, the Polish people still awaited a saviour. Finally, on 1 October, the last Polish soldiers still in action, on the Hel peninsula, were forced to surrender. 3 Polish destroyers and 3 submarines crossed the German blockade and made their way to British ports.

The Eastern War was over; 694,000 Polish soldiers had been captured by the Germans, with 217,000 in Soviet hands. Most would never live to see 1944. 60,000 Polish soldiers had been killed. In three weeks, the Luftwaffe and Waffen SS had eliminated 25,000 Polish civilians. The Germans lost only 14,000 men.
That same night, the first 'bombing raid' was made over Berlin. The RAF dropped leaflets over the city declaring, that while the civilians were rationed and restricted, their leaders secreted away vast sums for their own purposes. After one month of war, 97 million leaflets had been dropped over the Occupied Territories. A popular joke at the time told of an airman who had dropped his bundle of leaflets still tied up in their brick. The captain exclaimed, "Good God man… you could have killed someone!"
On 4 October, Hitler signed a secret amnesty releasing those SS men who had been arrested by the German Army for crimes against civilians. On the following day, he flew to Warsaw, where, when interviewed by foreign journalists he declared, "Take a good look around Warsaw, this is how I can deal with any European city." He would soon have another chance.
On 8 October, a group of more than 20 Poles, including children between the ages of 2 and 8, were taken to the village cemetery in Swiece and summarily executed. Watching were 150 German soldiers, who immediately protested to their medical officer. He promptly wrote to Hitler himself in outrage. Not long afterwards, General Blaskowitz personally protested to Hitler about the executions. His disgust was ignored.
The terms that Germany had offered France and Britain in an effort to pawn them off and buy time, were rejected by the Allies. Hitler had no intentions of peace. On 9 October, he laid plans for the invasion of Luxemborg, Holland and Belgium. "War with England" the words were chilling, but even moreso were the directives sent that day to all hospitals and doctors asking for a detailed list of all those considered mentally infirmed, insane or of non-German blood.
All of these were to be 'treated', and these 'defective' patients of hospitals and refectories were to be the silent victims of WWII.
Meanwhile, on 11 October, an economist, bearing a letter from Albert Einstein met with Roosevelt, detailing the 'possibility' of creating a bomb of unimaginable destruction through nuclear fission. Ten days later, the first committee on uranium met in Washington. Whether declared or not… America was now at war.

On the other side of the Pacific, a life and death struggle was shaping on an unimaginable scale. That night, 13, October, U-47 penetrated the British naval defenses at Scapa Flow and in the early hours of 14 October sunk the battleship Royal Oak as she lay at anchor. 833 sailors drowned.
2 days later, 2 German bombers flew unescorted over Scotland, both were shot down by interceptors with Fighter Command. It was the first time British fighters had destroyed a German aircraft over home soil. The impact felt was enormous.
A month later, a New Zealander flying over France, shot down a German bomber from the then record combat height of 27,000.
In Poland, mass expulsions were ordered, clearing the entire city of Gydnia. The Poles who were expelled had to find homes elsewhere in war damaged Poland, in regions already suffering from severe shortages of food. Yet they could only take with them whatever they could pack into suitcases or bundles… as winter set in. Their homes, the bulk of their possessions and a life spent building dreams had to be abandoned. Executions also continued at an unabated pace.
On 17 October, 70 year old Father Pawlowski, parish priest of Chocz, was arrested by the Gestapo, beaten beyond recognition and then taken to an execution post where he was shot. They then forced local jews to kiss his feet and bury him.
Also that day, a ministerial decree freed the SS units from regular German Army control, giving SS field divisions judicial independence. No longer would SS units be tried by German Army court martial but by their Waffen superiors. The Army was also stripped of it's administrative control in Poland, this also turned over to the SS.
The world awaited Hitler's next move, hoping there was some truth to his 6 October peace offering. Secretly, no such quarter would be given. He boldly declared to a gathering of SS officials, "Destiny will decide. One thing is certain, in the course of world history, there have never been two victors, but very often only vanquished."
The New Order was in full swing. In Poland, all jews and Poles between the ages of 14 and 60 were 'obliged' to work for the Germans in SS controlled labor camps and must leave the pavement free for Germans. "The streets belong to the conquerors, not the conquered." Conditions in the camps were unspeakably harsh and few would survive the rigors of forced labor at the hands of the SS. At shops, Germans must be served first. All conquered males must raise their hats to Germans authorities and forces.
Fraternization with German women was forbidden, punishable by exemplary tortures. Polish women who spoke to German nationals were sent to brothels. The Poles were now a subject people. To further this disgusting idea of a 'master race', Himmler approved a mandate to gather young girls with 'perfect Nordic traits' to procreate with SS officers in order to assure a perfect race. These human stud farms lasted throughout the war and were the site of unspeakable abuse, rape and murder.
General Blaskowitz, protesting further at the treatment of the jews, directly accused the SS of 'inhuman activities'. He described one occasion in the Polish township of Turek in which the SS had "herded a number of jews into a synagogue and were there ordered to crawl along the pews singing, while being continuously beaten with whips. They were forced to do so while nude."
Hitler was pressing the patience of many of the officers in the German Army, who were now becoming vocal over the debase treatment of the civilian population.
On 3 November, 30 Polish school and university teachers were taken to a nearby wood, where they were shot. Teachers were a prime target of the SS, as "beasts" were not allowed to be educated.
In the West, preparation mounted for the inevitable German attack. Brigadier General H.D.G. Crerar, a distinguished Canadian soldier, arrived in Britain on 27 October to establish the nucleus of a Canadian military headquarters. By the 3rd of November, Congress had repealed the provision in the Neutrality Act, which since 1937 had forbid the shipment of American arms to belligerent countries and the granting of economic credit with which foreign countries could purchase these arms. These barriers swept away, a Purchasing Commission was set up and immediate negotiations between the U.S., Britain and France began.

The first monument of shame had fallen. Our impassivity to the suffering of millions was ebbing as anger leaked into the homes of 140 million Americans. The stories, photos and personal recounting of atrocities delivered upon the Poles and the Jews assured that America could not stay neutral for long. The public opinion was now leaning towards war.
Roosevelt knew that the entrance of the U.S. into hostilities in Europe at this stage would prove extremely costly. With the flaring of Japanese aggression sweeping through Indo-China it would only be a matter of time before a war would erupt on two fronts.
He also knew the sad shape of American military readiness. Almost no modern machines existed in the U.S. Armed Services inventories. Aircraft, naval vessels and even infantry weapons were outdated. The military lacked experience, knowledge and the confidence to fight a superior German war machine. Additionally, there was a sentiment of sympathy in America for the Nazi cause, a blight remaining still today.
The U.S. was caught napping. They couldn't contribute in any significant manner other than morale. When it was learned that the U.S. had finally given way to selling arms to the Allies, Churchill gleefully declared in front of the House of Commons, "we will be victorious… with this powerful aid from our neighbors across the sea."
Even this was a sham. The U.S. industrial capacity was shambles. Congress launched an investigation of industrialists and eventually stripped them of their authority to produce equipment in their own factories, placing that authority with the U.S. government. A total re-organization of industrial production was ordered, reverse engineering the auto plants of GM, Ford and Chrysler to produce aircraft, tanks and even munitions. By, 1944, the massive industrial might of the U.S. machine could not be effectively gauged.
Materiel produced in the U.S. exceeded by 2/3 the industrial output of the entire Allied nations and reached a peak in May of 1945. In that month, 11,000 aircraft were built, over ¾ of them delivered to the Soviet Union, Britain and her Commonwealth allies.

But… in the bleak opening months of 1939-1940, the U.S. could not be seen much less heard. Her vague promises were grudging and empty. Her military was unprepared. Her people were sympathetic to the butcher of Poland.

This was just the beginning…. And so much more to tell.

"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs… it is the rule." -Friedrich Nietzsche

On little shores and little seas, live people of little sense; everyone has equal wisdom where the world is half as wide. -a Viking kenning

Fair Skies.


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