Oskar Schindler – An industrialist, a war-profiteer, a German and a member of the Nazi Party. A saviour of over a thousand lives.

The story of Oskar Schindler is one of paradox; a Nazi saving Jews. Whoever heard of such a ridiculous thing? And yet, it is true. And it is one of the most famous stories to come out of the hell of the Second World War. It is a story of unimaginable hardship, terror, uncertainty, panic, hope and desperation. It’s a story that’s centered around row after row of letters typewritten onto a sheaf of notepaper. It’s about luck, chance and amazing fortune. It is almost fantastical, in the truest sense of the word.

Who was Oskar Schindler?

Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist. He was born on the 28th of April, 1908. He married his wife, Emilie, in March of 1928 and eleven years later, joined the German National Socialist Worker’s Partry…the Nazis.

Oskar Schindler; 1946. Photographed with some of the Schindlerjuden. He’s standing on the right, holding his hat in his left hand

Schindler had been a businessman before the outbreak of the Second World War, but never a successful one. During the Depression he started many businesses but for one reason or another, they all went bankrupt. This all changed when Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939, starting the Second World War.

After the Nazi occupation of Poland, Schindler moved East and got involved in the black market. Being a member of the Nazi Party meant that he could mix and mingle with the Gestapo, the S.S. and prominent Nazis in Poland. His connections meant that he was able to purchase an “Aryanised business”…that is to say, a Jewish business that had been turned over to non-Jewish (usually German) businessmen. Schindler eventually found himself as the director of a factory in the Polish city of Krakow which manufactured enamelware cooking equipment, the Deutsche Emaillewarenfabrik. With this factory, Schindler would slowly start to rise, after years of failure.

Schindler and the Jews

Schindler was nothing if not an opportunist. If something good came his way, he jumped at it. When he saw his chance to join a powerful political party, he jumped at it. When he saw his chance to make his fortune in Poland, he jumped at it. When he saw his chance to take over ownership of a Jewish factory, he jumped at it. And when he saw his chance to get cheap labour from the Jews…you bet he jumped on that too. Someone buy this guy a trampoline…

Schindler was completely indifferent to the suffering of the Jews. He didn’t care. Why should he? They were an inferior race and of no interest to him. But…they were cheaper to employ than non-Jews. And always out to save a few Zloty somewhere to make more somewhere else, Schindler started employing them, purely as a cost-cutting measure. Zloty, by the way, is the currency of Poland, although it would’ve been German currency (the Deutschmark) at the time. Jewish Poles were cheap and they were plentiful. Much cheaper than employing non-Jewish Poles, which is where it all started.

The Jews in Schindler’s factory were grateful for their jobs. By the early 1940s, the Nazis were establishing ghettos in Poland where all Jews were forced to live. There was a ghetto in Warsaw, a ghetto in Lodz and you bet…there was a ghetto in Krakow as well. But luckily for Schindler’s workers, his factory was located outside the boundaries fo the ghetto, which meant that they could leave the confines of the ghetto each day and go to work and at the same time, do some black-market trading and buy whateve they needed, sometimes using the goods that they manufactured in the factory for bartering.

Employing the Jews

Schindler was not interested in saving the Jews. He saw them as his workforce. As a way to make money. And if the Jews were taken away, he would lose money. He would have to employ non-Jewish Poles, which would cost him more and lose him more money. If he lost a worker, he would have to train another worker to do the same job, which wasted time, and which lost him more money…the cycle goes on.

But this all changed in 1942.

Starting at the end of May, 1942, Jews in the Krakow Ghetto were being deported to the surrounding death-camps and labour-camps. Belzec and Plazsow respectively. When he witnessed Jews being shot in the streets of Krakow, Schindler suddenly realised how delicate everything was. Over night, he could lose his entire workforce! And he began to feel terrible about what was happening to the Jews, deciding that he had to do something to save them.

Schindler did this the only way he knew how. By getting them to work. Just like you see in Spielberg’s famous movie, passes, work-permits and identity papers were forged on a vast scale. Schindler was doing everything he could, using his position as a member of the Nazi Party, to save as many Jews as he could. He turned writers, musicians, teachers, professors, lawyers, rabbis and other ordinary Polish Jews into…metal-workers, machine-operators, mechanics, welders, riveters, smithies, carpenters…he gave them any kind of tradesman’s job that he could think of, that would mean that they were “essential workers”. To be an “essential worker” meant that your occupation was essential to the German war-effort. To Schindler’s Jews, this was literally a matter of life and death. Thanks to Schindler’s intervention, hundreds of Jews were saved from going to the Belzec Extermination Camp.

Instead, they ended up in Plazsow, the labour camp. Plazsow was no Florida funpark, but it was a damn sight better than Belzec. Schindler even managed to get his Jews segregated from the other labourers in the camp so that they could live amongst themselves and feel safe. Having his own sub-camp for his Jews was essential to Schindler. He impressed on the camp commandant, Amon Goeth, that production would suffer severely if he had to pick his workers out of the thousands of others in the main camp at Plazsow every morning for work! It would be much more convenient for everyone if they had their own camp. Goeth agreed to this. What he didn’t know was that, by having his own camp, Schindler could smuggle food, medicine, clothing and other essential supplies to his Jews to keep them safe and healthy.
Schindler’s enamelware factory in Krakow as it appears today

All the while, Schindler was bribing people left, right and center in order to keep his Jews safe; everyone from Amon Goeth the camp commandant, right down to the guards who patrolled the camp. They were now over a thousand Jews working for Schindler, ranging in ages from children aged ten or younger, all the way up to retired grandparents in their sixties or seventies. Most of them were Polish, although Jews from other countries also found themselves working for Schindler. In some cases, entire families were saved and mothers and fathers worked together in the factory alongside their children. This was largely due to the influence of Stern who deliberately gave jobs to his fellow Jews to save them from the death camps.

Itzhak Stern

Portrayed in the 1993 film by the marvellous Ben Kingsley, Itzhak Stern was Schindler’s Jewish accountant. Stern was responsible for the daily running of many of Schindler’s operations and it was he who helped create all the forged employment papers that would save so many Jews from deportations to death camps, and instead, find them working in the relative safety of Schindler’s enamelware factory. He kept Schindler’s books in order and made sure that everything ran smoothly. He helped Schindler run his black-market operations and the bribes that he would give to other Germans to ensure that his factory and his Jews were kept safe. Together, Schindler and Stern worked the factory, striving to protect the Jews. Hundreds flocked to the enamelware factory, even if they had never worked in a factory in their lives.

Stern and Schindler worked under layer after layer of lies, deceit and deception, all a necessary cover to protect their growing role in saving the Jews of Krakow. Apart from giving ‘non-essential’ Jews the false paperwork to allow them to move out of the ghetto and work in the factory, Stern and Schindler even falsified the factory’s employment books! Employment-lists which had the names of every single worker written on them, were all altered or changed in one way or another. The elderly working within the factory had their dates of birth changed. Instead of being seventy, they were now fifty. Instead of being a librarian, they were now a welder. Children as young as ten suddenly became young men and women in their mid-twenties who instead of being schoolboys and schoolgirls, were suddenly metal-polishers, buffers and grinders. If the Gestapo ever took it upon themselves to examine the books…they would see a perfect German Aryan factory run by a German who employed Jews who were all professionals in their respective fields, even if they’d never picked up a welding-torch, riveting-gun or operated a metal punch-press in their lives.

Schindler’s List

The most famous part of Schindler’s efforts to save the Jews is his LIST. The famous list of over 1,000 ‘Schindlerjuden’ (literally, ‘Schindler’s Jews’), who were supposedly “essential workers” in his factory. Where did the list come from and what is its significance in this story?

The year is 1944. Schindler and Stern are struggling to keep up appearances. Schindler continues to bribe prominent Gestapo and S.S. officers and continues to try and protect his workers from everything that he can, from starvation, disease and brutal mistreatment at the hands of the camp guards and officers in Plazsow, who would visit the factory frequently to torment the workers. Schindler objected vehemently to such treatment. Short of actually showing sympathy to the Jews, he used the cover that the guards constant visits made his workers fearful. This, in turn, effected worker-morale which in turn, effected the factory’s output, which in turn, effected the factory’s contributions to the war-effort and to the overall good of der Vaterland – ‘The Fatherland’ – Germany.

It was around this time that the winds of change started blowing. Labour-camps such as Treblinka, Majdanek and Plazsow were being shut down. Along with the ghettos, they too were being ‘liquidated’, a wonderfully euphamistic term that meant that all the Jews contained within these institutions would be sent directly to the death camps, most likely Auschwitz-Berkinau. Schindler began to realise that time was running out.

Writing the List

It was blatantly clear to Schindler, Stern and every single one of the factory-workers, what would happen. The camp would be liquidated and all the Jews, without exception, would be sent to Auschwitz. Desperate to try anything, Schindler gained control of a German munitions factory. He would move his Jews there. He explained to Goeth that since ‘his Jews’ were already experienced and talented metalworkers, machinists and press-operators, it would make much more sense that he move them to the new factory and camp, instead of sending them off to Auschwitz. If that happened, then Schindler would have to find a whole new labour-force and train them from scratch, about how to operate machines and work metal and polish shell-casings so that they would fit into the cannon-breeches properly and a whole heap of other piddly things. And, it would be disastrous for the Fatherland if production of munitions would fall behind schedule, wouldn’t it?

To ensure that he could keep his Jews, Schindler needed a record of them. He needed documented proof of every single worker under his factory roof. He needed to know their names, ages (real or imagined), professions (again, real or imagined), he had to know their religions and their nationalities. He needed…

A list.

It was this list, every single last letter typed up by Itzhak Stern himself, that saved 1,200 Jewish lives from almost certain death in Auschwitz. Stern’s entry of his own name lists him as:

STERN – Isak – 25.1.01 (date of birth) – Bilanzbuchalter (Accountant).

The significance of the list is that every name on it was listed as an ‘essential worker’ for the German war-effort and therefore would be spared from extermination. Being on the list was literally life or death for hundreds of Schindler’s Jews. As the Schindlerjuden lined up to board the train going to the new camp and factory, they prayed that Stern hadn’t accidently forgotten to include them on the list!

The Schindlerjuden were packed into cattle-cars and transported by train to their new munitions factory in Czechoslovakia. The trains wre all divided up. One held men with their wives and children. Another train held women exclusively. It must’ve been absolute horror to Schindler and his Jews when the womens’ train took a wrong turn and ended up in the very place that everyone dreaded! – Auschwitz! It was only very hasty action and a lot of bribing on Schindler’s part, as well as his personal intervention at Auschwitz, that saved them all from death.

Away from the eyes of the S.S. and the Gestapo, Schindler and his Jews finally found a haven. They lived and worked in the new munitions factory. All of them. Even Schindler and his wife, Emilie. They could have lived in the villa provided for them in the hill overlooking the factory, but Schindler was so terrified of the S.S. bursting into the factory in the middle of the night to cart off his workforce that he never lived there, spending every night in his office.

Life settled into a sort of rhythm now. They would work all day and relax at night. Jewish holidays were observed and time off was given to celebrate them. The Sabbath was observed and work would cease on Sundays. Workers who died in the factory (either through accident, illness or old age…never through the intervention of the factory’s guards) were given traditional Jewish funerals, even though this was illegal under Nazi rule.

But in and amongst all this relative tranquilty and peace, Schindler was still playing games with the Gestapo the S.S. and other Nazis. As Liam Neeson famously said in the film ‘Schindler’s List’ – “If this factory ever makes a shell that can actually be fired, I’ll be a very unhappy man“.

And he was true to his word.

Schindler deliberately sabotaged the German war-effort. Every morning he would wander around the factory, fiddling with the machines. He would remove parts to make them break down. He would recalibrate them and readjust them so that the casings that they made for the shells were just that little bit too big, or too small, so that they wouldn’t fit into the guns they were meant to be fired out of. Screws were missing. Blasting-caps would suddenly not work. He did everything he could to make sure that not a single round of ammunition manufactured by his factory would ever pass quality-control.

The End of the War

Schindler and his Jews had no illusions about what would happen to Schindler and his wife when the War ended. As a Nazi and as a profiteer of slave-labour, as a persecutor of the Jews, he would be hunted by everyone – the Russians, the British, the French, the Americans…he had to escape.

Knowing that Schindler’s chances of survival were slim, the Schindlerjuden banded together. They drafted a letter that they hoped, would explain to any Allied soldiers or to other Jews, who Schindler was and the nature of his work, sparing him from death or imprisonment. This letter, translated into English, may be read here. Schindler even gave a speech to his workers before leaving. He gave the women cloth to make clothes or to sell on the black market. He gave them all a bottle of wine each, again to sell on the black market for badly needed money. He implored on his Jews to resist the temptation to take out revenge-attacks on Nazis and Germans after the end of the War and then, he and his wife fled into the night.

Schindler after the War

For all the good he did during the War, Schindler’s luck never changed. In the 1930s he was a failing businessman. In the 1950s and 60s, he continued to be  failure of a businessman. Every venture he tried led to nothing. He even set up a cement-making factory with the help of his former Jewish workers, but even that petered out to nothing. He died on the 9th of October, 1974 at the age of sixty-six. Schindler’s accountant, and eventually, lifelong friend, Itzhak Stern, died in 1969 at the age of 68.

Schindler’s Grave. It is a Jewish tradition to place a rock on or around a gravestone when paying respects to the deceased

The List Today

Amazingly, Schindler’s List survives to this day. Two copies are known to exist. One was typed up around 1942 and listed all the workers employed in Schindler’s enamelware factory. This one was discovered in 1999. A second list was discovered ten years later. This one is dated April, 1945 and listed all the Jewish workers employed in Schindler’s defective munitions factory. The original texts of Schindler’s List, along with thousands of other Schindler-related documents including photographs, speeches and Schindler’s personal papers, are now preserved in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Israel.

Do you want to read the list? The original German text is here, and a scan of the original 1945 list may be read here. The 1945 list ends at 801 entries, but the true number of people saved is nearly 1,200.

Just a few days ago, we passed the sixth of June, 2011; the anniversary of “D-Day” and the beginning of the Allied push to destroy Nazi Germany and liberate the oppressed peoples of the European continent. Everyone knows what happened on that day; how they stormed the beaches and faced remarkable resistence, how fighter-planes dominated the skies above, keeping the ground-troops protected from potential enemy air-attacks and how Tom Hanks and a group of Yanks blasted a hole through the German defenses using nothing but balls, brains and a few feet of Bangalore Torpedo.

But what about the other end of the story? What was it like on the very first day of the Second World War? We all know the big facts, but what about the little facts hidden in between them? For example, did you know that within hours of war being declared, it was military personnel halfway around the world in Australia, who fired the first Allied shots of the War? Or that a British ocean-liner was sunk by a German U-boat just hours after Britain declared war against Germany? Or that air-raid sirens were tested in London, causing mass panic? It’s all true.

Preparations for War

On the First of September, 1939, Germany invaded Poland after it was declared that the Poles had attacked German border-posts (a falsehood; no such attacks were ever launched by the Poles). Great Britain and France, allies of the Polish nation, were obliged to take action for the defence of Poland and began making military preparations, ordering the mobilisation of their armed forces. In England, evacuation of children and expectant or young mothers was already underway in the appropriately-named ‘Operation Pied-Piper’. A blackout was enforced all over England starting on the 1st of September and it would remain in place unil April of 1945.

Germany did not declare war on Poland formally and no declaration of war was ever signed by Germany against Poland. World War Two starting as a formal declaration of the commencement of hostilities by one country against another did not start until the third of September, 1939. But a lot more things happened on that day than the signing of a simple piece of paper. What follows is a breakdown of the significant events of that first day of the Second World War…

The Shortest Day

All times are in Greenwich Mean Time.

Sunday, 3rd September, 1939

9:00am – ENGLAND – Sir Nevile Henderson, British Ambassador to Germany, sends his final diplomatic note to the German government, calling for an immediate cease of all German military action in Poland.

11:15am – ENGLAND – Sir Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister of the time, goes on national radio and addresses the British people. He delivers the now-famous words that “…consequently, this country is at war with Germany”.

11:30am – ENGLAND – Air-raid sirens sound across London, but it is a false-alarm. Jangled by the news of war, Londoners panic as they believe their city is under attack and run for cover.

12:30pm – FRANCE – The French government issues an ultimatum to Germany to cease all military action. Germany refuses.

3:00pm – FRANCE – The French government formally declares war on Germany.

6:00pm – ENGLAND – King George VI broadcasts his first wartime speech to the nation, live from Buckingham Palace.

A (staged) photograph of King George VI giving his famous, first wartime speech. For the actual broadcast, the king was standing, sans jacket, in front of a lectern in a small room that was specially prepared for the occasion. This snapshot was taken after the broadcast was made.

7:40pm – ENGLAND – British cruiseship, the S.S. Athenia, is torpedoed by German submarine U-30. It is the first British shipping-loss of the Second World War.

The S.S. Athenia as she appeared in 1933, docked here in Montreal Harbour, Canada. 117 people died when she was sunk in 1939

9:15pm – AUSTRALIA – The first Allied shot of the Second World War is fired. Being alerted that Australia was at war, troops manning the powerful coastal artillery-cannon at Fort Nepean near Melbourne, Australia, fire a shot-across-the-bow (a warning-shot) at a vessel steaming into Port Phillip Bay, which refused to stop for inspection. The ship turned out to be an Australian freight-ship.

Interesting Note: The main gun at Fort Nepean also fired the first Allied shot of the First World War back on the 4th of August, 1914, when it ordered an escaping German cargo-ship to heave-to. If it failed to do so, orders were given that the next shot fired was to be done so in order to sink her…wisely, the ship’s captain turned around and steamed back to Melbourne. He and his crew were arrested and imprisoned.

The Guns of Nepean. Through these two gun-barrels, were fired the first Allied shots of both World Wars. The one on the left fired the first shot of the First World War, the one on the right fired the first shot of the Second World War

By the end of the first day, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, New Zealand and India had declared war on Germany and had started a conflict that would last for nearly six years. It is to this day, the largest armed conflict ever seen. On the evening of the Third of September, 1939, everyone on earth went to bed knowing that when they woke up the next day, the world would never be the same again.

With the anniversary of D-Day coming up, this article is written to commemorate the original and most famous of all D-Days…the sixth of June, 1944.

The Second World War is famous for a lot of reasons. It was the most expensive war, it was the costliest war in human lives, it had the weirdest national leaders at the helm at the time (a paraplegic Yank, a chainsmoking, paintbrush-brandishing MP, a mustachioed Russian lunatic and a crazy Austrian guy with a toothbrush moustache and half his sexual equipment hanging around beneath him)…but the Second World War also holds the record of being the war with the biggest ever seaborne invasion. No, not the Battle of Dunkirk…that was the biggest seaborne evacuation; but the Battle of Normandy, specifically, the naval landings on the beaches of France.

The Allied attempt to liberate northern France and to start the process of beating back the Germans and driving them out of lands which were not their own  was codenamed “Operation Overlord”. However, the actual beach-landings were given the codename “Operation Neptune”. It was during Operation Neptune that all those famous photographs were taken…like this one:

Seaborne Invasions

In warfare, invasions by sea have always been the most difficult to pull off. Airborne invasions involve planes strafing and bombing the target-area and then sending in paratroopers. Land-invasions are done using infantry and tanks, possibly with air-support. In both instances, getting onto dry, solid ground is pretty easy. Either you’re already there…or you soon will be.

Seaborne invasions, however, have always been tricky. A soldier sloshing through the surf with his uniform, his rifle, his ammunition, his helmet, his kit, his boots and other necessities was liable to be bogged down in the soft, shifting sand beneath the waves. This makes him a sitting duck for any defending soldiers, who can stick out their rifles and shoot him. Added to this is the problem that to get the attacking soldiers near to the beach, you need small boats. Small boats that are fast, light and which can go right up to the sand without running aground. Prior to the Second World War…no such boats existed! From the time of Napoleon right up to WWI, warships were forced to use regular wooden ship’s rowboats to ferry their troops ashore. This was slow, dangerous and catastrophic. Because these boats couldn’t go right up onto the beach, soldiers had to jump over the sides of the boats and wade through water that could be up to their waists, to get to the sand! This wasted time and made the men easy targets for enemy soldiers on land.

Operations Covered in This Article

In my mind, and probably in the minds of thousands of others…It is a great mistake to call the invasion of Normandy a single battle or operation. It sure as hell was not. The Invasion of Normandy was a concerted effort by thousands of people doing dozens of tiny little things and a few big things to pull off the most audacious and ridiculous and fantastic beach-assault in history. Covered in this article will be the following ‘Operations’ that made up the various elements of the Normandy Invasion.

Operation Overlord – The Battle of Normandy.
Operation Neptune – The Storming of the Beaches (more famously known as “D-Day”)
Operation Mulberry – The creation of a floating harbour off the coast of France.
Operation Cobra – The breakout from the beachhead to commence the liberation of Europe and the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Specialised Invasion Equipment

Folks fighting the Second World War realised pretty quickly that if they intended to win the war by an invasion of Europe by sea, they would need a lot of specialised fighting equipment with which to do it. What kinds of mechanical curiosities did people whip up to put an axe to the axis back in the 1940s?

Higgins Boats

The Higgins boat…which is the more people-friendly name of the water-craft also known as the “LCVP” (Landing Craft: Vehicles & Personnel), was one of the most famous and vital inventions of the Second World War, without which, the large-scale naval invasions such as those in Italy and France, would not have been possible.

The Higgins Boat was invented by an American chap named Andrew Higgins. The problem at the time was that since conventional boats needed keels to slice through the water, they were not able to get right up onto the beach during naval assaults: The keel would dig into the sand and strand the boat out in the surf, unable to move inland any further. To combat this, Higgins created a flat-bottomed boat which he based on the boats then used in navigating swamps and marshes in the United States. Having a flat bottom meant that his craft could go right up onto the beach and not get bogged in the surf.

Although referred to as ‘Higgins boats’ in this article for reasons of simplicity, they went by a variety of names. One of them was the ‘LCVP’ (Landing Craft: Vehicles & Personnel)

The other feature of the Higgins boat was its famous ramp-front. Another problem of the time was getting soldiers out of their boats as quickly as possible. Because of their high sides, it was hard for soldiers to get out of regular row-boats quickly enough, and this meant that they could be killed easily by enemy gunfire. Having a boat with a ramp that dropped down meant that soldiers could run right off the boat, onto the beach and find cover. The ramp also allowed vehicles such as Jeeps, small, wheeled artillery pieces and small tanks, to be driven right off the boats and onto the beach.

Higgins was quick to see the necessity for his new invention. Production of them started in 1941! Higgins boats were not fast (12kt), not pretty and certainly not comfortable (with the flat bottom, the Higgins boat bellyflopped across the waves with all the grace of a seal), but it was important! The war would not have been won without it, and Normandy would’ve been a disaster.

D-D Tanks

Duplex Drive tanks (shortened to ‘DD Tanks’ or jokingly…Donald Duck tanks) were the Allies’ solution to getting tanks and the necessary firepower and speed that they brought with them…onto the beaches of Normandy as fast as possible.

DD tanks were invented in the early 1940s. The Allies knew that it would be asking too much if they kindly asked the Wehrmarcht if they might, pretty-please, park a few of their tanks on the shores of France for them to use when they came ashore and blasted through their defenses. Instead, they needed to find a way to get their own tanks to France. The problem was, to get tanks onto land, the Allies would need a harbour. But to get a harbour, they first had to capture it. And to capture it, they needed tanks, but to get tanks, they needed a harbour and…you get the idea.

To get tanks ashore without a harbour, the Allies decided to create a floating tank (hence the alternate name ‘Donald Duck tank’). The tanks floated thanks to inflatable screens which were placed around them, and were propelled thanks to rather weak (though effective) outboard motors. The inflatable and collapsable screens, used to give the tanks the necessary boyancy so that they could float ashore, were made of waterproofed canvas. The tanks were offloaded from warships and were then sailed towards the beaches. Once the tanks reached the beaches, the inflatable screens were deflated. They collasped around the sides of the tank, giving the tank-crews the ability to just drive ahead and blast the hell out of the enemy.

“Ducks”

Officially called the ‘DUKW’ (utility vehicle with all-wheel drive designed in 1942), the ‘Duck’ as it was affectionately called, was one of the most important machines invented for the Invasion of Normandy. Based off of an ordinary truck which had its body removed from its chassis to be replaced by a watertight, boat-shaped hull, the ‘Duck’ was an amphibious delivery vehicle, able to power itself through the water and drive out of the surf onto the beach. These floating pickup-trucks were essential to the Nornandy invasion in that they were able to ferry cargo from ships docked at sea, to land-forces fighting on the beaches and then go straight back out into the water again. Twenty-one thousand ‘Ducks’ were manufactured during the War.

Hobart’s Funnies

The Allies had been planning to charge into Normandy for years…and the Axis knew that the Allies were going to come charging in. The only thing was, the Axis didn’t know where the Allies would come ashore. Because of this, the Axis barricaded, reinforced, booby-trapped and built up every single square yard of sand which made up the French coastline, to impede the Allied advance. To break through the multiple layers of defences, from sea-mines to hedgehogs to barbed wire, machine-gun nests, defensive bunkers, sea-walls and barbed wire, the Allies knew that they needed tanks. But not just any kinds of tanks. They needed tanks that could do a variety of tasks – Tanks that could blow holes in stuff, tanks that could clear minefields, tanks that could cross trenches and ditches, tanks that could clear away the rubble of the stuff that other tanks blew up!

The number of tanks that were developed were phenomenal. And the Allies had to know how to operate every single one of them. The man responsible for gathering the armour and firepower, and whose duty it was to train the tank-crews who would use them, was Sir Percy Hobart. Hobart was a military engineer and an armoured-warfare expert, the perfect man to teach the Brits how to use their newest playthings. Because the tanks were just so weird, soldiers named the tanks after the man who taught them how to use them, and they became collectively known as “Hobart’s Funnies”.

The number of tanks that the British Army developed was phenomenal. Here’s a few of the more famous tanks and what they could do…

The Crocodile.

The Crocodile. The trailer behind the tank carried the 400gal of fuel that allowed this beast to breathe fire!

Awesome name, huh? The Crocodile was modified so that instead of a central, main gun (like what most tanks have), it had a massive, fire-belching flamethrower on the front! How cool is that!? Fed from a tank that held four hundred gallons of petrol, the Crocodile could shoot flames a hundred and twenty yards! Although somewhat inaccurate and hard to aim, the Crocodile scared the daylights out of the Krauts and was excellent at roasting the enemy alive inside the confined spaces of German machine-gun bunkers.

AVRE.

ARMOURED VEHICLE, ROYAL ENGINEERS. Not very interesting. Or is it? The AVRE, like all the other tanks, was modified for a specific purpose. This one fired huge mortar-rounds at anything that the Allies considered an impediment to their progress across Germany, namely roadblocks, buildings or bunkers. The AVRE fired massive, high-explosive shells from its main gun, capable of blowing the shit out of whatever it touched.

ARK.

Armoured Ramp Carrier. A special tank that carried a pair of ramps on its roof. It was designed to act as a bridge on wheels. If the army approached an obstacle such as a trench, the ARK would drive ahead, deploy its ramps and then park itself there and let other tanks drive over the top of it!

Crab

The crab…probably given that name because of the two arms that stuck out in front of it…was the British Army’s minesweeping and mine-clearing tank. It had two metal arms that stuck out in front of it with a long, metal cylinder between them. Attached to the cylinder was a series of chains. At the flip of a switch, the cylinder spun around and the chains whirled out in front, whipping up the ground as the tank drove ahead. The chains would strike and detonate any mines which were in the tank’s path, and provide a safe route for soldiers to follow behind.

German Beach-Defences

In the truest spirit of German efficiency, the Krauts were not just sitting around twiddling their thumbs, wondering what the Yanks and the Limeys and the Frogs were getting up to. They knew something was going to happen. They knew that an invasion of France…ONE DAY…was going to be inevitable. To shore themselves up against this inevitablity, the Germans built an enormous collection of fortifications along the northern shores of Europe, stretching alongside the English Channel and up past the North Sea. Officially called the “Atlantic Wall”, this series of defences comprised of everything from powerful anti-tank mines, miles of barbed wire, huge pillboxes and machine-gun nests, anti-tank ditches, long-range artillery cannons (set several hundred yards back, which would fire down on the landing-beaches), mines on stakes that they drove into the sand, designed to go off if a landing-craft hit it, blowing the boat and its passengers to pieces and most famously of all…these things:

Those square-looking spikey things are synonymous with beach-warfare. They’re called Czech Hedgehogs (or simply ‘hedgehogs’) and they’re an anti-tank obstacle. Incredibly easy to make and nigh unshiftable. They’re three lengths of steel beam riveted or welded together in a rough cross-shape and then just scattered all over the beach. Cheap, simple and effective. The problem with them is that if you drove a tank into one…you couldn’t crush it, and because it had no actual base, you couldn’t topple it over and just shove it out of your way. To the troops storming the beaches of Normandy, Czech hedgehogs were a mix of frustration and lifesaver all in one. They might have been a pain in the ass for the tank-crews who couldn’t drive over them or shove them out of the way, but to the infantry they were lifesavers in disguise. Allied soldiers would hide behind them and use them for cover while they fired on German machine-gun nests with their submachine-guns and rifles. They were lucky that the hedgehogs were there, for there was precious little else on the beaches that would have given them sufficient cover from the powerful counterfire of the German MG-42 belt-fed machine-gun.

The Battle of Normandy

The Guiness Book of World Records, once a noble institution of fact and intelligence, now sadly degenerated into a compendium of useless information such as who created the world’s biggest ice-cream pyramid…says that the Battle of Normandy holds the record of being the biggest ever seaborne invasion. And it’s right. Take a look at these numbers:

Planes: 12,000.
Ships: 7,000.
Troops: 160,000.

All these men and machines took part in the initial assault on the beaches on the 6th of June, 1944. And they won! But not without a lot of problems, first.

The order of battle was pretty simple – Planes go overhead, drop off surprise-packages for the Germans, ships come, deploy tanks and men, tanks and men go ashore and blow the hell out of the Krauts, who are already too busy dealing with the surprise-parcels dropped off thanks to the RAF and the Army Air Corps. The battle started with parachute-troops being dropped behind enemy lines. Their jobs were to secure important locations such as villages, roads and airfields. They were to link up and create a barrier so that reinforcements couldn’t get to the beaches as quickly as they might. Bombers would fly over the beaches and perform saturation-bombing of the coastline. This was to knock out as many enemy bunkers as possible, but also to provide some nice hidey-holes for the Allied troops when they came ashore.

The coastline of Normandy was divided into six specific beaches, all codenamed. In order, they were…

Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword, as seen on this map:

Once the airborne troops were dropped behind enemy lines, they went about their objectives, linking up and then spreading out in groups. They secured important roads, bridges and railroad lines. They also tried to disrupt enemy movements as much as possible, attacking German troops and sabotaging German artillery-positions, which were located further inland than other Allies could reach. By blowing up the German artillery-guns, the airborne units stopped shells being rained down on the beaches, giving their fellow fighters a chance at the enemy.

Not everything went perfectly, though. Omaha Beach especially, was a mess. The D-D tanks, deployed too far out in the ocean, sank before they could reach land. The aerial-bombardment had failed to knock the German machine-gun nests out of commission and the beach was as flat as a pancake when the soldiers arrived. With no shell-craters for them to take cover in, the Americans were sitting ducks for the Germans who machine-gunned them down in their hundreds. Omaha became known as “Bloody Omaha” after the war.

The Battle of Normandy started in the pre-dawn of the morning of the 6th of June, 1944. An allied armada, a naval and aerial taskforce the size of which the world had never seen before and which it has never seen again, charged towards the French coast after crossing the English Channel from a number of British seaports.

The objectives of the battle were to destroy German coastal defences, liberate France and establish a secure beach-head for the Allies so that extra troops and supplies could be driven and shipped onto the battlegrounds. The fighting, as depicted in films such as “The Longest Day” and “Saving Private Ryan” was fierce and prolonged. The Germans knew that the moment the Allies broke through their defences, they would come steamrolling in like the neighbours from hell, destroying everything in their path.

Once the Allies had destroyed the German defences and liberated some of the coastal villages, they were able to set up bases. Since no harbour (or at least, no harbour sufficient for warships) existed in Normandy, the Allies knew they would have to build one. Floating in huge pontoons, they were able to hastily construct a manmade breakwater and piers which led out deep enough into the English Channel for ships to dock and offload their cargos. Called “Operation Mulberry”, it was one of the most essential elements of the D-Day invasion. Without a port (even if it sounded like one you might buy from IKEA), the invasion would have ground to a halt. Once the beach-head was established, without a constant stream of supplies, men, ammunition, food, fuel and firearms, the invashion would have ground to a halt. All very imporant reasons for the creation of a floating harbours. With this vital entrance to Europe secured, the Allies could now push forward in their liberation of Europe. It was one of the most crucial battles of the Second World War. It meant that now, the Germans were fighting a war on two fronts (France and Russia) and this caused the German Army to split up its resources, meaning that the Allies would be able to beat them easier.

The Air-Battle for Normandy

Normandy was many things. It wasn’t just storming the beaches. It also wasn’t just an attack by ground-forces. It wasn’t just a naval assault. It was also a huge aerial pre-emptive strike by the Allies.

Knowing that they wouldn’t succeed at Normandy without dominance of the air, the Allies spent weeks in advance attacking German-occupied France using the combined power of the United States Army Air-Force and the Royal Air Force. Their objectives were to blow up bridges, destroy railway lines, attack aircraft factories and destroy every single airworthy flying-machine within attacking-distance of Normandy. They strafed and gunned and bombed airfields left, right and center, destroying hangars and airfields, runways and as many enemy planes as they could find. They also bombed the beaches  that the landings were to take place on.

Raiding the beaches was an essential element of the air-assault on the north of France. Although the Allies knew that destroying the German machine-gun bunkers through carpet-bombing was going to be only marginally successful at best, bombing the beaches would have the advantage of giving their advancing ground-troops plenty of fox-holes in the sand in which to hide from enemy gunfire. Without this crucial attack on the beaches, the British, Canadian, American and Commonwealth troops storming the beaches would be sitting ducks for the Germans, who had mined, barricaded and wired every square inch of the Normandy coastline…at least, every square inch that wasn’t flat and smooth as a billiard table to serve as an unobstructed killing-field.

The End of the Battle

There are conflicting dates for the end of the Battle of Normandy and of Operation Overlord in general. The most accepted view is that it was the 25th of August, 1944, with the liberation of the French capital of Paris. After a battle that lasted six days, the Germans were finally overwhelmed by a mix of Free French forces, American infantry and French resistence fighters within the city and were forced to surrender. The fact that many of Paris’s historical buildings such as the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum, the Arc D’Triomphe and the Cathedral of Notre Dame still survive today, is due wholly to the occupying Nazi governor’s decision to ignore Hitler’s famous command that Paris be razed to the ground to try and destroy Allied morale.