As Roger Moorhouse notes in his introduction, Heinrich Hoffmann could claim to be ‘one of the most important photographers of the 20th century’. He had ‘exclusive and intimate access’ to not just ‘a major Head of State’ but to a key figure in world history. He was an established professional photographer who had photographed the Kaiser and the visiting British Royal family long before he took up with Hitler. He was a pioneer in taking his new Leica outside, for images beyond the established tradition of studio portraits. He stood by Hitler from the earliest days through almost the very end, occupying a unique position in the inner circle.

And he was not just taking photographs of Nazi cronies and, later, State occasions; he was not just keeping a record. He helped shape Hitler’s image worldwide; he introduced him to Eva Braun, his young assistant, and he was a sympathetic ear at, it seems, any hour of the day or night. His photographs were even instrumental in helping Hitler develop his oratorical style.

So ‘Hitler Was My Friend’ is an important document, even though it was completed only after the war, as a collection of reminiscences. The following excerpt describes how he lived alongside Hitler for much of the war:

With the exception of the Felsennest in the Eifel [during the invasion of France], all of Hitler’s Headquarters bore names that had some connection with the wolf - Wolfsschanze, Werwolf, Wolfsschlucht; this was because, at the beginning of his political career, Hitler had used the pseudonym Wolf.

At these Headquarters the invitation to the ‘evening’ cup of tea usually came about three o’clock in the morning, after the last of the situation reports had been discussed. Usually very few people were present, and the party normally consisted of Hitler’s aides and secretaries, a doctor and any liaison officer from Ribbentrop or Himmler who happened to be at Headquarters. Unbeknown to Hitler, these latter had been given the task by their chiefs of intimate circle, reporting every minute detail of what happened in the Führer’s intimate circle.

My own quarters were simple but well-furnished and comfortable, consisting of a sitting-room, bedroom and bathroom, and, to help me to while away my many free hours, I was also given a wireless. In the same barrack with me lived Professor Dr Morell, Admiral Voss, General Bodenschatz, who was Göring’s Adjutant, and Obergruppenführer Wolf, Himmler’s Adjutant and the man who later made the first overtures for an armistice in Italy. My job at Headquarters consisted exclusively of taking photographs of officers and men who had come to be presented with various decorations - hardly a full day’s work!

These talks took place for the most part in the middle of the night and often, by the time I left the Führer’s dugout, the sun was already high in the heavens …

Hitler’s personal quarters were deep underground, with a cement roof 25 feet thick, dark, windowless and devoid of fresh air; night and day they were lighted by electricity, and a pump did its best to keep the atmosphere healthy. I just used to sit and wait until Hitler sent for me, either to take a meal or to have a talk. These talks took place for the most part in the middle of the night, and often, by the time I left the Führer’s dugout, the sun was already high in the heavens, and I would fling myself on my bed sleepy, tired out and in a thoroughly bad temper.

Life in this inner ring was both boring and exhausting. As long as Hitler continued to take his meals with us, there was always something of interest to listen to, but once he had decided to eat alone, boredom reached its zenith. We lived in complere isolation, except for occasional arrivals commanded to attend by Hitler to he decorated by him personally with the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, with Diamonds and Swords. While most of these heroes painted the situation at the front in the rosiest of colours, some of them spoke pretty bluntly, much to Hitler’s annoyance. When they had gone, he would say that each man could only see the situation on his own tiny bit of the front and was, of course, in no position to venture an opinion on the whole.

A frequent visitor was Field Marshal Rommel, of whom Hitler had first held the highest opinion. I remember taking photographs when Rommel came to submit a report on his unsuccessful offensive against Egypt in the summer of 1942. Rommel, incidentally, was the only man to whom Hitler gave permission to talk to the international press reporters in Berlin.

After his crushing defeat at El Alamein by General Montgomery, Rome realised that his position in North Africa had become untenable, and he flew at once to Führer-Headquarters - this time to be received very coldly. On various occasions, most of our Field Marshals and senior Generals - von Brauchitsch, von Rundstedt, von Leeb, Mannerheim*, Guderian, who was relieved of his command, and Hoepner, who was dismissed from the Army by Hitler in person - paid us visits, but beyond marking the occasion with photographs, I did not come into contact with any of them.

When, in the winter of 1941 the German armies became bogged down in the snow and terrible cold at the gates of Tula and Moscow, there was a scandal about the inadequacy of the troops winter clothing. Hitler immediately set to work and himself designed the types of clothing that were to be manufactured, but by the time they were in mass production, it was already too late, and many thousands had died of exposure.

Don’t you worry! Nothing like that can happen to us - I’ve studied my history far too well!

Hitler was completely confident of the ability of the German armies to defeat Russia speedily and decisively. Quite early on, I remember, I ventured to say that I hoped we would avoid making the same mistakes as Napoleon. Hitler laughed ‘You sound like one of the western propaganda merchants, my dear fellow,’ he replied. ‘If Napoleon couldn’t do it, Hitler can’t! - That’s the parrot cry with which they are trying to comfort themselves. Don’t you worry! Nothing like that can happen to us - I’ve studied my history far too well!’

© Heinrich Hoffman 1955, ‘Hitler Was My Friend: The Memoirs of Hitler’s Photographer’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd. Also available as an eBook.

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Otto Dietrich was Hitler’s press secretary and a Nazi insider - and member of the SS - from 1931 until March 1945. Although he had a much lower public profile, he vied for power with Josef Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister. He was not in Hitler’s inner circle but saw him frequently, enjoying his confidence almost right up to the end of the regime, when Hitler denounced him for ‘defeatism’.

Dietrich, a doctor of political science, had the opportunity to study Hitler over several years. Unlike many others, who became hopelessly devoted to Hitler, he managed to maintain some degree of objectivity. Immediately after the war, he began to re-evaluate his belief in Nazism and became more critical of Hitler.

Dietrich was imprisoned for war crimes after the Nuremberg Trials in 1949 and wrote ‘The Hitler I Knew’ while in Landsberg Prison. This is a unique study, a genuinely critical reflection on Hitler’s abilities based on personal experience. His insights are based on observation and supported by many anecdotes about Hitler’s behaviour.

So The Hitler I Knew: Memoirs of the Third Reich s Press Chief (re-released in 2023) is an indispensable study for anyone interested in Hitler the man.

The following excerpt considers Hitler’s attitude to some of his contemporaries:

Hitler's opinion of the capabilities of various persons would vacillate wildly over the years. Windbags and incompetents he would hail as men of remarkable ability and heap them with honours. Years later, when these same people had shown what poor stuff they were made of, he would cry damnation upon them and discover that they were really just the opposite of what he'd earlier said.

And on the other hand, he would dismiss others, especially his opponents, as political charlatans, lily-livered rascals, and puffed-up nonentities. It would take years of grim experience to prove to him that they were nothing of the kind. When I think over the ideas he had about people, I can only say that the sure instinct which he so prided himself on failed him in nine cases out of ten.

A few words of explanation may be necessary. It is well known that Hitler's cult of personality, the great stress he laid upon individuals, was one of the most important branches of his philosophy. As a socialist Hitler made much of the idea of the "folk community." But for himself as an individual, there was something far more vital than the community-feeling: the individuality of the Herrenmensch, the man born to be a master.

Personality is rooted in individualism; community in sense of the group. To strike a balance between the two and join them in a creative unity was the great aim of Hitler's doctrine. But it also became the great problem of his life, and the one he failed to solve. In going into this matter, we touch upon ultimates, upon the underlying character of Hitler.

...

His egocentricity operated strikingly in his treatment of people around him. No one in the vicinity of Hitler stood a chance of developing into a personality in his own right. Passionate subjectivist that Hitler was, he had no understanding or sympathy for objectivity. Again and again, he stressed that he wanted to cleanse the minds of the German people of all "objectivity nonsense" and educate them to subjective thinking.

… he evaluated people solely by the standard of their usefulness to his ends.

He was the purest subjectivist imaginable, for he evaluated people solely by the standard of their usefulness to his ends. That alone explains his disastrous misjudgments and the wild ups and downs of his favours.

Göring, who during the First World War had been a good fighter pilot, and who later was not a bad politician, was hailed by Hitler as the greatest genius in military aviation. Ten years later, when Göring could no longer deliver victories, Hitler decided that he was the greatest failure on record.

...

… Churchill's stirring wartime speeches. Hitler read them carefully, … he secretly admired them.

His grotesque verdicts upon his contemporaries and opponents in international affairs, verdicts which he would burst out with during ‘table-talk’, now have only historical interest.

He had Chamberlain labelled as the prototype of the hide-bound British conservative. He felt himself affronted because the British prime minister would not grant him hegemony on the continent and would not make a deal with him on a land-and-sea partnership between England and Germany. After Godesberg he was furious with Chamberlain, whose efforts to keep peace on the continent he denounced as betrayal and fraud. On the whole, however, he admired the British Tories and their skill at governing throughout the world. He never ceased to hope that British conservatism would eventually become his ally in Europe.

Churchill he hated as the greatest antagonist of his life, a man whose whole style of life was diametrically opposed to his own. Churchill's earlier life as a war correspondent, writer, and critic aroused antipathy and feelings of rivalry in Hitler, the orator, and he would rant against Churchill on this account.

… when he saw a picture of Churchill bent over a prayer book, praying for victory, he became absolutely rabid.

Oddly though, he was enraged at the idea that Churchill sold his articles for large sums - although Hitler himself, when the "Movement" was in need, had accepted payments of several thousand dollars for his interviews with American journalists. Churchill, so fond of good living and good whisky, with his inevitable cigar in his mouth, was an offence in the eyes of Hitler, the anti-smoker and teetotaler. When he heard that Churchill was in the habit of dictating in the mornings from his bathroom, and when he saw a picture of Churchill bent over a prayer book, praying for victory, he became absolutely rabid.

I always handed him the texts as well as the summary of Churchill's stirring wartime speeches. Hitler read them carefully, and I gathered from his entirely superficial and irrelevant remarks that he secretly admired them. But he would never discuss them in any serious way.

Since the majority of his associates showed they were impressed by these speeches, Hitler himself preserved an icy silence on the subject. He would only pick away violently at random weak points in the speeches. He could not bring himself to admit that Churchill had the qualities of a great man.

Before the war, Churchill had once received a Gauleiter of Hitler's in his London studio and had said, "Your Führer will be the greatest statesman in Europe if he preserves the peace of the world." Peace had not been preserved. In the war with Germany, the same Churchill who had hurled imprecations against Bolshevism formed an alliance with Stalin against Hitler. For this manoeuvre, Hitler so detested Churchill that objective judgment was out of the question.

Roosevelt was. … merely the capitalistic tool of “international Judaism”

Roosevelt was, to Hitler's mind, merely the capitalistic tool of "international Judaism" Bolshevist Moscow being the other, the proletarian end of this conspiracy. To expose and defeat this double-barreled international plot was, he felt, the mission of his life.

With each presidential election in America, he hoped to see Roosevelt trounced. Sooner than provide Roosevelt with anything which would be useful to his cause, he forbade the German press and the German radio to attack Roosevelt during the election campaigns against Willkie and Dewey. Roosevelt's sudden death aroused in Hitler one of his last hopes, and to this he clung almost up to his own death.

With Stalin Hitler felt a certain sense of solidarity, although he appraised the Russian's personality differently depending on his own political direction of the moment. As the high priest of Marxism and the enemy of his own ideology, Stalin was someone to be hated. After the nonaggression pact, Hitler was full of praise for his ally. When Stalin became his deadly foe again, he did not stop respecting him, but he refused to say a good word for him.

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© *Roger Moorhouse 2023, ‘The Hitler I Knew: Memoirs of the Third Reich’s Press Chief ’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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Continuing a short series about Hitler, this week’s feature comes from Tim Heath’s Creating Hitler’s Germany - The Birth of Extremism. Heath specialises in German eyewitness accounts of life under the Nazis, publishing a series of books that give a candid insight into the lives of ordinary Germans under Nazism and after the war.

This excerpt comes from the very earliest days when the German public first encountered Hitler, when he began to make speeches in the Beer halls of Munich immediately after the First World War:

Munich was to become the spiritual home of the Nazis. It was in Munich, on 16 October 1919, that Hitler gave his first pre-arranged public speech. Hitler had joined the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [German Workers Party] the previous month. Otto Rische lived in Munich with his wife and three children. He was another disgruntled soldier who had fought in the First World War and had witnessed the decline in Germany’s fortunes in the preceding years:

It was several friends of mine, who I had served with in the army, that persuaded me to go with them to listen to this new speaker. It was at the Hofbraukeller, a restaurant in Haidhausen owned by the Hofbrau brewery. I believe this was Hitler’s first official public speech and there were a hundred or so people in attendance. When we arrived, we bought ourselves beer and settled down to listen to what the man had to say. My initial thoughts when I first saw Hitler was that he didn’t look much. I was going to drink my glass of beer and go home, but my friends told me I must wait. I sat back down and as Hitler came in I waited to listen. There was some raucous applause and cheering from the crowd as he entered the room.

When he began to talk, it was like being hit on the head. This unassuming man with his small, black, well-trimmed moustache instantly grabbed your attention. He was very outspoken about the Weimar government. In a most skilled rhetoric, he poured scorn on Weimar, the Treaty of Versailles and the Communists.

Everything he said appealed to us, but here, in this place, were barely one hundred people. I can remember thinking to myself, what possible difference could he and this small workers party make in the current political state? It was a whirlpool of clashing ideologies rather than one defined one.

We were like sheep running in all directions from a wolf. I thought, what he was saying was right and he was certainly passionate about what he was saying. My friends just said we have to support Hitler, as the more of us who join him, the louder a voice and greater political influence we will have. I would say that’s how many joined in the political group that would become the Nazi Party. Just a hundred or so people, but then the hundreds grew to thousands.

Otto Rische was just the kind of German that Hitler had hoped to influence. He had been a shopkeeper before going to war in 1914, after which his parents took over the business. After 1918, the business began to struggle in the poor economic climate. The Rische family had to adapt in order for their business to survive the depression that followed and Hitler seemed like a light at the end of a dark tunnel. He offered hope and promised prosperity for all Germans. Otto wrote of the situation, ‘I hate nothing as much as I hate our government right at this moment!’

Another Munich resident, Albert Friest, who worked at a Munich bank, also succumbed to Hitler’s charisma:

After Hitler had spoken, people were left almost star struck by the man. He was surrounded by his supporters, some of whom would become familiar faces in the future Third Reich.

At these early meetings, it was quite easy to approach Hitler, shake his hand and congratulate him. Naturally, he wanted to court every piece of support from society as he could. He had a firm yet courteous nature, smiled and was happy to engage in conversation. Even in these early meetings, anti-Semitic language was prevalent. He had to find political scapegoats and Jews and Communists fitted this perfectly. He made no effort to hide his dislike of Jewry and Communists.

I felt that this was a man that hated a lot of things about Germany at that time. He hated the fact we lost the war, he hated the fact that Jews had thrived and prospered over what he termed indigenous Germans and he hated seeing the German people suffering man full of hatred, yet I had to admire his tenacity in getting from the consequences of Versailles. Yes, I would say he was a up in public and speaking out for Germans and Germany. It’s no surprise his popularity soared over the years. Once you heard him speak, that was it, you were captivated.

Ingrid Altmann worked as a secretary for a legal firm in Munich. She recalled accompanying her then boyfriend, Andreas Hoess, to hear Hitler speak, on 24 February 1920. This was one of his larger meetings, with around two thousand people in attendance. The venue was the Hofbrauhaus in Munich and this was also the date that the new National Socialist German Workers Party [NSDAP or Nazi Party] was officially founded.

The Sturmabteilung, or SA, were there. These men were often referred to as Braunhemden, or Brownshirts’, due to the colour of their uniform shirts. The SA became the paramilitary wing of the fledgling Nazi Party. Their role was to provide protection for Hitler, his staff and his supporters at the rallies. They were also employed to disrupt meetings of the opposing political parties. The SA soon became adept at using violence and intimidation, not just against political opponents, but also Germany’s Jewish population. The SA would later be dissolved after a bloody purge that saw many of its founding members murdered or imprisoned during the ‘Night of the Long Knives’.

Ingrid wrote of the event on 24 February 1920:

I was angry with Andreas. All men appear to have this political preoccupation. They read politics and discuss politics, even in the cinema. I would have rather been taken out to dinner than witness some war veteran tell us all the things we Germans already know: I could not have been more wrong. Contrary to being boring, this Adolf was quite some show!

He whispered softly, like a man would do in his lover’s ear, then he would explode into fury, deriding the old German attitude, cowardice and betrayal of 1918. Shaking his fist in the air he grasped his audience and held them all by the throat before calming down and letting them gather their breath. I was hypnotized by this man and somewhat intrigued. His enemies called him the failed artist, the bastard, but he was actually very charming.

Andreas had associates who were friends of this Adolf and they introduced us after his speech. As I explained, he came across as the perfect gentleman. He took my hand and bowed his head and kissed my knuckles. At the end of the evening, I removed the white gloves I was wearing and never washed or wore them again. Why I did that, I’m not sure. It was strange; this Adolf was not exactly an attractive man, yet I felt an attraction of sorts towards him, which was quite inexplicable.

Andreas sensed this and I’m sure he was jealous. I was not the only woman to be granted an audience, but he made you feel like you were the only woman in the room. When he greeted you it was unconditional sincerity.

Ingrid Altmann would be among the first of thousands of German women and girls to fall under the Hitler spell.

Not everyone was spellbound, however, as Melitta Jorg wrote in a letter to her friend in Norway:

There is a thuggish air about the National Socialists. Their leader is a man named Adolf Hitler. He is not a German but Austrian, yet he is telling us that my father’s generation are traitors. He wants Germany to be great again and says he will rebuild her to her former glory. How will he accomplish this task? War? It makes me squirm when you see these high society darlings grovelling to him and how he stares them in the eyes. It would appear that he is making love to them with his eyes as he clasps their hands and kisses them graciously, as if a kind of statesman. The man is quite repulsive, supports racial theories, hates anything Jewish and incites violence in my opinion. My old friend Bernd loves the man and she goes to listen to him talk. She will have nothing said against the man. We argue, I say he is ugly inside and out and she protests to the contrary. Poor deluded darling, sigh!

Melitta Jorg, described by her great-granddaughter as a charming socialite, would later flee Germany after Hitler and the Nazis came to power. Her family was of Jewish ancestry and under no illusion as to what was going to happen to them. They packed up their belongings and left their home for France, only to move again as Hitler’s army spread across Europe. Melitta and her family were among the lucky ones, finally arriving in England sometime in the late 1930s. The word ‘war’ in Melitta’s letter was strangely prophetic.

© Tim Heath 2019, ‘Creating Hitler’s Germany - The Birth of Extremism.’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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Roman Sandgruber estimates that there are over 150,000 published studies of Hitler and Nazism, and several hundred biographies of the man. The discovery of a collection of letters written by his father, Alois Hitler, led him to add to the literature and meticulously examine sources from Hitler’s earliest, formative years. Hitler’s Father - Hidden Letters: Why the Son Became a Dictator does not fully answer its own question, because one of its main conclusions is that much remains a mystery. Nevertheless, this study focuses on facts, uncovers new material, and avoids speculation and imaginative interpretation.

The following excerpt comes from the introduction:

Alois Hitler, alias Schicklgruber

Smoking pipes, sitting in the inn, breeding bees, striking his children. This is the basic tone of most statements about Hitler’s father: at home a patriarch, at work a pedant, in public right-wing, to the children a brutal despot. Alois Hitler was certainly not a pleasant husband, family man, work colleague or citizen. What he was certainly not, however, was an alcoholic or idle man who would have wasted his time in the inn and in the beehive, nor a bourgeois citizen or provincial official whose horizon would not have extended beyond Braunau, nor a husband to whom the family would have been completely subordinated to his own sexual needs or his professional advancement, and certainly not a child molester and devil charmer, as Norman Mailer portrayed him in his Hitler novel.

Alois Hitler failed in many fields: as a father, husband, educator, economist and ultimately as a human being, without many friends and without a real home. But there are also the other sides: the meticulous fulfilment of duty, the constant career awareness, the critical urge to educate, the interest in innovations, the joy of social gatherings.

Alois Hitler’s origins and childhood are surrounded by myths, inventions and assumptions. Firstly, because there are hardly any sources: Who would have been interested in a barely outstanding, neither rich nor particularly conspicuous and certainly not really high-ranking person in the Austrian province? Second, because Adolf Hitler, when he became known and powerful, did everything to hide his own history and that of his parents and ancestors, or to turn it in his favour, thus on the one hand eliminating sources and, on the other hand, creating myths. And thirdly, because most depictions of Adolf Hitler’s childhood are elaborated from a very long distance and above all without much knowledge of the way of life at that time in the rural petty bourgeois provincial milieu in which the Hitler family moved.

That Adolf Hitler’s murderous and violent political path could be derived Tyrannical fathers and loving mothers are not an isolated case in history. from this is not provable. But there are some hints. To overestimate oneself and not to accept other opinions and knowicage was already apparent in his father, as was the tendency to self-taught further education and contempt for all academic and school authorities.

The tendency to violence also shows parallels between the son’s political behaviour and his father’s style of parenting. In his sex life, on the other hand, the father differed quite conspicuously from the son, even if he was almost certainly not homosexual, which is remarkably often assumed in the latest literature.

The unresolved places and existing gaps in the family tree may have burdened the son more than the father. But why Alois Hitler had his family name changed from Schicklgruber to Hitler at the age of almost 40 and brought about a quasi-legitimisation of his illegitimate birth still raises questions about the course of events and the motives.

The region in which Alois Hitler moved throughout his life, he got to know through forced and voluntary changes of location to an above average extent for the time. This influenced his speaking and writing habits. In contrast to the Viennese subaltern central officials, whose Viennese was discoloured by the dialect of their mostly noble superiors in a way that was often perceived as condescending, Alois Hitler was dominated by the regional dialect, which had been polished by the many changes of milieu, which he used with High German phrases and excessive use of foreign words.

To attempt to give an officialauthoritarian tone to his use of words and bureaucratic diction, Alois wrote his letters, although without any higher education, in a stilted civil servant German mixed with technical terms, into which the use of dialects repeatedly mixed Alois Hitler’s origins were among smallholders, his status that of a middle official, but his longing was for a life as a master farmer and influential city citizen, for a country estate, for a horse and wagon and for a property that went far beyond beehives or the scope of an allotment.

They had servants. Relations were maintained with the city. The godparents of the children came from Vienna. They spent summers in the cooler Forest Area. The children were sent to secondary schools. What stands out in particular, however, is that they not only took part in political events, but also sought to actively shape them.

The numerous relocations had brought Alois to many different milieus: from the Forest Area to Vienna, from there to Saalfelden and Salzburg, Wels, Braunau, Passau, Urfahr, Fischlham/Hafeld, Lambach and finally Leonding and Linz. His son Adolf had taken part in it, starting in Braunau with his father.

The first ten or twenty years are the formative phases in a person’s life: it is clear that the language, eating and living habits, manners, education, religion, world view and sexual habits of the young Hitler were decisively influenced by his parents’ home and the environment. Adolf Hitler never wanted to talk much about his origins.

As Reich Chancellor, he forbade all publications about it. He had essential documents confiscated or destroyed. Much therefore remains a mystery. A biography is always a puzzle with many individual pieces from which the individual stages of life and the continuous life line are to be put together. But there are almost infinite days in between, uniform and yet eventful, about which one knows nothing at all. This is particularly the case with the young Hitler and his father.

...

Hitler himself also tried to conceal his origins. How much did he know? How much was he psychologically burdened by this? In Mein Kampf there are only two short, moreover contradictory, sentences about his father’s ancestors: ‘As the son of a poor, little housekeeper, he had not suffered at home ... and later, on the occasion of his own stay in Vienna: .. always the image of the Father in front of his eyes, who had once made his way from poor village and shoemaker boy to state official’

It was precisely in these sentences that he fought for a very long time for the formulation that originally should have been called ‘housekeepers and day labourers. In which light did he want and should he put his origins? Into the painful reality of a poor, low and unexplained origin? An incestuous circumstance? A lie?

Hitler’s sister Paula, in any case, claimed to the US Army in 1945 that she knew practically nothing about her father’s origin, unlike her mother’s: ‘My father did not care about the relationship. I didn’t know any of my father’s relatives, so we, my sister Angela and I, often said: we don’t even know that our father must have had relatives. And Adolf Hitler himself did not want to talk about it either.

© Roman Sandgruber 2022, ‘Hitler’s Father - Hidden Letters: Why the Son Became a Dictator. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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Hitler’s life has been the subject of intense scrutiny since the war and the topic of innumerable books. Until his death, the Nazi’s succeeded in keeping many aspects of his life secret, allowing them to build a myth about a man wholly ‘devoted to Germany’ with no time for women. In 1945, the German public was shocked to discover the truth of his relationship with Eva Braun.

‘Hitler and his Women’ looks at all the women who had any significant interaction with Hitler during his lifetime, as well as a few about which there is only limited evidence. There is little new here, but it seems as complete a study as possible. The author does look at some of the more lurid speculation about Hitler’s sexuality and various relationships - but confines his main narrative to the known facts. From Klara, Hitler’s mother, 23 years younger than his father, to Eva Braun, 23 years younger than Hitler, this survey includes many female characters.

In his youth, there is Stephanie Isak, a middle-class girl from Linz - way out of his league at the time - who Hitler obsessed over for four years but never spoke to. There is Mitzi Reiter, the sixteen-year-old he met when he was thirty-seven but never got beyond kissing.

Later there is Magda Goebbels, ‘first lady of the Reich’, about whom his chauffeur joked, “When Magda Goebbels was around Hitler, one could hear her ovaries rattling”. There are the devoted secretaries who seem to have been sucked into the raw power surrounding the Fuhrer. What else can explain their patience with a flatulent old bore who subjected them to interminable monologues into the small hours.

And there is Geli Raubal. Daughter of his half-sister, Angela, who became Hitler’s housekeeper in 1925. The seventeen-year-old Geli (19 years younger than Hitler) moved in with him, with her mother. Over the next six years, an intense relationship developed with Hitler, during which he became ever more possessive. Geli eventually became a virtual prisoner in his apartment, but seems to have been obedient to him. Finally, after a series of violent rows, she shot herself in the chest. Was it a cry for help or an intended suicide? We will never know. Was she pregnant, and was it Hitler who actually shot her? That is much more speculative.

Hitler was undoubtedly distraught at Geli’s death. Her turned for solace to his photographer’s assistant, Eva Braun, whom he had first met when she was seventeen. The following excerpt looks at that relationship:

It was after the death of Geli Raubal in the autumn of 1931 that things took their most compelling turn. Whatever he felt for Geli, Hitler had continued to meet with Eva throughout the period of his attachment to his niece. It was not something that either Geli or Hitler himself ever worried about - after all, his relationship with Eva was purely platonic. Eva was a much-needed companion during his relationship with Geli.

It was obviously a time of emotional torment for him and Eva was a constant in his life, perhaps the only one, totally different from the mercurial Geli Raubal. After Geli s unexpected and violent death, he needed Eva and her constancy even more. It might be, perhaps, simplistic to say that he needed someone to console him in the wake of his niece’s death — in the way that his mother would have done. Simplistic but true - at various times in his life even Adolf Hitler needed consolation and a friendly face. Eva Braun could be guaranteed to provide both of them.

Quite when companionship morphed into intimacy, when sexualized encounters between the two became common, is not known. The line between friendship and loving in any relationship is at best blurred. With Hitler and Eva, it was doubly so. Part of the trouble in dating the advance in the relationship derives from Hitler’s motives. A friendly, welcoming face, a warm hand upon his arm, that was one thing but there was a lot more than that to his choice of Eva as a mistress. She was a girl who fitted perfectly with his credo that the more significant the man, the more insignificant his partner.

Hardly the most intellectual of women, Eva Braun was exactly what Hitler wanted in a companion. She was someone who would not challenge him, someone who looked good in the eyes of his closest comrades and, perhaps most important of all, someone who clearly admired, even adored, him - and was not afraid to let people see how she felt. She preened when in his company and although by the summer of 1932 she was still living at home it was not long before she was staying the odd night or two at his apartment - the same apartment where Geli had shot herself.

Eva coped rather well with the plethora of photographs, the drawings and busts of Geli Raubal, icons that were plastered all over the apartment in what was clearly a shrine to the dead girl. Many would have been disconcerted, demanding that the images be removed but Eva adopted a pragmatic approach. As far as she was concerned Geli was dead; her memory might remain but that was all and she could not stand between herself and her lover. Eva now had Adolf Hitler and nothing would change that. Or would it?

In the run-up to the 1932 elections, with the Nazis now serious contenders for supreme power in Germany, Hitler was inordinately busy. He flew all over the country, the first mainstream political leader to use air transport, making speeches and attending rallies. He had little time for Eva Braun, and weeks passed without contact between them.

Always emotional, Eva sat at home or in the apartment and fretted. At last she came to the decision that he was no longer interested in her. Politics and, who knows, other women seemed to have taken him over. Life suddenly seemed worthless. Her response was to take her father’s pistol and shoot herself in the chest. Discovered by her sisters, Eva was rushed to hospital, where she survived but only just.

Hitler flew to her side, appalled by what she had done but, faced by the prospect of losing her - as he had lost Geli Raubal - he was suddenly aware of just how much he wanted her. Eva’s suicide attempt might have been genuine. It might also have been a gesture, an attempt to pull him back to her side. She was to repeat the performance later in the relationship, that time with sleeping pills.

Now, however, near death but secure in the knowledge of his love, she basked in the attention that was thrown at her, from Hitler in particular. After all, Eva had always wanted to be centre stage and, as she lay in her hospital bed swathed in bandages, pale, ghostly and more beautiful than ever, there was no way she could be more of an object of Hitler’s desire than this.

© Phil Carradice 2021, ‘Hitler and His Women’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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It can be hard to comprehend how utterly different aviation was during the war. Both engines and airframes were constantly developed and upgraded while planes were operational. Maintenance took place under the most difficult circumstances. Navigation was crude, relying on human calculation in flight. The true challenges of flying, let alone alone combat flying, are an amazing story of human endeavour.

'Airmen's Incredible Escapes - Accounts of Survival in the Second World War' lives up to its promise with a collection of previously unpublished stories, all of them extraordinary stories by men who defied the odds and lived to tell the tale. They are drawn from first-person accounts by British, Commonwealth and American pilots and aircrew, covering fighters and bombers in every theatre through the war.

The following account is from RAF Flight Lieutenant Lewis Bevis, who was posted to Egypt in September 1941. First he had to fly his Hurricane across Africa to get there!

With the Mediterranean especially hazardous for convoys to Malta, let alone all the way to Egypt, most supplies from the British in the Middle East went all the way round Africa and up the Suez Canal. For aircraft, a quicker option was to take crated planes to the port of Takoradi on the West African coast, assemble them there, and then fly them east and north to Egypt in a series of hops.

‘After a week or two of training and acclimatisation at Takoradi, Bevis took off in a flight of six Hurricanes on the first leg of the long haul to Egypt…

The first day they followed a Bristol Blenheim, which led the navigation, south to Lagos in Nigeria, where they spent the night. The next morning, with the other five Hurricanes, Bevis lifted off on a four-hour flight to Kano in Northern Nigeria.

In the group with me was another Londoner, Rick. Petrol economy was important and we were instructed to fly at low revs and high boost to achieve this. After a little over an hour’s flying, I developed engine problems with a loss of performance. I fell behind the flight and was advised by the leader to make my own way.

However, Rick decided to stay with me. We were at 12,000 feet over thick cloud when I explained to him over the R/T that if I descended below the cloud I would not have enough power to regain height. He suggested that he should go down below the cloud and advise me of the terrain. Checking the course on my map, I saw that we could possibly be over mountains up to 5,000 feet, so I told him to wait.

Rick did not wait. Ten days later he was found dead, having descended into the cloud and crashed into a mountain face.

I continued on, and no longer being in touch with Rick, decided I had to try to get below the cloud cover. I broke cloud at about 3,000 feet over high ground coming out just above the treetops, luckily to a landscape falling away in front. Being on course I was able to pick up the Niger river and, in time, landed at Minna where petrol reserves in 4-gallon cans were available.

The next day, Bevis, with a full tank of fuel, reached Kano. The ground crew found that the Hurricane’s engine needed plug maintenance, caused by the necessary over-boosting during the flight. This meant that he had to wait to join the next ferry flight of Hurricanes.

When they arrived three days later, Bevis set off with them on the various stages via Maiduguri, El Geneina, El Fasher and Wadi Seidna across the southern Sahara and Sudan. At the Wadi Seidna airfield, despite Bevis and the other pilots having been flying since 05.45 hours that morning, the station officer made them refuel and take off again on a seven-hour flight north to Luxor in Egypt.

During the flight from El Fasher, Bevis had dropped his maps onto the floor of the Hurricane, intending to recover them on landing at Wadi Seidna. Distracted by the station commander's orders, he forgot. Once airborne, Bevis found himself thinking it would be easy to follow the other five Hurricanes without his maps:

‘After nearly an hour, we ran into a sandstorm, reducing visibility to nil. We got split up and now I was on my own.’

He needed those maps, but he would need to land to find them, wherever they had lodged in his cockpit. He made several attempts to land in the desert, pulling away at the last moment from rock-strewn areas.

Finally I noticed a native village with a clear area nearby on which I landed. I was then able to recover the maps. While I was doing this, I was descended upon by a crowd of natives from the nearby village, riding donkeys and camels. While they gathered round, I pointed to place names on the map to establish my position. The name Abu Ahmed rang a bell with them, and that apparently was where I was.

The village headman gave Bevis a bed for the night made out of ropes, and he slept surprisingly well. In the morning, by using sign language and pointing at chickens, he managed to get boiled eggs for his breakfast. However, when he reached the Hurricane, he found the villagers had stripped it of the leather gun covers, his parachute, and, among other loose items, his Very pistol, his only means of defence.

I started up the motor, surrounded by donkeys and camels. I had checked my fuel and the distance from Abu Ahmed to Luxor, and I reckoned I still had enough to get me there. I climbed to 8,000 feet and set course.

At a point some forty miles south of Luxor, where a low mountain chain crosses the Nile and there are river cataracts, the red fuel-warning light came on. I was shocked, very short of fuel, and wondering whether the gauges were accurate. Looking around, I saw what, from high up, appeared to be a roadway.

However, when I got down to about 1,000 feet what had looked a suitable road from higher up was, in fact, a doubtful surface with banking on each side. Committed I made a good landing, but unfortunately hit a large boulder. This turned the aircraft off the road and onto its back, and I passed out.

Although unconscious for a while I was not seriously hurt. Eventually an Egyptian, an educated engineer working on the Nile, came to help me. He took me to a telephone. After some hours a truck arrived from Luxor with airmen seeing what they could recover from the Hurricane.

Bevis then returned to Luxor with the recovery crew and, a few days later, was allocated another Hurricane in a group flight to Cairo.

On this last leg of the journey I flew into a khamsin sandstorm. The desert sands are lifted by gale-force winds to heights of 10,000 feet. It gives you the impression of being just above the ground temporarily raised to 10,000 feet.

In the poor visibility once again I became separated from the rest of the flight. I climbed above the sandy murk to work out a plan, knowing that I required sufficient fuel to make a precautionary landing if necessary. With this in mind, I decided that the best course was to try to land while I still had petrol in hand.

‘At around 800 feet I suddenly noticed the colour around me changed from a reddish-brown to grey. This turned out to be the ground coming up!’

Bevis dropped the Hurricane down into the sandstorm’s higher clouds. Immediately, he could not see anything at all. There were no breaks in the clouds. All he could do was continue descending steadily by circling turns, all the while watching the air speed, gyro instruments, and altimeter.

At around 800 feet I suddenly noticed the colour around me changed from a reddish-brown to grey. This turned out to be the ground coming up! I levelled off, and landed into a 40mph wind. I rolled no more than a few hundred yards before coming to a stop. I began to get out of the aircraft to look around, but as I was dressed only in shorts and a sleeveless shirt, I found the gritty wind stung too much, so I stayed in the cockpit. It was about 15.00 hours. As the evening drew on, the storm abated as is usual in a khamsin. I took a look around in the dark, returning to the aircraft to try and get some sleep sitting up.

In the morning, Bevis walked around and inspected the area where he had landed. The storm began to pick up again, and he knew he needed to take off soon.

I had landed in a small wadi with soft sand scattered through it. I started the engine and taxied to the far end. Several times the wheels sank ominously into the sand, making it feel as if the aircraft must go up on its nose. I then realised I would have to prepare a path. I began laying flat stones to try to make a firmer surface for take-off.

It was tedious backbreaking work. The temperature rose above 100. What little water I had in my flask I sipped economically throughout the day. By evening my confidence was slipping. I knew I was in for another night in the cockpit. I continued to gather stones for the take-off that I had put off to the following morning. I also knew I was beginning to dehydrate.

---

Bevis’s ordeal ended only through luck and prayer when he eventually managed to take off and fly to a landing strip in Egypt. He was taken to hospital to recover before completing his journey to Cairo.

© Bryn Evans 2022, ‘Airmen’s Incredible Escapes: Accounts of Survival in the Second World War ’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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A new title from Tim Saunders deserves to be featured. I have previously covered ‘Arras Counter-Attack 1940’ and ‘Hill 112’. Saunders’ histories are based on close study of primary sources, building a detailed picture of how battles unfolded, including personal recollections by men from both sides alongside unit war diaries written at the time. In August 1944, the hard-fought struggle for Normandy was coming to a bloody finale as the Germans found themselves trapped in the Falaise pocket.

The 8th Battalion, The Rifle Brigade (8 RB) fought in co-ordination with the tanks of 23rd Hussars (23 H), both arrived in Normandy about a week after D-Day. As a motorised infantry battalion, 8 RB were the fruit of new thinking in the British Army as to how infantry should fight alongside tanks. In Company with Tanks: 8th Rifle Brigade in Normandy describes how that unfolded in practice, how the British fought a series of battles from Operations EPSOM through to GOODWOOD and BLUECOAT, until after significant casualties, they finally had the Germans cornered:

20 August

The fight to close the Falaise Pocket farther east had been underway for days, and 8 RB/23 H battlegroup were now in the main part of it, where the Germans were still doing their best to escape through the narrowing but rapidly closing neck. As far as the advance through the Forêt de Gouffern to the extant objectives on the other side was concerned, the brigade advance was slow, being constrained by boundaries to the south with the 3rd US Armoured Division and control measures to the north. These were necessary to prevent the battlegroup from being shelled by friendly artillery or attacked by the Allied tactical air forces. In addition, ‘the whole area was infested with Germans.’

That morning, G Company and A Squadron resumed the advance, as described by Major Bell:

The position at Cui next morning was exactly the same as when we had left it the night before, with the exception that this time we were not greeted by any hostile fire. The village contained a large hospital which was full of German wounded, and which seemed to have an enormous medical staff, many of whom I am quite sure acquired Red Cross armbands a very short time before we arrived on the scene. There were large numbers of seriously wounded Germans and some German nurses, who when not on duty appeared to be practising their feminine charms most effectively and blatantly on the walking wounded cases.

The two wounded Sherman crewmen were found in the house and evacuated down the British medical chain. While the German prisoners were secured, the other two company squadron groups sent patrols forward to the Falaise-Argentan road. However, as they approached the forest, B Squadron came under fire and lost a tank to a pair of Panthers but, outnumbered in the resulting engagement, the panzers were in turn knocked out by B and C Squadrons’ Shermans.

Now it was the turn of the infantry to advance to the forest, but the farther 8 RB progressed into the Falaise Pocket, the grimmer the scenes of destruction became. Rifleman Jefferson of E Company, 17 Anti-Tank Platoon, described what he saw in his journal:

We moved forward slowly. The whole scene became increasingly more indescribable. The whole area was strewn with dead Germans and horses and wrecked transport, guns and knocked-out tanks of every description. We had to pick our way through the wreckage. Sometimes there was no other way through the devastation but to drive over the corpses. The stench was overpowering. Prisoners were giving themselves up in their hundreds.8 Sergeant Hicks provides a more graphic description:

The retreating Germans were mercilessly strafed by our air forces as they had no protection at all from the Luftwaffe. I vividly recall seeing the result column caught on a main road. It was not only littered with the debris of burning tanks and numerous other types of armoured vehicles and lorries but also scores of dead horses, which the Germans had been using to draw guns and ammunition limbers.

It reminded me of black-and-white photographs I had seen of similar situations in the First World War. You had to see it in the flesh, in Techni- colour, with the road literally awash with blood and entrails, human corpses in grotesque positions and to cap it all a sickly stench over the scene like an invisible fog.

I don’t know how I stopped myself from throwing up. I think we were all rather stunned by what we could see. The conversation was practically nil except for exclamations such as ‘My God’ and ‘Bloody Hell’ and such like. Of some of the damage and carnage our air force had wrought on a German. The road was obviously impassable, and we were glad to find an alternative route across fields and to get away from the ghastly mess.

At 1600 hours, G Company and A Squadron took over the lead in the forest: After crossing the Falaise-Argentan highway at Occagnes, we approached the Foret de Gouffern with a certain amount of caution, as several clearly camouflaged objects could be seen in the edge of the wood. Under cover of smoke, and after we had brought down a few precautionary rounds of gunfire on the wood itself, a patrol went forward and fired a P.I.A.T. bomb at one of these objects.

A direct hit was scored, but on clear examination the object turned out to be an abandoned German tank and the other objects we had seen in addition also turned out to be the same. Accordingly, a section of carriers moved forward, but the leading one went up on a mine and once again the advance was slowed down. The woods either side of the road obviously had to be cleared by the motor platoons on foot and this plan was set in motion. More traces of mines were found and blown down trees had been pulled across the road, but with the aid of our sappers these were cleared and the vehicles began moving forward again.

While the riflemen cleared through the forest, the tank crews of 23 H had more time to take in the scene around them amidst the shell-torn trees: Occasionally there was a burnt-out lorry or car in the ditch, and sometimes the blackened and twisted corpses of men were visible side-by-side, while other crushed, torn bodies lay around. Again, and everywhere, there was the smell of burning and decay.

The battle group reached their objectives overlooking the village of Bailleul. Below was the valley, which had become the final killing area, scattered with ‘the pulverised remnants of the German Army in Normandy’.

It was not just the German dead and wounded that Rifleman Jefferson recalled coming across but individuals and groups of bewildered German soldiers:

Some wore the unmistakable [runic] sign of the crack SS troops, still their arrogant selves. The prisoners were a nuisance to us. We simply bypassed them and sent them back in long columns. Bulldozer tanks tried to clear the roads. There was simply nowhere to push some of the German debris; it was piled so high. Literally thousands of German dead lay around.

On 20 August, the divisional cage processed some 900 POWs, while 13 RHA batteries advanced with the battle groups, ‘poured round after round into the pocket at targets identified by an Auster air OP aircraft’.

One notable set of POWs exemplifies the extent of the dislocation of Seventh Army’s command and control, when G Company captured their first German general: It was at this stage that 12 Platoon, moving forward on foot, captured [Lieutenant] General Kurt Badinsky, commanding 271 Infantry Division, and his entire staff. An old lady rushed up to them and told them there were some Germans in a certain farmhouse; on closer inspection, a General was seen at the window and was immediately covered while the remainder of the Platoon surrounded the buildings.

Staff officers, clerks, and orderlies came tumbling out, and, very soon, the complete Divisional Headquarters personnel were assembled in the courtyard, being enthusiastically searched. The old General, who had no idea what was happening around him, and who had no division left to command, was particularly anxious to surrender to an officer and refused to believe Michael Anderson was one, and when I arrived on the scene, I had considerable difficulty in making him believe that I was not a non-commissioned officer. He found it very hard to believe that the dress of British officers in action was almost identical to that of their men, and when the Colonel arrived, looking equally dusty and shabby, he was never more exasperated.

A request was granted to him to say goodbye to his staff and, after much heel-clicking and saluting, the first live German General we had ever seen was driven away to captivity, leaving behind him two very fine cars, which were very quickly snapped up. These two cars were described as ‘streamlined and crammed with arrogant and immaculate German staff officers’, who were ‘passed back to Brigade Headquarters with little ceremony’.

However: ‘With great difficulty, we managed to get a resplendent Horch, while Colonel Hunter took over an equally magnificent Lincoln Zephyr.’ Harboured on the southern edge of the pocket, 23 H describe the night air being ‘filled with planes and flares and tire long rumblings and vivid flashes of explosions’.

For G Company: ‘The ceaseless pounding by our guns and aircraft of the remnants of the German Seventh Army in the pocket continued all the time, and for once that sort of sound was rhythm to our ears.’ During 20 and 21 August, the fight for the Allies to close the Falaise Pocket was over, with German counterattacks to facilitate the escape of the remnants of the Seventh Army having been defeated.

© Tim Saunders 2026, In Company with Tanks: 8th Rifle Brigade in Normandy. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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Nigel West, the pen name of Rupert Allason, has become well known as the semi-official historian of MI5, the British Security Service, which runs counter-espionage operations. His ‘MI5: British Security Service Operations, 1909–1945: The True Story of the Most Secret Counter-Espionage Organisation in the World’ published in 2019 benefited from access to MI5 archives and interviews with former operatives.

Nigel West's book traces the history of MI5 from its modest beginnings in 1909 to 1945, focusing on its important role in World War II. By the end of 1940, MI5 had built up not only a very good picture of the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence, but was actually feeding them information. The ‘double cross system’ run by MI5 had rounded up all the German spies in Britain and was using them to communicate false ‘intelligence’ back to Germany. One of their double agents supplied the identity ‘George Rymer’ for use in future operations. When the name appeared on a radio intercept, they had good reason to believe he would arrive soon.

The following passage is one of dozens of individual cases that West addresses in this study. This is the MI5 version of their dealings with Josef Jakobs, aka George Rymer, in 1941:

The agent using the name George Rymer dropped by parachute into a field near Ramsey in Huntingdonshire on the night of 31 January/1 February, 1941. His arrival was first noted by two farm labourers, Charlie Baldock and his brother-in-law Harry Coulson, who were walking to work across their small holding, Dove House Farm, at around half-past seven in the morning. They were discussing the sound of a low-flying aircraft they had heard the previous night, and both agreed that it had been a German bomber.

Suddenly a shot rang out and both men dropped to the ground in surprise. Another shot was fired and almost immediately they spotted the source - someone lying in a potato field a few hundred yards away. They cautiously approached the figure, who began to wave his arms in the air. He was evidently injured and needed their help.

The man on the ground was middle-aged, and introduced himself as a parachutist from Germany. When the two farm labourers had recovered from their surprise, they examined the leg of the injured man. It was badly broken, and all three agreed he could not be moved without help.

Coulson elected to stay with the distressed figure while Baldock ran over to Shelton's Farm to raise the alarm. The foreman at Shelton's promptly telephoned Ramsey police station and also warned his son. Harry Godfrey, of Baldock's discovery. Harry Godfrey held the rank of Lance-Corporal in the local Home Guard so he quickly slipped on his uniform, armed himself with a rifle and went to arrest the German parachutist.

In the meantime, Coulson had taken the opportunity to talk to his immobilised captive, who began to explain that he was not, in fact, a German. He was, he claimed, a Luxembourger by birth. He had spent a miserable night in great pain and had smoked only a part of his cigarette supply before his lighter had run out of fuel.

Underneath his Luftwaffe regulation flying tunic he wore a grey pin-striped suit with spats. Beside him was a smart brown trilby, a steel helmet with some pieces of chocolate in it and a flask of brandy. A few feet away lay a small military-issue shovel and a partly concealed fibre suitcase. When this was eventually dug up and opened, a five-valve radio transmitter was found inside. Coulson also searched his prisoner's pockets and recovered a forged identity card in the name of George Rymer and an unused ration book.

At nine o'clock a single policeman from Ramsey arrived on his bicycle to take command of the situation. He borrowed a horse and cart from Shelton's Farm and transported the wretched German spy to Ramsey police station in the back of it. Once safely in his cell he was given a thorough search and relieved of some five hundred one-pound notes in two bundles.

“I am not saying this in any sense of a threat,” Stephens told one captive, “but you are here in a British Secret Service prison at the present time and it’s our job in wartime to see that we get your whole story from you. Do you see?”

There was little doubt in anyone's mind that the prisoner was a spy so he was driven the same day down to Scotland Yard, and finally [Camp] 020. There he underwent the usual intensive interrogation by Colonel Stephens and 'the Board'. The parachutist gave his name as Josef Jakobs, born in Luxembourg on 30 June, 1898.

In civilian life he had been a dentist, typewriter salesman, mortgage broker, bookseller and in a variety of other trades. When war broke out he was a Reservist and had been called up for service in the Wehrmacht before transferring to the Abwehr in Hamburg in September 1940.

For three months he had undergone wireless training until he could achieve sixteen words per minute in Morse. On 8 January, 1941, he moved to The Hague for instruction in weather reporting, and upon completing it, he was dispatched on his mission.

Jakobs also claimed to have joined the Abwehr in an attempt to escape Germany and sabotage the war effort. A mysterious Dr Burgos had asked him to join the Abwehr as an agent of a secret Jewish society. His aim was to make contact with Jews in Britain and resist the Nazis. None of this impressed 'the Board' much, and it was decided to place Jakobs on trial.

According to West, Jakobs was executed at 12 minutes past noon on the 14th August 1941 after being held as a prisoner in a special cell at the Tower of London since the end of his trial on 6th August. This is an interesting difference from other sources that give the date of his execution as the 15th August.

© Nigel West 2020, ‘MI5: British Security Service Operations, 1909–1945: The True Story of the Most Secret counter-espionage Organisation in the World. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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Max Kuhnert (1917-1990) was a very experienced cavalryman in 1941, having served in Belgium and France in the mounted reconnaissance troops of an Infantry Division during the invasion of 1940. As a senior NCO in 1941, he had a hugely responsible role, often right out in front for the whole Division.

‘Will We See Tomorrow’ has a graphic description of the conditions in Russia in early August 1941. Kuhnert was not involved in the fighting for Gomel, which was the site of a terrible battle and much suffering, its population reduced from 144,000 to 15,000 during 1941-1943. But an incident in the woods and swamps of Russia was burnt onto his memory. Kuhnert found himself nursemaiding a young officer, who was not only a very inexperienced horse rider but had much to learn about the skill and craft of mounted scouting …

Our destination was ‘Gomel’, though this was only the plan. On the way, we were to meet stiff resistance, and also have to make our way through the treacherous Rekidnov swamps, which occupied the whole area in between. The main objective was to go as fast as possible south - perhaps our division was needed to strengthen or at least to help out with some encirclement.

Relentlessly we marched on, and now we, the ‘lot on horseback’, really came into our own. Not only had we to scout to find the enemy, but we also had to look for a comparatively safe route for all vehicles, including tanks. You can imagine what it would be like for a heavy vehicle to get caught in a swamp. It was not just a matter of riding ahead now, but of riding ahead of the infantry point, with their scouts on foot. We, on horseback, had such advantages as having four rather than two legs, and of being able to see further; on the other hand we could also be seen more easily, and we presented a larger target. There were scout cars, but in a swampy area they were hardly a first choice.

This was no small order for us and I could see right away that we would have to work hand-in-hand with Lieutenant Weigert’s troop. Since the Lieutenant had no experience whatsoever I suggested that he might follow me. .

‘That would hardly be fair,’ Sergeant Helm said. It would sap his confidence, or at least hurt his pride. Why not take two of each of the squad of my rider troop and him. It would look much better. My five members, including Corporal Krizock, would go along with Erich Helm to the Battalion.

‘Well... all right, then,’ I said, not really agreeing, but seeing the sense. After all, I hardly knew his men, and having such a greenhorn to drag along on an important mission like this went strictly against the grain. However, just for the sake of peace, I agreed and went to Lieutenant Becker to be briefed.

Confounded bloody war, I thought. I really was worried. We parted and set off on our respective routes. The maps were not much help at all; the compass was most important now.

There were eight of us. I didn’t even know the names of Erich’s boys, so I just pointed to a young corporal to take the first stretch as front scout. Then I followed with Lieutenant Weigart, at a distance but so that we could still see one another, as we usually did in the daytime, and the rest did exactly the same behind us.

Lieutenant Weigert was like a kid, asking question after question, and really took my concentration away, for I had to keep a very watchful eye on the front scout for any signal. In the end, I asked him to keep quiet and told him that I would tell him in my own way, if necessary, what was required and when. After all, this was not a training exercise, but in deadly earnest. At most of the forest corners or any bends or groups of houses, I cantered ahead to join the front scout whose name, I learnt, was Ebert. We called it observation halt; I always consulted the Lieutenant first, out of courtesy, blast it. Several times Ebert used the drawing manoeuvre described earlier.

After one hour’s march nothing had happened, and I again called a halt. I exchanged Ebert with a rider from the rear, by the name of Henkel, a shortish blond chap, a bit scared. It was his first time at the front, and it was showing.

‘Well’, I said, ‘you have got something to look forward to,’ but then I briefed him by telling him exactly what to do. One person was learning fast, and that was Lieutenant Weigart.

It was a highly organised operation. Everyone was connected with the essential units, such as anti-tank guns, two of them from 14 Company. Our men in the rear were in touch by sight with the infantry scouts and they in turn with their company commander. The only difficulties were the flanks.

The terrain was changing constantly, and many times we were unable to keep exactly to the strait and narrow, so to speak, as the compass told us. Our orders were to stop only when absolutely necessary, and a complete halt for a rest or for the night could be made only when it was ordered from the rear, and then only if it was a safe position, whatever that meant.

We were getting rather tired after two or three hours on the march under constant tension. Plenty of wooded countryside was in front of us, but so far we had had no contact with anyone -we hadn’t even spotted a plane from either side. The countryside was beginning to turn swampy; we could see, here and there, greener patches of grass with smaller patches of reeds in between. I pointed them out to Lieutenant Weigert and suggested that we send a man back to report it to the company commander behind us. Henkel, out front, had done very well so far, until we heard rifle and machine-gun fire out front, to our right, a long way away yet, at which he came galloping back.

‘Go back,’ I shouted, ‘and keep going; they have nothing to do with us, but be very observant,’ but then I changed my mind. ‘Would you mind if I went myself to the front, and you take over here, Lieutenant?’ ‘No, not at all,’ he answered, his voice very throaty. So off I went, hoping that the time lost, about three or four minutes, had not changed anything out front. I felt a great deal better now, not having to rely on someone else. Siegfried [his horse] also seemed much more alert and his ears were telling me everything, twitching and turning at the slightest sound.

The firing had stopped and I approached smaller squarish pieces of woodland, mostly pines and very dense at that. As I stopped for a moment to skim the edges of them with the glasses, I thought I saw something, but I was not sure at first; only when I scanned the area again could I see quite clearly movements among some pines, while the other trees were quite still and there was no wind about. I signalled back to the others to stop and went on till I was in rifle range.

Observing the flank where there were also some pine patches, I signalled for an observer to be sent to the left and scout the small woods, and then galloped back to the comparative safety of the trees. Lieutenant Weigert had already gone. But I had not asked him to go, but to send someone. He had left with Ebert and Henkel to explore the woods, trotting, if you please, as if we were on Luneburg Heath, right across the plain, virtually holding hands with each other.

Well, there they go, I thought, mad with myself for having allowed such a stupid thing. What if the Russians were just waiting for them in those woods? After all, I had observed movements out front, and shooting had been going on on the right, so why shouldn’t there be any on the left?

I decided to go after them, telling the others to stop and spread. I circled first to the left to try to get a better look around the wooded edges, but could see no one and eventually went straight for the opening between the two forest islands. No sooner had I reached the first corner, than I saw them, about two hundred metres away, still together as if they were inspecting the birds. I knew I had told them to look up into the treetops from time to time, but this was ridiculous.

I observed that they had ridden along the edge of the wood, which was all right, and then had turned in the middle, towards the nice green grass, in the tell-tale reeds. Too late for me to do anything, though - fire was spitting at them from the right; instead of riding into the wood on the right, they panicked and turned, galloping like mad, straight into the green that I knew was swamp. They all went down, and the only screams I could hear were from their horses.

I froze completely, not believing what I saw. There was nothing I could do. I just stood there until they had practically disappeared. I realised that the Russians had not seen me yet because they were concentrating on those poor devils. Oh, how I hated myself.

I galloped along the edge and raced back till I was in touch with the first infantry scout. I told him what had happened and turned to signal to my men, the remainder of them, calling them in, still shaking at the knees. I dismounted then and tried very hard to control myself and not to scream.

Colonel von Gratz called me to his tent, or rather he was waiting for me outside it. What was I going to tell him? Here we go, I thought, I am really for it. Major Mauve and Lieutenant Becker were also there, with several young officers. ‘Well, all right, Kuhnert, let’s hear all about it. We haven’t got much time. By the way, we are all very sorry. Bloody bad luck.’

I told him everything and he said in a whisper, ‘I should have known better.... He was too damn young, with no sense, and the other two just lads as well. All so unnecessary. What a waste....

© Estate of Max Kuhnert 1993, ‘‘Will We See Tomorrow, A German Cavalryman at War 1939-1942’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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“There is a tendency to think of the Second World War, especially on the Eastern Front, largely in terms of black and white. Although colour film was available, it was expensive and often restricted. Colour ‘combat’ film footage was shot on the Western Front and the Pacific, most of it by American cameramen. In Germany, Agfa pioneered the use of colour in the 1930s, which was adapted into negative print and slide film, with the first German colour feature movie made in 1940.

This was in response to the development of Kodachrome and Technicolor in America, where Hollywood was just beginning to embrace colour. During the 1930s photography caught on in Germany in a big way. The country became an international centre of excellence for the manufacture of not only cameras and film, but also lenses. Agfa’s marketing was very seductive, especially when it came to urging Germans to take holiday snaps. Lens-makers such as Carl Zeiss based in Jena took a similar approach with their advertising. In 1941 the company proclaimed in the pages of Signal:

Snapshots of everyday experiences are lasting memories. But the rapidly changing scenes of everyday life bring with them opportunities for the photographer in which a good camera and the best lenses are necessary. - A reliable aid in obtaining better photographs is the ZEISS LENS, the eagle eye of your camera.

Joseph Goebbels, head of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, immediately saw the value of Agfacolor to both the German film industry and Nazi propaganda. Initially, the Nazis did not make much use of colour photography, as much of their propaganda was illustrated by artwork designed to deliver very simplistic messages. Goebbels, though, understood the power of the moving image and stills photography to sway public opinion. Indeed, it was this that had helped the Nazis come to power.”

…

From the introduction to Life and Death on the Eastern Front. Most of the images contained in this volume are not from the Wehrmacht archives used in magazines like Signal but from private collections. Thousands of German soldiers took colour images of the campaign in Russia and sent them home to be developed. Many of those collections survive to this day, even if the majority of German soldiers on the Eastern Front did not survive the war.

The following images and the original captions represent the range of material presented here:

©Anthony Tucker-Jones & Pixpast 2022, ‘Life and Death on the Eastern Front. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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On 20th November 1944, Hitler left his ‘Wolf’s Lair’ for the last time. He had spent over 800 days directing the war from the remote Field HQ in East Prussia. This was the scene of the early exhilaration over the dramatic advances into Russia during Operation Barbarossa - through to all the subsequent reverses. When he left, the sound of Red Army guns in the distance was unmistakable.

Hitler moved here in June 1941 and brought a small army of security and support staff. Hitler’s Wolfsschanze: The Wolf’s Lair Headquarters on the Eastern Front - An Illustrated Guide lavishly illustrates the location and provides a history of the events that took place there over those 800 days. The book provides detailed background on the functions of the various buildings on the site and illustrates it with many images of the site as it is today. It will be an invaluable guide to anyone planning a visit.

Alongside this is a more general history of what life was like for those living and working in the compound. The remote, damp, mosquito-infested compound was by all accounts not a very pleasant place to be. John Grehan draws on a wide range of sources to complete the picture - from the many important visitors who left a record of their time here, through to accounts from his secretaries and even from the food tasters who checked Hitler’s food before it was passed to him. There are many contemporary images of Hitler on the site, mostly of him greeting visitors. There is also a chapter on the July 1944 assassination attempt.

A very useful insight into how Hitler lived for much of the war with some fascinating details. The following excerpt concerns the camp cinema:

Also facing this compound was the cinema, or kino (Building H). This played a vital role in the social life of the Wolfsschanze. For many, used to the vibrant nightlife of Berlin, the 'horrid ... dirty green, gloomy, airless forest encampment ... permanently swathed in fog', as one resident described it, was excruciatingly dull, and apart from drinking and conversation there was little else to keep the residents entertained other than the cinema.

Films were shown at 20.15 and 22.15 hours every night, although the senior man in Dining Room I determined the exact timings. Every Friday at 17.00 newsreels were shown, among which were Pathe news scenes from the bombing of London. As the cinema was a wooden building, smoking was not permitted.

As time progressed, the residents, having watched every available current film, were reduced to watching old silent movies. Hitler encouraged visitors to use the cinema, but he did not attend himself, preferring to watch films in his own quarters, and he saw all the German newsreels - the Deutsche Wochenschau - before they were allowed to be shown in the cinema, which he carefully censored.

These were silent films and, according to one of Hitler's valets, Karl Wilhelm Krause, one of the adjutants would read out loud the accompanying text with Hitler checking that the words fitted the film footage. Often, he dictated what he thought needed to be corrected.

From the winter of 1942 onwards, Hitler stopped watching the newsreels.

There was, though, one special evening in the cinema that Hitler attended. This was when Generalmajor Walter Domberger, head of the Army Weapons Department, was invited on 7 July 1943 to give a presentation on the A4 rocket, which later became the feared V2 that so terrorised London the following year.

Domberger wrote of that memorable day as his aircraft flew beyond the River Vistula and as the skies cleared, 'below us, as far as the eye could see, stretched the dark forests of East Prussia, plentifully adorned with glittering lakes and occasionally flower-decked meadows'.

The viewing took place a little after 17.00 hours. Hitler entered the room escorted by Keitel and Alfred Jodl (who described the Wolfsschanze as 'a cross between a monastery and a concentration camp'). Domberger was shocked at the deterioration in the Fuhrer's appearance since he had last seen him, four years earlier:

A voluminous black cape covered his bowed, hunched shoulders and bent back. He looked a tired man. Only the eyes retained their life. They stared from a face grown unhealthily pallid from living in huts and shelters and seemed to be all pupils.

With a commentary by a soon-to-be-professor Wernher von Braun, Hitler was shown astonishing film footage of the V2 rocket for the first time soaring majestically not just into the sky, but into space. The film ended, and von Braun finished his commentary. 'No one dare utter a word,' continued Domberger. 'Hitler was visibly moved and agitated. Lost in thought, he lay back in his chair, staring gloomily in front of him ... At last... Hitler walked rapidly over to me and shook my hand ... If we had had these rockets in 1939,' said the Fuhrer, 'we should never have had this war.'

Another film that Hitler allegedly watched (though probably in the confines of his own quarters) was the execution of eight of the senior figures involved in the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt. The film was shot in Plotzensee prison, Berlin, where the condemned men were stripped to the  waist and hanged by nooses of piano wire attached to meat hooks suspended from the ceiling of the small prison room. The barbaric scene was played on 18 August at the Wolfsschanze. According to Albert Speer, 'Hitler loved the film and had it shown over and over again.'

Dr Dietmar Pertsch recalled being in the cinema two days after Hitler's fifty-third birthday on 20 April 1942, when the weekly propaganda film, the main part of which was dedicated to the war in the East, was shown.

This included three shots of Hitler's birthday celebrations.The first of these was a celebration of the NSDAP (the Nazi Party) on the eve of the birthday, which showed the 'national unity' with high party officials alongside wounded soldiers and war widows listening to the closing chorus from Beethoven's 9th Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Wilhelm Furtwangler.

The middle section was a 'typical' Nazi weekly show with a lot of blaring trumpets and ordinary Germans meeting senior Reich figures, plus a group of children from Rastenburg singing gentle songs superimposed with an image of Hitler. The martial music returned, followed by lots of smiling faces and a happy-looking Fuhrer.

The entire production had been carefully crafted by Goebbels as 'patron of the German film' and bore no relationship to the dreadful struggles of the German army battling deep inside Russia. Yet, as Dr Pertsch asked himself: 'Did we see through the dramatic concept? No! We were proud of ourselves to have been there in the Wolfsschanze and seen the Fuhrer.

© John Grehan 2021, Hitler’s Wolfsschanze: The Wolf’s Lair Headquarters on the Eastern Front – An Illustrated Guide. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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Staggering Red Army losses

24th July 1941: The Germans are shocked by crude Soviet tactics that send line after line of infantry into frontal assaults that are soon mown down

… the whole mass of Russian troops came trampling stolidly and relentlessly forward.

It was an unbelievable sight, a machine-gunner’s dream target ...

Erhard Steiniger was born in 1920, in the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, where his family had a small farm. He became a German citizen when this region became absorbed into ‘Greater Germany’ and was conscripted in 1940. He was assigned to the Signals platoon of the 151st Regiment, which, as part of the 61st Infantry Division, invaded the Baltic states during Barbarossa.

He marched into Lithuania with a full pack, a rifle, a 17-kilo radio and a camera. He wrote his memoirs for his family in 1981 but must have been relying on some detailed notes, probably collected alongside his many photographs, even if he did not keep a full diary. The English translation of Radio Operator on the Eastern Front: An Illustrated Memoir, 1940-1949 was first published in 2022.

Steiniger states that he had “no great adventures, nor even really unusual experiences” but he did survive the Eastern front for four years and then more than four years as a forced labourer in Siberia (although he says little about the latter period).

So a highly readable and seemingly honest account of the experiences of an ordinary soldier who states quite clearly that he did not want to be a hero or win any medals. Although he covers the whole war, there is more detail about the early part of Barbarossa.

The following passage begins with two days, spent almost as tourists, in the Latvian capital of Riga at the beginning of July 1941:

We saw a lot of them [Latvian militia] now, formed from elements of the former Latvian Army and civilians, now restoring order in their own way in liberated Riga. We radio operators were given lodgings in the large flat of a Latvian Jew. He seemed to be ill, and spent his time in his living room in a large leather armchair. Occasionally he tried to engage us in political conversation but we saw no point in it, preferring to spend the two days of our stay in Riga getting to know the city.

Riga looked like it had once been a German city. I could imagine the enthusiasm with which my platoon commander would inspect all the historical German structures at close quarters such as the Church of St Peter, begun in 1209 and the old Guild House of the Black Heads dating from the fourteenth century.

We telegraphists of the regimental signals platoon entered a hotel en masse to be fed caviar on bread. It was the first and last time I tasted it in my life; the price for this moderate pleasure was too high. When returning to our lodgings I saw on the street victims being led off chained to shackles around their throats.

Who these people were I never found out but no German soldiers were involved. All the same, now I understood the concerns of our host, who must have feared the same fate for himself.

[The 151st departed Riga on the 4 July and were soon moving into Estonia]

We had to advance. The days free of contact with the enemy came to an end. We reached the town of Fellin, which a little earlier had had to withstand a Luftwaffe air attack before our troops took it. The liqueur factory had escaped damage and remained in business. The exchange rate was one Reichsmark to ten roubles The purchases here were the first and last of their kind, for from now on the war became increasingly hard-fought.

Even at the divisional level we did not learn much about the overall situation except that the vanguard of our army corps had been disbanded. We did not have enough infantry to engage the Russian motorised units ahead.

The Estonians with their blue-black-white flags welcomed us as liberators as the Latvians had done previously. Estonian volunteers were assembled into auxiliary corps under the superintendence of a German officer but led by an Estonian commander. They were given special tasks which required native speakers, such as the neutralisation of Russian stragglers operating from ambush positions.

The topography of Estonia is hilly and more rugged than Latvia and for that reason more handsome. To the north we found it increasingly interspersed with giant boulders deposited there in the Ice Ages and therefore debris from Scandinavia. Personally I preferred Estonia to Latvia. The Estonian coast from the Gulf of Finland to the Bay of Riga, which I got to know better later in the war, reinforced the positive impression I had of this country.

Around 11 or 12 July we reached Pilistvere. Hauptmann Michalik and his horsemen (of the regimental mounted platoon) were sent to cleanse some fields of wheat from which we had received fire. It was here that the next line of Russian defence awaited us, this side of Poltsamaa.

I can still see in my mind’s eye the white-painted Pilistvere church where we put our signals vehicles under cover, for the Russian artillery had the entire area of our regiment’s advance in sight and range. It was our first experience of artillery fire concentrated in such a manner.

In the area around Pilistvere we came to a place on the road of our advance at which three trucks of the advance party had been ambushed. We found the massacred crews in the ditch under the trees to the left of the road - eyes gouged out, sex organs cut off. The corpses were already decomposing. Worms had already moved into the eye sockets and the flesh of the eyebrows. Steel helmets and equipment lay scattered around. The message from the Russians was that they took no prisoners.

This included men found wounded who were killed off as unnecessary ballast for the Red Army. The Soviets were not signatories to the Geneva Convention. This fact came home to us here for the first time, Army Ambulances, recognisable from afar by the large red cross on a white background, seemed to be priority targets.

Now we understood the merciless cruelty of this war. As a result of what we saw here, the conviction spread amongst us all ) that it was now victory or death. Our fate as soldiers at the front was less important than sparing the people at home such cruelty

In any case a certain black humour now replaced our fear of death to some extent. As for the atrocities which certain German special units committed in the Polish and Russian areas, essentially we knew nothing of them.

... the second great milestone for me in the Russian campaign was Poltsamaa where I learned to smoke. Heinz Schimanski and I were ordered to 1st Battalion and on the way to the battalion command post had been forced frequently to leave the highway and seek shelter, the heavy Russian artillery maintaining almost continuous fire on our supply road.

In the intervals between each barrage, a few of their 7.62-cm flat-trajectory ‘Ratch-Boom’ cannons kept up nuisance fire. This was a feared weapon for us because there was absolutely no possibility of reacting to it. The shell arrived and exploded before the sound was heard of the gun discharging. The Russians even used it to fire at a single man.

The Tross [baggage and support] and fighting vehicles strung out across the terrain, and the men of 13th and 14th Companies, all suffered casualties. Gefreiter Heinze of 14th Company, the hero who destroyed ten enemy tanks in twenty minutes at Piezai, fell here. A soldier’s fate!

Seizing an opportunity, we had reported to 1st Battalion and then dug a slit trench very quickly, covering it with slivers of tree trunk, brushwood and sods of turf to protect against splinters. At our feet in the trench lay our radio equipment with only the aerial protruding. Hidden thus below ground we felt safer than having to listen to Russian shells whizzing past immediately above our trench.

Apparently, they suspected that the battalion command post was at the edge of the woods, it was about thirty metres beyond in a field of rye. Nevertheless, the concert of shells hissing and bursting tore at the nerves, and then followed the evil spray of sharp shell splinters swirling out from the axis of the explosion to end up in the field or tree trunks. The black smoke would clear - and if one did not hear the cry ‘Sanitater!’ (‘Medic’) one could be content, though often those hit were no longer able to call out.

The first casualty in our immediate vicinity was the provisions cart. It had been driven up the field path along the edge of the wood, and now its dead horses lay near our slit trench. The heat bloated their bodies and a stinking broth welled up from their wounds. Who could ever forget this stink of carcass, which one came across constantly in these weeks of the advance!

Heinz and I left our slit trench only for the most urgent reasons. Our toilet was a shell crater behind the rotting horses. We had to monitor the telephone connection, and if this were interrupted, then we would superimpose telegraphy so as to guarantee that the battalion was never cut off from the regiment, and that was our job.

One day Heinz offered me his pack of cigarettes with the invitation, ‘Go on, take it, it will calm you down.’ It was at a time when our sector was being bombarded by the Russian artillery. Over those ten days I became a chain smoker. The cigarette butts which we extinguished in the earth surrounding our slit trench formed a kind of mosaic, the evidence of a nerve-racked impotence..

.

Those days outside Poltsamaa caused our troops appreciable losses. I remember the shipping out of a seriously wounded man with blood-soaked bandages, who from the stretcher raised his head slightly, his face waxen and distorted with pain, to cry out, ‘Herr Hauptmann, destroy the Russians - and on to Moscow!’ Then his strength gave out and his head sank back.

Our regimental signals platoon also suffered its first losses. Feldwebel Kiausch lost a leg in the churchyard at Pilistvere. At the 3rd Battalion, a shell exploded on the edge of a slit trench in which three men of the construction troop had sought cover. Horst Salomon, an enthusiastic handball player with the Danzig sporting association, was dead. Shell splinters cut open his body in strips from the legs upward. His two companions, Alois Weiss and Max Herrmann, were seriously wounded. We felt certain they would not be the last.

In the Polish and French campaigns, our signals platoon had suffered no casualties, even though our regiment had been involved in heavy fighting at Mlava, Pultusk and Praga in Poland, at the storming of Fort Eben Emael in Belgium and at Dunkirk.

After ten days Poltsamaa fell to us almost without a fight. Unteroffizier Presch and Hans Weikert relieved us, and we returned to the regimental command post. We shaved off our beards and washed the filth from our bodies and clothing in a stream.

© Erhard Steiniger 2019, Translation © Geoffrey Brookes 2020, ‘Radio Operator on the Eastern Front: An Illustrated Memoir, 1940-1949’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd. NB: The above two images taken in Riga do not appear in this book. They were taken by a German official photographer.

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The Germans invading the Soviet Union quickly discovered that it would be a conflict unlike anything they had previously encountered. Although Nazi propaganda characterised ‘the Slavs’ as Untermenschen, sub-humans, they put up a determined resistance, resolute even in the most suicidal circumstances. Nowhere was this more evident than in the fortress of Brest-Litovsk.

Located right on the border, on the eastern side of the River Bug, the fortress was a 19th-century construction begun in 1833. By 1941, the star-shaped fortress area with a central citadel and several separate strongpoints, surrounded by barracks housing 12,000 men and some of their families, was not intended as a key defensive position. With the surprise attack in the early hours of the 22nd June, it became a blocking position by default.

The Wehrmacht planned to take Brest within 12 hours. It would take over a week before the main body of besieged Soviet troops surrendered. Pockets of resistance continued for another month. Rostislav Aliev pieced together The Siege of Brest 1941: A Legend of Red Army Resistance on the Eastern Front, from sources on both sides, a difficult task since so many of the participants were dead.

The following excerpt looks at hours soon before the siege ended, when the East Fort was the only remaining site of organised resistance within the complex:

By the evening of 27 June, there was bustling in the stable below the inner wall — although the wall was shaking from shell explosions, yet another attempt to break out was being prepared here. Understanding that an escape across the grounds of the fort was impossible, the defenders decided to make an unexpected attempt — having broken through the casemates’ ceilings or walls, they intended to burrow through the earth covering the wall and, catching the enemy by surprise, to make a break for it in the darkness and smash through the German cordon. Approximately 200 people were ready to take part in this attempt. However, the soil proved to be sandy - sand kept refilling the tunnels.

Nevertheless, in several places they were able to break through the ceiling, erect ladders and dig their way up to the surface. One soldier after another clambered up the ladder and emerged on the surface. However, they were spotted - machine-gun bursts and shell explosions forced them to drop prone or try to seek shelter in the tunnels again. Many failed in the attempt - one of the tunnel exits caved in when a shell landed on it just as the first soldier emerged from it.

Machine-gun bursts that now and then struck the wall forced other soldiers to forego the digging of more tunnels. Altogether, approximately fifty men were killed or wounded during this break-out attempt. Soldiers gloomily dug fresh graves directly in the stable, while Abakumova and her assistants sought to tend to the wounded as far as they were able to do so. Now they also had nothing left to do but wait. By this time, Dar’ia Prokhorenko’s and Lidiia Krupina’s year-old daughters had both died.

On the morning of 28 June, an assault gun now joined the tanks that were shooting up the East Fort. An 88mm anti-aircraft gun - the largest calibre that the artillery could now contribute - was also employed against the fort. However, it seems that the additional weapons weren’t bringing about the desired result, so Oberst John drove off to the airfield at Terespol in order to seek air support. The former chief of staff of the II Fliegerkorps (Air Corps) Paul Deutschman (who was a colonel in 1941), recalled:

The commander of one of the regiments of the 45th Division arrived at the air corps’ command post in Biala Podlaska and asked for assistance in taking a Red Armv commissar school in Brest (it was steadfastly resisting and preventing an advance) that his elements had encircled, in order to support Panzer Group 2. Of course, the defenders within the gorge casemates of East Fort had no way of preventing forward movement along the rollbahns. However, some sort of weighty reason was needed in order to get the Lufttvaffe s commitment and employ such powerful bombs.

John learned that he could get air support, but for this it would be necessary to pull his own units back to West Fort. He was able to reach an agreement with a bomber unit (according to some sources, 6 Staffel [flight]/KG [Kampfgeschwader, or Combat wing] 3, which was equipped with Ju-88 bombers) staging from the Terespol airfield, to bomb East Fort that evening.

At 1145, a discussion took place between Armin Dettmer and the la of the LIII Army Corps headquarters regarding the order governing the division’s departure, which still hadn’t been put into effect. Losing patience, Dettmer sent a radio message to the LIII Corps headquarters, requesting authorization to move out in trail behind the 52nd and 167th divisions in the event of a departure in march column. He stressed, ‘We request a prompt decision.’ However, the corps headquarters was initially silent. Eventually, a reply came: the 45th Infantry Division’s departure from Brest was cancelled. Weighing all the circumstances and realizing that the 45th Division was still needed in Brest, Weisenberger decided to part with it.

The 45th Division left the roster of the LIII Corps and was made subordinate to a temporary command, Hdh.Kdo.z.b.V. XXXV. That evening a Fourth Army order arrived, according to which the division was presumably supposed to become part of the OKH reserve and be directly subordinate to Fourth Army headquarters. However, the dispatch of a reinforced regiment to Kobrin that was indicated in the order was cancelled — probably because by this time units of the division had already been diverted to guarding airfields.

The renewed firing on the East Fort by tanks and the assault gun failed to bring results. In the course of the afternoon of 28 June, the withdrawal of the committed elements from East Fort to the cordon line began. It was conducted with intensive fire cover, so that the defenders would not use the withdrawal to make another break-out attempt. Elements of III/I.R. 135 and the 45th Reconnaissance Battalion pulled out of the fortress entirely — for them, the fighting was over.

Only 5/1.R. 135 and Hartnack’s II/I.R. 130 remained on North Island. Everything was now ready for the bombing of East Fort — in order to mark the target, white sheets were laid down on the outer edge of the ditch. However, approaching heavy cloud cover forced a cancellation of the mission. It was revealed at 1915, though, that the regiment still didn’t know about the reason for the air-raid’s cancellation. Now Hartnack s battalion was forced to re-establish the tight cordon around East Fort quickly.

With the dawn on 29 June, Hartnack’s companies were again pulled back from East Fort. The weather promised to be fine, and by 0800, the drone of aircraft engines approached from the west. A white signal flare soared into the sky, and five Ju-88s dove on the target with a howl, releasing high-explosive fragmentation SD-500 bombs. Six direct hits were obtained, two missed the target, and two bombs failed to explode (one of them fell inside the Citadel, near one of the gates).

The effects of one of the hits are still visible today on the western side of East Fort’s outer wall. The casemates didn’t suffer - even Oberst John wrote about this, and any visitor today who desires to do so can go for a walk around them and not see any traces of collapsed walls or debris. Then once again, gunshots rang out from the windows and embrasures during an attempt to attack: its defenders were not contemplating surrender.

John obtained an agreement for another bombing mission that afternoon. The II Fliegerkorps command opted again to use medium bombers, one of which would be flown by a select crew, which was to drop the single 1,800 kilogram bomb (the SC-1800) available at the airfield on the fort. In addition, if the enemy still didn’t surrender after the second bombing mission, a new approach was being prepared for 30 June - the attackers would roll numerous fuel barrels up the slope of the glacis in front of the three inner gates and windows, before igniting them all.

Since the windows of the gorge barracks of the inner wall faced the ditch (the interval of space between the inner and outer walls), it was fully conceivable to drive out its defenders by this method. The goal was just the same as it had been now for several days: to destroy the garrison without taking excess casualties. For this operation, Harmack requested 8,000 liters of an enriched fuel mixture (petrol and oil from captured stockpiles).

Immediately after 12:00 noon, the defenders said farewell to the members of the command staffs families that were still taking cover in the casemates of East Fort. Dar’ia Prokhorenko recalls:

All the cellars were smashed; only ours remained intact, where the children were located. Then someone spoke up for the women and children to leave, or else the children would starve to death. We all got ready to leave, and there was now nowhere to fight; everything was demolished.

Major Gavrilov remembers, ‘I’ll never forget the tears of my combat comrades as they escorted the women and children out of the fort.’

© Rostislav Aliev 2013, ‘The Siege of Brest 1941: A Legend of Red Army Resistance on the Eastern Front’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd. NB Not all of the images above are from this volume.

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As a boy, Artem Drabkin would sit quietly while his father, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War against Germany, reminisced with former comrades about their wartime experiences. Fascinated Drabkin would go on to collect the memoirs and reminiscences of many former Soviet soldiers, seamen and airmen. The result was a series of books arranged around different aspects of the war in the East.

The first of these, chronologically, is Barbarossa Through Soviet Eyes: The First Twenty-Four Hours, published in translation in 2012. This is typical of Drabkin’s work, drawing on a wide range of sources to tell the story from multiple perspectives in different locations along the vast front that came under attack in the early hours of 22nd June 1941:

Soviet troops stationed in the Baltic republics were simultaneously attacked by two Panzer groups. Pavel Rotmistrov - a future marshal of armoured troops - remembers:

On 21 June, literally hours before the Fascist invasion of Lithuania, the Commander of the Baltic Special Military District, Colonel-General Fedor Kouznetsov, arrived at our location. Having hastily entered General Kourkin’s office - to whom I was reporting at that moment - Fedor Kouznetsov nodded in reply to our salutes and without further ado announced:

‘There is information that a sudden German invasion is likely within the next day or two.’

We glanced at each other in silence. Although premonitions of tragedy had plagued us for days, Kouznetsov’s statement overwhelmed us. ‘And what about the TASS announcement . . ?’ asked Alexei Kourkin in a daze. The Commander cut him short: ‘In reality, that was merely an external policy action and nothing to do with the true military situation.’

Kouznetsov - looking haggard and weary - wiped his face with a handkerchief: ‘No point discussing these problems now - we’ve got plenty of our own, which are important enough. Get the corps units out of camp and into the adjacent forests, ready for action. Do it under the pretext of a field drill.’

Alexei Kourkin asked for permission to regroup but Kouznetsov declined: ‘It’s too late for that - German aviation could hit your troops on the march.’ My own proposal to evacuate the families of commanders and political officers was also quashed: ‘Maybe it’s necessary, but we must bear in mind that such a measure would cause panic.’

...

[Meanwhile, the 129th Regiment of the Soviet Air Force only learnt of the imminent attack at the last moment]

Only two men remained outwardly quiet. They were the regimental commissar and the recently appointed regimental commander, Yuri Berkal: both understood the seriousness of the situation better than anyone. The time had come to show what the young fighter pilots were capable of.

Yuri Berkal scrutinised them: there were no signs of bewilderment or fear on their faces. Each knew his place, his job, and that was pleasing. Holding his anxiety in check, the regimental commander - coolly as if setting up a regular task for a training flight - said: ‘Three squadrons to provide cover for the towns of Ostrow-Mazowieckie, Zambrow and Lomzha, and the fourth - for our aerodrome.’ It was no secret that these towns were near the border. Beyond them was Poland and Germany...

The aerodrome began to buzz like a beehive. The observation flight of three planes took off. Yuri Berkal looked at his watch - 4.05 a.m. A white flag waved and the first squadron, then the second, the third and the fourth were in the air. Two groups of MiG-3s headed towards Ostrow- Mazowieckie and Zambrow, nine ‘Chaikas’ towards Lomzha, the other nine remained to cover the aerodrome.”

Already, 3 squadrons (12 MiG-3s and 18 I-153s) of the 129th FAR were aloft. Twelve Me-109s, which converged upon the aerodrome, failed to succeed and one of them was even considered shot down. The next raid of eighteen He-llls was also successfully repulsed. Three downed German planes were claimed after the dogfight. Pilots Anatoly Sokolov, Alexander Kouznetsov and Venidikt Nikolaev bagged one He-111 each. German sources don’t confirm the loss of these planes.

Having run out of fuel, the Soviet fighters closed in for landing under cover of the fourth (reserve) squadron. Nevertheless, the ‘conveyer belt’ of air raids would not stop, and could not be held in check. By 10 a.m., 27 MiG-3s, 11 I-153s and 6 training machines had burned out as a result of bomb raids and ground attacks on Tarnovo aerodrome.

Bomb explosions had made the airfield unusable for take-offs and landings so the 129th FAR’s commander decided to relocate.

Vsevolod Olimpiev, commander of the Telephone Section of the Signals Company, 9th IAD HQ, remembers:

On 21 June 19411 was already snoozing with the Sunday leave warrant in my pocket, when I heard the orderly bark: ‘Take up your arms!’ I glanced at my watch - it was about 2 a.m. The company quickly lined up in the HQ backyard. The battle alarm hadn’t surprised us, for a regular drill had been anticipated. Uncommon orders - setting up an aerial observation post on the tower of the HQ building, getting battle ammo and hand grenades, loading the reserve stock of cable in a car - were perceived as simulating real combat conditions. I was young and inexperienced, and did not suspect the worst.

My section began its customary work in the darkness of a moonless night, wiring a field telephone to a reserve command post, located at a farmstead several kilometres away from town. It was almost fully light when our special truck - designed to unwind cable - reached a military aerodrome on the outskirts of town. All was quiet. Our attention was caught by 37mm guns hidden in caponnieres along the airfield, guarded by crews with helmets and armed with carbines. Such semi-automatic flak guns were a novelty back then. Our vehicle was no more than half a kilometre away from the aerodrome when we heard explosions and machine-gun bursts.

Having looked back, we saw planes diving on the aerodrome, glittering tracers of shells and bullets, bomb blasts. The terrible reality became clear to us when black crosses became visible on a bomber pulling out of a dive above us.

The first half of 22 June I was on duty by the telephone at the command post of the commander of the 9th IAD, Hero of the Soviet Union, General-Major Chernykh. Telephone communications with aviation regiments stationed in different towns of the Bialystok Oblast, and on field aerodromes along the border, had been interrupted [. . .]

Communications with some regiments were established via radio. As judged from Chernykh’s gloomy face, the news was bad. Gradually, the terrifying reality was emerging: most of our planes had been destroyed on the ground by bombing raids or strafing from the air - even by artillery fire. Nevertheless, aerial combat was conducted all day long above Bialystok by flights on duty, and all those who had managed to take off . . .

I spent the second half of this tragic day in a roadside ditch just outside town. A big armoured unit sped past, heading west, and tearing our telephone cable in several places. With great difficulty, I managed to restore communications with divisional HQ, which possibly saved my life.

At the end of the day, I received a telephone order to leave everything behind and get back to HQ. as soon as possible. Two dramatic pieces of news awaited me there. All aviation units had been ordered to quit town immediately and retreat eastward. Such a decision was definitely justified, not only by huge losses of aircraft, but also by the rapid advance of German tank units trying to encircle Bialystok from north and south.

The second news was no less overwhelming: the Air Force Commander of the Baltic Special Military District, General Ivan Kopets, had shot himself. I used to come across him at divisional HQ_- a tall, young, general in leather overcoat remained in my memory. Apparently, he was one of those who had understood his responsibility for the destruction of the District Air Force, which was to tell fatefully upon our military failures of the summer and autumn of 1941.

Late in the evening of 22 June, a long column left Bialystok and was far beyond the city by early Monday morning. Only servicemen with blue-collar badges were in the vehicles - pilots without planes, aviation technicians, signallers, commissaries. Thus my long wartime journey began …

© Artem Drabkin, Alexie Isaev, Christopher Summerville 2012, ‘Barbarossa Through Soviet Eyes: The First Twenty-Four Hours’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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Many military historians have been attracted to the relatively short battle for Crete, which unfolded in the last week of May 1941, including Antony Beevor and the late Professor Callum MacDonald. John Hall Spencer (1928-2022), who was first a Royal Marine officer, beat them all to it with ‘Battle for Crete’, published in 1962 to critical acclaim, subsequently reprinted twice.

The intensely fought battle pitched some of Hitler’s best troops, his Fallschirmjäger, against some of Britain’s best, amongst them the Australians and the New Zealanders. The British were forewarned but disorganised, the majority of men having just been evacuated from Greece with very little equipment, ammunition, etc., sometimes without their officers. Both sides made tactical mistakes, and there is much to pick over in determining the many factors that contributed to victory or defeat. This is a balanced account drawing on sources from both sides.

The following two excerpts look at German preparations for the invasion and the state of British forces waiting on the island:

Hitler did not have an operation against Crete in mind … when he launched the attack on Greece. He, too, had to decide quickly. It has been said that his object was to rid Greece of the R.A.F. who menaced the Italian and Romanian oil-fields, and the idea of completing this operation by airborne capture of Crete was first put forward by the Luftwaffe.

The strategic value of the island was obvious enough. On 28 October 1940, General Halder, the German army’s Chief of General Staff (O.K.W.) had recorded in his diary that the desert supply problem could never be solved until Alexandria was a German base, and that this in turn depended on mastery of the Mediterranean and possession of Crete by means of air landing. Suda Bay provided the British navy with a refuelling base.

The capture of Crete would close the Aegean to them, and make the sea route from the Danube through the Dardanelles and the Corinth Canal secure for the Italians’ oil supplies. And the airfields at Iraklion and Maleme would establish the German air force on the flank of the North African theatre and alongside the route from Malta to Alexandria. It was apparent that, if Crete fell into German hands, the whole British position in the eastern Mediterranean would be worsened; there would then be little to check German expansion into Africa and Asia.

Halder’s diary entry for October 26, that is two days before the Italian attack on Greece, reads: ‘In order to obtain conclusive results we must strike simultaneously at Crete and Egypt.’ With Rommel established in North Africa, this was now feasible.

About ten days after launching the attack on Greece and Yugoslavia, the Commander of Luftflotte IV, Colonel-General Lohr, proposed to Goering that Crete should be captured by airborne and parachute troops of Fliegerkorps XI, itself commanded by General Student but acting wider his direction together with the ground support aircraft of Fliegerkorps VIII.

Reichsmarshall Goering then acted as spokesman. His was a powerful and compelling personality. Hitler was soon persuaded. And Directive No. 28 was issued on 25 April 1941. It began:

‘An operation to occupy the island of Crete, Operation Merkur, is to be prepared with the object of using Crete as an air base against Britain in the eastern Mediterranean.’

Command was delegated to the Commander-in-Chief, Luftwaffe. The assault was to be carried out by Fliegerkorps XI with ten bomber groups and 500 transport aircraft - about 1,000 aircraft in all. The transport aircraft would carry an assault regiment, parachute troops and a reinforced mountain division. After this agreement on broad lines of principle by the chief executive, debate then started on detailed planning.

General Lohr could not decide whether to concentrate his airborne attack on western Crete at Maleme or, alternatively, to let General Student have his way and land at seven points simultaneously. The first plan achieved concentration of force at the vital point and was academically beyond reproach. On the other hand, Student’s plan stood to gain the maximum advantage from the first shock. It had also the advantage mathematically that the two phase lift spread the load on the limited number of aircraft available.

The issue was referred back to Goering as Commander in Chief.

His clear and decisive ruling - by no means untypical - in contrast to the Führer, he had the qualities of a leader rather than those of the prophet manque - was that landings should be made around Maleme in the west in the morning and at Rethimnon and Irakhon in the afternoon.

Huge contingents of German troops were now gathering on the isthmus. They included paratroop artillery detachments, antiaircraft and anti-tank gunners and medical orderlies. They and all of Fliegerkorps XI and the mountain troops waited for essential supplies and the ground staff necessary to ensure smooth take-off.

The provision of petrol caused particular difficulty. Pumping equipment on the landing-grounds was unusable. Day after day the ground staff in sweltering heat rolled petrol-drum after petrol-drum to the waiting aircraft. The giant machines were voracious as locusts. Hand pumps were used to fill them with petrol. Valuable time was lost. And the German logistics staff calculated that 36,000,000 litres of petrol were needed for the operation.

Airfield construction was pushed ahead ruthlessly. At Molaloi the airfield was ready in a week. Milos island was occupied on May 10; a site chosen on the same day; and the airfield was ready in three days.

Dive-bombers and single-engined fighters were concentrated on these forward air-strips - at Milos, Molaloi, Scarpanto and with Corinth and Argos as base airfields. Bombers and reconnaissance aircraft were based as far off as Salonica, Bulgaria and Rhodes. Transport aircraft used the airfields in southern Greece. Concentration of the attacking troops round airfields at Corinth, Megara, Tanagra, Topolia, Dhadhion (Amfiklia), Elevsis and Faliron had been completed by May 14.

There was so far only speculation about the objective. Doubts for commanders were resolved at General Student’s briefing. Von der Heydte [‘Daedalus Returned: Crete, 1941’] has described the scene in the Hotel Grande Bretagne, so lately used for the conferences of Britain’s smiling, assured, young Foreign Secretary.

‘One look at the hermetically-sealed and shuttered room in the Hotel Grande Bretagne, where the commanders of all the paratroop regiments and battalions were gathered to receive orders, was sufficient to dispel the secret of our target: a large map of Crete was prominently displayed upon the wall.

‘In a quiet but clear and vibrant voice, General Student explained the plan of attack. It was his own, personal plan. He had devised it, had struggled against heavy opposition for its acceptance, and had worked out all the details. One could perceive that this plan had become a part of him, a part of his fife. He believed in it and lived for it and in it.

Meanwhile, the British forces on Crete prepared for an expected attack as best they could. The vast majority of troops on Crete had just been hastily evacuated from Greece without their heavy equipment. Some had arrived with only the clothes they stood in. The following excerpt describes the situation of the Australians and New Zealanders:

Their only cooking utensils were petrol tins. They had no mess tins, knives, forks or spoons. Food was eaten out of old herring tins with wooden spoons. One Australian described his condition:

‘It was hard to get clean clothes and lice appeared. We had a long fight with them - the boys would do a day in underpants while the women washed their clothes, and they are great washerwomen but until the great day when we were given a shirt and shorts each, lice were always with us. I had a blanket and greatcoat but for a week or more shared the blanket with three others. We would sleep in a row with greatcoats on and the blanket over our feet. I slipped into Canea and bought a brush and razor. Except for a table knife that was all my equipment.’

The New Zealanders, on the other hand, seemed in better case. The diarist of one of their units recorded: ‘Conditions very peaceful in the pleasant waiting existence. Parties bathe in the Mediterranean and bask in the sunshine; the area is fertile in vineyards, cornfields and vegetable patches, and orange vendors ply a steady trade.’

While these troops waited for code word ‘Cromwell’ , indicating enemy action imminent and troops to man battle stations at a half-hour’s notice, some of the promised tanks arrived in insufficient numbers.

On May 15, sixteen light tanks of an out-of- date type arrived. The guns lacked proper cooling systems and no wirelesses had been fitted before embarkation. Their engines had anyway already been run to death in the western desert. Four days later a further three I or ‘infantry’ tanks of 7th Royal Tank Regiment were landed with the Highlanders at Timbakion on the south coast.

During this time, enemy air attacks steadily increased in intensity. The diary of one New Zealand soldier, 36224, C. Trethowen, attached to 5th Field Park Engineers, gives the pattern:

April 27. Left Greece to board Ack Ack ship Carlysle [sic] at 1.30 a.m. Arrived at Crete 7.00 p.m. We lost track of one another in the rush to get ashore by barge in case of an air-raid.

April 29.I met up with the Norwegian crew off the ship took our vehicles to Greece on March 14. They had later been attacked by aircraft. A bomb had gone down the funnel and finished her. They were waiting for another ship just as though nothing had happened.

We moved up on hills above Maleme aerodrome and I was doing picket from 1.00 a.m. till dawn.

May 6. Digging slit trenches around Galatas the last few days; several reconnaissance planes came over.

May 12. Shifted camp to hills on the coast side of Soudhas [Suda] Bay; air-raids becoming heavy and more often now.

May 14. Fireworks most of the night, with bright flares over the harbour, and bombing of shipping and supplies.

May 15. Our unit is to dig a shaft in hillside to keep the records safe but it never gets finished.

May 16. One of the heaviest raids today. Bomb shrapnel everywhere after they finished, but we all survived.

May 17. Two heavy raids on Soudhas Bay port installations: they got three ships and a tanker from which the smoke is pouring as I write.

May 18. Fifteen raids today, gave the harbour another pasting. I saw one bomber drop a stick of bombs through a field hospital not far from us.

May 19. More heavy air-raids today.

© John Hall Spencer 1962, 2008, 2020, ‘Battle for Crete’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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Part of the Battle of Crete sequence:

‘Battle for Crete’: After the swift victory over Greece, German attention shifts to the strategically important island, and an invasion plan is hastily improvised

20th May 1940: The battle for Crete begins: German bombing and machine gunning are followed by parachute drops over a wide area - they are met with fierce resistance and suffer heavy casualties

22nd May 1941: Crete - possession of the airfields is vital: The exceptional Charles Upham leads a counterattack at Maleme airfield and personally overcomes several enemy positions

23rd May 1941: Destroyer v Dive bomber: HMS Kelly, under the command of Lord Louis Mountbatten, eventually loses a battle to evade the bombers by sharp manouvering

25th May 1941: Attack and counter-attack on Crete: The strategic location of Galatas village makes it the focus of alternating assaults by German and British forces, joined by Cretan civilians

28th May 1941: Crete - retreat over the mountains: The evacuation of British forces gets underway, and thousands of men must make the march to the southern beaches, in the hope of being taken off

29th May 1941: Many men who have survived the battle die during the evacuation by sea

30th May 1941: Even as British forces are being evacuated under fire, the Germans realise that what they have achieved has come at a terrible cost

1st June 1941: The British run out of time to evacuate the remaining soldiers on Crete, even though they have not not yet been apprehended by the Germans

2nd June 1941: Civilians massacred at Kondomari: A rare instance of photographic evidence of a Wehrmacht atrocity, an example of so many similar executions of civilians throughout the war

4th June 1941: Does the Nazi airborne invasion of Crete mean that paratroopers are an even more credible threat for an attack at home

10th June 1941: Churchill defends the Battle of Crete: The House of Commons debates the latest in a long line of defeats for British forces facing the Germans

13th June 1941: Few of the 16,00 men taken prisoner on Crete receive enough food, but the wounded suffer a prolonged ordeal

Previously unpublished diaries and memoirs from the war continue to emerge, as featured last week. But a growing genre is the reconstruction of an individual’s wartime service by living relatives, often supported by extensive archival research and background histories. These personal projects can be very illuminating explorations of what it was like to be in a particular theatre of war or branch of the services.

Taking this approach to a new level is The Glass Mountain, which has just been released in paperback (although I enjoyed the audiobook). Malcolm Gaskill is a professor of Early Modern History. So wartime Italy was unfamiliar territory for him. But from a snatch of conversation about extraordinary Great Uncle Ralph, a long personal adventure unfolded. The result is a great accomplishment, a combination of personal research, imagination and reflection.

Ralph’s memoir has been augmented not just by research but by a series of visits to the relevant sites in Italy. This is coupled with contemplation of what his generation went through. An unusual but fascinating approach to history, not just about one individual but about how we remember the past.

The following excerpt illustrates the author’s power to reimagine past events, as Ralph, accompanied by his fellow POW Charlie, breaks out of a prisoner-of-war camp:

The bulb outside the hut shone a pale cone on the threshold; the only light beyond was the sickly yellow glow of the fence lamps. The air was cool, the sky a ceiling of impenetrable black. They crossed the muddy path to the cookhouse, which was in complete darkness. Nodding to the Scots Guards sergeant on watch, they hurried through the door.

Inside, with its smell of grease and huge kettles and ranges, they pulled off their greatcoats. Waiting in the stoke-room were RSM Alderson and the three camp policemen, their faces just visible by the faint light washing through the windows. Alderson reported that the guards with the mobile arc light had gone, meaning the coast was clear. They moved towards the rear of the building, where the door was already open, framing illumination from the fence just a few yards away.

It was like the curtain had lifted on a dazzling stage and this was their cue. Charlie went out first, dropping onto his front behind a mound of firewood that one of the warrant officers had helpfully stacked outside the door. Ralph followed. Pulse racing, he realized that even the Gazala Cauldron, where he’d been chased by Rommel and dive-bombed by Stukas, hadn’t prepared him for this. For a moment, he wished himself elsewhere:

Now that the moment for action was here, I didn’t feel too good . . . there was a lot to be said for washing the whole thing out, withdrawing quietly, and popping back to a nice warm bed. Such things passed through my mind as I waited there during what might be termed the initial minute of my escape.

But what Ralph considered childish thoughts and feelings were swiftly chased away. He was determined to prove himself to RSM Alderson and his policemen hiding in the shadows, and to Charlie, with his unwavering composure.

Behind the first fence, too feet to the left, loomed a watchtower mounted with a machine gun, its line of fire directly down the corridor between the two walls of wire. The sentry box to their right was much closer, barely fifteen feet away. They could see the tips of the guard’s boots and couldn’t move until he did. Minutes ticked agonizingly by. Then at last the guard strolled away. Passing the wire cutters to Charlie, Ralph signalled to the ex-Derby constable, who ran across to the WOs’ hut to alert Hugh Owen.[who had contrived a method of short circuiting the camp electricity]

There and throughout the camp, magically, the lights waned to a fuzzy pallor. The Bradford man began singing ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ so raucously that Ralph and Charlie barely heard RSM Alderson whisper ‘good luck!’ as they left the cover of the wood pile, wriggling towards the fence. They were fully exposed, albeit in a much reduced glare.

The ten-foot fence was tightly criss-crossed with barbed wire. By now, Ralph’s heart was thumping in his ears like a steam hammer, palms running wet as he waited for Charlie to make the first cut. It was tougher than they’d imagined. Ralph had a go. Grasping the cutters in both hands, he just about managed to snap the downwires near their base, as they’d planned, then propped up the cross wires with a pair of specially-made notched sticks. This allowed just enough clearance for Charlie to shuffle under on his back, pushing with his heels.

It seemed to take an age. Once Charlie was clear, Ralph repeated the manoeuvre, but the belt of his overalls snagged on a barb, snaring him there until Charlie crawled back to help. They replaced the wires as best they could, then approached the next barrier. Hearing the reassuring voice of their Greek Cypriot accomplice, Ralph tackled the second fence. But it was a tussle, and the sweat was pouring out of him.

Charlie touched his shoulder. ‘There isn’t time, Sleuth. It’ll take too long,’ he hissed. ‘There’s only one way now and that’s over the top.’

The escapers pressed themselves against the fence, squinting back at the Cypriot, who was casually chatting with the sentry barely fifteen yards away. There was no way back now, but still Ralph’s thoughts were gripped by the madness of what they were doing. They knew Hugh Owen wouldn’t be able to keep the lights down much longer, and if they came back up while he and Charlie were on top of the fence, the guard operating the machine gun would knock them off like a pair of coconuts in a shy.

Charlie, who an hour earlier had barely been able to walk, was up there like a monkey, and for a split second Ralph saw him silhouetted against a shaft of dimmed lamplight. Then he was over and disappeared into the darkness.

Now it was Ralph’s turn. He clambered up the same way, struggling to hold the wire cutters and water bottle. Keeping an eye on the dark shapes in the watchtower, he lowered himself down the curtain of wire into the unfinished Sector 1. Charlie was waiting. Though unfamiliar, they knew this part of the camp was routinely patrolled, so they picked their way through the building materials and equipment in a brisk yet cautious crouch.

Behind them they could hear no raised voices or alarms, only their Bradford singer who, Ralph noted, had progressed from music hall to The Mikado and was leading the others in a full-throated rendition of ‘A Wand’ring Minstrel, I’ - A thing of shreds and patches, Of ballads, songs and snatches .. . And dreamy lullaby.’

They scampered into a half-built blockhouse, where Ralph wiped his face and sighed with relief. Hastening along the dark central corridor, they exited at the far end. The camp lights flicked back to brightness, but already they were hidden from view on the far side of the building. They continued the short distance to the outer perimeter, a low wall at the edge of a dell. In the distance lay the town of Altamura, barely visible in the blackout, which they planned to skirt round in a wide southern arc to remain concealed in what they hoped would be sparsely populated countryside.

They tore down the hill - ‘like a couple of pursued hares’, Ralph recalled - and up the other side, stumbling on stones as their vision fully adjusted to the night. After negotiating this rough terrain for what felt like hours, they paused, both men blowing hard yet tingling with excitement. Out of range of the mobile arc light, they looked back on the camp with wonder. It suddenly seemed small, diminished, planted in a pool of light that illuminated a canopy of cloud drawn low across an indigo sky.

Ralph checked his watch, amazed it was only 10.45 p.m. Charlie struck a match to read the compass and maps, and predicted that in a mile they should reach a railway line. This they must put quickly behind them. Trains and stations were under strict military control, and if news had been wired from the camp, any soldiers in the area would be on high alert.

They set off again, and after another thirty minutes came to the top of a small rise. Peering over, they could just make out the railway track and a farmhouse to their left. They lay still a while, ears pricked up, then, hearing nothing unusual, descended towards the track, which cut across the open fields on a raised layer of ballast. A dog at the farm started barking, prompting the escapers to scurry forward under the loose signal wires and over the rails and sleepers.

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© Malcolm Gaskill 2025, ‘The Glass Mountain’. Reproduced courtesy of Allen Lane (The Penguin Press) Ltd. NB The above image is not from this title.

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The story of war is so often the story of ‘ordinary’ people in extraordinary circumstances. Recently published is the memoir of William Gillanders, which he did not write until 1996. These ‘ordinary experiences’ of a private soldier would see him celebrated as a hero were he alive today. But he obviously did not regard himself as exceptional, and we must be grateful that his daughter brought his private family manuscript to publication.

Frontline Medic & SOE Agent: The WW2 Memoir of William Gillanders MM is a tale full of twists and turns, a young man who volunteers for the Army in October 1939 after watching German planes bomb ships outside Edinburgh - the first air raid on Britain. He should have gone to France with the Highland Division, most of whom became prisoners. But a spell in hospital with bronchitis meant he missed the departure - and instead was ‘volunteered’ as a driver with a blood transfusion unit - and in turn learnt how to give transfusions himself. Eventually, he had to make his own lucky escape from France. As a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps in Egypt in 1942, he was asked to pack medical supplies for the Special Operations Executive - and he found himself volunteering for the mission himself. Once in Yugoslavia, working alongside the partisans, he was often the only person with medical expertise available.

The following episode comes from relatively late in the war, when Gillanders is supporting the partisans in occupied Yugoslavia. They became aware of the many Allied aircrew who had been shot down and were on the run, and a plan had to be devised to get them out:

Major Reed was rather uncertain as to how we would get the growing number of men out. To his relief, and our horror, a message came from Brigadier MacLean that Ian and I were to proceed to Tito’s HQ in Bosnia by foot and to ensure the safe passage of the airmen to the same destination. Ian and I were ill-equipped to walk that distance, possibly 200 miles or more, as the partisans had taught us you never walked in a straight line. Ian had a fleece-lined leather jacket, whilst I had a sailor’s duffel jacket. We had no waterproof gear or sleeping bags. I did have a balaclava and a woollen scarf about 8 feet long, and thick socks that had all been hand-knitted by my granny (these were the envy of everyone, especially my socks). I would put on my balaclava, then wrap the scarf round my neck and head and Ian would tie it behind my back. Lack of a waterproof jacket with a hood was a handicap, but having no gloves or mittens was worst of all. My fingers were sometimes raw with burst chilblains and frostbite.

We rounded up all the aircrew known to be in the area, at least 100, and it turned out that almost all were American, with just a few Allied airmen. (The British, or RAF, which included New Zealand, Australia, Canada etc. were very independent and wanted to make their own way home.) In our group was an American Air Force major who had been living in Venice with a kind Italian woman who found him after he had baled out of his aircraft. A lucky break for one of them. He apparently got fed up, probably couldn’t stand the place, and left during the night in case she reported him to the authorities. He made his way to Trieste, then into the Yugoslavian hills, where partisans picked him up. He took a big chance by wearing civilian clothes. If the Germans had discovered him, he would have been shot. The partisans were very suspicious of him and kept him away from the other airmen. We had to verify his credentials by radioing Italy, who had his story confirmed by the Americans.

We were finally ready to start. We had no food with us. Our only first-aid gear was in my satchel. We had four partisans as escorts, and couriers, and Ivo was our interpreter. Our escorts had ltalian-300 rifles and Ian and I had a sub- machine gun and a revolver each. By the time we had reached the top of the first hill, there were huge gaps in our lines and it was at least twenty minutes before we could all start together on the next leg. With Ivo and one escort I led out, while Ian and an escort came up in the rear. The other two escorts were in between. While this was a constant physical and mental challenge, the trek did have its funny moments. Ian would send up notes via a young courier, saying, ‘for God’s sake slow down, you’re not in the light infantry.’

By the end of the first day, 80 per cent of our charges had blisters and were moaning their heads off. It wasn’t their fault – they were fliers not walkers, and flying boots weren’t the best footwear for such a journey. This was worrying as I had heard from the partisans that the Germans had a flying-column out – commandos and Jaegers (mountain ski troops). We felt certain they knew about us, as only about 40 per cent of the peasants supported Tito, especially in Croatia. Sure, they all paid lip-service, and of course did the same when the Germans came into a village. Sometimes when walking in a small group, we had met peasants with donkeys, maybe just looking for firewood, who looked at us with abject fear, uncertain as to whether to give the clenched-fist partisan salute or give the fascist greeting, something like ‘God’s greeting to you,’ in Serbo-Croat. It was a matter of life and death to them probably every day and we understood their fear. As the Germans wore the same kind of berets we wore, that too must have confused the poor, innocent peasants.

The village where we would spend our first night was quite empty, so we had plenty of room to bed down our herd. We had no blankets but the rooms were warm because the big tiled stoves were going full blast. Ian produced some tea he had hidden away, so we boiled the billy. We had no sugar or milk but that tea gave me a lift I am sure cocaine or heroin could not have. If drugs had been available in Yugoslavia at that time, I am sure we would have been into them the same as the American soldiers were in Vietnam. I dressed all the blistered feet put in front of me, and finally fell asleep by the stove.

Ivo woke me early in the morning. He had a pot of polenta and said we should eat some of this and get the hell out of the place as he had discovered that the reason the village was empty was because of an outbreak of typhus. I hoped that my anti-typhus shots were working. The airmen took the news very well but the distance and speed we subsequently travelled amazed me; were these the men who could not walk the night before because of blisters. I told them not to worry, we would be quite safe as our lice were marque fives, while the ones in the village were only ones and twos.

The urgency didn’t last long and soon we were walking slowly again and stopping to wait for stragglers. It was snowing and getting dark when we finally reached Udbina, a small town which was almost completely demolished, with only a few houses remaining with canvas or tarpaulins for roofs. These were our billets for the night. We were lucky that a partisan unit was in occupation and gave us some stew and black bread and coffee. The tarpaulin roofs were sagging with snow and big fires were raging in the rooms below, so consequently water dripped on us all night. The next morning I was glad to leave and pitied the poor partisans who were left behind to fight. We learned later, that a month after our visit to that devastated village, a doctor who had befriended us at the medical conference was killed in Udbina, along with a number of wounded, when a German ski patrol surprised them at night.

We struggled on from village to village. Eventually, we had to cross a railway and a main road. This was accomplished by waiting for the German patrols to pass, then stealing through a village without arousing too many dogs, crossing the road at the greatest speed possible, and taking off up into the mountains. It was hard going as we had only had one short rest and there was no food, we were told, until we reached a partisan camp. We climbed and climbed and crossed a pass and eventually came upon a few wooden huts. Installed here was a partisan attack group. We were allotted so many to a hut, and it was a bit of a squeeze, with thirty-five to forty for each. I looked for a space to lie down as far away from the fire as possible as the atmosphere was stifling.

I felt a tug at my leg and when I looked down, there was a partizanka propped up on her elbow pointing at a space next to her. I found my other neighbour was also a partizanka. I just lay down exhausted while they cuddled into me, and I fell into deep sleep – no thought of any funny stuff. When you are wet, hungry and exhausted, sex is the last thing you think of. In the morning when I was having a wash, I saw a patrol move out. It included the two partizankas – one carrying a machine gun, the other had belts of ammunition draped round her neck and shoulders. They smiled and waved and walked away to God knows what.

The partisan OC asked us if we would like to see where we would be once it was dark. The Americans and the others were either sleeping or resting. We made our way along a hillside and after maybe a mile we stopped on the brow of the hill and peeped over. You had to be careful using binoculars because if the sun glinted on them, you could be a dead duck. The partisan pointed below and there, about three quarters of a mile away on a road, was a line of German trucks with two or three officers or NCOs waving and gesticulating. The partisan officer said he hoped they would move soon as the partisans we had seen leave earlier had mined the road on the bend going up the hill. Our officer said, ‘We should move. If they see us, we’ll get a breakfast of grenades’ (likely 88mm shells, in this case). We didn’t need any coaxing, and made our way back. We couldn’t move until dark and I hoped the German convoy hadn’t struck a mine as there would be a real hornets’ nest below if it had been attacked by the partisans.

When our group left it was snowing and we trudged along the path. This time I was much happier, as we had a strong, well-armed escort with us. This unit must have been an elite partisan group. They were well disciplined, alert and had high spirits and a good attitude. We crossed the road easily enough but there was also an autobahn ahead, hence the escort. This road had a beautiful surface and was wide and dead straight. The Germans had armoured patrols running up and down the road all night, so a good escort was essential. And we made it. Once over the road it was hard climbing again until we reached one lone hut. Not a hope of sleeping but we did get a cup of hot ersatz coffee and some black bread. This was typical of our daily treks. Some of the airmen were by now very sick and weak and we realised that unless we reached Tito’s HQ soon, some would not make it.

I still remember one young fellow – his name was Anderson. He was a 21-year-old tail-gunner. The aircraft he was flying in was hit by anti-aircraft fire and went out of control. The last thing he heard was the command to bale out. He had opened the door of his turret to reach his parachute, which hung on a hook just outside the door. When he put his hand round to grab it, there was absolutely nothing there – the entire main part of the aircraft had gone. The flak had shot the tail and he realised that the tail had just broken away. He believed the rest of the crew would have died, as without its tail the aircraft would go into an uncontrollable spin. He told me he just sat down in his seat and yelled. The tail did not spin, but sailed down, landing in the tops of some tall trees, then slowly sliding down to the ground. He stepped out, unharmed physically but mentally a mess. Sometimes he didn’t know who he was. He ranted and raved at night and some of the Americans took care of him. He now had diarrhoea, as had 90 per cent of us, and was very weak.

© Lindsay Gillanders 2025, ‘Frontline Medic & SOE Agent: The WW2 Memoir of William Gillanders MM’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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In October 1940, Mussolini decided to surprise Hitler by embarking on his own military adventures; predominantly rural Greece was surely a pushover for the relatively modern Italy. It was Mussolini who was surprised by the strength and purpose of the Greek resistance. In the deep snows of the high mountains of northern Greece, the poorly equipped but fervently patriotic Greek Army trounced the Italians and pushed them back into Albania. But everything changed when Hitler intervened.

John Carr’s comprehensive account of the war, The Defence and Fall of Greece 1940-1941, tells the story from the Greek perspective. First published in 2013 and reprinted several times since, this history uses many Greek sources that had not previously been translated into English. He incorporates eyewitness accounts from front-line soldiers as well as the diaries and memoirs of generals and politicians.

The following excerpt takes up the story in the last few tragic days of the war, when the Greek government had to face up to the reality that the Greek armed forces, even supported by the British, were impotent to resist the overwhelming strength of the Wehrmacht, and that the Nazis were about to envelop their country.

There were many personal tragedies, not least the unfortunate Alexandros Koryzis, who had felt obliged to accept the role of Prime Minister only when the King asked him, upon the untimely death of his predecessor at the end of January:

Koryzis was deathly tired. He confessed to King George that, as the Germans had now invaded and would in all likelihood occupy Athens, he had failed as prime minister; all he wanted to do was to resign. The king admonished him stiffly that this was no time for a prime minister to lose his nerve and leave the country without a government; indeed, he should consider himself a front-line soldier and keep fighting to the end. But Koryzis was adamant. He was neither a politician nor a soldier, but an ex-banker. He wanted out. Others could carry on the struggle in his place. But neither would the king budge. He ordered the hapless prime minister to stay in his post. At that, Koryzis stooped to kiss the king’s hand and said he had to go home ‘for some business’ .

Eyewitnesses saw Koryzis emerge ashen-faced, and without a word, pick up his hat and coat and exit the hotel almost at a run. Prince Peter encountered him at the front door. I managed to get a glimpse [the prince wrote], through the glass door, of his face, haggard with anguish. I thought of how weary he must be with all the responsibilities loaded on him at these critical moments. Koryzis got into his car and was driven home.

The king emerged and buttonholed his brother and heir, Crown Prince Paul, and told him that something in Koryzis’ attitude worried him and he wanted to make sure his prime minister was all right. Paul drove to Koryzis’ house, to be met by the prime minister’s distraught wife. Her husband had come home ‘very sad’ , she said, and had locked himself in the bathroom. At that moment a pistol shot sounded from inside. Prince Paul burst in to find Koryzis dead, with a bullet in his head, lying in a widening pool of blood. It was the afternoon of Good Friday, the saddest day in the Greek Orthodox calendar.

Koryzis’ suicide climaxed the intense depression that seized the entire country. Morale in the RHN [Royal Hellenic Navy] was now crumbling, along with that in the army. With the King George knocked out, Rear Admiral Mezeviris transferred his flag to the Queen Olga, but he hardly had time to settle in when a mutiny on the destroyer Aetos occupied his attention. Lieutenant Commander Ioannis Toumbas, who has masterminded the scuttling of the shore batteries at Thessaloniki, was sent to the Aetos to restore order after the captain and two senior officers had walked off. Addressing the surly crew from the bow, Toumbas said he didn’t want to have to arrest anyone at this critical stage, so ‘any member of the crew who doesn’t realize his duty should leave this ship now. Those who stay will continue the fight out of the country’ . All but three of the Aetos’ petty officers and half the ratings promptly left the ship.

Some of the mutineers had sabotaged some of the anti-aircraft guns (though not irreparably). Among them was the ship’s purser, who was stopped at the gangplank and found to be carrying a case full of the ship’s money; the man was court-martialled and shot. The ugliness also spread to the crews of the Spetsai, but it was nipped in the bud with harsh measures.

Such negativity, fortunately, was the exception rather than the rule. When the air raid sirens sounded on Easter Day, 20 April, the Psara was at anchor off Megara. The crew had gathered on the deck for the Easter service and looked skywards anxiously, but nothing appeared. At 2.45 pm, just after lunchtime, Commander Konstas was ordered to join a convoy that had been put together to escort the Averof to safety at Alexandria. At 6.15 pm, about four hours before the destroyer was due to sail, fifteen Ju87s screamed down on it out of the sunset. As the Psara’s anti-aircraft guns blasted away at full strength, bombs fell on the Queen Olga and Panthir alongside.

Two bombs smacked into the foredeck of the Psara, almost severing the bow from the main structure, and knocking out the forward gun control. The Stukas strafed the decks, blasting any crewmembers there literally to bits. ‘Heads and body parts were all over’ , wrote Konstas, trying to describe the hell. The Psara’s bow began to sink, though Konstas had the satisfaction of seeing his remaining guns blast at least two Stukas out of the sky.

The Luftwaffe attacks ceased half an hour later. Konstas had the shattered ship towed to Megara, but it was too far gone for repair. The bow was under water and the engine room was flooding. Reluctantly he gave the order for the brave little Psara - the first RHN vessel to fire a naval shot in anger by shelling Italian positions in Epiros - to be abandoned. Documents and portable weapons were removed, as well as the ship’s emblem with the motto, ‘Freedom or Death’ . The Greek ensign was left flying on the mainmast.

Konstas described his own experience during his ship’s last moments,

as darkness was falling: I go down to my quarters, which are dark and full of water. I light a match to see my way. The door to my bedroom is jammed, so it can’t open. I pick up the photograph of my children, say an emotional farewell to my cabin and go back up on deck ... It is time to abandon our beloved ship. We draw away in boats. Now nothing is visible of the ship but the flag fluttering on the mast. It’s twenty past seven. The sea is about to cover the mast. We doff our hats and cry, ‘Long live the Psara? with tears in our eyes. At the same time we hear the boilers explode, the sea churns and the hulk of the Psara vanishes from our sight... We leave the place in deep sadness, yet proud, because the Psara up to the last moment performed her service to the Country.

When the Psara died, forty of her crew died with her. Fifty-seven others were wounded, two lost their wits in the horror, and two were missing. It was an Easter the survivors would never forget.

Two days after that, the destroyer Hydra was ordered to accompany the submarine Papanikolis to Alexandria, along with a Danish freighter carrying munitions. The skies seethed with Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft. Between Aigina and the mainland a large formation of dive-bombers approached from the north. Half of the formation - about three dozen planes - peeled off and dived on the Hydra. Mezeviris, on the bridge, ordered a high-speed zigzag course and readied the anti-aircraft guns. The Stukas’ attack was identical to that on the Psara - near-vertical dive bombing followed by a devastating strafing of the decks. One bullet caught the ship’s commanding officer, Commander Theodoros Pezopoulos, hatless as he was hastening up from his quarters, killing him instantly. Mezeviris saw him ‘slip and sit down on the deck, his back supported by the rail, with his eyes closed and a slight smile on his face, showing the calm of having done his duty till the last’ .

Bombs burst around the Hydra, immobilising the engines and putting out of action all but a few light machine guns below the bridge. The ship had not actually been hit, but many near misses had cracked the hull and water was pouring in. The decks were strewn with dead and wounded. When the destroyer was visibly fatally crippled, the Ju87s broke off the attack. Rear Admiral Mezeviris, himself bleeding from a flesh wound, stumbled over the foredeck awash with blood, ‘stepping over dismembered bodies’ and ordering whoever he met to abandon ship.

Only one lifeboat was left, and the most seriously wounded were placed in it. The rest of the survivors had to swim a few hundred yards to an islet called Lagosa (one of the advantages of Greek seas is that a ship is never far from some island or speck of rock in an emergency). A few minutes after the last man got off, the Hydra dipped its prow suddenly, its stern rearing up, and went down vertically, carrying Commander Pezopoulos and its dead with it.

An exhausted Mezeviris lay down on the rock of Lagosa for an hour or so. Wounded and soaked men were everywhere. One medic, himself lacking part of a leg, crawled up to the admiral. ‘How are you feeling, sir?’ the medic said, oblivious of his own life-threatening condition. The men ‘cried like children’ when they learned that Pezopoulos, a well-liked commander, was dead. As the entire scene had been visible from Piraeus, a host of rescue craft sped to Lagosa. The Papanikolis, which had waited in vain for its escort to show up, proceeded unprotected to Souda Bay in Crete. That same evening, Mezeviris ordered the Queen Olga, Lerax, and Panthir to leave for Crete ahead of schedule. They only just made it.

© John Carr 2013, ‘The Defence and Fall of Greece 1940-1941’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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The Commander in Chief , Middle East, Sir Archibald Wavel, was responsible for four significant campaigns. He had been successful in North Africa against the Italians, but now faced the Germans in Greece. In East Africa, there was a continuing struggle to defeat the Italians in their former colonies in Eritrea and Ethiopia (then commonly known as Abyssinia) and in Somalia. The Italian occupation of the African coastline leading to the entrance to the Red Sea meant that the Axis could threaten shipping bound for the Suez Canal, which was now becoming the only lifeline for supplying British forces in the Mediterranean.

The war being fought in Ethiopia was unconventional in many respects. The British commander Orde Wingate, later famous for another guerrilla force in Burma, led a group of British officers in charge of local ‘boys’, from different ethnic groups. These ‘Patriots’ were loyal to Haille Selassie the Emperor, regarded by some as a Messiah, who had been usurped by the Italian. But the different ethnic groups were not always loyal to one side, could be swayed by some of the renegade members of Ethiopian royalty, and were not always very disciplined.

This somewhat complicated story of some very colourful characters in the shifting fortunes of war is told by David Shirreff in Bare Feet and Bandoliers, the product of some wide ranging research from a many sources. The following excerpt takes up the tale at the beginning of April 1941:

[The local British commander of rebel forces] Johnson, ordered by Boustead to ‘get in front of the Italians and do what damage he could’, had taken up an ambush position with his small force on the ridge known as Jibuti or Dumbuka, 28 kilometres from Debra Markos, through which the road to the Abbai runs and waited for the Italian column. They were facing towards Debra Markos but had two sentries watching the road behind them.

At dawn on 3 April, [the Italian commander] Maraventano’s transport column left Usciater to return to Debra Markos, having delivered one of the CCNN battalions [Italian Blackshirt Militia]. The column consisted of 30 empty lorries and a Red Cross vehicle, escorted by two armoured cars, a platoon of Blackshirts and 50 of Ras Hailu’s banda [a notorious Ethiopian warlord and his irregular troops (or bandits)]. As they approached the Jibuti ridge from the south they were spotted by Johnson’s sentries. Johnson turned his men round, let the Italians get within range, and opened up with Brens and an anti-tank rifle. The leading armoured car attempted to return fire but could not elevate sufficiently, and the escort got out and returned fire from behind rocks. The two armoured cars were knocked out by the Boyes anti-tank rifle and 25 trucks were destroyed. The remaining five trucks were turned round and the survivors went off in them in the direction from which they had come.

Italian casualties were seven nationals killed and one missing, five banda killed and 12 wounded. Johnson’s force suffered no casualties. The result of this highly successful ambush was that Maraventano’s withdrawal plans were disrupted and he could not carry all the supplies he needed, though by using civilian transport, ‘I was able to load four days’ rations.’ Johnson was awarded an immediate DSO for this action.

After Maraventano had taken leave of Ras Hailu and his daughters and loyal chiefs and subchiefs (‘the older faithful ones wept’), his column started its 800-kilometre march to Dessie at 9.00 a.m. on 4 April having been assembling since dawn. Ras Hailu assured him again that his march would not be disrupted this side of the Abbai.

In addition to his seven colonial battalions and 1000 national troops, the column included, ‘4000 women and children, the families of ascari, 500 native civilians who had compromised themselves by acts done in our favour, and about 100 nationals from the towns of Engiabara, Burye, Dambacha and Debra Markos. As most carried their own belongings, you will have a faint idea of how this crowd encumbered the march of the column.’ They also had the 200 Ethiopian baggage camels captured at the Charaka river. Despite these encumbrances they covered the ground with remarkable speed.

While Maraventano departed unmolested from Debra Markos, Gideon Force [the British led guerrila force] was poised to move in. In the town Ras Hailu, the old Lord of Gojjam, performed a double act, displaying a most remarkable authority. He saw Maraventano off the premises, made sure that neither Belai Zelleka nor anyone else molested him on his way to the Abbai, put his men in to take over the forts and prevented looting in the town, and awaited Boustead and the Emperor.

Boustead sent Hayes in at midday on 4 April with two platoons of No 1 patrol company. As Hayes approached the fort, ‘I was met by a large crowd and Ras Hailu. They started kissing my feet and Ras Hailu took me in to a small inn and plied me with tej [a honey wine, like mead].’ Boustead and Nott followed with Gideon Force, placed guards on all stores and allotted areas to the gathering patriot chiefs in the surrounding forts.

Among the chiefs was Nagash [a Patriot leader, but regarded by the British as having poor authority over his men] with his men designated as governor of Debra Markos by Haile Selassie, who arrived on 5 April. With this authority he demanded that Boustead should remove his troops from the fort. Having had no help from Nagash in the fighting Boustead and his officers dealt with him and his men fairly sharply. Boustead refused to remove his troops, and when Nagash’s men started looting the hospital, ‘Jock Maxwell shot one dead at 300 yards and scared off the others, making them drop their loot as they ran.’

Nott and Kabada went back to Dambacha in one of Ras Hailu’s trucks to report to Wingate and the Emperor. Although flying the Ethiopian flag, they were sniped at by Patriots. Nott stopped and ‘warned the various posts not to fire’ .

Nott returned in the truck with Wingate, and other arrivals at Debra Markos on 5 April were Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Benson OBE, Royal Ulster Rifles, to take command of the 2nd Ethiopian Battalion, and Sandford and Kabada to see Ras Hailu, assess the political situation, and prepare for the Emperor’s entry on 6 April.

When Sandford and Kabada, who, despite what Kabada wrote afterwards, were working together effectively and amicably, met Ras Hailu, the ras, who had a sense of humour, greeted Kabada with the words, ‘You will pursue me to my grave!’ Kabada, as court chamberlain, had been his gaoler under Haile Selassie. Sandford told him that the Emperor was pleased with his action in surrendering the town and maintaining law and order, and Hailu replied, as Sandford reported to the kaid in a letter of 8 April, with ‘a long story explanatory of his attitude over the last few years, and in particular detailing his manoeuvres over the last few weeks for hoodwinking the Italians so as to be able to come over when the time was ripe.’ He also said that the Emperor should defer his entry into Debra Markos for fear of aerial attack. Sandford saw through this last remark as a ploy by the ras to consolidate his position with Nagash’s fitauraris before the Emperor arrived.

On 6 April 1941, the same day Cunningham’s forces entered Addis Ababa, Emperor Haile Selassie entered Debra Markos in a car driven by le Blanc in a convoy of six cars, which le Blanc had led up the Matakal escarpment on 2 April, the first vehicles to travel on the road he had been constructing. The date 6 April remains a significant one in Ethiopian history, the ‘Day of Liberation under the Mengistu regime (1974-91), the day on which British troops entered Addis Ababa and the day the Ethiopian flag first flew over a provincial capital.

But it had a more ominous significance at the time; it marked the recapture of Benghazi by Rommel and Axis troops, signalling the beginning of the reversal of Allied fortunes in North Africa.

Haile Selassie arrived at the fort at midday and was greeted by Wingate and a parade of the two battalions of Gideon Force commanded by Boustead. After Haile Selassie had taken the salute, Ras Hailu was to make his submission, but, awkward to the last, he kept the Emperor and the parade waiting for half an hour.

Then, as Tutton records, ‘he drove up in a motor car and got out. He bowed stiffly, a formal obeissance to the Emperor, and muttered something, and then stood upright.’ Nott was also watching the scene; ‘Haile Selassie then read an address in which he praised the Fr. Bn and 2nd Eth. Bn. He then sat on the Palace steps — which we had hastily cleaned as his dwelling — and held a reception of notables.’

We can speculate how many of those notables who said goodbye to Maraventano with tears in their eyes on 3 April came to greet the Emperor on 6 April. In the evening, on hearing that Cunningham’s troops were in Addis Ababa, the Emperor invited all officers to a ‘champagne [captured] reception’.

So ended an eventful day. Next day Nott extracted petrol from Ras Hailu, who was still holding the petrol supplies - ‘He gave me a good reception and some inferior cognac before breakfast’ - and Haile Selassie held a review of patriot forces, eliciting a comment from Maxwell, which was unflattering but fair as far as the Debra Markos campaign was concerned: ‘HM received patriots who danced before him, reciting their prowess, mostly lies except for Azaj Kabada and his boys’.

© David Shirreff 1995, 2009, ‘Bare Feet and Bandoliers: Wingate, Sandford, the Patriots and the Liberation of Ethiopia. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd. NB Not all of the above images are from this volume.

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Not many people are familiar with the name Charles H. Lightoller, although most will have seen him portrayed on screen at some time. Lightoller was the Second Officer on the Titanic and the most senior officer to survive the sinking. This alone would make him noteworthy - he has been portrayed in at least eighteen different films, television series and documentaries, and even on stage. But in a career spanning over half a century at sea, including heroic roles in two World wars, Lightoller deserves to be better known.

Just published is Unsinkable Lights - Charles H. Lightoller’s Epic Tale of Hope and Survival, which seeks to do him justice. This is more than the story of one man. It is a picture of a different age, a maritime age still visible to us but rapidly slipping from view astern. Author Dustin D. Hyland has thoroughly researched the background to a succession of dramatic events. It is fascinating account, well told. The following excerpt is the tale of just one day in that life, when Lightoller took one of his sons and a Boy Seascout across the Channel, on his motor yacht Sundowner:

‘Hard to starboard!’ the elder Lightoller bellowed. Unlike Titanic, where steering commands were given in the opposite of the intended direction, the Merchant Shipping Act of 1932 dictated that the steering orders matched the planned movement of the vessel. Roger spun the helm, and the agile motor yacht altered course to starboard. The group observed a German sea mine only a few feet from the boat’s port side.

The Sundowner was barely clear of the mine when Lightoller spotted three Luftwaffe aircraft overhead. The Gleniffer diesel could only propel the former pinnace to 10 knots. To the pilots above, she appeared to be easy picking. Lightoller watched as the trio of fighter aircraft grew larger. Suddenly, the air exploded with gunfire.

Racing nearby, the 300-foot HMS Worcester – on her sixth trip to Dunkirk since the start of Operation Dynamo – opened her 4.7-inch anti-aircraft guns, and the three Luftwaffe aircraft fled toward the French coastline. The destroyer sustained damage from an aerial attack a few days earlier. It grounded in shoal water on her return trip from Dunkirk on 30 May. The damage had slowed her top speed, but she was still moving much faster – around 18 knots – than the Sundowner, quickly leaving the motor yacht in its wake.

Around 2.25 pm, Lightoller spied a nearby craft in distress. The motor cruiser Westerly, owned by Robert Arthur Bonham Christie, was on her return voyage to Ramsgate. Her crew of five – two rescued soldiers and three navy ratings – frantically tried to get the Sundowner’s attention. Bonham Christie was an affluent yachtsman and the only son of Mary Bonham Christie – dubbed the ‘Demon of Brownsea’ for her tyrannical and reclusive ownership of Brownsea Island. When Admiralty officials couldn’t locate Bonham Christie, they commandeered the vessel.

One of the boat’s engines had stopped working on the cross Channel voyage, and now flames leaped 10 feet into the air. Smoke soared from the 25-foot motor cruiser, and the elder Lightoller directed Roger to steer in the stricken boat’s direction. Lightoller discovered that the Westerly had over 200 gallons of fuel on board as the five members scrambled aboard the Sundowner. Now, with eight people on board, the motor yacht had scarcely left the Westerly when a massive fireball exploded into the air.

‘I went alongside and took them on board’, Lightoller recalled, ‘thereby giving them the additional pleasure of once again facing the “hell” they just left’. The Sundowner was safely away, but the explosion attracted another threat. The Junkers Ju 87, or Stuka, was a twin-seat dive bomber developed by Germany in the 1930s. Partially inspired by the American Curtiss Falcon, the gull-winged aircraft could fly at over 250 miles per hour and carried various bombs below its wings and fuselage. But it was in diving toward its target that the plane separated itself from other bombers. As the bomber dove toward its target, ram air sirens mounted near the aircraft’s wheels began to scream in what became known as ‘Jericho trumpets’.

Now Lightoller could hear the dreaded shriek of the trumpets as a pair of Stukas dove toward the Sundowner. The nose of the first bomber rose as it released its deadly payload. ‘Hard-a-port!’ Lightoller ordered.Roger spun the helm, and the bomb fell harmlessly to the starboard side of the motor yacht. A wave surged over the Sundowner’s main deck as the bomb detonated.

‘Hard-a-starboard!’ Lightoller, standing in the vessel’s bow, bellowed. Once again, Roger turned the wheel, and the bomb fell safely toward the craft’s port side. ‘The bomb landed this time only a very short distance away on the port quarter’, Ashcroft remembered. ‘Water came aboard from the bomb. We rolled heavily. Got out of it.’

Luckily, two bombs proved to be the most that the Luftwaffe was willing to waste on a small motor yacht, and the Stuka pilots flew away disheartened. Lightoller quickly exchanged his white hat for a black beret, realising that his peaked cap might make him a target for Luftwaffe pilots.

But the Sundowner was not out of danger yet. As the vessel approached Dunkirk harbour, a new airborne menace emerged. Sharing the skies with the Stukas were the infamous Messerschmitt Bf 109s. Like the Stukas, the single-seater 109s cut their teeth during the Spanish Civil War. They used that experience to their advantage over Dunkirk and the Channel. Powered by an 1,800 horsepower Daimler-Benz V-12 engine, the fighters could reach speeds of nearly 400 miles per hour and carried an assortment of guns, bombs, and rockets. Now, a single 109 had the Sundowner in its crosshairs.

Luckily for the motor yacht and its eight occupants, Lightoller knew the Messerschmitts’ fatal tic. His late son Brian learned in flight school and once shared with his father that the 109s were required to lift their noses slightly just before firing their 20mm cannons. It was a trait that the former mariner-turned-chicken farmer hoped to exploit. The single 109 bore down on the Sundowner, and Lightoller waited. As the nose began to rise, he made his move. ‘Hard-a-starboard!’ The motor yacht heeled to starboard, and towers of seawater sprayed on its port side as the rounds missed their mark.The fighter swung around for another try at the 28-year-old vessel. The process repeated itself with the Sundowner making a last-second turn to port. ‘The bullets came flying down the starboard side’, Ashcroft remembered. ‘That was the start of the fighter planes. After that, they accompanied us pretty well to the harbour entrance’.

Like the Stuka pilots before him, two failed assaults proved enough, and the 109 moved along to easier targets. The elder Lightoller knew his beloved craft well, and he noticed that the agile boat was becoming lethargic as she evaded enemy aircraft. He left his perch at the bow and went below decks to investigate. While the bombs dropped by the Stukas had not directly found the Sundowner, their concussive blast had opened a few of the diagonal seams along her teak hull. Lightoller descended to the engine room, located amidships, beneath the pilot house. Water poured through the seams and started collecting in the vessel’s bowels. To counter the seawater incursion, the elder Lightoller turned on the bilge pump, hoping it would be enough to keep the seawater in check.

For Roger, standing at the motor yacht’s helm, plotting a course for Dunkirk harbour was not difficult. Ahead of the Sundowner, massive pillars of smoke rose from the oil tanks that the Luftwaffe had bombarded. When the vessel arrived near Dunkirk around 3.00 pm, officials no longer used the beaches to load ‘Tommies’ onto ships. Instead, the two breakwaters, the West Mole and East Mole, were tasked with evacuating troops. The carcasses of ships were strewn all over the harbour, and Roger cautiously picked his way through the debris and approached the West Mole.

‘Time and time again, boats were blown to smithereens. The place was strewn with wreckage’, Lightoller later wrote. As the Sundowner approached the moles, a large transport ship passed by and came under attack from the air. Stukas swarmed the vessel and dropped their payloads. Despite damage, the transporter continued to surge ahead.

Thousands of troops crowded the beaches and the narrow moles, anxiously awaiting rescue. It was low tide when the motor yacht reached Dunkirk, and Lightoller looked up at the towering West Mole. The West Mole was unusable due to nearby oil refinery fires, and it would be far too challenging to embark from there, so he instructed Roger to move to the East Mole instead. At the 1,600-foot-long East Mole, the Sundowner pulled near the quarter of the HMS Worcester, the same warship that had used her anti-aircraft guns to chase the Luftwaffe away from the motor yacht just hours before. The plan was for the troops on the overloaded Worcester to transfer aboard the Sundowner.

As Lightoller readied for the arrival of the ‘Tommies’, Worcester’s anti-aircraft guns opened another bombardment on the Luftwaffe. Once the guns had fallen silent again, Lightoller approached the warship’s skipper, Commander John Hamilton Allison. Allison had commanded the Worcester since March 1940. The commander and the Worcester rescued 509 troops from the beaches during her first voyage to the French port. Despite a destructive air raid in Dunkirk the following day, the destroyer rescued another 800 soldiers on her subsequent journey, barely escaping before another Luftwaffe attack. The warship returned around the same number of troops to Dover during her following three rescue missions.

Now, with time running out before the Nazis closed in, nearly 1,000 soldiers crowded her decks and interior spaces. ‘How many can you take?’ the destroyer’s commanding officer asked Lightoller. The Sundowner had once held twenty-one people during her Baltic voyage. Still, with the beaches and piers full of soldiers waiting to return to British soil, Lightoller reckoned he could fit a few more onboard. ‘Oh, about a hundred’, Lightoller replied. Allison was stunned. ‘Are you sure?’ the commander asked sceptically. Lightoller nodded. ‘Go ahead, take all you can’.

Lightoller ordered Gerald Ashcroft to stand on the roof of Sundowner’s wheelhouse and create a battle dressing station. Meanwhile, Roger would oversee the loading of troops below decks. Soon, the former White Star Line officer supervised the troop embarkation onto the Sundowner, and a naval rating counted the soldiers as they arrived. The first to embark was a 28-year-old Royal Navy Reserve officer, Sub-Lieutenant Charles Jerram. Jerram commanded the motorboat Skylark, but the Luftwaffe attacked the 40-foot vessel, and the Worcester rescued Skylark’s three-person crew on her way to Dunkirk. Once aboard the Sundowner, the starving sub-lieutenant raided the motor yacht’s pantry and found the only remaining food – a mouldy piece of apple pie. He promptly inhaled the dessert.

Filing behind Jerram were dozens of ‘Tommies’ – exhausted and anxious to get off the beaches of France. Soon, it became clear that the soldiers’ equipment would take up too much room and add precious additional weight to the vessel. Lightoller ordered the men to remove their gear and throw it into the harbour. Reluctantly, the equipment made its way into the drink. Roger requested the ‘Tommies’ lay on the deck and atop each other to maintain the vessel’s stability and maximise the number of troops the boat could carry.

Among the soldiers was Private Reginald King, a Malvern native who served with the British Expeditionary Forces. King embarked on the Worcester, but with the destroyer at capacity, the 21-year-old and some of his fellow soldiers were ordered at gunpoint to climb over the side to the waiting Sundowner. In his youth, King had hoped to join the Royal Navy. However, a voyage in a small boat made him seasick, so he enlisted in the Territorial Army instead. After Britain declared war, he was mobilised and soon found himself with the regular army in France. The 300-foot destroyer dwarfed the 58-foot motor yacht, and perhaps Private King had thoughts of his previous seasick voyage as he embarked the Sundowner. The private was among the first to arrive onboard and found himself crammed below decks near the bow on the vessel’s starboard side.

When the count reached fifty, Lightoller shouted to Roger to see how many more he could accommodate below decks. ‘Oh, plenty of room, yet’, came Roger’s enthusiastic reply. And so, the embarkation continued. At seventy-five, the elder Lightoller queried again. Roger confessed it was becoming crowded but mentioned that he had squirreled away three additional soldiers – two in the now empty bathtub and one on the toilet. Despite the dangerous situation and the constant barrage of Worcester’s anti-aircraft guns, the elder Lightoller hadn’t lost his sense of humour. ‘I hope the men in the bath haven’t got their boots on’, Lightoller joked. In fact, in addition to everyone’s helmets, weapons, and other equipment, their boots also found their way into the water.

At seventy-five soldiers, Roger ran out of room below decks, and the focus shifted to the main deck, with another forty-seven soldiers finding refuge. Including the 3 men who brought the Sundowner from Ramsgate that morning and the 5 rescued from the Westerly, the motor yacht now held 130 souls. ‘We once had 21 on board and I thought that was somewhat of an achievement’, Lightoller later wrote to his brother-in-law, Vermont. ‘Still I reckoned we might manage 50 or 75, but I never imagined in the wildest flight of imagination thought we could pack that number’.

Whether Lightoller thought of Titanic’s half-loaded lifeboats as the Sundowner overflowed with troops is unknown. Perhaps it was the faces of the young soldiers that reminded him of his son, Trevor, that prompted him to continue loading the motor yacht well beyond its intended load. With the vessel loaded to capacity, it was time to cross the Channel again. It was late afternoon when the Sundowner began her journey back to Ramsgate.

© Dustin D. Hyland 2026, ‘Unsinkable Lights - Charles H. Lightoller’s Epic Tale of Hope and Survival ’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd. N.B. The above images are not from this volume but are courtesy of Warner Bros. and Stavros1, Wikimedia.

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