Mar 27, 1914: Budd Schulberg was born on this date. During WW2 Schulberg was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services working with John Ford’s documentary unit.
Schulberg was among the 1st Americans to witness the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps and he pursued evidence for the war crimes trials.
He was also on the team that arrested Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl.
Sterling Hayden was born Mar 26, 1916. He served in the Office of Strategic Service Maritime Unit & received the Silver Star for crossing the Adriatic Sea from southern Italy to supply Yugoslavian communist rebels with weapons & displaying "great courage in making a hazardous sea voyage in enemy-infested waters.”
Post-WW2, he starred in "Dr. Strangelove" & "The Godfather.””
Complicated history in post-war, Red scare Hollywood. Folk song by Tom Russell:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo44BNEX4ww&list=RDMMdi6K-3kS94Y&index=10
On Jan 13, 1944, the Gestapo arrested Gustave Biéler and wireless operator Yolande Beekman in the Café Moulin Brulé in Saint-Quentin. He was executed by firing squad at the Flossenburg concentration camp on September 5, 1944. He was 40 years old. (3/3)
On Nov 18, 1942, Biéler, along with wireless operator Arthur Staggs and Michael Trotobas parachuted into France. Biéler led the MUSICIAN circuit in occupied France. (2/3)
Mar 26, 1904: On this date, Gustave Biéler was born in Beurlay, France. He was a Canadian national who served in the Special Operations Executive F section. He was considered by SOE commander, Col Maurice Buckmaster, as the best student SOE ever had. (1/3)
Veuve was one of the first Allied officers to reach the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. After the end of WW2, René Veuve adopted his codename "Joyeuse" as his surname. He worked as an emergency & trauma surgeon at the Mayo Clinic while also pursuing a master's degree in surgery at the University of Minnesota. He was a co-founder of the American Trauma Society. He died June 12, 2012 (aged 92) in Lake Placid, New York. (4/4)
As part of Operation Sussex, Veuve parachuted into northern France in April, 1944 near Chartres & adopted the cover of a postal worker. The operation was a major success. (2/4)
René Veuve was born in Zurich, Switzerland. He was an agent of the Office of Strategic Services, codename Joyeuse. He was raised & educated in France & Switzerland. He joined the Free French Forces following the collapse of France with the German invasion in 1940. (1/4)
Ein paar Punkte, die in DMs gerutscht sind:
Was wenn die Okkupation schlimmer ist als Krieg? Holocaust, Holodromor, Kulturrevolution, Rote Khmer, Pfad der Tränen? Was macht #WW2 angeblich so einzigartig in der Rechtfertigung?
Srebrenica wurde weitgehend widerstandslos eingenommen, und 8k von 36k Bewohner wurden massakriert.
Während der 4-jährigen Belagerung von Sarajevo wurden 15k Menschen getötet (davon 5k Zivilisten) - bei einer Bevölkeung von 300k-380k.
In the post-war period, Italian women participated in politics of their country in unprecedented number. 50% of the women elected to the postwar Parliament had a partisan background. The gains Italian women earned through their courageous work with the Resistance resulted in them acquiring a seat at the table of Italian politics. (2/2)
Over one quarter of the participants in the Italian Resistance during WW2 were women. After the war, 200,000 Italians were registered formally as active members of the Resistance; 55,000 were women. (1/2)
The original WW2 War Department document “FASCISM!” may be read in its entirety here: (2/2)
https://archive.org/details/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism/page/n7/mode/2up
Mar 24, 1945:
“Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for US Army personnel in the European theater of WW2... On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was ‘FASCISM!’” (1/2)
Mar 24, On this date in 1944, the real ‘Great Escape’ occurred when British Commonwealth POWs escaped from the German prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III.
It was immortalized in the HIGHLY fictionalized 1963 film ‘The Great Escape’ (including among other inaccuracies, the role of Americans in the actual escape.) In the movie, Steve McQueen's character was based on Jerry Sage of the Office of Strategic Services.
Violette Szabό was executed at Ravensbrück at the age of 23, on or before 5 February 1945. She was posthumously awarded the George Cross, the highest award bestowed by the British government for non-operational gallantry or gallantry not in the presence of an enemy. She is one of only twelve George Crosses to be awarded to a woman. (2/2)
Mar 24, 1944: On this date, the poem The Life That I Have was issued by Special Operations Executive cryptographer Leo Marks to agent Violette Szabo. The poem was made famous by its inclusion in the 1958 movie about Szabo, Carve Her Name with Pride. (1/2)
This documentary (in Norwegian with English subtitles) tells the story of Operation Martin and Jan Baalsrud’s escape. It includes interviews with Baalsrud and others. (5/5)
He had a harrowing 2 month journey fleeing to neutral Sweden. Along the way, he was buried in an avalanche, amputated his own frostbitten toes, battled starvation, & went snowblind. He eventually made it to safety. (4/5)
https://explorersweb.com/2021/03/20/great-survival-stories-jan-baalsrud-evades-nazi-dragnet/
He swam several hundred meters through ice water, bullets whizzing about him. One bullet sheared off a big toe. He lost a boot yet ran barefoot through the snow into a gully where he killed a German Gestapo officer with his pistol. (3/5)
Their boat was attacked by a German patrol ship. Baalsrud & his team blew up their boat with 8 tons of explosives & tried to escape in a dingy, but the German’s sank it. (2/5)
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/norwegian-jan-baalsrud.html
