Table of Contents Title Title Page Copyright Page FOREWORD BY SIR JEREMY ISAACS INTRODUCTION INTERVIEWEES CHAPTER GERMANY'S HITLER CHAPTER JAPAN'S MILITARISM CHAPTER APPEASEMENT AND PHONEY WAR CHAPTER BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC 1939–40 CHAPTER FALL OF FRANCE AND DUNKIRK CHAPTER WINSTON CHURCHILL Picture Section CHAPTER BATTLE OF BRITAIN AND THE BLITZ CHAPTER NORTH AFRICA AND THE BALKANS CHAPTER BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC 1940–41 CHAPTER 10 BARBAROSSA CHAPTER 11 PEARL HARBOR CHAPTER 12 FALL OF MALAYA AND RETREAT FROM BURMA CHAPTER 13 BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC 1942–43 CHAPTER 14 BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC 1942–43 Picture Section CHAPTER 15 VICTORY IN NORTH AFRICA CHAPTER 16 STALINGRAD AND THE EASTERN FRONT CHAPTER 17 STRATEGIC BOMBING: ROYAL AIR FORCE CHAPTER 18 THE HOLOCAUST CHAPTER 19 CASABLANCA AND TEHRAN CHAPTER 20 ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS CHAPTER 21 ECONOMIC AND SCIENTIFIC WARFARE CHAPTER 22 HOME FRONT CHAPTER 23 OCCUPATION AND RESISTANCE Picture Section CHAPTER 24 STRATEGIC BOMBING: US ARMY AIR FORCE CHAPTER 25 THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN CHAPTER 26 D-DAY IN NORMANDY CHAPTER 27 BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC 1944–45 CHAPTER 28 RETURN TO BURMA CHAPTER 29 WESTERN EUROPE CHAPTER 30 YALTA AND POLAND Picture Section CHAPTER 31 FALL OF BERLIN CHAPTER 32 ENDURING THE UNENDURABLE CHAPTER 33 SETTLING ACCOUNTS CHAPTER 34 FALLING OUT: VIEWS IN 1970–72 CHAPTER 35 REFLECTIONS APPENDIX ABOUT THE WORLD AT WAR TV SERIES AWARDS EPISODE SUMMARY PERMISSIONS INDEX OF INTERVIEWEES GENERAL INDEX The definitive history of the Second World War Footnotes THE WORLD AT WAR THE WORLD AT WAR THE LANDMARK ORAL HISTORY FROM THE PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED ARCHIVES RICHARD HOLMES This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly ISBN 9781407029177 Version 1.0 www.randomhouse.co.uk 10 Published in 2007 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing A Random House Group Company Text copyright © Richard Holmes 2007 The World at War is a trademark of FremantleMedia Limited Licensed by FremantleMedia Enterprises Richard Holmes has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser The Random House Group Limited Reg No 954009 Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.co.uk A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Designed and set by seagulls.net ISBN: 9781407029177 Version 1.0 To buy books by your favourite authors and register for offers visit www.rbooks.co.uk FOREWORD BY SIR JEREMY ISAACS All film-makers shoot more footage than they use; The World at War was no exception We always knew we had more good stuff than could conceivably be crammed into twenty-six hours of commercial television – each 'hour' only fifty-two minutes, thirty seconds long, to be precise We never kept a strict tally, but I'd guess the ratio of newsreel printed to that used was about fifteen to one; for interviews it was higher still, well over twenty to one The first assemblies of strong, relevant material ran at over three hours; hard choices always had to be made to get each episode down to transmittable length We shot, from the outset, for the series and for the record What was omitted was left, not on the cutting-room floor, but in the Imperial War Museum (IWM) Thames Television, at its all-round best the finest of the ITV franchise holders, sturdily footed the bill In a way, the money Thames spent was public money The ITV companies, fifteen of them, enjoyed near monopolies, in their own areas, of television advertising revenue In February 1971, after years of pressure, the government agreed to change the basis of the special levy on ITV franchises – the price they paid for their monopoly – from a tax on revenue to a tax on profit; their income would no longer be taxed at source The condition was that the companies spend, and be seen to spend, more on programmes I went at once to my bosses at Thames and suggested we make a history of the Second World War A few weeks later, on April Fool's Day 1971, we started work Our principal collaborator was the IWM; its director, Noble Frankland, our historical adviser It was a condition of the contract that all the original footage we shot be deposited in the IWM's archive There it has lain to this day The World at War's key ingredients were the image and the word, newsreel and eye-witness interview Music and narration held all together Some programmes went short of pictures; there is little visual record of war at sea, or acts of resistance, or of genocidal gas-chambers Those episodes relied on interviews One episode, on Stalingrad, used no witnesses; no Red Army veterans would face the camera in 1972–73, at the height of the Cold War But those were the exceptions For the most part we reckoned to use newsreel and interviews, split fifty-fifty; so only about thirteen hours of interview made it to the screen Some voices are heard only for a moment An American paratrooper, who dropped in France before the D-Day landing, tells us: 'I was afraid I was nineteen, and I was afraid.' I hear him still Others, particularly the leaders, talked at greater length What interviewer, researcher or producer, facing a Supreme Commander, a presidential aide, the Foreign Secretary, an SS General, could resist seeking an overview, a tour d'horizon? It might serve in several programmes, after all As you read these pages, remember The World at War's interviewers; they did a fine job The World at War took fifty of us three years to make: we talked to hundreds of survivors and printed a million feet of film When it was finished – the final episode screened in May, 1974 – we made three lengthy specials from the ample surplus to hand Then, the team broke up; each moved on to other things Making The World at War took over our lives, but we never thought of transferring what we'd done to other media Now, triumphantly, the voices we recorded speak again on the printed page Rereading the transcripts today, I am impressed by how successfully, in skilled hands, they transfer to print; vivid, articulate, revelatory Television history is narrative history Several interpretations of a strategic decision may be worth considering, but the film-maker must choose one, and stay with it On the page, there is time and freedom to review the options On complex issues, a wealth of opinion is easily displayed, and differing experiences related In commissioning this oral history, Ebury Press has taken a visionary initiative Richard Holmes has done a superb job of selection, and of organising the mass of material On many topics he presents a broader and more nuanced account than did TV's linear narrative His book deserves a vast readership I salute him Jeremy Isaacs describes the making of The World at War in Look Me in the Eye: A Life in Television, published by Little Brown 2006 INTRODUCTION I always rather dislike being called a television historian, preferring to see myself as an historian who enjoys talking about his subject: in that sense, at least, television, books and lectures are simply different parts of the same process Yet there is no doubt that I am exactly of an age to have been profoundly influenced by television history The BBC series The Great War appeared in my last year at school, and I can well remember watching some of its episodes on a tiny television in the worn and fusty setting of a house-room at my boarding school It introduced the real complexities of its subject to an audience that either knew nothing about the war or had accepted at face value some of the more egregious comments that then passed for fact Despite the best endeavours of Dr Noble Frankland, then Director of the Imperial War Museum (whose generosity in reducing the charges that the museum might otherwise have charged for copyright material had made the series possible in the first place), it took some extraordinary liberties with its use of visual images, blurring the boundaries between reconstructed and actuality sequences It nevertheless deserves the much overused description 'landmark', and, as Dr Frankland has written, 'it launched the idea of history on screen' In 1973, almost a decade later, when I was in the early stages of my career as a military historian, pecking away at my doctoral thesis with the one-finger typing that kept the makers of Tipp-Ex in profits, the Thames Television series The World at War appeared I was captivated at once The poignant rise and fall of Carl Davis's music; the montage of extraordinary facial photographs in the pre-title sequence, each successively burned away to reveal another, like pages of an album seared by heat, and the mellifluous enunciation of Laurence Olivier, all had me enthralled even before I had properly watched a single episode Once I began to watch, I was hooked The breadth of the 26episode series, shaped and sustained by the directing brain of Jeremy Isaacs, the series producer, was simply breathtaking This was no narrowly Eurocentric story, but just what its name implied, the Second World War from background to legacy, and from the freezing waters of the North Atlantic through the sands of the Western Desert to the jungles of Burma What struck me then was the remarkable quality of the eyewitnesses who had been interviewed, and the way in which the words of the men and women who had 'fought, worked or watched' were put at the very centre of the television treatment For instance, I shall never forget hearing Christabel Bielenberg, a British woman married to a German lawyer, describing the rise of Hitler: suddenly the events of 1933–36 were not something that had happened long ago and far away, but a personal story being told by a familiar voice She was to call her book The Past is Myself, and reading the transcripts of her interview I see how apt that phrase is, and just what an impact personal accounts like this have had on my own development as a historian Looking at the series when it was first screened I was struck by its success in gaining access to so many men and women who had seen the wider picture, and having now had access to the full range of interviews, I am even more impressed To select a few names, almost at random, there are the words of John Colville, Churchill's urbane and perceptive Private Secretary; Hasso-Eccard Freiherr von Manteuffel, one of the most successful practitioners of armoured warfare; Vera Lynn, 'The Forces' Sweetheart', whose songs caught the mood of Britain at war; 'Manny' Shinwell, veteran Labour politician; Francis de Guingand, Montgomery's Chief of Staff; Albert Speer, Hitler's architect turned Post-war: Views in 1970-72 Asia nationalism Cold War Eastern Europe Japan personal responsibility Poland United States of America Western Europe Postscripts broadcasts Potsdam conference propaganda proximity fuse radar Radio Orange radio, importance Radun ghetto Reflections on the war accomplishing the main objective boring and intensely engaging community spirit death, attitude towards happiness from comradeship hermit horror easily forgotten impulse to build for the future love and war contrasts memory of those who died non-combatant involvement other matters trivial participants cut off from relatives personal responsibility of leaders privilege to be killed for a cause racial integration start sense of fulfilment turning point in life Regensburg Resistance, summary Restigouche, HMCS Rhine crossing Rome Rommel, Erwin legend and myth of Roosevelt, Franklin D businessmen Churchill, Winston S Stalin, Josef round-the-clock bombing Royal Daffodil SA (Sturm Abteilung) Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg St Helier St Ló USS St Vith Saint-Mère-Eglise Salerno San Emiliano, SS Schlieffen plan Schweinfurt Scientific warfare scrub typhus Second Front, campaign for Second Front concerns Churchill, Winston S Second Front discussions Tehran conference Settling Accounts, summary Sicily Sickle Stroke plan Simplicissimus Singapore Slapton Sands Sorge, Richard Soviet Union see USSR SS (Schutzstaffel) Stalin, Josef Churchill, Winston S humour precedent of occupiers deciding social system Roosevelt, Franklin D Tehran conference Stalingrad, Battle of fighting turning point of war Stauffenburg, Count Claus von Stork, WAS Strategic Day Bombing: US Army Air Force combat mission tours summary Strategic Night Bombing, RAF losses navigational aids Pathfinders thousand bomber raid 'window' Streczyk, Sgt Sunflower, HMS Tarawa Tay, HMS Tehran conference Poland Second Front discussions Stalin, Josef Tobruk Todt, Fritz Torgau Truman, Harry S Tukhachevsky, Mikhail U-boats attack systems attacks by planes depth-charged surface manoeuvrability U-99 U-121 U-264 U-333 U-386 U-440 U-514 U-528 U-630 wolf-pack Ukraine Unconditional Surrender terms United Kingdom economic cost of the war 'fighting to the last American' peace propaganda peripheral operations staying power of British army United Nations Organisation United States of America economy full employment gasoline rationing 'Germany First' policy Great Depression inflation internment of Japanese isolationism Lend-Lease 1941 War Production Board USSR frontier decisions Germany pact 1939 Nazism danger pre-war USSR, Invasion of Churchill, Winston S first battles Moscow environs Russian patriotism Western aid to Russia Utah Beach V–l rockets Venomous, HMS Versailles, Treaty of Vidette, HMS Vrba, Rudolf Walker, Frederick 'Johnny' Wannsee conference War Emergency Committees Warsaw uprising Wavell, Sir Archibald West Virginia, USS Western Europe 1944-45 Southern France invasion supplies across beaches White Plains, USS 'Wild Boar' system Wilkie, Wendell 'window' Wingate, Orde women mobilisation World at War, The interviewees featured transcripts television series WVS (Women's Voluntary Service) Yalta conference myths Poland spheres of influence Yugoslavia The definitive history of the Second World War Includes: All Original 26 episodes Special Presentations hour 30th Anniversary Disc containing previously unseen interviews and retrospective interviews with the original production team Imperial War Museum Photo Gallery, Biographies, Brief History of The World at War, Episode Summaries, Speeches/Songs & Newsreels/Maps FREMANTLEMEDIA Footnotes *1 By the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 the Germans accepted war guilt and the obligation to pay reparations *2 Martin Bormann (1900–45) became the powerful head of the Party Chancellery and Private Secretary to Hitler *3 Frontsoldaten, front-line soldiers: veterans of the First World War, also name adopted by several organisations formed to combat Communist revolutionaries immediately after the war *4 The Night of the Broken Glass, a pogrom against Jewish shops and homes on the anniversary of the birthday of Martin Luther, 10 November 1938 *5 Theodor Morell (1886–1948), Hitler's private physician, injected him with a cocktail of drugs including some known to cause euphoria, personality changes and psychosis *6 On 15 May 1932 a group of young officers assassinated Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai and attacked the home of Marquis Kido's predecessor *7 The Tripartite Pact also known as the Axis Pact was signed on 27 September 1940 **1 Sir Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, 1938–46 *8 Richard Sorge (1895–1944), German agent of the Comintern who joined the Nazi Party and worked under cover as a Frankfurter Zeitung journalist in Japan from 1933 *9 The Japanese occupied French Indochina in July 1941 *10 Shigenori Togo (1882–1950), Foreign Minister 1941–42 and 1945 *11 Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky (1883–1937) was the victim of Nazi disinformation that fed into Stalin's fear that the military might overthrow him *12 Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947), British Prime Minister 1923–24, 1924–29, 1935–37 *13 Field Marshal Sir Edmund Ironside (1880–1959), Chief of the Imperial General Staff 1939–40 *14 Edvard Beneš (1884–1948), President of Czechoslovakia 1935–38, in exile 1940–45, 1945–48 *15 The pact signed by foreign ministers Molotov and Ribbentrop on 23 August 1939 had secret provisions for 'territorial rearrangements' at the expense of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania **2 The Daily Worker was the organ of the British Communist Party, which under Harry Pollitt (1890–1960) was the most Moscow-servile of all the European Communist parties *16 David Lloyd George (1863–1945), a reformist pre-1914 Chancellor of the Exchequer, was Prime Minister 1916–22 of the most corrupt administration in modern British history *17 Edward Wood, Viscount Halifax (1881–1959), Foreign Secretary 1938–40, strongly urged seeking terms from Germany following the Fall of France *18 The San Emiliano was in fact sunk in 1942; this vivid extract is included here as a generic description of what merchant seamen faced, and knew they faced, every time they put to sea *19 Marshal Philippe Pétain (1856–1951), First World War hero for his defence of Verdun who became the head of the collaborationist Vichy regime 1940–44 *20 Brendan Bracken (1901–58) was widely and falsely believed to be Churchill's illegitimate son He was Minister of Information 1941–5 and was ennobled in 1952 *21 The German pilot later died of his injuries *22 Holmes calculated that he could sever the thin tail boom of the Dornier 217 with his wing and that his Hurricane would survive the impact He was right only on the first count *23 William Joyce was born in 1906 in New York A leading figure in the British Union of Fascists, he fled to Germany in 1939 to avoid internment and broadcast for the Nazis to Britain throughout the war Declared British on a flimsy technicality he was hanged for treason in 1946 *24 In July 1941 Churchill ordered that Wavell should exchange commands with General Sir Claude Auchinleck, C-in-C Indian Army *25 Fritz Todt (1891–1942) joined the Nazi Party in 1922 and was Hitler's first Armaments Minister Speer became the second after Todt was killed when his aircraft exploded on February 1942 *26 Sir Stafford Cripps (1889–1952), when Ambassador to Moscow in 1940, found his warnings of an imminent Nazi attack treated with disdain by Stalin He returned to Britain in 1942 to demand ever greater sacrifices on behalf of the USSR *27 Harry Hopkins (1890–1946), Roosevelt's friend and Chief Diplomatic Adviser, was instrumental in getting the $50 billion Lend-Lease programme through Congress *28 Lieutenant General Arthur Percival (1887–1966), Commander-in-Chief Malaya 1941–42 **3 The same day as Pearl Harbor – the International Date Line intervening *29 About half the 100,000 Asians and 16,000 of the 60,000 Europeans employed as forced labourers on the Thailand–Burma railway died of overwork, malnutrition and disease *30 Edson received the Medal of Honor for his epic defence of the Lunga Ridge with 800 men against an attacking force of about 2,500 on the night of 13–14 September 1942 *31 The invasion of Kiska in the Aleutian Islands in August 1943 was as described, but in the earlier invasion of nearby Attu the 2,500 Japanese defenders fought to the last man and inflicted 4,000 US casualties *32 Colonel Shoup won the Medal of Honor leading the assault on Tarawa *33 The defenders under Rear-Admiral Keiji Shibasaki were 3,000 marines, plus 1,000 Japanese and 1,200 Korean Pioneers, of whom 17 Japanese and 129 Koreans survived *34 General Sir Claude Auchinleck, C-in-C Middle East July 1941–August 1942 *35 Of the surrender of Tobruk on 21 June 1942 Churchill wrote, 'This was one of the heaviest blows I can recall during the war Not only were the military effects grim, but it affected the reputation of British arms Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another.' *36 Interview conducted at a reunion of Afrika Korps veterans in Germany *37 Actually Arabic *38 Recs confessed on his deathbed in 1979 that he had been a Soviet spy in association with the 'Cambridge Five' Thanks to their activities and those of traitors in the Roosevelt administration, including Alger Hiss, the Western Allies had no secrets from the Soviet dictator *39 The first thousand-bomber raid, on Cologne, took place on 30–31 May 1942 Bomber Command itself only achieved a front-line strength of 1,000 bombers in June 1944 *40 Directive issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in June 1943 'to accomplish the progressive dislocation and disruption of the German military, industrial and economic system and the undermining of the German people' *41 Between 24–25 July and 2–3 August 1943 Bomber Command mounted four major raids on Hamburg More than 40,000 were killed and more than a million survivors fled the city *42 Wild Boar, a response to the Hamburg raids, involved German fighters attacking by the light of burning cities or flares dropped by higher-flying aircraft It was abandoned by the end of the 1943 *43 The 'Battle of Berlin' ran from November 1943 to March 1944, when Bomber Command came under the command of General Eisenhower in preparation for D-Day *44 Ninety-five of 795 bombers were lost during the Nuremberg raid of 30–31 March 1944 *45 Herget's unique eight kills in one night took place on 20–21 December 1943 *46 Wolff's words betray him: he states that the SS were not the executioners but then says the commander of the death squad was an SS officer *47 Thanks to Morgen, Koch was convicted and executed in April 1945 **4 Later in the interview Hilse identified the officer as SS Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Höss, hanged on the gallows next to the Auschwitz crematorium in April 1947 *48 Eaker was well briefed: he knew that Churchill greatly favoured one-page memoranda *49 Genera] Lyman Lemnitzer was Supreme Commander of NATO 1963–69 *50 The British MAUD Committee, drawing on the research of emigré German scientists, produced a report on the feasibility of a uranium bomb on 15 July 1941, an advanced copy of which was sent to Bush He waited until he received an official version in October before taking it to President Roosevelt *51 The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) split from the established American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1938 The two organisations merged again in 1955 *52 Fritz Sauckel (1894–1946) was Hitler's tie facto Minister of Labour *53 Speer's acceptance of culpability on the forced-labour count at Nuremberg was sufficiently nuanced for him to avoid the fate of Sauckel, who was hanged *54 John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), influential British political economist who proposed an interventionist role for government that shaped Western economies for a generation *55 Although endlessly controversial in the post–war years, Butler's patiently negotiated Education Act, 1944 was probably the best solution possible to what had been one (and at the time of writing still remains) of the most intractable problems in British politics *56 The report by Sir William Beveridge (1879–1963), published in December 1942, provided the blueprint for the Welfare State legislation of the post-war Labour government *57 Dr Hans von Dohnanyi (1902–45) was a senior official in the Reichs Ministry of Justice, later seconded to the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence), where Hans Oster had attempted to warn France and Britain about Hitler's intentions before the war and which under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris became a hub of Resistance activity *58 Pastor Dietrich and Klaus Bonhoeffer were arrested at the end of 1943, as were Hans von Dohnanyi and Josef Mueller who had collaborated on a dossier of Nazi war crimes and of resistance plans passed through Pope Pius XII to London Admiral Canaris and Hans Oster were dismissed from the Abwehr in January 1944 and later executed *59 Prince Bernhard was a German aristocrat who had been a member, for convenience, of the Nazi Party and the SS Cavalry Corps before marrying Crown Princess Juliana in 1936 *60 John made contact with British Intelligence when posted to Madrid and escaped to England after the failure of the July Plot *61 Marshal of the Royal Air Force Hugh, Lord Trenchard (1873–1956), Chief of the Air Staff during the First World War and founder of the RAF **5 General of the Air Force Henry 'Hap' Arnold (1886–1950), Commander of the US Army Air Corps from 1938 and the USAAF 1941–45 *62 Bomber Command had a thirty-mission tour of operations, which could be repeated *63 In the Schweinfurt–Regensburg raid of 17 August 1943 LeMay's Wing (not Division) lost 24 of 146 B-17s and the 1st Wing lost 36 of 230 A further 87 were damaged beyond repair and 95 suffered lesser battle damage Losses on this and other missions caused Eighth USAAF to wait for the longrange Mustang fighter before venturing deep into Germany again in 1944 *64 This engagement on New Year's Day 1945 ended with the 487th shooting down 23 of 50 German fighters that attacked their airfield in Belgium during the German Ardennes offensive *65 Major General Sir Percy Hobart (1885–1957) trained the Mobile Force (later 7th Armoured Division) in Egypt and was recalled from retirement to form 79th Armoured Division RE with specialised tanks, known as 'Hobart's Funnies', for the Normandy landing *66 Robert Capa (1913–54), Hungarian-born war photographer, took 108 pictures at Omaha Beach, of which only eleven blurred frames survived a laboratory error *67 Cornelius Ryan (1920–74), author of the enormously successful The Longest Day (1959) about D-Day and A Bridge Too Tar (1974) about Operation Market Garden (Arnhem), which were made into major films in 1962 and 1977 respectively *68 Lieutenant General Lesley McNair (1883–1944) was Commanding General, Army Ground Forces, responsible for the training and equipment of troops for overseas deployment *69 Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (1891–1945) put all his guns and almost all his garrison in buried bunkers and caves, with the result that the preliminary bombardment left the defences essentially untouched *70 Actually they were greater: American losses were 8,700 killed and 19,000 wounded, while except for 216 who surrendered, the Japanese garrison of 21,000 was killed *71 Almost uniquely, at this stage of the war, the Franklin was hit by two conventional bombs Lieutenant Commander Gary was awarded the Medal of Honor *72 The Laffey, now a museum ship in Charleston, South Carolina, is thought to have taken five direct hits After running repairs, she sailed back to California under her own power *73 Scrub typhus is a disease communicated by flesh-boring parasites called chiggers *74 Mishan and Kanglatongbi are villages between Imphal and Kohima on the Dimapur road *75 In early September General von Schwerin-Krosigk was relieved of command *76 A grossly immodest press conference by Montgomery after the Battle of the Bulge almost led to his being relieved of command by Eisenhower, whose outrage was stoked by his deputy, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder He was saved by de Guingand, who flew to Paris to plead his case *77 The Third Moscow Conference, among the American, British and Soviet foreign ministers, took place in October–November 1943 *78 The Fourth Moscow Conference, among Stalin, Churchill, Molotov and Eden, took place in October 1944 *79 H Freeman Matthews (1899–1986), career US diplomat; Gladwyn Jebb (1900–96), head of the Foreign Office Reconstruction Department and first Acting Secretary-General of the United Nations; Pierson Dixon (1904–65), career British diplomat *80 The reference is to his persecutor Richard Nixon, President 1969–74 *81 Speer's statement that gauleiter Karl Hanke fled Breslau in a prototype helicopter has been generally disbelieved – Manteuffel's testimony confirms that there was such a machine *82 The Tokyo fire storm in the night of 9–10 March 1945 destroyed a quarter of a million buildings and killed in excess of 100,000 people *83 General Korcchika Anami committed seppuku on 15 August *84 The rebel officers led by Major Hatanaka Kenji murdered the commander of the 1st Imperial Guards Division and persuaded some of the palace guards to join them by claiming support from War Minister Anami After failing to find the Emperor's recording or to broadcast his own message, Hatanaka Kenji committed seppuku *85 In May 1945 Wolff negotiated the surrender of all German forces in northern Italy with the Americans The Russians learned about it from the British traitor Kim Philby *86 West Germany refused to accept the Oder–Neisse line as the permanent frontier with Poland until Chancellor Brandt recognised it by treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland in 1970 *87 Eden was referring to the penetration of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos by Soviet spies Allan Nunn May and Klaus Fuchs, backed by the Rosenberg ring in New York *88 To put it mildly – the 'stagflation' of the 1970s destroyed the post-war Keynesian consensus *89 Hiss was fully aware of the development of the atom bomb – this is perhaps the clearest example of 'he who excuses himself accuses himself in his long interview ... ABOUT THE WORLD AT WAR TV SERIES AWARDS EPISODE SUMMARY PERMISSIONS INDEX OF INTERVIEWEES GENERAL INDEX The definitive history of the Second World War Footnotes THE WORLD AT WAR THE WORLD AT WAR THE. .. pecking away at my doctoral thesis with the one-finger typing that kept the makers of Tipp-Ex in profits, the Thames Television series The World at War appeared I was captivated at once The poignant... an act of war and the other had no conceivable military justification, but to emphasise that the signature feature of the Second World War was the literally unimaginable civilian death-toll Our