Tag Archives: France

Josephine Baker, singer and spy, is recognised as a National Hero by France

December 1, 2021Articles, UncategorizedAmerica, Civil Rights Movement, France, history, Josephine Baker, World War 2Dorinda Balchin

On 30^th November 2021 France honoured the US-born 20th Century singer and activist Josephine Baker with a place in the Pantheon, the memorial to France’s national heroes, the first black woman to receive such an honour. So, who was Josephine Baker, and why is she such a hero to the French?

Josephine McDonald, the daughter of Carrie McDonald, was born in St Louis on 3^rd June 1906. Her official biography states that her father was a vaudeville drummer, Eddie Carson, but it’s believed that she was actually the daughter of a member of a wealthy German family whom her mother was working for at the time. Carrie and Eddie often took Josephine onto the stage with them during their act but, unfortunately, their stage careers weren’t a success and the couple eventually split up.

Josephine grew up in a poor part of St Louis where she helped with the family finances by doing laundry, waiting on tables and babysitting; when she couldn’t find work she would dance in the streets collecting money from passers-by. By the age of 13, Josephine had left home and was touring with a vaudeville troupe, the Jones Family Band and Dixie Steppers, before joining the first African-American musical, Shuffle Along. In the show she was placed on the end of the chorus-line but drew attention to herself by exaggerating the dance routines in a comical way and soon became popular with audiences, the start of an illustrious career.

Josephine married four times over the years. Her first marriage was to Willie Wells when she was just 13 years old; the marriage was very short-lived. She married for a second time in 1921, to Willie Baker. This marriage didn’t last long either, but she kept Willie’s surname for the rest of her life as it was her name when she first became famous.

In 1925 Josephine travelled to Paris where she took part in a new show, La Revue Negre’ (The Negro Review). Her ‘Danse sauvage’ where she worn nothing but a feather skirt was seen as wild, sensual and charismatic, and she became an overnight sensation, becoming a symbol of the jazz age. She then moved on to perform at the Folies Bergère with her iconic costume – a skirt of artificial bananas and very little else. Although her audience was predominantly white Josephine’s performances followed African themes and styles. She became a French citizen in 1937 after her third marriage, to French industrialist Jean Lion. Her pet cheetah, Chiquita, often appeared on stage with her – it wasn’t uncommon for the animal to leap into the orchestra pit and terrify the musicians!

Josephine became the most successful American entertainer working in France – a level of success she could never have achieved in racially divided America. She was earning more than any other entertainer in Europe and was introduced to the elite of the time – Ernest Hemingway, Georges Simenon, Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein amongst others.

In 1927 Giuseppe Abantino became Josephine’s manager and lover. In the same year she took etiquette and singing lessons and embarked on a world tour. By the time Josephine returned to Paris she had re-invented herself and set the foundations for an enduring career. Yet despite her popularity in Europe Josephine received mixed reviews in America, often with racial undertones. TIME magazine said “Josephine Baker is a St. Louis washer-woman’s daughter who stepped out of a Negro burlesque into a life of adulation and luxury in Paris… In sex appeal to jaded Europeans of the jazz-loving type, a Negro wench always has had a headstart… But to Manhattan theatre-goers last week she was just a slightly buck-toothed young Negro woman whose figure might be matched in any night-club show, and whose dancing and singing might be topped almost anywhere outside of Paris.” An unhappy Josephine returned to France.

When France declared war on Germany in September 1939 Josephine was recruited by French Military Intelligence – the Deuxieme Bureau – to collect information about troop movements etc. from German officials she met at parties in ministries and embassies. Josephine’s undercover work was successful because of her fame which allowed her to mix with everyone from Italian bureaucrats to Japanese officials. When Germany finally invaded France Josephine left Paris for her home, Chateau des Milandes in the Dordogne, where she helped the Free French arrange visas to escape the country; Josephine also used her work as an entertainer to travel around Europe visiting neutral countries such as Spain and Portugal. She smuggled intelligence about airfields, harbours and German troop concentrations to the Spanish resistance written in invisible ink in her sheet music, from there it was sent on to England. She also carried notes pinned to her underwear, hoping that her celebrity status meant she wouldn’t be searched. As well as her work with the Resistance Josephine was a member of the Free French Forces and Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, she also served in the Red Cros, and performed for troops in North Africa and the Middle East. After the war Josephine was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion d’Honneur by de Gaulle. She was also awarded the Rosette of the Resistance.

Josephine had divorced Lion in 1940, she married for the fourth and last time in 1947, to conductor Jo Bouillon. This was a period in which she re-invented herself as a more serious singer, returning to the Folies Bergères in 1949. In 1951 she returned to perform in the US, initially a very successful run in which she refused to perform to segregated audiences and was named NAACP’s ‘Woman of the Year’. But her stance against discrimination and segregation ruffled too many feathers. Josephine was accused of being a communist, her work visa was cancelled, and she returned to France from where she continued to champion the American Civil Rights Movement.

Josephine returned to perform in the US where she continued to refuse to play to segregated audiences; her work for the Civil Rights Movement led to her being invited to speak at the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King gave his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech. Dressed in her Free French uniform and wearing her medals Josephine described how a segregated America was so different from France – “You know, friends, that I do not lie to you when I tell you I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.”

After Martin Luther King’s assassination, his widow Coretta Scott King approached Josephine and asked if she would take her husband’s place as leader of the Civil Rights Movement. Josephine saw this as a great honour but eventually declined, saying that her children were “too young to lose their mother”.

In an effort to show that all people can live together in harmony if they are not brought up with ideas of discrimination Josephine adopted 12 babies from countries all around the world; she called them her ‘rainbow tribe’, part of what she described as her ‘experiment in brotherhood’. She continued to fight racial injustices for the rest of her life.

On 8^th April 1975 Baker starred in a revue marking 50 years in show business, the audience included Sophia Loren, Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross, and Liza Minnelli. Four days later Josephine was found in a coma in her bed, surrounded by newspapers with their rave reviews – she had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. She died later that day, aged 68.

Like so many people, the war years were only a small part of Josephine’s life, yet her actions during that time showed a courage which and dedication to her adopted country which means that she has always been a popular figure. That popularity, and the gratitude of the people of France, has now been recognised by an honour given to only a few.

You can see a short BBC video about Josephine here

‘Operation Fish’ – the gold that crossed the Atlantic to keep it safe from Hitler

February 21, 2021Articles, world war 2Canada, France, Germany, Gold, Great Britain, history, Operation Fish, Second World War, World War 2Dorinda Balchin

“Hope you won’t mind our dropping in unexpectedly like this, but we’ve brought along quite a large shipment of fish.” This was the strange comment from British banker, Alexander Craig, when he arrived at Bonaventure Station in Montreal on 2^nd July 1940, yet the ‘cargo of fish’ he had brought for his Canadian counterparts contained no fish at all. The train standing at the platform was actually carrying 2,229 bullion boxes, each containing 4 bars of gold with a total value of £30 million. As well as the gold there were 500 boxes of marketable securities worth in excess of £200 million. This was a massive amount of money, yet it was only the start of Operation Fish, a wartime mission so secret that few people know of it even today.

Canada set up a Central Banking System in 1935, and within a year Britain was purchasing and holding ‘earmarked gold’ there (that is gold bought in Canada and kept there for safety or trading). By the end of 1936 the British government, with one eye on early signs of aggression from Germany, was holding 3,304 gold bars in Canada, each with a value of $US 14,000. With the prospect of war continuing to grow, Britain approached the Bank of Canada in early 1939 with a request that it would receive and hold gold reserves sent from Britain to keep them safe and to make it easier for Britain to pay America for arms and munitions if war broke out. At this point there was talk of a Lend-Lease agreement but it was still in the early stages and the Americans were demanding cash payment from Britain for all deliveries of ships, planes, tanks and munitions.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth arrive in Vancouver, 1939

The first shipment of £30 million of gold bullion from Britain was sent ‘under cover’ with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth when they made an official visit to Canada in the spring of 1939. The project was so secret that no records of the arrival of the gold in Halifax were kept, instead the cargo was unloaded at a quiet out of the way pier where 100 armed mounted police waited to transfer the gold to trains for shipping to Ottawa. Once war broke out in September of that year shipments began in earnest.

HMS Enterprise, one o f the ships used to transport Britain’s gold © IWM FL 5389

In early 1940 the British Government used its Emergency Powers Act to force civilians to register their paper securities; these were later confiscated by the Government and sent to Canada to be used in the war effort. The decision to send Britain’s wealth to the New World was not an easy one to make as the ships carrying it would be at the mercy of Hitler’s U-Boats which were then wreaking havoc in the Atlantic. Yet with the prospect of an imminant invasion of the British Isles Churchill believed he had no choice, if Britain was overrun the Government would need a base oversees from where it could direct the Empire in it’s continuing fight against Nazism. Transferring the gold was such a great risk, however, that the British War Cabinet did not inform the War Risk Insurance Office of the shipments knowing that if even just one of the ships was lost the value could never be compensated. In the month of May 1940 alone, over 100 ships were sunk whilst making the Atlantic crossing – that was more than 40% of all transatlantic travel – yet, miraculously, not a single gold transport was lost during the entire war.

When the shipments arrived in Halifax the boxes were put on sealed trains guarded by the RCMP. They travelled first to Montreal where the paper securities were unloaded and sent to the Sun Life Building to be stored in an underground vault three stories below ground level, Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers kept a 24 hour guard. The vault beneath the Sun Life Building had to be constructed in a hurry, so a rumour that the British Crown Jewels were being held there was deliberately spread as a cover for the increased activity and security.

After the securities had been unloaded the trains would continue their journey from Montreal and deliver the gold to the Bank Of Canada’s vaults in Ottawa. Each rail car could only hold 150 – 200 boxes as they were so heavy, and so as many as five trains were sometimes needed to ship the gold from just one transatlantic convoy. There was so much gold (in excess of 1,500 tons) that it filled the 6,000 square foot vault, and the Bank needed to hire more than 120 retired Canadian bankers, brokers and investment firm secretaries to keep records. By the end of Operation Fish, the Bank of Canada was home to more gold than anywhere in the world outside of Fort Knox in the United States. The movement of such vast amounts was a highly labour-intensive task and the cost of transport was over $CAN 1 million.

By the end of Operation Fish Britain’s assets in Canada exceeded over 1,500 tons of gold and over $300 billion in Securities (2020 value).

Britain was not the only country to send its gold to Canada for safe keeping. In June 1940 a single carrier from France shipped a staggering 254 tons of bullion across the Atlantic with an estimated value $US 305 million. Whilst the shipment was at sea the German Blitzkrieg rolled across northern Europe and France was defeated. The French government authorised Britain to take over France’s debts and assets to continue fighting the war, leading Churchill to request that the French gold be put with the British reserves. Unfortunately, the captain of the ship decided that he would take his orders from the hastily set up Vichy Government and so he slipped out of Halifax and sailed with his cargo to Martinique whilst France’s remaining assets in Ottawa were frozen until the end of the war.

It is testament to the high levels of security surrounding the shipment and storage of Britain’s wealth that no one found out about ‘Operation Fish’. The 5,000 employees of Sun Life never suspected what was being stored beneath their feet, and even though hundreds of people were involved in transporting, counting, recording, and storing the huge amounts of gold and securities the Axis intelligence agencies never found out about the ‘golden fish’ whch travelled from Great Britain to Canada.

The day that Churchill sank the French Fleet

July 7, 2020NewsEngland, France, history, Mers el Kebir, Second World War, World War 2, WW2Dorinda Balchin

On July 3^rd 1940 the British Fleet fired on the French Fleet which was at anchor in the North African port of Mers el Kebir, near Oran in Algeria. The attack lasted for only 10 minutes but in that time hundreds of French sailors were killed and their ships crippled. Yet only days before France and Britain had been Allies fighting against Hitler’s Germany, so what went wrong?

The German Blitzkrieg was unexpected and totally devastating in its speed and France fell to the Germans which left the British in a difficult position. Many of the ships in the French Fleet were still at sea or in port and Churchill realised that it was vital to keep these resources out of enemy hands by any means possible.

Many French ships were already in British ports but there was also a large squadron of battleships in the port of Mers el Kebir. The Admiralty were worried that if these ships were to join with the Italian navy in the Mediterranean it would give the Axis powers naval superiority there and possibly make Britain’s position in North Africa untenable. On 23^rd June 1940 an armistice was signed between France and Germany, and when the details were announced they confirmed the worst fears of the Admiralty. The agreement said that ‘The French war fleet is to collect in ports…under German and/or Italian control to demobilize.’ The declaration went on to say that ‘The German Government solemnly declares to the French Government that it does not intend to use the French War Fleet which is in harbours under German control for the purposes of the war.’

Germany and France sign an armisgtice © IWM HU 75914

However, the British government did not trust Hitler as he had broken many promises before, which left Churchill afraid that the French Fleet might be used to help an invasion of Britain. He had to make a decision about what to do next and so announced that ‘At all costs, at all risks, in one way or another we must make sure that the navy of France does not fall into the wrong hands.’

Churchill ordered the immediate setting up of Operation Grasp whose aim was to simultaneously seize

all French ships in the UK ports of Plymouth and Portsmouth
all French ships in the port of Alexandria in Egypt

At the same time Operation Catapult under Rear Admiral Somerville was to give an ultimatum to the ships in Mers el Kebir. Somerville had command of a force consisting of Ark Royal, Hood, Valiant, Resolution, 2 cruisers, and 11 destroyers. At Gibraltar Somerville met with Admiral North who was Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, and Captain Holland who spoke fluent French. The three officers had been ordered to present French Admiral Gensoul with 3 options

Join the Royal Navy to fight the Germans
Sail to a British Port where the ships would be taken over and the crews repatriated
Sail to an island in the French Caribbean, disarm, and stay there for the remainder of the war

Churchill had ordered that if Gensoul refused to make a decision he would be told to scuttle his ships. If he refused to do that the last resort would be for the British to fire on the French Fleet and sink it.

Somerville and North both felt that these orders went against what was honourable as the French had so recently been an ally; the Prime Minister understood this but explained his decision by saying that ‘you are charged with one of the most disagreeable and difficult tasks that a British Admiral has ever been faced with.’ But, despite that, he was still convinced that this confrontation with Admiral Gensoul was the only way forward.

On the morning of 3^rd July the British Fleet arrived off Mers el Kebir and Holland was ferried in by the destroyer HMS Foxhound to conduct negotiations. Gensoul initially refused to allow Holland on board his flagship because he felt insulted that the British had sent a mere Captain to speak with him, as he was an admiral he insisted that talks had to be conducted by an intermediary. Gensoul eventually rejected the British proposals saying that he would scuttle his ships if the Germans tried to take them but would not do so on the orders of the British.

Somerville recalled Holland and gave Gensoul until 3pm to reconsider his decision. Whilst waiting Swordfish aircraft were sent in and dropped magnetic mines across the harbour entrance to prevent the French leaving. At 2.15pm, probably in an attempt to buy more time, Gensoul said that he would finally speak directly to Holland. In acknowledgment of this Somerville extended the deadline to 5.30pm because he did not want to fire and hoped that further talks would lead to a resolution of the situation. However, Gensoul continued to insist that he was not prepared to relocate to the Caribbean or scuttle his ships unless they faced a direct threat from the Germans.

The Admiralty notified Somerville that French re-inforcements were on the way and so his time was up. Holland left the French admiral at 5.25pm whilst Gensoul still thought that the British would not open fire and that they were simply bluffing to put pressure on him to scuttle.

At 5.54pm the British battleships Resolution and Valient opened fire on the French Fleet, closely followed by Hood. The French tried to leave anchor to escape but it was too late and the Dunkerque, Gensoul’s flagship, was hit four times killing 181 men and causing a great deal of damage. When the Bretagne was also hit one of her main magazines exploded and the ship capsized, taking 1,079 of her crew with her.

At this point Somerville ordered a halt to attack to give the French time to abandon their ships so that the British could scuttle them, but the French had no intention of letting the British sink their ships so two destroyers and a battleship broke out of the harbour and returned fire on the British. Gensoul hoped to gain some time to allow these ships to escape so he sent a signal to Somerville to say that he now agreed to the British terms. Somerville, however, knew what was happening and told Gensoul that ‘Unless I see your ships sinking I shall open fire again.’

The French ships which had broken out managed to escape their British pursuers, but there was no hope for those left in Mers el Kebir. A final bombing run was made on the ships a few days later to make sure that none were seaworthy but the battle had, in effect, ended late in the afternoon of the 3^rd July.

During the Battle of Mers el Kebir the French lost 1,297 sailors with over 350 wounded. They saw the British attack as an act of treachery, and at the funerals of those who died Gensoul told the remaining French sailors that ‘If there is a stain on a flag today it is certainly not on yours.’

Somerville himself felt that the action he had been ordered to lead was dishonourable and called himself ‘the unskilled butcher of Oran’. He wrote home to his wife and said ‘I just felt so damned angry being called on to do such a lousy job. We all feel dirty and ashamed that the first time we have been in action was an affair like this.’

Churchill however was unrepentant. He had felt that he could not give more time for the negotiators to seek a peaceful solution and believed that ‘Mers el Kebir showed that the British War Cabinet feared nothing and would stop at nothing.’

There are a number of theories as to why Churchill ordered his fleet to fire on the French. Some argue that the British Prime Minister was simply ruthless and took this action to show the world, particularly the Americans, that Britain was not beaten and that under his leadership there would be no surrender to the Germans.

Others argue that keeping the peace between Britain and a France which had already been defeated by the Germans was not as important to Churchill as ensuring that the French ships could not be used against the British.

For Churchill making a public statement of British resolve was a major factor in ordering the operation against the French.

So, was the sinking of the French Fleet at Mers el Kabir an unpleasant necessity (Churchill’s view), a dishonourable act (Somerville’s view) or a murderous atrocity (Gensoul’s view)? Or does the answer, as is so often the case during a time of war, lie somewhere in between?

The sweet scent of collaboration? – Coco Chanel

September 8, 2019Articles, world war 2Chanel, Coco Chanel, France, Germany, history, Second World War, World War 2, WW2Dorinda Balchin

Coco Chanel is a name recognised the world over as the French fashion designer and business woman who founded the global brand which carries her name. There have been questions since the end of the Second World War about her links with Germany during the conflict, particularly her liaison with German diplomat Hans Gunther von Dincklage. So how much of this was true and how much mere rumour?

Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel was born in 1883 to a poor family; her mother died of TB when she was 12 and her father sent her and her two sisters to live in an orphanage at the convent of Aubazine where Chanel learnt how to sew, something which was to influence the whole of her life. When she was 18 the young Gabrielle moved to a Catholic girls boarding house in Moulins where she earned her living as a seamstress; she also liked to sing in cabaret, and it was whilst doing this that she got the nickname ‘Coco’.

Hugh Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster, and Coco Chanel

In the years between the wars Chanel had a couple of love affairs with wealthy and influential French aristocrats. She always wanted to be at the height of fashion and so designed her own hats; from that humble beginning she moved on to open her own boutiques in Deauville (which was the fashion centre of the ‘Roaring Twenties’) and Biarritz. Her boutiques, funded by her wealthy lovers, sold hats and fashionable clothing. The poor young girl who grew up in a Catholic orphanage now mixed with politicians and aristocrats from across Europe including Hugh Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster, and it was at this time that she met and became friends with Winston Churchill.

In 1924, Chanel was looking to expand her empire and reach by putting her new perfume on the global market but she needed financial backing to do this. Chanel was introduced to Jewish businessmen and brothers Pierre and Paul Wertheimer who invested heavily in Parfums Chanel, taking the majority of the stock for themselves and another business partner whilst leaving Chanel with just a 10% stake in the company. As her company grew Chanel met and fell in love with Paul Iribe and, during their relationship, she financed his controversial journal Le Temoin (The Witness) which was an extremely xenophobic, ultra-nationalist, and racist publication. Chanel was heartbroken when Iribe died of a heart attack.

At the outbreak of war in September 1939 Coco Chanel surprised everyone by closing her businesses and putting her 2,500 employees out of work. As the German Blitzkrieg forged its way through northern Europe Chanel moved to the Pyrenees for safety whilst the Jewish Wertheimers chose to go into exile, but before doing so they placed Parfums Chanel in the hands of a trusted friend, the Christian business man Felix Amiot. The Wertheimer’s ship sailed for New York just a few days before France fell to the Germans, and as they moved further away from France Chanel returned to Paris where she moved into the Ritz hotel which was the place where most of the highest ranking

German military staff preferred to stay, and where she had an affair with Hans Gunther von Dincklage.

Chanel still felt cheated by the Wertheimers and resented the fact that she only held a 10% share in her famous perfume; when she heard that the brothers were now producing N^o 5 in America she was furious and wanted to get revenge. Chanel decided to use the Aryanisation laws to take control of the company – after all she was Aryan whilst the Wertheimer’s were Jewish and so, by law, had no rights of ownership over Parfums Chanel. On 5^th May 1941 Coco wrote to the government department charged with disposing of Jewish financial assets to say that Parfums Chanel was still the property of Jews who had legally abandoned it. She claimed that she had never received a fair share of the profits from the company and felt that the department could now compensate her for that. In the initial legal review Amiot was able to show that he had gained control of the company from the Wertheimers through legal means, but the company was still declared Jewish, partly thanks to a friend of Chanel’s who sat on the board. The next step for Chanel was to write to the Commissioner General for Jewish Questions asking for all shares and control of all the Wertheimer’s perfume companies (not only Chanel) be given to her. Amiot had an aviation business before the war and was now working with Junkers to provide planes for the Germans (he used this link as a means to save his workers from being sent to Germany in forced labour units whilst at the same time helping to finance a resistance group working with the British). When it came to choosing between a man supplying bombers for the Luftwaffe and a female fashion designer the Germans found in Amiot’s favour.

This was a resounding defeat for Coco Chanel, and it was at this point that she appears to have begun working for von Dincklage at the Abwher (the German intelligence service in which von Dincklage was highly placed in Paris) in return for his help in trying to regain control of Parfums Chanel. The influential German agent who was also her lover gave Chanel the Agent number F7124 and code name Westminster (after her lover from before the war). It was late 1943 and the Germans were losing ground on all fronts so von Dincklage first took Chanel to Berlin to meet Walter Shellenberg who was head of the SD, the Nazi party’s intelligence agency. Schellenberg was Himmler’s right-hand man and wanted to negotiate peace with the British whilst still continuing the war against Russia and America. In November 1943 Chanel was sent to Madrid on Operation Modelhut (Operation Model Hat) to use her connection with Churchill to convince him to end the war on terms set by Hitler. Chanel and Churchill had been close friends in the 1920’s so she had every expectation that she would at the very least be able to have personal communications with him. However, Chanel’s close friend, Vera Lombardi , also knew Churchill and informed the British that Chanel was a Nazi agent, effectively ending any chance that Coco had of success in her mission – Chanel wrote a number of letters to Churchill, but as she had been denounced he didn’t answer any of them. Coco returned to Paris in January 1944.

Chanel’s relationship with von Dincklage was no secret, and the Free France Secret Services seem to have known about the work that she was doing for him. When Paris was liberated on 25^th August 1944 citizens sought out any collaborators, particularly women who had had relationships with the Germans. Just four days later, on 29^th August 1944 two FFI resistance fighters arrested Chanel at the Ritz and she was questioned by the Free French Purge Committee about her work as a German agent. It has been implied that Churchill remembered their previous friendship and intervened with de Gaulle, for she was released after just two hours questioning, and in September 1944 Chanel re-joined von Dincklage in Switzerland. In 1949 Chanel once more faced questions about how she used the anti-semite laws to try to gain control of Parfums Chanel from the Wertheimer brothers, her relationship with von Dincklage, and her work for the Abwher, but denied all accusations against her. Chanel continued to live with von Dincklage until the mid 1950’s. She returned to Paris in 1954 and reopened her couture business with help from her friend Pierre Wertheimer, the man she had sought to destroy during the war but who was now reconciled to her (Amiot had returned the company to the Wertheimers at the end of the war). The fashion business of Coco Chanel prospered as never before.

Coco Chanel, who died in 1971, is one of a number of French artists who were accused of collaborating with the Nazis during the Second World War – including Maurice Chevalier, Jean Cocteau, Sacha Guitry and Edith Piaf. So what was she? A shrewd businesswoman and opportunist, or an active collaborator? It was not until 2014 when French intelligence agencies declassified a number of documents that it was finally confirmed that Coco Chanel had worked as a spy for the Germans during the Second World War. On example from the French Defense Ministry’s archives showed that France’s secret services had suspicions about Chanel’s Nazi connections at the time:

A source from Madrid informs us that Madame Chanel, in 1942-1943, was the mistress and agent of Baron Gunther Von Dincklage. Dincklage was the attaché to the German Embassy in Paris in 1935. He worked as a propagandist and was a suspected agent.

Another example comes from Hal Vaughan’s book ‘Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War’. He spent a lot of time reviewing American, German, French, and British archives, and says that Abwehr Agent 7124 whose code name was ‘Westminster’ went on missions around Europe to recruit new agents for the Third Reich, travelling to Spain with Baron Louis de Vaufreland, a Frenchman who worked as an agent for the Germans; his job was to find people who could be recruited or coerced to spy for Germany, and as Chanel knew the British ambassador to Spain she went with him as cover, and to offer him introductions.

After the publication of Hal Vaughan’s book a spokesperson for the Chanel company said that “Such insinuations cannot go unchallenged. She would hardly have formed a relationship with the family of the owners (the Wertheimers) or counted Jewish people among her close friends and professional partners such as the Rothschild family, the photographer Irving Penn or the well-known French writer Joseph Kessel had these really been her views. It is unlikely…We also know that she and Churchill were close friends for a long time. She apparently approached him about acting as an intermediary between the Allies and the Germans for a peace settlement known as Operation Modelhut. No one knows for sure exactly what happened or what her role was to be. There are several different versions and it will no doubt always remain a mystery.”

So I leave you with a question…Did Coco Chanel really support the Nazi cause or did she just do what she thought was necessary to retain her company in a time of war? Two things remain of interest to me. The first is her pre-war funding of Le Temoin which appears to show anti-semitic tendancies on her part. The second is the details of her relationship with General Walter Schellenberg who was chief of the German intelligence agency Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) and the military intelligence spy network Abwehr (Counterintelligence) in Berlin and who sent Chanel on her mission to Madrid. Schellenberg was tried by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal at the end of the war and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for war crimes; he was released in 1951 because he had an incurable liver disease. It is interesting to note that Chanel paid for his medical care and living expenses, supported his wife and family, and paid for Schellenberg’s funeral when he died – make of that what you will.

‘Britain’s Baby Blitz’ – the world’s first jet propelled missiles

June 13, 2019Articles, world war 2ballistic missile, Doodelbug, France, Germany, history, Poland, rockets, Second World War, V-1 weapon, V-2 weapon, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Wernher von Braun, WW2Dorinda Balchin

It was 75 years ago today that the world awoke to a new age as the first V1 rocket fell on the city of London.

We are all used to the term ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’, and prior to the Second World War the only weapon which could have been called that was the gas used in the trenches during the First World War. The shells used to deliver the gas were of a conventional nature, but what the Germans later developed was something completely different so that when Hitler’s new weapons rained down on London for the first time in 1944 they were almost incomprehensible in their sophistication and power. What were they? And where did they come from?

In 1939 the Oslo Report alerted London to the development of new and very advanced weapons in Germany, but the report wasn’t taken seriously – if Britain couldn’t build such weapons then obviously Germany would be incapable of it too – and it was a number of years before the threat of missile weapons aimed at Britain from the continent was recognised by the Allied powers. It was on 29^th September 1943 that Albert Speer publicly promised retribution against the mass bombing of German cities, saying that the Nazis now had a new ‘secret weapon’; Hitler intended to deploy thousands of these weapons, and if he had succeeded he would almost certainly have destroyed the city of London.

Wernher von Braun at Peenemunde Army Research Centre

Research and development of the ‘secret weapon’ was carried out in a purpose-built facility at Peenemunde on the Baltic coast, which was the biggest research centre in the world between 1936 and 1945 and the first ever missile test site. With brilliant scientists like Wernher von Braun Germany was way ahead of the Allies in missile technology, and by 1942 they were making good progress with the test launch of the first V1 missile. Then, on 3^rd October 1942, the Germans launched the first V2 rocket into the stratosphere at supersonic speed, changing the face of warfare for ever. The ‘V’ in their name stood for Vergeltungswaffen meaning‚ ‘revenge weapon‘, and Hitler hoped that they would be in place in time to punish Britain for the destruction of German cites and turn the tide of the war in his favour.

Allied spy planes had already identified Peenemunde as a key site in Hitler’s weapons development programme, and on 17^th and 18^th August 1943 more than 500 bombers set off from Britain to destroy the facility. The raid was very successful, causing severe damage at the site and putting back the missile programme by 8-12 weeks, but more importantly from the Allied point of view some of the most important scientists involved in the project were killed during the raid, a loss which could not be replaced. As well as Peenemunde, the Allied spy planes had also identified a huge concrete bunker at St Pol in northern France, and an even bigger one in a quarry at Wizernes, 40km from the English Channel. They were not sure what these structures were for but knew that they must be vitally important to the Germans (they were actually intended launch sites for the V-weapons). These missile sites in northern France were bombed following the raid on Peenemunde, and although the huge thick concrete domes were effectively bomb proof the foundations were damaged by ‘near misses’ which made some of the sites inoperable. The only bomb that could touch the massive concrete structures was the 12,000lb ‘Tall Boy’ and the even bigger ‘Grand Slam’ bombs designed by Barnes Wallis, the mastermind behind the ‘Bouncing Bomb’.

Nordhaousen V2 faclity © IWM (OWIL 64335)

The Germans could not afford the losses caused by the Allied bombings and so the V-weapons programme was relocated to the forests of Blizna in Poland and the Hertz mountains of Germany. A mountainside just outside the small town of Nordhausen was turned into an underground factory to make V-weapons, the tunnels were so long and deep that it was hard for the allies to bomb them, and impossible for them to know what was happening inside. The SS were put in charge of the V-weapons programme at this critical stage and they conscripted 60,000 slave labourers to work there, housing them in the concentration camp at Dora. The tunnels stretched for 21km, and the conditions for the workers were terrible. Until the spring of 1944, prisoners were mostly kept underground in unstable tunnels, deprived of daylight and fresh air. The mortality rate was higher than at most other concentration camps with prisoners who were too weak or ill to work were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau or Mauthausen camps to be killed. In 1944, a compound to house forced laborers was finally built above ground level south of the main factory area, giving the workers some relief from the atrocious conditions underground. Once full production of the missiles began towards the end of 1944, the Dora-Mittelbau concentration/work camp had a prisoner population of at least 12,000.

As the final elements of the V-weapons were put together work went ahead to create launch sites in northern France with many hidden ramps being created in woods. These were V1 storerooms and launch sites aimed at Southampton, Portsmouth and London; the Germans planned to use these sites to launch up to 2,000 V1’s every day.

The V1 was a small pilotless winged bomb which carried 1 ton of high explosives and was powered by a jet engine which enabled it to travel at a maximum speed of 400 mph with a maximum reach of 200 miles (this distance decreased in poor weather conditions). A pre-set magnetic compass together with a gyroscopic auto-pilot helped it to find and maintain its course, while at the front of the flying bomb was a small propeller which measured the distance covered and shut the power to the engine when the pre-set distance had been reached, hopefully over its target. The first V1 landed on London on 13^th June 1944, a week after the D Day landings. After 15^th June around 100 V1’s were being launched against Britain every day, and the ‘Doodlebug’ or ‘Buzzbomb’ as they were called (named after the sinister sound they made) brought terror to the streets of London. When the sound of its engine stopped people ran for cover as the flying bomb fell from the sky. This new terror became known as ‘Britain’s Baby Blitz’.

Rescue after the first V1 13th June 1944 © IWM (HU 44273)

40mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun watching for V1 rockets © IWM (H 39407)

Thousands were killed in the V1 attacks and the British fought back with everything they could. There were massed anti-aircraft guns on the south-east coast of England, and RAF pilots would either shoot down or tip over the flying bombs to force them off course. V1’s flew straight and level so they were relatively easy to take out once sighted and many were shot down before they reached their target. Of the estimated 8,000 or 9,000 launched anti-aircraft guns shot down over 1,800, a similar number were brought down by the RAF, and 200 were destroyed by barrage balloons. The greatest single loss of life caused by a V1 killed 121 people when a flying bomb landed on the Guards Chapel at Wellington Barracks during a service.

D Day had started just days before the launch of the first V1, and as the Allies advanced through northern Europe they soon overran the V1 emplacements in northern France and Holland. The launch sites were steadily pushed further and further back until England was no longer within their reach and the last doodlebug fell on London 7^th September 1944.

V2 labelled nach England, to England © IWM (BU 3238)

The Baby Blitz was not, however, over. The following day, 8^th September 1944, the first V2 crashed into Chiswick in London with devastating effect. At 14m high it was a streamlined rocket as tall as a four-storey building. Its engine burned a mix of liquid oxygen and alcohol-water, and it was the first missile to reach the edge of space before falling at supersonic speed, ensuring that it came out of nowhere with no warning, delivering its payload of 1 ton of high explosive at a terminal speed of 2,386 mph. The first V2 took an estimated 5 minutes to fly the 200 miles from its launch site in the Hague to London, and there was no defence against it. As the V2 explosions came without warning, the government initially attempted to conceal their cause by blaming them on defective gas pipes which had been damaged by earlier bombing. But as more and more of the missiles landed on London the public were not fooled and soon began referring to the V-2s as “flying gas pipes”.

V2 damage 8th September 1944 © IWM (HU 88803)

By October the offensive was relentless. A particularly devastating strike was on 25 November 1944 when a V-2 exploded at the Woolworth’s store in New Cross Road, killing 168 people and seriously injuring 121 more. It was difficult for Military Intelligence and the RAF to take out these missiles at source as launch sites were not fixed. The Germans would pour an innocent looking concrete slab then, just before launch a truck would arrive with the rocket, set up, fuel it, launch it and drive off. The continued Allied advance through Europe allowed them to overrun these sites, and this is what saved London with the last V2 falling on the city on 27^th March 1945. The final death toll of Hitler’s Vergeltungswaffen project was discovered when Dora camp was liberated and thousands of dead slave workers were found stacked outside the underground tunnels, the SS had not even bothered to bury them.

Liberation of Dora, a surviving prisoner lying amongst the corpses

Germany’s V-weapons caused over 30,000 casualties in England (9,000 deaths, the rest wounded) and left hundreds of thousands homeless. Yet despite this, the overall destruction they caused was less than the Blitz of 1940-1941. In fact, more slave labourers died making the V-weapons (an estimated 20,000) than civilians were killed during the offensive.

But the successful creation of the V-weapons had ushered in a new type of warfare. The Americans and Russians rushed to grab this new technology and the scientists who had created it with Werner von Braun eventually going on to be one of the lead scientists on the American Saturn 5 project which took man to the moon.

Jim Radford ‘The Shores Of Normandy’

June 3, 2019Articles, world war 2D Day, France, history, Jim Radford, Normandy, On The Shores Of Normandy, Second World War, World War 2, WW2Dorinda Balchin

Thursday 6^th June marks 75 years since the Allies invade northern Europe on the beaches of Normandy. The largest seaborne invasion in history was supported by the Mulberry Harbours, and the most moving memorial to those who built the harbours and stormed the beaches is made by Jim Radford, who was just a boy sailor aged 15 when he sailed to Normandy.

Jim has written a song about his experiences; it has been re-recorded for this anniversary and is racing up the charts towards number one.

Please take the time to read this article, and to listen to him singing of the day this boy became a man. I can think of no more fitting tribute to those who gave so much on 6^th June 1944. https://www.heart.co.uk/news/who-is-d-day-veteran-jim-radford-and-whats-his-son/

Czech pilots of the RAF

October 22, 2018Articles, world war 2Battle of Britain, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, history, pilots, RAF, Second World War, war, World War 2, WW2Dorinda Balchin

In my last article I explained how the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, reached an agreement with Hitler in September 1938, an agreement which resulted in Germany annexing the Sudetenland and eventually taking over the whole of Czechoslovakia. There were many brave Czechs who wanted to fight against the Nazis but could not do so once their country had fallen; this article explains what happened to some of them.

In the weeks after Germany occupied Czechoslovakia thousands of soldiers and airmen managed to escape the county and joined the French Foreign Legion until the Second World War finally began in September 1939. Czech airmen then transferred to the Armée de l’Air and fought in the Battle of France. After the German Blitzkrieg and the rapid defeat of France around 4,000 Czech military personnel sailed to Britain and offered their services to the besieged island kingdom.

On 2^nd July 1940 Benes, the Czech Prime Minister in exile, asked the British Government to allow Czech airmen to help defend Britain; within a month a Czech fighter squadron and a Czech bomber squadron had been formed. The Czech pilots were an asset as they already had combat experience and nurtured a deep hatred of the Germans, whilst the British needed every pilot they could get to fight off the expected invasion by Hitler. By the end of August a second Czech fighter squadron was operating in the skies above south-east England. Many people are unaware that almost 20% of the pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain were not British. The foreign forces consisted of 147 Poles, 101 New Zealanders, 94 Canadians, 88 Czechoslovaks, 29 Belgians, 14 French, 10 Irish, 7 Americans, and 1 Palestinian. The Czech pilots soon gained a reputation for aggressive combat, no doubt fuelled by the loss of their homeland. One of these – Jacob Frantisek – was the third most successful pilot during the Battle of Britain with 17 ‘kills’, and was one of just a few ‘Triple Ace’ pilots (to qualify as an Ace you must have brought down 5 enemy planes). It is interesting to note that out of the top ten fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain (all whom shot down at least 14 enemy planes) 50% were not British and included one Czech, one Polish, one Australian and two New Zealanders.

The foreign squadrons had an impressive record against the Luftwaffe and Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, head of RAF Fighter Command, said that he was not sure that Britain would have won the aerial battle without them. In recognition of their contribution the foreign pilots were visited at their base by King George VI, whilst the Polish and Czech airmen and their exploits were a common feature in the media. One of these pilots was the aforementioned Josef Frantisek who has been credited with shooting down 17 enemy aircraft in September 1940 alone, and is considered to be one of the top ‘scorers’ of the entire war even though his career as a fighter pilot was short.

Frantisek was born just before the outbreak of the First World War with a spirit of adventure which led to him joining the Czechoslovak Air Force, and which made it hard for him to obey orders when the armed forces were told not to resist the German invasion in 1939. He fled to Poland and served with the air force there, flying low to drop hand grenades on the attacking Germans. When Poland was defeated three weeks later Josef fled to Romania where he was interned before escaping; he travelled through the Balkans until he eventually reached Syria where he embarked for France. Once there he flew against the Germans until France was defeated and he made his way to Britain where he joined the RAF, his fourth air force in little more than a year.

Frantisek was a bit of a ‘Lone Wolf’ who would break away from the rest of his squadron to fight alone, often flying incredibly close to the enemy before opening fire or pursuing them back across the English Channel, and this is what ensured his high number of kills. Many British pilots thought that he was reckless, but it may simply have been that Josef Frantisek felt that he had nothing to lose, he had watched the German war machine roll over Europe and believed that winning the battle in the skies over Britain was the last hope of defeating Hitler. In one of his own reports Frantisek described how swarms of Messerschmitt 109s attacked so he played hide and seek with them in the clouds, during the engagement he almost collided with a German bomber and then shot down two enemy planes in a few minutes before he was hit, he ended the sortie in a cabbage field north of Brighton where he said he ‘made an excellent landing’. Josef’s short but highly successful career with the RAF ended on 8^th October 1940, the day after his 27^th birthday, when he crash-landed in a field in Surrey; his plane flipped over and he died instantly. No one is quite sure what happened – whether it was a lack of fuel or perhaps just sheer exhaustion – but the Allies lost a truly great pilot that day. Not long after Frantisek’s death Hitler felt that his Luftwaffe could not gain control of the skies above Britain and his invasion was postponed.

With the Battle of Britain won the foreign pilots continued to fly with the RAF against the Germans. Another Czech hero was Karel Kuttelwascher who joined the Czechoslovak Air Force when he was 18 and had already done 2,200 flying hours before the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia. Three months after the invasion he escaped to Poland hidden in a coal train, then to France where he helped the fight against the Germans before escaping to Morocco where he got a ship to England and joined the RAF. He flew for two years with No. 1 Squadron in which time he shot down enemy planes and took part in attacks against the German battle cruisers ‘Scharnhorst’ and ‘Gneisenau’. From mid-1942 Kuttelwascher flew night intrusion missions in which he flew a long-range Hurricane over enemy bases to take out German bombers as they were taking off or landing, a time when they were low and slow so vulnerable to his cannon. His ‘Night Reaper’ plane was very successful as he destroyed 15 bombers and badly damaged 5 more in just three months. On one memorable sortie he shot down three Heinkel bombers in just four minutes; Kuttelwascher was so successful that he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross twice in just 42 days. The media idolised successful pilots like Kuttelwascher and they began to call him ‘The Czech Night Hawk’; with18 kills he was the top-scoring Czech pilot of the Second World War.

Czechoslovak airmen did not only serve as pilots, they were also involved in Transport Command, Ferry Command, photo reconnaissance, air-sea rescue, and in dropping agents into enemy territory, including their homeland. 480 Czechs paid the ultimate price and did not live to see the peace – 273 of these deaths came from the bomber crews of 311 Squadron which suffered incredible losses. There were 1,500 Czechs still serving in the RAF at the end of the war, but these heroes did not receive the welcome they deserved when they returned home.

The Communists took control of Czechoslovakia in February 1948, and it was the belief of the new authorities that anyone who had fought for the western allies was suspect, probably a traitor; many of the former pilots were arrested, and Karel Janoušek, who had been head of the RAF Czech Inspectorate during the war, was imprisoned for 15 years. Many other airmen were dismissed from the forces and all of them were victimised, their wartime heroics forgotten. One example of how these Czech heroes were treated is Josef Koukal who, like Frantisek and Kuttelwascher, had made his way to the RAF via the air forces of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France. In September 1940 he was shot down over the Isle of Sheppey, and although he was thrown clear of his plane in an explosion his clothes caught fire and he suffered burns to 72% of his body. Over the next two years Koukal underwent 22 operations at ‘The Guinea Pig Club’, the specialist burns unit at The Queen Victoria Hospital. Despite his extensive burns and two pieces of shrapnel in his right eye (which remained there for the rest of his life) Koukal was determined to fly again, his doctors could not dissuade him and he resumed operational flying in May 1943. Koukal returned to his homeland after the war, but after the Communist takeover in 1948 he was persecuted by the State Security Police. Koukal refused to be provoked so they could not arrest him but he, his wife, and their two sons were restricted to living in a single room without running water or a toilet for the next 14 years. Koukal died of a heart attack in 1980 and it was not until November 1989, after the Czech ‘Velvet Revolution’, that he finally received recognition from his homeland for the part he played in fighting to free Czechoslovakia from Nazi German control. Koukal was ‘politically and morally rehabilitated’ by the new non-Communist regime and posthumously promoted to the rank of Colonel in the Czechoslovak Air Force; at the same time the other men who had flown with the RAF were finally officially recognised. Many had already died but those who still survived and were now in their 70’s and 80’s were overnight celebrities who were finally able to show their uniforms and medals with pride, and spent as much time as possible visiting schools and clubs so that their story could finally be told.

You can find out more about these brave Czech pilots on the Free Czechoslovak Air Force webpage

Greater Love Has No Man Than This – Noel Chavasse

July 20, 2018ArticlesFirst World War, France, history, Noel Chavasse, RAMC, Sally Gunnell, Victoria Cross, WW1Dorinda Balchin

Following on from my previous article about the Royal Army Medical Corps I wanted to pay tribute to one of the heroes from the Corps who dedicated his life to helping those who had been wounded in battle, Captain Noel Godfrey Chavasse.

Chavasse was born in Oxford on 9^th November 1884, 20 minutes after his twin brother Christopher. The family moved to Liverpool when their father, Rev. Francis Chavasse, was made Bishop of Liverpool. Both boys did well at school where they excelled at sports, before going to Trinity College, Oxford. After graduating with a First-class honours degree Noel continued to study medicine at Oxford, and during that time both he and Christopher represented Great Britain in the 400 metres at the 1908 Olympic Games. In 1909 Noel joined the Officers Training Corps Medical Unit at Oxford University, later being promoted to Lance-Sergeant. He passed his exams to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and was awarded the Oxford University’s premier medical prize, the Derby Exhibition. In 1913 Chavasse joined the Royal Army Medical Corps as a Surgeon-Lieutenant in the Territorial 10^th Battalion of the King’s Liverpool Regiment.

When war broke out in 1914 Chavasse, like many other young men, was eager to serve and was happy to be in France by the end of the year. He initially wrote home to say that as he was not particularly heroic he was pleased that doctors were not allowed in the trenches so he would run little risk. Yet the young doctor soon saw the horrors of trench warfare as men were rotated back from the frontline in terrible condition, and he wrote home to say that they all came to hate the war worse than they had thought they could. Yet, despite everything, Chavasse continued to work hard, being amongst the first doctors to use the new anti-tetanus serum to help the wounded, and when the troops in nearby trenches were terrified by the first use of chlorine gas by the Germans he arranged for his father to send a gramophone to help raise their spirits.

For a man who did not feel heroic Noel Chavasse was to become the most highly decorated officer of the First World War. He was awarded the Military Cross for his actions at Bellewaarde near Ypers on 16^th June 1915 where he spent 12 hours helping to treat and rescue casualties in no man’s land (more than 1,000 men died during that offensive). Chavasse was promoted to Captain in 1915, and was also mentioned in despatches later that year.

In 1916 Chavasse was awarded the first of two Victoria Crosses. His unit suffered heavy casualties at Guillemont on 9^th August with 230 out of 600 men killed, wounded or missing. Chavasse worked for more than 24 hours, disregarding sniper, machine gun and mortar fire to tend the wounded, bury fellow officers and collect ID from the dead. Although wounded in the back by two shell splinters, he refused to retire behind the lines and worked on, rescuing men from as close as 25 yards to the German line. His VC citation read:

Captain Noel Godfrey Chavasse, M.C., M.B., Royal Army Medical Corps.

For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty.

During an attack he tended the wounded in the open all day, under heavy fire, frequently in view of the enemy. During the ensuing night he searched for wounded on the ground in front of the enemy’s lines for four hours.

Next day he took one stretcher-bearer to the advanced trenches, and under heavy shell fire carried an urgent case for 500 yards into safety, being wounded in the side by a shell splinter during the journey. The same night he took up a party of twenty volunteers, rescued three wounded men from a shell hole twenty-five yards from the enemy’s trench, buried the bodies of two officers, and collected many identity discs, although fired on by bombs and machine guns.

Altogether he saved the lives of some twenty badly wounded men, besides the ordinary cases which passed through his hands. His courage and self-sacrifice, were beyond praise.

In a letter to his parents Chavasse described his work at the front line: “We found a man bleeding badly from one arm and held the main artery, and then we put a tourniquet on with a respirator string. Then I found that the arm was all but off and was only a source of danger. So I cut it off with a pair of scissors and did the stump up. We had to do everything by the light of an electric torch and when we got a stretcher it took us two hours to get him out of the wood… The mud was fearful. While I and my Corporal were dressing a case we both sank up to our knees in the mud of the trench. Men had to be dug out and some poor wounded of another battalion perished in the mud…We had one sad casualty. A poor fellow was crouching at the bottom of the trench when there was a slip which buried him, and he was dead when he was dug out. Both his brothers have been in the Scottish and have been killed. His mother committed suicide after the death of the 2nd. There is only a sister left.”

Chavasse’s second Victoria Cross was awarded for his actions during the period of the 31^st July to 2^nd August 1917, at Wieltje in Belgium. On 31^st July Chavasse’s unit were trying to recapture Passchendaele Ridge at Ypres, and whilst tending the wounded he was hit in the head but refused to be sent from the line. The weather was terrible and he was under constant heavy fire, but time and again Chavasse went into no man’s land to help the wounded. Early on 2^nd August he was resting in his first-aid post when it was hit by a shell. Everyone in the post was killed or wounded; Chavasse himself had at least six injuries but crawled for half a mile to get help for his colleagues. He was taken to a casualty station suffering from a serious stomach wound and died there at 1pm on 4^th August 1917, aged 32. The citation for his medal read:

War Office, September, 1917.

His Majesty the KING has been graciously pleased to approve of the award of a Bar to the Victoria Cross to Capt. Noel Godfrey Chavasse, V.C., M.C., late R.A.M.C., attd. L’pool R.

For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty when in action.

Though severely wounded early in the action whilst carrying a wounded soldier to the Dressing Station, Capt. Chavasse refused to leave his post, and for two days not only continued to perform his duties, but in addition went out repeatedly under heavy fire to search for and attend to the wounded who were lying out.

During these searches, although practically without food during this period, worn with fatigue and faint with his wound, he assisted to carry in a number of badly wounded men, over heavy and difficult ground.

By his extraordinary energy and inspiring example, he was instrumental in rescuing many wounded who would have otherwise undoubtedly succumbed under the bad weather conditions.

This devoted and gallant officer subsequently died of his wounds.

One soldier who witnessed Chavasse’s actions said “Gee! He did work! I was beginning to think he was not human, because nothing made him flinch or duck…The first wound that he received was in the head, and all he did was to take his tin hat off, put a bandage around his head, and carry on…This he did all day and all night until the next wound he got, in the side, did for him…a VC is too small a reward for such a man”.

Chavasse is buried at Brandhoek New Military Cemetery, Vlamertinge. His military headstone is unique as it depicts two Victoria Crosses, underneath is an inscription chosen by his father: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”. Chavasse’s heroism is still remembered by the people of Liverpool where he came third in a BBC poll in 2003 to find the 100 Greatest Merseysiders, above Bill Shankly, George Harrison and William Gladstone, and behind only Ken Dodd and Lennon and McCartney.

Chavasse has had at least 16 memorials dedicated to him, more than any other VC holder, including one at Liverpool Cathedral. He is the only VC and Bar of World War I and one of only three since the honour was introduced by Queen Victoria in 1857.

In this video athlete Sally Gunnell talks about Noel Chavasse.

Blitzkrieg – the ‘lightning war’

May 10, 2018Articles, world war 2Ardennes, Battle of the Bulge, Belgium, Blitzkrieg, Carl von Clausewitz, France, Heinz Guderian, history, Hitler, Maginot Line, Panzer, Rommel, Second World War, World War 2, WW2Dorinda Balchin

On 10^th May 1940 Hitler launched an attack into Belgium and France. What no one could have imagined on that day was that just six weeks later Marshall Pétain would sue for peace, signing an armistice which ceded three-fifths of French territory to the Germans. To add insult to injury, Hitler insisted that the armistice was signed in the same railway carriage in which Germany had been forced to admit defeat at the end of the First World War. So what had gone wrong for the Allies?

World War 1 had been a long-protracted conflict in which the opposing armies were static for the majority of the time, dug-in in extensive trench systems across northern Europe. Between the wars the Allies had assumed that if there were to be another war it would also be trench based and so they had planned accordingly. The French had used their huge defence budget to build a line of super-trenches with fortifications, tunnels, and underground bunkers on the German border (the Maginot Line), whilst the BEF supported French troops on the Belgian border. Therefore, when the British Expeditionary Force arrived in France at the outbreak of the Second World War they were ready for the prospect of a static defensive war. What the Allies were not prepared for, however, was Hitler’s intention to fight a swift, offensive war.

At dawn on 10^th May 1940 29 German divisions began an invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium; in response the Allied commanders positioned the bulk of their forces defensively inside Belgium, playing into the hands of the enemy. What they were initially unaware of was that this attack was a feint and a further 45 divisions were thrusting forwards through the Ardennes. The French had believed this forested area to be impassable by enemy troops and so had left it woefully undefended. This second German force swiftly breached the Allied right flank, pushing them back towards the English Channel. With the fall of France and the disastrous retreat of the BEF from Dunkirk blame was placed on an innovative German tactic of blitzkrieg in which the enemy used the new technology of tanks and dive-bombers to force a swift victory. In German blitzkrieg means lightning war, a term which seemed apt for surprise attacks which made lightning fast advances into enemy territory, and in which air power supported ground troops to overwhelm the defenders. But blitzkrieg was not, in fact, a completely new idea.

Blitzkrieg – German attack through the Ardennes forest

The key elements of blitzkrieg are speed, surprise and superior firepower, and as such the concept can be traced back to Prussian military tactics in the early 19^th century where limited resources meant that the only route to victory for the Prussians was through swift, powerful attack. Carl von Clausewitz, who made a detailed study of generals from Alexander the Great to Frederick II of Prussia, argued in his 1832 book ‘On War’ that all military force should be focussed in a single action against the enemy’s ‘centre of gravity’, its Schwerpunkt. Once this vulnerable point has been identified a frontal attack combined with a double flanking movement should crush the enemy, even if attacking troops had to be withdrawn from other areas and risks taken to achieve this objective.

The German Alfred von Schlieffen developed a plan for a swift attack against his country’s old enemy, France, and this plan was put into action at the beginning of the First World War. Developing the ideas of von Clausewitz, Schlieffen’s aim was to achieve a swift victory by using 90% of the German army to move through Belgium and northern France to take Paris in a quick and decisive campaign. The plan was good in principle, but the attacking forces were slowed when they met with unexpected Belgian resistance, and this in turn gave the British time to prepare a defence at Mons. Although the Schlieffen Plan had failed it was believed to have a solid basis and so the idea of a lightning fast attack was used again in the spring offensive of 1918 when German armies reached within 75 miles of Paris before their advance was halted.

Between the wars the theory of blitzkrieg was further developed by Heinz Guderian who advocated the integration of light tanks and dive-bombers to improve the manoeuvrability of the German army, insisting that every tank should have a radio to give them an added advantage. Hitler had fought in the trenches during World War 1 and wanted to avoid further trench warfare if at all possible, so when he saw Guderian’s plan he was very taken with the idea of victory through speed and movement. The German High Command were derisive of Guderian’s plan, telling Hitler that his claim that he could reach the French coast in a matter of weeks was idle boasting, but Guderian insisted that if they could break through the enemy frontline the panic and confusion caused amongst the civilian population would hamper any defending army’s movements to the front and so make success even more assured. Despite the misgivings of his senior officers Hitler was prepared to take the gamble. Germany tested its modern blitzkrieg tactic with a combination of both air and land action in the Spanish Civil war in 1938 and in Poland in 1939, with promising results.

When Germany pushed into the Ardennes in 1940 stukas were sent in just ahead of the armour to soften up the target and destroy rail links and communication centres. The German tanks, supported by infantry in half-track vehicles, began their advance at the same time with the bombing only stopping at the last minute, leaving the Allies no time to re-group. Once the first objective was taken the attacking army moved on leaving civilian refugees to clog the roads needed by the defending army, and also attacking the fleeing civilians to add to the fear and panic. The use of FM radio communication gave yet another advantage to the attacking army, enabling quick decisions to be made based on reliable evidence rather than waiting for orders from HQ. It was left to units following this initial attack to secure the gains made, thus freeing the panzer units to move on to the next Schwerpunkt.

Blitzkrieg was so successful in the initial phase of the war that Germany went on to use the tactic on the Easter Front against the Russians during Operation Barbarossa, and in the North Africa campaign (Rommel, who commanded the German Afrika Korps, had been involved in the May 1940 attacks which forced the surrender of France). The Allies also adopted the ‘lightning war’ tactic in the Western Desert, on the Eastern Front, and after the D Day landings, relying on firepower to establish breakthroughs by fast-moving armoured units. Germany last used the blitzkrieg tactic during the Battle of the Bulge, yet the Allies continued to push forward and by the end of the war Hitler’s Third Reich was defeated by the very tactic which had brought it such success in 1940.

Bibliography:

The Roots of Blitzkrieg by James Corum
Panzer, a Revolution in Warfare: 1939–1945 by Roger Edwards
The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West by Karl Heinz Frieser
To Lose a Battle: France 1940 by Alistair Horne.
History of the Second World War by B H Liddell Hart
A History of Blitzkrieg by Bryan Perrett

Dorinda Balchin – Author

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