The Night Witches

 The Night Witches

Women who terrorized the Nazi front at night

AN AIR REGIMENT UNLIKE ANY OTHER

In 1941, as Nazi Germany invaded the
Soviet Union, Marina Raskova, one of the
USSR’s most celebrated aviators,
convinced Joseph Stalin to allow women
to fight in combat aviation units.

Three all-female air regiments were
created. Among them was the 588th
Night Bomber Regiment, later renamed
the 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation
Regiment. Captain Evdokia Bershanskaya, 
an aviator with a ten-year experience at the time,
was appointed the commander of the
regiment. Under her  command, the regiment
fought until the end of  the war. Most of its 
pilots were barely out of high school. 
Some were only 17 or 18 years old.

FLYING WOODEN PLANES INTO WAR
The women flew slow and fragile Polikarpov
Po-2 biplanes, originally designed for crop
dusting and pilot training. The planes were
made largely of plywood and canvas.
They carried minimal equipment. Yet what
looked obsolete became deadly. The planes
could fly lower than many German fighters
could safely maneuver.

Flights were highly dangerous and exhausting.
Open cockpits exposed crews to winter winds
and anti-aircraft fire. Many navigators drew
routes with pencils on maps resting on their
knees

The aircraft had dual controls, meaning both
the pilot and the navigator could operate it.
Navigators flew the plane back to base in
instances when pilots had been killed.
Until August T943, the airwomen did not carry
parachutes, choosing instead to take an
additional 20 kg of bombs. Machine guns were
only installed on the aircraft in T944.
Before then, the only Weapons available for
self-defense against enemy fighters were the
pilots’ and navigators’ TT pistols.

WHY THE GERMANS CALLED THEM “NIGHT WITCHES”
The regiment specialized in nocturnal
harassment bombing. Pilots flew in
darkness, often cutting their engines
before reaching targets. The aircraft
would glide silently over German
positions before releasing bombs.

Soldiers on the ground heard only a soft
rushing sound in the air. The Germans
compared it to the sweep of a witch's
broomstick.
That is how the “Night Witch was born.

WAR OF EXHAUSTION
German pilots initially mocked the
women pilots. That changed quickly
The regiment became known for
precision bombing, discipline and
psychological pressure Sleep deprivation
became one of their most effective
weapons. German soldiers never knew
when another aircraft would appear
overhead.

The women flew relentless missions
night after night. On some nights,
a single crew would fly 6-8 sorties
in summer and up to 10-12 in winter.
The intervals between missions were
5-8 minutes.

Because the Po-2 carried only small
bomb loads, crews had to return
repeatedly to rearm

COMBAT STATISTICS

During the course of combat operations,
the women of the regiment flew a total
of 23,672 combat sorties. In total, the
aircraft spent 28,676 hours in the air,
equivalent to 1,191 full days.

The regiment destroyed or damaged
17 crossings, 9 railway trains, 2 railway
stations, 26 supply depots, 12 fuel
tankers, 176 vehicles, 86 firing positions,
and 11 searchlights. They triggered
811 fires and 1,092 large explosions, and
delivered 155 sacks of ammunition and
food supplies to encircled Soviet forces.

KAZAKH NIGHT WITCH 
Among the regiment’s pilots was Khiuaz
Dospanova. Born in present-day Atyrau ,
in 1922, she joined the regiment at just
20 years old after training as a reserve
pilot before the war. She completed
around 300 combat sorties across the
Caucasus, Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland.
ln 1943, after a severe crash left her with
multiple fractures, doctors advised her to
stop flying. She went back to combat
anyway, only to return home in 1945,
when the war ended. She died
in Almaty in 2008 at the age of 86.
Today, she is remembered as one of Kazakhstan's
most celebrated wartime heroes.

COMBAT LOSSES
The regiment’s irrecoverable combat
losses amounted to 23 personnel and
28 aircraft. Although many of the
airwomen died behind enemy lines,
none of them were ever listed as missing
in action. After the war, the regiment's
commissar Evdokia Rachkevich travelled
to all known crash sites using funds
collected by the unit, and succeeded in
locating the graves of every fallen woman.

WELL-DESERVED RECOGNITION
The Soviet command eventually awarded
the regiment elite Guards status —
one of the military’s highest honors.
Twenty-three members of the regiment
became Heroes of the Soviet Union,
highest wartime honor. 250 women
received various awards and medals.

WOMEN II in WWII 
The “Night Witches" were part of a much
larger story. Nearly a million Soviet women
served during the WWII as pilots, snipers,
medics, machine gunners, anti-aircraft
operators, scouts, and partisans.
Millions more sustained the war effort from
the home front, carrying entire industries,
working in factories, hospitals, collective
farms, railways, and evacuation networks as
much of the male population was sent to
the front.

In total, around 34 million people served
in the Soviet armed forces during the war,
while the Soviet Union lost an estimated
27 million lives — soldiers and civilians
combined. The scale of destruction
reshaped entire generations

Sophie Scoll "The White Rose Movement"

 
 On 22nd February, 1943, Munich  a
university student stands before a guillotine,
moments from death.

She's 21 years old. Her crime? Throwing
pamphlets from a balcony.
Her name is Sophie Scholl, and she's about to
speak words that will haunt Nazi Germany and
inspire generations.

But six years earlier, Sophie believed every word
Hitler told her.
At twelve, she eagerly joined the League of
German Girls, the female wing of Hitler Youth. Her
brother Hans joined too. They marched. They
sang. They trusted.

Their father, an anti—Nazi politician, begged them
to see the truth. They argued back, convinced he
was wrong.

Then in 1937, Gestapo arrested Hans for joining an
unauthorized camping group. Sophie watched 

Storm troopers drag away her brother for
something as innocent as a scouting trip.
Everything she believed began to crumble.

By 1942, Sophie enrolled at Munich University to
study biology and philosophy. Hans was there
studying medicine, quietly gathering friends who
whispered about resistance.

Then their friend Fritz came back from the Eastern
Front and told them what he'd witnessed. Mass
shootings. Jewish families executed. The
machinery of genocide.

They formed the White Rose. They wrote
pamphlets calling Germans to wake up, to resist,
to remember their humanity.
"We will not be silent," their writings declared. "We
are your bad conscience."

Sophie bought an illegal typewriter. She helped
write their message. And because Gestapo agents
rarely suspected young women, she distributed
the pamphlets across Munich.

Five successful operations. Then the sixth.
18th February, 1943. Sophie and Hans placed
pamphlets throughout the university. Nearly done,
Sophie saw leftover leaflets in her suitcase. A
split-second choice.

She climbed to the top floor and threw them over
the railing. They cascaded down like falling snow.
A janitor spotted her. Minutes later, the Gestapo
arrived.

Four days later, after a trial that was pure theater,
Sophie received her death sentence. Hours until
execution.

Prison guards later reported her strange
calmness. No tears. No pleading. Just quiet
conviction.

Josephine Baker — Entertainer, Spy, and Resistance Hero

For International Women's Day, we remember
Josephine Baker, a woman whose life went far
beyond the stage. While many knew her as a
world-famous dancer and singer, few realised that
during World War II she became a spy and
resistance fighter for France.
Josephine Baker was born in 1906 in St. Louis,
Missouri, United States. Growing up in poverty
and facing severe racial discrimination in America,
she left home at a young age and eventually
moved to Paris, where she quickly became one of
the most famous entertainers in Europe. By the
1920s and 1930s, Baker was a superstar — known
for her performances, charisma, and bold
personality.
But when World War II began and Nazi Germany
occupied France, Baker refused to leave the
country she had come to love. Instead of fleeing,
she chose to help the fight against the Nazis.
Because she was an international celebrity,
Josephine Baker had access to high-ranking
officials, diplomats, and military officers at parties
and social gatherings. French intelligence quickly
realised how valuable this could be. Baker began
working for the French Resistance, gathering
information from conversations with Axis officials
and passing it on to Allied intelligence.

She carried secret messages written in invisible
ink on her sheet music, allowing her to travel
across borders without suspicion. As an
entertainer, she could move more freely than most
people during wartime, performing in countries
across Europe and North Africa while secretly
carrying intelligence for the Allies.
Baker also used her fame to support the war effort
in other ways. She performed for Allied troops,
boosting morale for soldiers fighting on the front
lines. She even used her own money to help the
Resistance.

Her bravery did not go unnoticed.
After the war, Josephine Baker was awarded some
of France's highest honours, including the Croix de
Guerre and the Legion of Honour, recognising her
courage and service during the war.
Yet her story did not end there.
Baker continued to fight for justice and equality.
She became an outspoken supporter of the Civil
Rights Movement in the United States, refusing to
perform for less

 

Hedy Lamarr Actress and Inventor

 

Hedy Lamarr, a 1940s Hollywood star,
developed a frequency-hopping radio
guidance system for Allied torpedoes,
laying the groundwork for today’s 
and Bluetooth technologies.

 Hedy Lamarr, a 1940s Hollywood star,
co-developed a frequency-hopping radio guidance
system for Allied torpedoes, laying the groundwork
for today's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies. 


Hollywood called her the most beautiful woman
alive. But behind the glamour she was inventing
technology 50 years ahead of its time. The Military 
ignored her. She died broke. Now her invention 
powers your phone. The Hedy Lamarr story nobody knows.

1940s. Hollywood calls her the most beautiful woman in 
the world. Hedy Lamarr. Movie star. Red carpets. Magazine 
covers But nobody knows what she does in her
spare time.

Born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna. At 19, she marries Friedrich 
Mondl, an Austrian arms dealer selling weapons to the Nozis.
He's controlling. Obsessive. She's trapped in a gilded cage.

But she's listening carefully at every dinner party.
Generals and engineers gather, discussing
weapons, torpedoes, radio control technology.
She absorbs everything. Remembers every detail.

1937. She escapes during a theater outing in London.
Flees to America.
Changes her name to Hedy Lamarr. Louis B. Mayer signs her to MGM.
She becomes o Hollywood sensation overnight.

1940. World War Two is raging. Nazi U boats sink Allied ships daily.
Radio controlled torpedoes keep getting jammed by enemy signals.
Hedy remembers everything from those
dinner parties.

She meets George Antheil at a dinner party.
He's an avant garde composer. Not a scientist. Not an engineer.
She explains her idea: Make radio signals jump between
frequencies so fast enemies can't jam them.

They work together at her house between film shoots.
Antheil understands timing from music. Hedy understands 
weapons from her first marriage.
Together they develop frequency hopping spread spectrum.

11th August , 1942. They file US Potent 2,292,387.
A secret communication system using 88 frequencies, synchronized 
like a player piano.
It would make Allied torpedoes completely un-jammable.
The US Navy reviews their invention. Too complicated, they say.
Too impractical. Impossible to manufacture.
They tell her to go sell war bonds instead
Use that pretty face for something more useful.

The potent expires in 1959. Unused. Forgotten.
Hedy continues acting, but her star fades
Roles dry up. She has no idea her invention will change
everything.

1980s. Engineers developing cellular phone
technology discover her frequency
hopping potent. 1990s. It becomes foundational for Wi-Fi.
Bluetooth. GPS.
Every wireless device uses her tech.
She never receives a cent.

1997. Finally, someone notices. She receives a Pioneer 
Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
She's 83. Nearly blind.
Refuses to appear at the ceremony.
Says on the phone: "It's about time."

19th January, 2000.
Hedy dies alone in Florida. Age 85.
Meanwhile, her frequency hopping tech
generates billions annually for tech
companies worldwide.
She never profited from any of it.

After her death, recognition finally arrives.
Inducted into the National Inventors Hall
of Fame.
Documentaries made. Books written.
The world realizes: She wasn't just beautiful
She was brilliant.

Every time you connect to Wi-Fi, pair
Bluetooth devices, or open GPS navigation,
you're using technology a Hollywood
actress invented in 1942.
The world only saw her face.
Her mind was changing the future.

They dismissed her because she was
beautiful, because she was a woman,
because she was an actress.
The military ignored her.
History nearly erased her.
But her invention outlasted everyone who
doubted her.
Hollywood called her the most beautiful woman
alive. The military called her impractical. But she 
quietly invented the technology that powers
bluetooth, and GPS. 

In the 1940s she was everywhere.
Red carpets, magazine covers, movie premieres.
But in her spare time, she read engineering manuals
and sketched inventions at her dressing table.

In the 1940s she was everywhere.
Red carpets, magazine covers, movie premieres.
But in her spare time, she read engineering manuals
and sketched inventions at her dressing table.

Born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna, she married an
Austrian arms dealer at nineteen.
He entertained generals and engineers who
discussed weapon systems over dinner.
She listened carefully and remembered every detail

I Hollywood called her the most beautiful
woman alive.
But Hedy Lamarr wasn't just a movie star. Between
filming scenes in the 1940s, she was sketching out
blueprints for something no one could imagine back
then: wireless communication.
She invented frequency hopping, a system designed
to guide torpedoes. The military ignored her. She died
broke.

Today, that same technology powers your Wi-Fi
Bluetooth, and your phone.
Beauty fades, but ideas last forever.

Hedy Lamarr was more than a movie
star.
While Hollywood adored her beauty, she was quietly
designing technology that would shape the next
century.
In 1942 she patented a secret communication system
based on frequency hopping.
It was ignored by the military and forgotten for
decades.
But her invention became the foundation of modern
wireless communication.
Every Wi-Fi connection, every Bluetooth signal, every 

GPS route traces back to her idea.
She died without profit or recognition.
Today, she is celebrated as one of the most brilliant
inventors of the twentieth century.
Sometimes the brightest minds are hidden in plain
sight.

Who Was Violette Szabo?

 

During the Second World War, Szabo was recruited by
the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to work as an
agent in German-occupied Europe. She spoke fluent
French and was sent to France in 1944, having been
recruited as an agent in 1942.


Szabo joined the SOE’s ‘F’ Section after the death of
her husband Etienne, who had been fighting as part
of the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. On her
first mission to France in April 1944, she acted as
courier to Philippe Liewer, whose resistance network
in the Rouen area of France had been uncovered by
the Gestapo. Violette’s job was to try to and
re-establish contact with members of the network
and gather vital intelligence.

Her second mission began on 07th June 1944, the day
after D-Day. She, Liewer and another agent
parachuted into south-west France, near Limoges, to
set up a new network with local resistance groups.

Three days later Szabo was on a courier trip with a
resistance leader known as ‘Anastasie’ when they
encountered German forces. Their car was stopped
at a road block and a gun battle took place. Violette
was captured but helped ensure that Anastasie was
able to escape. After capture, Szabo was brutally
interrogated in Fresnes prison in Paris before being
deported by train to Germany. During the journey the
train was attacked by British aircraft, and Violette and
another female prisoner took the opportunity - at
great personal risk - to take water to the male
prisoners.
Szabo was executed at Ravensbruck concentration
camp in early 1945.
Szabo’s story and those of other SOE agents feature
in our exhibition ‘Spies, Lies and Deception’, currently
on at IWM London. See the link in our bio for more.
The first photo shows Szabo and the second shows
her daughter, Tania, receiving her mother's
posthumous George Cross, 28th January 1947.

Herta Kasparova Czech Collaborator

  Herta Kasparova, a female
collaborator who worked with the Germans during the
occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War ll, at the
time of her execution by pole hanging...
Herta Kasparova was born on  01st June, 1923, in the
small Czech town of Trest', into a world that never
treated her gently. From birth, she lived with a visible
disability—a damaged right leg that caused a
pronounced limp. In a society that prized physical
normalcy and conformity, especially in the interwar
years, this marked her early. As a child and adolescent,
she was mocked, isolated, and made painfully aware
that she was seen as different. Long before politics
entered her life, she had already learned what it meant
to be vulnerable and watched.

When Nazi Germany occupied Czechoslovakia,
survival often depended on language, usefulness and
proximity to power. Herta spoke both Czech and
German fluently, a skill that suddenly gave her value in
a brutal system. The Gestapo in Trest' used her as a
translator, placing her in rooms where fear dictated
every word. She translated documents and
interrogations, and later was accused of acting as an
“investigator,” reporting on suspected dissidents
within her own community. Whether driven by
coercion, fear, a desire for protection, or a fragile
sense of belonging, her role tied her fate tightly to the
occupiers.

After the war, the moral landscape shifted violently
and quickly. Collaboration trials swept through
Czechoslovakia, fueled by grief, rage, and a desperate
need for justice or vengeance. Herta was arrested,
tried, and sentenced to death. She was just 23 years
old.

On 13th September, 1946, at 6:38 p.m., she was
executed by pole hanging, a method designed not for
mercy but for spectacle and punishment. The
execution device was stark and imposing. When she
was brought before it, terror overtook her body. Her
legs collapsed beneath her, and guards had to lift her
upright. Witnesses noted her visible fear as the ropes
were tied, her chest strapped, her body raised. In her
final moments, the procedure was carried out with
calculated brutality, ending her life publicly and
decisively.

Jean Bartik ENIAC,

 CAPTURED IN FRANCE, TORTURED, AND SENT TO
RAVENSBRUCK, SHE WAS SENTENCED TO DEATH-TWICE-
AND NEVER SPOKE A NAME. MOST DID NOT SURVIVE
WHAT SHE ENDURED. BUT SHE DID SURVIVE.
LIBERATED IN ‘1945. SHE WALKED OUT ALIVE WHEN
SURVIVAL ITSELF WAS RESISTANCE.

 Jean Bartik entered computing
at a moment when no one even knew what the job was
called. In the 1940s, she and five other women were
assigned to the

ENIAC, a 30-ton machine built to
calculate artillery trajectories. It filled a room, roared
with heat, and had no programming language, no
manuals, no diagrams, and no precedent. What existed
was hardware—cables, switches, and panels—and the
expectation that these women would somehow make
it work.

Programming ENIAC meant thinking in pure logic.
Bartik learned to translate complex mathematical
equations into physical actions, crawling inside the
machine, rewiring it by hand, setting thousands of
switches, and debugging problems by sound and
instinct. When something went wrong, there was no
code to review—only miles of wiring to trace. They
weren't just using the machine; they were inventing
the very idea of how a computer could be instructed

Their most revolutionary achievement came when
they transformed ENIAC from a single-purpose
weapon calculator into the first stored-program
computer. This leap—allowing a machine to hold
instructions rather than be rewired for every task—
became the foundation of modern software. Yet when
ENIAC was unveiled to the public, the women who
made it function were largely ignored, mistaken for
models or assistants rather than architects of a new
field.

Bartik spent decades watching computing become
one of the most powerful industries in the world while
the women who built its foundations were erased from
its origin story. Only later in life did she begin receiving
recognition for what she had always known: that
modern computing did not begin with sleek code or
corporate labs, but with women who taught a machine
how to think before society was ready to credit them
for it.

https://share.google/UKH8n2kFpnB2547jB

Soviet Sniper Rosa Shanina

 

 Smart, Beautiful, and Deadly:
19-Year-Old Soviet Sniper Roza Shanina with 59
Confirmed Kills, 1945

Roza Shanina, the Soviet sniper who captured global
attention at only 19 years old, achieved 59 confirmed
kills during World War ll — including 12 during the
Battle of Vilnius alone.

After her brother was killed in 1941, she volunteered
for the army and chose to become a front-line sniper.
She quickly gained a reputation for exceptional
accuracy and for performing doublets — hitting two
targets with two rapid shots.

By 1944, Canadian newspapers were calling her “the
unseen terror of East Prussia", and she became the
first Soviet female sniper to receive the Order of
Glory.

Despite Soviet orders to withdraw female snipers
from direct combat, Shanina refused to step back.
She repeatedly asked to return to the front line, even
writing to General Krylov and to Stalin himself. Her
request was denied, yet she went anyway — receiving
only administrative punishment, and continuing to
fight.

In her diary, she wrote about feeling “an unknown
force" pulling her toward battle, and about losing her
comrades one after another. She fully understood she
might be killed, but kept advancing.

On 27th January 1945, she was mortally wounded while
shielding a wounded artillery officer, and died the next
day — leaving behind deeply emotional diary entries
from a brave, strong young woman worn down by war
and loss.

Hitler without the moderates Fenruary 1938

Head of the Army and Everything 
The German press has returned to silence, said the BBC in one of its witty moments, 
and all is apparently well again in the Reich. 
The international situation has been little affected by the recent manifestation of 
disunity in Germany, but one thing remains  clear after all the excitement; A Dictator
is not necessarily as firm in the saddle as he appears to be, and as he would like the 
world to believe. appears to be, and us he would like the World to believe.

What Will Hitler Say?
The whole of Europe is wondering what Herr Hitler will say
to this Reichstag; on Sunday, when he is to make his first
public statement since the great changes in the chief offices
of State which have set him still more firmly in the saddle.

No Room For Criticism
It would seem that the general. effect of the upheaval is that Herr Hitler has removed 
from power high officials who were not entirely in sympathy with his policy, but reserved 
their right to criticised. Nazism has no room for criticism. In 1934 Herr Hitler disposed 
of his critics by having them shot; this time he has adapted the more humanised way of 
replacing them with men who will do his bidding without question.

The dramatic events of the beginning of the month brought into the light of day much ignore 
than was happening at the time. The true position of the last few years stands out clearly 
for all to judge. All during these years the Nazi Party has proclaimed that it hats stood
solidly and entirely for Germany, and that the throne on which Herr Hitler had installed 
himself by their energies  was without at flaw in its structure.
All was unity and perfection, and there were no critics i the Reich because there was 
nothing to he criticised.

Generals Dismissed
And yet, after rumours the strictest censorship could not suppress, the world learned 
that two of the main supports of this perfect organization had been set on one side, 
and a new kind of structure put in position to maintain it. The causes of this revolutionary 
change in the control of the Reich were so grave that the Commander-in-Chief and the Chief
of Staff (Marshal von Blomberg and General von Fritsch) of the most famous army in Europe 
had to surrender their high positions, together with thirteen other generals and many officers
of high rank. The Foreign Minister surrendered his high office and took a lower office in 
what is called a Secret Cabinet. The new Foreign Minister is Herr von Ribbontrop, who has 
been Ambassador in London and has  the advantage of knowing this country and its desire for 
World peace.

The immediate result of the changes is apparently that Herr Hitler has given himself more 
power than ever. He has made himself head of the Army, which he controls through National-
Socialist officers. He has put the Civil Service under a. more uniform  control than hitherto. 
In short, the new men and the new ideas have been brought to the test against the traditional 
ideas of the long established servants of the State, whether in foreign, military, or civil 
matters, and they have prevailed.

Only time can show what underlies this vast upheaval. Herr Hitler himself has frequently shown 
that he is averse from the reckless actions proposed by his fanatical followers. He porcelains
himself stronger today than in the past: can he continue to check his extremists without  
the support of the moderates who have gone.

The Crystal Gazer

 HlTLER’S FANTASY OF IMPERIAL DOMINATION


 " The German Chancellor" said Mr Chamberlain in the House of Commons on
01st September. " has not hesitated to plunge the world into misery in order to serve
his own senseless ambition." What form that ambition takes is described below.

  Just as 1914 Kaiser Wilhelm and his fellow Pan-Germans planned and worked for a
German Empire which should stretch from the North Sea to Bagdad and possibly far
beyond, so Hitler dreams of a great nazi dominion. Under Hitler however, the Drang
nach Sued-Osten (The Drive to the south east) of the Berlin Bagdad railway, of Mittel- 
Europa, has been reinforced by a religious urge.

   Like the Kaiser, Hitler believes that he is inspired by God -- the "good old german god" 
of whom we heard so much in the last war -- but he displays a mystical fanaticism which
would have been altogether alien to the character of the Kaiser, brought up as he was on
the lines of Victorian evangelism. Hitler see himself as the captain of a crusade aiming
at the domination of Europe's lesser breeds by men of the pure Nordic or Ayran race. With 
fanatical fervour he has preached his gospel from a thousand platforms and in all the
seven hundred pages of  "Mein Kampf" -- than book which is put into the hands of every
newly-married couple in the Nazi Reich.

  There is imperialism enough in all conscience in "Mein Kampf," but it is still more clearly in
evidence  in that book which has been called the New Testament of Nazism - "The Myth of
the Twentieth Century," published in 1930 by Alfred Rosenberg, the Russian refugee of 
German extraction who greatly influenced Hitler in his most impressionable early years,
and who has become the priest and prophet of Pan-German Aryanism.

  In this remarkable effusion, which is now in its 110th edition and of which more than half 
million copies have been sold, Rosenberg visual

ises a German empire which shall i
include not only Germany but all the adjacent lands in which there is a German or an Aryan
population. First Austria, he prophesied, would come into the fold, and next the Sudeten
Germans; somewhat later the Teutons of Alsace-Lorraine, Switzerland,  Luxenberg, Belguim,
Holland, Poland, Lithuania, Russia and Hungary will follow suit. Sometimes the union will
be effected voluntarily; sometimes force of arms will be neccessary. But no obstacle, however
great, can stop this growth of Germany as the imperial power of ceneral and south-eastern Europe,

  Not only the German-speaking parts of the continent are to be come under the Reich. The 
Germans will play their part as the supermen of Nietsche's creed, and they will have their 
willing and devoted slaves many other races on their border lands. Denmark, Sweden, Norway,
and Finland are to form a "Northern Germanic Federation"; Jugoslavia, Rumania, and Bulgaria 
are to  constitute the "Balkan Protectorate"; Lithuania, Latvia, and Etsonia are to be a "Baltic
Dominion"; and finally, the Russian Ukraine, together with Ruthenia and the Polish Ukraine, will 
form the vast "Ukrainian Dominion.'

More Room for Germans!

  "We demand land and soil (Colonies) for the nourishment of our people and the settlement of
our surplus population," declares the third article of the original programme of the Nazi party,
issue in 1920, four years before the birth of "Mein Kampf"; and in "Mein Kampf" Hitler urges again
and again the German right to unhammpered expansion. Before the end of the twentieth century,
he says, the world shall see 250 million Germans flourishing in the heart of the European continent.
Nazi Germany's appetite for colonial expansion will not be sated until her bounds extend from
the Atlantic and the English Channel to the Black Sea, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean.

   "Then the plough will be the sword," runs a passage in "Mein Kampf," "and out of the tears
of  war will grow the harvest of future days." 

The Plan in Operation.

     Step by step the great dream, fantastic though it may appear, has been carried into realisation.
Austria has returned to the Reich as Hitler and Rosenberg declared it should and would; the Sude-
ten Germans have returned, too, and Czechslovakia was wiped out inthe  process; the Germans in 
Memel and Danzig and the Tyrol have all returned or returning by one way or another to their
 "Homeland."

   Then somewhere, somehow, the plan has gone wrong. Instead of executing the Drang nach 
Sued-Osten to the oilfields of Rumania and the rich corn lands of the Ukraine, Hitler has flung his
 legions against Poland, which up to now has played very little part in the dreams of Pan-Germanism; 
in the map illustrating Rosenberg's scheme of German expansion, for instance, practically the whole
of Poland -- including even the Corridor -- is left outside the imperial limits.

   Moreover, in one of his most cynical moments, Hitler has shaken hand with Moscow, with the 
Bolshevik monster whom he has so often and so violently denounced, and so closed the door, for
the time, at least, on his expansion towards the south-east.

   The Kaiser in his day made a similar move. Just as Hitler has attacked Poland, so the last of the 
Hohenzollerns in 1914 swept through Belguim. And Hitler should have remembered that then Britain
stood by Belguim.   ... He should have thought of that -- and thought again.

General Gamelin 23rd September 1939

23rd September 1939
Gamelin -- Man of the Moment
Just as the last war the French people loked up to "Papa" Joffre and
to Foch, the Supreme Generallissimo, so today they put their trust in General
Gamelin, who has control of all the armed forces -- on land and sea
in the air -- of the Republic.

General Marie Gustav Gamelin was born in Paris in 1872, shortly
after France of the second Empire had crashed in Bloody ruin at
Sedan.  It is said that as a child, he played with toy soldiers in his
nursery, and today, when he attends a meeting of the Supreme War
Council, he sometimes glances across the road at the house in
which he was born.

The blood of the soldiers flows in his veins, although in his early
days he wanted to be a painter, and still today he is something
more than a dabbler in water colours. From the Military academy 
at St. Cyr, the French Sandhurst, he went to the Chasseurs, and after 
a term of service in Africa became military secretary to Joffre.

At the outbreak of the Great War in August 1914, he held a position
on the Operation Branch of Joffre's staff. What happened then may 
be told in the words of "Pertinax," the distinguished French journalist,
writing in the column of the "Daily Telegraph":

               On the evening of  25th August there was a
         discussion regarding the proper course to adopt
         in order to stop the movement of the German army,
         then pointing towards the valley of the Oise ad Paris
         and threatening to outflank the French line on the left..
             General Berthelot, Deputy Chief of the General  staff,
          declared himself in favour of a counter-attack directed
          towards the north-west and aimed at the inner (i.e. left) 
          front of the enemy right wing, which was opposite the
          British divisions. As against this Gamelin speaking for
          the Operation Branch, maintained that the invader taken 
          in the rear by an army gathered in the region of Paris and
          advancing north-eastwards.  Joffre decided in favour of
          Gamelin, who drew up Order NO. 2 -- the seed of the
          Victory of the Marne.
              The operation however, was not put into action before
           the French armies had retreated behind the Seine. On the
           morning of 04th September, when the Operation branch met,
           Gamelin, examining the map on which the positions of the
            various Corps were laid out, observed that they "Capped"
            the German effectives -- in other words, that a sort of circle
            seemed to be sketched automatically round them.
               The favorable opportunity offered itself: it was was seizing
            without delay. The attack must be made at once, and the 
            proposed recovery along the Seine put aside. Such is the    
            story of the Order No. 6 of 04th September, the order which   
            led to victory -- again the work of Gamelin's pen.

 

 In the spring of 1918, he decided to leave the French G.H.Q. for the field
and was given command of a Brigade of light Infantry (Chasseurs) in
Alsace, and later of the 9th Division. At the time of the great March 
offensive of 1918 Gamelin's single division held the front -- if it may be
called  -- which gradually spread over eleven miles. In those terrible days
 of defeat and retreat, he was one of the last to yeild ground.

 After the war he held a command in Syria, and there again he achieved 
victory for France at a most critical moment, when with 5,000 men he
annihilated a fanatical mob of 100,000 Druses.

 Small of stature, with pink cheeks, reddish hair, steel blue eyes and a crisp
moustache, he is a typical French soldier. He  is always meticulously 
turned out, with his many ribbons and medals in his buttonhole. His favorable
phrase to be, "I am a philosoopher."  As Joffre said after the battle of the Marne,
in which Gamelin had, as we have seen, played so valuble a part:: "If the be
philosophy, it is time that all generals were philosophers." 

photo Top
Meeting General Lord Gort at Victoria Station, London, in the summer of 1939
photo bottom
On several occasion general Gamelin, French Generlissimo, has paid official visits to
 (Aldershot) England, particularly since it became appartent that the Franco-British cooperation of
1914-1918 might have to be repeated in tg=he faceof the menace of Nazi aggression.

Clark Gable Actor

 

A film legend who went AWOL from Hollywood in favor of the USAF

Hollywood has plenty of actors and actresses who have served their 
country in the United States military over the years. Jimmy Stewart, 
Humphrey Bogart, Paul Newman, Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda... 
the list is lengthy.

Elvis Pressley probably had the highest-profile stint in the Army. 
The King of Rock and Roll got plenty of attention from the international 
press when he did an 18-month hitch in Germany in the 1950s.

But it’s doubtful any Hollywood actor — A-lister or otherwise — 
could quite match the unique military legacy of leading man Clark 
Gable. Gable had already soared to the peak of the acting world, 
starring in “Gone with the Wind” and winning an Academy Award for 
“It Happened One Night” by the time the United States was forced 
to jump into the World War II fray.

Gable was 41 years old and had recently lost his third wife, Carole 
Lombard, in a plane crash when he made the startling decision to halt 
his film career and join the Air Force. He was past the draft age at 
the time, but enlisted as a private in August of 1942 in Los Angeles. 
It was shocking news in Hollywood — can you picture Tom Cruise or Brad 
Pitt pulling the plug today and saying they wanted to give up their 
day jobs and head  to Basic Training?. Why would a Hollywood

Gable was sent to Officer Candidate School at Miami Beach, Fla., 
graduating as a second lieutenant. From there he went to aerial 
gunnery school and was eventually assigned to the 351st Bomb 
Group at Polebrook, England. Though he could have opted out of 
flying on any combat missions, Gable flew in at least five such
missions in B-17s, at least some of which he used to get footage 
for a film he was making for the military.

             |

His overseas stint ended in October of 1943 and he was relieved 
from active duty in June of 1944 after reaching the rank of major. 
By that point he was over the maximum age for combat. When he 
resumed his movie career, he was no longer able to fulfill all his 
AAF Reserve time commitments and resigned his commission in September 
1947.

One thing is certain about Gable, he knew how to pose for a photo!
He no doubt was the subject of many more portrait photo shoots 
than the average Air Force crewman, and the Hollywood alpha male 
knew how to look great in front of a camera. In addition to his 
posed studio shots, there are many fabulous photos of him hanging 
out of plane windows, saluting and doing other cool stuff that 
collectors and enthusiasts can enjoy. Nice photos of Gable in 
his uniform can be found for as cheap as $9.99, all the way up 
to $200-plus for vintage originals. Clark Gable, Hollywood stud, 
and military man. No matter how you treated Scarlett O'Hara, we salute you! *