3 Another stumbling block was the American Ninety-Ninth Division. They held the northern shoulder of the Bulge assault, inflicting tremendous casualties on the Germans in the Battle of Elsenborn Ridge. Despite the fact that the Wehrmacht offensive had sputtered, the Germans did not give much ground until Patton was able to relieve Bastogne. In fact, on January 1, the Germans launched Operation Baseplate (Unternehmen Bodenplatte), a last-gasp aerial bombardment on Allied airfields by the Luftwaffe. It was a success, resulting in the destruction of 465 American and British aircraft. However, the sorely depleted Luftwaffe also lost nearly 300 planes, which pretty much finished it as a fighting force.
4 The citation for Abrams’s Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster (awarded in lieu of a second Distinguished Service Cross) concludes by describing the final moments of the Bastogne breakthrough: “Heedless of approaching darkness and strong enemy defenses, he brilliantly led his battalion on to a further objective. Lieutenant Colonel Abrams’ intrepid actions, personal bravery and zealous devotion to duty exemplify the highest traditions of the military forces of the United States and reflect great credit upon himself, the 4th Armored Division and the United States Army.”
Chapter 13
1 The Twentieth Amendment officially moved the inaugural date from March 4 to January 20. The reason for this change was that the pace of modern communications meant that news of a president’s election no longer took several months to travel around the country; nor did it take months for the president to travel to Washington, DC, to take office. The new amendment was ratified in 1933, and took effect for FDR’s second inaugural in 1937. The Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1947, makes it unlawful for a president to be elected to more than two terms.
2 Gen. George C. Marshall, Adm. Ernest King, Secretary of War Harold Stimson.
3 The practice of a presidential invocation did not begin until 1937. Chaplain of the Senate ZeBarney Thorne Phillips delivered the prayer then, and again in 1941. He died in 1942, whereupon FDR selected Dun to replace him. With the exception of Billy Graham in 1989, 1993, and 1997, Phillips is the only cleric to perform the invocation more than once. A minor footnote is that Angus Dun’s father was cofounder of the credit rating firm Dun and Bradstreet.
4 Andrew Johnson was the senator and military governor of Tennessee chosen by Lincoln to serve as vice president during his second term. Johnson showed up severely hungover for his inaugural on March 4, 1865—and then proceeded to take two stiff shots of whisky before delivering a rambling address to the Senate. On the day that Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson was also targeted for murder but was spared when his killer lost his nerve. Upon his ascension to the presidency, Johnson was divisive and inept. Many of the so-called red states and blue states that exist in American politics today can trace their roots back to Johnson’s lack of leadership at a time in the country’s history when healing instead of settling scores should have been foremost. He was impeached by the House of Representatives but avoided conviction by the Senate by just one vote. He was charged with violating the now-repealed Tenure of Office Act, which was passed the previous year specifically to restrict the powers of his presidency. Johnson managed to fight the charges over the course of the ensuing three-month trial and served out the rest of his term. He actually tried to run for the presidency once again that summer, but his lack of popularity made that impossible. Johnson was so bitter about not getting the chance to serve four more years that he refused to attend the inaugural of his successor, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.
5 The fifty-one-year-old Mao Tse-tung led China’s revolutionary Communist regime. After the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, the Chinese Communists overthrew the ruling Nationalist Party government led by Chiang Kai-shek. From 1949 onward, Mao Tse-tung ruled China with a despotic grasp that rivaled that of Hitler and Stalin. Mao died in 1976 at age eighty-two.
6 The Gestapo was Nazi Germany’s official secret police. Under the supervision of Heinrich Himmler, this branch of the SS terrorized and murdered anyone who might represent a threat to the Nazi Party. Even law-abiding Germans lived in fear of a visit from the Gestapo, who were often clad in civilian clothing. The Gestapo headquarters, on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin, featured underground cells where prisoners were held and tortured. The remains of those cells can be seen today at the Topography of Terror Museum in Berlin, which is built upon the large city block that was once home to the Gestapo. The buildings comprising Himmler’s headquarters have all been demolished. All traces of that awful legacy have been replaced by a stark landscape of gray stones, and no vegetation. The entire city block will never again be developed.
7 There is some evidence that Donovan, a well-known Anglophile, was a double agent working for the British. But that has never been proven.
Chapter 14
1 While the term concentration camp is widely used to describe the many places where the Nazis tortured and killed their enemies, real and imagined, six facilities (Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau) also carried the term extermination camp, because most prisoners were murdered immediately upon their arrival. Auschwitz-Birkenau served the dual purpose of forced labor/extermination camp.
2 Each of the five crematoria at Auschwitz featured a room for gassing victims and ovens for burning the bodies. When the number of bodies became too much for the ovens to handle—as with the deportation of Hungarian Jews from March to November of 1944 following the success of Otto Skorzeny’s Operation Mickey Mouse—the bodies were burned outdoors. A large pit behind Krema V served this purpose.
3 Auschwitz was divided into three sections: the main camp, the extermination camp (Birkenau), and a labor camp four miles away that serviced the IG Farben chemical factory. There were also a number of subcamps in the region.
4 Among the experiments were injecting dye into a child’s eyes to see if the iris’s color could be changed, injecting the bodies with germs and diseases to study the physical reaction, and performing operations without anesthetic. On one occasion, Mengele attempted to create a Siamese twin by sewing the bodies of identical Gypsy children to one another, back to back, and connecting their veins and internal organs. The two girls died a few days later when gangrene set in.
5 Each concentration camp was administered by an SS-Totenkopfverband, or “Death’s Head Unit.” These units, usually clad in black from head to toe, were divided into two groups, one overseeing daily life in the camps and the other responsible for perimeter security. A commandant oversaw the unit and the camps. Guards had complete discretion regarding punishment and brutality, and many of them had come to their new callings after a prewar life of crime. Wounded SS soldiers on the front were often transferred to concentration camp duty to recover from their injuries. Also, the inverse was often true, with SS guards ordered to leave the camp and serve on the front lines if they showed themselves to be soft or unwilling to commit atrocities. Life as an Auschwitz guard was relatively easy, with steady supplies of liquor, illicit sexual relationships with prisoners, and a social life of which soldiers on the front lines could only dream. For this reason, SS guards were more than willing to follow orders, no matter how brutal or morally questionable they might have been. In the chilling words of SS guard Oskar Gröning, “The main camp of Auschwitz was like a small town, with its gossiping and chatting. There was a grocery, a canteen, a cinema. There was a theatre with regular performances. And there was a sports club of which I was a member. It was all fun and entertainment, just like a small town.”