Long way home

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, shot down and captured in 1940, breaks a window and jumps from a POW train in Ontario, making his way through the snow to Ogdensburg, New York. After the US refuses to hand him back, he will make his way to Mexico, then Brazil from where he flies back to Germany. He is the only POW to escape from Canada and make it home. He will perish after his Bf-109F suffers an engine failure over the North Sea in October, 1941."

 

[Nocke]

Just amazing how brainwashed these guys must have been.

[DD_Arthur]

3 hours ago, 216th_Nocke said:

Just amazing how brainwashed these guys must have been.

 

I don't think Franz von Werra had undergone any sort of brainwashing.  

[Nocke]

Not in Canada, in Germany he was brainwashed.

I guess we have a misunderstanding here?

To be out of the war and do this to get back into it is just plain crazy.

[DD_Arthur]

16 minutes ago, 216th_Nocke said:

Not in Canada, in Germany he was brainwashed.

I guess we have a misunderstanding here?

To be out of the war and do this to get back into it is just plain crazy.

 

No, I don’t think he was brainwashed anywhere.  In von Werra’s case he was a nineteen year old playboy when Hitler became Chancellor.  

 

Hundreds of allied aircrew crew managed to evade capture with the help of Dutch and French networks and undertook perilous journeys across Europe to get back into the war. We don’t consider these people as brainwashed do we?

 

It’s no easy thing to brainwash an educated, developed nation.  Millions of people across central and Eastern Europe spent forty years under the Soviet yoke in what were basically police states with their children educated in soviet ideologies and forced to join  ‘young pioneer’ type organisations.  

 

It didn’t work. They threw off and threw out these regimes in a matter of days when opportunity arose.

What the German nation did under the Nazis was not the product of brainwashing.  The Nazi’s exploited deeper themes in the history and outlook of the German nation at the time to wage wars of aggression and genocide across Europe.

Was a nation of some eighty million people brainwashed to take part in this? It seems doubtful.

[Nocke]

I was not thinking of "the germans", but of young soldiers.

Maybe brainwashing is not exactly the right term here, but at least they had a strong and effective propaganda going on in the Hitler youth, and in the schools. I have heard people talking about it working from own experience. They believed the shit.

Now as you write that Werra guy was already nineteen when Hitler took over than that does of course not apply for him. Just plain stupidity then in my view.

I would make a difference between germans escaping to go on fighting, and allieds doing the same. My sympathy is with the latter.

[DD_Arthur]

10 hours ago, 216th_Nocke said:

I was not thinking of "the germans", but of young soldiers.

Maybe brainwashing is not exactly the right term here, but at least they had a strong and effective propaganda going on in the Hitler youth, and in the schools. I have heard people talking about it working from own experience. They believed the shit.

Now as you write that Werra guy was already nineteen when Hitler took over than that does of course not apply for him. Just plain stupidity then in my view.

I would make a difference between germans escaping to go on fighting, and allieds doing the same. My sympathy is with the latter.

Fair enough .  In von Werra's case it would seem he came a long way to spend eternity at the bottom of the north sea.

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Two Luftwaffe officers escape from a POW Camp No.15 in Northumberland, England, with forged papers that identify them as Dutch officers serving in the RAF. They make their way to RAF Carlisle, a training base. Without difficulty they enter the station and with the help of a ground mechanic start the engine of a Miles Magister, of which there are 50 parked around the airfield. Taking off, they head southeast for the North Sea and the Netherlands, a distance of some 587 kilometers to the Dutch coast. Over the North Sea they realize they cannot make the Netherlands as they will run out of fuel. Rather reluctantly they decide to turn back and land at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Back at Camp No. 15 again, the two daring escapees are sentenced to 28 days solitary confinement. No German POWs escape from the UK during the war, but these came the closest."

 

 

A Miles Magister

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Two Kawanishi H8K flying boats depart Wotje on a three thousand mile trip. They refuel from submarines I-15 and I-19 at French Frigate Shoals between Hawaii and Midway, then proceed to Pearl Harbor, arriving in the early morning darkness of March 4th. Not knowing that they are tracked by American radar, they overfly Pearl Harbor only have have cloud cover obscure the target and they bomb by dead reckoning. One “Emily” drops four 500 lb bombs onto an uninhabited forested slope and the other drops them into the water offshore. Fortunately for the Japanese, the clouds also prevent four P-40 fighters from locating them and they return to base. The pilots report inflicting substantial damage to military facilities and causing heavy loss of life.

 

- Commander Joe Rochefort of the HYPO code breaking unit analyzes message traffic and will determine that the Japanese used French Frigate Shoals as a refueling point. Admiral Nimitz directs that mines be laid in the shoals and a watch be kept on them. This activity will prevent a similar operation from determining the status of the American fleet just prior to the Battle of Midway."