In a surprise attack, the Germans invaded Norway on April 9, 1940, and quickly secured the capital of Oslo as well as other major cities along the east and west coasts of the country. The underequipped and unprepared Norwegian military fought the Germans in the interior and in the far north but even with the assistance of British troops and ships was unable to withstand the German onslaught.
After running from the enemy for two months, the Government, King and Crown Prince of Norway fled to Britain, and the Germans took complete control of the country.
The Nazis appointed Josef Terboven as the Reich Commissioner, and all of Norway came under his control. Approximately 1700 Jews lived in Norway at the time of the invasion, and about 200 of them had fled from the Nazis in Central Europe. Although Terboven placed restrictions on the Jews and their property, it wasn’t until one year later, in the spring of 1941, that arrests and imprisonments were stepped up. Most of these arrests took place outside Oslo, in locations where Jews were small in number.
In early 1942, Terboven required all Jews to have a “J” stamped on their identity cards and the word “Jew” stamped on their identity papers. Also in 1942, Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian collaborator, was named prime minister. He and Terboven executed the main persecution of the Jews.
Vidkun Quisling & Josef Terboven Courtesy of Flikr: The Commons via Wikimedia Commons
In the fall, the Norwegian police arrested the seven hundred and sixty-three Jews they could locate, including women and children, and transported them by ship to Germany. They were immediately sent to Auschwitz where most of them perished in the gas chambers.
The Norwegian Resistance had facilitated the escape of about nine hundred Jews to Sweden, where they survived the war as refugees. Hans Mamen was one of those resistance members. Hans grew up on a farm outside Oslo and was a student at the local Lutheran seminary. He learned of the persecution of Norway’s Jews and felt called as a Christian to help protect them. Hans’s mission began when a seminary professor asked him to help find a hiding place for a Jewish family who had requested the professor’s help.
Hans established a network of seminary students and other friends and contacts to assist. Some hid Jews, some shared food and supplies, and a few of them led Jews safely across the border into Sweden. Hans led many rescue efforts, usually taking only three people at a time to reduce the risk of capture. He led his charges through sparsely-populated areas of dense forests. They crossed these difficult areas on foot, often at night. Hans arranged for a Swedish lumberjack who lived just across the border to keep a lantern lit at night so they would know when they had arrived in Sweden.
On one journey, Hans accompanied a mother and her three-year-old son across the country, and then they hiked to the border. He carried the child on his shoulders into the dense forest, and the sudden, complete darkness frightened the young boy. His cries echoed across the landscape, and nothing Hans or the child’s mother tried would calm him.
With dawn approaching and the threat of their footprints in the snow leading a Nazi patrol to them, Hans feared capture. Finally, he whispered to the boy that he shouldn’t wake up the birds, and the child immediately quieted. Once across the border, they enjoyed the sunrise and the opportunity to speak aloud again.
Celia Century, a Jewish refugee from Norway, sits on the deck of a summer camp in Ronneby Sweden next to a non-Jewish friend. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
In December 1942, the Norwegian police, working for the Nazis, arrived at the Mamen’s farm and demanded to see Hans. His mother explained that he was at the seminary in Oslo. After the police left, she telephoned the seminary, and her coded message was passed to Hans during class—“‘Pack your suitcase.’”
Hans rushed to the home of a trusted friend and sent a message to his fiancée, Ruth. Although her parents were afraid and didn’t want her to leave, Ruth packed a small bag to escape with Hans.
Hans and Ruth traveled by train from Oslo but disembarked before reaching the border. He had called ahead and arranged for one of his contacts, a licensed woodcutter, to meet them. The couple rode under a tarp in the back of the man’s old truck. They stopped at a safe house; however, Nazi agents were searching the neighborhood. Hans and Ruth climbed back into the truck, and the woodcutter drove them to a border checkpoint, where he knew the lone Norwegian guard was loathe to leave his hut at night.
Although the woodcutter turned resistance fighter was willing to use his gun if necessary, the truck rolled across the border without incident. The couple’s benefactor didn’t stop until they were far from the border. After he did, Hans and Ruth climbed out of the truck, fell on their knees, and thanked God for bringing them safely through.
Hans and Ruth married in Sweden and had the first of five children. Before the war ended, Hans finished his seminary studies and assisted the Norwegian resistance by helping Allied agents cross from Sweden into Norway to conduct operations. After Norway was liberated, Hans and Ruth returned home, and he served as a Lutheran pastor for many decades.
Villa Grande in Oslo. Site of the Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities and former home of Vidkun Quisling. Credit: Leifern, Wikimedia Commons
More than sixty years later, Hans was asked to speak at the new Holocaust Center in Oslo. A tall, bearded Norwegian “greeted him with unusual affection for a stranger.” The man identified himself as “the Jewish toddler who decades earlier had quieted down in the dark, snow-covered forest so he would not awaken the birds.”
Sources:
Gragg, Rod. My Brother’s Keeper. Center Street, 2016.
Today’s story is the miraculous account of how the Norwegian’s saved their gold reserves from the Nazis and spirited them out of the country right under the enemy’s noses. If the Germans had obtained these reserves, they would have gained more wealth to supply their war machine.
Although Norway was neutral during WWII, Nicolai Rygg, the director of Norges Bank where the nation’s gold reserves resided, made preparations in case Norway should fall or a crisis develop. Early in 1940, Rygg brought in volunteers to pack bars of gold in white painted boxes and seal them with iron bands. Bags of gold coins were packed in smaller kegs. Of the 421 million Krone stored in the bank, 300 million was shipped to the United States. The rest was left in the vault because Norwegian law did not allow all the gold to be removed from the country at one time.
After Rygg learned that German warships were headed up the Oslo Fjord on April 9th, Rygg contacted General Laake, the Commander-in-Chief of military forces, who ordered Rygg to immediately evacuate the gold to the bank in Lillehammer. Moments later, Rygg learned that the Germans already occupied major cities but hadn’t reached Oslo (the sinking of the Blücher kept the Germans from seizing the capital for an extra eight hours).
Norges Bank at Oslo 1906-1986. Courtesy of Norges Bank.
Twenty-six trucks were chartered from local merchants, and the drivers were directed to the side entrance of the bank but were not informed about what they would be carrying. Bank guards were placed close to the bank to keep inquisitive eyes away, but the military was not used in order to avoid drawing attention to the operation. The bank employees loaded the gold.
Each truck, along with two armed bank guards, drove away immediately after loading so there was no convoy to draw the attention of the Luftwaffe. The first truck left at 8:15 AM and the last truck shortly before 1:30 PM. German soldiers marched down the main street of Oslo at exactly the same time, and the Norwegian commander of the Oslo garrison surrendered the city at 2:00 PM at the Akershus Fort, only a couple hundred yards from Norges Bank.
A Gold Bar from the Norges Bank. Courtesy of Norges Bank.
The gold shipment totaled 818 large crates, 685 smaller crates, and 39 kegs of gold coins. Lillehammer was 115 miles from Oslo, and the trucks traveled over snow-laden roads. Vehicles and pedestrians fleeing the capital slowed down the trucks, and people became angry because the trucks didn’t stop to help them. The last truck arrived at the bank in Lillehammer at 8:00 PM.
The bank employees in Lillehammer tucked the gold away in their vault; however, they could only unload the cargo when the Luftwaffe wasn’t flying over them. The media picked up on the activity and broadcast that trucks of gold were arriving in Lillehammer. A Trondheim newspaper also reported on the shipment, but the Germans did not pick up on the reports. The Royal Family, the Norwegian government, and the Norwegian gold had escaped for the time being!
The gold remained at Lillehammer for ten days while the Norwegians barricaded the roads and kept the Germans from advancing. Rygg checked on the gold twice and on the second trip, he asked the bank manager, Andreas Lund, to memorize the numbers to the vault lock. Frequent bombing raids forced the bank to close and wait to reopen until the planes disappeared.
Norges Bank at Lillehammer. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain
On April 14th, 15 German transport planes dropped about 180 lightly armed paratroopers in the Dombås area, northwest of Lillehammer. They were spread over a wide area, and the Norwegian troops successfully killed or captured them over a five-day period. This kept the railway lines to the north and the west coast open.
In the mean time, it became obvious that the Germans could overtake Lillehammer at any time. Oscar Torp, the Norwegian Minister of Finance, tasked Fredrik Haslund, Secretary of the Labour Party, with transporting the gold from Lillehammer to the port of Åndalsnes where the British Royal Navy could take it safely away. On April 17th, the British—determined to assist the Norwegians in ousting the Germans—had landed a large number of troops and equipment at three Norwegian ports—Harstad, Namsos, and Åndalsnes.
United States Military Academy Dept. of History – Courtesy of Wikipedia – Public Domain
At midnight on April 19th, orders came to open the bank vault door. Unfortunately due to fear and anxiety, Lund had a difficult time getting the lock to the brand new vault open—it had only been opened once before and Lund was operating by memory. He finally succeeded with the code a little past 1:00 AM.
Haslund had recruited the Lillehammer chief of police who assembled 30 volunteers who met at a secret location at 10:00 PM. They were armed with spades and shovels so they would appear to be preparing to dig trenches. Instead they were quietly transported to the bank and loaded the trucks which took the gold to the railway station, a short distance away. The gold was loaded onto the wooden railcars. A small group of soldiers was ordered to accompany the train, but the men weren’t told what they were guarding. They soon figured out the contents because of the Norges Bank initials displayed on the outside of each container.
Lillehammer Train Station. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain
The train left Lillehammer at 4:00 AM with its lights dimmed in case any Luftwaffe aircraft flew over. When dawn approached, the bullion train stopped at Otta and pulled onto a siding to wait for a safer time to proceed. Later, a train arrived at Otta Station from the north with three carriages full of British soldiers who had their thumbs in the air. The Norwegians were encouraged. Little did they know what dangers lay ahead.
The gold train sat undetected on a railroad siding in Otta. It didn’t run during the day because the German bombers loved to target anything moving. After a twenty-four-hour wait, the gold train left at 10:00 PM and arrived at the port town of Åndalsnes at 4:30 AM on April 20th.
View of the innermost part of the Romsdalsfjord with Åndalsnes up to the left in the picture. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
Åndalsnes is located at the head of a fjord – a long narrow inlet which connects to the Norwegian Sea. The British had landed troops and secured Åndalsnes two days before, and at 9:00 AM on the 20th, the Germans commenced bombing the port, the British ships, all transport routes, and the town of approximately 2000 people. In spite of their intelligence, the Germans were not aware of the presence of Norway’s gold, which remained at the station awaiting transportation out by British warship to the United Kingdom.
At 11:00 PM, Fredrik Haslund, the official tasked with conveying the gold out of Norway, sent the gold train to a siding at Romsdalhorn, a few kilometers away. Towering mountains guarded the tiny station, making it a perfect place to hide a train. Due to the constant daytime bombing, a crew of railwaymen worked in twelve-hour shifts to repair the area’s rail lines.
On the night of April 24th, Mr. Haslund ordered the gold train to be brought down to the dock in Andalsnes. Norwegian soldiers loaded 200 boxes of gold onto the HMS Galatea which had just unloaded British troops and equipment. The cruiser carried sixteen tons of the gold along with Norwegian officials to Scotland, and from there, the gold was transported to London and the Bank of England. Thirty-four tons of gold remained in Norway, awaiting transportation to the Allies. If the Nazis took possession, the precious metal would provide a tremendous boost to the enemy’s war chest.
A Modern View of Åndalsnes from the Romsdalsjjord Courtesy of Creative Commons via Wikimedia. Author Ludovic Peron.
The Norwegians expected German soldiers to come up the valley into Åndalsnes at any moment. Only hours remained to move the gold. An army captain obtained twenty-five trucks and drivers, and in two hours’ time, all the gold was removed from the train and loaded on the trucks. The convoy navigated over poorly paved roads that were covered with melting snow and mud. Unfortunately, the Luftwaffe returned to Åndalsnes and attacked the convoy. The soldiers and drivers ran for cover and no one was injured during the forty-five minutes of strafing. The convoy continued its journey, and when the next attack commenced, the drivers sped up. The Germans weren’t successful at hitting their targets. After reaching a ferry crossing, some trucks were hidden and some were camouflaged until dark.
A ferry arrived but could only carry two trucks across the water at a time. It took six hours to convey all the trucks to the other side. Because of deep ruts and potholes caused by the winter weather, the road ahead had to be repaired in places before the convoy could pass through. Trucks broke down and had to be replaced, and the crews became exhausted unloading and reloading the gold. Local farmers utilized their horses and equipment to drag one truck out of a ditch and back onto the road.
Eventually the convey arrived at the port of Molde where the Norwegian Government, King Haakon, and Crown Prince Olav were taking cover. They had arrived on April 23rd, and Molde had essentially become the new capital of Norway. The gold was unloaded into a large vault in the basement of the Confectionsfabriken building (clothing factory) in town.
Confectionsfabriken Building – Molde
The people of Molde were very helpful. They assisted with unloading the gold, providing security, and feeding the exhausted soldiers. But the Germans were intent on capturing or killing the King, Crown Prince, and Government. The Luftwaffe attacked Molde and it’s surroundings with bombs and incendiaries. The townsfolk set off the air-raid alarms as soon as they spotted aircraft, which allowed everyone time to escape to the woods.
On April 28th, the German Government announced that they were at war with Germany and that King Haakon was wanted ‘dead or alive.’ This was no surprise to the king or the Government. The relentless air strikes forced the British to send the cruiser HMS Glasgow to Molde and plans were made to evacuate.
The Germans bombed Molde for the first time at night. With debris littering the roads and fires raging, Norway’s gold was loaded on any available truck and transported to various locations at the harbor. Not all the trucks were immediately able to find a safe path through the destruction.
Before the HMS Glasgow could pull into port, a fire had to be extinguished on the dock. A portion of the gold was carried on board from this dock, and some was ferried by smaller ships from other points and loaded by crane onto the ship. The King, Crown Prince, members of the Norwegian Government, and the French, Danish, and British embassy members and staff joined British soldiers aboard the ship.
The Ruins of Molde – 1940. Courtesy of Flickr. No known copyright restrictions.
After the Germans unsuccessfully attacked the ship, the Glasgow left port and sailed down the fjord in reverse for at least an hour. It was too dangerous to turn around in the fjord at night. Not all of the gold had been loaded and not all of the gold had even made it to the dock before the Glasgow was forced to sail.
Along with the gold, the Glasgow carried King Haakon, Crown Prince Olav, members of the Norwegian Government, and diplomatic officials from Britain, France, and Denmark to the Tromso area in the far north of Norway. From here, the Norwegians hoped to form an offensive against the Germans and drive them out of the country.
Summer Night in Tromso (2012). Photo Credit: Mark Ledingham via Wikimedia Commons
After delivering its precious human cargo, the Glasgow turned south and safely landed the second installment of Norway’s gold in Scotland. Norwegian officials accompanied the shipment by train to London where it was stored in the vault of the Bank of England.
Back in Molde, Fredrik Haslund, the official in charge of rescuing the gold, searched for a way to remove the 18 tons which the Glasgow had been forced to leave behind due to the bombings. While Molde was burning, Haslund loaded eight tons of the gold on the steamer Driva, and the ship set off at 2:00 AM, only one hour after the Glasgow had pulled away.
The Luftwaffe dropped a stick of bombs in the water near the Driva, but she wasn’t damaged. During her trip north she was attacked by a German seaplane, and to avoid being sunk, the Driva’s first mate beached the craft on a flat shoreline. Bombs fell but landed in the sea. As the tide came in, another steamer pulled the Driva back out into the fjord.
Molde Under Attack in 1940 Painting by Rolf Groven
In the meantime, near Molde, Haslund decided the gold should be moved to fishing vessels because the Driva was too much of a target for the Germans. Word was sent to the Driva to rendezvous at the village of Gjemnes. The remaining ten tons of gold was transported by truck to Gjemnes and loaded onto fishing boats (puffers) there. Five hundred and forty-seven boxes of bullion were loaded in the dark, including the gold from the Driva. By this time, Norway’s fight against the Nazis was over in southern Norway but still continued in the far north of the country.
The puffers sailed through the fjords, laying over at coastguard stations and villages but not staying in any one place for long. Unfortunately, the captains of the puffers weren’t comfortable moving into unfamiliar waters farther north along the dangerous coast, and Haslund was forced to find other sources to move the gold to Tromso where the new capitol had been established.
Bodo at the time Haslund visited before it was bombed by the Germans on May 27, 1940. Courtesy of Hundholmen
The gold was again unloaded and reloaded on two different fishing boats. The boats split up but rendezvoused at a small port north of Bodo on May 7th. Hasland left the boat and traveled by car to Bodo where he located the local military commander and learned where the British had placed the minefields in a fjord they must pass through. After safe passage through the fjord, they obtained the services of the commanding officer of a Norwegian guard ship who boarded and piloted them safely to Tromso where they arrived on May 9th.
The gold was combined on one of the puffers, and that boat went out to sea with the other fishing boats each day. On May 21st, the gold was loaded on the HMSEnterprise, a Royal Navy cruiser. The Luftwaffe had previously attacked the Enterprise with 150 bombs, and she was in poor condition. She left on May 23rd on a zig-zag course for the UK. She was attacked again, but none of the bombs hit their target. The Enterprise traveled down the west coast of England without destroyer protection and docked at Plymouth in the south. The gold was transported by train to London and deposited in the Bank of England.
Expecting a German invasion of Britain at any moment, the Norwegians made plans to move its gold once again. The British had already removed all of its own gold reserves before the war started in September of 1939. The Norwegian precious metal was split into several shipments and sent across the Atlantic to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and to the Bank of Canada in Ottawa. A small portion of the gold remained with the Norwegian Government-in-Exile established in England. This allowed them to function independently throughout the war.
Source: Gold Run by Robert Pearson. Casemate Publishers, 2015.
Many have heard about the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Allied troops from Dunkirk in May-June of 1940, but few know the story behind this miracle. In May 1940, the approximately 400,000 strong British Expeditionary Force waited on the continent of Europe in anticipation of German hostilities. On May 10th, the Germans invaded Holland and Belgium, and the bulk of the Allied forces moved into Belgium to meet the attack.
Dunkirk Beach in 2012. Courtesy of User: Eporte in Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons
What the Allies didn’t expect was that the main thrust of the German forces would come through the Ardennes Forest to the south of their position. The Allied military leaders didn’t believe it was possible to move a large amount of soldiers and equipment through this area, but the Germans proved them wrong. By May 13th, the first German troops crossed the River Meuse into France at a place poorly defended by the Allies. A total of nine German Panzer divisions rapidly headed west in what is known as the Blitzkrieg, “Lightning War.”
The enemy trapped a half million French, British, and Belgian soldiers between the German troops to the north and the German troops streaming to the coast in the south. So effective was this maneuver that on May 15th, French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud phoned British prime Minister Winston Churchill and said, “We are beaten. We have lost the battle.”
On May 20th, the first German division reached the coast near Abbeville. On May 23rd, General John Gort, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, defied the orders of the British Imperial General Staff. Instead of conducting an all-out assault on the German army, Gort sent his troops to the coast and instructed them to form a defensive perimeter, allowing thousands of troops scattered over hundreds of miles to funnel through to the little-known town of Dunkirk. Thousands of French troops also took positions along the outer perimeter.
Before it was all over with, Churchill thought he would be forced to announce the grim news that a third of a million British soldiers had been captured or killed. He couldn’t envision evacuating more than 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers before the Germans moved up the coast and cut them off.
Churchill shared the hopeless situation with British King George VI, and the king appealed to the British people in a radio broadcast on May 24th. He asked the nation and all within the empire to pray for deliverance and announced a National Day of Prayer for Sunday, May 26th. He implored, “‘Let us with one heart and soul, humbly but confidently, commit our cause to God and ask his aid, that we may valiantly defend the right as it is given to us to see it.’”
The British people answered the call and met in churches throughout the country to pray for their troops and their nation. Long lines formed outside many cathedrals, including Westminster Abbey where King George and his cabinet went to pray.
The British Lined Up Outside Westminster Abbey on the National Day of Prayer – May 26th. Public Domain
On May 24th, the same day King George appealed to the British to pray, General Guderian and Adolf Hitler ordered the German Army to halt. The Panzers were less than fifteen miles from Dunkirk. Hitler and his generals were concerned their tanks would be needed in case of an Allied counterattack, and they wanted to prevent the loss of equipment they would need for the march to Paris.
In addition, Herman Goering, commander of the Luftwaffe, had requested that Hitler allow the airforce to prevent the evacuation of British troops instead of the army. It wasn’t until May 26th that the German army was allowed to move toward Dunkirk. By then, the British and French defenses were well entrenched.
The British Expeditionary Force Evacuating at Dunkirk. Public Domain
On May 26th, Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsey commenced Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk. The Luftwaffe had already destroyed the port facilities, so the British destroyers loaded men at the East Mole, a flimsy wooden pier five feet wide, which extended 1400 yards into the sea. The loading process proceeded slowly, so Ramsey also requisitioned small boats from England to shuttle the troops waiting on the beaches to bigger ships anchored in deep water. The Luftwaffe continued to attack, strafing and bombing the beaches, the Mole, the ships, and the men backed up around the port.
On May 27th, General Halder, Chief of the German General Staff proudly boasted about the impending destruction of the British Army, but the Germans didn’t reckon with the prayers of the British. On May 28th, a terrible storm developed over Flanders, grounding the Luftwaffe and allowing more British troops to move to the coast unhindered. The defensive perimeter held the German Army back.
Following the storm, the normally turbulent waters of the English Channel calmed. Ramsey called for hundreds of small boats to head to Dunkirk. Many of these vessels wouldn’t have made it safely across and back if it hadn’t been for the unusual stillness of the waters. These boats carried thousands of troops back to England and saved their lives.
Small Boats Taking Troops Back to England from Dunkirk. Public Domain.
Despite the loss of six destroyers, eight personal ships, and over two hundred small craft, about 330,000 British and French troops were evacuated from Dunkirk between May 26th and June 3rd. The British were so grateful that they held a National Day of Thanksgiving on Sunday, June 9th. Choirs and congregations all across the country sang the words to Psalm 124.
“If the Lord himself had not been on our side, now may Israel say: if the Lord himself had not been on our side, when men rose up against us; They would have swallowed us up quick: when they were so wrathfully displeased at us. Yea, the waters of the proud would have gone over our soul. But praised be the Lord: Who has not given us over for a prey unto their teeth. Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler: the snare is broken, and we are delivered. Our help standeth in the name of the Lord: who hath made heaven and earth.”
Many of the troops saved at Dunkirk lived to return across the Channel and help the Allies win World War II. God heard and answered the prayers of a people who humbled themselves and sought His face.
Just four months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, eighty U.S. Airmen, known as the Doolittle Raiders, pulled off a daring attack on Japan. Caught by surprise, the Japanese were unprepared for enemy bombers to strike their homeland, especially in broad daylight. Greater than the damage inflicted, the raid had a psychological impact on the Japanese and their leaders. The military pulled troops and equipment back from the war zones to protect Japan. The raid boosted the morale of the Allies and instilled hope that the enemy was not invincible.
Doolittle Painting from the Official Site of the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders. Used by Permission.
After the Doolittle Raiders bombed Japan, fifteen of the sixteen crews flew to China and either crash landed or bailed out of their planes. By way of a centuries-old communication system, news of the bombing in Japan spread quickly across the Chinese countryside.
The Japanese had brutally occupied parts of China for many years, and the Chinese rejoiced over the news that their enemy’s homeland had finally been attacked. When the “giant” Americans floated down or crashed into their world, the Chinese eagerly escorted the Raiders away from the occupying Japanese forces and to safety far from the coast.
Doolittle Raiders Bombing Japan. Used by Permission.
The Japanese quickly figured out the areas where the Raiders had landed and sought to capture them. Although most of the crews were spirited away to safety, the survivors from two crews were caught and imprisoned. Their stories can be found here and here.
Because the Chinese aided in the escape of most of the Raiders, the Japanese retaliated with a vengeance. The first order of business was to capture and occupy for one month the areas in China from which air raids could be launched against the Japanese homeland. Japanese Emperor Hirohito ordered his army in China to totally destroy military installations, air fields, and important lines of communication in these places. But the Japanese did so much more. They spent three months wreaking havoc in the Chekiang and Kiangsi Provinces where the Raiders had landed.
The Chinese Escorting Doolittle Raiders to Safety Courtesy of the Official Site of the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders
Japanese soldiers forced four thousand Chinese to dig eight-foot wide, three-foot-deep trenches on the runways of the airfields that were the most threat to Japan. This forced the U.S. to cancel planned follow-ups to the Doolittle Raid. One hundred thousand Japanese troops “attacked every town with a link to Doolittle’s crew.” The Raiders had given gifts and trinkets to those who helped them, but the Japanese used this evidence to single out the helpers for the harshest torture before killing them. One farmer who had helped a Raider was wrapped in a kerosene-soaked blanket and his wife was forced to set him on fire. In addition, the Japanese soldiers—
Drowned children
Beheaded women and babies
Looted and burned towns and villages
Raped any woman between the ages of 10 and 65
Bayoneted or burned to death many orphans and the aged
Wrecked electrical plants and pulled up railroad lines
Slew thousands of pigs, oxen, and other farm animals
Set crops on fire
Destroyed bridges and roads
Shot anyone or anything that moved
Threw dead bodies into wells, contaminating village drinking water
Chalked “Christ is defeated” on the wall of one torched church
Conducted over 600 bombing runs
Destroyed everything in their path
Spread destruction over some twenty thousand square miles
Slaughtered at least 250,000 Chinese
Eventually the Japanese soldiers spread their vengeance much farther inland, stopping only a few days’ march from Chunking, the capital of free China.
Many years before, the Japanese had built a three-square mile complex in Manchuria to develop bacteriological warfare. They conducted their experiments on humans they had taken prisoner, including Americans. This clandestine outfit was secretly known as “Unit 731” and employed 3000 scientists, doctors, and technicians. Before the arrival of the Doolittle Raiders, the Japanese had already “turned loose its specially bred fleas and rats to spread bubonic plague among the people of Changde and Ningbo in central China” (Nelson) and had dropped anthrax-bacillus bombs on the town of Anta.
Building from the Unit 731 complex which now houses the Unit 731 Museum By 松岡明芳 Courtesy of Creative Commons from Wikimedia Commons
In retaliation for the Doolittle Raid, the Japanese “sprayed cholera, typhoid, plague, and dysentery across southeastern China” in June and July of 1942 (Nelson). During one operation, the wind changed at the last minute and seventeen hundred Japanese soldiers contracted and died from disease, and ten thousand more were injured.
It was later learned that the Japanese had planned to spray the Allied forces in the Philippines with a 1000 kilograms of bubonic-plague-infected fleas, but the Allies surrendered first. The Japanese had also planned to attack the U.S. soldiers at Saipan with their “full arsenal of bacteriological weaponry,” but the U.S. won the battle quickly and thwarted the Japanese.
At the end of the war, the United States captured Unit 731 and continued the research into biological warfare. The Japanese unit chiefs shared “their research findings in exchange for release from prosecution” (Nelson). The U.S. Army built millions of bombs which contained several deadly toxins, but in 1972, “seventy-one nations jointly agreed to outlaw biological warfare, and President Richard Nixon ordered the weapons destroyed” (Nelson).
Japan also launched attacks on the U.S. mainland in retaliation for the Doolittle Raid.
Sources:
The First Heroes: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raid—America’s First World War II Victory by Craig Nelson (Viking, 2002)
Target Tokyo: Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor by James M. Scott (W. W. Norton & Co., 2015)
With the outbreak of WWII, submarine warfare took on new dimensions. Many heroic battles occurred “under the sea.” The adventures of one particular Polish submarine received international attention and provided inspiration to those at war.
Where? The Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Finland, and the North Sea
Poland’s submarines were commissioned to protect the 90 miles of Polish coastline on the Baltic Sea. The Orzel had only been at sea for about twenty months when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and World War II began. At first, the Polish submarine fleet carried on very low-key operations, observing and reporting German naval activity, but on the seventh day of the war, the fleet was ordered to return to the Central Baltic region.
Poland’s submarines weren’t prepared for battle—they’d missed their May maintenance because of the seriousness of the international situation and had been at sea for nearly twelve months without an overhaul.
At first, the Polish submarine fleet carried on very low-key operations, observing and reporting German naval activity, but on the seventh day of the war, the fleet was ordered to return to the Central Baltic region.
On September 14th, the commanding officer of the Polish submarine division ordered the sub commanders to carry out patrols and thwart enemy shipping for as long as possible. When they could no longer continue, they were to sail to the United Kingdom. If that wasn’t possible, they were to seek internment in Sweden.
When the Polish submarine Wilk attempted the long journey, the Germans attacked with depth charges and dropped thirty-eight bombs from the air. Despite the opposition, the Wilk made it safely to the rendezvous point at Rosyth, Scotland on September 20.
The Orzel’s adventure lasted much longer . . . After patrolling the Baltic Sea for nine days, the Orzel landed at Talinn, capital of Estonia. The captain needed medical treatment for stomach pains. Officially neutral, but sympathetic to Germany, the Estonians insisted upon following international law. They required the Orzel to leave port within twenty-four hours but not until a German freighter already in port departed first (also international law). The German vessel didn’t sail, so the Orzel missed her departure deadline.
The Estonian government then interned the Orzel and her crew. They removed the ship’s charts, the sailors’ small arms, the breach locks on the ship’s guns, and fifteen of twenty torpedoes. They stationed two Estonian guards on the ship to conduct surveillance. But, undetected, the Polish submariners partially cut through the thick ropes mooring the ship, leaving the sub attached to the jetty by a single strand.
On the night of September 17-18, two Polish sailors crawled ashore and cut the lines powering the jetty searchlights. The sailors severed the last rope tying the Orzel to the jetty and overpowered the two Estonian guards, taking them aboard the sub. At the mouth of the harbor, the ship hit a rock, but the crew trimmed the tanks, and the sub floated free.
While the Estonians fired on the sub with rifles and artillery from the small fortified islands outside the city, the Orzel submerged and fled. The sailors steered blindly with no chart for soundings. At dawn, they lay down at the bottom and waited as the hunters passed over them and depth charges burst around them.
At midnight, the Orzel cautiously rose, and the submariners discovered they were at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland. Nothing was in sight, so they remained surfaced and recharged the sub’s batteries.
Meanwhile, the Orzel’s escape from Estonia became an international incident, and Germany accused the Estonians of complicity with Poland. The Soviets, who had invaded Poland on September 17th , patrolled the Gulf of Finland with cruisers and six destroyers, looking for Polish subs. The Orzel’s crew dropped off the Estonian guards on the island of Gotland, Sweden, leaving them with money, cigarettes, and a bottle of whiskey. The Orzel then cruised the Baltic for two weeks, evading the Soviets.
The Orzel in English Port, 1940 – Public Domain Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
With their water supply running low and their cook suffering from an infected finger, the crew of the Orzel decided to proceed to Scotland. On the way, they sighted a flotilla of German destroyers, so they dove to a shallow bed and avoided detection. After dark, they surfaced to periscope depth, ran aground, floated free, and crept along until reaching deeper water, all while the German flotilla continued to patrol.
The Orzel traveled up the narrow waterway between Denmark and Sweden and arrived at the North Sea where she was vulnerable to German attack and “friendly fire” from British patrols. On October 14 at six o’clock in the morning, a British shore naval station picked up a faint transmission from the Orzel, and a few hours later a Royal Navy destroyer escorted the sub into Rosyth.
The arrival of the Orzel shocked the Royal Navy—the British had presumed the ship was lost at sea. The Orzel went on to serve the Allies, sinking the clandestine German troop transport, Rio de Janeiro, in southern Norway in April 1940. During the sub’s seventh patrol in May-June of 1940, the Orzel disappeared and was never heard from again. To this day, her fate remains a mystery, although the Polish government has made repeated attempts to locate her final resting place.
