Chase McCoy 2/4/2016 Ms. Weseman 4B The Battle for Castle Itter The Battle for Castle Itter is known as one of the strangest battles to take place during World War II. French VIP’s were captured by the Waffen SS and held is Castle Itter but were rescued by an unlikely bunch; American and German Soldiers fighting side by side. The only reason this could take place was because of the fact the war was just days from being over. Itter Castle is a small castle sat on a hill near the village of Itter in Austria. After the German annexation of Austria, the German government officially leased the castle in late 1940 from its owner, Franz Grüner. The castle was taken from Grüner by SS Lieutenant General Oswald Pohl under the orders of Heinrich Himmler …show more content…
His caution was justified; within minutes, the Sherman rounded a curve in the road and almost drove over a squad of SS troops trying to set up a roadblock. The infantrymen riding on the tank opened fire, as did the Sherman’s bow machine gunner and Gangel’s troops in the truck, and the SS troops fled into the surrounding woods. Lee ordered his driver to “open her up,” and the tank slued around another corner and up the road to the castle, the Wehrmacht truck close behind. Roaring over the short bridge at the top of the road, the vehicles lurched to a stop directly in front of Itter’s main gate as night began to fall. Castle Itters former French prisoners were quite unimpressed by the small force that had arrived to “save” them. The former prisoners had been expecting a column of armor supported by bunches of heavily armed American soldiers. What they got was a lone tank, seven Americans, and—to their disbelief—a truckload of armed Germans. While Gangel went out of his way to be polite and accommodating to the French, Lee was apparently his typically harsh self. Paul Reynaud must have found the American lieutenant particularly irritating, for in his postwar memoirs the former prime minister remembered Lee as “crude in both looks and manners,” and also stated, “If Lee is a reflection of America’s policies, Europe is in for a hard time.”(Reynaud) Harding, Stephing. "The Battle For Castle Itter." The Last Battle 11 September 2008: 1. Web. 5 Feburary 2016.
“BritishBattles.Com Analysing and Documenting British Battles from the Previous Centuries.” BritishBattlescom. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.
Craig Williams was born in Concord Massachusetts. He wrote the book “Enemy at the Gates” in 1973. The point of this book was to show both the extreme importance of this battle in the course of World War II and the courage of both the German and Russian troops during this horrific battle. This book did an excellent job portraying the hardships the soldiers faced and the gruesome scope of the battle for this important city. However, it did so with a pro-axis slant.
of something big. This battle marked the being of the end of World War II.
...also being used. 1st Division had done well supporting the troops by making ease of the passing of impassable obstacles. Though by the end of the first day, what tanks did not bog down in German trenches were now out of gas.
The major focus of the book focuses on reconstruction of the events this group of men participated in. According to Browning, the men of Police Battalion 101 were just that—ordinary. They were five hundred middle-aged, working-class men of German descent. A majority of these men were neither Nazi party members nor members of the S.S. They were also from Hamburg, which was a town that was one of the least occupied Nazi areas of Germany and, thus, were not as exposed to the Nazi regime. These men were not self-selected to be part of the order police, nor were they specially selected because of violent characteristics. These men were plucked from their normal lives, put into squads, and given the mission to kill Jews because they were the only people available for the task. “Even in the face of death the Jewish mothers did not separate from their children. Thus we tolerated the mothers taking their children to the ma...
This delineation is crucial in a book that is based on war, as descriptive details magnify the suspense created in the rising action of the plot. In Hitler’s Secret, a stately convoy of the Reich’s military vehicles passes through in front of Otto and Leni: “First to rumble past were a dozen Kübelwagen, the standard German Army field car. After them came perhaps thirty Opel trucks…and even more tank transporters” (Osborne 61). Osborne utilizes this scene to show the reader the might of the Nazi Army during the Second World War. It is not common knowledge to realize that this was a typical scene throughout the Nazi empire. Therefore, the author inserts this section to assist the reader in creating a sharper mental image of the characters’ surroundings. This allows the reader to enjoy and
Hadaway, Stuart. “Rifleman Thomas Plunkett: A Pattern for the Battalion.” Research Subjects:Biographies. The Napoleon Series, 2000. Web. 20 March 2014. http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/biographies/c_plunkett.html
page 175 “No help or backing was to be had then from his high-born comrades; that hand-picked troop broke ranks and ran for their lives to safety of the wood.” (Heaney)
Morley, Joyce Anne Deane. "War Memories: Plotting the Battle of Britain." Letter. 9 Dec. 2003. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. BBC WW2 People's War. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
Without a doubt, the men of this battalion greatly contributed to the final solution. The first action the 101st Battalion was order to do took place in Józefów. They went into the town and were ordered to "shoot anyone trying to escape" and "those that were too sick or frail to walk to the marketplace, as well as infants and anyone offering resistance or attempting to hid, were to be shot on the spot". (Browning, 57) They then trucked or marched the Jews they found into the woods just outside the village. "When the first truckload of thirty-five to forty Jews arrived, an equal number of policemen cam forward and, face to face, were paired off with their victims." (Browning, 61) The shear atrocity of this was too much for many of the policemen, so alcohol was provided to calm the men?s nerves. Only a dozen men stepped out and refused to shoot at all. As the day went on, however, many could not continue. They even had a "special technique" dubbed the "neck shot". "The men wer...
Elting, Mary and Robert T. Weaver, Battles: How They Are Won. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1944.
Rothenberg, Gunther E. Review of Battle: A History of Combat and Culture, by John A.
Works Cited Horne, Alistair. A.S.A. & Co. To Lose a Battle: France, 1940. New York: Penguin, 1990. Jackson, Julian.
Parsons, Othal T. Interview by author, 17 April 1995. Mail questionnaire. 12th Armored Division Historical Project, Abilene Christian University, Abilene, Texas.
Within this assessment I will be responding to the question ‘Does General Douglas Haig deserve his reputation as the “Butcher of the Somme?” as a plentiful amount of historians criticise him for why multitudinous soldiers died during the battle of the Somme, essentially due to his poor battle plan, but alongside every event there is two sides to what has happened.