Americans still missing. Since moved into a new role as Research Historian where he spent the majority of his time helping family members discover their loved ones world war ii stories throughout our services. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome james dausey. [applause] thank you, pete. It is a great honor to be a part of this incredible conference. It is my third of these and a great delight to moderate a panel with such esteemed unfamiliar speakers. Twoink you know our speakers very well. I will keep the introductions brief for both of them. First, going in the order of presentation first, james , holland. Historian, writer, and broadcaster. We have seen him on countless tv shows and documentaries. Hes led many of our tours here at the museum. There are too many books i would take 10 minutes going through all of his books. Just to mention a few of them italys sorrow, a year of war, 194445, fortress malta, the battle of britain. Hes working through a threevolume new history of the Second World War in the west. Have been completed on that. Involved in several documentaries for bbc. And james finds time for other interests besides history. And for many people, you think the history just takes over everything in your life, but he is living proof that it doesnt need to, as he is a big fan of the sport of cricket. For our second presenter, very wellknown, a longterm friend of the Museum Richard frank. , internationally renowned expert in the pacific war one of , our longest serving advisors. President ial counselor. He was an historical consultant for our road to tokyo exhibition. Also has led many tours for the travel program. After graduating from the university of missouri he was , commissioned in the United States army which he served 34 , years. A tour of duty in the republic of vietnam. Rifle platoon leader in the 101st division. He completed law school in Georgetown University law center in washington, d. C. Soon afterwards began work on , his first book, published in 1990. He won the united state marine corps general greenes award. We at the museum are delighted and honored to be hosting the official book launch of the volume of his trilogy on the first history of the asian war. Asia pacific war. That first volume, tower of skulls, comes out in march. March 3 will be the book launch. It is my great privilege to turn the panel over to james and then richard. Thank you. [applause] thank you, jason. Thank you very much. While it was completely really brilliant in previous conferences to be standing at a huge, great hall while there is , nothing wrong with the halls of the previous years, it is so much better to be in this amazing environment. Amazing planes above us. This feels like the right place to be talking about about the Second World War. And talking of cricket, its my duty as an englishman and a cricket fanatic to bring up in very gentlyt every time i come to new , orleans. My last book was about the enormity campaign, and said, how would i bring cricket into this . I was going through diaries and then may 17, it said, had a game of cricket, score 16. I thought, brilliant. Thats my answer. I managed to get it in. Anyways, this is much darker stuff today. Much more serious. When i was asked to do this, i think what rob and the good folk here had in mind was that i was specifically talking about the atrocities. But actually, i think the descent into barbarity goes beyond the atrocities. I will do them in stages. Look at these young chaps. He realize that the hitlers ss jugen division really were jugen. They were young guys, recruited at 17. Most of them 18 by the time they get in. Boy, do they look freshfaced. I have an 18 year old son and the thought of him being on the front line is horrendous. And of course, plenty of 18yearolds. Plenty younger than that beside. The interesting thing about the jugen, people always talk about elite divisions in terms of the germans. I think, you know, i think it is overused. I think what is interesting about them was they are not amazingly well trained. There are certainly very wellequipped. And these are fanatical guys. They have been brought up in a totalitarian militaristic state, where discipline is all. If you say go across the field and get shot at, theyll do it. Similarly, you know, there is a sort of mood that comes from the top. You have to look at who the Senior Commanders are in the 12th hitler jugen division. A lot of those waffen ss divisions. A lot of them go back to the early days of the nazis. You can see where this filters down. You are not talking about the prussians commanding these divisions. This is them on on d 1, the early hours of june 7. Going through here. What is fascinating about this is that d 1, the focus is so heavily on dday. It was a couple years ago, he was talking about how the canadian fought on d 1. These engagements. I dont want to go over the same old ground too much. However, it is a really really , important engagement and is broadly written out of the narrative a little bit. Or if it goes in, it goes in for the wrong reasons. In the wrong ways. I think this little engagement that happens between the ninth canadian Infantry Brigade and , a regiment, one of the main fighting units of the 12th ss, i think it tells you so much about what is going on. The nature of the fighting and enormity, and about the nature of the fighting to come. All of those things are endlessly fascinating. So when the next sort of 15 minutes, what im going to do is try to explain why that is so important. When a division is moved to the front line, it doesnt all arrive en masse. It arrives slightly in drifts and drafts. However the leading unit is the , 25th panzergranadier unit. Regiment, which is commanded by a waffen ss. There he is in his glad rags. There he is in his normandy kit. They have some rather fantastically designed kits for normandy. Had the best kit, the best camouflage smocks and new uniforms and all the rest of it. They always look the part. They were gung ho and ready for business. The plan was that when they got there, they wanted to pull up alongside the 21st panzer, the only Panzer Division in normandy at the time, and then you would have 12 ss in the middle the hitlerjugend , division. Zer, hot footing it up. They were not hot footing it that far because they were being hammered by the bombers. Alliedhter bombers fighterbombers strafing them to , hell, really. The idea is that they all pull in a line and go straight for the sea, to the west and push them down and push the allies back to the sea. That is the plan. Time,ut 8 00 a. M. British 9 00 a. M. American time meyer , has about half the divisions infantry and a third of the artillery. Which is not bad. I reckon hes got 29 artillery bevys plus a whole host, a horse to backtrack 75 millimeter , antitank guns, a few 88mm antitank guns, mortars, and of course lots of young men bristling with firepower and this for getting into scrap and kicking some canadian butt as quickly as they can. That is the situation. On top of that, you have gruper rauch. Joseph. Named after he is in the Panzer Division. The 192ndcommanding grenadier regiment and has been added another whole load of guns. Most of these are on tracks. I reckon hes got about 28 guns. So in other words by the time , meyer is on the scene, youve got rauch as well, plus remnants of the Infantry Division. Not very good, but theyve still got bodies. Youve got a formidable force. You also have a force in the 12th ss who are up for the fight. If panzermeyer tells them to go into battle, they will go. Meyer turns up and does a bit of wrecking. He gets shot at and hastily retreats and goes back to the ardennes. It got bashed about in the war. It had bomb damage and all the rest of it, but none of that is there anymore. It has been tarted up. It is absolutely one and the same place. You can look at the photos of the 12th ss and say, that is the spot. You can see that is the main abbey on the righthand side of that picture. That is where he goes up and looks out. There you are. You can marry yourself up at that wharf, for example. This is one of the towers on the abbey. That photo you just saw two back if i go back. , can you see the lefthand tower in that corner . That bit in the corner there if , i go back again, thats it. There they are, looking out. And from there, this huge, undulating area to the west. This is the area through which the ninth canadian Infantry Brigade are advancing. From up there, you have just the mother of all views. If youre the head of the artillery, and you are coordinating all the artillery in that area that is where you , would want to be. Trust me, you know, because you can see everything. You can get on the blower and get all your guns where you want them to be. Any canadians coming up, they will have a hell of a time. That is the long and short of it. I keep saying it is the ninth canadian Infantry Brigade, but actually, its not, really. Its the north nova scotia highlanders. Theres not a lot of them. Theres four companies each , about 119 men. Each. Just about under 800 men. Something like that. They are supposed to be supported by two regimens of two whole regiments of artillery but they are not there. They have been held back supporting and operation of the eighth brigade attacking an old radar station. It is five miles away. Theyre pushing very much on their own. They have a squadron of troops, four tanks of m10 tank destroyers. And the sherman tanks of the sherman fusiliers. That is basically it. They are supposed to go into action with huge artillery support, and as is the allied way of war, you go in with plenty of firepower. They are supposed to have naval gun support as well. But the Naval Forward observation officer cant get through on the radio because the radio has been so scrambled. He just cannot get through so they do not have that Naval Support either. So in other words, what you are talking about is a handful of infantry, you know, 800 men, tops. And of course, when you are doing a battalion attack its them aree all 800 of swarming up in a single direction. You go up in companies and you have one company in reserve and two companies up forward, and then you have, of those companies, two platoons up there and on reserve. One your actual spearhead is comparatively light. They are going up against camp gruber rauck which has to be said, slightly dealing with the and they are also coming up against the 12th ss. Oops. Sorry. Im being too keen. So this is basically they get up to this little hamlet, and they push on through there, then and get into the next city, by midday the city is captured. Then they push on to this village here. It is this village here. This is the southern bit of it. They push right into there and by this point of the day it is , quite hot. The canadians of the leading elements come into this area and this typical norman village, this kind of big square area. With water in it. That is where you would use it for getting your water for home and you would use it for laundry and all sorts of stuff. They are using it to slake their thirst. They are filling up their water bottles. At that moment, all hell breaks loose. This is the moment the 12th ss start raining in their shells. There has been fighting all day. I mean you know, they have been dingdonging with the camp gruber, there has been plenty of fighting and shelf fire coming in. But suddenly, it is absolutely wild. The person who has got overall control of the artillery in this area is mayors guys. So i reckon if you toss it up, he has got 59 guns supporting him which is a heck of a lot. , he also has his own battalions panzer grenadier regiment. A panzer grenadier regiment is basically a murder motorized regiment. The other thing really interesting about this and compares to the divisions is that they are, they are kind of understrength. They are 10,000 or 11,000 men strong. But the ss Panzer Divisions are really overstrength. The strength of the 12th ss is about 18,000 men strong. 17,000,but what meyer had, they are about 210,000 to 215,000 men strong. Pretty much a double the company size of those of the canadians. Anyway to cut a long story short, the canadians get pushed back, then beyond. At this later in the afternoon, point the artillery starts to kick in. The ss men get no further at all and have to be pulled back. There are stages in this fight, and this is the area i am talking about. This is an original british map, it belonged to a lieutenant who was the commander of the sherwood range a British Armored , unit. This is a section of his original map. You can see can you see just to the west, you can see a bolo you can see the town below that red line. And then above that, slightly to is authie. That is authie. They are pushing back a mile back to this village. That is as far as the germans get. What is really interesting is that during this time, the third battalion which does the main attack through authie and into is commandedlage by one of those ghastly nazi thugs. He really gives the ss a really bad name. The has earned his nazi strikes from commanding guards at dachau. He has been in the ss division. First he has done all sorts of unspeakable things in the Eastern Front. And there he is on the lefthand of our picture. With his new fancy kit on. And he is an absolute lunatic. The problem is when you are young, an 18yearold ss type, you take your lead from your commanders. The commanders, if they are brutal, incompetent, and stupid like he was, then what happens that tends to kind of filter down. They captured lots of canadians and then started executing them. So in authie itself they execute , eight. Two of these canadians are dragged from where they lay and put into the middle of the road. Some french civilians try to pull them off. They are warned off. Dont you pull them off or we will shoot you. Then a force come up and run over the bodies back and forth, back and forth until they are absolutely in april. A pulp. Some french civilians have to clear them up by using a shovel. It is just beyond disgusting. Various other canadians are captured during the day. And these ones are on their way to the abbey. In total, 37 men are executed by a combination of being shot in the head, being smashed in the head with rifle butts, and various other kind of unspeakable acts. A lot of them are actually killed in the abbey and their bodies are sort of left there. It is incredibly brutal. This is the brutal bit we are all talking about in relation specifically to this talk. I do think there was another type of barbarity that needs to be addressed. And what happens is that later on that afternoon, the artillery kicks in. The canadians counterattack. They moved back onto the village. They cannot hold it and they pull back again. Any kind of knocking the canadians back into the sea is being knocked in the head. The full weight of the ss division, half of that derivative, a huge amount of artillery. I reckon you are talking six to one in terms of manpower. Considerably greater than that in terms of firepower for the germans. Very where the germans have the advantage in firepower, but they do in this situation. They get absolutely nowhere. What does this tell us . First of all, this episode tells us one thing. When you come up against the ss, you will have despicable atrocities like the ones that happened in the abbey. It also tells us that the canadians are probably better than we give them credit for. Which i think is definitely true. Repeatedly during the Second World War, the canadians time and time again, whether it be in the navy, whether it be in the air force, whether it be on the ground, they punch above their weight. All volunteers, canadians. There is no draft. So that is one thing. Second thing it tells you is perhaps the 12th ss is not as good as we have given them credit for. I think maybe possibly, but they are still pretty good. I mean how good do you need to be . You have a good machine gun, you antitank gun, you have some pretty useful mortars, and you will do what youre told. That is usually enough for most people. I think they are pretty good, they are ok. They are certainly well equipped. What it also tells you is going on the offensive in normandy , anywhere whoever the site is, is incredibly difficult. And i think that is one of the big, big lessons. It sets the tone around the abbaye darden. It sets the tone for the campaign that is going to follow. What is absolutely the case is in the fighting that follows, we have over the year successive narrative historians have rather had it in for the allies and complaining about how slow they are and stodgy and british stopping for too much cups of tea and american stopping for too many hershey bars. All the rest of it. I think that is absolute nonsense. I say have you walked that , ground . You know there are two different , types of normandy. There is the bit where the canadians are and the british are, which is to the east and west of caen which is largely , open fields. I look at that. Operation access. But as the british going into attack basically over the same ground that this has been fought the plus one, with canadians and the 12 ss. You look at that and that to me just says, first world war. There is the tommys with their distinctive helmets disappearing off into the mist. The point is you have to take that leap of faith. The allied way of war is to use firepower as much as they possibly can to limit the number of people in the firing. Very sensibly, americans, canadians and british limit the number of kind of infantry. You know the narrative, it is , about the infantry and the army. In the case of british second army, 13 in the infantry, 7 in armor. You know 45 service troops. ,so in other words the actual , spearhead is actually small. The idea is you probe forward behind a barrage, behind firepower, you go to the germans. The one thing the germans will always always do with pavlovian , deliberation is counterattack. The moment they counterattacked, wham , down comes your firepower. Wham down comes your airpower. Down comes your offshore naval guns in the case of the Normandy Campaign. But it still means it is incredibly dangerous to take that leap of faith and go out into the front. And this next picture, that is the ammunition lorry going up again. You can see the wide open space of this terrain. It is really difficult to attack. It is a brutal, brutal battle that has been begun here in normandy. And you know as if that was not , bad enough, then you have the bacage. It has to be just so incredibly hard. Until you work out how you can get through that, the rhinos dont kick in until the third week of the hedge cutters o