Great Pacific War story

If you are interested in WWII history and want a fascinating and captivating story from the Pacific front, then check out Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides. Below is a review of the book.



The Bataan Death March was just the beginning of the woes American soldiers captured by the Japanese army in the Philippines had to endure. The survivors of the march faced not only their captors' regular brutality (having surrendered, they were considered to be less than honorable foes), but also a host of illnesses such as dysentery and malaria. For three years these "ghost soldiers" lived in misery, suffering terrible losses.
When Army Rangers among Douglas MacArthur's forces arrived in the Philippines, they hatched a daring plan to liberate their captured comrades, a mission that, if successful, would prove to be a tremendous morale booster at the front and at home. Led by a young officer named Henry Mucci (called "Little MacArthur" for his constant pipe as well as his brilliance as a strategist), a combined Ranger and Filipino guerrilla force penetrated far behind enemy lines, attacked Japanese forces guarding Allied prisoners at a jungle outpost called Cabanatuan, and shepherded hundreds of prisoners to safety, with an angry Japanese army in hot pursuit. Amazingly, they suffered only light casualties.
In Ghost Soldiers, journalist Hampton Sides recounts that daring rescue, once known to every American schoolchild but now long forgotten. A gifted storyteller, Sides packs his narrative with detailed descriptions of the principal actors on both sides of the struggle and with moments of danger and exhilaration. Thrilling from start to finish, his book celebrates the heroism of hundreds of warriors and brings renewed attention to one of the Rangers' finest hours. --Gregory McNamee

Remembering Kristallnacht

Why is it important to remember? Does it ever become overkill? What do we lose if we forget our past? Check out this article about the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht. How can we as a society move forward and still honor the past?

THE RECORD (Hackensack, N.J.) Nov. 9, 1998, n.p. Reprinted with permission from Associated Press Newsfeatures. GERMANY JEWS REMEMBER KRISTALLNACHT by Anne Thompson Associated Press Writer BERLIN (AP)--With a "march of silence" and plans for new synagogues, Germany's Jewish community marked the 60th anniversary Monday of Kristallnacht--the "Night of Broken Glass"--when Nazi storm troopers burned and ransacked Jewish businesses and temples. Germany's Jewish community numbered 530,000 before the Nazis took power; it now is 70,000 strong and growing. But neo-Nazi incidents also are on the rise, and Jewish leaders are more determined than ever that the Holocaust not be forgotten--fighting what they see as a trend toward emphasizing Germany's future at the expense of remembering its past. Politicians, including Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, religious leaders and members of the Jewish community gathered for anniversary speeches in a cavernous, mosaic-covered Berlin synagogue where windows were shattered during the Kristallnacht violence that presaged the Holocaust. Topic No. 1: How to remember the past while moving Germany into the 21st century and its seat of government back to Berlin, Adolf Hitler's capital. Underscoring all the speeches was the theme that Germans still struggle for the right way to preserve the horrors of the Holocaust as a lesson for future generations. Ignatz Bubis, the leader of Germany's Jews, lambasted what he calls an "intellectual nationalism" represented in comments by a prize-winning German author who says repeated media references to Nazi atrocities are designed to perpetuate German guilt. Bubis contends novelist Martin Walser has given neo-Nazis mainstream arguments for anti-Semitic assaults, such as the small swastikas found Monday etched into a monument commemorating the mass deportation of Berlin's Jews to concentration camps. "Whenever someone who is counted among the spiritual elite of the nation makes such statements, they carry a weight of their own," Bubis told the audience of 2,000. "It is certain that right-wing extremists will refer to Walser." The Kristallnacht anniversary has particular significance this year, which saw the election of politicians too young to have memories of World War II. The generational change, coupled with the move to Berlin and the new government's emphasis on a forward-looking Germany has sparked concern that there is a desire to return to a "normal" Germany unburdened by the Holocaust. "For me, normality is to be a Jew and to be able to live in Germany again," Bubis said. "'Normality' cannot mean that we supplant memory and live with a new anti-Semitism and new racism." Berlin's Jewish community held its first "march of silence" Monday in remembrance of Kristallnacht. Some 2,000-3,000 people formed a sea of umbrellas on a dark, drizzling afternoon. A march also was held in Duesseldorf, along with ceremonies in Buchenwald, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich. The synagogue ceremony started with a description of Kristallnacht from historian Andreas Nachama, leader of Berlin's Jewish community. On the night of Nov. 9, 1938, Nazi leaders heard a Jew had shot a German diplomat in Paris. In reprisal, they ordered storm troopers into the streets in Germany and Austria, which Hitler had annexed earlier. They rounded up Jews and burned and broke windows in synagogues and Jewish businesses--calling it the "Night of Broken Glass." When the rampage ended on Nov. 10, more than 1,300 synagogues were destroyed and more than 30,000 Jews had been sent to concentration camps. Several hundred people were killed or committed suicide. Today, some say Kristallnacht risks being eclipsed by another watershed--the Nov. 9, 1989, fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to German reunification the next year. Nachama called it a "coincidence" that the events fall on the same date but saw commonality in both resulting from totalitarianism: Kristallnacht from the Nazis and the Berlin Wall from the communists. There was hope, too, in Monday's events. The eastern city of Dresden broke ground for a synagogue on the site of a Jewish temple destroyed in the war. And Berlin unveiled blueprints for rebuilding its temple in the Mitte neighborhood, a center of Jewish life before the war. While both prewar synagogues sat about 2,000 people, the new ones will have seats only for a few hundred. Of the 11 million people who perished under the Nazis, about 6 million were Jews. * * * GERMAN CITY BUILDING NEW SYNAGOGUE DRESDEN, GERMANY (AP)--Sixty years after Dresden's main synagogue burned to the ground in the Nazi pogrom Kristallnacht, officials on Monday laid the cornerstone for a new synagogue on the same site. The new building will be smaller to reflect the city's diminished Jewish community, but the leader of Dresden's Jews, Roman Koenig, expressed hope that it would stand as a sign of tolerance and vigilance. It is the first new synagogue to be built in former East Germany since reunification in 1990. The Semper synagogue, built in 1838 by the same architect who designed Dresden's famed opera house, was one of more than 1,300 destroyed by Nazi storm troopers on Kristallnacht, known as the Night of Broken Glass, on Nov. 9, 1938. But Dresden firefighter Alfred Neugebauer, responding to the blaze, saved a Star of David from the building and hid it in his attic until the war ended. He then returned it to the Jewish community. The star will be placed on top of the new synagogue, which will begin holding services in a year. The city of Dresden and Saxony state have contributed $6 million to build the synagogue. Another $2.4 million has been donated, including $110,000 collected in Columbus, Ohio, Dresden's American sister city. Frank Wobst--a Dresden native and now head of Columbus-based Huntington Bankshares Inc.--helped forge the sister-city relationship, and returned Monday to present the check and underline the American city's commitment to Dresden. "We wanted to be part of rebuilding the synagogue so Dresden's Jewish community would have a synagogue and be more complete," said Wobst, who was only 4 when the old synagogue was destroyed. He left his native city for West Germany in 1952, as the communists secured their hold on East Germany, and moved to the United States several years later. Wobst also brought with him a $30,000 check to help rebuild the city's central church, the Frauenkirche, which was destroyed in the war by Allied bombs.--Frank Ellmers, Associated Press Writer

Thompson, Anne. "Germany Jews Remember Kristallnacht." The Record (Hackensack, NJ) Nov. 9 1998: n.p. SIRS Researcher. Web. 09 April 2010.

Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment

Watch what happens when normal everyday people assume violent roles for "science" and society because someone else tells them to.

Auschwitz Chronology

January 25, 1940The SS decides to construct a concentration camp near Oswiecim (Auschwitz).
May 20, 1940The first concentration camp prisoners -- 30 recidivist criminals from Sachsenhausen -- arrive at Auschwitz concentration camp.


March 1, 1941Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of German Police Heinrich Himmler inspects Oswiecim (Auschwitz). Because nearby factories use prisoners for forced labor, Himmler is concerned about the prisoner capacity of the camp. On this visit, he orders both the expansion of Auschwitz I camp facilities to hold 30,000 prisoners and the building of a camp near Birkenau for an expected influx of 100,000 Soviet prisoners of war. Himmler also orders that the camp supply 10,000 prisoners for forced labor to construct an I.G. Farben factory complex at Dwory, about a mile away. Himmler will make additional visits to Auschwitz in 1942, when he will witness the killing of prisoners in the gas chambers.

September 3, 1941The first gassings of prisoners occur in Auschwitz I. The SS tests Zyklon B gas by killing 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 other ill or weak prisoners. Testing takes place in a makeshift gas chamber in the cellar of Block 11 in Auschwitz I. Zyklon B was the commercial name for crystalline hydrogen cyanide gas, manufactured by I.G. Farben and normally used as an insecticide. The "success" of these experiments will lead to the adoption of Zyklon B as the killing agent for the yet-to-be-constructed Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center.


January 25, 1942SS chief Heinrich Himmler informs Richard Gluecks, the Inspector of Concentration Camps, that 100,000 Jewish men and 50,000 Jewish women would be deported from Germany to Auschwitz as forced laborers.


February 15, 1942The first transport of Jews from Bytom (Beuthen) in German-annexed Upper Silesia arrives in Auschwitz I. The SS camp authorities kill all those on the transport immediately upon arrival with Zyklon B gas.

December 31, 1942German SS and police authorities deported approximately 175,000 Jews to Auschwitz in 1942.

January 1 - March 31, 1943German SS and police authorities deport approximately 105,000 Jews to Auschwitz.

January 29, 1943The Reich Central Office for Security orders all designated Roma (Gypsies) residing in Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to be deported to Auschwitz.

February 26, 1943The first transport of Roma (Gypsies) from Germany arrives at Auschwitz. The SS authorities house them in Section B-IIe of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which becomes known as the "Gypsy family camp." By the end of 1943 more than 18,000 Roma (Gypsies) will have been incarcerated in the so-called family camp and as many as 23,000 Gypsies deported to the Auschwitz camp complex.

April 1, 1943 - March 1944German SS and police authorities deport approximately 160,000 Jews to Auschwitz.

May 2, 1944The first two transports of Hungarian Jews arrive in Auschwitz.

July 6, 1944The deportation of Hungarian Jews is halted by order of Regent Miklos Horthy. The last transport from Hungary arrives on July 11.

August 2, 1944SS camp authorities murder the last residents -- just under 3,000 -- of the so-called Gypsy family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The SS murders an estimated total of 20,000 Roma (Gypsies) in the Auschwitz concentration camp complex.

April 1944 - November 1944SS and Police authorities deport more than 585,000 Jews to Auschwitz.

October 7, 1944Members of the Jewish prisoner "special detachment" (Sonderkommando) that was forced to remove bodies from the gas chambers and operate the crematoria stage an uprising. They successfully blow up Crematorium IV and kill several guards. Women prisoners had smuggled gunpowder out of nearby factories to members of the Sonderkommando. The SS quickly suppresses the revolt and kills all the Sonderkommando members. On January 6, 1945, just weeks before Soviet forces liberate the camp, the SS will also hang four women who smuggled gunpowder into the camp.

November 25, 1944As Soviet forces continue to approach, SS chief Heinrich Himmler orders the destruction of the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers and crematoria. During this SS attempt to destroy the evidence of mass killings, prisoners will be forced to dismantle and dynamite the structures.

January 12, 1945A Soviet offensive breaches the German defenses on the Vistula; Soviet troops take Warsaw and advance rapidly on Krakow and Oswiecim.

January 18 - 27, 1945As Soviet units approach, the SS evacuates to the west the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. Tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, are forced to march to the cities of Wodzislaw and Gliwice in the western part of Upper Silesia. During the march, SS guards shoot anyone who cannot continue. In Wodzislaw and Gliwice, the prisoners will be put on unheated freight trains and deported to concentration camps in Germany, particularly to Flossenbürg, Sachsenhausen, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, and Dachau, and to Mauthausen in Austria. In all, nearly 60,000 prisoners are forced on death marches from the Auschwitz camp system. As many as 15,000 die during the forced marches. Thousands more were killed in the days before the evacuation.

January 27, 1945Soviet troops enter the Auschwitz camp complex and liberate approximately 7,000 prisoners remaining in the camp. During the existence of Auschwitz, the SS camp authorities killed nearly one million Jews from across Europe. Other victims included approximately 74,000 Poles, approximately 21,000 Roma (Gypsies), and approximately 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war.

Concentration Camps Information

Many of you have questions about concentration camps and death camps. Here are a few links to some sites with excellent resources and information.

Expansion of the camp system: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005474

Auschwitz: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005189

Auschwitz video "Through the lens of the SS: Photos of Nazi Leadership": http://www.ushmm.org/research/collections/highlights/auschwitz/

Keeping track of prisoners: tattoos and numbers: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007056

Extra Credit Challenge: Hitler Youth Recruited

Earn up to 5 points on your paper: Watch this video about a member of the Hitler Youth who has a change of heart during WWII. What interesting things did this video teach/show you?

New Challenge: Inside the Mind of Adolf Hitler

Watch this video and listen to what Hitler's men say about Hitler. What strikes you as interesting?