Hell in Paradis - 27 May 1940

After suffering heavy losses crossing the Aire canal in the Béthune sector. SS Totenkopf troops face a rearguard action by men of the 2nd Royal Norfolk Regiment, 1st Royal Scots and the 8th Lancashire Fusiliers, along a defensive line in the hamlets of Riez du Vinage, Le Cornet Malo and Le Paradis.
Men of the Royal Norfolks hold out in a farmhouse and fight until out of ammunition before surrendering to SS troops of the Totenkopf division.... they are gathered and led down the road.....
1/7
99 prisoners of war are lined up against a barn wall a little further down the road. In the meadow facing them are machine guns.
An order is barked out by the unit's commander, Fritz Knöchlein and the guns open up.
Only two men will survive, Privates William O'Callaghan and Albert Pooley, who play dead under the bodies of their comrades.
2/7

A traitor's return

In the weeks following the German capitulation, French POWs, forced labourers and deportees started to be repatriated.
Some, like Paul Pradier, tried to slip back into France pretending to be someone else because they had a dark past to hide....
1/6 Pradier decided not only to become a collaborator, but aged 19 became a policeman for the SS Sipo-SD in the Dordogne, infilitrating maquis resistance groups and then denouncing them, as well as finding Jewish people that were hiding out in the countryside.
2/6

Forgiveness. 10 June 1944 - 12 May 1945

On the evening of Friday 9 June, 19-year old André Désourteaux waved goodbye to his parents and siblings and set off from his village to stay in Limoges where he was starting work early the next day.
It would be the last time he saw them, because after lunch SS troops arrived and by the time they had left, 643 men, women and children were dead. 18 of them were members of Andrés family.
The village was called Oradour-sur-Glane.
1/6 When André finished his shift at the end of the afternoon, he waited for the tram to arrive to take him back to Oradour.
It never arrived.
Instead he went to the train station and put his bike on a train that took him to a village five miles away.
Cresting a hill, he saw that the church had burned down, and people warned him that the Germans had been, but the scale of the events were as yet unknown.
2/6

🇬🇧 The Dame of Sark
On 10 May 1945, a small British delegation of three officers arrived on the small island of Sark in the Channel Islands to take the German surrender.
Sibyl Hathaway, the feudal lady of the island, was present and the officers asked her if, as they were short of men, if she would take command of the 275 men of the German garrison.
Lieutenant Colonel K. Allen asked her if she could manage a few days without British troops. Her answer was.... “As I have been left for nearly five years,” she said, “I can stand a few more days.”
1/8 When France fell in June 1940, the Channel Islands were demilitarised, deemed as having no strategic importance. Some people chose to take the offer of evacuation, but on Sark, Sibyl Hathaway and her husband held a public meeting to state that they would remain, and many local people decided to do the same.
The Germans arrived on 3 July 1940. It was an easy catch, as the island's sole defender was 70-year old John Perrio, a donkey-borne old soldier armed with an ancient rifle.
2/8

4 May 1945 - The race to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
Units of the US 3rd ID and 101st Airborne, and the French 2nd Armored Div are engaged in a race to be the first to Berchtesgaden.
During the night, the French form a column of the 12 Company Régiment de marche du Tchad (RMT), and Sherman tanks of the Régiment de chars de combat (RCC).
On board the Sherman named Bautzen, is 25-year old Robert Constant, originally from the French city of Limoges and who has been in action from Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the Colmar Pocket and the advance across southern Germany. 1/4 At 2 p.m., the French column reaches the river Saalach, the last barrier before Berchtesgaden which is now only 15 kilometres away.
However, the bridge has been blown and in front are Americans from the 3rd ID in the process of bridging the river and who, of course, are not going to let the French be first across... 2/4

21 April 1945 - Meeting a monster

Norbert Masur, a German-born Jew and Swedish representative to the World Jewish Congress flew in to Germany to meet with the architect of the Holocaust Heinrich Himmler.
His plane landed at Tempelhof airport Berlin on 19 April at the same time as Soviet forces were pushing into the capital's eastern and southern suburbs. 1/4 Masur was taken to Hartzwalde some fifty miles north of Berlin and not far from the women's concentration camp of Ravensbrück.
The meeting was set up by, and at the estate, of Himmler's physio therapist, Felix Kersten.
Kersten had used his unique access to Himmler throughout the war to intervene and save some Jews and homosexuals from extermination. 2/4

A surprise attack - and a link to the Titanic
Granville, the night of 8/9 March 1945 was one like many others since the small port town's liberation by US forces on 31 August 1944.
However, out at sea, a German seaborne force led by Kapitänleutnant Carl-Friedrich Mohr from the occupied Channel Islands, was approaching to raid the town. 1/7
The German garrisons on the Channel Islands had been cut off since the end of the Battle of Normandy and supplies, as well as morale, were low. In December, four German paratroopers and a sailor, held in the Granville POW camp had made a daring escape to Jersey by taking a landing craft from the harbour. 2/7

🇺🇸 Iwo Jima - the morning of 23 February 1945
Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal takes what is arguably the most iconic photo of the Second World War as a group of Marines attach the Star Spangled Banner to a pole and raise it on the summit of Mount Suribachi. Today we are going to focus on the story of the Marine seen on the left, a man who, like so many, stuggled in the post war years to shake off the demons he had encountered in combat. 1/10 PFC Ira Hamilton Hayes was born in 1923 into the Akimel O'odham (Pima) Native American people in Arizona. He enlisted into the USMC Reserve in August 1942 and went on to see combat on the Solomon Island of Bougainville before taking part in the bloody landings on Iwo Jima on 19 February 1945. 2/10

🇫🇷 Love without limits
Lyon, 21 October 1943. Lucie Aubrac's husband Raymond has now been in the hands of the Gestapo for four months. Time is running out and he will soon disappear into the night and fog of the Nazi concentration camp system... 1/8 Lucie was born into a working class family in Paris in June 1912. Her father, Louis Bernard, saw action in the Great War and was badly wounded in 1915. Her parents supported Lucie and her sister in the pursuit of their studies and after studying at the Sorbonne, whilst at the same time working as a dishwasher in a restaurant, she passed the tough competitive examination for the recruitment of associate professors and found work at the University of Strasbourg. 2/8

Slaughterhouse 1945
13 February 1945, the Saxony capital of Dresden is hit by two raids led by RAF Bomber Command, creating a massive damage to the city on the river Elbe. Follow up raids by the USAAF over the next two days create a deadly firestorm leaving the city a burned out husk and an estimated 25,000 dead. Present in the city was a British paratrooper who had been taken prisoner at Arnhem the previous September.... 1/4
Victor Gregg would be haunted for the rest of his life by what he saw. He was in a prison in the city after having been sentenced to death for an act of sabotage at a soap factory he was forced to work in. A high esplosive bomb damaged the wall and he was able to escape and in the chaos of the raids, he was seen as just another POW and put to work clearing bodies during the attacks and after. 2/4

🇫🇷 "We are French!"
29 April 1941 - Carpiquet airfield, Caen, Normandy in occupied France. 20-year old Denys Boudard and 21-year old Jean Hébert penetrate the base, across the grass they see the hangar where a German plane sits.... 1/7 The two friends had taken flying lessons at the nearby aerodrome of Cormelles-le-Royal before the war and knew the area well. Both immediately joined the French air force on the outbreak of war and began their military pilot training. With the fall of France, they were sent to Oran in Algeria and began to think of ways of continuing the fight. 2/7

🇫🇷 The Famous Five
On the night of 16 September 1941, five French high school pupils, took to the waters of the English Channel in two canoes after months of planning and preparation to join de Gaulle's Free French in London. Before they left, each one left a message on the bed, it simply said, "Dear Parents, I have gone to join General de Gaulle."
Their names were Pierre Lavoix (19), Jean-Paul Lavoix (17), Renelde Lefebvre (16), Christian Richard (17) and Guy Richard (15). 1/6 Led by Pierre Lavoix, the group of friends began making their plans in May. The Lavoix brothers already had a canoe, but another was needed for the other three. Renelde managed to buy one for only 300 francs, but there was a reason for its cheap price - it had a huge hole in it, but got a Kriegsmarine motorboat crew based at Berck to help repair it! 2/6

🇺🇸 Valor - An Alamo in the Ardennes
On 8 February 1945, 23-year old Staff Sergeant Day G. Turner (319th inf/80th Inf Div) fell in the liberation of Europe when his unit was involved in heavy fighting east of Diekirch on the Luxembourg border with Germany. At the time of his death, he did not know that he was going to be awarded the Medal of Honor for an amazing feat of stubborn defence a month earlier... 1/7
S/Sgt Turner was a typical US citizen soldier. Born in Berwick, Pennsylvania in 1921, he was drafted into the US Army in September 1943 after his twenty-second birthday. His unit left New York on 1 July 1944 and had its first taste of action in the latter phase of the Battle of Normandy and the subsequent push across France.
As part of Patton’s Third Army, the 319th Infantry was south of the German attack in the Ardennes in mid-December, but moved north into Luxembourg to join the Battle of the Bulge. 2/7

Carve their names with pride 🇬🇧 🇫🇷

5 February 1945. Ravensbrück concentration camp. Special Operations Executive agents, Violette Szabo, Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe are taken from the punishment block and informed by camp commandant, Fritz Suhren, that they have been sentenced to death. Taken to the execution alley near the crematorium, they are shot in the back of the head. 1/4
Lilian Rolfe was born in Paris in 1914 to a British father and Russian mother. When war broke out, she was working at the British Embassy in Rio de Janeiro. She made her way to Britain in early 43 and joined the WAAF in May. She came to the attention of the SOE and was recruited in November, training as a wireless operator. During the early hours of 5 April 1944, she was on board one of two Lysanders (one was carrying Violette Szabo) that landed near Tours in occupied France. Working with local Resistance groups, she sent over sixty messages back to London, organizing arms drops and sending back intelligence. Her luck ran out on 31 July when she was arrested in Nangis, south-west of Paris. By the time of her execution, she could barely work, ill and worn out by the forced labour in various sub camps. She was thirty years old. 2/4

🇧🇪 In remembrance
Andrée Dumont died two days ago at the age of 102. Born in Brussels on 5 September 1922, she played a role in the Comet Line helping Allied airmen escape occupied Europe. 1/7 Born into a patriotic family, she could not accept the surrender of 28 May 1940 and entered into resistance working as a messenger for her father Jean-Luc who was involved in the Luc-Marc network. 2/7

🇫🇷 During the early hours of 30 January 1944, BCRA French agent 23-year old Marguerite Petitjean is parachuted from a 138 Sqn Halifax along with three male agents over DZ Ajusteur in the Drôme department. 1/7
The drop is not without incident, there is thick fog and Eugène Déchelette (photo) breaks his ankle when he hits the ground and Marguerite gets tangled up in a tree. Yvon Morandat and Sabotage expert René Obadia are fine. 2/7

19 January 1945
French 3 star general, Gustave Mesny, is in a convoy of cars driving high ranking French POWs to Colditz Castle. His car falls behind the others and pulls over, one of the two guards, SS men wearing Wehrmacht uniforms, takes out a pistol and executes the general with a bullet to the back of the neck.... 1/6 Gustave Mesny, who had seen action during the Great War, commanded the 5th North African Infantry Division in the Battle of France and they fought like lions in defending the Lille Pocket, thus giving British units more time to evacuate from Dunkirk. Such was the defence of the six French divisions at Lille, German General Waeger allowed them to parade when they lay down their arms and saluted them. 2/6

🇺🇸 Unbroken - The 333rd Field Artillery Battalion
With Bastogne now surrounded, another band of brothers had made its way into the perimeter and played a vital role in fending off German attacks. 1/4 The 333rd Field Artillery Battalion was a racially segregated unit composed of African-American troops. A day into the German offensive in the Ardennes, the unit fought back at Schoenberg near St. Vith and remained at the guns even when the Germans broke into their lines. 2/4

17 December 1944 - A war crime and payback 32 years later.

On day two of the German Ardennes offensive, Waffen-SS troops of Kampfgruppe Peiper murdered eighty-four U.S. POWs in a field at Malmedy on the second day of the Ardennes offensive. Led by Joachim Peiper, the SS troops encountered a convoy of American rear-echelon troops at Malmedy and captured 113 men, most of whom were of Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. 1/8 The men were taken to a field by a crossroads and gunned down, but there were survivors. Peiper survived the war and was put on trial at Dachau with the main accusation concerning the Malmedy Massacre. 2/8

🇺🇸 A serenade for eternity
15 December 1944. At 1.45 pm, a UC-64A Norseman lands at RAF Twinwood Farm to pick up a prestigious passenger. Major Glenn Miller boards the aircraft and greets Lt Col Norman F Baessell who has offered to take him to Paris where he is due to establish his band and play concerts for American troops. Ten minutes later the Norseman, flown by Flight Officer John R.S. Morgan, takes off and is never seen again. 1/6
Miller voluntarily enlisted in the fall of 1942 and was commissioned as a captain in the Army Specialist Corps before being transferred to the AAF Technical Training Command (TTC) where he formed a band. In May 44, Eisenhower requested the transfer of Miller's AAF band to Great Britain and was introduced to another star in London, the actor Lt. Col. David Niven who was deputy director of SHAEF Broadcasting. (Niven is seen here in the 1942 film 'First of the Few' with Leslie Howard who would die on 1 June 1943 when the plane he was flying in was shot down over the Bay of Biscay). 2/6

🇫🇷 It has been announced today that Marc Bloch will enter the Panthéon in Paris. On the evening of 16 June 1944, Marc Bloch was in Montluc prison in Lyon. Footsteps rang out down the corridors and cell doors clanged open. Led out of his cell, he joined 29 other Resistance prisoners who were led to waiting trucks. 1/6
Bloch was born in Lyon on 6 July 1886 into a Jewish-Alsatian family and was working as a high school teacher in Amiens when the Great War broke out. Having already done his two years obligatory military service, he was mobilised as a sergeant into the 272nd Infantry Regiment and saw action during the bloody Battle of the Frontier and on the Marne, then later the Somme and other battles right up to the end of the war. 2/6