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Submitted by Major Lee Morton who was a navigator on C-130s and C-141s, and from 1973 to 1975 flew missions in Southeast Asia as described in the video in addition to Hanoi during the peace talks and to Saigon to help in its evacuation, being the third to last C-130 out.
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By Dick Martin
Nazi doctrine pigeonholed their women as obedient mothers and wives, but a cadre of strong female supporters aided the rise of the Fuhrer and some of his most trusted men.
Hitler’s always spoke of his mother, Klara, as a saintly figure, whose major accomplishment was having him as a son. She was born on August 12, 1860 and died in 1907 at the age of 47. She was a simple woman whose birthday was designated as a “day of honor” for the German mothers. Hitler’s broader message for German women was to serve their husbands and raise children leaving nearly everything else to men. Specifically, they were to raise sons who would become warriors and daughters to become mothers of future warriors. As a reward for having many children, the Nazis handed out the Cross of Honor of the German Mother – a bronze one for four or five children, silver for six or seven, and gold for eight or more. From his earliest days in Munich, Hitler recognized the importance of appealing to women and remained a bachelor to exude what he thought was a sexually charged magnetism. In his early rallies, he even placed women in the front rows to exploit their enthusiasm. They persuaded their husbands to join Hitler and they devoted themselves utterly and selflessly to the Nazi Party’s interests. Throughout his reign, women taught Hitler the social graces he lacked, provided a maternal influence, and the funds and connections to mix it up with the German elite. Other than Eva Braun, three women would significantly influence Hitler: Winifred Wagner, Helene Beckstein, and Elsa Bruckmann. Despite all this, Hitler was thought to be impotent, a neuter! Two women who would probably know are his mistresses, Eva Braun and Geli Raubal, both victims of suicide. Hitler’s women never abandoned their self-justifying fantasies, thus demonstrating the Fuhrer’s continued power over them-even after he had perished along with his millions of victims. Taken and edited from a piece by Andrew Nagorski in the April 2020 edition of WWII magazine By Dick Martin  Happy Birthday!
Do you remember what you were doing one week after your 19th birthday? Charles (Chuck) Dawes does! In a scene you won’t see in the movies, Chuck and 65 of his colleagues were surrendering to the German Army in a farmhouse in France in November of 1944, less than a month after entering WWII at Marseilles, France. After days of being subjected to artillery fire, Chuck and his unit and some medical personnel found a farmhouse to take refuge for the night. During the night, Chuck and his colleagues were taken prisoner by the German Army. Were they the survivors of a frontal assault by the German Army on the farmhouse or were Chuck’s guards overwhelmed by the Germans. No, a polite German officer knocked on the farmhouse door, where the Americans were sleeping and asked them to surrender or he threatened to grenade the farmhouse. At that point Chuck and the rest of the group were lined up and marched to a German prison camp. |
