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Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Tying in WWI where countries also were in constant flux, and some towns especially impacted, I think this could make for a great collecting area and/or exhibit on its own!
Anyone else of like mind?
Dave.
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Dave,
I agree! I collect general WW, however, but I have seen some very nice collections at auctions with a WWII or WWI theme. Great way to specialize, but still have a broad country reach.
Chris
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A few years ago, I began weeding out many of the minor stamp varieties from my collection. This included the British Commonwealth countries with all those perf variations with the King George V definitives. Then I found an article that stated that the perf variations were the result of the successive loss of printing plants in England due to German bombing curing the Battle of Britain. Stamps needed to be printed, so they moved the surviving printing presses and perforating machines from one building to the next. This was the reason for the many stamp variations. I found these to be of historical importance as relates to the hobby. I pulled back those stamps, and even found that Steiner had pages for these stamps. They are safely back in my albums.
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I have found that there are different ways of assembling a WW2 collection, the most popular being a chronological narrative, with each event illustrated by a stamp or stamps. Sometimes this can get out of hand. To illustrate Dunkirk, one collector found a German stamp with a picture of a dynamo (Operation Dynamo was the Dunkirk evacuation). This is desperate, and may be an extreme example, but it does highlight the limitations of using stamps merely as illustrations. You might just as well make a nicely-kept scrapbook of magazine cuttings.
Charting how, when and why countries chose to commemorate people, battles, events, even 'hardware', ties the stamps themselves to the subject. Stamps are (usually) issued for a reason. This is important. (Those WW2 stamps issued for no reason, except to part collectors from their money, do not find a place in my collection; the criterion is usually whether the issuing country had any connection with the event being commemorated.)
Some time ago I bought second-hand two pleasing binders, embossed with the gold title "The History of WWII". But you'd barely be scratching the surface if you thought you could cover that conflict in just two albums. (They presently house the 'Liberation and Victory' section of my collection.)
'Liberation and Victory' is all but complete. Under current construction are 'Holocaust' (Part 2), and 'Resistance'. To come are 'Military Operations', 'Commanders', 'Military Hardware' (i.e. planes, tanks, etc.) and a lot of smaller sub-headings. And I haven't even included perforation varieties due to bombing!
It is a great way to specialise, but it requires a lot of time and effort. Fortunately, it is not so expensive, unless you want those 'Liquidation of Empire' cinderellas which appeared on another thread!
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When I started collecting stamp related to the Second World War, I really knew little about that conflict. After all, I was educated in American schools! 
The war certainly didn't take a prominent place in my education, but I did "learn" that United States beat the hell out of Germany, all by itself. Fortunately, thanks to stamps and covers, and to a lot of reading and watching PBS, I now have a pretty good handle on the major themes of the war. I do occasionally buy modern commemorative issues regardless of who issues them, IF they illustrate something I'm interested in. And I'll pick up stamps that indirectly illustrate an aspect of the war. Here's an example:
The stamp itself has nothing at all to do with the war. Here's the same stamp, inverted:
Kamsack, Saskatchewan is the namesake of H.M.C.S. Kamsack, a Canadian corvette that protected Allied convoys from German U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. Here's a Kamsack cover:
And an original photograph of Kamsack
The stamp, the cover, and the photograph made up a nice page in my Battle of the Atlantic exhibit.
In addition to the Battle of Atlantic, I've been especially interested in the history of the RCAF in Bomber Command, especially 420 Squadron, as well as the wartime economies of Canada and Great Britain. I also have a number of Second World War items in my military medicine collection.
Bob
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"but I did "learn" that United States beat the hell out of Germany, all by itself."
I do hope you are joking - Lots of Europeans, Poms, Kiwis & Aussies won battles against the Germans & Italians well before the US "Got Involved"
Notably at Sea ( Look up HMAS Perth WWII ) and well before the Japanese also Got involved..
Many good books on this subject and lots of stamps worldwide - Very good topic for stamps.. I think.. :-)
Cheers
Steve
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Hi Bob
I'm currently reading a book called "Cruiser" written by Mike Carlton - This is a book of over 2200 pages documenting the early years just before WWII and is written around the reconditioning and commissioning of HMAS Perth ( an old english cruiser renamed ) in Portsmouth England.
The book details conditions of life from around 1932 (I think) based on the lives of the Australians that were shipped to Britain to crew the newly named ship. Most of the ships had no radar but some carried a float plane for forward recon, those planes were BIPLANES.
Sorry to go off topic guys, but it's a topic of interest to a lot of us I think.
Cheers
Steve.
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I think we can be certain that Bob was referring to what he learned at school, rather than what he knows now! But I hope that the "Europeans, Poms, Kiwis and Aussies" Stevo45 mentions is not an exhaustive list, either! (There's the little matter of those Russian armies...)
Like me, Bob is of a generation for whom WW2 was altogether too close for the comfort of our teachers to make reference to, even though through comics and the like we were fascinated by the whole thing. We used to decorate our exercise books with swastikas by way of irritating them, and the more erudite of us would airily explain that they were Sanskrit symbols. But aside from being justifiably furious at our deliberate needling of them, none (in my experience) could be lured into telling us more about the issues surrounding the conflict, or their own part in it.
When, much later, it became correct for British state primary education to embark on WW2, it was solely from the narrowest, most Anglo-centric point of view. WW2 was nothing more than the Home Front, Anderson shelters, evacuees and rationing. That was it. Luckily, I taught outside the state system and was able to bring rather more excitement, interest, and all-round perspective on the matter, in a curriculum entirely of my own making. (Which of course included stamps, and there I found the chronological narrative style perfected by the first Marshall Islands 50th anniversary sets most useful.)
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Don't forget about soldiers from the occupied nations who fought with the Allies, even Algerians fought with the French troops (my late uncle from Algeria fought with DeGaulle, and helped to liberate France).
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"... We used to decorate our exercise books with swastikas by way of irritating them, and the more erudite of us would airily explain that they were Sanskrit symbols ..."
My childhood neighborhood in NYC was pretty much surrounded by ethnic German neighborhoods.
In the late 50s & early 60s, a few of those kids were fond of wearing Wehrmacht medals to school.
In fact, one of the local twits had a Nazi flag, mounted on the ceiling of his second floor living room, so as to be visible from the street.
This was less than twenty years after V-E day.
Freedom!
My mother tells me that a genuine wartime Nazi spy was arrested in a diner just up the road; there is a Wendy's on that corner, today.
Meanwhile, much of that 'original' population has been replaced by Hispanic immigrants ... quite an improvement, if you ask me.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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I do indeed understand, now, that the United States was a Johnny Come Lately to the Second World War, despite Roosevelt's clear thinking on the subject.
My first understanding that Canada had been involved in the war came when I got my first job in Canada, after emigrating from the U.S. in 1969. My boss, Dick Passmore, director of the Canadian Wildlife Federation, had trained fighter pilots at RCAF Station North Battleford, Saskatchewan, flying the Harvard II (Canadian version of the Texan) under the auspices of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Some Americans, tired of waiting for the U.S. to join the fight, volunteered for the RCAF.
My collection includes WW2 related stamps and covers from several Allied nations, including Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland, Jamaica, Brazil, and Curaçao, and military forces of Free Norway, Free Netherlands, Free France, and Free Poland.
My ire gets raised just a bit when I see TV programs extolling the heroism of the Eighth Air Force and the U.S. Army in Europe while ignoring the sacrifice of other nations.
Bob
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Bob,
the US Eighth AF paid an enormous price for the bombing it did in Europe. No need to detract from that (although one could argue about its effectiveness and morality, but that' s a different conversation).
the problem for American TV and movie producers is the immense gap between reality and Americans' knowledge and, even, interest. I remember watching Foyle's War and meeting Foyle's sergeant, just back, minus a leg, from Norway. Churchill wrote about the battle for Norway in his wonderful 6-volume war-time memoir, but I daresay 95/100 Americans would be shocked to hear there was a battle there, much less describe or understand it. I've never, ever, seen any reference in any mainstream media in the US about it.
David
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I read Churchill in the early 1970s; a seminal moment for me.
On the subject of the burden of the war, Churchill included a table entitled (more/less) "Number of Divisions In Contact With The Enemy" (by nation). Nothing put America's role in context quite like that.
Factoid: in June 1941, 120 German divisions attacked 150 Russian divisions. More than three long years later, in December 1944, American divisions in Europe approached 70. Who fought who?
Of immediate interest to me - with the draft looming - were the seeds of the Vietnam War.
Churchill was desperate to keep the French in the war, both during the Phony War (September 1939 thru May 1940) and after France fell.
One of the promises he made - which the French only took to heart after FDR signed on - was that all of France's colonies would be restored to her after the Allies defeated Germany.
Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Michael makes great points here.
I'll add that nomenclature is important: a corps means one thing to a western army and, sometimes, something else to a soviet army. Soviet tank divisions ceased to exist after Barbarosa, being replaced by corps. A corps meant the same thing in a western or soviet infantry formation.
in addition (or, sometimes, subtraction), the time and place determined the size of unit, with British divisions growing in size (on paper) as the war progressed.
we need to also look at relative size of units on paper: for infantry divisions, one late-war British ID is 18K; an American 14K; and a Soviet ID about 10k. German IDs ranged from 15/17K. Soviet TCs were roughly equivalent to US ADs at around 11K, with British and German ADs both larger, between 12/15 for German and 15 for British. By war's end, US and UK divisions were constantly being replenished while German divisions were being depleted, and paper strength often bearing no resemblance to what was in the field.
And, while there were 70 US divisions in Europe, there another 16 Army divisions in the Pacific as well as 6 Marine divisions; the Soviets had none, until just days before VJ day (which entitled them to all kinds of spoils for the thimble-full of blood).
I won't touch Vichy or post-war France and our and the British complicity in making the world a worse place, even without our capitulation in Eastern Europe.
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David said,
"The US Eighth AF paid an enormous price for the bombing it did in Europe. No need to detract from that (although one could argue about its effectiveness and morality, but that' s a different conversation)."
Of course. If I detracted from their sacrifice, I didn't intend to. My point was, or was supposed to be, that American historians often fail to discuss the significant roles (regardless of effectiveness and morality) of the RAF and RCAF, and the fact the combat losses of Bomber Command were far greater than those of the 8th Air Force, especially in terms of percentages.
The 8th Air Force, which carried out the bulk of bombing for the U.S. Army Air Forces, suffered 45,520 KIAs, 12% of the total number of aircrew. The RAF (which included the RCAF as well as air crew from other British Commonwealth nations and even some Americans), suffered 55,573 KIA, or 44% of the total number of aircrew.
A lesson that should have been learned is that bombing really isn't a very effective tool! The Germans thought that bombing England would force the English to capitulate, but it just strengthened the resolve of ordinary Brits to win the war. The Americans and British thought that bombing the Third Reich would force it to capitulate, but it just strengthened the resolve of ordinary Germans to win the war.
Certainly bombing helped to some degree to end the war — near the end, Germany didn't have enough oil or even experienced pilots to defend itself, much less launch effective attacks. And I believe that even raids that went badly for the RAF and the Americans served as morale builders for the people at home. Admittedly, the news that people received at home was often heavily censored and even invented: The London Times often reported that British bombers had destroyed this, that, or the other industrial plant or oil refinery or transportation network, whereas damage on the ground was often insignificant. Overall, German industrial output increased throughout the war.
Another aspect the aerial assault against the Third Reich that is often overlooked is that even raids that completely missed their targets, and that happened most of time with both the British and the Americans, at least forced Germany to expend its human and materiel resources on defence. A soldier manning a search light or an anti-aircraft gun isn't marching into combat against Russian and Allied ground forces.
A superb history about the bombing of the Third Reich is The Bomber War — Arthur Harris and the Allied Bomber Offensive 1939-1945, by Robin Neillands.
My short web page, Sgt. Joe Hicks and the Battle for Europe, provides background information about an award-winning article I wrote about the history of the wartime RCAF and about Sgt. Hicks, an RCAF observer who would have become a fighter pilot if he hadn't punched out his CO at his Service Flying Training School graduation party!
Joe was killed in 1942 when his Hampden bomber crashed on a Danish island following a raid on Rostock, German. His story came to light as I researched a picture postcard that he had mailed to a friend while he was training in Regina, Saskatchewan.
A link to the article, in a PDF file, is at the end of page. You can save and print the article to read at your leisure. If you own an iPad, save the PDF to iBooks to read as a book.
Bob
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Bob,
Understood, even before you mentioned it, that you were not denigrating the men of the Eighth AF.
I actually think we're making precisely the same point (and you're doing it better, I might add), that American self-focus makes perspective impossible. I, for one, had no idea, that RAF had such high fatalities, but that also likely included the extra years it spent in the air and its defense of its own air space. The Eighth had bomber escort duties late in the war, but no anti-bomber duties.
i've read your account of Joe Hicks several times, and find it a great exploration of the early days of the war.
I suppose we both question the wisdom and morality of big bombing, although I'm not convinced by the argument that AA gunners were not available for Panzer-Grenadier duty because they were shooting at airmen not manning tanks that weren't built from the steel that exploded over Dresden.
I think that Douhet's theories of war have been debunked at least as often as trickle donw theory, and equally well-ignored; corrolaries, such as increased sanctions against a repressive Iranian regime, seem never to be applied either. Still, we should count ourselves somewhat lucky that US and UK strategists, and Gehring, too, only went after the air aspect of Douhet's theory and ignored the gas aspects (although, I guess the fire bombing comes pretty close).
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So many of these WW2 conversations veer away from stamps onto the limitations (or otherwise) of general American knowledge about the conflict. There's no reason why intelligent Americans should be ignorant of (to take a couple of examples) the Soviet contribution towards the Third Reich's downfall, or the value of the respective contributions of US and UK forces in Europe from 1944. Obviously the uneducated British or American person's views will be heavily coloured and distorted by popular representations in film or comic, but more interesting would be a study of what image post-war American stamps have given to the conflict. How seriously has the US taken WW2 commemoration? Who or what should have been commemorated on US stamps that hasn't been? That investigation is currently a weak point of my own collection, and I'd be interested if Americans on this forum have a view.
I should say that Churchill is not really viewed as a great authority in academic circles here - I'd suggest you read, for example, the War Diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke to get a more nuanced view of the difficulties he caused the British High Command. Highly entertaining, Churchill, of course, but definitive, no.
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"... Churchill is not really viewed as a great authority in academic circles ..."
True, but I am more interested in Mr Churchill's opinions than I am interested in other peoples' facts.
The American innocence of the CCCP role in the defeat of Nazi Germany is a function of both the Cold War and the Arsenal of Democracy shtick.
As to the latter, American aid was loudly demanded, and welcome - the Murmansk convoys were in lieu of opening The Second Front, after all - but the Soviet T-34 did more to win the war than all of the other armored vehicles combined.
As to the former, a few stamps - for Stalingrad, the Seige of Leningrad, and the Battle of Kursk - would have been appropriate, but Joe McCarthy would have used them as proof that the US Post Office Department was riddled with ComSymps (Communist Sympathizers), and the DoD would have objected to the effect on the morale of NATO troops facing the Warsaw Pact.
The 50th anniversaries would have been the earliest feasible issue dates for stamps recognizing the CCCP role in defeating Nazi Germany.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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I don't think many would expect the USPS to commemorate the Soviet contribution to the defeat of the Third Reich - that is simply a matter of post-war politics, though see my point about the Marshall Islands below. I would expect the American people to be aware of it, though, at however basic a level.
Individual countries will understandably illustrate their own contribution to WW2 on stamps with scant reference to that of anyone else. The fiftieth anniversary five-year series from both the USA and Canada do this (the UK did not feel it necessary). Indeed stamp-issuing entities which seek a wider perspective (such as various small-island series) are obviously touting for philatelic custom. The Marshall Islands series was (in my view) the most successful of these, managing to paint the conflict with a satisfyingly broad brush, though rather spoilt by their decision to do much the same ten years later. (I have yet to find out to what extent the Marshall Islands rely on the USA for their stamp-issuing policy and practice.)
I have not made a thorough study of post-war USA stamps to see what people and events actually have been commemorated in the intervening seventy years. I suspect, as with the UK, that there have not been many. This is not the case with European countries, although it is interesting to see at what point they feel it is no longer necessary to mark the passing anniversaries.
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Ian, I thought Marshall Islands commemoration brilliant. I also liked Canada's and those from most of the island nations that jumped in.
the US contribution was limited to those five sheets. The caveat is that some WWII "things" were commemorated as part of larger nets: "Distinguished Soldiers" and "Advances in Aviation" and "Celebrate the Century" all come to mind. But, in the latter, for instance, the Liberator (more were produced than other bomber, even though B17 gets most TV time; my dad flew on the naval version, the PB4Y2, Privateer) shared the pane with YB49 (the Flying Wing, which, with its earlier cousin YB35, barely got off the drawing board or runway, and then only after the war),
I understand America's USPOD and USPS decisions not include Soviet contributions (I don't think there is any popular American media representation that includes British and Canadian troops in Normandy). I don't look for them to be our children's educators. And for those of us already interested in such things, our stamp issuing program does a nice job of showcasing not only what is already widely seen (Disney and Rockefeller Center) with that the deserves to be (Billy Mitchell and Frederic Law Olmsted).
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The film 'The Longest Day' did give a good representation of other nation's contributions to Normandy.
I don't recall anything Canadian, but who can forget the scene on the beach with the British bulldog mascot? The Caen bridge action was well covered, and it even included Richard Todd playing the role of a British Airborne officer - pure type-casting, since he had been a British Airborne officer in the fight at the Caen bridge.Then there was Richard Burton as the downed Spitfire pilot.
The French commando landing and combat at Ouistreham was highlighted. Always thought it odd that the commander of the first Free French forces to return to France was named Kieffer, a decidedly German name.
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"... odd that the commander of the first Free French forces to return to France was named Kieffer, a decidedly German name ..."
Alsace-Lorraine changed hands more than once.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Ah yes, The Longest Day. The British sections still managed to present that awkward, almost comical version of the British soldier familiar from dozens of earlier films. Burton's contribution (made one afternoon while he was filming Cleopatra) was slightly embarrassing, Todd's replete with echoey melodrama ("Hold, until relieved!"). The American sections came off far better, even if Roddy McDowell's dreamy GI grated ("June! Joo-oo-oon!").
All in all, it was a brave stab at a comprehensive educational experience which didn't fare too well either critically or with the public, many folk disliking having to read subtitles, not to mention monochrome (which is why it was re-released in a coloured-up version later on). After The Longest Day, I found any war film in which Germans spoke English in a guttural accent highly unsatisfactory.
Kieffer is on a 1973 stamp. I'll need a bit more time to check how many other characters in the film are commemorated likewise! 
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I saw The Longest Day again last year and I enjoyed it more than I expected.
I think it did a good job in suggesting the scale of the operation.
Best of all for me though was the music by Maurice Jarre. This was on one of my favourite LPs when I was a kid, Big War Movie Themes, and I've always liked it. 
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"Alsace-Lorraine changed hands more than once."
Yes, I'm well aware of that. One professor at my college taught both French and German. He was born in Alsace and grew up there, speaking both French and German. His family came to the US after WW I. I drew him for both languages, and I still remember parts of his lectures which were peppered with his memories of his birthplace. I haven't used either French or German for many years, so I doubt if I could hold even a basic conversation now, but back in the day, French speakers said I had a German accent and German speakers said I has a French accent - both thanks to how Dr. Lodter taught me to speak.
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Guthrum said,
"I don't think many would expect the USPS to commemorate the Soviet contribution to the defeat of the Third Reich... ."
I thought so too, but I took a look at my collection, and found this stamp, commemorating the joining of Soviet and American troops at the River Elbe:
It's one of 10 stamps -- second from the right at the top -- of the 1945 "Victory at Last" set of commemoratives:
I suppose by 1995, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. had somewhat softened the hard line it had taken as a result of the Soviet actions in Afghanistan.
Five mini-sheets in this format were issued, commemorating only the war years 1941-1945, since the U.S. did not become involved until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Each of the sheets includes notations about the war's history on the world map. Here's a detail image of the notation concerning the Soviet Union from the sheet shown above:
The inscriptions concerning the Soviet Union on the other mini-sheets:
1941 -- "Germany breaks 1939 Pact, invades U.S.S.R. in June, blitzkrieg almost reaches Moscow."
1942 -- "Extent of German expansion (into the Soviet Union), Summer, 1942. Russian defenders battle German forces at Stalingrad, Summer, 1942." (It's a bit misleading to indicate that the battle occurred in the "Summer, 1942". It began on 23 August 1942 and ended with the capture of the remains of the German 6th Army on 2 February 1943.)
1943 -- "Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill meet in Teheran November 28."
1944 -- "Leningrad's 900-day siege ends in January. / Advancing Soviet armies drive Germans from Baltic nations, Byelorussia, Ukraine and Balkans."
That's it. If there's any other U.S. stamp issued that has any connection with the Soviet participation in the Second World War, I'm not aware of it.
It is interesting that two of the stamps, at least in my opinion, of the stamps rather miss the story:
-- A stamp for 1943 shows a motor torpedo boat moving at high speed, with the caption "Italy invaded by Allies, September 1943." A much more appropriate picture would be infantry troops advancing under fire through the rubble of Italian towns.
-- A stamp in the 1944 sheet for 1944 shows a soldier shooting a flamethrower into a Japanese bunker on Saipan. There's no indication that the Battle for Saipan was the most costly for Americans to that date. The stamps doesn't show, obviously, the 1,000 Japanese civilians who committed suicide, many by jumping off "Banzai Cliff" or "Suicide Cliff" into the sea, to escape capture by the Americans.
Bob
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"... the 1,000 Japanese civilians who committed suicide, many by jumping off "Banzai Cliff" or "Suicide Cliff" into the sea, to escape capture by the Americans ..."
FWIW: There is an alternative narrative that the civilians were cornered at the cliff by the advancing & defending armies, and that far fewer would have jumped if the military campaign had been staged differently.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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"I thought so too, but I took a look at my collection, and found this stamp, commemorating the joining of Soviet and American troops at the River Elbe..."
I referred to those sets in my earlier post, but I think the example you give is very illuminating. Does it also 'miss the story'? Its broken bridge/tree-line image is, I assume, an attempt to commemorate the skill, bravery and dash of the US forces on getting that far into Germany and stopping, rather than barrelling on through the Red Army lines (Patton's preferred option, by some accounts!). I see no Soviet troops on that stamp, just three indistinct figures, one maybe with a flag, easy to miss; I suppose the USPS disdained to use the better-known photo-op images taken at Torgau of GI Joe shaking hands with Ivan for patriotic reasons.
The only specific references to the Soviet contribution to the war seem to be in the small print accompanying the maps around which these sets are arranged. "Soviet troops... suffer heavy losses in Battle of Berlin" is a bit of a smirk: after all, as a Russian soldier might say, "you should have seen the other fella...!"
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Mention of "The Longest Day" reminds me that many years ago there was a similar film on D-Day (different title) on UK TV which was made shortly after the war.
I understand that originally this ( semi-documentary) was to be made in different versions for different markets. Someone high-up in the US ( it might even have been Truman, or perhaps Eisenhower) insisted that the same film was to be shown everywhere in order that everyone should have a balanced view of the contributions of all the nations involved.
Re. the bombing issue, while people argue about the morality or otherwise of the policy, what is unforgivable are those who "blame" the aircrew involved. While many in a combat situation live in hope of survival, it is fair to say that the majority of bomber crew members went out night after night KNOWING that their survival in the long term was at least unlikely - and who has the right to knock that.
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Contrary to references above, The Longest Day movie was a hit in every way, at least in the US. At least that's how I remember it when it hit TV in the early 70's. I trolled the interweb for a few poignant quotes to assure myself I remembered correctly the sentiments of the older generation at the time (my father, uncle etc.):
""The Longest Day," which is estimated to have cost about $8 million to make, to date is estimated to have grossed over $100 million, the most tickets ever sold for a black-and-white picture."
US. Chicago Tribune, November 11, 1971, s. 2, p. 27, c. 1
"It is hard to think of a picture, aimed and constructed as this one was, doing any more or any better or leaving one feeling any more exposed to the horror of war than this one does."
"Screen: Premiere of 'The Longest Day':Production by Zanuck Opens at the Warner
By BOSLEY CROWTHER"
Published: October 5, 1962
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I'm re-reading Churchill's awesome book The Gathering Storm at night, and every time I come across a description of Germany's occupation of surrounding areas (Rhineland, Memel, Danzig, etc) I am even more interested in searching through THE HOARD for stamps and postmarks of the time.
Tying in WWI where countries also were in constant flux, and some towns especially impacted, I think this could make for a great collecting area and/or exhibit on its own!
Anyone else of like mind?
Dave.
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re: Reading WWII History & Relating It To Stamp Collecting
Dave,
I agree! I collect general WW, however, but I have seen some very nice collections at auctions with a WWII or WWI theme. Great way to specialize, but still have a broad country reach.
Chris
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03:52:45pm
re: Reading WWII History & Relating It To Stamp Collecting
A few years ago, I began weeding out many of the minor stamp varieties from my collection. This included the British Commonwealth countries with all those perf variations with the King George V definitives. Then I found an article that stated that the perf variations were the result of the successive loss of printing plants in England due to German bombing curing the Battle of Britain. Stamps needed to be printed, so they moved the surviving printing presses and perforating machines from one building to the next. This was the reason for the many stamp variations. I found these to be of historical importance as relates to the hobby. I pulled back those stamps, and even found that Steiner had pages for these stamps. They are safely back in my albums.
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re: Reading WWII History & Relating It To Stamp Collecting
I have found that there are different ways of assembling a WW2 collection, the most popular being a chronological narrative, with each event illustrated by a stamp or stamps. Sometimes this can get out of hand. To illustrate Dunkirk, one collector found a German stamp with a picture of a dynamo (Operation Dynamo was the Dunkirk evacuation). This is desperate, and may be an extreme example, but it does highlight the limitations of using stamps merely as illustrations. You might just as well make a nicely-kept scrapbook of magazine cuttings.
Charting how, when and why countries chose to commemorate people, battles, events, even 'hardware', ties the stamps themselves to the subject. Stamps are (usually) issued for a reason. This is important. (Those WW2 stamps issued for no reason, except to part collectors from their money, do not find a place in my collection; the criterion is usually whether the issuing country had any connection with the event being commemorated.)
Some time ago I bought second-hand two pleasing binders, embossed with the gold title "The History of WWII". But you'd barely be scratching the surface if you thought you could cover that conflict in just two albums. (They presently house the 'Liberation and Victory' section of my collection.)
'Liberation and Victory' is all but complete. Under current construction are 'Holocaust' (Part 2), and 'Resistance'. To come are 'Military Operations', 'Commanders', 'Military Hardware' (i.e. planes, tanks, etc.) and a lot of smaller sub-headings. And I haven't even included perforation varieties due to bombing!
It is a great way to specialise, but it requires a lot of time and effort. Fortunately, it is not so expensive, unless you want those 'Liquidation of Empire' cinderellas which appeared on another thread!
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re: Reading WWII History & Relating It To Stamp Collecting
When I started collecting stamp related to the Second World War, I really knew little about that conflict. After all, I was educated in American schools! The war certainly didn't take a prominent place in my education, but I did "learn" that United States beat the hell out of Germany, all by itself. Fortunately, thanks to stamps and covers, and to a lot of reading and watching PBS, I now have a pretty good handle on the major themes of the war. I do occasionally buy modern commemorative issues regardless of who issues them, IF they illustrate something I'm interested in. And I'll pick up stamps that indirectly illustrate an aspect of the war. Here's an example:
The stamp itself has nothing at all to do with the war. Here's the same stamp, inverted:
Kamsack, Saskatchewan is the namesake of H.M.C.S. Kamsack, a Canadian corvette that protected Allied convoys from German U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. Here's a Kamsack cover:
And an original photograph of Kamsack
The stamp, the cover, and the photograph made up a nice page in my Battle of the Atlantic exhibit.
In addition to the Battle of Atlantic, I've been especially interested in the history of the RCAF in Bomber Command, especially 420 Squadron, as well as the wartime economies of Canada and Great Britain. I also have a number of Second World War items in my military medicine collection.
Bob
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"but I did "learn" that United States beat the hell out of Germany, all by itself."
I do hope you are joking - Lots of Europeans, Poms, Kiwis & Aussies won battles against the Germans & Italians well before the US "Got Involved"
Notably at Sea ( Look up HMAS Perth WWII ) and well before the Japanese also Got involved..
Many good books on this subject and lots of stamps worldwide - Very good topic for stamps.. I think.. :-)
Cheers
Steve
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Hi Bob
I'm currently reading a book called "Cruiser" written by Mike Carlton - This is a book of over 2200 pages documenting the early years just before WWII and is written around the reconditioning and commissioning of HMAS Perth ( an old english cruiser renamed ) in Portsmouth England.
The book details conditions of life from around 1932 (I think) based on the lives of the Australians that were shipped to Britain to crew the newly named ship. Most of the ships had no radar but some carried a float plane for forward recon, those planes were BIPLANES.
Sorry to go off topic guys, but it's a topic of interest to a lot of us I think.
Cheers
Steve.
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I think we can be certain that Bob was referring to what he learned at school, rather than what he knows now! But I hope that the "Europeans, Poms, Kiwis and Aussies" Stevo45 mentions is not an exhaustive list, either! (There's the little matter of those Russian armies...)
Like me, Bob is of a generation for whom WW2 was altogether too close for the comfort of our teachers to make reference to, even though through comics and the like we were fascinated by the whole thing. We used to decorate our exercise books with swastikas by way of irritating them, and the more erudite of us would airily explain that they were Sanskrit symbols. But aside from being justifiably furious at our deliberate needling of them, none (in my experience) could be lured into telling us more about the issues surrounding the conflict, or their own part in it.
When, much later, it became correct for British state primary education to embark on WW2, it was solely from the narrowest, most Anglo-centric point of view. WW2 was nothing more than the Home Front, Anderson shelters, evacuees and rationing. That was it. Luckily, I taught outside the state system and was able to bring rather more excitement, interest, and all-round perspective on the matter, in a curriculum entirely of my own making. (Which of course included stamps, and there I found the chronological narrative style perfected by the first Marshall Islands 50th anniversary sets most useful.)
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08:57:15am
re: Reading WWII History & Relating It To Stamp Collecting
Don't forget about soldiers from the occupied nations who fought with the Allies, even Algerians fought with the French troops (my late uncle from Algeria fought with DeGaulle, and helped to liberate France).
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"... We used to decorate our exercise books with swastikas by way of irritating them, and the more erudite of us would airily explain that they were Sanskrit symbols ..."
My childhood neighborhood in NYC was pretty much surrounded by ethnic German neighborhoods.
In the late 50s & early 60s, a few of those kids were fond of wearing Wehrmacht medals to school.
In fact, one of the local twits had a Nazi flag, mounted on the ceiling of his second floor living room, so as to be visible from the street.
This was less than twenty years after V-E day.
Freedom!
My mother tells me that a genuine wartime Nazi spy was arrested in a diner just up the road; there is a Wendy's on that corner, today.
Meanwhile, much of that 'original' population has been replaced by Hispanic immigrants ... quite an improvement, if you ask me.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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I do indeed understand, now, that the United States was a Johnny Come Lately to the Second World War, despite Roosevelt's clear thinking on the subject.
My first understanding that Canada had been involved in the war came when I got my first job in Canada, after emigrating from the U.S. in 1969. My boss, Dick Passmore, director of the Canadian Wildlife Federation, had trained fighter pilots at RCAF Station North Battleford, Saskatchewan, flying the Harvard II (Canadian version of the Texan) under the auspices of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Some Americans, tired of waiting for the U.S. to join the fight, volunteered for the RCAF.
My collection includes WW2 related stamps and covers from several Allied nations, including Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland, Jamaica, Brazil, and Curaçao, and military forces of Free Norway, Free Netherlands, Free France, and Free Poland.
My ire gets raised just a bit when I see TV programs extolling the heroism of the Eighth Air Force and the U.S. Army in Europe while ignoring the sacrifice of other nations.
Bob
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Bob,
the US Eighth AF paid an enormous price for the bombing it did in Europe. No need to detract from that (although one could argue about its effectiveness and morality, but that' s a different conversation).
the problem for American TV and movie producers is the immense gap between reality and Americans' knowledge and, even, interest. I remember watching Foyle's War and meeting Foyle's sergeant, just back, minus a leg, from Norway. Churchill wrote about the battle for Norway in his wonderful 6-volume war-time memoir, but I daresay 95/100 Americans would be shocked to hear there was a battle there, much less describe or understand it. I've never, ever, seen any reference in any mainstream media in the US about it.
David
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I read Churchill in the early 1970s; a seminal moment for me.
On the subject of the burden of the war, Churchill included a table entitled (more/less) "Number of Divisions In Contact With The Enemy" (by nation). Nothing put America's role in context quite like that.
Factoid: in June 1941, 120 German divisions attacked 150 Russian divisions. More than three long years later, in December 1944, American divisions in Europe approached 70. Who fought who?
Of immediate interest to me - with the draft looming - were the seeds of the Vietnam War.
Churchill was desperate to keep the French in the war, both during the Phony War (September 1939 thru May 1940) and after France fell.
One of the promises he made - which the French only took to heart after FDR signed on - was that all of France's colonies would be restored to her after the Allies defeated Germany.
Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Michael makes great points here.
I'll add that nomenclature is important: a corps means one thing to a western army and, sometimes, something else to a soviet army. Soviet tank divisions ceased to exist after Barbarosa, being replaced by corps. A corps meant the same thing in a western or soviet infantry formation.
in addition (or, sometimes, subtraction), the time and place determined the size of unit, with British divisions growing in size (on paper) as the war progressed.
we need to also look at relative size of units on paper: for infantry divisions, one late-war British ID is 18K; an American 14K; and a Soviet ID about 10k. German IDs ranged from 15/17K. Soviet TCs were roughly equivalent to US ADs at around 11K, with British and German ADs both larger, between 12/15 for German and 15 for British. By war's end, US and UK divisions were constantly being replenished while German divisions were being depleted, and paper strength often bearing no resemblance to what was in the field.
And, while there were 70 US divisions in Europe, there another 16 Army divisions in the Pacific as well as 6 Marine divisions; the Soviets had none, until just days before VJ day (which entitled them to all kinds of spoils for the thimble-full of blood).
I won't touch Vichy or post-war France and our and the British complicity in making the world a worse place, even without our capitulation in Eastern Europe.
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David said,
"The US Eighth AF paid an enormous price for the bombing it did in Europe. No need to detract from that (although one could argue about its effectiveness and morality, but that' s a different conversation)."
Of course. If I detracted from their sacrifice, I didn't intend to. My point was, or was supposed to be, that American historians often fail to discuss the significant roles (regardless of effectiveness and morality) of the RAF and RCAF, and the fact the combat losses of Bomber Command were far greater than those of the 8th Air Force, especially in terms of percentages.
The 8th Air Force, which carried out the bulk of bombing for the U.S. Army Air Forces, suffered 45,520 KIAs, 12% of the total number of aircrew. The RAF (which included the RCAF as well as air crew from other British Commonwealth nations and even some Americans), suffered 55,573 KIA, or 44% of the total number of aircrew.
A lesson that should have been learned is that bombing really isn't a very effective tool! The Germans thought that bombing England would force the English to capitulate, but it just strengthened the resolve of ordinary Brits to win the war. The Americans and British thought that bombing the Third Reich would force it to capitulate, but it just strengthened the resolve of ordinary Germans to win the war.
Certainly bombing helped to some degree to end the war — near the end, Germany didn't have enough oil or even experienced pilots to defend itself, much less launch effective attacks. And I believe that even raids that went badly for the RAF and the Americans served as morale builders for the people at home. Admittedly, the news that people received at home was often heavily censored and even invented: The London Times often reported that British bombers had destroyed this, that, or the other industrial plant or oil refinery or transportation network, whereas damage on the ground was often insignificant. Overall, German industrial output increased throughout the war.
Another aspect the aerial assault against the Third Reich that is often overlooked is that even raids that completely missed their targets, and that happened most of time with both the British and the Americans, at least forced Germany to expend its human and materiel resources on defence. A soldier manning a search light or an anti-aircraft gun isn't marching into combat against Russian and Allied ground forces.
A superb history about the bombing of the Third Reich is The Bomber War — Arthur Harris and the Allied Bomber Offensive 1939-1945, by Robin Neillands.
My short web page, Sgt. Joe Hicks and the Battle for Europe, provides background information about an award-winning article I wrote about the history of the wartime RCAF and about Sgt. Hicks, an RCAF observer who would have become a fighter pilot if he hadn't punched out his CO at his Service Flying Training School graduation party!
Joe was killed in 1942 when his Hampden bomber crashed on a Danish island following a raid on Rostock, German. His story came to light as I researched a picture postcard that he had mailed to a friend while he was training in Regina, Saskatchewan.
A link to the article, in a PDF file, is at the end of page. You can save and print the article to read at your leisure. If you own an iPad, save the PDF to iBooks to read as a book.
Bob
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Bob,
Understood, even before you mentioned it, that you were not denigrating the men of the Eighth AF.
I actually think we're making precisely the same point (and you're doing it better, I might add), that American self-focus makes perspective impossible. I, for one, had no idea, that RAF had such high fatalities, but that also likely included the extra years it spent in the air and its defense of its own air space. The Eighth had bomber escort duties late in the war, but no anti-bomber duties.
i've read your account of Joe Hicks several times, and find it a great exploration of the early days of the war.
I suppose we both question the wisdom and morality of big bombing, although I'm not convinced by the argument that AA gunners were not available for Panzer-Grenadier duty because they were shooting at airmen not manning tanks that weren't built from the steel that exploded over Dresden.
I think that Douhet's theories of war have been debunked at least as often as trickle donw theory, and equally well-ignored; corrolaries, such as increased sanctions against a repressive Iranian regime, seem never to be applied either. Still, we should count ourselves somewhat lucky that US and UK strategists, and Gehring, too, only went after the air aspect of Douhet's theory and ignored the gas aspects (although, I guess the fire bombing comes pretty close).
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So many of these WW2 conversations veer away from stamps onto the limitations (or otherwise) of general American knowledge about the conflict. There's no reason why intelligent Americans should be ignorant of (to take a couple of examples) the Soviet contribution towards the Third Reich's downfall, or the value of the respective contributions of US and UK forces in Europe from 1944. Obviously the uneducated British or American person's views will be heavily coloured and distorted by popular representations in film or comic, but more interesting would be a study of what image post-war American stamps have given to the conflict. How seriously has the US taken WW2 commemoration? Who or what should have been commemorated on US stamps that hasn't been? That investigation is currently a weak point of my own collection, and I'd be interested if Americans on this forum have a view.
I should say that Churchill is not really viewed as a great authority in academic circles here - I'd suggest you read, for example, the War Diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke to get a more nuanced view of the difficulties he caused the British High Command. Highly entertaining, Churchill, of course, but definitive, no.
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"... Churchill is not really viewed as a great authority in academic circles ..."
True, but I am more interested in Mr Churchill's opinions than I am interested in other peoples' facts.
The American innocence of the CCCP role in the defeat of Nazi Germany is a function of both the Cold War and the Arsenal of Democracy shtick.
As to the latter, American aid was loudly demanded, and welcome - the Murmansk convoys were in lieu of opening The Second Front, after all - but the Soviet T-34 did more to win the war than all of the other armored vehicles combined.
As to the former, a few stamps - for Stalingrad, the Seige of Leningrad, and the Battle of Kursk - would have been appropriate, but Joe McCarthy would have used them as proof that the US Post Office Department was riddled with ComSymps (Communist Sympathizers), and the DoD would have objected to the effect on the morale of NATO troops facing the Warsaw Pact.
The 50th anniversaries would have been the earliest feasible issue dates for stamps recognizing the CCCP role in defeating Nazi Germany.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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I don't think many would expect the USPS to commemorate the Soviet contribution to the defeat of the Third Reich - that is simply a matter of post-war politics, though see my point about the Marshall Islands below. I would expect the American people to be aware of it, though, at however basic a level.
Individual countries will understandably illustrate their own contribution to WW2 on stamps with scant reference to that of anyone else. The fiftieth anniversary five-year series from both the USA and Canada do this (the UK did not feel it necessary). Indeed stamp-issuing entities which seek a wider perspective (such as various small-island series) are obviously touting for philatelic custom. The Marshall Islands series was (in my view) the most successful of these, managing to paint the conflict with a satisfyingly broad brush, though rather spoilt by their decision to do much the same ten years later. (I have yet to find out to what extent the Marshall Islands rely on the USA for their stamp-issuing policy and practice.)
I have not made a thorough study of post-war USA stamps to see what people and events actually have been commemorated in the intervening seventy years. I suspect, as with the UK, that there have not been many. This is not the case with European countries, although it is interesting to see at what point they feel it is no longer necessary to mark the passing anniversaries.
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Ian, I thought Marshall Islands commemoration brilliant. I also liked Canada's and those from most of the island nations that jumped in.
the US contribution was limited to those five sheets. The caveat is that some WWII "things" were commemorated as part of larger nets: "Distinguished Soldiers" and "Advances in Aviation" and "Celebrate the Century" all come to mind. But, in the latter, for instance, the Liberator (more were produced than other bomber, even though B17 gets most TV time; my dad flew on the naval version, the PB4Y2, Privateer) shared the pane with YB49 (the Flying Wing, which, with its earlier cousin YB35, barely got off the drawing board or runway, and then only after the war),
I understand America's USPOD and USPS decisions not include Soviet contributions (I don't think there is any popular American media representation that includes British and Canadian troops in Normandy). I don't look for them to be our children's educators. And for those of us already interested in such things, our stamp issuing program does a nice job of showcasing not only what is already widely seen (Disney and Rockefeller Center) with that the deserves to be (Billy Mitchell and Frederic Law Olmsted).
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08:38:21am
re: Reading WWII History & Relating It To Stamp Collecting
The film 'The Longest Day' did give a good representation of other nation's contributions to Normandy.
I don't recall anything Canadian, but who can forget the scene on the beach with the British bulldog mascot? The Caen bridge action was well covered, and it even included Richard Todd playing the role of a British Airborne officer - pure type-casting, since he had been a British Airborne officer in the fight at the Caen bridge.Then there was Richard Burton as the downed Spitfire pilot.
The French commando landing and combat at Ouistreham was highlighted. Always thought it odd that the commander of the first Free French forces to return to France was named Kieffer, a decidedly German name.
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"... odd that the commander of the first Free French forces to return to France was named Kieffer, a decidedly German name ..."
Alsace-Lorraine changed hands more than once.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Ah yes, The Longest Day. The British sections still managed to present that awkward, almost comical version of the British soldier familiar from dozens of earlier films. Burton's contribution (made one afternoon while he was filming Cleopatra) was slightly embarrassing, Todd's replete with echoey melodrama ("Hold, until relieved!"). The American sections came off far better, even if Roddy McDowell's dreamy GI grated ("June! Joo-oo-oon!").
All in all, it was a brave stab at a comprehensive educational experience which didn't fare too well either critically or with the public, many folk disliking having to read subtitles, not to mention monochrome (which is why it was re-released in a coloured-up version later on). After The Longest Day, I found any war film in which Germans spoke English in a guttural accent highly unsatisfactory.
Kieffer is on a 1973 stamp. I'll need a bit more time to check how many other characters in the film are commemorated likewise!
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I saw The Longest Day again last year and I enjoyed it more than I expected.
I think it did a good job in suggesting the scale of the operation.
Best of all for me though was the music by Maurice Jarre. This was on one of my favourite LPs when I was a kid, Big War Movie Themes, and I've always liked it.
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06:53:15pm
re: Reading WWII History & Relating It To Stamp Collecting
"Alsace-Lorraine changed hands more than once."
Yes, I'm well aware of that. One professor at my college taught both French and German. He was born in Alsace and grew up there, speaking both French and German. His family came to the US after WW I. I drew him for both languages, and I still remember parts of his lectures which were peppered with his memories of his birthplace. I haven't used either French or German for many years, so I doubt if I could hold even a basic conversation now, but back in the day, French speakers said I had a German accent and German speakers said I has a French accent - both thanks to how Dr. Lodter taught me to speak.
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Guthrum said,
"I don't think many would expect the USPS to commemorate the Soviet contribution to the defeat of the Third Reich... ."
I thought so too, but I took a look at my collection, and found this stamp, commemorating the joining of Soviet and American troops at the River Elbe:
It's one of 10 stamps -- second from the right at the top -- of the 1945 "Victory at Last" set of commemoratives:
I suppose by 1995, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. had somewhat softened the hard line it had taken as a result of the Soviet actions in Afghanistan.
Five mini-sheets in this format were issued, commemorating only the war years 1941-1945, since the U.S. did not become involved until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Each of the sheets includes notations about the war's history on the world map. Here's a detail image of the notation concerning the Soviet Union from the sheet shown above:
The inscriptions concerning the Soviet Union on the other mini-sheets:
1941 -- "Germany breaks 1939 Pact, invades U.S.S.R. in June, blitzkrieg almost reaches Moscow."
1942 -- "Extent of German expansion (into the Soviet Union), Summer, 1942. Russian defenders battle German forces at Stalingrad, Summer, 1942." (It's a bit misleading to indicate that the battle occurred in the "Summer, 1942". It began on 23 August 1942 and ended with the capture of the remains of the German 6th Army on 2 February 1943.)
1943 -- "Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill meet in Teheran November 28."
1944 -- "Leningrad's 900-day siege ends in January. / Advancing Soviet armies drive Germans from Baltic nations, Byelorussia, Ukraine and Balkans."
That's it. If there's any other U.S. stamp issued that has any connection with the Soviet participation in the Second World War, I'm not aware of it.
It is interesting that two of the stamps, at least in my opinion, of the stamps rather miss the story:
-- A stamp for 1943 shows a motor torpedo boat moving at high speed, with the caption "Italy invaded by Allies, September 1943." A much more appropriate picture would be infantry troops advancing under fire through the rubble of Italian towns.
-- A stamp in the 1944 sheet for 1944 shows a soldier shooting a flamethrower into a Japanese bunker on Saipan. There's no indication that the Battle for Saipan was the most costly for Americans to that date. The stamps doesn't show, obviously, the 1,000 Japanese civilians who committed suicide, many by jumping off "Banzai Cliff" or "Suicide Cliff" into the sea, to escape capture by the Americans.
Bob
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"... the 1,000 Japanese civilians who committed suicide, many by jumping off "Banzai Cliff" or "Suicide Cliff" into the sea, to escape capture by the Americans ..."
FWIW: There is an alternative narrative that the civilians were cornered at the cliff by the advancing & defending armies, and that far fewer would have jumped if the military campaign had been staged differently.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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"I thought so too, but I took a look at my collection, and found this stamp, commemorating the joining of Soviet and American troops at the River Elbe..."
I referred to those sets in my earlier post, but I think the example you give is very illuminating. Does it also 'miss the story'? Its broken bridge/tree-line image is, I assume, an attempt to commemorate the skill, bravery and dash of the US forces on getting that far into Germany and stopping, rather than barrelling on through the Red Army lines (Patton's preferred option, by some accounts!). I see no Soviet troops on that stamp, just three indistinct figures, one maybe with a flag, easy to miss; I suppose the USPS disdained to use the better-known photo-op images taken at Torgau of GI Joe shaking hands with Ivan for patriotic reasons.
The only specific references to the Soviet contribution to the war seem to be in the small print accompanying the maps around which these sets are arranged. "Soviet troops... suffer heavy losses in Battle of Berlin" is a bit of a smirk: after all, as a Russian soldier might say, "you should have seen the other fella...!"
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02:19:55am
re: Reading WWII History & Relating It To Stamp Collecting
Mention of "The Longest Day" reminds me that many years ago there was a similar film on D-Day (different title) on UK TV which was made shortly after the war.
I understand that originally this ( semi-documentary) was to be made in different versions for different markets. Someone high-up in the US ( it might even have been Truman, or perhaps Eisenhower) insisted that the same film was to be shown everywhere in order that everyone should have a balanced view of the contributions of all the nations involved.
Re. the bombing issue, while people argue about the morality or otherwise of the policy, what is unforgivable are those who "blame" the aircrew involved. While many in a combat situation live in hope of survival, it is fair to say that the majority of bomber crew members went out night after night KNOWING that their survival in the long term was at least unlikely - and who has the right to knock that.
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Contrary to references above, The Longest Day movie was a hit in every way, at least in the US. At least that's how I remember it when it hit TV in the early 70's. I trolled the interweb for a few poignant quotes to assure myself I remembered correctly the sentiments of the older generation at the time (my father, uncle etc.):
""The Longest Day," which is estimated to have cost about $8 million to make, to date is estimated to have grossed over $100 million, the most tickets ever sold for a black-and-white picture."
US. Chicago Tribune, November 11, 1971, s. 2, p. 27, c. 1
"It is hard to think of a picture, aimed and constructed as this one was, doing any more or any better or leaving one feeling any more exposed to the horror of war than this one does."
"Screen: Premiere of 'The Longest Day':Production by Zanuck Opens at the Warner
By BOSLEY CROWTHER"
Published: October 5, 1962
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