WW2 Your World War II Resource	Encyclopedia MDSWW-- The Macmillan Dictionary of the Second World War OCWW2--The Oxford Companion to World War II OEGWW2--The Oxford Essential Guide to World War II RMEWW2--Rand McNally Encyclopedia of World War II SBEE--Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage WW2AVE--World War II: A Visual Encyclopedia WW2AW--World War II: America at War, 1941-1945 INDEX
Allied Expeditionary Force	Allied air, ground, and naval forces assembled for the Normandy invasion and Allied campaign in Europe. The Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) was established in June 1942 near London. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower took command at SHAEF in Jan. 1944. The principal subordinate commands were the Allied Expeditionary Air Force and Allied Expeditionary Naval Force. All Allied ground forces were initially under the 21st Army Group headquarters but, following the Normandy landings, the US 12th Army Group was established under Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley after which there was no overall ground commander for the campaign. [WW2AW]
Allied Forces Headquarters	(AFHQ) Formed in August 1942 as Eisenhower's HQ for the North African campaign, it then became the HQ for the supreme commander in the Mediterranean theatre. It was based in Algiers from November 1942 until it moved to Caserta in Italy in July 1944. As the forerunner of SHAEF, it was the first Allied inter-service HQ to be created equally from British and US personnel. [OCWW2]
Allied Intelligence Bureau	(AIB) Combined US-Australian intelligence organization for Gen. Douglas MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Area command during World War II. The AIB was established in Australia on July 6, 1942 -- four months after MacArthur fled from the Japanese armies engulfing the Philippines. The AIB served as an umbrella organization for a number of sabotage and other clandestine units already in existence. Its charter called for these activities to "obtain and report information on the Southwest Pacific Area .... Weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale .... Render aid and assistance to local [guerrilla] efforts in enemy-occupied territories." The AIB operated under the direction of MacArthur's chief intelligence officer, Col. Charles Willoughby, with Col. G.C. Roberts, the Director of Intelligence of the Australian Army, serving as controller of the AIB. (Most of MacArthur's triips at the time were Australians.) Capt. Allison Ind, an officer from Willoughby's staff, was named as Roberts's deputy. In addition to planning and carrying out intelligence collection, sabotage, and guerrilla support missions in New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and the Philippines, the AIB operated the chain of coast watchers who kept track of Japanese movements in the region. AIB teams were sent into islands behind Japanese lines to collect intelligence or undertake sabotage missions. They were carried to their destinations in small craft and US submarines. AIB operations produced numerous successs -- and some failures. For example, an Australian-Portuguese team of 34 men landed on the Japanese-held island of Timor, east of Java. They were captured by the Japanese in Sept. 1943. The Japanese used the group's radio to transmit false information to the AIB, which accepted it as valid. Two more AIB parties subsequently landed on Timor and were easily captured by the Japanese. The AIB did not learn of the deception until the war was over. The existence of the AIB and its activities caused MacArthur to reject the use of the Office of Strategic Services in his theater. The bureau was abolished at the end of the war in the Pacific. [SBEE]
Allied Military Government	Civil affairs organization used to administer liberated territory not yet under civilian control. The Allied Military Government (AMG) worked in several phases, beginning with the providing of basic services immediately after liberation and continuing through formal occupation of former Axis territory. In the US zone of occupied Germany, AMG representatives focused on purging Nazis from government and key businesses. Of 1,456,467 persons investigated, 373,762 were disqualified from holding any government position or any job higher than laborer. (In a similar screening of "ultranationalists" in Japan, 186,000 Japanese were removed from government posts.) By the end of the war more than 7,000 specially trained civil affairs officers were on duty in occupied territory in Europe, Japan, and Korea. Another 23,000 officers and enlisted personnel were assigned to civil affairs.... AMG investigators launched the search for perpetrators of war crimes, with forty-nine major war criminals being put on trial in Nuremberg and Tokyo. In the US zone of Germany, more than 16,000 Germans were arrested as suspects or material witnesses in investigations of crimes against US nationals. In these 504 AMG-supervised trials there were 457 convictions. AMG officers were also responsible for the postwar repatriation of prisoners of war. Military government experts included officers whose civilian professions were put to military use. Art historians and curators tracked down looted treasures. Newspapermen set up newspapers purged of Nazi editors. Agronomists, public health workers, bankers, and teachers were also in the AMG ranks. [WW2AW]
Alsace, German Offensive in	(1944) This northeastern province of France was initially Hitler's preferred site for the launch of a German winter counter-offensive in 1944 following the Allied invasion of Normandy. Alsace was eventually chosen as the target of a subsidiary attack, code-named Nordwind, in support of the major offensive in the Ardennes. The Nordwind offensive began on 31 December with a surprise attack on thinly stretched American 7th Army positions by the German 13th SS, 89th and 90th Corps. Attacking south from the Saar region, they hoped to gain the Saverne Gap, and meet the northward drive of the 64th Corps from the Colmar pocket, which made a ten-mile advance towards Bitche to threaten the historic city of Strasbourg, on the Rhine. Allied commanding general Eisenhower responded to the anxiety of General De Gaulle by ordering 7th Army Group commander Devers to hold Strasbourg at all costs, despite his initial inclination to withdraw the US 7th and 1st French Armies to the Vosges. While American coutner-attacks stalled the drive from the Saar, renewed German attacks on 7 and 17 January, including the forcing of a small bridgehead across the Rhine north of Strasbourg, forced an American withdrawal to the Moder River on 20 January. Nevertheless American and French reserve forces halted both German drives from the north and south and the action was ended decisively with concentric attacks on German 19th Army units which had been holding out in the Colmar pocket for over two months. Resistance ended on 9 February. [MDSSW]
Alsos Mission	general name for intelligence collection missions that followed US combat troops in Europe to examine newly occupied areas for signs of German or Italian progress on the atomic bomb. Alsos was a cooperative effort of the Manhattan Project under Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves, the Office of Scientific Research, Army intelligence staff (G-2), and the Navy. {The Navy subsequently left the Alsos project, having established its own intelligence mission in Europe. The Alsos mission was headed by Lt. Col. Boris T. Pash, an Army intelligence officer, and consisted of scientific and military personnel. Pash led his group to Italy in 1943 to examine institutes and university laboratories, and to France, Belgium, and Germany in 1944-1945. The mission performed poorly in Italy, but it did obtain considerable information on German nuclear weapon efforts and helped to capture several German atomic scientists who subsequently worked in the West. (Soviet troops had stripped the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, the center of German atomic research, before US troops reached the city. The Alsos mission found that a US intelligence unit was using the building as its headquarters and had dumped the few remaining pieces of equipment and material in the backyard, unaware of its importance.) The code name Alsos was chosen by Gen. Groves because alsos is the Greek word for "grove." [SBEE]
Altmark Incident, The	A German supply ship for the Admiral Graf Spee, the Altmark was pursued into Josing Fjord in neutral Norwegian waters, on the night of 16 February 1940, by the British destroyer Cossack, whose commander knew of the presence of prisoners secretly transferred to the Altmark from the Graf Spee. A boarding party from the Cossack rescued 299 British seamen and then withdrew. The Norwegian government protested at the violation of their neutrality but allowed the Altmark to return to German waters. [MDSSW]
America First Committee	The America First Committee led the fight to keep the United States from entering World War II. Because anti-war sentiment was particularly strong on college campuses, it was hardly surprising that the America First Committee (AFC) grew out of a student group organized at Yale University by Kingman Brewer (a future president of Yale) and R. Douglas Stuart, a law student. Business and political leaders responded enthusiastically to this student initiative, and on September 4, 1940, the AFC was launched in Chicago with Robert Wood, chairman of Sears Rosebuck and Company, as national chairman and Stuart as national director. At its peak the AFC had some 800,000 members, the largest enrollment of any antiwar organization. More important, its members were to a large extent influential business and professional people and included national leaders such as Senator Burton K. Wheeler and Charles A. Lindbergh -- at that time considered to be the greatest American hero. Although dedicated to neutrality, the AFC favored a strong defense, which annoyed pacifists .... Although well-financed and respectable, America First lost much support as a result of Lindbergh's speech in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 11, 1941, in which he accused the Jewish people of "agitating for war." Thus the AFC was already in decline on December 7, 1941, when Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor put an end to it. [OEGWW2]
American Volunteer Group	(AVG) Known as the "Flying Tigers", because of the bared fangs painted on the noses of their fighters, this formation was the brainchild of Captain [Claire L.] Chennault, a retired US Army Air Corps officer who was an adviser to the Chinese government and a colonel in its air force. In April 1941 the Chinese agreed to Chennault's scheme that a number of American squadrons, manned by volunteer pilots from the US Army and Navy on one-year contracts, could operate in China against the invading Japanese. About 100 pilots and 200 ground staff were recruited and the British made an air base at Toungoo in Burma available for training, which began in September 1941. By November three squadrons, equipped with Tomahawk (P40) fighters, had been formed there, and Chennault was busy teaching them the tactics he had evolved from years of studying Japanese methods: stay in pairs; don't dogfight; use the Tomahawk's superior diving speed to make one pass, shoot, and break away. Once Japan was at war with the Allies, Chiang Kai-Shek kept a previous promise that the AVG could be employed in Burma if that country were attacked, and one squadron was used to defend Rangoon at the start of the Burma campaign while the other two were stationed in the Chinese city of Kunming from where they patrolled the Burma Road. All three squadrons were soon in action when Japanese bombers attempted to raid Kunming on 20 December 1941, and three days later 60 Japanese bombers attacked Rangoon's docks and the AVG's airfield at Mingaladon. Two AVG aircraft were shot down during these encounters, and two more were lost during a raid on Christmas Day, but the AVG and RAF squadrons accounted for 30 Japanese aircraft between them despite being heavily outnumbered. ...[O]n 23 January [1942, the Japanese] launched their main effort to overwhelm the aircraft defending [Rangoon]. Between that date and 29 January there was continuous fighting above Rangoon in which about 50 Japanese aircraft were probably destroyed while the RAF lost ten and the AVG two. Another, and final, attempt to overwhelm the defences was made on 25 and 26 February, but out of a force of 170 bombers and fighters about 34 were destroyed, most of them by the AVG. This victory enabled ships carrying reinforcements to arrive safely and for the evacuation of Rangoon to proceed without interference .... [A]fter the Japanese entered Rangoon on 8 March the surviving AVG aircraft were withdrawn to Magwe. Eventually they joined the other two squadrons in Kunming and were later deployed against Japanese bombers attacking Chinese cities. It had been hoped that the induction of the AVG into Chennault's new command, the China Air Task Force, which was to be part of the Tenth USAAF, would proceed smoothly. But when their contracts ran out in July 1942 only five pilots stayed on though another 20 agreed to remain until replacements could be found. Total AVG losses amounted to 50 aircraft and 9 pilots, for 286 Japanese aircraft destroyed. [OCWW2]
Amiens prison raid	A daylight precision bombing operation (Jericho) was mounted against the prison on 18 February 1944 by British aircraft. Its objective was to release important French resistance workers needed to implement sabotage plans once the Normandy landings had taken place in June. Out of 1,000 inmates, about 180 of whom were prisoners of the Germans, 87 prisoners were killed but more than 250 escaped. They included Raymond Vivant, a key resistance leader, and twelve other resistance workers who were about to be executed. [OCWW2]
Anakim	Code-name for a proposed British plan, discussed during late 1942/early 1943, to launch amphibious assaults on Rangoon, in conjunction with combined land offensives into Burma by Chinese and British troops from India and by the Nationalist Army from China. The plan was finally abandoned in the spring of 1943 when it became clear that neither the agreement nor the resources were available. [MDSSW]
Anders' Army	This was an army composed of Poles released from Russian prisons and led by [Gen. Wladyslaw] Anders. Initially, when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Anders and his retreating army were taken prisoner by invading Russian forces. When he, like many other Poles, refused to join the Red Army, he was imprisoned in Lubianka jail. The German invasion of Russia, June 1941, forced Stalin to come to an agreement with the Polish government in exile (London). He agreed to support a Polish army, to be organized in Russia, and appointed Anders general in command. Anders then attempted to trace and reassemble all Polish POWs in Soviet labor camps, discovering in the process the enormous losses his people suffered. However, even with his army formed, the Soviets would not give him sufficient supplies nor let him fight on the Russian front, so Anders, in 1942, secured the evacuation of 150,000 Poles from Russia to Persia and Palestine. Anders estimated that over one million Poles were left in Russia. Now under the jurisdiction of the British and of the Polish government in exile, who did not quite know what to do with him, his army received final training in Palestine until late 1943. Anders' Army was first transferred to Quassassin, Egypt, then (January 1944) landed in Italy as part of the British Eighth Army. There, they were detailed to take the heights of Monte Cassino and of Piedimonte, which barred the advance on Rome (11 May 1944) which they achieved after hand-to-hand combat and enormous casualties. In August they fought at Metauro, which drove the Germans back to the Sennio, and later took Bologna. After the German surrender, Anders' Army was a political embarrassment to the Allies, a wedge between Britain and the Soviets, and was therefore demobilized. Of 112,000 men, only 77 officers and 14,000 troops returned to Poland; the others were allowed to settle in Western Europe. [WW2AVE]
Anti-Comintern Pact	Anti-Communist agreement between Japan and Germany, signed on Nov. 25, 1936. The two nations agreed that in the event of an unprovoked attack by the Soviet Union on either Japan or Germany, they would move "to safeguard their common interests" and "take no measures which would tend to ease the situation of the Soviet Union." The pact was a response to the seventh congress of the Communist International (the Comintern), which in July 1935 had reiterated its anticapitalist, antiimperialist philosophy. Hitler said that the pact would help defend Western civilization from the threat of worldwide communism presented by the Comintern. Italy signed the pact in 1937 and Hungary and Spain in 1939. The Soviet-German Nonaggression Pact of 1939, which surprised Japan, invalidated the Anti-Comintern Pact .... But the Nonaggression Pact was in turn invalidated by the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, after which the Anti-Comintern Pact was renewed for five years in Nov. 1941.... [WW2AW]