tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/d-day-10852/articlesD-Day – The Conversation2023-11-07T12:53:28Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2163152023-11-07T12:53:28Z2023-11-07T12:53:28ZThe Great Escaper: Michael Caine’s final film is Britain’s answer to Saving Private Ryan<p>The Great Escaper is an engaging exploration of love, loss, memory and trauma. It’s also the final film for its star, Michael Caine, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/oct/14/michael-caine-confirms-his-retirement-at-the-age-of-90">as he has recently announced his retirement</a>. The film tells the real story of Royal Navy veteran, <a href="https://www.military.com/history/world-war-ii-veteran-escaped-nursing-home-70th-anniversary-of-d-day.html">Bernard Jordan</a>, who “escaped” from his care home in June 2014 to attend the 70th anniversary of D-Day commemorations in Normandy. </p>
<p>The film follows Caine’s “Bernie” as he embarks upon a deeply personal and emotional reckoning with his war, a journey he undertakes with the support of his stoic wife, Irene, beautifully played by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/jun/15/glenda-jackson-obituary">the late Glenda Jackson</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for The Great Escaper.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The Great Escaper uses a well-known storytelling device: the war-damaged veteran. In doing so, it marks itself as a British answer to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120815/">Saving Private Ryan</a> (1998). The film, which pays homage to the war generation, revels in forties nostalgia and stakes an assertive British claim to the memory of the Allied invasion.</p>
<h2>Troubled homecomings</h2>
<p>From the troubled homecoming of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Odyssey-epic-by-Homer">Homer’s Odysseus</a> to the spate of Hollywood films produced in the 1970s and 1980s focused on the angry and alienated Vietnam veteran such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077416/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Deer Hunter</a> (1978) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/">Apocalypse Now</a> (1979), the traumatised ex-soldier has long been a figure of cultural interest. This has especially been the case in the British film industry over the last 30 years.</p>
<p>Take, for instance, a trilogy of films produced in the late 1980s all of which examined the return to “civvy street” of battle-damaged Falklands veterans: <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098190/">Resurrected</a> (1989), <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098533/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Tumbledown</a> (1988) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097373/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">For Queen and Country</a> (1989). Or, more recent productions focused on returning soldiers, such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758771/?ref_=fn_al_tt_5">Outlaw</a> (2007), <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1653700/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Veteran</a> (2011) and, of course, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289406/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Harry Brown</a> (2009). </p>
<p>The latter starred Michael Caine as a decorated Royal Marine veteran who sets out to rid his impoverished inner-city council estate of crime.</p>
<p>Caine’s “Bernie” is clearly a very different figure to Harry Brown (he does nothing more controversial than letting down the tyres of antisocial cyclists). But as a film character, he nonetheless owes something to these cinematic counterparts. Like them, he carries the psychological scars of war, scars which wake him in the night and which take him back to the invasion beaches on the Normandy coast.</p>
<h2>D-Day on film</h2>
<p>The Normandy invasion has been subject of various films, perhaps most famously <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056197/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Longest Day</a> (1962). In the modern era, however, the D-Day film of most renown is undoubtedly Stephen Spielberg’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120815/">Saving Private Ryan</a> (1998), which starred Tom Hanks and Matt Damon.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Saving Private Ryan.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Intended as a homage to the “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Greatest-Generation">greatest generation</a>”, the film begins with an old soldier (the titular Private Ryan) searching the graves in the vast American military cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach in Normandy. This was the scene of some of the deadliest fighting on June 6 1944. </p>
<p>Finding the grave he is looking for, the aged veteran drops to his knees before the camera zooms in on his eyes so that Spielberg can take us back to the battle on that grey spring morning. It is a powerful scene, and it has clearly inspired The Great Escaper’s director, <a href="https://www.history.co.uk/articles/theres-a-lot-of-deep-deep-feeling-director-oliver-parker-on-his-new-film-the-great-escaper">Oliver Parker</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, the shadow of Saving Private Ryan looms large throughout. Like Spielberg, Parker takes us back to a Normandy burial ground, this time the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery in the town of Bayeux. He has us wander among the serried ranks of headstones and, via a series of flashbacks, we witness the carnage on the coast in washed-out colour, with the salt and sea spray in our eyes. </p>
<p>These similarities, I think, reveal the ultimate point of The Great Escaper. Through the familiar trope of a war-damaged British veteran, the films pays homage to those who fought and won the second world war. It’s a generation much vaunted in recent years, especially amid all the Brexit-induced forties nostalgia. </p>
<p>In doing so, Caine’s filmic finale also delivers an assertive British claim on the memory of D-Day (complete with obligatory digs at the “lateness” to the conflict of the American ally). In effect, it is the cinematic counterpart to the new <a href="https://www.britishnormandymemorial.org">British Normandy War Memorial</a>, unveiled just two years ago in June 2021. </p>
<p>Whether or not Parker’s film goes on to have the same cultural impact as Spielberg’s award-winning production remains to be seen. But thanks to the powerful presence of Michael Caine it surely stands a decent chance.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Edwards has previously received funding from the ESRC, the US-UK Fulbright Commission, the US Army Military History Institute, and the US Naval War College. Sam is a Trustee of Sulgrave Manor (Northamptonshire) and of The American Library (Norwich).</span></em></p>The film pays homage to the war generation, revels in forties nostalgia and stakes an assertive British claim to the memory of the Allied invasion.Sam Edwards, Reader in Modern Political History, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1826372022-06-05T12:22:14Z2022-06-05T12:22:14ZD-Day: The politics involved in how war should be memorialized and remembered<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466657/original/file-20220601-70047-1cisb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C70%2C994%2C634&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Troops of the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade head to shore in Bernières-sur-Mer, Normandy, France on June 6, 1944.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gilbert Alexander Milne, Department of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada, PA-122765</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Villages and towns along the Normandy coast will fill with visitors this week to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Normandy-Invasion">D-Day landings</a> on June 6. Flags will fly to welcome and acknowledge those who fought in <a href="https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/research/online-documents/d-day/order-of-the-day.pdf">the Great Crusade</a>. Over the summer, <a href="https://www.dday-overlord.com/en/normandy/commemorations/2022">hundreds of commemorations</a> will take place to mark <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/104/1045321/six-armies-in-normandy/9781844137398.html">80 days of battle</a>. </p>
<p>While not the only contribution by Canadian service men and women, D-Day takes a prominent place in Canada’s cultural memory of the <a href="https://douglas-mcintyre.com/products/9781550549133">Second World War</a>. </p>
<p>As a researcher of war heritage, I have observed and participated in commemorations in Normandy over the years. My focus has been on how the region, as a memorialized landscape of war, is <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Managing-and-Interpreting-D-Days-Sites-of-Memory-Guardians-of-remembrance/Bird-Claxton-Reeves/p/book/9781138592476">managed and interpreted</a>. I am also interested in the <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203134900-14/12-place-identities-normandy-landscape-war-geoffrey-bird">meaning people draw</a> from the histories and stories told at these sites of memory. </p>
<p>My research has been augmented by my time as a guide at Vimy Ridge, by serving in the navy and by producing films as part of the <a href="https://warheritage.royalroads.ca/">War Heritage Research Initiative</a> at Royal Roads University. </p>
<p>This year’s anniversary offers a moment to consider how Canadians use commemoration as an act of community and a reflection of national identity. We are undergoing a turn in the evolution of war remembrance. </p>
<h2>The politics of remembrance</h2>
<p>The politics of remembrance refers to the <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300110685/remembering-war/">many voices</a> engaged in how war and the fallen should be memorialized and remembered — from the challenges and opportunities associated with <a href="https://youtu.be/43vFu-sJlNw">memorial design</a>, <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-boys-of-pointe-du-hoc-douglas-brinkley?variant=32205222314018">speeches by heads of state</a> and <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781442616042/art-at-the-service-of-war/">war art</a>, to the interpretation of a <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/memorializing-pearl-harbor">war heritage site</a>. </p>
<p>Politics of remembrance evolve with new interpretations of the past to suit present-day ideological needs. While expected, the politics of remembrance illustrate how the past can <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/death-so-noble">unify</a> <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/608022/the-fight-for-history-by-tim-cook/9780735238374">or divide</a> people in the present. And the forces at play seem to be changing — three issues point to a new politics of remembrance. </p>
<p><strong>1. The passing of veterans</strong>: There is the inevitable passing of Second World War veterans. With less than <a href="https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/about-vac/news-media/facts-figures/1-0">20,000 veterans remaining</a>, in their passing we lose the voice of witnesses. </p>
<p>New generations will become entirely reliant on learning about the Second World War through various secondary means, like museums, schools, local commemorations and books and films. More funding to support communities to remember and commemorate <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/centenary_canada">is important</a>. </p>
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<img alt="A man lays a wreath in a park with the assistance of another man" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466354/original/file-20220531-20-ondvwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466354/original/file-20220531-20-ondvwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466354/original/file-20220531-20-ondvwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466354/original/file-20220531-20-ondvwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466354/original/file-20220531-20-ondvwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466354/original/file-20220531-20-ondvwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466354/original/file-20220531-20-ondvwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">D-Day Veteran Jack Commerford lays a wreath during a Remembrance Day ceremony at the National Military Cemetery at Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang</span></span>
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<p><strong>2. Canadian war heritage overseas under threat</strong>: In the early 2000s, the <a href="https://www.junobeach.org/">Juno Beach Centre</a> was established in Normandy, but it is currently under threat due to <a href="https://www.junobeach.org/juno-beach-centre-under-threat/">condo development</a>. The centre’s mandate was ambitious — to not only teach about what happened in Normandy and Canada’s wartime involvement, but of Canada as a nation. </p>
<p>Veterans realized the importance of a commemorative hub in Europe for Canada’s Second World War story. <a href="https://www.junobeach.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/JBCA-5-Year-Strategic-Plan_February_2022.pdf">That vision</a>, and the centre itself, warrants a national effort to protect and preserve this cornerstone of Canadian heritage overseas.</p>
<p><strong>3. Contest to own war memory</strong>: There is an evolving political contest to own war memory, and with it, to take the high ground of Canadian identity. Earlier this year, <a href="https://twitter.com/erinotoole/status/1488980291108900864?s=20&t=Q2cZgebs_DJIp-cvuEkbRg">Erin O’Toole</a> claimed to lead the party of “Robert Borden and Vimy Ridge.” And there was public outcry over the <a href="https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/police-look-to-identify-suspect-in-desecration-of-the-tomb-of-the-unknown-soldier-1.5765615">desecration</a> of the National Memorial by the so-called “freedom convoy” and the efforts to “<a href="https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/maclellan-rolling-thunder-and-the-meaning-of-the-national-war-memorial">reclaim</a>” it. </p>
<p>Similar to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-canadian-flag-and-the-freedom-convoy-the-co-opting-of-canadian-symbols-176436">co-opting of the Canadian flag</a>, Canada’s war memory has become a source of inspiration and misinterpretation to justify opinions concerning the nature of freedom and what it means to be Canadian. The consequences are divisive and diminish the memory and sacrifices of Canadians.</p>
<h2>A moral obligation to remember</h2>
<p>Inherent in the politics of remembrance is the belief among many that there is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2020.1797987">moral obligation to remember</a>. </p>
<p>The meaning of remembrance is open to interpretation because <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-importance-of-personal-memory-on-remembrance-day-126252">each person’s</a> experience with and connections to war, military and civilian, are different. </p>
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<img alt="People walk up to a modern building" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466435/original/file-20220531-46163-i4bszx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466435/original/file-20220531-46163-i4bszx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=219&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466435/original/file-20220531-46163-i4bszx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=219&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466435/original/file-20220531-46163-i4bszx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=219&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466435/original/file-20220531-46163-i4bszx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466435/original/file-20220531-46163-i4bszx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466435/original/file-20220531-46163-i4bszx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Juno Beach Centre in Courseulles-sur-Mer, Normandy, France.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jockrutherford/49139351541/in/photolist-WkwPWs-mtTTC-2hSh2dZ-bBrHJv-bowPK5-2hSh2DZ-WoLZuP-bBrGSp-2hSh2Tb-WkwPTw-WkwQ2s-XYicgk-bBrKUR-25trzr3-YWSNMY-25oGgN7-FNhn2g-XURWVA-BTsfEw-YCuWu1-YVmtwo-XYvwBk-YYuYuf-YWPmiw-BTsj57-XV2HH3-BTtRFG-YZK3pp-XV1LY3-YZJFog-YVmEa7-XV1ZLh-Z2dskk-XYtLG8-XUUWA1-YVmM4N-XYpUUZ-YWTF5m-YVuDzU-BUomsq-YZKhxe-XYnNkF-YVscLJ-XYsHQD-YAWVmQ-YAZvru-BTsQa7-YAY21y-BTAVds-XYqmhT/">(Jock Rutherford/Flickr)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Remembrance for the post-veteran generations involves learning about history and trying to comprehend the what, how and why remembering is relevant today. Visiting sites of war memory, such as Normandy, assist in gaining <a href="https://canadianmilitaryhistory.ca/events-page/study-tours/">new perspectives</a> while acknowledging that remembrance is also a journey to imagine the past and its context.</p>
<p>Standing in the footsteps of soldiers triggers many reflections, including on the violence of war, responsibility, camaraderie, sacrifice, liberation and freedom. People often think about what they would do, as hard as it is to imagine. Commemorating with other nationalities is important in Normandy, especially with <a href="https://untpress.unt.edu/catalog/dolski-d-day-in-history-and-memory/">those who were liberated</a>, and serves to reconcile the past with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511551109">former enemies</a>. </p>
<p>While <a href="https://exepose.com/2019/12/11/the-politics-of-remembrance%E2%80%8B-nationalism-and-the-state/">nationalism brews with ease in remembrance</a>, there are many sites of war memory stripped of worldviews, leaving only the universally shared sense of loss and death, and the call for humanity and peace. </p>
<p>I think of places like Place des 37 Canadiens in Authie, Normandy, where <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/normandy-massacres">soldiers who had surrendered were executed</a>. These histories are profound and gut-wrenching. But spending time there allows the visitor to break free of the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/fallen-soldiers-9780195071399?cc=ca&lang=en&">myth of the war experience</a>. </p>
<p>Remembrance as a force to heal, reconcile and unify, is something that should also be done here at home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182637/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoffrey Bird does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Remembrance for post-veteran generations involves learning about history, trying to comprehend the what, how and why and its relevance today.Geoffrey Bird, Professor of war heritage, memory and culture, Royal Roads UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1182152019-06-04T15:07:37Z2019-06-04T15:07:37ZD-Day 75 years on: ‘special relationship’ forged on the beaches of France now poised to enter a new era<p>In 1944 the blimps above London were barrage balloons – in 2019 the blimp above the capital is a giant caricature of the US president, <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-in-the-uk-a-state-visit-offered-in-haste-and-regretted-at-leisure-118192">Donald Trump</a>, as a petulant baby. In 1944, British and American troops went into battle as firm allies against a common enemy while in 2019 Trump chafes against NATO and gets into a Twitter battle with the mayor of London. As the world marks the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-48478849">75th anniversary of the D-Day landings</a>, how healthy is the Anglo-American alliance that made them possible?</p>
<p>The US president certainly does not sit easily with war heroes. During his extraordinary spat with the late Senator John McCain, a Vietnam War veteran who was captured and tortured by the North Vietnamese, Trump commented sarcastically that he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/22/im-not-a-fan-trumps-grudge-against-john-mccain-continues-even-in-death">preferred his war heroes not to get captured</a>. </p>
<p>Perhaps he did not realise that that would have excluded Winston Churchill – a man <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10417854/Winston-Churchill-an-all-American-hero.htmlhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10417854/Winston-Churchill-an-all-American-hero.html">even more revered</a> for his wartime role by Americans than he is in the UK. He was captured during the Boer War and became a national hero when he escaped from his PoW camp. It’s a sobering thought as Trump travels to France for the D-Day ceremony. </p>
<p>The D-Day landings have developed something of a mythology of their own, as a moment of heroic Anglo-American endeavour, sealing the wartime alliance and forging a transatlantic partnership that would see the world safely through the World War II and the Cold War that followed. </p>
<p>The truth is more complex. The fighting on the day was much harder than many people realised, at least until the appearance in 1998 of the Stephen Spielberg movie <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/movies/steven-spielberg-tom-hanks-legacy-saving-private-ryan-n1012166">Saving Private Ryan</a>, with its graphic portrayal of the fighting on Omaha beach. The fighting in the Normandy countryside in the days after D-Day similarly proved much harder and costlier than anything the allied commanders had anticipated. Recent research suggests that even the <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/d-day-why-the-training-was-deadlier-than-the-assault/">training for D-Day actually caused more casualties</a> than the invasion itself. </p>
<p>Moreover, the Allied High Command was far from the ideal of Anglo-American brotherhood the popular mythology would have us believe. The British commander, Field Marshal Viscount Bernard Montgomery, took little trouble to conceal his contempt for the American commanders, <a href="https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/george-patton-bernard-montgomery-operation-huskey/">General George S Patton</a> and especially General Dwight D Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander, to whom “Monty” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/28/books/the-man-who-didn-t-like-ike.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/28/books/the-man-who-didn-t-like-ike.html">showed unforgivable insubordination</a>.</p>
<h2>Special relationship</h2>
<p>Nor was the Anglo-American political relationship as harmonious as is often supposed. Churchill and Roosevelt certainly had a good relationship and a shared loathing of Nazism – but Roosevelt was deeply suspicious of Churchill’s moves to maintain the British Empire after the war and by 1945 he was drawing away from Churchill and <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2015/0305/Roosevelt-and-Stalin-details-the-surprisingly-warm-relationship-of-an-unlikely-duo">towards Stalin</a>. His successor as president, Harry Truman, <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/truman-records-impressions-of-stalin">put a stop to that move</a> but never enjoyed the warm relationship with Britain that Roosevelt had nurtured.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277911/original/file-20190604-69067-1hd3hs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277911/original/file-20190604-69067-1hd3hs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277911/original/file-20190604-69067-1hd3hs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277911/original/file-20190604-69067-1hd3hs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277911/original/file-20190604-69067-1hd3hs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277911/original/file-20190604-69067-1hd3hs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277911/original/file-20190604-69067-1hd3hs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Close, but no cigar: statue of Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">chrisdorney via Shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Nevertheless, in the years after 1945 a “special relationship” did develop between Britain and the United States – even if the term was always more important in London than it ever was in Washington. Faced with the imposing might of the Soviet Union, the Western allies drew closer together after 1945, sharing the occupation of Germany and Austria and forming a series of alliances. The best known of these was – and is – NATO, which was formed in order to “contain” Soviet Communism, which each saw as a threat to western values that could spread in much the same way as a virus. </p>
<p>To this end, Britain tied its defence policy closely to the United States, depending not only on the deployment of American military weaponry and personnel, but even on American nuclear weaponry for Britain’s supposedly independent nuclear capability. In fact, Britain cannot use its nuclear weapons <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-trident-nuclear-program/">without the go-ahead from Washington</a>, so if there is a special relationship, it is certainly not one of equals.</p>
<h2>Old friends, new tensions</h2>
<p>Nevertheless, the 75th anniversary of D-Day therefore provides a moment when the political realities of today can be put aside (Theresa May must be delighted to have a day without Brexit). Thoughts can instead turn nostalgically to the events of 1944, when there was at least the appearance of parity between the two allies.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1135453891326238721"}"></div></p>
<p>It is tempting to contrast Trump’s boorish behaviour and his petulant tweet-spat with Sadiq Khan with the urbane charm and tactful diplomacy shown by Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander and himself a future Republican president. He managed to keep Patton and Montgomery from each other’s throats while also maintaining good relations with Churchill, the king, the British public and his own president – a delicate balancing act.</p>
<p>More worrying, perhaps, is the contrast between Eisenhower’s commitment to the wartime alliance – even if it meant giving precedence to Montgomery’s ultimately unsuccessful Operation Market Garden (the “Bridge Too Far” campaign at Arnhem in the Netherlands) over Patton’s proposal for an American-led drive directly into Germany. </p>
<p>Eisenhower was no sentimentalist about his allies: anglophile though he was, in 1956 he took <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6494165.pdfhttps://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6494165.pdf">decisive action against sterling</a> to put a halt to Anthony Eden’s Suez invasion. But if allies sometimes needed to be reined in, Eisenhower also knew how to work with them in order to hold firm against a common enemy.</p>
<p>By contrast, Trump has shown impatience with his allies and enthusiasm for his opponents. Even leaving aside the claims of Russian interference with his election in 2016, Trump has given every sign of getting on better with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, than he does with European leaders. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"712969068396093440"}"></div></p>
<p>He has denounced his NATO allies for not committing to the alliance enough and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-03/trump-visit-uk-why-the-president-loves-brexit-so-much">welcomed Britain’s exit from the European Union</a>. The contrast with Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower – all of whom knew how to maintain American interests while still working with allies – could hardly be more stark.</p>
<p>So what lessons could Trump learn from D-Day? He will certainly learn its value in terms of news coverage – showing himself and his family in suitably dignified poses – but the main message will probably pass him by. D-Day’s success arose from international cooperation among allies – and its setbacks and failures arose when that cooperation weakened.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118215/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Lang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Relations between the UK and the US haven’t always been that “special”.Sean Lang, Senior Lecturer in History, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1181912019-06-04T12:51:06Z2019-06-04T12:51:06ZDark holiday: D-Day and the growth of ‘grief tourism’<p>As Britain prepares for the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-48478849">75th anniversary of D-Day</a> on June 6, visitors will be travelling in huge numbers to pay their respects at the Normandy beach landing sites. Back in England, Portsmouth on the south coast was the assembly point from which much of the invasion force sailed – and the city is the focal point for UK’s commemoration. </p>
<p>The event takes place while US president, Donald Trump, is <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-in-the-uk-a-state-visit-offered-in-haste-and-regretted-at-leisure-118192https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-in-the-uk-a-state-visit-offered-in-haste-and-regretted-at-leisure-118192">on a state visit to the UK</a> – and, on June 5, Portsmouth will host Queen Elizabeth II, Trump, the UK prime minister (for a few more days) Theresa May and other heads of state, including including French president, Emmanuel Macron, and German chancellor, Angela Merkel, to mark this occasion. </p>
<p>More than 300 D-Day veterans will sail to Normandy in northern France on MV Boudicca, a ship chartered by the The Royal British Legion to Normandy for the anniversary itself on Thursday, which will be escorted by a Royal Navy vessel. Altogether it is estimated that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/22/normandy-prepares-for-75th-anniversary-of-d-day-landings">two million “remembrance tourists”</a> will visit the beaches at Normandy to mark the 75th anniversary this year. </p>
<p>It’s easy to understand why so many people want to travel to see the major sites of what is, after all, one of the defining moments of World War II in western Europe, especially for any veterans or for the families of those who risked and sacrificed their lives. But there are also those who find the idea of visiting places linked with such death and destruction to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/it-may-be-macabre-but-dark-tourism-helps-us-learn-from-the-worst-of-human-history-60966">a little macabre</a>. There have been reports that Chinese authorities are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/04/tiananmen-china-hong-kong-vigil-anniversary">keeping tight security</a> around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on the 30th anniversary of crushing of student protests in 1989 in which hundreds were killed. </p>
<h2>Holidays in hell</h2>
<p>“Dark tourism” is a growing market. Whether the whole point of a holiday is to visit all the battlefields of Normandy, or whether it’s a side trip on a visit to Poland to take in Auschwitz – and people have plenty of good reasons to take a detour to this appalling death camp, not least as an educational experience – many people, at least once in their lives, decide to skip the beach resort and opt instead to visit dark tourism sites.</p>
<p>Dark tourism (also known as “black-spot tourism”, “morbid tourism” or <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517717300092">thanatourism</a> – after the Greek word “<em>thanatos</em>” meaning death) was identified in the 1990s. It is defined as “an attraction for places associated with death”. Researchers have found the trend <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269352606_Battlefield_sites_as_dark_tourism_attractions_An_analysis_of_experience">difficult to accurately pinpoint</a> as tourists may not necessarily realise they are visiting a site identified as a “dark destination”. But more than 2.1 million people visited the concentration camp at Auschwitz in 2018 while the 9/11 memorial in New York attracted more than 6.8 million visits in 2017. </p>
<p>The notorious Alcatraz prison in the US attracts an estimated 1.4 million visitors each year. And, interestingly, given the widespread perception of the health risks involved, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster at <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-46923899">Chernobyl in Ukraine</a> is also becoming a popular destination for the curious. </p>
<p>Following the huge success of the <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/23/watch-chernobyl-tv-series-cast-9668750/">recent television drama series</a> about the disaster, you wouldn’t bet against visitor numbers to Chernobyl increasing from the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/nuclear-disaster-chernobyl-booming-tourism-180909063156810.html">estimated 50,000 people</a> who visited in 2017. The same trend is identifiable at the site of the 2011 nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan, which received <a href="http://www.fukushimaminponews.com/news.html?id=943">an estimated 17,000</a> visitors in 2018.</p>
<h2>Morbid fascination?</h2>
<p>The reasons that people give for visiting these dark tourism sites are <a href="https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0261517717300092?token=6BB2057C8619103149A9DD5B413BADD4A3CAB2FB1B15FAB8A047CACAE3C5CED78FCBFDC1A204647C046902D0EF677E6F">many and varied</a>. They can include wanting to understand one’s family history and paying respect to relatives. There is also a desire for empathy or identification with the victims of atrocity or wanting to see a significant site for the purpose of education and understanding. Of course, sometimes, there is an element of voyeuristic attraction to horror.</p>
<p>Sadly not everyone approaches these sites with the respect they deserve. We live in the era of the “selfie” and, despite being obviously inappropriate, there have been reports of hordes of tourists queuing to take photos of themselves at the 9/11 memorial. This, in turn, has led to calls for <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-sept11-mood/sorrow-selfies-compete-at-new-yorks-9-11-memorial-15-years-on-idUKKCN11F1CAhttps://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-sept11-mood/sorrow-selfies-compete-at-new-yorks-9-11-memorial-15-years-on-idUKKCN11F1CA">“selfie sticks” to be banned from Ground Zero</a>. Similarly, visitors to Auschwitz have been asked to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/auschwitz-selfies-visitors-posing-railway-poland-a8833746.html">stop posing for photos</a> while balancing on its infamous railway tracks.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-tourists-go-to-sites-associated-with-death-and-suffering-81015">Why tourists go to sites associated with death and suffering</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Whatever their reasons for visiting sites associated with suffering, death and grief, many people find their visits cathartic and fulfilling. There’s no doubt that among the many people coming to Portsmouth – or travelling to the battlefields of France – for the 75th anniversary of D-Day there will be many for whom it is the first chance to pay tribute to a parent or grandparent who sacrificed their lives for a greater good. </p>
<p>So for anyone else who might be drawn to these places out of a sense of curiosity, or simply because it is a “bucket list” destination, remember that for many people you are treading on sacred ground – so walk softly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Sharples does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>You might think it morbid, but people have many reasons for visiting the sites of battles and disasters.Liz Sharples, Senior Teaching Fellow (Tourism), University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1169332019-06-03T12:40:28Z2019-06-03T12:40:28ZD-Day succeeded thanks to an ingenious design called the Mulberry Harbours<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275203/original/file-20190517-69209-21f2xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">To stage their invasion of Nazi-held France, Allied forces created floating harbors in the English Channel where ships could safely dock to send soldiers and supplies ashore.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Mulberry_Harbour_C4846.jpg">Royal Air Force</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Allied troops stormed the beaches at Normandy, France on <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/d-day">June 6, 1944</a> – a bold invasion of Nazi-held territory that helped tip the balance of World War II – they were using a remarkable and entirely untested technology: artificial ports.</p>
<p>To stage what was then the largest seaborne assault in history, the American, British and Canadian armies needed to get <a href="http://www.dday.center/d-day-facts-and-figures.html">at least 150,000 soldiers, military personnel and all their equipment</a> ashore on day one of the invasion.</p>
<p>Reclaiming France’s coastline was <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/battles/dday/">just the first challenge</a>. After that, Allied troops planned to fight their way across the fields of France to liberate Paris and, finally, onto Berlin, where they would converge with the Soviet army to defeat Hitler. </p>
<p>When Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and his advisers pressed for this ambitious invasion of Nazi-occupied France, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was dubious.</p>
<h2>Could it be done?</h2>
<p>Such an operation would require more than a million soldiers – all equipped with weapons, ammunition, food and clothing – plus hundreds of thousands of vehicles, tents and medical personnel. </p>
<p>Getting so many people and materials from ship to shore while battling waves, tides and currents presented an enormous logistical challenge. </p>
<p>Churchill, recalling the failed <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-century-on-gallipoli-campaign-should-be-more-than-just-a-symbol-of-futility-53084">marine campaign to capture Gallipoli</a> during World War I, feared that Allied troops would get trapped on the beaches and be sitting ducks for the German soldiers awaiting atop Normandy’s cliffs.</p>
<p>So Churchill demanded that a team of engineers, scientists and military officers design a marine staging area that could actually support a successful operation. </p>
<p>The team’s solution was ingenious: two easy-to-assemble artificial ports where Allied ships could safely anchor to stage the massive operation.</p>
<p>As I write in my <a href="https://rowman.com/isbn/9781442266681/geopolitical-constructs-the-mulberry-harbours-world-war-two-and-the-making-of-a-militarized-transatlantic">2016 book</a> on what became known as the “Mulberry Harbours,” each of these artificial ports consisted of artificial breakwaters – barriers against waves made up of sunken ships and huge concrete chambers. </p>
<p>Behind the circular breakwaters was a sophisticated system of floating piers anchored to the seabed.</p>
<p>All of these parts were <a href="http://www.usu.edu/today/index.cfm?id=56041&nl=479">towed 30 miles across the English Channel</a> on <a href="http://www.dday.center/d-day-facts-and-figures.html">D-Day</a> from southern England, then sunk into place, about a mile off France’s northwest shore, the same day.</p>
<p>German planes doing air reconnaissance did spot the concrete chambers, which had been filled with air to make them float before they were sunk. But, according to my archival research, they had no idea what they were seeing or how these giant containers would be used.</p>
<h2>A floating solution</h2>
<p>Once complete, each Mulberry Harbour – a code name that has no deeper meaning – gave Allied troops about 1 square mile of quiet, wave-free ocean from which to stage the invasion.</p>
<p>Nearly 200 military ships and landing crafts anchored at Mulberry Harbours in their first week, sending 12 military divisions, or about 180,000 men, straight into enemy territory. </p>
<p>Ten thousand of them <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/06/06/fact-sheet-normandy-landings">were killed or injured</a> on the first day, blown up by landmines and picked off by camouflaged German machine gun nests and blasted by artillery in concrete bunkers.</p>
<p>On June 19, 1944, a storm permanently disabled the Mulberry Harbour used by the American armed forces. </p>
<p>But Britain’s Mulberry Harbour continued to serve Allied forces for another 10 months as they freed all French ports from German control.</p>
<h2>War games in the bath</h2>
<p>Churchill became convinced of the merit of the Mulberry Harbours design while in a bath tub on the Queen Mary, as he traveled to Washington to discuss war strategy with President Franklin Roosevelt in 1943.</p>
<p>Churchill’s scientific adviser, Professor John Bernal, floated paper boats in the prime minister’s bathtub, agitating the water to simulate waves, then used a loofah, or sponge, to demonstrate the pacifying effect of breakwaters.</p>
<p>Churchill, who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/12/winston-churchills-eccentric-working-habits-revealed-in-rare-papers">often worked while bathing</a>, saw in that Queen Mary bathtub the answer to the challenge he had issued <a href="https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/churchill-style_9780810996434/">in the 1942 memo</a> commissioning portable harbors for D-Day.</p>
<p>“They must float up and down with the tide. The anchor problem must be mastered. Let me have the best solution worked out,” Churchill wrote. “Don’t argue the matter. The difficulties will argue for themselves.”</p>
<p>After D-Day, some Mulberry Harbours engineers were sent to the South Pacific with the idea that similar portable ports would be needed for the invasion of Japan. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki made that unnecessary.</p>
<p>No similar wartime engineering feat has been tried since.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116933/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colin Flint does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How engineers helped the Allies defeat Nazi Germany and win World War II.Colin Flint, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Utah State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/875422017-11-17T14:11:28Z2017-11-17T14:11:28ZStalingrad to El Alamein: what November 1942 tells us about today’s Russians – and the Brexit mindset<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195197/original/file-20171117-7557-1nl6h63.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Soviet troops advancing at Stalingrad. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The city of Stalingrad was in ruins as the Russian winter of 1942-43 took hold. For nearly three months it had been the battleground in which the Red Army had dug in to prevent the advance of the Nazis and their allies – and the vicious fighting had reduced much of the city to rubble. An early Axis victory would have freed up powerful forces from Hitler’s southern group of armies for the drive on the important oilfields of the Caucasus. </p>
<p>Beyond its strategic significance, Stalingrad was also of huge symbolic importance to the Soviets, since it bore the name of their great dictator.</p>
<p>The pivotal moment came on November 19, 1942 when the Red Army unleashed <a href="http://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/trapped-in-stalingrad-marshal-georgi-zhukovs-operation-uranus/">Operation Uranus</a>. It was a powerful counterattack to the north and south of the city, targeting the Romanian battalions that the Soviets judged to be the weakest links in the Axis defence line. </p>
<p>Some 300,000 German soldiers ended up trapped in the remains of the city, and the great siege of Stalingrad began. It would take until the following February before the survivors surrendered, having lived through inhuman conditions all winter. It became the single greatest defeat inflicted upon the Germany army in its history until that point. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195195/original/file-20171117-7559-1t2sr1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195195/original/file-20171117-7559-1t2sr1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195195/original/file-20171117-7559-1t2sr1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195195/original/file-20171117-7559-1t2sr1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195195/original/file-20171117-7559-1t2sr1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195195/original/file-20171117-7559-1t2sr1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195195/original/file-20171117-7559-1t2sr1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195195/original/file-20171117-7559-1t2sr1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Soviet soldier raises red flag in Stalingrad, 1943.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stalingrad, present-day Volgograd, was the site of the larger and fiercer of two battles that month 75 years ago which bore all the ingredients of the Allied triumph that was to come. The other was the second Battle of El Alamein, the British Eighth Army’s decisive victory in Egypt. </p>
<p>Though eventually winning World War II was due more to the awe-inspiring economic power of the United States and the immense sacrifice of the Soviet Union than to any individual battle, both these victories were severe blows to Hitler and his allies. In our current era of growing British isolationism and mounting Western distrust of the Russians, they also contain important lessons that are worthy of reflection. </p>
<h2>El Alamein</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/ff5_second_alamein.shtml">Britain’s victory</a> at El Alamein (October 23 to November 4, 1942) was incredibly important – revisionists are wrong to <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/8134617">belittle it</a> as a mere sideshow to the Red Army’s far larger struggle on the Eastern Front. </p>
<p>Forcing Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Axis forces out of Egypt once and for all wasn’t just Britain’s first major land-based victory over the Germans since the war’s start – though the battle deserves great fame for that alone. Driving the Axis far beyond reach of the Suez Canal and the Middle East’s oil was a vital stage in a much larger campaign across the Mediterranean and North Africa which, had it gone the other way in 1942, might have deeply debilitated the speed and certainty of eventual Allied victory. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195196/original/file-20171117-7559-8ci2vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195196/original/file-20171117-7559-8ci2vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195196/original/file-20171117-7559-8ci2vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195196/original/file-20171117-7559-8ci2vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195196/original/file-20171117-7559-8ci2vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195196/original/file-20171117-7559-8ci2vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195196/original/file-20171117-7559-8ci2vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195196/original/file-20171117-7559-8ci2vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Allied troops taking cover at El Alamein.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wkimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Winning in Egypt, rather than merely avoiding defeat, also helped demonstrate to the Americans that the British were serious about beating the Germans. It helped ensure continued US commitment to a “Germany-first” policy of prioritising the war against Hitler and his European allies over imperial Japan. Finally, the wider North African and Mediterranean campaign was vital rehearsal space for Western Allied troops before the more daunting task of assaulting German-occupied France on <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-military-power-economics-and-strategy-that-led-to-d-day-27663">D-Day</a>. </p>
<p>But while the victory was British-led, helmed by British general <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/montgomery_bernard.shtml">Sir Bernard Montgomery</a> – who had a formidable grasp of battlefield management – it was not exclusively British-won. The Eighth Army was a diverse multinational force, encompassing troops not only from the British Isles but also from Empire and Commonwealth countries and the lands of occupied Europe. Much of its armoured punch was composed of <a href="http://ww2today.com/29th-may-1942-british-tanks-attack-in-the-desert">US-built Grant tanks</a>.</p>
<p>El Alamein showed what the British can achieve in close partnership with other peoples and nations. Contrary to what Christopher Nolan’s recent movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5013056/">Dunkirk</a> implied, if inadvertently, Britain did not win World War II in a state of splendid isolation. This notion was <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/10/12/dunkirk-churchill-splendid-isolation/">eloquently trashed</a> by Sir Max Hastings recently, and it’s something the more ardent Brexiteers would do well to remember.</p>
<h2>Understanding Russia</h2>
<p>Stalingrad throws the multinational character of the Allied triumph during November 1942 into even starker relief. The blood price the Soviet Union paid both in that battle and during the war as a whole – and the toll they took on Hitler’s forces – compels us to reflect still further on just how much Britain’s national successes are achieved in partnership. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195200/original/file-20171117-7588-1843erh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195200/original/file-20171117-7588-1843erh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195200/original/file-20171117-7588-1843erh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195200/original/file-20171117-7588-1843erh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195200/original/file-20171117-7588-1843erh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195200/original/file-20171117-7588-1843erh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195200/original/file-20171117-7588-1843erh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195200/original/file-20171117-7588-1843erh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Putinator.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin">Wikimedia.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It also helps the difficult but necessary effort of comprehending Russia today. The fact that during World War II <a href="http://www.eisenhowerinstitute.org/about/living_history/wwii_soviet_experience.dot">at least</a> 11m Russian soldiers died along with millions more civilians, brings invaluable perspective to the nation’s ongoing fear of outside forces today. It helps explain the potency of Vladimir Putin’s image – cynically manufactured though it may be – as a strong shield against the outside world. If Western relations with the Russians are ever to be constructive, this needs recognised. </p>
<p>Only a few short years linked the victory at Stalingrad with the Red Army’s further emphatic successes as it pushed westward <a href="http://www.historyextra.com/article/premium/race-berlin">toward Berlin</a>, followed by the descent of the Iron Curtain across Europe <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/churchill-delivers-iron-curtain-speech">in 1946</a>. This heralded that rigid division between East and West that lasted more than four decades before resuming, only slightly less rigidly, in recent years. </p>
<p>To contextualise the British and Allied successes of November 1942 in such ways is to acknowledge fundamental truths about present-day international affairs and how Britain, and the West more widely, might fare better. </p>
<p>Allied victory that month – and then winning the war in 1945 – was achieved by a painstakingly constructed multinational coalition from across Europe and the wider world in which the Russians and other nations were absolutely integral. Grasping this hard-won and invaluable achievement would benefit the cause of constructive and fruitful international cooperation now and for years to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87542/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Shepherd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two big battles which turned the tide of World War II can tell us a great deal about some important present-day challenges.Ben Shepherd, Reader, History, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/799722017-06-28T14:06:52Z2017-06-28T14:06:52ZChurchill: Downton does D-Day<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176069/original/file-20170628-31328-izr3uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lionsgate</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Another big-screen celebration of the man <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/2509465.stm">frequently voted</a> the “greatest Briton” is currently greeting cinema goers. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2674454/">Churchill (2017)</a> tells the story of the war leader as he tussles with his subordinates during the final preparations for D-Day in June 1944. The film certainly has its charms, but do we really need yet another version of “Winnie the War Hero”? </p>
<p>For some, the answer is clearly an emphatic yes – and depictions of Britain’s “finest hour” are understandably reassuring for some in Brexit Britain. Put it this way – the UK left Europe after Dunkirk in 1940 with their tails between their legs, seemingly defeated by superior German forces, before returning triumphantly in 1944 (with a bit of help from their allies). Seen in this context, such films as Their Finest (2016), Dunkirk (due for release in July 2017), and Churchill offer attractive historical visions of resilience, resolution and transatlantic comradeship.</p>
<p>Indeed, Churchill, with Brian Cox in the title role, is only the first of two cinematic portrayals of the cigar-smoking warrior to be released this year. The second – <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4555426/">Darkest Hour</a> starring Gary Oldman, is due in November. In portraying the curmudgeonly war leader, Cox and Oldman join a veritable cinematic who’s who, most recently including Albert Finney (The Gathering Storm, 2002), Brendan Gleeson (Into the Storm, 2009), Michael Gambon (Churchill’s Secret, 2016) and John Lithgow (in The Crown, 2016). </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dLl5qfNhBjc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>But where Finney’s Churchill was portrayed as being ignored and isolated during the wilderness years of the 1930s – and where Lithgow’s brandy-drinking bathtub raconteur is seen negotiating the changed global order of the 1950s, the latest depiction of Churchill takes us back to 1944. As such, the film offers a rather different take on the great war leader of popular memory. </p>
<h2>Isolated and frustrated</h2>
<p>The film’s focus is revealed in the opening scenes which see Churchill wandering a windswept beach, alone. As he looks to the shoreline his mind and memory return to a past amphibious invasion for which he was partly responsible – the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00qt53k">Gallipoli landings</a>. The disaster which followed this 1915 assault on the Dardenelles clearly still weighs heavily on Churchill in 1944. And so there, on the foreshore, as he contemplates the D-Day operation, the sea runs blood red. </p>
<p>This nightmare of Allied destruction and defeat prompts a series of increasingly desperate attempts by Churchill to redirect Anglo-American strategy. Adamant that his instinct remains right, Churchill deploys all his charm, oratory and obstinacy to disrupt D-Day plans. In doing so, he comes into conflict with his leading generals, including Field-Marshal Montgomery – but most importantly the Allied supreme commander, General Dwight D “Ike” Eisenhower. </p>
<p>These encounters reveal that Churchill’s cherished status as strategic genius is suffering in the face of growing complaints that he no longer understands the details and demands of modern conflict. At one point, terrified that the Allied army will bleed out on the beaches of Normandy, he orders up alternative plans. But the Allied military is no longer his to command – chief of the British General Staff, Field Marshal Alan Brooke countermands his orders, while his efforts to force the cancellation of Operation Overlord are ignored by an increasingly irritated Eisenhower.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176017/original/file-20170628-7299-1xfpghc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176017/original/file-20170628-7299-1xfpghc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176017/original/file-20170628-7299-1xfpghc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176017/original/file-20170628-7299-1xfpghc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176017/original/file-20170628-7299-1xfpghc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176017/original/file-20170628-7299-1xfpghc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176017/original/file-20170628-7299-1xfpghc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">At loggerheads over D-Day: Churchill and Eisenhower.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Too often elevated</h2>
<p>The film thus offers a commendable critique of a man too often elevated to the status of military demi-god in Britain. Better, surely, to see our heroes as humans – with all the flaws and failings that are their gift and burden. But, like any film, there is also much that it omits or overlooks.</p>
<p>So for all the distraught pleas to Ike to spare the lives of his soldiers, we should also acknowledge that this “humane” Churchill was still the very same man who authorised the area bombing of Germany (a policy, admittedly, which he <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11410633/Dresden-was-a-civilian-town-with-no-military-significance.-Why-did-we-burn-its-people.html">later found deeply troubling</a>). Similarly, this guilt-laden apologist for past military disaster was also the same man whose <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Churchill_s_Secret_War.html?id=Mir6v_OhJRUC">role in the Bengal Famine</a> of 1943 has long been criticised, most recently (and controversially) by journalist <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Madhusree+Mukerjee&oq=Madhusree+Mukerjee&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.1999j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">Madhusree Mukerjee</a>.</p>
<p>Haunted by Gallipoli, yes. Desperate to avoid the mistakes of the armchair generals of 1916, certainly. Humane to his core, no. And nor should we expect anything different. As Carlo D’Este <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Warlord.html?id=78BLlwEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">has argued</a>, Churchill was always a soldier, always a warlord, always a defender of the British Empire. These nuances, contradictions and complexities of character are absent, unfortunately, from the latest film. </p>
<p>But such quibbles are secondary to a more significant issue concerning the film’s overall focus. Where <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/apr/23/their-finest-review-big-hearted-second-world-war-drama-gemma-arterton">Their Finest</a> follows a young Welsh woman (Gemma Arterton) negotiating the misogyny of the wartime film industry as she strives to pen an inspiring story of the “people’s war”, Churchill returns the heroics to its all too usual place: Winnie, Monty, Ike. Little space here for the valour of the common man – and even less for that of the common woman (apart from one scene where Churchill’s young typist checks a moment of prime ministerial despair). This is Downton does D-Day. </p>
<p>Even Churchill’s wife Clementine (Miranda Richardson) remains in the wings. Over the past 40 years Clemmie – just like Churchill – has been played by a succession of greats, and Richardson’s performance is, as usual, compelling. Now and then we see the interventions of an increasingly exhausted Clemmie as she endeavours to control, contain and censor the words and actions of her husband. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the result is that Clemmie remains peripheral, stoically enduring. Oh, to have Clemmie front and centre for once. Winnie was great, that is a tale long told. But so was Clemmie – not to mention those many others who fought and won the people’s war – and it’s high time that these stories also had their day in the sun.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Edwards has previously received funding from the ESRC, the US Army Military History Institute, and the US-UK Fulbright Commission.</span></em></p>The latest film about Britain’s revered war leader struggles to capture the man – or give his wife the credit she deserves.Sam Edwards, Senior Lecturer in History, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/399032015-05-08T09:53:53Z2015-05-08T09:53:53ZHow World War II spurred vaccine innovation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80569/original/image-20150505-951-1ig7cbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Military needs drove the development of vaccines we still use today. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-94601854/stock-photo-american-troops-storming-the-beaches-during-world-war-ii.html?src=iNw--csGVxMSx-OWXArE9g-1-1">US troops storming beach via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>War and disease have marched arm in arm for centuries. Wars magnify the spread and severity of disease by disrupting populations. As large groups of people move across borders, they introduce and encounter disease in new places. Often, they move into crowded, resource-poor environments that allow diseases to thrive.</p>
<p>Before World War II, soldiers died more often of disease than of battle injuries. The ratio of disease-to-battle casualties was approximately 5-to-1 in the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/fever/peopleevents/e_cuba.html">Spanish-American War</a> and 2-to-1 in the <a href="http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/4/580.short">Civil War</a>. Improved sanitation reduced disease casualties in World War I, but it could not protect troops from the 1918 influenza pandemic. During the outbreak, flu accounted for <a href="https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/">roughly half</a> of US military casualties in Europe. </p>
<p>As the Second World War raged in Europe, the US military recognized that infectious disease was as formidable an enemy as any other they would meet on the battlefield. So they forged a new partnership with industry and academia to develop vaccines for the troops. Vaccines were attractive to the military for the simple reason that they reduced the overall number of sick days for troops more effectively than most therapeutic measures. </p>
<p>This partnership generated unprecedented levels of innovation that lasted long after the war was over. As industry and academia began to work with the government in new ways to develop vaccines, they discovered that many of the key barriers to progress were not scientific but organizational. </p>
<h2>World War II sped the development of flu vaccine</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80543/original/image-20150505-954-1kcl39b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80543/original/image-20150505-954-1kcl39b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80543/original/image-20150505-954-1kcl39b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80543/original/image-20150505-954-1kcl39b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80543/original/image-20150505-954-1kcl39b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80543/original/image-20150505-954-1kcl39b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80543/original/image-20150505-954-1kcl39b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80543/original/image-20150505-954-1kcl39b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1918 flu pandemic devastated US forces in World War I.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACoughsAndSneezesSpreadDiseases.jpg">Uncredited. Image via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1941, fearing another pandemic as it braced for a second world war, the US Army organized a commission to develop the first flu vaccine. The commission was part of a broader network of federally orchestrated vaccine development programs. </p>
<p>These programs enlisted top specialists from universities, hospitals, public health labs and private foundations to conduct epidemiological surveys and to prevent diseases of military importance. </p>
<p>Wartime vaccine programs expanded the scope of the military’s work in vaccines well beyond its traditional focus on dysentery, typhus and syphilis. These new research initiatives targeted influenza, bacterial meningitis, bacterial pneumonia, measles, mumps, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9103870">neurotropic diseases</a>, tropical diseases and acute respiratory diseases. These diseases not only posed risks to military readiness, but also to civilian populations.</p>
<p>These programs were not a triumph of scientific genius but rather of organizational purpose and efficiency. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80885/original/image-20150507-1219-6rax53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80885/original/image-20150507-1219-6rax53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80885/original/image-20150507-1219-6rax53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80885/original/image-20150507-1219-6rax53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80885/original/image-20150507-1219-6rax53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80885/original/image-20150507-1219-6rax53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80885/original/image-20150507-1219-6rax53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80885/original/image-20150507-1219-6rax53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wartime vaccine programs expanded the scope of the military’s work beyond diseases like syphilis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SheMayLookCleanBut.jpg">US National Library of Medicine via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Scientists had been laying the groundwork for many of these vaccines, flu included, for years before. It was not until World War II, however, that many basic concepts were plucked from the laboratory and developed into working vaccines. </p>
<p>The newly formed flu commission pulled together knowledge about how to isolate, grow and purify the flu virus and rapidly pushed development forward, devising methods to scale-up manufacturing and to evaluate the vaccine for safety and efficacy.</p>
<p>Under the leadership of virologist Thomas Francis Jr, the commission gained FDA approval for their vaccine in less than two years. It was the first licensed flu vaccine in the US. In comparison, it takes eight to fifteen years on average to develop a new vaccine today. </p>
<p>Flu vaccine, as the Army later discovered, required annual tweaking to match circulating strains of the virus, which it still does today. Even so, the timeline from development to use was a remarkable achievement.</p>
<h2>Military needs drove vaccine development</h2>
<p>Wartime programs, like the flu commission, developed or improved a total of 10 vaccines for diseases of military significance, some in time to meet the objectives of particular operations.</p>
<p>For instance, botulinum toxoid was mass-produced prior to D-Day in response to (faulty) intelligence that Germany had loaded V-1 bombs with the toxin that causes botulism. Japanese encephalitis vaccine was developed in anticipation of an Allied land invasion of Japan. </p>
<p>Some of these vaccines were crude by today’s standards. In fact some might not receive broad FDA approval today, but they were effective and timely.</p>
<h2>How did these programs develop so many vaccines, so fast?</h2>
<p>Scientists often conducted research at their home institutions, which allowed the military to gain access to valuable expertise and facilities in the civilian sector. </p>
<p>The government used “No loss, no gain” contracts that covered the cost of research and, occasionally, indirect costs, but did not provide a profit. Under normal circumstances, universities would have resisted this technocratic reorganization of their research agenda, but the threat of war softened opposition. </p>
<p>Manufacturers also began to work on projects with little to no profit potential. Because vaccines were recognized as an essential component of the war effort, participating in their development was seen as a public duty.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80547/original/image-20150505-948-jce5f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80547/original/image-20150505-948-jce5f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80547/original/image-20150505-948-jce5f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80547/original/image-20150505-948-jce5f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80547/original/image-20150505-948-jce5f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80547/original/image-20150505-948-jce5f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80547/original/image-20150505-948-jce5f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80547/original/image-20150505-948-jce5f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Packing typhus vaccine for shipment. Here is enough vaccine to innoculate a town of 15,000 population. USPHS (United States Public Health Service) Rocky Mountain Laboratory, Hamilton, Montana.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/owi2001003561/PP/">US Public Health Service via Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With industry as a willing partner, wartime programs forged a new research format that effectively translated laboratory findings into working products. </p>
<p>At the time intellectual property protections were less of a barrier to information sharing than they are today. Without these restrictions teams were able to consolidate and apply existing knowledge at a rapid rate.</p>
<p>Borrowing management techniques from industry, flu commission head Francis and his fellow project directors exercised top-down authority, transferring people, resources and ideas to the most compelling projects. </p>
<p>Project directors also managed development in an integrated fashion, coordinating activities across disciplines and developmental phases so that everyone involved understood the upstream and downstream requirements for vaccine candidates.</p>
<h2>Working together for the greater good</h2>
<p>This cooperative, duty-driven approach to vaccine development persisted into the postwar era, even after the urgency and structure of wartime programs dissolved. This contributed to high rates of vaccine innovation through the middle of the 20th century. </p>
<p>Don Metzgar, a virologist who began working in the vaccine industry in the 1960s explained to me in an interview that, “pharmaceutical companies looked at vaccine divisions as a public service, not as huge revenue generators.” </p>
<p>When the military requested limited-use vaccines, such as meningococcal meningitis and adenovirus, industry obliged. But a series of legal, economic and political transformations in the 1970s and 80s disrupted this military-industrial partnership. Without industry cooperation, new vaccine development stalled and some existing vaccines were discontinued. </p>
<p>Whether at war or in peace, timely vaccine development is vital. New diseases with pandemic potential occur regularly: SARS in 2003, bird flu in 2005, swine flu in 2009, and Ebola in 2014. Our current vaccine development capabilities are not keeping pace. </p>
<p>Scientific obstacles can be formidable, as our continued struggle to develop vaccines for tuberculosis, malaria and HIV demonstrate. But many vaccines languish in the pipeline for reasons that have nothing to do with science. </p>
<p>Mobilizing federal resources on a massive scale, as we did in the 1940s, is not a sustainable solution, but we can still take a page out of the World War II playbook. </p>
<p>In a crisis, such as the West African Ebola outbreak, industry demonstrated that it still has the capacity to partner for the greater good, even when the business case for a particular vaccine is not compelling. </p>
<p>We need to leverage this capacity by reintroducing the highly integrated research practices to accelerate the translation of laboratory findings into working vaccines. Let’s not wait for history to teach us that lesson again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39903/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kendall Hoyt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>During World War II the US military forged partnerships with industry and academia that translated laboratory findings into working products at an unprecedented pace.Kendall Hoyt, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Dartmouth CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/276632014-06-06T05:19:04Z2014-06-06T05:19:04ZThe military power, economics and strategy that led to D-Day<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50411/original/d7gmptk3-1401982346.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The culmination of a lot of planning, and a lot of building.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dvids/3661056636">DVIDSHUB</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On June 6 1944, more than 150,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy. Their number rose to 1.5m over the next six weeks. With them came millions of tons of equipment, ranging from munitions, vehicles, food, and fuel to prefabricated floating harbours.</p>
<p>The achievement of the Normandy landings was, first of all, military. The military conditions included co-operation (between the British, Americans, and Free French), deception and surprise (the Germans knew an invasion was coming but were led to expect it elsewhere), and the initiative and bravery of officers and men landing on the beaches, sometimes under heavy fire. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_landings">More than 4,000 men died on the first day</a>.</p>
<p>D-Day was made possible by its global context. Germany was already being defeated by the Soviet Army on the eastern front. There, 90% of German ground forces were tied down in a protracted losing struggle (after D-Day this figure fell to two-thirds). The scale of fighting, killing, and dying on the eastern front was a multiple of that in the West. For the Red Army in World War II, <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/harrison/public/patrioticwar2006.pdf">4,000 dead was a quieter-than-average day</a>.</p>
<p>Economic factors were also involved. In 1944 the main fighting still lay in the east, but <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/harrison/public/ww2overview1998.pdf">the Allied economic advantage lay in the west</a>. Before the war the future Allies had twice the population and more than twice the real GDP of the Axis powers. During the war the Allies pooled their resources so as to maximise the production of fighting power in a way that the Axis powers did not attempt to match. America made the biggest single contribution, shared with the Allies through Lend-Lease. </p>
<p>Between 1942 and 1944 <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/harrison/public/ww2overview1998.pdf">Allied war production exceeded that of the Axis</a> in every category and on all fronts. This advantage was especially great in the West. In the chart below, a value of one on the horizontal plane would mean equality between the two sides. Values above one measure the Allied dominance:</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50415/original/6qcqdv6c-1401984377.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50415/original/6qcqdv6c-1401984377.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50415/original/6qcqdv6c-1401984377.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50415/original/6qcqdv6c-1401984377.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50415/original/6qcqdv6c-1401984377.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50415/original/6qcqdv6c-1401984377.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50415/original/6qcqdv6c-1401984377.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Allies made more planes, guns, tanks and bombs on every front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/harrison/public/ww2overview1998.pdf">Mark Harrison</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Eventually the accumulation of firepower helped turn the tide. A German soldier in Normandy <a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/BigL/BigL-7.html">told his American captors</a>, “I know how you defeated us. You piled up the supplies and then let them fall on us.”</p>
<p>D-Day was made possible by economics, but it was made inevitable by other calculations. When the outcome of the war was in doubt, Stalin demanded the Western Allies open a “second front” in Western Europe to take pressure off the Red Army. At this time, working towards D-Day was a price that the Allies paid for Stalin’s cooperation in the war. By 1944 German defeat was assured; now D-Day became a price the Western Allies paid in order to help decide the post-war settlement of Europe. </p>
<p>While D-Day was inevitable, its success was not predetermined by economics or anything else. The landings were preceded by years of building up men and combat stocks in the south of England, and by months of detailed logistical planning. But <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Supplying_War.html?id=Tu3XZTx_s84C">most of the plans were thrown to the wind</a> on the first day as the chaos of seasick men struggling through the surf and enemy fire onto the Normandy sands unfolded. This greatest amphibious assault in history was a huge gamble that could easily have ended in disaster.</p>
<p>Had the D-Day landings failed, our history would have been very different. The war would have dragged on beyond 1945 in both Europe and the Pacific. Germany would still have been undefeated when the first atomic bombs were produced; their first victims would have been German, not Japanese. Germany and Berlin would never have been divided, because the Red Army would have occupied the whole country. The Cold War would have begun with the Western democracies greatly disadvantaged. We have good reason to be grateful to those who averted this alternative history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27663/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Harrison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On June 6 1944, more than 150,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy. Their number rose to 1.5m over the next six weeks. With them came millions of tons of equipment, ranging from munitions, vehicles, food…Mark Harrison, Professor of Economics, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/276672014-06-06T05:18:46Z2014-06-06T05:18:46ZFrom D-Day to today: US foreign policy is at a turning point<p>As President Obama looks across the beaches of Normandy for the ceremony commemorating the D-Day landings, he could be forgiven for feeling ambivalent. Certainly, these are sites of great tragedy and a reminder of times when the threats were truly impending. Yet, as President Roosevelt might have reminded him, they also were simpler times, when Europe yearned for American action, the enemy was transparent and the public at home was united in its support of America’s mission.</p>
<p>Since 1945, America’s foreign policy elite has been convergent in their support of engagement, insistent that American leadership is required for the maintenance of security, economic prosperity and the promotion of democracy worldwide. But recent rumblings of discontent by populist forces at home, notably among Tea Party advocates, seems to have punctured that sense of unanimity. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/polls-americans-sick-war-terror-war-drugs-failed-u-s-wars.html">Opinion polls also suggest</a> the American public is tired of too much military engagement, worn down by the cost of two wars in terms of blood and treasure – although they still wholeheartedly support both economic integration and international institutions. The findings of a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/27685494">Globescan/PIPA global poll</a> published this week amplify the political problem of American engagement. The poll shows a continued trend of disapproval of United States policy around the world, prompting Americans to ask, why engage if we are so unappreciated?</p>
<p>In this context, critics and advocates alike may characterise last week’s <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/05/28/remarks-president-west-point-academy-commencement-ceremony">speech by President Obama on US foreign policy</a> as a turning point. The Times even headlined an editorial “<a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/leaders/article4109209.ece">American Retreat</a>,” suggesting the forces favouring isolation are now gathering a tailwind. Editorials in both <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/29/opinion/president-obama-misses-a-chance-on-foreign-affairs.html?_r=0">The New York Times</a> and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/president-obama-in-his-west-point-speech-binds-americas-hands-on-foreign-affairs/2014/05/28/f3db48fe-e66d-11e3-a86b-362fd5443d19_story.html">The Washington Post</a> made comparable points. </p>
<p>The reality is somewhat different: the president rejected the popular idea making the rounds that American needs to retrench. In contrast, he explicitly grouped two different forms of policy engagement under the still sacrosanct umbrella of “American leadership”. The first is a willingness to act precipitously when America’s “core interests demand it”. </p>
<p>Threats to Americans and their allies will be met by unilateral force if necessary. “On the other hand,” he said, when issues are of global concern “we should not go it alone. Instead, we must mobilise allies and partners to take collective action.” This second multilateral component, the president noted, requires that we “explain our efforts clearly and publicly” so not as to “erode legitimacy with our partners and our people” and “to strengthen and enforce international order.” </p>
<p>It was a far more humble formulation than we have come to expect of American presidents. Yet this was a clarion call for a new and more flexible form of engagement, essentially defying those isolationist voices. It is one that America’s allies should welcome, not fear. They are always complaining that America is too assertive – such as in the president’s preference for <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/barack-obama-threatens-deeper-sanctions-russia-over-ukraine-actions-1451444">far more comprehensive sanctions against Russia</a> over Putin’s actions in the Crimea. Now they worry about the president’s more modest approach that allows them to lead.</p>
<p>American liberals worry about disengagement. The fear at home is a different one among right-wing critics of Obama. They have recourse to a familiar refrain: a willingness to affirm “international norms and the rule of law” is a sign of weakness. Pandering to the United Nations poses a threat to American sovereignty and risks embroiling the US in initiatives that are costly and don’t serve its interests.</p>
<p>Yet such criticism – from at home and abroad – ignores a fundamental truth: America has been pursuing such a two-pronged strategy for more than a decade. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have selectively mixed efforts at assertive unilateral leadership with those of sponsoring global initiatives. </p>
<p>Examples of American efforts at traditional forms of more aggressive leadership are familiar: from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the failed efforts to push through initiatives on climate change, reform at international institutions like the World Bank, and peace settlements in the Middle East.</p>
<h2>Sharing the burden</h2>
<p>What has been less evident on the radar – and thus far less debated – is the effort of both administrations to provide the support for international initiatives in a variety of important policy areas. The Bush administration’s wholehearted and effective implementation of the <a href="http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/traffic/">UN’s policies on human trafficking</a> cajoled and coerced both its allies and enemies into instituting new initiatives against <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/us-lawmakers-take-action-to-curb-human-trafficking/1918920.html">people trafficking</a> around the world. </p>
<p>These efforts have been enthusiastically sustained by the Obama administration. The same is true of the <a href="http://www.state.gov/t/pm/rls/fs/2013/212140.htm">anti-piracy initiative</a> off the coast of Somalia: there a joint European-US force has enjoyed overwhelming success, reducing the number of attacks and even resulting in pirates standing trial in American courts. More recently, American support both for the anti-Islamist initiative in Mali and against the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda has proven effective in neutering their respective threat. </p>
<p>The example of a sponsoring strategy that has come closest to piercing the public’s consciousness is that of <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/146738/americans-approve-military-action-against-libya.aspx">America’s support for the intervention in Libya</a>. The US provided logistical and military support without incurring casualties and achieved its goal of unseating a dictator at a nominal cost. Rather than recognising the mission’s success, Republican critics gleefully seized upon a reputed <a href="http://www.thewire.com/politics/2011/04/leading-from-behind/36993/">loose-lipped White House aide’s comment</a> that this was “leading from behind”. They suggested that such initiatives were unacceptable simply because America was not seen to be in charge. </p>
<p>These examples are beneficial to the US because they involve burden sharing and are therefore less costly in both blood and treasure. They sanction the use of aggressive American action that would otherwise be subjected to intense international criticism. They allow for relatively easy withdrawal strategies because, by their very nature, American power and prestige is not itself at stake – America is simply part of a team. </p>
<p>And finally, as the president hopes will be the case, these initiatives have begun to help restoring <a href="http://www.columbiauniversity.org/itc/sipa/U6800/readings-sm/Kagan_America's%20Crisis.pdf">America’s lost legitimacy</a>. This is something it needs in abundance if America is to achieve its foreign policy goals in a world of transnational threats. President Obama’s words at West Point did not signal a change: they recognised one – and it was in the form of America’s foreign engagement, not its degree of engagement.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27667/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Reich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As President Obama looks across the beaches of Normandy for the ceremony commemorating the D-Day landings, he could be forgiven for feeling ambivalent. Certainly, these are sites of great tragedy and a…Simon Reich, Professor in The Division of Global Affairs and The Department of Political Science, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/275982014-06-06T05:18:29Z2014-06-06T05:18:29Z70 years after D-Day, women of the French Resistance are finally being recognised<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50378/original/jmn8ddxw-1401963820.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women carry sandbags in the fight for the liberation of Paris.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/liloueve/3412750574/sizes/o/">Clapagaré</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 70th anniversary of D-Day also commemorates the beginning of the end for the Third Reich occupation of France. Starting with the Normandy landings of June 6 1944, Allied troops began to turn the tide on four years of Nazi rule. </p>
<p>The landings in Provence near Toulon on <a href="http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=110">August 15</a> spearheaded the liberation of the southern departments and sent German troops scurrying back to the north and east. The most symbolic of the liberations, that of Paris, was achieved by August 25 1944. </p>
<p>Internal resistance became more confident and daring as Allied forces encroached on the country. Resistance fighters (they were called the “Maquis” in reference to the French scrub land) came out from the countryside to help, but often prematurely; they were gunned down, and villages deemed to be harbouring “terrorists” were put to fire and sword. </p>
<p>Liberated France was a predominantly female country. Most able-bodied French men were either held in prisoner-of-war camps or had been put to work in German factories to boost the Third Reich’s war effort, only returning some months later when the war was over. The people who witnessed the drama of liberation were therefore mostly women, children and the elderly. It was they who had to suffer the day-to-day hardships of German occupation. </p>
<p>And if the majority of the population did not take sides but simply tried to survive as best they could, there was a small minority who chose to resist. A great many women were among them.</p>
<p>Resistance activity was modelled on military activity, so the women of the Resistance therefore did not usually bear arms. But women across the country made a vital contribution to the Resistance movement, even if full recognition of their central role only came several decades after the events. </p>
<h2>Under the radar</h2>
<p>Women’s low visibility in French society paradoxically played to their advantage under occupation; it meant they could act as ideal couriers, with no-one, least of all the Germans, suspecting them of carrying important messages, concealing arms and papers in children’s prams, or conveying vital supplies to Resistance members in hiding. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50374/original/v5xbfm4v-1401963261.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50374/original/v5xbfm4v-1401963261.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50374/original/v5xbfm4v-1401963261.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50374/original/v5xbfm4v-1401963261.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50374/original/v5xbfm4v-1401963261.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50374/original/v5xbfm4v-1401963261.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50374/original/v5xbfm4v-1401963261.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50374/original/v5xbfm4v-1401963261.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paris, 1944.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/liloueve/3412750574/in/photolist-6czdJN-6czeR9-8gDb4j-44z9F1-jFTw7N-94YgLM-8Up2K7-k97Sqv-6czi6y-8whKpj-93z8Cs-mtrxU-mtrzP-mtrva-mtrA8-mtrwM-mtrzy-mtrBB-mtrwo-mtrAA-mtrxA-mtrvs-mtrBY-mtrz4-mtryB-hsKe1e-8wh2ws-96F3nz-8DRUXR-6ThWJm-9w7Gcf-8Pu7t7-9DTwjS-8Eap6G-973Lay-8NExJF-9BJ9rL-9bMKHX-6cv73B-94HzRj-cxowpE-cxoqHq-dBhgBM-6uyXy5-8FKcno-8PbTy1-8MPoZ4-bvvDze-9ijQmP-8LaUNQ/">Clapagaré</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But that same inconspicuousness meant the women of the Resistance were overlooked after the war. Women’s main priority in the immediate post-war years was elsewhere, as they focused on rebuilding family life in an effort to return to normality. They dutifully answered de Gaulle’s call for “<a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OKn2xyFGwlcC&pg=PT222&dq=%22twelve+million+bouncing+babies%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KCmPU6jKN8Kw7Abu54DIBw&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22twelve%20million%20bouncing%20babies%22&f=false">12m bouncing babies</a>” to rebuild France. </p>
<p>They themselves remained largely silent about their activities, often demurring to their male comrades, who took full credit for the Resistance’s achievements. Of 1,036 members of the Free French or Resistance honoured by Charles de Gaulle in the Order of Liberation, only six were female. </p>
<p>Yet for French women, who finally gained the vote in <a href="http://www.france.fr/en/institutions-and-values/history-womens-right-vote.html">October 1944</a>, the Occupation had been an apprenticeship. It allowed many women to gain insights into their own capacities and potential – even if they chose, for the most part, not to pursue it. </p>
<p>More recently, womens’ role in the Resistance has once again come to the fore. In February 2014, President Hollande announced that the ashes of <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/2-more-women-be-honored-famed-paris-pantheon">Germaine Tillion and Geneviève de Gaulle</a>, two distinguished resistance heroines, would be interred in the Panthéon, a prestigious national honour. Besides Marie Curie, they will be the Panthéon’s only women. Meanwhile, the French Sénat debated the role played by women in the Resistance in a special dedicated conference last month.</p>
<h2>Beyond the Gaullist myth</h2>
<p>While few women wielded arms or led resistance networks, there were some who did – like <a href="http://opus.bath.ac.uk/31894/1/Diamond_Modern_Contemporary_France_2012_20_4_453.pdf">Julia Pirotte</a>, a Belgian woman of Polish Jewish origin. As commander of a communist immigrant resistance group, FTP/MOI, she led the attack on the Marseille Prefecture and documented her activities with remarkable <a href="http://culture.pl/en/event/faces-and-hands-the-photographs-of-julia-pirotte">photographs</a>. Her example highlights not just the exceptional roles some women played in fighting the Nazis, but also the fact that Resistance workers were not all French. </p>
<p>In the interests of national unity, Gaullist post-war mythologists propagated the myth that the Resistance in France was primarily French, and that most French people had resisted. These blatant exaggerations were politically expedient; they allowed the country to move forwards after the trauma of Vichy and collaboration. The widely adopted “Gaullist myth” effectively obscured the presence of the many resisters of foreign origin, notably Spanish republicans, Polish and Romanian Jews, Italian anti-fascists and even German anti-Nazis. </p>
<p>Ongoing research drawing on archives across Europe is trying to more precisely chart the contribution these individuals made. As we move towards the 70th anniversary of liberation, the ordinary stories of the people of the Resistance – and women in particular – are still the key to a deeper and healthier understanding of France’s traumatic occupied years. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27598/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hanna Diamond receives funding from the AHRC and the EPSRC</span></em></p>The 70th anniversary of D-Day also commemorates the beginning of the end for the Third Reich occupation of France. Starting with the Normandy landings of June 6 1944, Allied troops began to turn the tide…Hanna Diamond, Reader in French History, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/273422014-06-06T05:15:55Z2014-06-06T05:15:55ZParatroopers and pests: the animals that helped and hindered in World War II<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50397/original/qgc8prvf-1401975152.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rob, who allegedly made more than 20 parachute descents, receiving a Dickin Medal in 1945.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>It’s the 70th anniversary of D-Day, and veterans and world leaders are meeting on the beaches of Normandy to commemorate the biggest seaborne invasion in military history. Memorial services are to recognise the estimated 4,500 soldiers who died that day. </p>
<p>There were also some lesser known troops involved in the Normandy landings: animals played a key part in the operation. The British army <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/the-parachuting-dogs-of-the-british-army-in-world-war-ii-a-939002.html">parachuted dogs</a> on to French soil prior to the invasion to locate mines and booby traps during the D-day landings. </p>
<p>There were many different kinds of dog infantry during the war, who had different roles on land, sea and in the air. As well as deploying mine dogs, Allied and Axis forces used sled dogs, patrol dogs and messenger dogs. Some achieved celebrity status, such as <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-27662650">Basme</a>, a Saint Bernard who became the mascot of the Royal Norwegian Force after having cut his teeth on the mine-sweeper Thorodd. In an echo of World War II, dogs performed military tasks, whilst becoming symbols of loyalty, bravery, and national identity.</p>
<p>So animals were very much part of the war. The armies relied on them despite the highly mechanised character of warfare between 1939 and 1945. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50409/original/2mhw799c-1401980785.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50409/original/2mhw799c-1401980785.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50409/original/2mhw799c-1401980785.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50409/original/2mhw799c-1401980785.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50409/original/2mhw799c-1401980785.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50409/original/2mhw799c-1401980785.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50409/original/2mhw799c-1401980785.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Russia, 1942.</span>
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<p>Horses had an enormous part to play in World War I, as Michael Morpurgo’s <a href="http://michaelmorpurgo.com/books/war-horse">War Horse</a> has recently brought back to the public imagination. In World War II the French had some cavalry divisions, and most of their artillery units were drawn by horsepower. And then the majority of German infantry units still relied on horses for transportation, despite the image of technologically advanced Blitzkrieg tactics. </p>
<p>As horses became exhausted during the rapid German advance through France, French military and civilian horses were requisitioned. Germany also mobilised hundreds of thousands of horses on the Eastern Front. In 1942 the Wehrmacht had <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Mechanized_Juggernaut_Or_Military_Anachr.html?id=IOdOPgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">400,000 horses under its control</a> for its invasion of the USSR, using them to pull artillery pieces and other material.</p>
<p>Pigeons were also pressed into service as “feathered messages”. The British Royal Air Force established a Pigeon Section with some RAF bomber crews carrying pigeons to fetch help in the event of an emergency. Pigeons were used to liaise with secret agents and resistance groups in France as well. And the British were not the only ones to exploit their possibilities: by the end of the war the US Army Pigeon Service reportedly boasted <a href="http://www.cherche-midi.com/theme/Les_animaux-soldats-Martin_MONESTIER_-9782862744384.html">55,000 birds</a>.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50398/original/z3mcbpc8-1401976340.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50398/original/z3mcbpc8-1401976340.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50398/original/z3mcbpc8-1401976340.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50398/original/z3mcbpc8-1401976340.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50398/original/z3mcbpc8-1401976340.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50398/original/z3mcbpc8-1401976340.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50398/original/z3mcbpc8-1401976340.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Crewman with homing pigeons, 1942.</span>
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<h2>Pests</h2>
<p>Whilst armies mobilised some animals to wage war, they also fought against others. US armed forces, for example, led a sustained campaign against malaria carrying mosquitoes in the Pacific. Initial malaria control measures were weak, and there were widespread malaria epidemics. In the early stages of the war, malaria caused <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2945309?uid=3738032&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21103810141911">eight to ten times more casualties</a> among US forces than Japanese troops achieved in battle.</p>
<p>In 1943 General Douglas MacArthur took matters in hand, ordering the deployment of malaria control units, the use of prophylactic drugs, such as quinine, and better education for troops. The measures paid off and by June 1944 the malaria rate amongst troops had <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2945309?uid=3738032&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21103810141911">dropped by 95%</a>.</p>
<p>The logic of totalised warfare that prevailed also led to US entomologists developing new technologies to annihilate lice and mosquitoes – the most significant of which was DDT spraying. The use of DDT is one of the war’s most profound environmental and social legacies, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2945309?uid=3738032&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21103810141911">remaking ecosystems and causing human DNA damage</a>. </p>
<p>On the home front, too, attempts to control pests were widespread. Insects and rodents threatened vital national resources, particularly food supplies. The British government attacked rabbits, rats and other rodents that threatened agricultural output. Moves against the creatures included the Rabbits Order of October 1939 (no. 1493), which empowered County War Agricultural Executive Committees to destroy rabbits deemed harmful to crops. </p>
<p>Scientists joined the fray. The leading light of animal ecology in Britain, C S Elton, secured funding from the Agricultural Research Council to allow his Bureau of Animal Population to develop the most effective way of killing rats, rabbits, and mice. And so the demands of total warfare led to new knowledge about Britain’s rodents, new policies against them. Having conducted surveys of mouse and rat populations, the bureau perfected its technique of delivering poisoned bait using a range of experimental methods, including infra-red photography. </p>
<p>Elton and others pushed for more effective and closely-managed pest control to be extended into peacetime, principally through the Prevention of Damage by Pests Act (1949). As with DDT, wartime pest control in Britain aimed to use scientific knowledge and new technologies to annihilate whole species. This had lasting legacies for the postwar period. </p>
<p>Combatant nations treated animals as both allies and enemies. They played important roles as combat auxiliaries, and presented a formidable problem as pests and disease carriers. And so, the legacy of animals in the World War II goes far further than <a href="http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=106725912">the grave of Brian</a>, the paratrooper dog. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27342/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Pearson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s the 70th anniversary of D-Day, and veterans and world leaders are meeting on the beaches of Normandy to commemorate the biggest seaborne invasion in military history. Memorial services are to recognise…Chris Pearson, Senior Lecturer in Twentieth Century History, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/273052014-06-03T12:55:21Z2014-06-03T12:55:21ZThe forgotten World War II backlash against Vera Lynn<p>Dame Vera Lynn’s latest album, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/national-treasure-the-ultimate-collection-mw0002674928">National Treasure — The Ultimate Collection</a>, has been released in the week of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. The album, filled with over 40 of her wartime hits, is yet another confirmation of her status as a living symbol of the British effort in World War II. </p>
<p>Lynn is remembered as the forces’ favourite, the ordinary East End girl with an extraordinary voice, whose broadcasts over the BBC sustained the nation through the darkest days of the war. </p>
<p>But behind this story is another, more interesting history of wartime broadcasting and stardom. Lynn was an extraordinarily popular performer, but she was more of a controversial figure than we might now imagine. Central to the wartime debates about sentimental music on the BBC, not everyone agreed that her music was good for morale at the time. </p>
<p>At the start of the war, Lynn began recording and touring as a solo performer in Variety. Having come to prominence as a broadcasting dance band singer, she took the microphone with her when she filled the halls as “<a href="http://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/view/778/765">Radio’s Sweet Singer of Sweet Songs</a>”. </p>
<p>The microphone was key. It allowed singers to use a nuanced vocal palette and remain audible while sing softly. Many perceived this sort of singing — labelled “crooning” — intimate, romantic. Crooners were popular, but they were also accused of being insincere, too American, and (in the case of men) effeminate. Lynn used the microphone and the style, but she kept her clear English diction. With her intense lyrical focus, no one could accuse her of insincerity.</p>
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<p>In the autumn of 1940 — during the London Blitz — Lynn’s broadcasting schedule picked up. The BBC had noted her popularity, especially with the forces. She started appearing regularly in Starlight, a 15-minute show that featured a singer “in an intimate setting”. Lynn would arrive at the BBC’s Overseas Entertainment Unit (OEU) studios, in the underground Criterion Theatre, before the Blitz started and then sleep until her rehearsals for the 2:30 am broadcast. Aimed at troops overseas, each Starlight was rebroadcast several times. “Her beautiful voice quality was unmistakable, her fan mail immense,” Cecil Madden, who led OEU, <a href="http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=38022">later recalled</a>.</p>
<h2>Sincerely Yours</h2>
<p>Lynn’s best-known wartime series, Sincerely Yours — Vera Lynn, went on air in late 1941. It differed significantly from Starlight, having dialogue, as well as singing. Structured as “a letter to the men of the Forces from their favourite star”, it was built around Lynn’s girl-next-door persona. It also reached a large home front audience on the Forces Programme, a domestic wavelength created for the troops but heard by a majority civilian audience. </p>
<p>Sincerely Yours was a hit. Throughout its 12 episode run from autumn 1941 to spring 1942, it attracted audiences of <a href="http://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/view/778/765">more than 20%</a> of the British population. Listening on Sunday nights, after the increasingly grim war news, many were comforted by Lynn’s reassuring dialogue, the weekly lullaby, and hits like “Wishing”. </p>
<p>But the show also became a target for criticism. An influential minority blamed the BBC’s “<a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372014.001.0001/acprof-9780195372014">sickly and maudlin programmes</a>” for significant British losses in North Africa and Southeast Asia. Sentimental popular music, they argued, had a “drugging effect” on the troops and undermined their masculinity and will to fight. Just because Lynn was the “Forces’ Favourite” did not mean she was actually good for their morale.</p>
<p>To help calm this [rather wild criticism", the BBC’s leadership decided to “rest” Sincerely Yours. Lynn, whose career was flourishing, still broadcast, but it was 18 months before she had another solo series.</p>
<h2>Crooner bans</h2>
<p>The BBC at home also announced a “crooner ban” in July 1942. The new Dance Music Policy Committee was tasked with censoring “slushy” songs, male crooners, and insincere and over-sentimental female singers. Ultimately, the committee banned more than 30 singers and cautioned nearly 60 more. But Lynn remained untouched. By this point she was too popular — and too sincere — to ban. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Madden and the OEU continued to promote women in broadcasting for overseas troops. Lynn’s radio work became the model for several shows built around “croonerettes” with “girl” producers and announcers. Madden believed that “radio girl friends” had a special ability to connect with overseas forces. Predictably, there was another backlash against crooning and women announcers — but only when their shows reached home audiences in early 1944. </p>
<p>Today, the idea that Dame Vera’s contributions to the nation’s morale were ever questioned seems ludicrous. But the stakes were serious: could popular tastes be trusted? Did women belong on radio? Could a working class girl be taken seriously? </p>
<p>The fact that — at least in Dame Vera’s case — the answer is an unequivocal yes was the result of her talent, artistic vision, and long commitment to her audience. But it is also the result of the complex social legacies of the war. </p>
<p>Her latest album rightly includes Dame Vera’s most iconic songs of the war: We’ll Meet Again, Yours, The White Cliffs of Dover. But the album’s other wartime hits — That Lovely Weekend, Goodnight Children, Everywhere, and others — tell a fuller story. When you listen to the album, look past the icon to the heartfelt performer making thoughtful, and sometime controversial, choices.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27305/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christina Baade receives funding from Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Council.</span></em></p>Dame Vera Lynn’s latest album, National Treasure — The Ultimate Collection, has been released in the week of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. The album, filled with over 40 of her wartime hits…Christina Baade, Associate Professor in Communication Studies, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.