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Tag: WWII

  • Rosie The Riveter Plant May Be Lost To A Wrecking Ball

    The iconic Michigan Plant where thousands of women constructed B-24 bombers during World War II faces its own battle this week with a wrecking ball. The Willow Run bomber plant in Ypsilanti has two days to come up with $1 million to keep its doors and history intact.

    A group leading the “Save the Bomber” campaign has raised $7 million already. But they are still $1 million short. And although they have until Thursday to come up with the remaining funds, demolition has already started on some parts of the factory.

    Loraine Osborne, one of the few remaining riveters today, stated that if their campaign fails, a very important piece of U.S. history will be lost forever.

    Although she isn’t the renowned Rosie the Riveter, Loraine Osborne was one of thousands of women to have built the 8,685 B-24 Liberators from 1942 to 1945, with one aircraft capable of being built in an hour.

    The Willow Run Bomber Plant

    Rose Will Monroe, who was the inspiration for the character Rosie the Riveter, was the woman behind the most influential female empowerment symbol of all time. Still used today, the acclaimed poster of Rosie with rolled up sleeves and red, polka-dot bandana, still carries the same weight of decades past.

    Today, Rosie needs help from the public. The plant is to be demolished to make way for a vehicle research facility.  However, Osborne and company have their own plans of saving that space for the Yankee Air Museum. The site’s manager has given plenty of extensions, but May 1st is the deadline.

    The president of the Michigan Aerospace Foundation told the Associated Press that “time is really short…” and that they need more people to help. But he hasn’t given up hope yet. He believes that they are going to make it.

    Image via YouTube

  • Bill Guarnere, of Band of Brothers Fame, Dies at 90

    William “Wild Bill” Guarnere, Sr. was rushed to a hospital from his home in Philadelphia Saturday morning. By the time Saturday night had arrived, Guarenere had died from a ruptured stomach aneurysm. Guarnere was 90 years old.

    Bill Guarnere rose to fame in the United States after the production of the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers in 2001. The miniseries was produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg and based off of the novel of the same name by historian Stephen Ambrose.

    Band of Brothers followed the story of Easy Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division from its training days at Toccoa and Mt. Currahee in Georgia to its parajump at D-Day in Normandy and all the way to its invasion of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest and the end of World War II.

    Bill Guarnere earned the nickname “Wild Bill” due to his vehement hatred and subsequent slaughtering of as many Germans as possible during the war. Before boarding the plane which would transport the troops from England to the beaches of Normandy, Guarnere learned of his brother’s passing in Monte Casino, Italy at the hands of the Germans. It was this event which propelled Guarnere to become the Nazi-killing machine he was: “I couldn’t wait to get off the plane. I killed every German I could. That’s why they called me ‘Wild Bill.’ ”

    After landing on the beaches of Normandy, Guarnere almost single-handedly killed an entire platoon of German soldiers at the village of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont in his first combat mission. Guarnere would eventually be shot in the leg by a sniper in 1944. While recovering in a hospital in England, Guarnere attempted to escape to rejoin his fellow Easy Company soldiers in the Netherlands. When he was caught in his escape attempt, Guarnere threatened to go AWOL if not allowed to rejoin his company.

    Unfortunately for Guarnere, his time with Easy Company would end when he lost a leg at the Battle of the Bulge while attempting to assist a fellow soldier who had also lost a leg.

    Despite his heroic actions in battle and fame which followed, Guarnere’s son says that his life was fairly normal: “All we knew was he lost his leg, and that was it. People knew more about (his service) than we did… His life didn’t really change, other than the fact that he was signing books and posters.”

    While Guarnere most certainly harbored a deep hatred of German soldiers and the Nazis, his love for Easy Company was even greater. In 2007, Guarnere decided to tell his own version of the story of Easy Company in a best-selling memoir entitled “Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends,” co-authored by fellow veteran and Easy Company member Edward J. “Babe” Heffron.

    “He did more things behind the scenes for other veterans than (for) himself,” stated Band of Brothers tour company operator Jake Powers.

    William “Wild Bill” Guarnere, Sr. is survived by his wife, the former Frances Peca, two sons, nine grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren.

    Image via YouTube

  • Clooney’s ‘The Monuments Men’ Delayed to 2014

    Back in September, Pixar’s massive release date pushback gave moviegoers the prospect of a 2014 without a single Pixar movie. Now, with less than two months to go before its original release date, the George Clooney movie The Monuments Men has been delayed to 2014,

    The L.A. Times is reporting that the movie has been delayed to sometime in early 2014. The Monuments Men was originally set to be released on December 18.

    The Times report quotes director George Clooney directly as saying he and his crew “just didn’t have enough time” to finish the flick by December. Clooney went on to say that the production doesn’t have enough people to put in the hours to finish the movie’s effects, which he stated he wouldn’t accept as looking “cheesy.”

    The Monuments Men is a World War II movie based on the book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel. The movie follows an Allied platoon that is tasked with saving art and cultural relics stolen by Nazis during the war. Clooney assembled quite an ensemble cast for the movie, which includes Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Hohn Goodman, Cate Blanchett, and Clooney himself.

    The movie had also been pegged as a possible Oscar contender, but will not make the release deadline for next year’s Academy Awards. Clooney told the Times that an Oscar was not his goal, saying, “…we wanted to make a commercial, non-cynical piece of entertainment.”

  • Rosie the Riveter Still Riveting at 93

    Elinor Otto, 93, was one of the original “Rosie the Riveter” girls, celebrated in the popular song and poster of the same name. She first joined the workforce as a single mom in 1942, piecing together planes at Rohr Aircraft Corporation in Chula Vista to support the war effort. “Rosies” were women, left behind, who supported the war effort by filling tens of thousands of jobs because able-bodied men had joined the fighting overseas. They did what they had to do to support the boys fighting overseas, and they still had families to feed, after all.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of0L3VktjTI

    NBC reports that Elinor gets up at 4 a.m. each morning and drives to the Boeing plant in Long Beach, California, and after her coffee and newspaper, begins at 6. She spends her days inserting rivets into the wing sections of C-17 cargo planes. It’s a job she’s been doing at various aircraft assembly plants.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55NCElsbjeQ

    Jobs were hard to find in wartime, and didn’t pay very well. Otto’s first job paid 65 cents an hour, about $38 less than she makes now. On top of that, she had to pay $20 a month for her son’s childcare. She soon discovered that she enjoyed the work and she was earning enough to support herself and her son. She says she loved the routine, the camaraderie, and going to the dance hall on the weekends to meet her friends from work.

    “It was ballroom dancing,” she remembered, her blue eyes shining at the memory. “I liked that.”

    “We were part of this big thing,” Otto said. “We hoped we’d win the war. We worked hard as women, and were proud to have that job.”

    But, when the war ended, the “Rosies” disappeared also, and when the boys came back, it left some women, like Otto, with no job and bills to pay. She got out there and tried new things, but office jobs didn’t appeal to her, and she spent a short time as a carhop, until she was informed that she would have to wear roller skates.

    Then, luckily, Southern California came out of the war with a booming aircraft industry and Otto’s skill with a rivet gun brought her back into the game, and she’s been there ever since.

    “I’m a working person, I guess. I like to work. I like to be around people that work. I like to get up, get out of the house, get something accomplished during the day,” she said.

    She is there because she is still good at what she does said her boss, Don Pitcher. “When I think to myself, ‘Why am I slowing up? Why am I home?’ I think that ‘Elinor is at work. And Elinor is 93!’”

    Otto was recently honored when Rosie the Riveter Park, next to the site of the former Douglas Aircraft Co. plant, was opened. The plant is where many women worked during World War II, according to LA Times.

    It celebrates not only the Rosie the Riveter era, but the later women’s empowerment movement propelled by the slogan attached to the iconic Rosie wartime poster, ‘We Can Do It!’.

    “She says, ‘We can do it!’ and I’m doing it!” Otto said, flexing her thin arm and laughing, mimicking the iconic poster.

    If she were younger, she jokes, she would look at herself now and wonder, “What’s that old bag still doing here?”. She says she will be working as long as she can, but it will probably only be until sometime next year when Boeing finishes off its last contract for those C-17 cargo planes.

    “I’ll be the one that closes the door,” Otto said. “I’ll be the last one there.”

    Image via youtube

  • Massacre Oradour: German Leader Visits WWII Site

    The year is 1944, and it is June 10, a Saturday. It is idyllic and serene in Oradour-sur-Glane, or it would be, if the threat of war had not cast its shadow over the small town’s residents. In an instance of cruelty and despicable nature that seems only befitting to the Nazi party of Germany, the small town was completely obliterated by soldiers of the Der Führer Regiment of the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division Das Reich. The Nazi soldiers proceeded to burn the town to the ground and kill a total of 642 citizens, including men, women, and children. To this day, there is no clear explanation as to why the soldiers did this. A grisly and harrowing in-depth analysis of the time leading up to the attack and the events of the attack itself can be found here.

    The remains of the town have been left as-is, as a testament to the horrors of the past, ordered to “bear witness” to it by Charles de Gaulle. The site is now considered a martyr-town, and recives around 300,000 tourists and visitors every year. The site has been the cause of some panic recently, with the remains crumbling and decaying as time goes. Officials have been working to keep the site up and suitable for tours and testement, especially in light of their latest visitor.

    On Wednesday, September 4th, the first German leader to ever set foot at the site arrived at the charred remains, where he held hands and hugged with the French leader in a solemn, heart-wrenching testament to the horrors of the past. German President Joachim Gauck and France’s leader Francois Hollande took a tour of the area in spirit of the ongoing effort to reconcile French and German post-war relations.

    On the topic of the reason for the atrocity still not being known, Guack was quoted as saying, “When I look today into the eyes of those who have been marked by this crime, I can say I share your bitterness over the fact that the murderers have not been brought to justice — that the most serious of crimes has gone unpunished.”

    An ongoing investigation of soldiers from that day is still taking place in Germany. Hopefully, answers may come soon. For now, this writer wishes peace to the people of both Germany and France as they dwell on this continuing reconciliation, as well as hope that, someday, justice may be served to them.

    Image courtesy of Wikimedia commons.

  • Auschwitz Guards Under Investigation

    The atrocities inflicted almost 70 years ago during World War II may be gone, but they are certainly not forgotten. The German special prosecutors’ office responsible for investigating Nazi war crimes has released recommendations to consider charges against Auschwitz guards serving during that time.

    Though the acts have gone unpunished for decades, recent investigative efforts have unearthed information that may bring many men to justice. According to Kurt Schrimm, the federal prosecutor who serves as the head of the office in Ludwigsburg, there were forty-nine individuals investigated as potential suspects. From this population thirty people have enough incriminating information about them to be charged with accessory to murder. Other potential criminal charges may still be brought against Auschwitz guards, even those that have relocated to various countries during the course of the decades since the acts were supposedly committed. Some of the locations where past Auschwitz guards have immigrated include: Austria, Brazil, Croatia, the United States, Poland, and Israel.

    Efraim Zuroff, who is the top Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem and the facility’s director said, “We commend the (prosecutors) for seeking to apply the precedent as widely as possible and hope that they will be able to find as many perpetrators as possible. It’s only a shame that this kind of legal reasoning was not applied previously, because it would have led to many, many more cases of people who definitely deserved to be brought to justice.”

    Mr. Zuroff spoke about the greater devastation of allowing these crimes to remain unpunished for multiple decades. “At the same time, today’s positive development underscores the failure to take such measures during the past five decades, a decision which allowed thousands of the worst hands-on killers to elude justice,” he said.

    Is there a certain point in time where retribution for past crimes should be relegated to history teachings? Ulrich Sander of the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime does not think so. “These crimes against humanity must not remain unpunished,” he said.

    [Image via Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Poland]