After-action report: 15th International Conference on World War II
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John “Lucky” Luckadoo, 100-year old veteran of the 100th Bomb Group, at the National WWII Museum
Over the weekend, the National WWII Museum in New Orleans hosted the 15th International Conference on World War II. The theme this year was “Resistance,” and the Museum had an excellent lineup of sessions, panelists, and speakers. Unfortunately, tickets were prohibitively expensive, and when I first looked at the program back in the late spring I wrote it off as something that wouldn’t happen. So I’m especially grateful to an old classmate who now teaches history at another college here in South Carolina for telling me about the Museum’s free streaming option just a few days before the conference started.
I wasn’t able to “attend” every session, but those that I did were exceptionally good and I wanted to catalog them here, along with a few notes, thoughts, and book recommendations—either books by the panelists or books recommended during a panel discussion. I hope this will provide a good resource for y’all as well.
Thursday, November 17th
Resistance from Within: Germany and Austria, chaired by Jason Dewey, panelists Nathan Stoltzfus and Günter Bischof
Stoltzfus described resistance movements within Germany while Bischof, an Austrian, concentrated on the wide array of Austrian anti-Nazi activity in the years immediately following the Anschluß in 1938. Both emphasized mass support for the Nazis—for whatever reason, including the restoration of national glory, economic revival, militarism or revanchism, or, the elephant in the room, anti-Semitism—as a major obstacle for resisters.
Living Under the Rising Sun, chaired by Richard Frank, panelists Ricardo Jose and Ethan Mark
I was unable to attend this session as it straddled my back-to-back classes Thursday morning classes, but a colleague told me it was excellent and passed along Richard Frank’s recommendation of the book below. I’ve had this on my to-read list since it came out, but this recommendation will bump it up in priority. Frank, by the way, is a name I’ve been familiar with for a long time (I have his most recent book, Tower of Skulls, on my desk waiting to be read right now), and he proved a highlight of every panel he either chaired or participated in.
Book recommendations: Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945, by Waldo Heinrichs and Marc Gallicchio
Between Hitler and Stalin on the Eastern Front, chaired by Jennifer Popowycz, panelists Robert Citino and Alexandra Richie
Perhaps my favorite academic panel. I’ve known Citino’s work a long time—his study The German Way of War was immensely helpful to me when I first started studying modern German history and German military history specifically. I was unfamiliar with Richie, though reazlied I had heard of her book Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising. Both were impressive, and together they had an eloquent, nuanced conversation about the extremely complicated and tricky subject of resistance in Eastern Europe.
Citino specifically critiqued the “Manichean” view of the war common to Americans, a view in which one sorts all participants into simplistic “good” and “evil” categories. This is dangerous, Citino implied, because it does not prepare the student of history for things like, for example, Latvian partisans who were anti-Nazi (good!) because they were ardent nationalists (hmm…) who wanted a Latvia for Latvians, specifically one free of Jews (uh-oh). The war was considerably more complicated for the occupied in the East than the Allies vs Axis global-strategic perspective many hold by default.
Richie especially impressed me with her encyclopedic and carefully explained view of Polish resistance to both the Nazis and Soviets, whether predicated on nationalism, Catholicism, Communism, something else, or some combination of these. Her closing remarks on how the Polish experience of World War II and the Cold War has given the Poles a keen sense of the value of freedom—and the worthiness of sacrifice to preserve it—was moving.
Book recommendations: Irena’s Children: A True Story of Courage, by Tilar Mazzeo
Missed sessions:
Living Under the Rising Sun, chaired by Richard Frank, panelists Ricardo Jose and Ethan Mark—Included discussion of the Philippines and Indonesia under Japanese occupation.
Fighting a Common Foe in Asia, chaired by Allan Millett, panelists Xiaobing Li and Dixee Bartholomew—Included coverage of the “united” effort of Nationalist Chinese forces and Mao’s Communists against the Japanese and the American OSS’s assistance to Ho Chi Minh’s Communist guerrillas in Indochina.
External Threat, Internal Struggles: Europe Under Occupation, chaired by Mark Calhoun, panelists Sarah Bennett Farmer and Jason Dawsey—Included discussion of the French resistance and Italian partisans.
Conference Opening—Richard Overy presented on his newest book, Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945, which is another book high up in my to-read list.
The Museum has the entire day’s sessions in one video file on Vimeo here.
Friday, November 18th
Losing at War: Battlefield Blunders and the Men Who Made Them, chaired by John Curatola, panelists James Holland and Conrad Crane
I missed the first few minutes of this panel owing to office hours obligations, but the rest of it was quite excellent. James Holland (Tom’s brother), well-spoken as usual, with a startlingly precise command of figures and statistics, paired well with Crane, who made the point early on that while tactical decisions are more exciting to study, logistics and preparation are usually more important overall to the outcome of battles. “Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics.” Crane also warned against “theoritis,” the neglect of real-world conditions in favor of theories that could only work under impossibly ideal conditions.
The Q&A proved especially fun, as everyone who studies World War II for even a few minutes comes to firm conclusions about who won, who lost, and why, and Holland and Crane were particularly good off-the-cuff here.
I took exception to one minor offhand remark by Holland re. the production of the Tiger tank as a “strategic” error considering how many resources each Tiger gobbled up. Holland made the valid point that, given Germany’s logistical situation, it made sense to focus on quality rather than quantity (cf. Soviet tank production), but that the Tiger was overcomplicated to produce, difficult to maintain or repair, and hard to drive. “This was like putting an eighteen-year old who doesn’t know how to drive in a Lamborghini,” or words to that effect. The points on design, production, maintenance, and repair I agree with, but the Tiger was not actually difficult to drive or learn how to operate, having intuitive controls, a well-positioned internal layout, and—unlike many other tanks including the Sherman, which Holland specifically described at one point—a steering wheel.
I gave up on arguing with people about the Tiger a long time ago—I think it’s cool and impressive, and I’m just going to enjoy it—but this was fresh on my mind thanks to this video essay on the Tiger’s strengths in “soft factors” from the inimitable Lazerpig. I feel a little silly recommending that, but it’s good.
Well, there I go coming to firm conclusions. At any rate, this was a fun and excellent panel.
Book recommendations: Hell in the Hürtgen Forest: The Ordeal and Triumph of an American Infantry Regiment, by Robert Rush
Asia Aflame, chaired by Richard Frank, panelists Xiaobing Li and Ethan Mark
A good, wide-ranging panel on Imperial Japan in Korea, China, Burma, India, and other mainland Asian territories that covered everything from strategy and resources to the experiences of ordinary soldiers, civilians, Korean “comfort women” pressed into prostitution for the Japanese army, and the long-lived after effects of the war in all of these places. (A nurse with experience in China pointed out during the Q&A that she struggled to impress upon some elderly Chinese grandmothers in the late 90s that childhood obesity was a serious problem, the assumption among that generation being that fat babies were healthy—because it was fat babies that survived the Japanese.) There was also an interesting side discussion of Japan’s actual longterm goals. Did they want to conquer North America in a “Man in the High Castle scenario”? Short answer: No.
Book recommendations: Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders, by Gerhard Weinberg
The Old Breed, K Company and Eugene Sledge, chaired by Richard Frank, panelists Saul David and Henry Sledge
One of the outstanding sessions I was able to attend. David has recently published a unit history of K Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, the unit in which Eugene Sledge served on Peleliu and Okinawa. Henry Sledge is Eugene’s son. David provided lots of interesting context for K/3/5’s experience of the war, including on campaigns like Guadalcanal and New Britain before Sledge joined the unit, and Henry Sledge gave a wonderful child’s perspective on his father’s later life, his writing of With the Old Breed (“I’d see him up late at night, writing on a yellow legal pad, and ask ‘What are you doing, Dad?’ ‘Nothing! Go to bed.’ He was nicer than that, but…”), and the special place that memoir has in the lives of veterans, veterans’ families, and the public’s understanding of what it was like to serve in World War II. Lots of insight and some profoundly moving stories.
Book recommendations: With the Old Breed and China Marine, by EB Sledge; Devil Dogs: King Company, Third Battalion, 5th Marines: From Guadalcanal to the Shores of Japan, by Saul David
Missed sessions:
Women at War: Resistance, chaired by Steph Hinnershitz, panelists Elizabeth Hyman and Lynne Olson—Included discussion of women who participated in the Warsaw Uprising and the archaeologist Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the subject of Olson’s most recent book.
“I Was There”: WWII Veteran Conversation, chaired by Michael Bell, guest Z Anthony Kruszewski, a veteran of the Polish resistance and the Warsaw Uprising.
The Museum has the entire day’s sessions in one video file on Vimeo here.
Saturday, November 19th
Final Resistance—July 20th and its Legacy in Germany, chaired by Alexandra Richie, panelist Levin von Trott zu Solz
This was the first of two outstanding sessions that I watched featuring speakers with direct personal connections to the war. Levin von Trott zu Solz is the nephew of Adam von Trott zu Solz, an ardent anti-Nazi who gained an important position in the Third Reich’s Foreign Ministry and who became a key associate of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg in the Officers’ Plot. How closely did Trott zu Solz and Stauffenberg work on the plot? The night before the attempt on Hitler’s life, Stauffenberg’s driver recorded visits to two places: a church and Adam von Trott zu Solz’s house. And it was the driver’s logs of these visits that got Adam arrested.
Richie and Trott zu Solz talked through the course of Adam’s life and education (Rhodes Scholar, graduate of Balliol College, Oxford), his work in China, and finally his determination to carry on resistance to the Nazis from “inside,” at home, which he felt was an inescapable duty. His patriotic motivation was quite movingly explained, though I would like to have learned more, as in the panels on Austrian and Polish Catholic resistance, about Adam’s devout and outspoken Christianity (something Adam had in common with Stauffenberg). Trott zu Solz’s narrated his uncle’s arrest, trial, and execution straightforwardly and without embellishment, making it all the more powerful—especially as he explained how Adam and others of the conspirators attempted to outmaneuver the Gestapo and other authorities even in the midst of interrogation and torture.
An informative personal look at just what “resistance” really demands of people.
Masters of the Air, the Bloody 100th, and John “Lucky” Luckadoo, chaired by Donald Miller, panelist John Luckadoo
The second session I watched on Saturday, and the last overall I was able to catch, featured another person with a direct connection to the war—the 100-year old John Luckadoo, the last living original B-17 pilot from the 8th Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group. Luckadoo was astonishingly sharp and expressive, despite admitting that he had trouble hearing questions during the Q&A, and offered up lots of long-view perspective as well as specific details about what serving aboard a B-17 meant. It was so cold at bombing altitude over Germany, for instance, that when flying through flak or attacked by Luftwaffe fighters he would start sweating in fear and the sweat would freeze—which would then block oxygen flow to his mask. Miller also noted how young the pilots and crews were: Luckadoo was 22 years old when the war ended.
Luckadoo also described a briefing with General Curtis LeMay himself, a planned mission over Berlin that would have amounted to a suicide run but was only aborted after they had crossed the Channel into Occupied Europe, and the worst mission in his experience, a raid on Bremen. Throughout, Luckadoo was also self-effacing, pointing out that surviving all of his missions did not make him exceptionally skilled or special but simply lucky—“Damn lucky,” as in the title of Kevin Maurer’s recent book about him.
The Q&A was especially interesting, as many older members of the audience mentioned having fathers or other relatives who served as crewmen on B-17s. Others had good questions about things like the likelihood of survival when bailing out of a stricken bomber. The cockpit of the B-17 was so cramped, Luckadoo answered, that you had to put on your parachute and other equipment after you got aboard. But if you were hit, “You could go through a knothole and you wouldn’t touch either side.”
This was one of several sessions I wish could have gone on even longer.
Book recommendations: Damn Lucky: One Man’s Courage During the Bloodiest Military Campaign in Aviation History, by Kevin Maurer
Missed sessions:
Saving Freud: The Rescuers Who Brought Him to Freedom—Rob Citino in conversation with Andrew Nagorski, author of the titular book, which covers the effort to help Sigmund Freud emigrate to England following the Anschluß.
A French Teenager in the Resistance—Steph Hinnershitz in conversation with Nicole Spangenberg, who was 12 at the time of the German invasion of France.
Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad—Marcus Cox in conversation with author Matthew Delmont on his newly released book.
Closing Banquet Presentation—Ben Macintyre, author of Operation Mincemeat, one of my favorite reads last year, presented on his most recent book, Prisoners of the Castle, a history of British POWs in Colditz.
The Museum has the entire day’s sessions in one video file on Vimeo here.
Conclusion
I was able to “attend” just under half of the Conference’s panels, interviews, and presentations, but what I saw was excellent. I learned a lot and was encouraged by the palpable enthusiasm for the topics. I was also glad to discover that the Museum has made available, at least for now, the recordings of each day’s sessions. I’ve linked all of them above. I plan to revisit several of these and catch up on the ones I missed. And I’m looking forward to next year’s conference.
I hope this has been a help, and that y’all will check some of these panels out, not to mention the many excellent books recommended over the course of the conference. Thanks for reading!
