The Avro York LV 633 “Ascalon” was an air transport developed in 1942, somewhat bulky in appearance with wings mounted high in the fuselage. It was Churchill’s favorite flight model, with enough space for a conference room. The name “Ascalon” was the traditional name for the lance used by St. George to slay the dragon, … Read more
As in the month of June 1943 the Nazi racial policies would become more diabolic, climaxing with the installation of a third crematory in Birkenau by the end of the month, there was some irony in the contagion of race riots among some engaged in the war effort against the Axis: the so-called “Zoot Suit … Read more
As Foreign Minister, and Viceroy of India before that, Lord Edward Halifax was the preferred choice of the Conservative Party and the King to succeed Chamberlain as Prime Minister, but he knew he was no match for Churchill and did not press his case. In this he showed an altruism which was commonly admired, notwithstanding … Read more
In the Teutonic gloom spreading from Tunisia to Stalingrad, the Luftwaffe engineered a glimmer of fresh resiliency with the inaugural test flight of a Messerschmitt Me 262 jet that reached 520 mph on May 22. In those same hours, Stalin was dissolving the Third international, or Comintern, on the first anniversary of the formal Soviet … Read more
May was flush with the most colorfully camouflaged spy networks in every government, and the Allied bombing of Sicily and Sardinia on May 19 and 20, as prelude to the invasion of Italy, punctuated one of the most celebrated espionage tricks of the war: Operation Mincemeat. As the brainchild of Admiral John Godfrey, director of … Read more
Benedetto Croce died in 1952, the same year in which Albert Einstein had to protest to his friend Maurice Solovine, “lest you think that weakened by age I have fallen into the hands of priests.” In 1943, Croce had to do something similar, as his essays on philosophic idealism increasingly gave the impression that he … Read more
I began my seminary studies by flying to Rome the same day Pope John Paul II returned from his first apostolic visit to the United States. Some published reports implied that I had been piled into his craft, but I was on the flight behind his, and I definitely had not been kidnapped. The early … Read more
In mid-April, the Polish government in exile requested that the International Red Cross investigate the failure of the Soviet government to explain the fate of 8,300 Polish officers “taken prisoner” by the Red Army in the autumn of 1939. The Germans had just announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. … Read more
German success in the Third Battle of Kharkov exasperated the Russians, although no one could foretell that it would be the last significant local German victory of the war. That was March 16, 1943, and the next day Stalin virtually demanded that the United States and Britain form a second European front to relieve the … Read more
The radical social commentaries of the United States‘ vice-president, Henry Wallace, would lead to a tense exchange with Winston Churchill in May, but Wallace had already stirred controversy with his leftist reduction of international relations, and war itself, to an economic dialectic. As chairman of the Board of Economic Warfare in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s … Read more
During February, the Eighth Army realized that local German advances in Tunisia signaled that no jejeune horoscope could be trusted. Rommel’s progress and the shock of the Battle of the Kasserine Pass were sobering to Allied forces, especially the newly minted American troops. The Nazis had a new dose of adrenalin, and Joseph Goebbels declared … Read more
The Judgment of the Nations was a work published in 1942 by the Catholic historian Christopher Dawson, but it started to get significant attention only in the early months of 1943. “The old landmarks of good and evil and truth and falsehood have been swept away and civilization is driving before the storm of destruction … Read more
In the House of Commons in the last week, of January, a Labour member for North-West Camberwell, Charles Ammon, spoke in favor of bombing Rome. He was a lifelong Socialist and Methodist lay preacher who would be raised to the peerage the following year as 1st Baron Ammon of Camberwell and then serve as chief … Read more
On the first day of the new year, in anticipation of his declaration of “Total War” twelve days later, Adolf Hitler had decided to make better use of manpower, weapons, and armor-plating by scrapping the High Seas Fleet. On January 3, Canadian troops landed in North Africa, one week before the Soviet Red Army entered … Read more
Germany had tried to suborn neutral countries with a dramatization of the war on the Russian front as a crusade against godless Communism. A new ambassador to Madrid was appointed with the intent of persuading Spain that the Nazis were the last defense of Catholic Europe. The former minister to Spain, Eberhard von Stohrer, had … Read more
If the Third Reich did not style itself after the Babe of Bethlehem, Dr. Goebbels proposed some fugitive cheer in a radio broadcast on Christmas Day by changing the subject of the feast. He hailed the Japanese for being free of the remnants of Christianity that he regretted in his Fatherland: It is our national misfortune … Read more
With the blackouts and bleak uncertainty about the fortunes of war, the days before Christmas were dark. The death of Rev. Vladimir Ledochowski, the “Black Pope,” on December 13 somberly marked a period of tremendous growth for the Society of Jesus, whose general he had been since 1915. Monuments to his service included new buildings … Read more
St. Thomas More said that to be a Christian, we must not only believe the Resurrection, we must continually be surprised by it. That saint, surprised daily by the empty tomb, saw what happens when people are not even surprised by God. The reinvented government that sentenced More to death was, from various angles, a … Read more
The series I have been writing on the Church in the Second World War has taught me the power of the maxim, “The best way to learn a thing is to teach it.” What I have learned from writing about events in 1942, reported in diaries and journals on crumbling war-rationed paper, has opened my … Read more
On November 17, 1942, when Operation Torch had secured the Allied occupation of French North Africa, Winston Churchill sent a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt: Very deep currents of feeling are stirred by the arrangements with Darlan. . . . We must not overlook the serious political injury which may be done to our cause, … Read more
