Alan Eardley
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Axis Powers
Apart from political and idealogical alignments and differences, it is interesting to look at the way the Axis Powers (particularly Germany and Japan) traded and colloborated in material terms in WW2, and the extent to which this concerned the Allies.
An example of this is the Commando raid on Bordeaux in December 1942 which was depicted in the book and film 'Cockleshell Heroes'. The 80 mile incursion up the Gironde under the noses of the Germans and Vichy French defences by Royal Marine canoeists working for Combined Operations HQ* to damage and sink five or six cargo ships is the stuff of legend. What is often not stressed is that the ships were known to be running the Atlantic Blockade regularly. They traded natural resources (particularly rubber) from the Japanese occupied Pacific for German and Italian arms and production equipment. Without this rubber the Axis Powers' ability to prosecute the war in the Mediterranean and to mount air defence of German occupied Europe would be reduced.
Whether the raid was successful is a matter for debate. Certainly 80% of the objective targets were destroyed, their strategic cargoes lost and the dock at Bordeaux rendered unusable for a time. (3 men sank 6 enemy ships). Those were probably viable objectives for what were among the darkest times in WW2 (Operation Torch was not going well, el-Alamein had yet to be fought and the 'Battle of the Atlantic' was in the balance). I suspect the high losses of active personnel incurred in the raid itself (mainly due to natural forces rather than enemy action) would not have been tolerated later in the war, but saddest of all was the killing of two of the raiding party who were captured by the Nazis under Hitler's highly illegal order to execute 'commando saboteurs' **. The same might apply to the RAF attacks on the Ruhr dams. The bravery of the participants was an inspiration to nations and a light of hope in the darkness of possible defeat.
* Perhaps it is vaguely relevant to this forum to observe that among the COHQ staff who planned the raid was Douglas Fairbanks, the Hollywood actor.
** I've just recalled that it emerged at the Hamburg trials of 1948 that one of the Nazi commanders who ordered the executions also claimed that they were ordered as a reprisal for supposed Russian breaches of the Hague Regulations (the so-called Kharkov fake executions) of Wehrmacht troops on the Eastern Front.
Apart from political and idealogical alignments and differences, it is interesting to look at the way the Axis Powers (particularly Germany and Japan) traded and colloborated in material terms in WW2, and the extent to which this concerned the Allies.
An example of this is the Commando raid on Bordeaux in December 1942 which was depicted in the book and film 'Cockleshell Heroes'. The 80 mile incursion up the Gironde under the noses of the Germans and Vichy French defences by Royal Marine canoeists working for Combined Operations HQ* to damage and sink five or six cargo ships is the stuff of legend. What is often not stressed is that the ships were known to be running the Atlantic Blockade regularly. They traded natural resources (particularly rubber) from the Japanese occupied Pacific for German and Italian arms and production equipment. Without this rubber the Axis Powers' ability to prosecute the war in the Mediterranean and to mount air defence of German occupied Europe would be reduced.
Whether the raid was successful is a matter for debate. Certainly 80% of the objective targets were destroyed, their strategic cargoes lost and the dock at Bordeaux rendered unusable for a time. (3 men sank 6 enemy ships). Those were probably viable objectives for what were among the darkest times in WW2 (Operation Torch was not going well, el-Alamein had yet to be fought and the 'Battle of the Atlantic' was in the balance). I suspect the high losses of active personnel incurred in the raid itself (mainly due to natural forces rather than enemy action) would not have been tolerated later in the war, but saddest of all was the killing of two of the raiding party who were captured by the Nazis under Hitler's highly illegal order to execute 'commando saboteurs' **. The same might apply to the RAF attacks on the Ruhr dams. The bravery of the participants was an inspiration to nations and a light of hope in the darkness of possible defeat.
* Perhaps it is vaguely relevant to this forum to observe that among the COHQ staff who planned the raid was Douglas Fairbanks, the Hollywood actor.
** I've just recalled that it emerged at the Hamburg trials of 1948 that one of the Nazi commanders who ordered the executions also claimed that they were ordered as a reprisal for supposed Russian breaches of the Hague Regulations (the so-called Kharkov fake executions) of Wehrmacht troops on the Eastern Front.