The U.S Marine Corps is not in the practice of sending their oldest members into harm's way - they aren't now, and they weren't in 1942. But when they imparted this information to Gunnery Sergeant Lou Diamond (1890 - 1951), he would have none of it - the mere idea that the world was to be at war, and he would be excluded: not going to happen:
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"Lou roared his way through the battles of Guadalcanal and Tulagi and did much to back up the Marine Corp's contention that he is far and away the the most expert mortar sergeant in any branch of the service." "Today in Europe there are more slaves than ever existed on any continent at any time. Hitler had to fight for every one of them... They used gangs, particularly in Poland, to round up workers from the streets, to drag them from churches and theaters and even from homes to go to work in Germany."
At the time it was estimated that there were as many as 6,000,000 slaves in Germany; half of them were prisoners of war.
Click here to read about the enslavement of France...
Having surrendered to the Nazis during the closing weeks of the war, General Maurice Rose of the Third Armored Division, was shot dead by a German tank commander. "A ranking member of of the German embassy staff in Tokyo told me a few weeks before Pearl Harbor, 'If Japan goes to war against America and Britain, our days will be numbered here, too. Japan will wage a race war in which we Germans will be regarded as enemies along with the rest of the white race. It is only a matter of time. They intend to conquer all of us, but they are smart enough not to tackle all of us at once.'"
Imperial Japan had a great many reasons to dislike their Nazi ally and most of them were far more legitimate than this one. All of them are are laid out in the attached article. During the Autumn of 1944, when the great momentum was with the Allies and the German Army was in rapid retreat, the SS newspaper Das Schwartz Korps declared that an Allied-occupied Germany would not be a placid land:
"The Allied soldiers shall find no peace. Death will lurk behind every corner. They might establish a civilian administration, but its leaders would not live a month. Nobody could execute the enemy's orders without digging his own grave. No judge could pronounce sentences dictated by the enemy without being crucified in his own window frame in the dead of night."
This article goes into great detail concerning how the SS intended to make good on these words. Even as early as 1937, the dark clouds of war could be seen on the horizon. The U.S. Congress still smarted from the last world war and did not want to be lured in to newest installment. Six months after this article was first read the Neutrality Act of 1937 would be passed - this column explains much of the thought that went into it. |