The greatest generation have now been consigned to their final rest, a solute to the Greatest generation whether they be American British Chinese or Soviet. God rest them all peacefully
@@jakevelasco4072excellent question. My father with the USAAF helped move people from Dachau to what were called DP (displaced persons ) camps. He never knew what happened then. These people had to even reestablish their identities. Most didn't have homes to go back to and did not know if any family members survived. I would definitely like to see an episode about these people.
Not to mention the sheer enormity of the task of trying to calculate and verify all the KDRs, team kills, objectives captured, vehicles destroyed, revives, resupplies, accuracy, ribbons and unlocks for each service member. And also the fact that they didn’t have anti cheat software back then so dealing with cheaters must have been a nightmare
My Dad went from Europe to home on 30 days leave. After his leave was up, he was to be part of the invasion of Japan. Japan surrendered while at home. Reported to the Army and was discharged the next day. He was very happy.
My farther and farther in law were both in the Pacific at the end. Dad came from the war in Europe so he went home on the next boat even though he stayed in the Army. My farther in law was younger (got in the war late), trained for the invasion of Japan, never happened and ended up staying for occupation duty in Japan until like 47. Strange how things worked out.
7:17 I love the nod to the Korean War here. Anyone who hasn't started following Indy's coverage so far should check it out, it's just as great as this channel has been.
Thank you so much for the lovely comment! See you on the next episode. If anyone is looking for a quick link to the channel, here it is: www.youtube.com/@TheKoreanWarbyIndyNeidell
I am a HUGE fan of your content, I am a retired US Army veteran, and a WWII re-enactor, I have been stationed in or traveled thru many of the areas you have covered and have found it enlightening to add your information to what I had already gathered while I was in those areas. If this sounds like I'm a little bit of a history nut...well, shots fired, hit scored. Keep up the great work and thank you for your attention to detail.
My father was a pilot. He started out in the Army prior to Pearl Harbor, immediately transferred to the Army Air Corp which became the Army Air Force. When the war ended in the Pacific he was not sent home. He did not have a choice. Due to his background and flight time on various bombers(he had a unique career in having flown almost all the bombers the US had due to his engineering background) he was kept there and eventually ended up in the Philippine's back to flying B-17's for reconnaissance flights. After two years there he caught dengue fever, severe case and was transported back home and eventually released. When he finished he was now in the Air Force. During the war itself he was in three plane crashes, one of those in combat. From the moment he left he refused to fly again.
Absolutely! Being Canadian, I'm most interested in Canada's solution, but some of the smaller countries would have even greater challenges due to small numbers spread all over. This was "just" another huge logistical problem and handled without computers. Plus I'd never learned anything about this before, or really even thought about it.
One of the reasons why to took time to demobilize was economic. The demobilization had to be paced in such a way that people who returned home had a chance to find jobs. Massively demobilizing after the war could have lead to massive unemployment and economic collapse. Even so, the world went into a major recession during the late 1940s, and did not fully recover until around 1950.
Australia didn’t go into a recession, and it was the most mobilised of the allied powers and paid all its foreign debt, including more support for Britain and America than it received. Its economic management of the war and post-war was unparalleled, including paying Britain for every penny it cost for it to join in on the occupation of Japan. The principal of its war economy was domestic borrowing, after learning the sorry lesson of WWI when it borrowed to half the value of its GDP from Britain, only to have the British decide that only Australia was to repay without discount, delay or offset.
@@seanlander9321 I'm genuinely curious to hear more about the Australian economic situation on the homefront, during and postwar. The final line really perked my ears up with interest! Any leads as to where I can find out more (American)?
@@Gungho73 The question of Australia’s debt to Britain after WWI is best summarised in UK Hansard. In 1931 Britain had stopped repaying America. Every country that had borrowed from Britain had likewise asked for leniency, which are individually recorded in Hansard. The British parliament decided though that only Australia wouldn’t be granted any reprieve, to paraphrase their decision ‘the Australians need to be taught a lesson’. Interestingly in 1953 following the London Agreement on WWI German Reparations, the British agreed the three conditions of the West Germans to recommence payments: 1. Discount by half. 2. Accelerated repayments after reunification. 3. Australia not to be paid anything. So Australia, thanks to British support, is the only country that Germany hasn’t reached a settlement with on the Treaty of Versailles. The completed agreement for all the other allied combatants as well as the countries derived from them such as Ireland, can be viewed on jstore.org.
Our late friend, Fred, had fought from D-Day to the end of the war, but decided to remain in Europe and accept his discharge there. He spent a year or two working for an aid group before finally returning to the USA and taking advantage of the GI Bill. He once told me he used the cigarettes in his ration packs as currency because the black market value of them was so high. Fred didn't smoke, so it was free money for him.
Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn? Remember how she said that we would meet again some sunny day? Vera! Vera! What has become of you? Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?
please cover treating the wounded and disabled veterans and the upgrade of the Veterans Bureau to the Veterans Administration and the role of Gen Bradley as its first head
@shawnr771 My grandpa's records are sketchy. As far as I'm aware all I have are a few medals (One being a Philippines Liberation Medal). No pictures or anything, he died 4 years before I was born. I know the MP Battalion he was in, and that he always wanted to go back to Fiji (Which I assume was for R&R back in the day).
@@audiothesoviet Mine grandfather's unit is not listed in the US Army roster for WW2. We have found his orders assigning him to the unit. We have found obituaries and other documentation about the unit. But the number is not listed. I have a picture of my grandfather from when he was in the Philippines. Prior to that the unit went into Europe in January of 45 and was later transferred to the Pacific. There job in Europe consisted of laying fuel pipelines and restoring civilian infrastructure. In the Philippines they worked on civilian infrastructure and getting Japanese holdouts to surrender.
My Dad joined the US Navy right after graduating high school early, finished his training about the time Japan surrendered. He ended up in China on 3 different ships , the first 2 turned over to the National China Navy. He stayed in Asia till he was discharged in '49. There alot of young men like my Dad who joined at the end, then taking over from those combat troops who were sent home.
My dad was on Saipan with the 500th Bomb Group. His rotation points were low, so he didn't qualify to play home on B-29's or other aircraft. He was put on a transport, and it took him six months with stops at islands and ports and to include a stop at Juneau Alaska. They only had tropical clothes, and it was almost December, so they all huddled together wrapped with as many blanked as they could get their hands on.
My father came home from Kimpo Field, Korea in December of 1945 after spending two weeks in Spokane, Washington recovering from his second bout of malaria.
Thanks for this one. Never really thought about the challenges of just sending millions of men home before this and the earlier stuff you did on the demobilization planning.
My grandfather served as an engineer in Patton's 3rd Army. Got to France a month after D-Day and was there for the duration. He was discharged December 7th, 1945, and passed away December 7th, 2006.
My grandpa was a combat engineer also. His unit was attached to Pattons 3rd Army. He didn’t reach France until February of 1945, and crossed the Rhine river into Germany the day Hitler committed suicide. They loaded him back on a ship to New York, gave him 2 weeks leave, and then a train to Seattle to prepare to head to Japan. The bomb was dropped, and gramps came home…
My Dad was a medic and was one of those 14,000 GIs crammed onto the Queen Mary when she crossed the Atlantic and sailed into New York harbor in July 1945. He said the entire voyage home was spent waiting in line to visit the head or get chow. He slept in a six-tier bunk set up in one of the the liner's two swimming pools. Almost immediately after arriving in NY, his medical outfit was tagged for redeployment to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan. He was on a troop train headed for the San Francisco POE and in the middle of Kansas when the word came down that the Japanese had surrendered. They turned the train around and headed back east. He was de-mobbed at Camp Miles Standish, Massachusetts, but before getting his discharge, he and a group of guys were crammed into a giant auditorium where a warrant officer with a clipboard came out on stage and asked if anyone wanted to stay in the Army. The MPs had to be called because of the reaction to his kind offer. I can remember my Dad laughing when he told me the story. It was the only thing about the war he ever laughed about. He had been drafted just six weeks after he and my Mom were married in October 1942, and had trained in Virginia and at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, before being shipped over to Europe.
@@stephenandersen4625 Thank you. It indeed is and I wish I could record it with my Dad telling the story in his thick Boston accent, but he died suddenly a few days before Christmas of 1994. I miss him every day.
The ship loaded with my uncle's regiment's records,personal footlockers and effects was sunk while he was recovering from wounds in a army hospital in 1945. They had records from when he entered the ETO and after. Got shipped to Ft. Dix in 1946 did not get out until 1947 because they had no idea who he was. Finally gave him what amounts to a general discharge and a bus ticket home. He was awarded 2 purple hearts,two bronze stars and a Legion of Merit and we fought for 30 yrs and finally a US senator helped him get his medals and upgrade to a honorable discharge
15:02 - This is something that had not occurred to me. American and British troops were headed home to areas that for the most part were untouched by the war. Soviet troops were being sent back to areas that had been battlegrounds and destroyed.
"UK relatively untouched by war" Probably one of the dumbest comments ever made. When war broke out Great Britain fully mobilised for it. Men of fighting age had to leave their jobs to be conscripted into the army, navy and airforce. Women lost their male providers for the best part of 7 years !!! Factories producing peace time goods were converted to war time production. Farms lost their male labourers producing both the opportunity and burden of Women stepping up to continue to run the factories and provide farm labour. Everything was rationed, Fuel, food, clothing etc etc. In order to supplement the "rations" chickens and allotments on every bit of spare land "Dig for Britain" became the norm. Worried about their men folk, worried about the children, worried about the bloody Luftwaffe ! When the war ended it was all change again ......rationing continued for years even after the war. 🙈
Indy's very correct statement that World War II demobilization is way too complicated to cover in one episode is of course a great understatement, and a lot of demobilization (as with everything else in war) was subject to chance and all kinds of random elements. My dad's World War II deployments and demobilization are a case in point. In 1942 while he was stationed in San Antonio Texas his outfit was set to Australia and wound up in the Solomon Islands. But my dad remained in San Antonio Texas under quarantine with a mild case of German measles. That's probably very lucky for me and my older sister in view of how bloody the Solomon Islands fighting was to be. In any case "not knowing what to do with him" once out of quarantine the army had him doing close order drill in the hot San Antonio sun, a complete waste of time according to my dad and no doubt true. My dad had already been all though that in basic training. This was during the darkest days of World War II in 1942 while Japan was inflicting devastating and humiliating defeats on the British and Americans in the Pacific. My dad confided to his Company Commander, a Captain, that he felt he was just wasting time in San Antonio with the war going so badly in the Pacific. Fortunately for my dad his Captain liked him and said he would see what he could do to get him usefully deployed. Long story short, my dad was put on a train (they never told you where you were being sent) and he wound up in weather school at Chanute Field in Illinois. My dad "aced the class," was promoted from Private to Staff Sergeant, and was put in charge of a mobile weather forecasting station. Basically he was assigned a truck equipped with weather and coding equipment with two Privates assisting him. He was attached to a combat unit which was eventually deployed to Europe. Like everyone else in his outfit he was bombed and shelled from the distance by the Germans (though he wrote home that the Germans surely had things much worse). But unlike most of the men in his unit my dad didn't have to go out on patrols or participate in attacks on the Germans. His job with the two men assisting him was to take weather readings, make weather forecasts, code them, and send them back to headquarters. As with everything else all discussions of weather were in code as the Allies and Axis powers even tried to keep their weather forecasts secret from their enemies. Finally in 1945 with World War II over in Europe, getting home was on everyone's mind including my dad's of course. Once again his Company Commander, a different Captain from the one in San Antonio Texas liked him. Somehow (my dad never knew how), his Captain pulled some strings, and somehow arranged for air transportation home for him via a series of plane flights to England, Iceland, Nova Scotia, and Fort Dix New Jersey. My impression was that this was pretty unusual and my dad certainly appreciated it. Once he was back in New Jersey, the Army offered to make my dad an officer and assign him a post teaching weather forecasting in the United States. But my dad responded that while he greatly appreciated the offer, four years in the military was enough for him and he very much wanted to return to civilian life. So by the end of 1945 my dad was mustered out of the military with his honorable discharge, combat theater medal, good conduct medal, and he went home to Brooklyn, NY. His mom (my grandma) kept hundreds of his World War II letters home as well as hundreds of photos of my dad's 1930s girlfriends until she died in 1981. Then my parents cleaned out my grandma's Brooklyn NY apartment. My mom got rid of the hundreds of photos with my dad's 1930s girlfriends in them. I thought they were "family history" but my mom said "never mind, they are none of your business Steve." My mom needn't have worried though because although my dad was "something of a babe magnet" in the 1930s, I'm very certain that he loved my mom very, very much and never would have cheated on her. But at least I still have all my dad's old World War II letters written home to his parents during 1941 - 1945. My dad knew what not to put in letters home so there was very little military censorship of his letters although there was a bit of it. Perhaps Indy will one day do a legacy special about the military censorship of letters sent home during World War II and/or the Korean War. After all, my dad was surprised that his letters home had anything in them worth censoring. But on a few occasions the military censors apparently thought otherwise and on those rare occasions a few words in his letters were blacked out.
My great-grandfather was mobilised in 44 and sent to training near Quebec City in Canada. The war ended before he was deployed, making him one of the lucky few of my ancestors who partook in the war.
You mention the possibility of covering other countries in the video. Is there any chance you could do some coverage on Poland? As in all the Poles who fought with the British. You've mentioned Polish units throughout your coverage of the war, but it would be interesting to hear what happened to them all, especially as now some may now be returning home to places that were Poland but are now part of other countries
I was going to comment on this too. The story of the Polish soldiers fighting on the soviet side is also interesting, particularly those from the areas occupied by the Soviet Union. Their families were relocated to what is now Western Poland and they had no idea where to find them. I always hear such stories with great interest
@@peugas13 I mean, that's not what I thought initially but makes perfect sense. Probably some unconscious bias on my part thinking about my own country and not others! There's bound to be more than enough material for Poland's own dedicated special episode
From what I've read, Most Poles who had fought in the British supplied units of the Polish Government In Exile settled in the UK or one of the Commonwealth nations. Most knew that going back to Poland under communist control was not good for them. The few who did were often arrested and then tortured and killed by the Soviets and Polish Communists.
@@rwdyeriii Quite a few of them ended up in Canada. I have met them over the years and there is/was a Polish Veterans club in the city I live in in Ontario
@@peugas13 By the term "relocated" you mean "expatriated" i.e. forcibly expelled from their homeland where they had lived for hundreds of years, often without any belongings. Poles from the southwestern regions of the Second Polish Republic were victims not only of Soviet and German occupation and persecution, but also of the cruel genocide committed by U. krainian nationalists.
Well, they did just fight the closest thing our species has seen to an apocalyptic war on their own soil. Their population didn't even recover until that little misunderstanding in Cuba and their demographics have never recovered. It takes time to rebuild, which was why nobody was worried about them intervening in Korea on account they still weren't really in the shape to do so. Of course the same was true with China only that Mao figured if a million starved then that was a million less mouths to feed.
I think if I did my math right, the territories of the former Russian Empire and Soviet Union lost something like close to 40 million people from WW1 through the Civil War all the way to the end of World War 2. And that's not including every other mass casualty inducing event that happened in between everything else. Fucking hell.
Lend-Lease ended and with it the huge supply of US foodstuffs that kept the population somewhat fed during the war years after the loss and destruction of so much farmland and infrastructure. The Soviet bureaucracy, always a mess where saving face was more important than telling the truth, once again failed to act in time. Basically the classical tale of Russian and Soviet history: And then it became worse...
Troops who returned home with their comrades on troop ships at end of WW2 had lower rates of PTSD than Vietnam veterans who flew back solo and were discharged the same day they flew home. The time spent on ships allowed the men to decompress. The same thing happened with British troops returning from the Falklands war. They talked, drank and decompressed in company of the men they had fought alongside and who knew what it was all about.
The huge difference was the sense of purpose. Not only they won, they also felt that they were on the right side of history. People In Europe, Eurasia, East Asia and Southeast Asia cheered the end of brutal Axis rule. The USA was seen as the exceptional nation. There would be later problems in these regions but as of end of 1945, it was not yet an issue for US troops.
My Grandfather was called up in 1940, just after my father was born, served as a driver in the RASC, he had been promoted to Captain by the time he was demobbed in 1946. He returned to his job as an insurance agent in Leeds, UK.
My great uncle landed in Europe August 1944 and met the Russians at the Elbe River. His papers have him down as a cook, but he told me he was detached several times on recon. He was sent “to find out what the Germans were doing”. He was in his 30s and a moonshiner from Arkansas. Probably kept him alive without a scratch.
Thank you! We do have another channel covering the Korean War week by week too if you'd like to see more from us: www.youtube.com/@TheKoreanWarbyIndyNeidell
My grandfather, captain in the romanian army, came back from Czechoslovakia to Romania on foot. He had a horse, but they had to eat it on the outskirts of Budapest. My grandmother didn't recognise him back home.
There is also the enormous amount of forced labourers that took in some cases month's to return home. The second half of 1945 was people on the move in Europe.
An interesting topic you missed was the demobilisation of equipment after the war. An airport at my regional Australian home town has pictures of thousands of WW2 bombers and fighters packed wingtip to wingtip awaiting scrapping. Some had not even been used. Great video!
My uncle was a "Tanker" in WWII and enlisted in Dec. 1941 about a week after Pearl Harbor. He took his basic and AIT and was home on a 30 day leave and then was in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France and Germany. Being married, a father and with all his time and battle points he should have been on the first boat home in June of 45, but of course the Army SNAFU his paperwork and he spent the summer and early fall in Germany. He got home around Haloween of 45. But... He did get to come home on the Queen Mary.
As I was scrolling down my UA-cam feed and saw the thumbnail for this video I could have sworn for a second that the figure in the left hand corner was Marty Feldman as Igor in Young Frankenstein 😁
My great grandfather was one of the 750,000 who had to stay in the British armed forces due to being a Royal Engineer, he was given the job of de-mining all the beaches around Britain. Before this he had spent 4 years in the same POW camp in lower Austria now modern day Slovenia, the same camp that actor Clive Dunn the man who played Lance Corporal Jack Jones was imprisoned in. They were both captured during the Greek campaign ,unfortunately they were not being evacuated in time. I never met my great grandfather but according to my father he spoke about it only once in detail and never spoke of it again.
Polish army in 1945 was special case because there were two of them. One loyal to London government and another one to Lublin Poland government ( by September it was in Warsaw). Demobilization of Western troops took almost two years and it's a long tale. Demobilization of troops in Poland came in waves because army had to deal with Ukrainian and Polish nationalist troops hiding in forests, German Werewolf and large numbers of various deserters and bandits particularly in Eastern part of Poland. Army was also tasked with repairing bridges,roads,mines and railroads. Removal of UXOs and landmines took nearly 30 years and in 2024 they are still found on occasion. Many troops were tasked with clearing crop fields since VE day and they continued until early 50s.
In November 1945, my father-in-law was transferred to a staging center at Samar, P.I. He got a ride home to San Francisco on an aircraft carrier. He had been in the Navy since early in 1942. My uncle was back from the South-West Pacific, after fighting in New Guinea and contracting malaria. My uncle was in the National Guard in 1940, and was called up in November 1940. My dad was going in the opposite direction to construct airfields in the Aleutian Islands, just in case the Japanese did not surrender. The Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were transferring soldiers back to America, along with the other great liners of that age. Going by liner across the Atlantic could be done in a week. It took my grandfather about 5 months to get out of France in the Great War.
My father served ss a signalman 2nd on the USS Mellette APA 156 a fast sttack troop transport. The ship took one Magic Carpet ride through the Panama Canal on to Norfolk.
In Australia, we had 900,000 men and women serving in WWII, from a population of just 7 million - 1 in 8 people were in uniform and we had the highest mobilisation of any Allied nation. Under man-power planning in 1942, men and women aged 18 to 35 could be conscripted for military service. Also men aged 36 to 60 for non-military service in the Civil Construction Corps - often building highways across Australia - e.g. 3,000 kms (1,900 m.) from Adelaide in the south to war-torn Darwin in the north. Also, men and women could be ordered to leave non-essential jobs - e.g, in retail or home duties - to move into war industries such as aircraft or munitions production, or helping farmers in the Women’s Land Army. This high mobilisation put a severe strain on our economy, as many older workers - in hard-labour jobs such as coal mining - had to keep working past their retirement age (65). Demobilisation started in 1943, when long-serving or disabled servicemen could de-mob. It hit top gear in the latter half of 1945 - as troops and airmen were brought home from the South-West Pacific, warships came home and aircrew were returned from RAF Bomber Command in the Uk (10,000 were sent there but only 5,500 survived to go home. (Kym in Darwin - my father Bob served in the Royal Australian Navy, seeing action in the Coral Sea (where his ship - the cruiser HMAS Hobart - was torpedoed (but didn’t sink) and in the sea battle at Leyte Gulf in the Philippines (on the destroyer HMAS Quiberon - as a radar operator). (Kym in Darwin, Australia). PS you might like to see these short docos available on this app - “Kokoda Front Line” (1942), “Give Us This Day” about Aussie food rationing (1943) and “South West Pacific” about Aussie munitions production (1944).
My late dad serving as a Warrant Officer in the ETO had a unique, and fast way, to transport from England to stateside: As a passenger on a B24 Bomber. He was among a group of division HQ officers that rode on a B24 being ferried back to the US. One aspect about that trip my dad spoke about many times over the years: The group of passenger officers, when finding out of the pilot/co-pilot could have been what was commonly referred to as "90 day wonders," the passengers strongly protested. Apparently one of the passengers had a rank of considerable clout, as those "90 day wonders" were replaced with commercial airline pilot/co-pilot; possibly from TWA.
Like the wars before and Korea and Vietnam after the US service men received little mental health services. Many had seen the horrors of war, lost friends, and still had physical scars not only for enemy action, but from disease and exposure. The movie "The Best Years of Our Lives" is about some of these soldiers returning home and what they dealt with, I very much recommend seeing it. At least in America a lot of these veterans would see a booming and great economy after the 1946 recession, returning to homes mostly not destroyed, finding good jobs, and raising families. Since most of the industrialized world had been bombed or fought over and lay in various states of ruin or disrepair, or needed for the essentials of rebuilding, America, already an economic super power, was even more prosperous as it became an even more important industrial powerhouse.. The amazing thing is that is was very magnanimous in its victory with Germany and Japan and open its economy to its allies which spread the recovery and over decades made our former enemies prosperous. But at the economic expense of future generations.
One element of this I'm curious about is how long did it take for industry to return to peacetime products and when were consumer goods available for purchase again?
My dad embarked from Le Havre on (I think) November 26th on the SS Mexico Victory. He arrived in New York on December 3rd, was transferred to another base, then sent on to Camp Grant (Rockford, IL), and discharged there on December 12. He caught the train to Chicago and came home on the Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee, stopping at the Highwood, IL headquarters to see my mom, whose supervisor gave her the day off. When he called his mother from New York, she said, "Oh, Marshall, do be careful. They're doing horrible things to people in Chicago these days." He said he rolled out of the phone booth laughing his head off.
You forgot the butt of many a comedy sketch in the post war UK, the "De Mob" suit, ex military were given an off the peg suit on leaving. The Goon show make constant reference to them.
My father was 2 1/2 years in ETO. In July 45, he was in Boston and was told that he was going to invade Japan. The nukes saved him from that. He was on duration plus 6 months. He put in his paperwork to get out and figured it would take the USCG the 6 months to let him out. One week later he was on the streets with a train ticket home and no idea what he would do for work. In the 1960s, I got to see one of his old uniforms and learned what a "Ruptured Duck" pin, on his uniform was. Good Luck, Rick
My father was a british officer in India, at the end of the war was sent to suez canal area and I believe went home around mid 1946. Since I'll see him next week (in his 99th year) I'll ask him.
Soviet Soldier: "Ура! We won the war! Now we get to go home right?" Comrade Stalin: "..." Soviet Soldier: "... We get to go home right??" Comrade Stalin: "No. You stay."
Shootout to my childhood neighboor that was in Germany until mid-1947 as part of the occupation forces. Granted, he also only arrived in Europe in 1945 itself and, in his words, saw "pissing contest skirmishes for three weeks" during his unit's drive into Germany. He understood why he was overseas as long as he was, but definitely wasn't expecting occupation duties to drag on as long as they did for him. Still managed to benefit from the GI Bill and got a good education and job when he got back, thankfully.
Thanks for covering these trips home. Would definitely be interested to hear how it was carried out in the smaller partners - also for volunteer brigades, like from the Spanish in France or the Irish with the UK.
Please do another episode or two about the demobilization of the other countries. I'm Canadian and I'd love to hear about what my ancestors went through, and I'm sure people from other countries would as well.
Actually, about twice that amount. 181,000 regulars, reserves, and other personnel. Obviously still a major decrease since 1945. When you don't have worldwide empire to defend, you don't need a massive military.
We can thank President Truman for smoothing the transition from soldier to civilian. Author David McCullough describes the proces in his biography, "Truman".
My dad was in the ETO during WW2, and was stuck in Germany for several months after the war ended, much to his displeasure. Several times, he said, ships he was scheduled to go home on were diverted to Great Britain to pick up, as he and the other men were told, “British War Brides”. Father was not pleased at this and wrote an anonymous letter to his Congressman back home, which caused an uproar. The army investigated and suspected he was the letter writer, but couldn’t prove anything. He finally made it home in January of 1946, after 2& 1/2 years in Europe.
During WW2, my father was a gunner's mate on cargo ships. At the end of the war, they no longer needed such personal. So they dropped the Navy gun crew off in Egypt - in the desert. He watched people climb the pyramids. He didn't get back until December 1945.
We’ll have plenty more legacy specials for you over the coming weeks and months. Join the Timeghost Army today so we can keep making them!
The greatest generation have now been consigned to their final rest, a solute to the Greatest generation whether they be American British Chinese or Soviet. God rest them all peacefully
I'm just grateful to you all for all of the content you create. And, yes, I am a TGA member.
Will we get an answer as to what life is like for people who survived the holocaust?
A you-tube channel called "Lim De Sheng Joseph" is posting some of your videos, I'm assuming without your permission.
@@jakevelasco4072excellent question. My father with the USAAF helped move people from Dachau to what were called DP (displaced persons ) camps. He never knew what happened then. These people had to even reestablish their identities. Most didn't have homes to go back to and did not know if any family members survived. I would definitely like to see an episode about these people.
Kudos to the clerks who handled the paper work needed to bring the service persons home without modern interconnected databases and computer networks.
The rear echelon people rarely ever get any recognition, you're right, thank you!
Not to mention the sheer enormity of the task of trying to calculate and verify all the KDRs, team kills, objectives captured, vehicles destroyed, revives, resupplies, accuracy, ribbons and unlocks for each service member.
And also the fact that they didn’t have anti cheat software back then so dealing with cheaters must have been a nightmare
@@rainkloud I'm annoyed that I didn't realize this was a joke until I read "revives".
@@rainkloud🤣👍🏻
@@Johnny5ive0 reminds me of a video on USAF maintainers: without the, pilots are just pedestrians with cool eyewear.
My Dad went from Europe to home on 30 days leave. After his leave was up, he was to be part of the invasion of Japan. Japan surrendered while at home. Reported to the Army and was discharged the next day. He was very happy.
Understandable tbh
My farther and farther in law were both in the Pacific at the end. Dad came from the war in Europe so he went home on the next boat even though he stayed in the Army. My farther in law was younger (got in the war late), trained for the invasion of Japan, never happened and ended up staying for occupation duty in Japan until like 47. Strange how things worked out.
Which division was he in?
Your father in law was farther from home than your father.
Farther is comparator, normally of distance.
Father is a relative.
Must have been such a relief for him. Thanks for sharing!
7:17 I love the nod to the Korean War here.
Anyone who hasn't started following Indy's coverage so far should check it out, it's just as great as this channel has been.
Thank you so much for the lovely comment! See you on the next episode.
If anyone is looking for a quick link to the channel, here it is: www.youtube.com/@TheKoreanWarbyIndyNeidell
You took my comment 😂😂😂😂😂
I am a HUGE fan of your content, I am a retired US Army veteran, and a WWII re-enactor, I have been stationed in or traveled thru many of the areas you have covered and have found it enlightening to add your information to what I had already gathered while I was in those areas. If this sounds like I'm a little bit of a history nut...well, shots fired, hit scored. Keep up the great work and thank you for your attention to detail.
My father was a pilot. He started out in the Army prior to Pearl Harbor, immediately transferred to the Army Air Corp which became the Army Air Force. When the war ended in the Pacific he was not sent home. He did not have a choice. Due to his background and flight time on various bombers(he had a unique career in having flown almost all the bombers the US had due to his engineering background) he was kept there and eventually ended up in the Philippine's back to flying B-17's for reconnaissance flights. After two years there he caught dengue fever, severe case and was transported back home and eventually released. When he finished he was now in the Air Force. During the war itself he was in three plane crashes, one of those in combat. From the moment he left he refused to fly again.
Part 2, yes please.
Yes
Absolutely! Being Canadian, I'm most interested in Canada's solution, but some of the smaller countries would have even greater challenges due to small numbers spread all over. This was "just" another huge logistical problem and handled without computers. Plus I'd never learned anything about this before, or really even thought about it.
Yes please
One of the reasons why to took time to demobilize was economic. The demobilization had to be paced in such a way that people who returned home had a chance to find jobs. Massively demobilizing after the war could have lead to massive unemployment and economic collapse. Even so, the world went into a major recession during the late 1940s, and did not fully recover until around 1950.
Australia didn’t go into a recession, and it was the most mobilised of the allied powers and paid all its foreign debt, including more support for Britain and America than it received. Its economic management of the war and post-war was unparalleled, including paying Britain for every penny it cost for it to join in on the occupation of Japan. The principal of its war economy was domestic borrowing, after learning the sorry lesson of WWI when it borrowed to half the value of its GDP from Britain, only to have the British decide that only Australia was to repay without discount, delay or offset.
@@seanlander9321 I'm genuinely curious to hear more about the Australian economic situation on the homefront, during and postwar. The final line really perked my ears up with interest! Any leads as to where I can find out more (American)?
@@Gungho73 The question of Australia’s debt to Britain after WWI is best summarised in UK Hansard. In 1931 Britain had stopped repaying America. Every country that had borrowed from Britain had likewise asked for leniency, which are individually recorded in Hansard. The British parliament decided though that only Australia wouldn’t be granted any reprieve, to paraphrase their decision ‘the Australians need to be taught a lesson’.
Interestingly in 1953 following the London Agreement on WWI German Reparations, the British agreed the three conditions of the West Germans to recommence payments:
1. Discount by half.
2. Accelerated repayments after reunification.
3. Australia not to be paid anything.
So Australia, thanks to British support, is the only country that Germany hasn’t reached a settlement with on the Treaty of Versailles. The completed agreement for all the other allied combatants as well as the countries derived from them such as Ireland, can be viewed on jstore.org.
@@seanlander9321 This sounds like a toxic relationship. I recommend you leave.
@@OneEye-m4u We did. They’re not worth it.
My grandfather was repatriated on the Queen Elizabeth. The only time he "cruised" on a luxury liner 😅
Same with my Dad! They ran into rough weather on the way back-and even aboard such a large vessel, most were seasick.
Our late friend, Fred, had fought from D-Day to the end of the war, but decided to remain in Europe and accept his discharge there. He spent a year or two working for an aid group before finally returning to the USA and taking advantage of the GI Bill. He once told me he used the cigarettes in his ration packs as currency because the black market value of them was so high. Fred didn't smoke, so it was free money for him.
It was a remarkable era, back then, of cigarettes that were highly coveted.
Wich Fred are you referring to?
Flinstones, Mercury or Krueger?
“We’ll meet again,
Don’t know where
Don’t know when,
But we’ll meet again…
Some sunny day.”
Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?
Remember how she said that we would meet again some sunny day?
Vera! Vera! What has become of you?
Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?
@peteranderson037
Oh, by the way, which one is Pink?
Part 2! Part 2! Part 2!
please cover treating the wounded and disabled veterans and the upgrade of the Veterans Bureau to the Veterans Administration and the role of Gen Bradley as its first head
If I'm remembering the details right from my grandpa's discharge papers, he didn't arrive home until September 1946, and he was an MP in the Pacific
My grandfather was in an Engineer battalion in the Philippines.
He did not return home until 1946 also.
@shawnr771 My grandpa's records are sketchy. As far as I'm aware all I have are a few medals (One being a Philippines Liberation Medal). No pictures or anything, he died 4 years before I was born. I know the MP Battalion he was in, and that he always wanted to go back to Fiji (Which I assume was for R&R back in the day).
@@audiothesoviet Mine grandfather's unit is not listed in the US Army roster for WW2.
We have found his orders assigning him to the unit.
We have found obituaries and other documentation about the unit. But the number is not listed.
I have a picture of my grandfather from when he was in the Philippines.
Prior to that the unit went into Europe in January of 45 and was later transferred to the Pacific.
There job in Europe consisted of laying fuel pipelines and restoring civilian infrastructure.
In the Philippines they worked on civilian infrastructure and getting Japanese holdouts to surrender.
One of my favourite scenes in 'best years of our lives' was the opening scene where 3 servicemen were coming home however they could.
My Dad joined the US Navy right after graduating high school early, finished his training about the time Japan surrendered. He ended up in China on 3 different ships , the first 2 turned over to the National China Navy. He stayed in Asia till he was discharged in '49. There alot of young men like my Dad who joined at the end, then taking over from those combat troops who were sent home.
Interesting story-thanks for sharing.
My dad was on Saipan with the 500th Bomb Group. His rotation points were low, so he didn't qualify to play home on B-29's or other aircraft. He was put on a transport, and it took him six months with stops at islands and ports and to include a stop at Juneau Alaska. They only had tropical clothes, and it was almost December, so they all huddled together wrapped with as many blanked as they could get their hands on.
My father came home from Kimpo Field, Korea in December of 1945 after spending two weeks in Spokane, Washington recovering from his second bout of malaria.
Malaria was a tough ordeal for many. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for this one. Never really thought about the challenges of just sending millions of men home before this and the earlier stuff you did on the demobilization planning.
Thanks for watching!
Band of Brothers showcased the Points System, if they get enough Points, they can go home.
My grandfather served as an engineer in Patton's 3rd Army. Got to France a month after D-Day and was there for the duration. He was discharged December 7th, 1945, and passed away December 7th, 2006.
My grandpa was a combat engineer also. His unit was attached to Pattons 3rd Army. He didn’t reach France until February of 1945, and crossed the Rhine river into Germany the day Hitler committed suicide. They loaded him back on a ship to New York, gave him 2 weeks leave, and then a train to Seattle to prepare to head to Japan. The bomb was dropped, and gramps came home…
My Dad was a medic and was one of those 14,000 GIs crammed onto the Queen Mary when she crossed the Atlantic and sailed into New York harbor in July 1945. He said the entire voyage home was spent waiting in line to visit the head or get chow. He slept in a six-tier bunk set up in one of the the liner's two swimming pools.
Almost immediately after arriving in NY, his medical outfit was tagged for redeployment to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan. He was on a troop train headed for the San Francisco POE and in the middle of Kansas when the word came down that the Japanese had surrendered. They turned the train around and headed back east.
He was de-mobbed at Camp Miles Standish, Massachusetts, but before getting his discharge, he and a group of guys were crammed into a giant auditorium where a warrant officer with a clipboard came out on stage and asked if anyone wanted to stay in the Army. The MPs had to be called because of the reaction to his kind offer. I can remember my Dad laughing when he told me the story. It was the only thing about the war he ever laughed about.
He had been drafted just six weeks after he and my Mom were married in October 1942, and had trained in Virginia and at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, before being shipped over to Europe.
It is this kind of personal memory that needs to be recorded.
@@stephenandersen4625 Thank you. It indeed is and I wish I could record it with my Dad telling the story in his thick Boston accent, but he died suddenly a few days before Christmas of 1994. I miss him every day.
The ship loaded with my uncle's regiment's records,personal footlockers and effects was sunk while he was recovering from wounds in a army hospital in 1945. They had records from when he entered the ETO and after. Got shipped to Ft. Dix in 1946 did not get out until 1947 because they had no idea who he was. Finally gave him what amounts to a general discharge and a bus ticket home. He was awarded 2 purple hearts,two bronze stars and a Legion of Merit and we fought for 30 yrs and finally a US senator helped him get his medals and upgrade to a honorable discharge
15:02 - This is something that had not occurred to me. American and British troops were headed home to areas that for the most part were untouched by the war. Soviet troops were being sent back to areas that had been battlegrounds and destroyed.
Well, for the UK troops, untouched is a relative term. Some areas, sure, but major cities and ports could well be a different matter
"UK relatively untouched by war" Probably one of the dumbest comments ever made. When war broke out Great Britain fully mobilised for it. Men of fighting age had to leave their jobs to be conscripted into the army, navy and airforce. Women lost their male providers for the best part of 7 years !!! Factories producing peace time goods were converted to war time production. Farms lost their male labourers producing both the opportunity and burden of Women stepping up to continue to run the factories and provide farm labour. Everything was rationed, Fuel, food, clothing etc etc. In order to supplement the "rations" chickens and allotments on every bit of spare land "Dig for Britain" became the norm. Worried about their men folk, worried about the children, worried about the bloody Luftwaffe ! When the war ended it was all change again ......rationing continued for years even after the war. 🙈
Indy's very correct statement that World War II demobilization is way too complicated to cover in one episode is of course a great understatement, and a lot of demobilization (as with everything else in war) was subject to chance and all kinds of random elements. My dad's World War II deployments and demobilization are a case in point. In 1942 while he was stationed in San Antonio Texas his outfit was set to Australia and wound up in the Solomon Islands. But my dad remained in San Antonio Texas under quarantine with a mild case of German measles. That's probably very lucky for me and my older sister in view of how bloody the Solomon Islands fighting was to be.
In any case "not knowing what to do with him" once out of quarantine the army had him doing close order drill in the hot San Antonio sun, a complete waste of time according to my dad and no doubt true. My dad had already been all though that in basic training. This was during the darkest days of World War II in 1942 while Japan was inflicting devastating and humiliating defeats on the British and Americans in the Pacific. My dad confided to his Company Commander, a Captain, that he felt he was just wasting time in San Antonio with the war going so badly in the Pacific.
Fortunately for my dad his Captain liked him and said he would see what he could do to get him usefully deployed. Long story short, my dad was put on a train (they never told you where you were being sent) and he wound up in weather school at Chanute Field in Illinois. My dad "aced the class," was promoted from Private to Staff Sergeant, and was put in charge of a mobile weather forecasting station. Basically he was assigned a truck equipped with weather and coding equipment with two Privates assisting him. He was attached to a combat unit which was eventually deployed to Europe. Like everyone else in his outfit he was bombed and shelled from the distance by the Germans (though he wrote home that the Germans surely had things much worse). But unlike most of the men in his unit my dad didn't have to go out on patrols or participate in attacks on the Germans. His job with the two men assisting him was to take weather readings, make weather forecasts, code them, and send them back to headquarters. As with everything else all discussions of weather were in code as the Allies and Axis powers even tried to keep their weather forecasts secret from their enemies.
Finally in 1945 with World War II over in Europe, getting home was on everyone's mind including my dad's of course. Once again his Company Commander, a different Captain from the one in San Antonio Texas liked him. Somehow (my dad never knew how), his Captain pulled some strings, and somehow arranged for air transportation home for him via a series of plane flights to England, Iceland, Nova Scotia, and Fort Dix New Jersey. My impression was that this was pretty unusual and my dad certainly appreciated it. Once he was back in New Jersey, the Army offered to make my dad an officer and assign him a post teaching weather forecasting in the United States. But my dad responded that while he greatly appreciated the offer, four years in the military was enough for him and he very much wanted to return to civilian life. So by the end of 1945 my dad was mustered out of the military with his honorable discharge, combat theater medal, good conduct medal, and he went home to Brooklyn, NY.
His mom (my grandma) kept hundreds of his World War II letters home as well as hundreds of photos of my dad's 1930s girlfriends until she died in 1981. Then my parents cleaned out my grandma's Brooklyn NY apartment. My mom got rid of the hundreds of photos with my dad's 1930s girlfriends in them. I thought they were "family history" but my mom said "never mind, they are none of your business Steve." My mom needn't have worried though because although my dad was "something of a babe magnet" in the 1930s, I'm very certain that he loved my mom very, very much and never would have cheated on her. But at least I still have all my dad's old World War II letters written home to his parents during 1941 - 1945.
My dad knew what not to put in letters home so there was very little military censorship of his letters although there was a bit of it. Perhaps Indy will one day do a legacy special about the military censorship of letters sent home during World War II and/or the Korean War. After all, my dad was surprised that his letters home had anything in them worth censoring. But on a few occasions the military censors apparently thought otherwise and on those rare occasions a few words in his letters were blacked out.
Thanks for keeping the account of your dad alive and sharing it with us
@@kaj4501thank you, glad you liked it!
My great-grandfather was mobilised in 44 and sent to training near Quebec City in Canada. The war ended before he was deployed, making him one of the lucky few of my ancestors who partook in the war.
Yes, I would love to see a part two. And maybe even a part three for the axis.
My father, an NCO in the USAAF, came home from the West Pacific. He was able to pose as an officer and eat in the officer's dining area on the trip!
Please do part two! Dominions, Japan, and others.
You mention the possibility of covering other countries in the video. Is there any chance you could do some coverage on Poland? As in all the Poles who fought with the British. You've mentioned Polish units throughout your coverage of the war, but it would be interesting to hear what happened to them all, especially as now some may now be returning home to places that were Poland but are now part of other countries
I was going to comment on this too.
The story of the Polish soldiers fighting on the soviet side is also interesting, particularly those from the areas occupied by the Soviet Union.
Their families were relocated to what is now Western Poland and they had no idea where to find them. I always hear such stories with great interest
@@peugas13 I mean, that's not what I thought initially but makes perfect sense. Probably some unconscious bias on my part thinking about my own country and not others! There's bound to be more than enough material for Poland's own dedicated special episode
From what I've read, Most Poles who had fought in the British supplied units of the Polish Government In Exile settled in the UK or one of the Commonwealth nations. Most knew that going back to Poland under communist control was not good for them. The few who did were often arrested and then tortured and killed by the Soviets and Polish Communists.
@@rwdyeriii Quite a few of them ended up in Canada. I have met them over the years and there is/was a Polish Veterans club in the city I live in in Ontario
@@peugas13 By the term "relocated" you mean "expatriated" i.e. forcibly expelled from their homeland where they had lived for hundreds of years, often without any belongings. Poles from the southwestern regions of the Second Polish Republic were victims not only of Soviet and German occupation and persecution, but also of the cruel genocide committed by U. krainian nationalists.
Part 2 please! I'd love to see more in depth on the other nations. As a Canadian it's of particular interest.
They should make a part 2 about this
"The Soviet Union is hit by a famine in 1946."
Fucken hell. They can't catch a break.
Well, they did just fight the closest thing our species has seen to an apocalyptic war on their own soil. Their population didn't even recover until that little misunderstanding in Cuba and their demographics have never recovered. It takes time to rebuild, which was why nobody was worried about them intervening in Korea on account they still weren't really in the shape to do so. Of course the same was true with China only that Mao figured if a million starved then that was a million less mouths to feed.
I was going to comment the same, to lose 20 million in a war and then another 2 million in a famine. Heartbreaking.
I think if I did my math right, the territories of the former Russian Empire and Soviet Union lost something like close to 40 million people from WW1 through the Civil War all the way to the end of World War 2. And that's not including every other mass casualty inducing event that happened in between everything else. Fucking hell.
That stood out for me, surprised Indy didn't linger on it more. Maybe it's discussed more in depth in another video?
Lend-Lease ended and with it the huge supply of US foodstuffs that kept the population somewhat fed during the war years after the loss and destruction of so much farmland and infrastructure. The Soviet bureaucracy, always a mess where saving face was more important than telling the truth, once again failed to act in time. Basically the classical tale of Russian and Soviet history: And then it became worse...
Troops who returned home with their comrades on troop ships at end of WW2 had lower rates of PTSD than Vietnam veterans who flew back solo and were discharged the same day they flew home. The time spent on ships allowed the men to decompress. The same thing happened with British troops returning from the Falklands war. They talked, drank and decompressed in company of the men they had fought alongside and who knew what it was all about.
The huge difference was the sense of purpose. Not only they won, they also felt that they were on the right side of history. People In Europe, Eurasia, East Asia and Southeast Asia cheered the end of brutal Axis rule. The USA was seen as the exceptional nation.
There would be later problems in these regions but as of end of 1945, it was not yet an issue for US troops.
@@tkm238-d4rthe WW2 Allied vets who lived to see the modern Judo-Horrors of life realized they fought for the wrong side
@@nfaisnfgayJudo-Horrors? Get f@&ked.
My Grandfather was called up in 1940, just after my father was born, served as a driver in the RASC, he had been promoted to Captain by the time he was demobbed in 1946. He returned to his job as an insurance agent in Leeds, UK.
I would love to see a small series on the Marshall Plan and how Germany and Europe were rebuilt after the war...
My great uncle landed in Europe August 1944 and met the Russians at the Elbe River. His papers have him down as a cook, but he told me he was detached several times on recon. He was sent “to find out what the Germans were doing”. He was in his 30s and a moonshiner from Arkansas. Probably kept him alive without a scratch.
7:35 You know, I think Indy might be onto something... just a strange feeling, surely it's just a coincidence!
Excellent show! I would love to hear about Canadian demobilization if you can.
Great stuff as always, a mainly unreported time of the struggle.
Those Beach pictures at 1:30 ARE PURE GOLD !
7:22 Future hindsight sure helps to have foresight.
That was the first video I have watched on this channel. Great content.
Thank you! We do have another channel covering the Korean War week by week too if you'd like to see more from us: www.youtube.com/@TheKoreanWarbyIndyNeidell
My grandfather, captain in the romanian army, came back from Czechoslovakia to Romania on foot. He had a horse, but they had to eat it on the outskirts of Budapest. My grandmother didn't recognise him back home.
Thank you! Not the stuff you immediately think about but very interesting.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you for the lesson.
There is also the enormous amount of forced labourers that took in some cases month's to return home. The second half of 1945 was people on the move in Europe.
Great show . It kept me sane through Covid and continues to do so . Thank you all .
Thanks for the message, we hope all is well!
Great stuff guys!
Excellent commentary Indy, missed listening to your programs over the last few months , good to hear you again, cheers 😊
An interesting topic you missed was the demobilisation of equipment after the war. An airport at my regional Australian home town has pictures of thousands of WW2 bombers and fighters packed wingtip to wingtip awaiting scrapping. Some had not even been used. Great video!
My uncle was a "Tanker" in WWII and enlisted in Dec. 1941 about a week after Pearl Harbor. He took his basic and AIT and was home on a 30 day leave and then was in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France and Germany. Being married, a father and with all his time and battle points he should have been on the first boat home in June of 45, but of course the Army SNAFU his paperwork and he spent the summer and early fall in Germany. He got home around Haloween of 45.
But... He did get to come home on the Queen Mary.
As I was scrolling down my UA-cam feed and saw the thumbnail for this video I could have sworn for a second that the figure in the left hand corner was Marty Feldman as Igor in Young Frankenstein 😁
Love the legacy vids thanks for making them.
And thank you for watching.
My great grandfather was one of the 750,000 who had to stay in the British armed forces due to being a Royal Engineer, he was given the job of de-mining all the beaches around Britain.
Before this he had spent 4 years in the same POW camp in lower Austria now modern day Slovenia, the same camp that actor Clive Dunn the man who played Lance Corporal Jack Jones was imprisoned in. They were both captured during the Greek campaign ,unfortunately they were not being evacuated in time. I never met my great grandfather but according to my father he spoke about it only once in detail and never spoke of it again.
Polish army in 1945 was special case because there were two of them. One loyal to London government and another one to Lublin Poland government ( by September it was in Warsaw). Demobilization of Western troops took almost two years and it's a long tale. Demobilization of troops in Poland came in waves because army had to deal with Ukrainian and Polish nationalist troops hiding in forests, German Werewolf and large numbers of various deserters and bandits particularly in Eastern part of Poland. Army was also tasked with repairing bridges,roads,mines and railroads. Removal of UXOs and landmines took nearly 30 years and in 2024 they are still found on occasion. Many troops were tasked with clearing crop fields since VE day and they continued until early 50s.
Steppenwolf has a great song about this
You crawled your way through Stalingrad, Kursk and Berlin only to die to a lack of bread in a dirt hovel.
In November 1945, my father-in-law was transferred to a staging center at Samar, P.I. He got a ride home to San Francisco on an aircraft carrier. He had been in the Navy since early in 1942. My uncle was back from the South-West Pacific, after fighting in New Guinea and contracting malaria. My uncle was in the National Guard in 1940, and was called up in November 1940. My dad was going in the opposite direction to construct airfields in the Aleutian Islands, just in case the Japanese did not surrender.
The Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were transferring soldiers back to America, along with the other great liners of that age. Going by liner across the Atlantic could be done in a week. It took my grandfather about 5 months to get out of France in the Great War.
Today is Saturday November 2, 2024. I’d give A LOT to return to who we were at wars end in early 1946
My father served ss a signalman 2nd on the USS Mellette APA 156 a fast sttack troop transport. The ship took one Magic Carpet ride through the Panama Canal on to Norfolk.
In Australia, we had 900,000 men and women serving in WWII, from a population of just 7 million - 1 in 8 people were in uniform and we had the highest mobilisation of any Allied nation. Under man-power planning in 1942, men and women aged 18 to 35 could be conscripted for military service. Also men aged 36 to 60 for non-military service in the Civil Construction Corps - often building highways across Australia - e.g. 3,000 kms (1,900 m.) from Adelaide in the south to war-torn Darwin in the north. Also, men and women could be ordered to leave non-essential jobs - e.g, in retail or home duties - to move into war industries such as aircraft or munitions production, or helping farmers in the Women’s Land Army. This high mobilisation put a severe strain on our economy, as many older workers - in hard-labour jobs such as coal mining - had to keep working past their retirement age (65). Demobilisation started in 1943, when long-serving or disabled servicemen could de-mob. It hit top gear in the latter half of 1945 - as troops and airmen were brought home from the South-West Pacific, warships came home and aircrew were returned from RAF Bomber Command in the Uk (10,000 were sent there but only 5,500 survived to go home. (Kym in Darwin - my father Bob served in the Royal Australian Navy, seeing action in the Coral Sea (where his ship - the cruiser HMAS Hobart - was torpedoed (but didn’t sink) and in the sea battle at Leyte Gulf in the Philippines (on the destroyer HMAS Quiberon - as a radar operator). (Kym in Darwin, Australia). PS you might like to see these short docos available on this app - “Kokoda Front Line” (1942), “Give Us This Day” about Aussie food rationing (1943) and “South West Pacific” about Aussie munitions production (1944).
My late dad serving as a Warrant Officer in the ETO had a unique, and fast way, to transport from England to stateside: As a passenger on a B24 Bomber.
He was among a group of division HQ officers that rode on a B24 being ferried back to the US.
One aspect about that trip my dad spoke about many times over the years: The group of passenger officers, when finding out of the pilot/co-pilot could have been what was commonly referred to as "90 day wonders," the passengers strongly protested. Apparently one of the passengers had a rank of considerable clout, as those "90 day wonders" were replaced with commercial airline pilot/co-pilot; possibly from TWA.
Great content . Do a part 2.
A fascinating article about a subject that few WW2 students have considered. Well done!
Like the wars before and Korea and Vietnam after the US service men received little mental health services. Many had seen the horrors of war, lost friends, and still had physical scars not only for enemy action, but from disease and exposure. The movie "The Best Years of Our Lives" is about some of these soldiers returning home and what they dealt with, I very much recommend seeing it. At least in America a lot of these veterans would see a booming and great economy after the 1946 recession, returning to homes mostly not destroyed, finding good jobs, and raising families. Since most of the industrialized world had been bombed or fought over and lay in various states of ruin or disrepair, or needed for the essentials of rebuilding, America, already an economic super power, was even more prosperous as it became an even more important industrial powerhouse.. The amazing thing is that is was very magnanimous in its victory with Germany and Japan and open its economy to its allies which spread the recovery and over decades made our former enemies prosperous. But at the economic expense of future generations.
This vest and tie combo is so good!
Fascinating thank you!
Great video, also, even though i tried to learn quite a lot about ww2 and post-war, I never heard of the soviet famine of 1946, crazy stuff
One element of this I'm curious about is how long did it take for industry to return to peacetime products and when were consumer goods available for purchase again?
The first DP in an American war film was in Hell Is For Heroes. Nick Adams is a DP. Steve McQueen film.
My dad embarked from Le Havre on (I think) November 26th on the SS Mexico Victory. He arrived in New York on December 3rd, was transferred to another base, then sent on to Camp Grant (Rockford, IL), and discharged there on December 12. He caught the train to Chicago and came home on the Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee, stopping at the Highwood, IL headquarters to see my mom, whose supervisor gave her the day off. When he called his mother from New York, she said, "Oh, Marshall, do be careful. They're doing horrible things to people in Chicago these days." He said he rolled out of the phone booth laughing his head off.
That had to be one tough job. Had to be a funny feeling to get back home. Getting a new car was a nice dream that came true for many.
Has everyone seen The Best Years of Our Lives?
No... The only war films I remember seeing are war films with existential crises, basically my flashbacks
You forgot the butt of many a comedy sketch in the post war UK, the "De Mob" suit, ex military were given an off the peg suit on leaving. The Goon show make constant reference to them.
Yes.. All from Burton tailering... with a snooker hall upstaairs.... !
What the hell, how is that I just found out about this channel?? Now I know what to listen for my interstate travels 😂
Welcome to the show!
My father was 2 1/2 years in ETO. In July 45, he was in Boston and was told that he was going to invade Japan. The nukes saved him from that. He was on duration plus 6 months. He put in his paperwork to get out and figured it would take the USCG the 6 months to let him out. One week later he was on the streets with a train ticket home and no idea what he would do for work. In the 1960s, I got to see one of his old uniforms and learned what a "Ruptured Duck" pin, on his uniform was. Good Luck, Rick
My father was on the aircraft carrier Midway, living in New York, ready for deployment
This is a really interesting video!!! Thank u Time ghost crew for covering this
My father was a british officer in India, at the end of the war was sent to suez canal area and I believe went home around mid 1946. Since I'll see him next week (in his 99th year) I'll ask him.
Soviet Soldier: "Ура! We won the war! Now we get to go home right?"
Comrade Stalin: "..."
Soviet Soldier: "... We get to go home right??"
Comrade Stalin: "No. You stay."
Excellent video again.
Thank you very much!
My Grandad nade it home from Burma sometime in 1946. My mother finally met her Dad. She was three by this point.
Shootout to my childhood neighboor that was in Germany until mid-1947 as part of the occupation forces. Granted, he also only arrived in Europe in 1945 itself and, in his words, saw "pissing contest skirmishes for three weeks" during his unit's drive into Germany. He understood why he was overseas as long as he was, but definitely wasn't expecting occupation duties to drag on as long as they did for him.
Still managed to benefit from the GI Bill and got a good education and job when he got back, thankfully.
My grandfather hated that point system haha I have him in multiple letters complaining about how it would take him forever to go home!
My Dad came home from England on RMS Queen Mary in August 1945. He was finally demobbed in December.
Thanks for covering these trips home. Would definitely be interested to hear how it was carried out in the smaller partners - also for volunteer brigades, like from the Spanish in France or the Irish with the UK.
Please do another episode or two about the demobilization of the other countries. I'm Canadian and I'd love to hear about what my ancestors went through, and I'm sure people from other countries would as well.
Hi Indy
Expecting this video.
Nicely covered.
Thanks
UK: 5 million troops in 1945 down to 75000 in 2024.
Yup and they lack the arms and equipment to even be able to defend the UK for 1 week.
Less than that more, like 60-65 thousand, is a complete and utter disgrace what the British government have done to the armed forces.
Actually, about twice that amount. 181,000 regulars, reserves, and other personnel. Obviously still a major decrease since 1945. When you don't have worldwide empire to defend, you don't need a massive military.
What’s the problem, it’s not like Britain has an empire anymore. It’s an isolated island, with a wobbling economy where nothing gets done anymore
@@MrJimheeren "Isolated Island"? you saying Britain is a nothing country?
I'm always so happy to see this guy!!!!!!!
so is he controlling the teleprompter when he puts his right hand on the chair arm just under the desk?
We can thank President Truman for smoothing the transition from soldier to civilian. Author David McCullough describes the proces in his biography, "Truman".
My dad was in the ETO during WW2, and was stuck in Germany for several months after the war ended, much to his displeasure. Several times, he said, ships he was scheduled to go home on were diverted to Great Britain to pick up, as he and the other men were told, “British War Brides”. Father was not pleased at this and wrote an anonymous letter to his Congressman back home, which caused an uproar. The army investigated and suspected he was the letter writer, but couldn’t prove anything. He finally made it home in January of 1946, after 2& 1/2 years in Europe.
Just thinking about getting everyone home must be a nightmare trying to make that machine move
During WW2, my father was a gunner's mate on cargo ships. At the end of the war, they no longer needed such personal. So they dropped the Navy gun crew off in Egypt - in the desert. He watched people climb the pyramids. He didn't get back until December 1945.
That was something. Interesting.
History I have never heard…thank you!
"They're not gonna travel back in time." Thanks for clearing that up 😂
My granddad was an RAAF officer involved in demobilisation in 1944-46 (demob in Aust started early). He was a lawyer in civilian life