Posted on 06/23/2008 5:12:27 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
I understand the German's took heavy casualties during that operation. It was sort of a shock to those in the high command who were used to easier operations like Holland and Denmark.
From reply #11:
Schemling hated Hitler and Hitler returned the favor by putting Schemling in the paratroops hoping he be killed.
Have you heard about this before?
First, the German paratroop units took very heavy casualties in capturing Crete. The invasion did not go as the Germans planned. Crete was to be a combined airborne/amphibious assault, same as Allied assaults in Normandy & Sicily. However, the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force destroyed and/or turned back the amphibious element, leaving the lightly armed paratroops to take the island on their own. That they did was a testament to their fighting ability. And no surprise they suffered high casualties.
The casualties were so high Hitler forbade the mass use of paratroops in airborne assaults from that time forward. Of course, it was also very difficult for the Germans to secure local air superiority after mid-1943 to make it feasible.
As to Schmeling, I don’t think so. He was never a member of the Nazi Party. However, to state he “hated” Hitler is a stretch. 90% of Germans hated Hitler...in 1946. And I don’t think Hitler put him in the Fallschirmjaeger to have him killed. Had Hitler wanted that outcome, he would have parachuted him into Stalingrad after the encirclement. No, I think Schmeling was merely a patriot doing what he honorably believed was his duty to his country.
What! Where is the YouTube?
This post and this whole thread have been quite a treat.
I have made some progress on Barbara Tuchman's book Stilwell and the American Experience in China. She explains that the American public got an idealized version of the Chinese from the missionary societies. Supposedly there were hundreds of millions of souls just dying to be converted to Christianity and to set up an American-style democracy. So Americans gave big bucks to the missionaries for relief while the government tried to look out for our far eastern interests without sinking too deeply into the exploitation practiced by the old colonial powers. Tuchman does a much better job of explaining the situation in China in the early twentieth century, so I recommend her book to anyone who wants background on the China of 1938.
I’ll have to go get that book. Sounds like some good insight to be had. I always like to find historical writings that were written by those who were actually experiencing the time. Not to put down those books that were written later and are very well researched, but there is some nuance that these books have that cannot be captured by someone who did not actually experience it.
I'm glad Joe whipped him in '38, but again, the weight of the evidence for how he helped Joe and some other things cited in this link shows that Max Schmeling was a very good human being.
http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?en/press/max-schmeling-joe-louis-s.2157.htm
During the war, he was in the Army and spent a lot of time in Europe boxing exhibition matches to entertain the troops. He got money for these matches. He donated every penny of the money to military relief funds. However, the IRS counted it as income to him and fully taxed it, at wartime rates. He wasn't too clear about what was happening and didn't pay the money, and interest and penalties built up. Eventually, the IRS came calling. And they went after that poor man like Javert after Jean Valjean, pretty much up until the end of his life. They never forgave a penny of the original debt, although at the end they stopped charging interest and penalties on it, thanks to Joe's final wife who was a lawyer and who took on the IRS over this.
Joe was pretty much done as a fighter toward the end of his championship reign. He should have lost the title to Walcott in their first fight but got a questionable decision, then was able to knock Walcott out in the rematch although the decline in his skills was still evident. He then retired as champ, Walcott and Charles fought for the vacant title and Charles won.
But Joe had no other way to satisfy the taxman, so he came back and fought Charles to try to regain the title. And Charles beat him up over 15 rounds. Didn't knock him out, but made hash of his face and just really beat him up. Joe should have quit then, but couldn't because of the taxman, so he kept fighting, had some fair to middling performances against some fighters who were actually pretty prominent in the day, then got thrown in against Marciano. And he actually started off well against Marciano, was in control early and busted up Marciano's face. But Marciano was relentless, Joe finally wore down and Marciano knocked him out.
That was the end of the boxing, but Joe turned to rasslin' to try to make enough money to keep the IRS off his a**. However, he got hurt in a match ... somebody whose name escapes me fell on his chest and bruised his heart ... and the doctors wouldn't clear him to rassle anymore.
So for the next 20 years or so, he was a rasslin' referee, appeared on quiz shows, did personal appearances, got money to appear at championship fights, etc., pretty much anything he could get a few dollars into his pocket from, which the IRS pretty much immediately shanghaied. He also had some business deals go bad.
And he also fell in with some unsavory characters and started doing drugs, most notably cocaine, some have speculated heroin since one of those unsavory characters who he called a close friend was a big heroin dealer in Vegas.
Because of the drugs ... and booze, he became pretty much a chain drinker of Remy Martin cognac, and probably everything aggravated by his getting hit in the head too many times... he basically lost his mind and began having paranoid delusions. He thought people were following him around and spraying poison gas on him. There are stories of him on the road covering up all the air vents in his hotel room, covering up the windows with cardboard, down on his hands and knees smearing mayonnaise on cracks above the baseboards, etc., to keep people from spraying the gas on him.
His son, who if I'm not mistaken is an attorney, had him committed to a mental hospital for a while. After that, he worked for a while as a greeter in Las Vegas, some of his friends set him up with that gig to try to help him because the IRS was still on his a**, they were as relentless on him as he was in the ring, and his debt was in seven figures. His mental problems were kept in check by medication, although there were some stories of him going off on the occasional tourist and accusing them of trying to gas him.
Toward the end, he collapsed physically, had an aneurysm and some strokes and ended up in wheelchair.
As I said, it's a very, very sad story. And it's one of the reasons I've always hated the IRS, not just because I believe in lower taxes. I mean, I believe that folks should pay their debts, but Joe Louis IMHO had enough markers for what he did for this country and the way he conducted himself as champion for so many years to where they didn't have to torment the man for 35 years the way they did, when he had no way to pay that debt, and IMHO if he gave the money away, every freaking penny of it, it should not have been fully counted as his income in any event, although I absolutely understand it was wartime and things were on a different scale. However, somebody should have realized after a while that you can't squeeze blood from a turnip and let it go.
Honestly sounds like Schmeling was a real hero.
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