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In 1940 a new version of Stahlhelm was produced, the Model 1940. The Model 1940 was almost identical to the model 1935 in every way except that the tri-color shield was removed along with the Wehrmactadler. The M40′s ventilation holes on the sides of the helmet were also increased for maximum combat and production efficiency. The crimping of the rim of the Model 1935 was still in use for this Stahlhelm variation.
The great military successes on all fronts have led part of the population to have an overly optimistic opinion of the situation, one that is ahead of the facts. The [German] people’s desire for peace can lead only too easily to wishful thinking that does not correspond to actual conditions. Thus one not infrequently encounters the following thinking by average citizens:
In the East, the Soviet Union is near its end since the Caucasus has been cut off and the Volga River has been reached. The English can no longer do anything to us in the Mediterranean; if U-Boat successes continue for a few months longer, the opponents will no longer have any shipping capacity. They suffer one defeat after another in East Asia. And British dominion over India is almost ready to collapse. All these factors together mean that the war will end victoriously for us this year.
Such a very optimistic attitude is extraordinarily dangerous. If it is not dealt with or derailed, the danger exists that there will be serious effects on morale that will hinder dealing with the increased difficulties that will come with winter.
In our speeches we must avoid anything that might encourage such overly optimistic wishful thinking by the public.
Any predictions about future developments are absolutely forbidden. The task of propaganda is not to predict what will happen, but rather to explain what did happen and is happening. This also includes raising certain hopes about a future significant improvement in our food situation resulting from harvests in the newly won regions of the Soviet Union.
Even if we succeed in producing agricultural surpluses in these areas in the face of great difficulties such as the lack of agricultural machinery, tractors, fuel, seed, etc., it will not be immediately possible to transport large amounts of these products to the Reich. Any predictions in this subject are absolutely out of order. Even if the food situation improves significantly in the near future, from the propaganda standpoint it is better to announce the success after the fact. Here, too, the maxim applies: “Nothing is as successful as success, and nothing is more dangerous than disappointed hopes.â€
It is always important to even with great successes that each success is only a building block of victory. Our opponents have taken very heavy blows and their losses are terrible, but they are not yet fatally wounded. A boxing match provides a good example:
One boxer has been hit hard and could collapse at any moment. Then the bell rings and the pause enables him to catch his breath again and gather new strength. One round follows another until finally continuing blows break his last strength and he suddenly falls to a blow, often one weaker than those he has already withstood.
All speakers have the absolute duty of following the above guidelines. We want to train our people to hardness, and must therefore avoid strengthening any overly optimistic hopes that are expected to be fulfilled within a short time. We must much more make it clear to our people that there is no doubt of our final victory, but that a major and critical decision will not happen in the immediate future. Instead, we must slowly beat down our opponents step by step.
The quintessential turncoat, Benedict Arnold actually was quite the patriot at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. He had been involved in many victories over the British, but frequently was overlooked for advancement and honors. After another general claimed responsibility for his success at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, Arnold grew disillusioned. His wife had died during his endless campaigns, he was broke, and Congress kept cutting funding for the military. Around this time, he was reprimanded, unfairly, on two counts of dereliction of duty. Soon after he wrote to British Major John Andre and made a deal to sell his command of West Point to the British for 20,000 pounds ($3 million in today’s dollars). Andre was intercepted with the plan and hanged.Arnold escaped and accepted a commission with the British Army, leading attacks on Virginia and Connecticut, before moving to London. He died in 1801.
Timothy Webster, a British-born former New York City police officer, was hired by Allan Pinkerton, who called himself the “Chief of the United States Secret Service,” and sent to Richmond to do reconnaissance work in the Confederate capital. His cover was that he was a secessionist courier from Baltimore. According to Pinkerton, everyone who met Webster, “yielded to the magic of his blandishments and was disposed to serve him whenever possible.” He quickly ingratiated himself with Confederate officials, including Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin, who asked him to start carrying messages to secessionists in Baltimore. This allowed him to deliver actual Confederate documents to Pinkerton, along with his observations. In 1862, captured Pinkerton operatives blew Webster’s cover. He was arrested, tried, and hanged, despite a letter from Abraham Lincoln to Confederate President Jefferson Davis asking that Webster’s life be spared.
Mata Hari
Born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in Holland in 1876, Mata Hari moved to Paris in 1905 and became famous for her Asian-inspired exotic dancing. She had learned something of Indian and Javanese dancing styles when she had lived in Malaysia with her husband, who was in the Dutch Colonial Army. Her fame grew and she acquired lovers throughout Europe, many of them very powerful. After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German consul in Holland tried to recruit her as a spy. She took his offer of 20,000 francs, though it seems she never actually did any spying for him. The French soon asked her to spy for them as well, but they quickly learned that she was technically in the employ of the Germans. She was arrested in 1917, tried, found guilty, and executed on October 15. However, the case against her was flimsy and much of the evidence against her was circumstantial. Thirty years later, one of the prosecutors declared, “There wasn’t enough evidence to flog a cat.”
Dusko Popov
The man who inspired James Bond, Yugoslavian Dusko Popov was recruited by MI5 to work as a double agent during World War II— between 1940 and 1944. He pretended to give the Germans important military intelligence, when he was really relaying information about Germany back to the British. He communicated invisible ink on postcards, and a special code of microdots. Unfortunately, his code name was not quite as cool as 007’s. At first he was called Agent Scoot. But his “appreciation for the ladies” and his love of threesomes earned him the name Agent Tricycle.
Arthur Owens
Arthur Owens spent years in exile, reviled as a Nazi spy, but he actually was a double agent working with MI5. The Germans recruited Owens, a broke inventor and Welsh nationalist, while he was on a business trip to Belgium in 1935. He did give the Germans important information about the British military buildup before the war. But he was quickly recruited by MI5 to work as the Britain’s first double agent. In 1941, he was placed in Dartmoor prison, where he took information from German inmates and fed it back to his bosses. Documents released in the 1970s revealed his dual role, but unfortunately, they did not have a widespread impact and did nothing to improve his reputation as a traitor.
Harold ‘Kim’ Philby
Harold “Kim” Philby was one of 40 Cambridge students recruited to work as spies by the Soviet Union, but he rose far higher, was more trusted, and lasted longer than the rest. He started as a KGB informer in the 1930s in London, while working as a London Times correspondent. In the 1940s, he joined the Secret Intelligence Service, became one of its most trusted agents, and worked as a mole for the Soviet Union for nearly eight years. He even received the Order of the British Empire in 1945. In 1949, he started working as a British Intelligence liaison between the FBI and the CIA. Philby finally came under suspicion in 1951, but was not caught outright until January 1962, because his bosses refused to believe evidence against him. Three days after being accused of espionage, he fled to the Soviet Union where he died in 1988.
(1875-1947) One of the “Old Fighters” and a party member from its earliest days. Nazi party treasurer, 1925. Reich director, 1935. Died in an Allied internment camp in 1947.
“Good News” (15 June 1944)
(1887-1945) Head of the Nazi puppet government in Norway whose name became synonymous with traitor and collaborator. He founded the National Union party in 1933 and conferred with Hitler for the first time in December 1939. He was executed by his own countrymen on October 24, 1945.
(Born 1914) A courier for the Polish underground who in November 1942 brought information to London reporting the deportation and mass murder of Jews. He met with Allied leaders and delivered a message from Jewish underground sources demanding help and action.
Pilots from the Fleet Air Arm made a significant contribution to the Battle of Britain. The Royal Navy had control of home waters in 1940, and it was assumed that men trained to fly in the Fleet Air Arm could better spend their time attached to squadrons from Fighter Command. Fifty-five pilots from the Fleet Air Arm flew at least one recognised operational sortie during the battle and seven were killed. Others were killed in later campaigns. Those marked * were killed in the Battle of Britain.
Begg, G (Sub Lieutenant)
Birch, R (Lieutenant)
Birrell, M (Midshipman)
Blake, A (Sub Lieutenant) *
Bramah, H (Sub Lieutenant)
Bulmer, G (Sub Lieutenant) *
Bunch, S (Sub Lieutenant)
Carpenter, J (Sub Lieutenant) *
Carver, R (Lieutenant)
Chilton, P (Sub Lieutenant)
Coates, J (Lieutenant)
Cockburn, J (Lieutenant)
Cockburn, R (Sub Lieutenant)
Cork, R (Sub Lieutenant)
Dawson-Paul, F (Sub Lieutenant) *
Dubber, R
Gardner, R (Sub Lieutenant)
Gilbert, P (Midshipman)
Grant, M (Sub Lieutenant)
Greenshields, H (Sub Lieutenant) *
Guthrie, G (Sub Lieutenant)
Guy, P (Midshipman)
Hay, R (Lieutenant)
Hutchinson, D (Sub Lieutenant)
Jeram, D (Sub Lieutenant)
Kestin, I (Sub Lieutenant)
Kindersley, A (Lieutenant)
Lamb, R (Sub Lieutenant)
Lennard, P (Midshipman)
MacKinnon, A (Lieutenant)
Mahoney, T (Petty Officer)
Marsh, A (Lieutenant)
Martin, R (Sub Lieutenant)
Moss, W (Sub Lieutenant) *
Nowell, W (Sub Lieutenant)
Parke, T (Sub Lieutenant)
Paterson, B (Sub Lieutenant)
Patterson, P (Midshipman)
Pudney, G (Sub Lieutenant)
Reardon-Parker, J (Sub Lieutenant)
Richards (Sub Lieutenant)
Roberts, G (Midshipman)
Russell, G F (Lieutenant)
Shaw, F (Petty Officer)
Sleigh, J (Lieutenant)
Smith, F (Sub Lieutenant) *
Stockwell, W (Petty Officer)
Sykes, J (Sub Lieutenant)
Taylor, D (Petty Officer)
Taylour, E (Lieutenant)
Tillard, R (Lieutenant)
Walsh, R (Sub Lieutenant)
Wightman, O (Midshipman)
Worrall, T (Sub Lieutenant)
Wright, A (Lieutenant)
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