Fold3 Spotlights

He Hated His Uncle

Article on William Patrick Henry from the <em>Victoria Advocate</em>

Article on William Patrick Henry from the Victoria Advocate

In 1939, a young German man fled from Britain to New York and within a year tried to join the ranks of the United States. He was denied, but not because he was German. It was because the young man wasn’t just any German—he was Adolf Hitler’s nephew, and his name was William.

William Patrick Hitler lived in Britain with his parents, his father being Adolf’s half-brother. The family was never wealthy, and his father, Alois, eventually abandoned him and his mother. As the famous uncle rose to power, it became difficult for William to succeed in Britain. Once people learned of his name, they didn’t want much to do with him. So William went to Germany for help from his uncle.

It was easier for William to find a job in Germany, but they were never very good ones. Adolf didn’t reach out to help his nephew much. He said, “I didn’t become Chancellor for the benefit of my family…No one is going to climb on my back.” Despite not getting special treatment from his uncle, William seemed to get it from everyone else and was often invited to parties and dinners. But he wasn’t satisfied living for only lavish social gatherings.

William moved back to Britain and offered to do interviews on the subject of his uncle. Adolf didn’t take kindly to that and offered William a job in the regime if he renounced his British citizenship. William didn’t want to be involved, and instead threatened to reveal Adolf’s Jewish ancestry (a pretty strong rumor that had recently been circling). That certainly didn’t go over well, and William fled to the United States, where he gave lectures about his uncle.

But shortly afterward he wrote a letter to the president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, requesting a position in the armed forces (since he was already rejected).

“More than anything else I would like to see active combat as soon as possible and thereby be accepted by my friends and comrades as one of them in this great struggle for liberty.”

William was investigated and then cleared for service in the US Navy in 1944. After the war, however, William disappeared. He moved to Long Island, changed his last name to Stuart-Houston, and had four sons with his wife, Phyllis Jean-Jacques, who was also German. They were married in 1947 soon after William was discharged.

William and his family lived the rest of their lives in privacy, keeping to themselves but always friendly. William died in 1987 and his wife in 2004. Three of his four sons are still living.

Read more about William’s life here and here.

Have a Coke

Conflict: World War II

by Karen

Sailors enjoying bottles of Coca-Cola in a newspaper ad

On 21 June 1945, Virginia’s Halifax Gazette reported on how the sugar rationing would affect production of many people’s favorite beverage:

Halifax Gazette, 21 June 1945

Because Coca-Cola didn’t want to compromise the integrity of their drink by using other sweeteners, they decided to decrease production instead. But while the company’s stateside plants had to deal with rationing, their overseas plants that made Coca-Cola for the soldiers were allowed bigger sugar rations because the beverage was considered important for the morale of the troops. In fact, in June 1943, General Eisenhower requested that Coca-Cola send over 3 million bottles of the soda, as well as the necessary supplies to refill and reuse the millions of bottles twice a month.

About 150 Coca-Cola employees, called “Technical Observers,” were given the rank of Army officer and sent overseas to develop bottling plants to satisfy the troops’ craving for the soda. The “64 complete bottling plants […] distributed over 5 billion bottles of Coca-Cola to servicemen and women.” In places where it was too hard to get bottles of Coca-Cola to the troops, portable soda fountains were sent instead.

Coca-Cola was well aware of the marketing power that came with being a favorite drink of the military and capitalized on it in their advertising. Their wartime ads showed soldiers abroad using Coke to bond with residents of other countries, and returning soldiers back in the states being welcomed home with a refreshing soda. Below are a few examples of such ads from the Halifax Gazette:

31 August 1944

28 September 1944

20 July 1944

Find many more WWII Coca-Cola ads in Fold3’s Newspapers collection. Or read more about Coca-Cola during the war here, here, or here.

Women Airforce Service Pilots

Conflict: World War II

by Taraya

Women Airforce Service Pilots Frances Green, Margaret R. Kirchner, Ann Currier, and Blanche V. Osborn walking away from their aircraft, “Pistol Packin’ Mama.”

Before 1941, two famous female pilots named Jacqueline “Jackie” Cochran and Nancy Harkness Love had individually proposed plans to the U.S. Army Air Forces. The proposals asked that women be allowed to fly planes in non-combat missions, such as ferrying aircraft or towing drones and aerial targets, in order to free male pilots for combat. Though both proposals were initially turned down, minds began to change after the U.S. became more directly involved in the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor and it became clear that more pilots were needed.

In September 1942, while Jackie Cochran was in Britain flying for the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) program—which had been using female pilots since 1920—General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces, approved a plan for a Womens Auxilliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) under the Direction of Nancy Love. Cochran returned to the U.S., insisting that women could do more for the USAAF than just ferrying. So another program was instituted—the Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD), headed by Cochran herself. In the Summer of 1943, the WAFS and WFTD were combined into one single women pilot group, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs).

Elizabeth L. Gardner of Rockford, Illinois, WASP

More than 25,000 women applied for the WASP program, but fewer than 1,900 were accepted. After four months of military flight training, 1,074 of them became the first women to fly American military aircraft. Though not trained in combat, the women were given much the same instruction as aviation cadets, learning how to recover from any position. They flew newly manufactured planes to military bases, towed targets, and transported cargo. By December 1944, the WASP had delivered 12,650 aircraft to their destinations.

Since the WASP program was considered a civil service, the WASPs were not given military benefits. The 38 women who perished in accidents during training and on active duty were sent home at the family’s expense and weren’t allowed to have an American flag over their coffin. In September 1943, the first bill for militarization of the WASP was introduced in the House of Representatives. Cochran and Arnold both wanted a seperate corps headed by a female colonel. But the bill was defeated, as were the subsequent attempts to give the WASPs military status. In the end, Cochran essentially asked that the question be resolved by either granting military status or by disbanding the program. So it was announced that the program was to be disbanded by December 20, 1944.

In 1977, the previously classified, sealed documents explaining the WASPs services to the country were unsealed, following the incorrect statement that the Air Force was then training the first women pilots ever to fly American military aircraft. With the support of Senator Barry Goldwater, the WASPs lobbied again for recognition, which was granted to them in legislation signed by President Jimmy Carter in the form of a World War II Victory Medal for each WASP. An American Theater Ribbon/American Campaign Medal was also granted to those WASPs who had served for more than one year. Then on May 10, 2010, President Barack Obama and the United States Congress granted the WASP program the Congressional Medal of Honor for its service to the nation, and the 300 surviving WASPs came to the U.S. Capitol to receive the medal.

For more on how the WASP was started, their wartime efforts, and a list of members, check out this Wikipedia page. You can also check out this page on Fold3 for facts and photos of Elizabeth M Magid, a WASP. And there is more to see on Fold3 regarding the WASPs; you can use this search to find more photos and stories. This page on pbs.org is also a great resource for first-hand accounts of the WASP.

The Trial of Henry Wirz

Conflict: Civil War

by Kayla

Henry Wirz at the gallows right after the door was dropped

Henry Wirz was a Swiss-born man trying to escape the persecutions of his country and ended up moving to Louisiana just in time for the Civil War where he fought as a private for the Confederacy. In 1862 he was wounded by a bullet to the right arm in the Battle of Seven Pines. The injury prevented him from further participation in combat, and he was afterward promoted to captain for his bravery.

For the next two years, Wirz was on assignment for Jefferson Davis in Europe. When he returned in 1864, he began working for the prison department where he took charge of one of the most famous prison camps: Andersonville.

Andersonville was a prison camp for captured Union soldiers and was known for its cruel tactics, deplorable food, medicine, and water, and severe living quarters. Once the war ended, Wirz was put on trial for his actions and found guilty. He was hanged on 10 November 1865.

One of the many charges of which Henry Wirz was found guilty at his trial

The first charge of which Henry Wirz was found guilty at his trial

“Maliciously, willfully and traitorously, and in aid of the then existing armed rebellion against the United States of America…combining, confederating and conspiring together with Jefferson Davis…at Andersonville…to injure the health and destroy the lives of soldiers in the military service of the United States, then held and having prisoners of war within the lines of the so-called Confederate States and in the military prisons thereof, to the end that the armies of the United States might be weakened and impaired: in violation of the laws and customs of war.”

The execution of Wirz is still a debated topic due to the situation he had to deal with. Medical supplies from the Union to the Confederacy were cut off, and everyone in the South received strict food rations. In other words, the prisoners weren’t the only ones suffering. However, the testimonies of the witnesses were damning, even if many of them couldn’t be verified.

Read more of Henry Wirz’s trial records here and find out about additional Civil War executions here.

The Missing Soldiers Office

Conflict: Civil War

by Karen

Clara Barton, ca. 1865

Clara Barton is well-known for her relief work on Civil War battlefields and for founding the American Red Cross, but did you know that right after the war, she created an organization to locate and identify missing soldiers?

About 365,000 Union soldiers died during the war, but more than 40 percent of those were never identified, leaving their families to wonder about the fate of their husbands, sons, and brothers. Clara Barton, already famous for her war work, began to receive letters from these families, asking her if she had any information on their soldiers who hadn’t made it back home.

In March 1865 she got permission from President Lincoln to start the Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army, which she ran out of her third-floor boardinghouse rooms in Washington DC. A letter signed by the president was placed in newspapers throughout the country, informing the readers that they should send any inquiries about missing soldiers to Clara Barton. Letters began pouring in, and soon Barton was receiving 150 letters a day. She and her team of 12 clerks (whom she paid out of her own pocket until she was reimbursed by Congress in 1866 for $15,000) worked tirelessly to respond to the inquiries.

One of the ways Barton gathered information on missing soldiers was to collect their names, regiments, and companies from the letters of inquiry that she was sent. She then compiled the names into huge lists, divided by state, which were publicly posted and included in newspapers, in hopes that a veteran or someone else would read the list, see a name they recognized, and write to Barton with the information they had on the missing soldier. By 1868, when the office closed, Barton and her team had received over 63,000 letters—two-thirds of which they sent responses to—and found information on 22,000 missing Union soldiers.

During the same time that she was running the Missing Soldiers Office, Barton was contacted by Dorence Atwater, who, while imprisoned at Andersonville, Georgia, had kept a list of 13,000 men who had died there. Barton and Atwater traveled to Andersonville and together worked to identify and mark the graves of the thousands of soldiers, and Barton helped raise the flag when the Andersonville National Cemetery was dedicated in August 1865.

Read more about the Missing Soldiers Office here, here, or here. Or learn about the rediscovery of the office in 1996. You can also search Fold3’s collection of historical newspapers for contemporary and later articles about Clara Barton.