World War Two

Smitty and Kareem: A Friendship That Preserved the Story of the 761st Tank Battallion

Bill Thompson

There was a battalion of soldiers in World War II that had to fight for its chance to fight.

It was the all-black 761st Tank Battalion of the US Army. Those men trained for over two years, but were not permitted into actual combat until the American forces in Europe were being decimated by superior German tanks.

That’s when the 761st Tank Battalion – dubbed the Black Panthers – was deployed under General George Patton.

One member of that heroic outfit was a man named Leonard Smith, known to his friends as Smitty. And Smitty was friends with another GI whose son later became one of the greatest superstars of basketball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Smitty’s story struck a chord with Abdul-Jabbar, who ultimately met other members of the 761st and gathered their stories for a book he called Brothers in Arms.

The story is one of not just courage and determination but humility and humanity.

I met with the soft-spoken Abdul-Jabbar when his book came out in 2004.

So here now, from 2004, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The 761st Tank Battalion included one Medal of Honor recipient, 11 Silver Stars, and 300 Purple Hearts.

How World War II Could Have Ended Without Hiroshima

Bill Thompson

Today, August 6, is the 80th anniversary of the day the United States became the first – and so far, only – nation to use a nuclear weapon in war.

The Enola Gay dropped a bomb codenamed “Little Boy” that destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

It was soon after the U.S. dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki three days later that Japan surrendered. But could that surrender have happened without those two bombings?

We now know that in the spring of 1945 an American intelligence officer was tasked with getting messages to Tokyo, opening the door to a peaceful surrender.

That officer was then-27-year-old Martin Quigley, who was with the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS — the forerunner of the CIA.

Through complicated diplomatic maneuvers that sound like something out of a spy thriller quickly accomplished his mission.

So what happened?

Quigley explored that question in a 1991 book that he wrote, called Peace Without Hiroshima. He and I talked about it one summer day in 1991 when he was on a book tour.

So here now, from 1991, Martin Quigley.

Martin Quigley died in 2011. He was 93.

Hiding in Plain Sight: Edith Hahn Beer’s Holocaust Survival Story

Bill Thompson

Have you ever heard the phrase “hiding in plain sight”?

At the age of 25, an Austrian Jewish woman named Edith Hahn and her mother were sent to the Jewish ghetto in Vienna by the Nazi regime.

Two years later she was moved to work in a German factory – and never saw her mother again.

But a Christian friend gave Edith copies of her own identification papers, With which she was able to return to Vienna – and ultimately travelled to Munich.

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Carefully concealing her true identity, Edith Hahn volunteered as a German Red Cross nurse.

And that’s where she met a Nazi party member, who married her – even after she revealed to him her Jewish identity.

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Their daughter Angela was born in a Nazi Hospital. Their marriage ended soon after the war, and so did Edith’s lifesaving charade.

She lived the rest of her life in Israel and London. And in 1999 told her story in a book called The Nazi Officer’s Wife.

It was a book that her daughter Angela had urged her to write, soon after Edith’s letters were sold at auction and ultimately donated to the Holocaust Museum in Washington.

I met them both when Edith’s book was published. So here now, from 1999 Edith Hahn Beer and her daughter Angela.

Edith Hahn Beer died in 2009. ten years after our interview. She was 95.