SaddleBrooke’s World War II Roundtable’s motto is, We discuss all aspects of World War II. The most vicious and costly war in human history in terms of blood and treasure will provide students of that conflict with material seemingly forever. In April, the Roundtable concluded its fifth season presenting topics on the war that was fought on all continents except Antarctica.
- Chris Wilson spoke on Russia’a enormous contribution to the war. Estimates on Russian war deaths range as high as 20 million. Chris lives in nearby Oro Valley.
The following presenters are all SaddleBrooke Residents.
- The Japanese invasion of China and Japan’s experimentation with bio-weapons on Chinese citizens by Dr Wally Warpaha cast light on a little known aspect of the war. Many of their “experiments” on innocent citizens paralleled those of their allies, the Nazis.
- The Battle of Britain and Operation Sealion, Germany’s code name for the invasion of England, was the subject of Paul Belanger’s talk. Paul’s hypothesis was that Hitler never was serious about invading England.
- Former president of the Roundtable Mark Schwartz spoke on the development of close air support in WW II as the need to protect ground troops with air power was complicated by differences of opinion between the army’s ground and air forces.
- Political matters kept the U.S. out of the war until the attack on Pearl Harbor but President Roosevelt declared America the “arsenal of democracy” and committed our country to supplying Britain and Russia with material to carry on the battle. Trucks, Jeeps, weapons, clothing, shoes and food were sent by boat loads to our allies and the effort would probably have failed had not Henry Kaiser risen to the challenge and developed production techniques to turn out liberty ships at the rate of three ships every two days between 1941-1945. That presentation was by Bruce Rogers.
- Steve Reggentin has made more presentations to the Roundtable than any other speaker. Steve went through all of the machinations of the battle of Midway Island: The feints and thrusts of the opposing navies, the breaking of the Japanese naval code, the effect of the Doolittle Raid on Japan’s perceived vulnerability, and the inability of the Japanese wartime economy to match the production capacity of the United States.
The Roundtable will be back in the fall with a full lineup of wonderful speakers and topics. We are all very proud of the Roundtable, which has grown from a half-dozen folks literally sitting around a round table discussing the war to meetings with over one-hundred SaddleBrooke attendees. To keep up with our activities, be sure to get on our email list. Send an email to sreggentin@gmail.com to be included.
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