Presentations

Herman Goering

I never knew that Goering was the second in line to the Nazi Empire, and because of that I’m surprised that he was not killed by Hitler since Hitler was so paranoid. I also found it interesting that Goering surrendered to the allies and did not commit suicide with the rest of the Nazi’s higher leadership. I have to wondering what kind of treatment he was expecting from the allies?

Medicine

I thought the presentation on medicine was very interesting. I never thought of medicine as something that would increase military strength but the information presented proved otherwise. I never thought that malaria was such a big problem for the US but I had no idea just how bad it was until she presented the ratios of combat wounded to malaria cases. It makes one wonder how many more individuals would have been drafted if medicine like penicillin or better pills to prevent malaria had not been developed.

Kasserine Pass

I never heard of the battle of Kasserine Pass before the presentation and how it was the first major engagement between America and German forces. I guess I always assumed that this engagement would have taken place during Operation Torch. It was interesting to see that we suffered approximately 65% of causalities in the battle. I think it shows that America did not properly train its soldiers before the battle and then failed to learn from the other allies’ mistakes before the battle as well.