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The Normandy landings were the largest seaborne invasion in history, with nearly 5,000 landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers participating. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on D-Day, with 875,000 men disembarking by the end of June. Allied casualties on the first day were at least 12,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead. The Germans lost 1,000 men. The Allied invasion plans had called for the capture of Carentan, St. Lô, Caen, and Bayeux on the first day, with all the beaches (other than Utah) linked with a front line 10 to 16 kilometres (6 to 10 mi) from the beaches; none of these objectives were achieved. The five bridgeheads were not connected until 12 June, by which time the Allies held a front around 97 kilometres (60 mi) long and 24 kilometres (15 mi) deep. Caen, a major objective, was still in German hands at the end of D-Day and would not be completely captured until 21 July.
Utah Beach Utah Beach was in the area defended by two battalions of the 919th Grenadier Regiment. Members of the 8th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division were the first to land, arriving at 06:30. Their landing craft were pushed to the south by strong currents, and they found themselves about 2,000 yards (1.8 km) from their intended landing zone. This site turned out to be better, as there was only one strongpoint nearby rather than two, and bombers of IX Bomber Command had bombed the defences from lower than their prescribed altitude, inflicting considerable damage. In addition, the strong currents had washed ashore many of the underwater obstacles. The assistant commander of the 4th Infantry Division, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the first senior officer ashore, made the decision to "start the war from right here", and ordered further landings to be re-routed. (Wikipedia)
Coordination with the French Resistance
French Resistance members and Allied paratroopers discuss the situation during the Battle of Normandyin 1944
Through the London-based État-major des Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur (French Forces of the Interior), the British Special Operations Executive orchestrated a massive campaign of sabotage to be implemented by the French Resistance. The Allies developed four plans for the Resistance to execute on D-Day and the following days:
- Plan Vert was a 15-day operation to sabotage the rail system.
- Plan Bleu dealt with destroying electrical facilities.
- Plan Tortue was a delaying operation aimed at the enemy forces that would potentially reinforce Axis forces at Normandy.
- Plan Violet dealt with cutting underground telephone and teleprinter cables.
The resistance was alerted to carry out these tasks by messages personnels transmitted by the BBC's French service from London. Several hundred of these messages, which might be snatches of poetry, quotations from literature, or random sentences, were regularly transmitted, masking the few that were actually significant. In the weeks preceding the landings, lists of messages and their meanings were distributed to resistance groups. (Wikipedia)
Armoured reserves Rommel believed that Germany's best chance was to stop the invasion at the shore and requested that the mobile reserves, especially tanks, be stationed as close to the coast as possible. Rundstedt, Geyr, and other senior commanders objected. They believed that the invasion could not be stopped on the beaches. Geyr argued for a conventional doctrine: keeping the Panzer formations concentrated in a central position around Paris and Rouen and deploying them only when the main Allied beachhead had been identified. He also noted that, in the Italian Campaign, the armoured units stationed near the coast had been damaged by naval bombardment. Rommel's opinion was that, because of Allied air supremacy, the large-scale movement of tanks would not be possible once the invasion was underway. Hitler made the final decision, which was to leave three Panzer divisions under Geyr's command and give Rommel operational control of three more as reserves. Hitler took personal control of four divisions as strategic reserves, not to be used without his direct orders. (Wikipedia)
Weather The invasion planners determined a set of conditions regarding the phase of the moon, the tides, and the time of day that meant only a few days in each month were deemed suitable. A full moon was desirable, as it would provide illumination for aircraft pilots and have the highest tides. The Allies wanted to schedule the landings for shortly before dawn, midway between low and high tide, with the tide coming in. This would improve the visibility of obstacles on the beach, while minimising the amount of time the men had to spend exposed in the open.[37] Eisenhower had tentatively selected 5 June as the date for the assault. However, on 4 June, conditions were clearly unsuitable for a landing; high winds and heavy seas made it impossible to launch landing craft, and low clouds would prevent aircraft from finding their targets.[38]
Group Captain James Stagg of the Royal Air Force (RAF) met with Eisenhower on the evening of 4 June. He and his meteorological team predicted that the weather would improve sufficiently so that the invasion could go ahead on 6 June. After much discussion with the other senior commanders, Eisenhower decided that the invasion should go ahead on the 6th. Had Eisenhower postponed the invasion, the next available date with the correct combination of tides (but without the desirable full moon) was two weeks later, from 18 to 20 June. But, during this period, they would have encountered a major storm that lasted four days, between 19 and 22 June, which would have made the initial landings impossible to undertake. (Wikipedia)
The amphibious landings were preceded by extensive aerial and naval bombardment and an airborne assault—the landing of 24,000 British, US, and Canadian airborne troops shortly after midnight. Allied infantry and armoured divisions began landing on the coast of France starting at 06:30. The target 50-mile (80 km) stretch of the Normandy coast was divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword Beach. Strong winds blew the landing craft east of their intended positions, particularly at Utah and Omaha. The men landed under heavy fire from gun emplacements overlooking the beaches, and the shore was mined and covered with obstacles such as wooden stakes, metal tripods, and barbed wire, making the work of the beach clearing teams difficult and dangerous. Casualties were heaviest at Omaha, with its high cliffs. At Gold, Juno, and Sword, several fortified towns were cleared in house-to-house fighting, and two major gun emplacements at Gold were disabled using specialised tanks. (Wikipedia)
Planning for the operation began in 1943. In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a substantial military deception, codenamed Operation Bodyguard, to mislead the Germans as to the date and location of the main Allied landings. The weather on D-Day was far from ideal, but postponing would have meant a delay of at least two weeks, as the invasion planners had requirements for the phase of the moon, the tides, and the time of day that meant only a few days in each month were deemed suitable. Hitler placed German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in command of German forces and of developing fortifications along the Atlantic Wall in anticipation of an Allied invasion. (Wikipedia)
Airborne and Beach Assault
The Normandy beaches were chosen by planners because they lay within range of air cover, and were less heavily defended than the obvious objective of the Pas de Calais, the shortest distance between Great Britain and the Continent. Airborne drops at both ends of the beachheads were to protect the flanks, as well as open up roadways to the interior. Six divisions were to land on the first day; three U.S., two British and one Canadian. Two more British and one U.S. division were to follow up after the assault division had cleared the way through the beach defenses.
Disorganization, confusion, incomplete or faulty implementation of plans characterized the initial phases of the landings. This was especially true of the airborne landings which were badly scattered, as well as the first wave units landing on the assault beaches. To their great credit, most of the troops were able to adapt to the disorganization. In the end, the Allies achieved their objective. (source: US Army)
During World War II (1939-1945), the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning. Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. The Normandy landings have been called the beginning of the end of war in Europe. (source: HISTORY.com)
---Fifty years ago at Harvard, Winston Churchill delivered his great clarion call for Anglo-American brotherhood. How remarkable it is that his words remain as noble a guide half a century on.---
The Price of Greatness - Winston Churchill
The last time I attended a ceremony of this character was in the spring of 1941, when, as Chancellor of Bristol University, I conferred a degree upon the United States Ambassador, Mr. Winant, and in absentia upon President Conant, our President, who is here today and presiding over this ceremony. The blitz was running hard at that time, and the night before, the raid on Bristol had been heavy. Several hundreds had been killed and wounded. Many houses were destroyed. Buildings next to the University were still burning, and many of the University authorities who conducted the ceremony had pulled on their robes over uniforms begrimed and drenched; but all was presented with faultless ritual and appropriate decorum, and I sustained a very strong and invigorating impression of the superiority of man over the forces that can destroy him.
Here now, today, I am once again in academic groves - groves is, I believe, the right word - where knowledge is garnered, where learning is stimulated, where virtues are inculcated and thought encouraged. Here, in the broad United States, with a respectable ocean on either side of us, we can look out upon the world in all its wonder and in all its woe. But what is this that I discern as I pass through your streets, as I look round this great company?
I see uniforms on every side. I understand that nearly the whole energies of the University have been drawn into the preparation of American youth for the battlefield. For this purpose all classes and courses have been transformed, and even the most sacred vacations have been swept away in a round-the-year and almost round-the-clock drive to make warriors and technicians for the fighting fronts.
Twice in my lifetime the long arm of destiny has reached across the oceans and involved the entire life and manhood of the United States in a deadly struggle.
There was no use in saying "We don't want it; we won’t have it; our forebears left Europe to avoid these quarrels; we have founded a new world which has no contact with the old. "There was no use in that. The long arm reaches out remorselessly, and every one's existence, environment, and outlook undergo a swift and irresistible change. What is the explanation, Mr. President, of these strange facts, and what are the deep laws to which they respond? I will offer you one explanation - there are others, but one will suffice.
The price of greatness is responsibility. If the people of the United States had continued in a mediocre station, struggling with the wilderness, absorbed in their own affairs, and a factor of no consequence in the movement of the world, they might have remained forgotten and undisturbed beyond their protecting oceans: but one cannot rise to be in many ways the leading community in the civilised world without being involved in its problems, without being convulsed by its agonies and inspired by its causes.
If this has been proved in the past, as it has been, it will become indisputable in the future. The people of the United States cannot escape world responsibility. Although we live in a period so tumultuous that little can be predicted, we may be quite sure that this process will be intensified with every forward step the United States make in wealth and in power. Not only are the responsibilities of this great Republic growing, but the world over which they range is itself contracting in relation to our powers of locomotion at a positively alarming rate.
We have learned to fly. What prodigious changes are involved in that new accomplishment! Man has parted company with his trusty friend the horse and has sailed into the azure with the eagles, eagles being represented by the infernal (loud laughter) - I mean internal -combustion engine. Where, then, are those broad oceans, those vast staring deserts? They are shrinking beneath our very eyes. Even elderly Parliamentarians like myself are forced to acquire a high degree of mobility.
But to the youth of America, as to the youth of all the Britains, I say "You cannot stop." There is no halting-place at this point. We have now reached a stage in the journey where there can be no pause. We must go on. It must be world anarchy or world order.
Throughout all this ordeal and struggle which is characteristic of our age, you will find in the British Commonwealth and Empire good comrades to whom you are united by other ties besides those of State policy and public need. To a large extent, they are the ties of blood and history. Naturally I, a child of both worlds, am conscious of these.
Law, language, literature - these are considerable factors. Common conceptions of what is right and decent, a marked regard for fair play, especially to the weak and poor, a stern sentiment of impartial justice, and above all the love of personal freedom, or as Kipling put it:
"Leave to live by no man 5 leave underneath the law" - these are common conceptions on both-sides of the ocean among the English-speaking peoples. We hold to these conceptions as strongly as you do.
We do not war primarily with races as such. Tyranny is our foe, whatever trappings or disguise it wears, whatever language it speaks, be it external or internal, we must forever be on our guard, ever mobilised, ever vigilant, always ready to spring at its throat. In all this, we march together. Not only do we march and strive shoulder to shoulder at this moment under the fire of the enemy on the fields of war or in the air, but also in those realms of thought which are consecrated to the rights and the dignity of man.
At the present time we have in continual vigorous action the British and United States Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee, which works immediately under the President and myself as representative of the British War Cabinet. This committee, with its elaborate organisation of Staff officers of every grade, disposes of all our resources and, in practice, uses British and American troops, ships, aircraft, and munitions just as if they were the resources of a single State or nation.
I would not say there are never divergences of view among these high professional authorities. It would be unnatural if there were not. That is why it is necessary to have a plenary meeting of principals every two or three months. All these men now know each other. They trust each other. They like each other, and most of them have been at work together for a long time. When they meet they thrash things out with great candour and plain, blunt speech, but after a few days the President and I find ourselves furnished with sincere and united advice.
This is a wonderful system. There was nothing like it in the last war. There never has been anything like it between two allies. It is reproduced in an even more tightly-knit form at General Eisenhower's headquarters in the Mediterranean, where everything is completely intermingled and soldiers are ordered into battle by the Supreme Commander or his deputy, General Alexander, without the slightest regard to whether they are British, American, or Canadian, but simply in accordance with the fighting need.
Now in my opinion it would be a most foolish and improvident act on the part of our two Governments, or either of them, to break up this smooth-running and immensely powerful machinery the moment the war is over. For our own safety, as well as for the security of the rest of the world, we are bound to keep it working and in running order after the war - probably for a good many years, not only until we have set up some world arrangement to keep the peace, but until we know that it is an arrangement which will really give us that protection we must have from danger and aggression, a protection we have already had to seek across two vast world wars.
I am not qualified, of course, to judge whether or not this would become a party question in the United States, and I would not presume to discuss that point. I am sure, however, that it will not be a party question in Great Britain. We must not let go of the securities we have found necessary to preserve our lives and liberties until we are quite sure we have something else to put in their place which will give us an equally solid guarantee.
The great Bismarck - for there were once great men in Germany - is said to have observed towards the close of his life that the most potent factor in human society at the end of the nineteenth century was the fact that the British and American peoples spoke the same language.
That was a pregnant saying. Certainly it has enabled us to wage war together with an intimacy and harmony never before achieved among allies.
This gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance, and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship. I like to think of British and Americans moving about freely over each other's wide estates with hardly a sense of being foreigners to one another. But I do not see why we should not try to spread our common language even more widely throughout the globe and, without seeking selfish advantage over any, possess ourselves of this invaluable amenity and birthright.
Some months ago I persuaded the British Cabinet to set up a committee of Ministers to study and report upon Basic English. Here you have a plan. There are others, but here you have a very carefully wrought plan for an international language capable of a very wide transaction of practical business and interchange of ideas. The whole of it is comprised in about 650 nouns and 200 verbs or other parts of speech - no more indeed than can be written on one side of a single sheet of paper.
What was my delight when, the other evening, quite unexpectedly, I heard the President of the United States suddenly speak of the merits of Basic English, and is it not a coincidence that, with all this in mind, I should arrive at Harvard, in fulfilment of the long-dated invitations to receive this degree, with which president Conant has honoured me? For Harvard has done more than any other American university to promote the extension of Basic English. The first work on Basic English was written by two Englishmen, Ivor Richards, now of Harvard, and C.K. Ogden, of Cambridge University, England, working in association.
The Harvard Commission on English Language Studies is distinguished both for its research and its practical work, particularly in introducing the use of Basic English in Latin America; and this Commission, your Commission, is now, I am told, working with secondary schools in Boston on the use of Basic English in teaching the main language to American children and in teaching it to foreigners preparing for citizenship.
Gentlemen, I make you my compliments. I do not wish to exaggerate, but you are the head-stream of what might well be a mighty fertilising and health-giving river. It would certainly be a grand convenience for us all to be able to move freely about the world - as we shall be able to do more freely than ever before as the science of the world develops - be able to move freely about the world, and be able to find everywhere a medium, albeit primitive, of intercourse and understanding. Might it not also be an advantage to many races, and an aid to the building-up of our new structure for preserving peace?
All these are great possibilities, and I say: "Let us go into this together. Let us have another Boston Tea Party about it."
Let us go forward as with other matters and other measures similar in aim and effect - let us go forward in malice to none and good will to all. Such plans offer far better prizes than taking away other people's provinces or lands or grinding them down in exploitation. The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
It would, of course, Mr. President, be lamentable if those who are charged with the duty of leading great nations forward in this grievous and obstinate war were to allow their minds and energies to be diverted from making the plans to achieve our righteous purposes without needless prolongation of slaughter and destruction.
Nevertheless, we are also bound, so far as life and strength allow, and without prejudice to our dominating military tasks, to look ahead to those days which will surely come when we shall have finally beaten down Satan under our feet and find ourselves with other great allies at once the. masters and the servants of the future. Various schemes of achieving world security while yet preserving national rights, traditions and customs are being studied and probed.
We have all the fine work that was done a quarter of a century ago by those who devised and tried to make effective the League of Nations after the last war. It is said that the League of Nations failed. If so, that is largely because it was abandoned, and later on betrayed: because those who were its best friends were till a very late period infected with a futile pacifism: because the United States, the originating impulse, fell out of line: because, while France had been bled white and England was supine and bewildered, a monstrous growth of aggression sprang up in Germany, in Italy and Japan.
We have learned from hard experience that stronger, more efficient, more rigorous world institutions must be created to preserve peace and to forestall the causes of future wars. In this task the strongest victorious nations must be combined, and also those who have borne the burden and heat of the day and suffered under the flail of adversity; and, in this task, this creative task, there are some who say: "Let us have a world council and under it regional or continental councils," and there are others who prefer a somewhat different organisation.
All these matters weigh with us now in spite of the war, which none can say has reached its climax, which is perhaps entering for us, British and Americans, upon its most severe and costly phase. But I am here to tell you that, whatever form your system of world security may take, however the nations are grouped and ranged, whatever derogations are made from national sovereignty for the sake of the larger synthesis, nothing will work soundly or for long without the united effort of the British and American peoples.
If we are together nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail.
I therefore preach continually the doctrine of the fraternal association of our two peoples, not for any purpose of gaining invidious material advantages for either of them, not for territorial aggrandisement or the vain pomp of earthly domination, but for the sake of service to mankind and for the honour that comes to those who faithfully serve great causes.
Here let me say how proud we ought to be, young and old alike, to live in this tremendous, thrilling, formative epoch in the human story, and how fortunate it was for the world that when these great trials came upon it there was a generation that terror could not conquer and brutal violence could not enslave. Let all who are here remember, as the words of the hymn we have just sung suggest, let all of us who are here remember that we are on the stage of history, and that whatever our station may be, and whatever part we have to play, great or small, our conduct is liable to be scrutinised not only by history but by our own descendants.
Let us rise to the full level of our duty and of our opportunity, and let us thank God for the spiritual rewards He has granted for all forms of valiant and faithful service.
Source: http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/speeches-of-winston-churchill/118-the-price-of-greatness
As with all highly anticipated news, the first reports are often muddled and confused. This audio report is no different, sharing the exciting news of Japan's surrender to the Allies on 12 August 1945 and then recalling the news flash.
While this account is semi-true, the Japanese government had only sought a surrender from the US, not actually having signed anything yet. The twin destructions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atomic weapons had obtained the result Truman had hoped they would and eleviated the necessity of invading the Japanese homeland.
President Truman has announced that 14 Aug will be V-J (Victory over Japan) Day. The official unconditional surrender of Japanese forces will take place on 1-2 September, 1945.
Colonel Britton was the pseudonym of Douglas Ritchie, a 36-year-old Assistant News Editor at the BBC. He expanded the V for Victory campaign in 1941 and 1942 in the occupied territories, where it was designed to subvert German rule with various methods of resistance. Since the English-language service was not tightly controlled by the Ministry of Information, the campaign flourished.
Ritchie suggested an audible V using its Morse code rhythm (three dots and a dash). Having the same rhythm, the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was then used as the call-sign by the BBC in its foreign language programmes to occupied Europe for the rest of the war. The irony that they were composed by a German was not lost on many of the audience or for the more musically educated that it was "Fate knocking on the door" of the Third Reich.
"You wear no uniforms and your weapons differ from ours, but they're no less deadly.
The fact that you wear no uniforms is your strength. The Nazi official and the German soldier don't know you, but they fear you.
The night is your friend, the 'V' is your sign..." (BBC Broadcast - 1941 June 27)
14 June 1944 - BBC Hermanville Churchbells
With the liberation of Caen and Hermanville the small village a few miles outside the main city comes the joyful liberation by Allied forces. The townsfolk celebrate by ringing the bells of the church which is their pride.
Italy Declares War on Allies (10 June 1940)
Taking a short break from the D-Day audio series, we bring you the English translation of Benito Mussolini declaring war on the British and French.
In reprisal, President Roosevelt announces a shift from neutrality to "non-belligerency," meaning more active support for the Allies against the Axis.
"The hand that held the dagger has plunged it into the back of its neighbor." -- FDR
Part 14 of the D-Day Audio Series
6 June 1944 - 0927 CBS D-Day Broadcast
News reports from combat reporters on-scene including air reprots, onboard ship (LST) and interviews with soldiers about to depart on the shores of Normandy.
D-Day Audio Series #13
0900 - 6 June 1944
A war reporter from NBC attached to the 9th Bomber Command tells about the D-Day events and plans.
D-Day Audio Series #12 - CBS World News 0900 EWT 6 June 1944
SHAEF - Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces
Allied troops landed on the channel islands according to a German broadcast.
Military Analysis on the Normandy Invasion
CBS D-Day Broadcast 0540 EWT (6 June 1944)
Hitler takes command of the Army and defense forces.
Air operation recap and special training for troops assaulting the beaches and paratroopers behind the lines assault.
Part 10 of the D-Day Audio Series begins the references to the initial German resistance by local German tank forces and background on General Eisenhower's attempts at deception.
Of interest are the references to the 'Monitors' or shallow draft heavily armed warships designed to deal with coastal defenses.
Firsthand Reports of Airborne
Part 9 of the D-Day Audio Series starts off by showcasing early firsthand combat reporters tales of the departing airborne missions.
Part 8 of World War II History's D-Day Audio Series is Continuing early morning reports from CBS and European affiliates bringing new European updates on the D-Day landings at Normandy beginning at 0415 EWT 6 June 1944.
D-Day Audio Series #6: 03:32 EWT - NBC First Reports about invasion in Europe coming in.
London - Communique #1 radio broadcast.
Continuing NBC reports.
Men and Women of the United States this is a historic moment!
D-Day Audio Series #5: 03:30 Eastern War Time - CBS World News & AP Review of Reports Still Unconfirmed with Allied Headquarters in Washington remaining silent, with increasing reports about Normandy on 6 June 1944.
THIS MEANS INVASION! - Communique #1
CBS Newsroom continuing reports.
Supreme Headquarters - Allied Expeditionary Force
Communique #1 - (6 June 1944)
Under the command of General Eisenhower Allied naval forces supported by strong air forces began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France.
Part 3 of the D-Day Audio Series is the first American news coverage of the D-Day invasions at Normandy on 6 June 1944.
Part 2 of the D-Day Audio Series is the pre D-Day Fireside Chat given by Franklin D. Roosevelt. In this speech, Roosevelt highlights the fall of Rome to the Allied forces on 4 June 1944, preparing the nation for success in Europe while not giving away any details on the upcoming invasion.
Transcript:
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened, he will fight savagely.
But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man to man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to victory!
I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!
Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
— Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
The first audio broadcast in our D-Day Audio Series is General Eisenhower's message to the troops on 5 June 1944 just prior to the invasion. This message was given in print as well to the troops before they left for Normandy.
Prior to the D-Day landings in Normandy, French Resistance fighters were alerted to the impending assault via coded messages transmitted through the BBC and Radio France. This audio clip showcases some of the English and French codes used.
As a bonus, attached is a PDF with a list of Coded Resistance Broadcast Messages and some of their meanings.
Keep an eye out for other exclusive D-Day content coming soon only on the WWII History App.
Today in WWII History
World War II History for May 13
Winston Churchill in Helmet
May 13, 1940 – Winston Churchill told Britain’s Parliament that “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”
Winston Churchill “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” speech (May 13, 1940)
May 13, 1944 – Adolf Hitler gave permission for a full Germany withdrawal from the U.S.S.R.
WWII Events Today, April 22
Apr 22, 1941 – Emmanuel Tsouderos was named premier of Greece.
Apr 22, 1941 – Two thousand US Army reinforcements were sent to the Philippines.
Apr 22, 1942 – Apr 23, 1942 – 14 German U-boats were refueled and resupplied 500 miles from Bermuda, giving the Germans a total of 18 submarines to operate almost unmolested from Nova Scotia to Florida.
Apr 22, 1942 – 15 French hostages were executed by the Germans in Paris.
Apr 22, 1942 – A Joint US-New Zealand Naval Command was established.
Apr 22, 1942 – Lexington joins Yorktown at Tongutabu to prepare for expected battle.
Apr 22, 1942 – Washington announced that US forces had arrived in India.
Apr 22, 1942 – Yenangyaung in Burma was evacuated by British forces.
Apr 22, 1943 – Allied forces in Tunisia began the final phase of the North African campaign. The main thrust was directed at the capture of Tunis and Bizerte.
Apr 22, 1944 – Fighting ended on New Britain.
Apr 22, 1944 – Russia concluded peace talks with Finland.
Apr 22, 1944 – US Army amphibious forces landed near Hollandia, New Guinea.
Apr 22, 1944 – Yugoslav Partisans occupied the German-held island of Korcula in the Adriatic.
Apr 22, 1945 – Hitler refused to leave Berlin although its encirclement was imminent. Units of the First White Russian Front continued to advance in the eastern suburbs.
Apr 22, 1945 – Indian troops of the Fourteenth Army recaptured the Yenangyaung oil fields, the largest in Burma. Most Japanese forces were ordered to withdraw from Rangoon and move back to Pegu and Moulmein.
Apr 22, 1945 – Mindanao’s Japanese force was split in two as the US X Corps landed as a blocking force.
Apr 22, 1945 – Palawan is declared secure.
Apr 22, 1945 – The French First Army reached Lake Constance. US Seventh Army forces swept to the Danube. Field Marshal Alexander said German units in Northern Italy had “no hope of escaping.” Allied planes hammered at the Alpine escape passes.
Springtime at Anzio
20 April 1944 - BBC's Wynford Vaughan Thomas reports on springtime life at Anzio.
BONUS - WWII P-38 Wallpaper
Attached is a cool looking phone wallpaper of a P-38 wireframe model. Click the Wallpaper button to save and use.
Enjoy!
On of the bloodiest battles to occur during the entirety of World War II happened on a small desolate island in the vast Pacific (16 Feb 1945 – 26 Mar 1945).
American Flag on Iwo Jima overlooking the landing beaches.
“Iwo Jima, which means sulfur island, was strategically important as an air base for fighter escorts supporting long-range bombing missions against mainland Japan. Because of the distance between mainland Japan and U.S. bases in the Mariana Islands, the capture of Iwo Jima would provide an emergency landing strip for crippled B-29s returning from bombing runs. The seizure of Iwo would allow for sea and air blockades, the ability to conduct intensive air bombardment and to destroy the enemy’s air and naval capabilities. The seizure of Iwo Jima was deemed necessary, but the prize would not come easy. The fighting that took place during the 36-day assault would be immortalized in the words of Commander, Pacific Fleet/Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who said, ‘Among the Americans who served on Iwo Island, uncommon valor was a common virtue.’
To the Japanese leadership, the capture of Iwo Jima meant the battle for Okinawa, and the invasion of Japan itself, was not far off.”
–Researched and written by 1st Lieutenant Kimberley J. Miller, Marine Corps History Iwo Jima Amphibious Landing
Listen to the US Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal speak about the Battle of Iwo Jima (25 Feb 1945)
Today in WWII History
World War II History for January 20
Audio: 1940-01-20 – Winston Churchill – Speech – Neutrals-Liberation is Sure
Jan 20, 1940 – In a speech admonishing neutral nations to support the Allied cause, Winston Churchill, Britain’s first lord of the admiralty, claims, “Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last.” Churchill also denounces the Soviet Union’s invasion of Finland.
Jan 20, 1941 – Japan expanded annual intelligence budget to $500,000 to gather more intelligence on the United States.
Jan 20, 1941 – Japan orders cultural attaches in US to establish intelligence gathering networks.
Jan 20, 1942 – At the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich presented a plan to deal with the “Jewish question”.
Jan 20, 1942 – Marines arrive Pago Pago covered by Enterprise and Yorktown.
Jan 20, 1944 – Jan 21, 1944 – During the night of 20 Jan 1944 (and into the early hours of 21 Jan), the heaviest RAF raid on Berlin to date was launched. 700 aircraft dropped over 2,300 tons of explosives on the German capital. Damage was assumed to be extensive, but could not be confirmed due to bad weather on the next day.
Jan 20, 1944 – Russian troops recapture Novgorod, and will retake Leningrad a week later. By early May, they will have recaptured Odessa and Sevastopol as well. Meanwhile the British Royal Air Force bombs Berlin with more than 2,300 tons of bombs.
Jan 20, 1945 – Curtis LeMay takes command of the US strategic bomber forces in the Pacific, and agress with Arnold that incendiary bombing is the way forward.
Edward Joseph Chlapowski (June 5, 1922 – Jan. 16, 2011)
/via CNN.com
Chlapowski, who died Sunday in Montana at age 88, was the person who told the world of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
According to the Billings Gazette, Chlapowski, who was a Navy radioman on Adm. Husband Kimmel’s staff at Pearl Harbor, was in his barracks on the morning of December 7 when he looked out the window and saw a hangar at nearby Hickam Field explode.
“I turned to see the planes coming in and saw the ‘meatballs’ on the side,” he said, referring to the red Japanese military insignia on the planes, according to the Gazette report. “The hair on the back of my neck stood up, just as it still does today when I think of it,” he said.
Chlapowski said he hurried to his post in the communications room on base. There a supervisor handed him a message, which he transmitted in Morse code: “This is no drill – Pearl Harbor is being bombed by the Japanese – this is no drill.”
Chlapowski was a member of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association and the person assigned to present plaques to members’ families when a fellow survivor died. Of the 84,000 U.S. military personnel on Oahu that day, only a couple of thousand are thought to be living now, the Gazette reported.
Read his obituary here.
Hear one of the radio broadcasts notifying the US about the attack on Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941:
[Audio History] 1945-01-06 FDR Fireside Chat On Battle Of The Bulge
“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States…
Ladies and gentlemen,
Today in pursuance of my constitutional duty, I sent to the Congress a message on the State of the Union, and this evening I am taking the opportunity to repeat to you some parts of that message:
This war must be waged, it is being waged, to the greatest and most insistent intensity. Everything we are, everything we have, is at stake. Everything we are, and have, will be given. We have no question of the ultimate victory, we have no question of the cost. Our losses will be heavy, but we and our allies will go on fighting together to total victory.
We have seen a year marked on the whole by substantial progress toward victory, even though the year ended with a setback for our arms. When the Germans launched a ferocious counterattack into Luxembourg and Belgium with the obvious objectives of cutting our line in the center.
Our men have fought with indescribable and unforgettable gallantry under most difficult conditions. The high tide of this German attack was reached two days after Christmas. Since then we have reassumed the offensive. We have rescued the isolated garrison at Bastogne and forced a German withdrawal along most of the line of the salient.
The speed with which we have recovered from this savage attack was possible primarily because we have one supreme commander in complete control of all the allied armies in France. General Eisenhower has faced this period of trial with admirable calm and resolution and is steadily increasing success.”
This the text of the first 2 minutes of the fireside chat given by Franklin D. Roosevelt after he delivered his State of the Union to Congress on 06 January 1945 covering the war and the Battle of the Bulge.
(Transcribed by S. Terjeson)
Captain H.W. Langsdorff of the German Pocket Battleship Graf Spee
In 1939, Captain Langsdorff gave the world a matchless example of personal integrity and human compassion in wartime but uninformed military criticism has overlooked his true value.
Langsdorff's significant role in the dramatic Saga of the Graf Spee has remained obscure. Respected historians have dismissed him as a "first class person" but an unimaginative warrior. Admiral Raeder left a black mark on the Captain's military record in his post-war writings when he blamed Langsdorff for losing his ship by attacking three cruisers and going against general orders. This half-truth plagued Langsdorff's career for 60 years.
The Sinking of the Graf Spee
These are the actual radio broadcasts from Dec 17-18, 1939 about the sinking of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Speeoff Uruguay in South America.
Graf Spee was a German pocket battleship of 10,000 tons launched in 1936. The Graf Spee was more heavily gunned than any cruiser and had a top speed of 25 knots and an endurance of 12,500 miles (20,000 km).
The Graf Spee had sunk several merchant ships in the Atlantic before being attacked by a British search group consisting of the cruisers Exeter, Ajax, and Achilles. The damage on the 13th to Graf Spee forced her to seek refuge in Montevideo, Uruguay for several days to make repairs. On the 17th Graf Spee left Montevideo and was scuttled by the crew. Captain Langsdorff of the Graf Spee committed suicide three days later. Most of the crew had been secretly taken off when they were in port and the rest were rescued after the ship being scuttled.
PRIME MINISTER WINSTON CHURCHILL SPEECH AT THE MANSION HOUSE
“End of the Beginning” Speech
London, November 10, 1942
I notice, my Lord Mayor, by your speech you have reached the conclusion that news from the various fronts has been somewhat better lately.
In our wars, episodes are largely adverse but the final result has hitherto been satisfactory. Eddies swirl around us, but the tide bears us forward on its broad, restless flood.
In the last war we were uphill almost to the end. We met with continual disappointments and with disasters far more bloody than anything we have experienced so far in this. But in the end all oppositions fell together and our foes submitted themselves to our will.
We have not so far in this war taken as many German prisoners as they have taken British, but these German prisoners will, no doubt, come in in droves at the end, just as they did last time.
I have never promised anything but blood, tears, toil and sweat. Now, however, we have a new experience. We have victory-a remarkable and definite victory. The bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers and warmed and cheered all our hearts.
The late M. Venizelos observed that in all her wars England-he should have said Britain, of course-always won one battle, the last. It would seem to have begun rather earlier this time.
General Alexander, with his brilliant comrade and lieutenant, General Montgomery, has made a glorious and decisive victory in what I think should be called the Battle of Egypt. Rommel’s army has been defeated. It has been routed. It has been very largely destroyed as a fighting force.
This battle was not fought for the sake of gaining positions or so many square miles of desert territory. General Alexander and General Montgomery fought it with one single idea-to destroy the armed forces of the enemy and to destroy them at a place where the disaster would be most punishable and irrevocable.
All the various elements in our lines of battle played their part. Indian troops, Fighting French, Greeks, representatives of Czechoslovakia and others. Americans rendered powerful and invaluable service in the air. But as it happened, as the course of battle turned, it has been fought throughout almost entirely by men of British blood and from the dominions on the one side and by Germans on the other. The Italians were left to perish in the waterless desert. But the fighting between the British and Germans was intense and fierce in the extreme.
It was a deadly battle. The Germans have been outmatched and outfought with every kind of weapon with which they had beaten down so many small peoples and, also, larger, unprepared peoples. They have been beaten by many of the technical apparatus on which they counted to gain domination of the world. Especially is this true in the air, as of tanks and of artillery, which has come back into its own. The Germans have received that measure of fire and steel which they have so often meted out to others.
Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning to the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Hitler’s Nazis will be equally well armed and, perhaps, better armed. But henceforward they will have to face in many theatres that superiority in the air which they have so often used without mercy against others and of which they boasted all around the world that they were to be masters and which they intended to use as an instrument for convincing all other peoples that all resistance to them was hopeless.
When I read of the coastal road crammed with fleeing German vehicles under the blasting attacks of the R. A. F., I could not but remember those roads of France and Flanders crowded not with fighting men, but with helpless refugees, women and children, fleeing with their pitiful barrows and household goods upon whom such merciless havoc was wreaked. I have, I trust, a humane disposition, but I must say I could not help feeling that whatever was happening, however grievous, was only justice grimly repaid.
It will be my duty in the near future to give a particular and full account of these operations. All I say about them at present is that the victory which has already been gained gives good prospects of becoming decisive and final, so far as the defense of Egypt is concerned.
But this Battle of Egypt, in itself so important, was designed and timed as a prelude and a counterpart of the momentous enterprise undertaken by the United States at the western end of the Mediterranean, an enterprise under United States command and in which our army, air force and, above all, our navy are bearing an honorable and important share. A very full account has bee published of all that has been happening in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.
The President of the United States, who is Commander in Chief of the armed forces of America, is the author of this might undertaking and in all of it I have been his active and ardent lieutenant.
You have, no doubt, read the declaration of President Roosevelt, solemnly endorsed by His Majesty’s Government, of the strict respect which will be paid to the rights and interests of Spain and Portugal, both by America and Great Britain.
To those countries, our only policy is that they shall be independent and free, prosperous and at peace. Britain and the United States will do all that we can to enrich the economic life of the Iberian Peninsula. The Spaniards, especially, with all their troubles, require and deserve peace and recuperation.
Our thoughts turn toward France, groaning in bondage under the German heel. Many ask themselves the question: Is France finished? Is that long and famous history, marked by so many manifestations of genius, bearing with it so much that is precious to culture, to civilization and, above all, to the liberties of mankind-is all that now to sink forever into the ocean of the past or will France rise again and resume her rightful place in the structure of what may one day be again the family of Europe?
I gladly say here, on this considerable occasion, even now when misguided or suborned Frenchmen are firing upon their rescuers, that I am prepared to stake my faith that France will rise again.
While there are men like General De Gaulle and all those who follow him-and they are legion throughout France-and men like General Giraud, that gallant warrior whom no prison can hold, while there are men like that to stand forward in the name and in the cause of France my confidence in the future of France is sure.
For ourselves we have no wish but to see France free and strong, with her empire gathered round her and with Alsace-Lorraine restored. We covet no French possession. We have no acquisitive designs or ambitions in North Africa or any other part of the world. We have not entered this war for profit or expansion but only for honor and to do our duty in defending the right.
Let me, however, make this clear, in case there should be any mistake about it in any quarter: we mean to hold our own. I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. For that task, if ever it were prescribed, some one else would have to be found, and under a democracy I suppose the nation would have to be consulted.
I am proud to be a member of that vast commonwealth and society of nations and communities gathered in and around the ancient British monarchy, without which the good cause might well have perished from the face of the earth.
Here we are and here we stand, a veritable rock of salvation in this drifting world. There was a time not long ago when for a whole year we stood all alone. Those days, thank God, have gone.
We now move forward in a great and gallant company. For our record we have nothing to fear. We have no need to make excuses or apologies. Our record pleads for us and we shall get gratitude in the breasts of every man and woman in every part of the world.
As I have said, in this war we have no territorial aims. We desire no commercial favors, we wish to alter no sovereignty or frontier for our own benefit.
We have come into North Africa shoulder to shoulder with our American friends and allies for one purpose and one purpose only. Namely, to gain a vantage ground from which to open a n ew front against Hitler and Hitlerism, to cleanse the shores of Africa from the stain of Nazi and Fascist tyranny, to open the Mediterranean to Allied sea power and air power, and thus effect the liberation of the peoples of Europe from the pit of misery into which they have been passed by their own improvidence and by the brutal violence of the enemy.
These two African undertakings, in the east and in the west, were part of a single strategic and political conception which we had labored long to bring to fruition and about which we are now justified in entertaining good and reasonable confidence. Taken together they were a grand design, vast in its scope, honorable in its motive and noble in its aim.
British and American forces continue to prosper in the Mediterranean. The whole event will be a new bond between the English-speaking people and a new hope for the whole world.
I recall to you some lines of Byron which seem to me to fit event and theme:
“Millions of tongues record thee, and anew
Their children’s lips shall echo them and say,
Here where sword the united nations drew
Our countrymen were warring on that day.
And this is much and all which will not pass away.”Retrieved from: http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1942/421110b.html Nov 17,2010
World War II History for October 26
Audio Clip: Winston Churchill Speech October 29, 1941 – These Are Great Days
Oct 26, 1941 – The Australians were relieved at Tobruk by the British 70th Division, the Polish Carpathian Brigade and British tank elements.
Oct 26, 1942 – USS Enterprise was hit twice during the Battle of Santa Cruz. She suffered 44 killed and 75 wounded, but also planted several bombs on Shokaku, taking her out of the war for 9 months for repairs. (Image Gallery – Battle of Santa Cruz)
Oct 26, 1942 – The US carrier USS Hornet and destroyer USS Porter were sunk in the Battle of Santa Cruz. It was the last time carrier based aircraft were used by the Japanese in the Guadalcanal campaign.
Oct 26, 1944 – The Battle of Leyte Gulf comes to an end with a decisive American victory as U.S. carrier aircraft and B-24s pound the retiring Japanese squadrons.
World War II History - Audio Podcast (App Exclusive) CBS News Anchor Elmer Davis with the News - 07 October 1939 (4m40s - mp3)
Radio Background In August 1939, Paul White, the news chief at CBS, asked Davis to fill in as a news analyst for H. V. Kaltenborn, who was off in Europe reporting on the increasingly hostile events. Davis became an instant success. Edward R. Murrow later commented that one reason he believed that Davis was likeable was his Hoosier accent which reminded people of a friendly neighbor. By 1941, the audience for Davis' nightly five-minute newscast and comment was 12.5 million.
[edit]Office of War Information Davis spent two and a half years reporting the news on radio and gaining the trust of the nation. Then, in 1941, his colleagues persuaded President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to appoint Davis director of the newly created United States Office of War Information, a sprawling organization with over 3,000 employees.
As Director of the Office of War Information, Davis recommended to President Roosevelt that Japanese-Americans be permitted to enlist for service in the Army and Navy and urged him to oppose bills in Congress that would deprive Nisei of citizenship and intern them during the war. Davis has been termed one of the "unsung forefathers" of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, an all-Nisei combat unit in the war.
WWII Events Today, September 28
Audio: 26 Sept 1943 – CBS World News
Sep 28, 1938 – Chamberlain repudiated the foreign ministry statement of the previous day, saying, “We cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in war simlpy on [Czechoslovakia’s] account.”
Sep 28, 1938 – Chamberlain proposed to Hitler a conference involving Czechoslovakia, France, Italy, Germany, and Britain, saying “I cannot believe that you will take responsibility of starting a world war which may end civilization for the sake of a few days’ delay in settling thsi long-standing problem.”
Sep 28, 1938 – On the advice of Mussolini, Hitler postponed his invasion of Czechoslovakia for 24 hours and called a Munich meeting with Chamberlain, Daladier, and Mussolini. The Italian leader had told Hitler, “… I feel certain that you can get all the essentials without war and without delay.”
Sep 28, 1939 – Poland is partitioned between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
Sep 28, 1939 – Estonia and Russia signed a 10-year mutual assistance pact, with the Soviets acquiring military rights and access to raw materials. (Moscow was to sign similar pacts with Latvia on Oct 5 and Lithuania on the 10th, completing Soviet hegemony over the Baltic states.)
Sep 28, 1940 – Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles outlined US policy in Asia toward Japan. He said Tokyo’s intention to create a new order in Asia had resulted in Japan’s reliance “upon the instrumentality of armed force, and it has made it very clear that it intents that it alone shall decide to what extent the historic interests of the United States and the treaty rights of American citizens in the Far East are to be observed.” Welles called for “complete respect” for US rights, “equality of opportunity for the trade of all nations,” and “respect” for all treaties and international agreements to which the US had agreed. “Modifications” through “peaceful negotiations” would be considered.
Sep 28, 1940 – The first of the 50 destoryers which the US turned over to Britain reached England.
Sep 28, 1941 – The first British convoy for Russia left Iceland.
Sep 28, 1941 – Syria was declared independent by Vichy France.
Sep 28, 1941 – Citing “irresponsible elements” with acts antagonistic to the Reich, Germany declared a state of emergency in Bohemia and Moravia.
Sep 28, 1941 – Sep 29, 1941 – SS troops massacred nearly 34,000 Jews from the Kiev area in the nearby Babi Yar ravine. In its official report, Einsatzgruppe C related: “The Jewish population was invited by poster to present themselves for resettlement. Although initially we had only counted on 5,000-6,000 Jews reporting, more than 30,000 Jews appeared; by a remarkably efficient piece of organization they were led to believe in the resettlement story until shortly before their execution.” It had been suggested the Jews were killed in reprisal for the bombing of a Kiev hotel used as a German headquarters, but the SS had been systematically killing Jews in Russia in the wake of the advancing Wehrmacht. Babi Yar stands as perhaps the most horrible single example of vengeful genocide.
Sep 28, 1942 – The main force of the US 32nd Infantry Division reached Port Moresby and was ordered to join the drive on Wairopi.
Sep 28, 1943 – The evacuation of Kolombangara in the Solomons was begun by the Japanese. (It continued through Oct 3 with Allied forces attempting to block their removal. In the end 9,400 Japanese were removed.)
Sep 28, 1944 – Canadian 3rd ivision troops fought their way into Calais.
Sep 28, 1944 – German troops launched a strong counterattack at Arnhem to retake the Nijmegen bridge.
BBC Alvar Liddell – 15 September 1940
Battle of Britain
Here is the midnight news and this is Alvar Liddell reading it.
After 10 o’clock 175 german aircraft had been destroyed in today’s raids over this country.
Today was the most costly for the German airforce than any other. In daylight raids between 350-400 aircraft were launched in 2 attacks against London and south-east England. About half of them were shot down.
It was officially announced that by 10 o’clock tonight 175 raiders were known to be destoryed by our fighters and anti-aircraft guns.
Editor’s Note:
While reports like this were common for the BBC to publish, the exact number and results are not always exact. Often numbers were inflated by the propaganda ministry to boost morale and conversely affect the Germans.
WWII Events Today, August 31
Audio Clip: BBC reports on children being evacuated from London (1939-09-01).
Aug 31, 1936 US Neutrality Bill, no shipping to combatant nations. “Schools, not battleships.”
Aug 31, 1938 Churchill suggests alliance with US and USSR over Sudeten.
Aug 31, 1939 The British fleet was mobilized.
Aug 31, 1939 In London, civilian evacuations began. Edward R. Murrow describes the evacuation of school kids from London. (Image Gallery)
Aug 31, 1941 Finnish army regains their border.
Aug 31, 1943 The USS Harmon, first U.S. Navy ship to be named for an African American, commissioned.
Aug 31, 1944 The British 8th Army broke through the German’s “Gothic Line.” The defensive line was drawn across northern Italy.
Winston Churchill “The Few” Speech
House of Commons – August 20, 1940
Almost a year has passed since the war began, and it is natural for us, I think, to pause on our journey at this milestone and survey the dark, wide field. It is also useful to compare the first year of this second war against German aggression with its forerunner a quarter of a century ago. Although this war is in fact only a continuation of the last, very great differences in its character are apparent. In the last war millions of men fought by hurling enormous masses of steel at one another. “Men and shells” was the cry, and prodigious slaughter was the consequence. In this war nothing of this kind has yet appeared. It is a conflict of strategy, of organization, of technical apparatus, of science, mechanics and morale. The British casualties in the first 12 months of the Great War amounted to 365,000. In this war, I am thankful to say, British killed, wounded, prisoners and missing, including civilians, do not exceed 92,000, and of these a large proportion are alive as prisoners of war. Looking more widely around, one may say that throughout all Europe, for one man killed or wounded in the first year perhaps five were killed or wounded in 1914-15.
The slaughter is only a small fraction, but the consequences to the belligerents have been even more deadly. We have seen great countries with powerful armies dashed out of coherent existence in a few weeks. We have seen the-French Republic and the renowned French Army beaten into complete and total submission with less than the casualties which they suffered in any one of half a dozen of the battles of 1914-18. The entire body-it might almost seem at times the soul-of France has succumbed to physical effects incomparably less terrible than those which were sustained with fortitude and undaunted will power 25 years ago. Although up to the present the loss of life has been mercifully diminished, the decisions reached in the course of the struggle are even more profound upon the fate of nations than anything that has ever happened since barbaric times. Moves are made upon the scientific and strategic boards, advantages are gained by mechanical means, as a result of which scores of millions of men become incapable of further resistance, or judge themselves incapable of further resistance, and a fearful game of chess proceeds from check to mate by which the unhappy players seem to be inexorably bound.
There is another more obvious difference from 1914. The whole of the warring nations are engaged, not only soldiers, but the entire population, men, women and children. The fronts are everywhere. The trenches are dug in the towns and streets. Every village is fortified. Every road is barred. The front line runs through the factories. The workmen are soldiers with different weapons but the same courage. These are great and distinctive changes from what many of us saw in the struggle of a quarter of a century ago. There seems to be every reason to believe that this new kind of war is well suited to the genius and the resources of the British nation and the British Empire; and that, once we get properly equipped and properly started, a war of this kind will be more favorable to us than the somber mass slaughters of the Somme and Passchendaele. If it is a case of the whole nation fighting and suffering together, that ought to suit us, because we are the most united of all the nations, because we entered the war upon the national will and with our eyes open, and because we have been nurtured in freedom and individual responsibility and are the products, not of totalitarian uniformity, but of tolerance and variety. If all these qualities are turned, as they are being turned, to the arts of war, we may be able to show the enemy quite a lot of things that they have not thought of yet. Since the Germans drove the Jews out and lowered their technical standards, our science is definitely ahead of theirs. Our geographical position, the command of the sea, and the friendship of the United States enable us to draw resources from the whole world and to manufacture weapons of war of every kind, but especially of the superfine kinds, on a scale hitherto practiced only by Nazi Germany.
Hitler is now sprawled over Europe. Our offensive springs are being slowly compressed, and we must resolutely and methodically prepare ourselves for the campaigns of 1941 and 1942. Two or three years are not a long time, even in our short, precarious lives. They are nothing in the history of the nation, and when we are doing the finest thing in the world, and have the honor to be the sole champion of the liberties of all Europe, we must not grudge these years or weary as we toil and struggle through them. It does not follow that our energies in future years will be exclusively confined to defending ourselves and our possessions. Many opportunities may lie open to amphibious power, and we must be ready to take advantage of them. One of the ways to bring this war to a speedy end is to convince the enemy, not by words, but by deeds, that we have both the will and the means, not only to go on indefinitely, but to strike heavy and unexpected blows. The road to victory may not be so long as we expect. But we have no right to count upon this. Be it long or short, rough or smooth, we mean to reach our journey’s end.
It is our intention to maintain and enforce a strict blockade, not only of Germany, but of Italy, France, and all the other countries that have fallen into the German power. I read in the papers that Herr Hitler has also proclaimed a strict blockade of the British Islands. No one can complain of that. I remember the Kaiser doing it in the last war. What indeed would be a matter of general complaint would be if we were to prolong the agony of all Europe by allowing food to come in to nourish the Nazis and aid their war effort, or to allow food to go in to the subjugated peoples, which certainly would be pillaged off them by their Nazi conquerors.
There have been many proposals, founded on the highest motives, that food should be allowed to pass the blockade for the relief of these populations. I regret that we must refuse these requests. The Nazis declare that they have created a new unified economy in Europe. They have repeatedly stated that they possess ample reserves of food and that they can feed their captive peoples. In a German broadcast oL27th June it was said that while Mr. Hoover’s plan for relieving France, Belgium and Holland deserved commendation, the German forces had already taken the necessary steps. We know that in Norway when the German troops went in, there were food supplies to last for a year. We know that Poland, though not a rich country, usually produces sufficient food for her people. Moreover, the other countries which Herr Hitler has invaded all held considerable stocks when the Germans entered and are themselves, in many cases, very substantial food producers. If all this food is not available now, it can only be because it has been removed to feed the people of Germany and to give them increased rations-for a change-during the last few months. At this season of the year and for some months to come, there is the least chance of scarcity as the harvest has just been gathered in. The only agencies which can create famine in any part of Europe, now and during the coming winter, will be German exactions or German failure to distribute the supplies which they command.
There is another aspect. Many of the most valuable foods are essential to the manufacture of vital war material. Fats are used to make explosives. Potatoes make the alcohol for motor spirit. The plastic materials now so largely used in the construction of aircraft are made of milk. If the Germans use these commodities to help them to bomb our women and children, rather than to feed the populations who produce them, we may be sure that imported foods would go the same way, directly or indirectly, or be employed to relieve the enemy of the responsibilities he has so wantonly assumed. Let Hitler bear his responsibilities to the full, and let the peoples of Europe who groan beneath his yoke aid in every way the coming of the day when that yoke will be broken. Meanwhile, we can and we will arrange in advance for the speedy entry of food into any part of the enslaved area, when this part has been wholly cleared of German forces, and has genuinely regained its freedom. We shall do our best to encourage the building up of reserves of food all over the world, so that there will always be held up before the eyes of the peoples of Europe, including-I say deliberately-the German and Austrian peoples, the certainty that the shattering of the Nazi power will bring to them all immediate food, freedom and peace.
Rather more than a quarter of a year has passed since the new Government came into power in this country. What a cataract of disaster has poured out upon us since then! The trustful Dutch overwhelmed; their beloved and respected Sovereign driven into exile; the peaceful city of Rotterdam the scene of a massacre as hideous and brutal as anything in the Thirty Years’ War; Belgium invaded and beaten down; our own fine Expeditionary Force, which King Leopold called to his rescue, cut off and almost captured, escaping as it seemed only by a miracle and with the loss of all its equipment; our Ally, France, out; Italy in against us; all France in the power of the enemy, all its arsenals and vast masses of military material converted or convertible to the enemy’s use; a puppet Government set up at Vichy which may at any moment be forced to become our foe; the whole western seaboard of Europe from the North Cape to the Spanish frontier in German hands; all the ports, all the airfields on this immense front employed against us as potential springboards of invasion. Moreover, the German air power, numerically so far outstripping ours, has been brought so close to our Island that what we used to dread greatly has come to pass and the hostile bombers not only reach our shores in a few minutes and from many directions, but can be escorted by their fighting aircraft. Why, Sir, if we had been confronted at the beginning of May with such a prospect, it would have seemed incredible that at the end of a period of horror and disaster, or at this point in a period of horror and disaster, we should stand erect, sure of ourselves, masters of our fate and with the conviction of final victory burning unquenchable in our hearts. Few would have believed we could survive; none would have believed that we should today not only feel stronger but should actually be stronger than we have ever been before.
Let us see what has happened on the other side of the scales. The British nation and the British Empire, finding themselves alone, stood undismayed against disaster. No one flinched or wavered; nay, some who formerly thought of peace, now think only of war. Our people are united and resolved, as they have never been before. Death and ruin have become small things compared with the shame of defeat or failure in duty. We cannot tell what lies ahead. It may be that even greater ordeals lie before us. We shall face whatever is coming to us. We are sure of ourselves and of our cause, and that is the supreme fact which has emerged in these months of trial.
Meanwhile, we have not only fortified our hearts but our Island. We have rearmed and rebuilt our armies in a degree which would have been deemed impossible a few months ago. We have ferried across the Atlantic, in the month of July, thanks to our friends over there, an immense mass of munitions of all kinds: cannon, rifles, machine guns, cartridges and shell, all safely landed without the loss of a gun or a round. The output of our own factories, working as they have never worked before, has poured forth to the troops. The whole British Army is at home. More than 2,000,000 determined men have rifles and bayonets in their hands tonight, and three-quarters of them are in regular military formations. We have never had armies like this in our Island in time of war. The whole Island bristles against invaders, from the sea or from the air. As I explained to the House in the middle of June, the stronger our Army at home, the larger must the invading expedition be, and the larger the invading expedition, the less difficult will be the task of the Navy in detecting its assembly and in intercepting and destroying it in passage; and the greater also would be the difficulty of feeding and supplying the invaders if ever they landed, in the teeth of continuous naval and air attack on their communications. All this is classical and venerable doctrine. As in Nelson’s day, the maxim holds, “Our first line of defense is the enemy’s ports.” Now air reconnaissance and photography have brought to an old principle a new and potent aid.
Our Navy is far stronger than it was at the beginning of the war. The great flow of new construction set on foot at the outbreak is now beginning to come in. We hope our friends across the ocean will send us a timely reinforcement to bridge the gap between the peace flotillas of 1939 and the war flotillas of 1941. There is no difficulty in sending such aid. The seas and oceans are open. The U-boats are contained. The magnetic mine is, up to the present time, effectively mastered. The merchant tonnage under the British flag, after a year of unlimited U-boat war, after eight months of intensive mining attack, is larger than when we began. We have, in addition, under our control at least 4,000,000 tons of shipping from the captive countries which has taken refuge here or in the harbors of the Empire. Our stocks of food of all kinds are far more abundant than in the days of peace, and a large and growing program of food production is on foot.
Why do I say all this? Not, assuredly, to boast; not, assuredly, to give the slightest countenance to complacency. The dangers we face are still enormous, but so are our advantages and resources. I recount them because the people have a right to know that there are solid grounds for the confidence which we feel, and that we have good reason to believe ourselves capable, as I said in a very dark hour two months ago, of continuing the war “if necessary alone, if necessary for years.” I say it also because the fact that the British Empire stands invincible, and that Nazidom is still being resisted, will kindle again the spark of hope in the breasts of hundreds of millions of down-trodden or despairing men and women throughout Europe, and far beyond its bounds, and that from these sparks there will presently come cleansing and devouring flame.
The great air battle which has been in progress over this Island for the last few weeks has recently attained a high intensity. It is too soon to attempt to assign limits either to its scale or to its duration. We must certainly expect that greater efforts will be made by the enemy than any he has so far put forth. Hostile air fields are still being developed in France and the Low Countries, and the movement of squadrons and material for attacking us is still proceeding. It is quite plain that Herr Hitler could not admit defeat in his air attack on Great Britain without sustaining most serious injury. If after all his boastings and bloodcurdling threats and lurid accounts trumpeted round the world of the damage he has inflicted, of the vast numbers of our Air Force he has shot down, so he says, with so little loss to himself; if after tales of the panic-stricken British crushed in their holes cursing the plutocratic Parliament which has led them to such a plight-if after all this his whole air onslaught were forced after a while tamely to peter out, the Fuhrer’s reputation for veracity of statement might be seriously impugned. We may be sure, therefore, that he will continue as long as he has the strength to do so, and as long as any preoccupations he may have in respect of the Russian Air Force allow him to do so.
On the other hand, the conditions and course of the fighting have so far been favorable to us. I told the House two months ago that, whereas in France our fighter aircraft were wont to inflict a loss of two or three to one upon the Germans, and in the fighting at Dunkirk, which was a kind of no-man’s-land, a loss of about three or four to one, we expected that in an attack on this Island we should achieve a larger ratio. This has certainly come true. It must also be remembered that all the enemy machines and pilots which are shot down over our Island, or over the seas which surround it, are either destroyed or captured; whereas a considerable proportion of our machines, and also of our pilots, are saved, and soon again in many cases come into action.
A vast and admirable system of salvage, directed by the Ministry of Aircraft Production, ensures the speediest return to the fighting line of damaged machines, and the most provident and speedy use of all the spare parts and material. At the same time the splendid-nay, astounding-increase in the output and repair of British aircraft and engines which Lord Beaverbrook has achieved by a genius of organization and drive, which looks like magic, has given us overflowing reserves of every type of aircraft, and an ever-mounting stream of production both in quantity and quality. The enemy is, of course, far more numerous than we are. But our new production already, as I am advised, largely exceeds his, and the American production is only just beginning to flow in. It is a fact, as I see from my daily returns, that our bomber and fighter strength now, after all this fighting, are larger than they have ever been. We believe that we shall be able to continue the air struggle indefinitely and as long as the enemy pleases, and the longer it continues the more rapid will be our approach, first towards that parity, and then into that superiority, in the air upon which in a large measure the decision of the war depends.
The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and b~ their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day; but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, with deliberate careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power. On no part of the Royal Air Force does the weight of the war fall more heavily than on the daylight bombers, who will play an invaluable part in the case of invasion and whose unflinching zeal it has been necessary in the meanwhile on numerous occasions to restrain.
We are able to verify the results of bombing military targets in Germany, not only by reports which reach us through many sources, but also, of course, by photography. I have no hesitation in saying that this process of bombing the military industries and communications of Germany and the air bases and storage depots from which we are attacked, which process will continue upon an ever-increasing scale until the end of the war, and may in another year attain dimensions hitherto undreamed of, affords one at least of the most certain, if not the shortest, of all the roads to victory. Even if the Nazi legions stood triumphant on the Black Sea, or indeed upon the Caspian, even if Hitler was at the gates of India, it would profit him nothing if at the same time the entire economic and scientific apparatus of German war power lay shattered and pulverized at home.
The fact that the invasion of this Island upon a large scale has become a far more difficult operation with every week that has passed since we saved our Army at Dunkirk, and our very great preponderance of sea power enable us to turn our eyes and to turn our strength increasingly towards the Mediterranean and against that other enemy who, without the slightest provocation, coldly and deliberately, for greed and gain, stabbed France in the back in the moment of her agony, and is now marching against us in Africa. The defection of France has, of course, been deeply damaging to our position in what is called, somewhat oddly, the Middle East. In the defense of Somaliland, for instance, we had counted upon strong French forces attacking the Italians from Jibuti. We had counted also upon the use of the French naval and air bases in the Mediterranean, and particularly upon the North African shore. We had counted upon the French Fleet. Even though metropolitan France was temporarily overrun, there was no reason why the French Navy, substantial parts of the French Army, the French Air Force and the French Empire overseas should not have continued the struggle at our side.
Shielded by overwhelming sea power, possessed of invaluable strategic bases and of ample funds, France might have remained one of the great combatants in the struggle. By so doing, France would have preserved the continuity of her life, and the French Empire might have advanced with the British Empire to the rescue of the independence and integrity of the French Motherland. In our own case, if we had been put in the terrible position of France, a contingency now happily impossible, although, of course, it would have been the duty of all war leaders to fight on here to the end, it would also have been their duty, as I indicated in my speech of 4th June, to provide as far as possible for the Naval security of Canada and our Dominions and to make sure they had the means to carry on the struggle from beyond the oceans. Most of the other countries that have been overrun by Germany for the time being have persevered valiantly and faithfully. The Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Dutch, the Belgians are still in the field, sword in hand, recognized by Great Britain and the United States as the sole representative authorities and lawful Governments of their respective States.
That France alone should lie prostrate at this moment is the crime, not of a great and noble nation, but of what are called “the men of Vichy.” We have profound sympathy with the French people. Our old comradeship with France is not dead. In General de Gaulle and his gallant band, that comradeship takes an effective form. These free Frenchmen have been condemned to death by Vichy, but the day will come, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, when their names will be held in honor, and their names will be graven in stone in the streets and villages of a France restored in a liberated Europe to its full freedom and its ancient fame. But this conviction which I feel of the future cannot affect the immediate problems which confront us in the Mediterranean and in Africa. It had been decided some time before the beginning of the war not to defend the Protectorate of Somaliland. That policy was changed in the early months of the war. When the French gave in, and when our small forces there, a few battalions, a few guns, were attacked by all the Italian troops, nearly two divisions, which had formerly faced the French at Jibuti, it was right to withdraw our detachments, virtually intact, for action elsewhere. Far larger operations no doubt impend in the Middle East theater, and I shall certainly not attempt to discuss or prophesy about their probable course. We have large armies and many means of reinforcing them. We have the complete sea command of the eastern Mediterranean. We intend to do our best to give a good account of ourselves, and to discharge faithfully and resolutely all our obligations and duties in that quarter of the world. More than that I do not think the House would wish me to say at the present time.
A good many people have written to me to ask me to make on this occasion a fuller statement of our war aims, and of the kind of peace we wish to make after the war, than is contained in the very considerable declaration which was made early in the autumn. Since then we have made common cause with Norway, Holland and Belgium. We have recognized the Czech Government of Dr. Benes, and we have told General de Gaulle that our success will carry with it the restoration of France. I do not think it would be wise at this moment, while the battle rages and the war is still perhaps only in its earlier stage, to embark upon elaborate speculations about the future shape which should be given to Europe or the new securities which must be arranged to spare mankind the miseries of a third World War. The ground is not new, it has been frequently traversed and explored, and many ideas are held about it in common by all good men, and all free men. But before we can undertake the task of rebuilding we have not only to be convinced ourselves, but we have to convince all other countries that the Nazi tyranny is going to be finally broken
The right to guide the course of world history is the noblest prize of victory. We are still toiling up the hill; we have not yet reached the crest-line of it; we cannot survey the landscape or even imagine what its condition will be when that longed-for morning comes. The task which lies before us immediately is at once more practical, more simple and more stern. I hope-indeed, I pray-that we shall not be found unworthy of our victory if after toil and tribulation it is granted to us. For the rest, we have to gain the victory. That is our task.
There is, however, one direction in which we can see a little more clearly ahead. We have to think not only for ourselves but for the lasting security of the cause and principles for which we are fighting and of the long future of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Some months ago we came to the conclusion that the interests of the United States and of the British Empire both required that the United States should have facilities for the naval and air defense of the Western Hemisphere against the attack of a Nazi power which might have acquired temporary but lengthy control of a large part of Western Europe and its formidable resources. We had therefore decided spontaneously, and without being asked or offered any inducement, to inform the Government of the United States that we would be glad to place such defense facilities at their disposal by leasing suitable sites in our Transatlantic possessions for their greater security against the unmeasured dangers of the future. The principle of association of interests for common purposes between Great Britain and the United States had developed even before the war. Various agreements had been reached about certain small islands in the Pacific Ocean which had become important as air fueling points. In all this line of thought we found ourselves in very close harmony with the Government of Canada.
Presently we learned that anxiety was also felt in the United States about the air and naval defense of their Atlantic seaboard, and President Roosevelt has recently made it clear that he would like to discuss with us, and with the Dominion of Canada and with Newfoundland, the development of American naval and air facilities in Newfoundland and in the West Indies. There is, of course, no question of any transference of sovereignty-that has never been suggested-or of any action being taken without the consent or against the wishes of the various Colonies concerned; but for our part, His Majesty’s Government are entirely willing to accord defense facilities to the United States on a 99 years’ leasehold basis, and we feel sure that our interests no less than theirs, and the interests of the Colonies themselves and of Canada and Newfoundland, will be served thereby. These are important steps. Undoubtedly this process means that these two great organizations of the English-speaking democracies, the British Empire and the United States, will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general one can stop it. Like the Mississippi, it just keeps rolling alone. Let it roll. Let it roll on full flood, view the process with any misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished; no one can stop it. Like the Mississippi, it just keeps rolling alone. Let it roll. Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands and better days.
WWII Events Today, July 25
Audio: Mussolini Resigns (1943-07-25)
Jul 25, 1934 – Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was shot and killed by Nazis.
Jul 25, 1937 – Japanese 20th Division clashed with Chinese troops at the city of Langfang, China, major rail junction between Beijing and Tianjin. This was the first major battle of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Jul 25, 1940 – US embargos scrap metal and petroleum to Japan.
Jul 25, 1940 – The German Reich Economic Minister outlined the New Order for Europe, citing use of forced labor from occupied nations.
Jul 25, 1941 – US and UK freeze Japanese assets.
Jul 25, 1943 – The Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, steps down as head of the armed forces and the government following a coup.
Jul 25, 1943 – USS Harmon (DE-678) was launched at Bethlehem Steel’s Fore River shipyard, Quincy, MA. She was the first U.S. Navy ship to be named for an African-American. The ship’s namesake, Mess Attendant First Class Leonard Roy Harmon, also posthumously received the Navy Cross for heroism during the Battle of Guadalcanal.
Jul 25, 1944 – Allied forces begin the breakthrough of German lines in Normandy.
Today in WWII History – The Battle of Midway
World War II History for June 4
Audio: MBS News – The Battle of Midway 06.04.1942
Jun 04, 1940 “We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. War’s are not won by evacuations.” – Winston Churchill – To Parliament
Jun 04, 1942 Battle of Midway
Jun 04, 1942 Battle of Midway – PBYs attack Occupation Force northwest of Midway; one PBY torpedoes fleet tanker Akebono Maru.
Jun 04, 1942 Battle of Midway – Japanese carrier fleet – Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu – sends its aircraft against defensive installations on Midway. Although defending USMC F2A’s and F4F’s suffer disastrous losses, damage to facilities on Midway is comparatively slight.
Jun 04, 1942 Battle of Midway – Japanese carrier fighters and antiaircraft fire annihilates the USMC SBD’s and SB2U’s, Navy’s new TBF’s, and USAAF torpedo-carrying B-26’s sent from Midway Island to attack the Japanese carriers. USAAF B-17’s likewise bomb the Japanese carrier force without success.
Jun 04, 1942 Battle of Midway – Concentrating on the destruction of Midway air forces, the Japanese carriers were caught unprepared for the U.S. carrier air attack.
Jun 04, 1942 Battle of Midway – Torpedo bombers (TBD’s) from American carrier striking force Hornet (CV-8), Enterprise (CV-6), and Yorktown (CV-5) attack the enemy carriers. Although mauled by the defending combat air patrol and antiaircraft fire, they draw off the former and leave the skies open for dive bombers (SBD’s) from Enterprise and Yorktown.
Jun 04, 1942 Battle of Midway – SBD’s from Enterprise sink carrier Kaga and bomb Akagi (flagship) SBD’s; SBD’s from Yorktown bomb and sink carrier Soryu.
Jun 04, 1942 Battle of Midway – Submarine Nautilus (SS-168) torpedoes carrier Kaga but her “fish” do not explode.
Jun 04, 1942 Battle of Midway – Hiryu escapes destruction that morning, launches dive bombers that temporarily disable Yorktown. Fletcher transfers flag to Astoria (CA-34) .
Jun 04, 1942 Battle of Midway – A second Japanese counter attack 2 hours later, damages Yorktown with bombs and torpedoes so severely that she was abandoned.
Jun 04, 1942 Battle of Midway – In the late afternoon, SBD’s from Enterprise, including Yorktown planes, hit the Japanese Force again, striking Hiryu, the fourth and last of the Japanese carriers.
Jun 04, 1942 Battle of Midway – TF-16 (Spruance) released at dusk.
Jun 04, 1942 Battle of Midway – With control of the air irretrievably lost, the Japanese are compelled to abandon Midway invasion plans and the invasion force retires westward.
Jun 04, 1942 – Jun 05, 1942 Battle of Midway – Overnight – Three Japanese fleets, with ten battleships, including Yamato, the world’s largest battleship, two escort carriers, cruisers, and destroyers race to engage the U.S. carriers.
Jun 04, 1942 – Jun 05, 1942 Battle of Midway – Overnight – The U.S. fleet withdraws till midnight, then returns to the protective air cover of Midway.
Jun 04, 1942 – Jun 05, 1942 Battle of Midway – Overnight – Finding nothing, the Japanese battle fleets also withdraws.
Jun 04, 1942 Battle of Midway – 4:1 win in favor of US
May 26, 1940 – Jun 04, 1940
Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Allied troops at Dunkirk began. In one of the most dramatic withdrawals in military history, a hastily assembled fleet of 861 ships and boats began pulling what was left of the trapped Allied armies off the beaches of Dunkirk. In a week, 224,585 British and 112,546 French and Belgians were taken to safety. About 40,000 Frenchmen were left behind. A total of 231 of the rescue vessels were sunk, mostly by the Luftwaffe, but German air strikes were restricted by bad weather and the tenacious fighters of the RAF. For all the glory that accompanied the gallant retreat, Dunkirk represented the nadir of the war for Britain. (More…)
May 26, 1940
Hitler after a critical two-day delay, ordered German troops to attack Dunkirk. The first units could not advance until late in the day, but the main force could not be organized until the following day. “By then,” said General Guderain, “it was too late to achieve a great victory.”
Today in WWII History
World War II History for May 7
Audio: 1942-05-07 – Gen Wainwright Broadcasts Surrender Of Corregidor
May 07, 1940 – May 10, 1940 – British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigns in disgrace. He will be replaced by Winston Churchill on 05.10.
May 07, 1940 – Pacific fleet ordered to Pearl Harbor as a warning to Japan
May 07, 1942 – Japanese carriers attack US oilier Neosho and destroyer Sims thinking they are a carrier and cruiser.
May 07, 1942 – US carriers attack escort carrier Shoho thinking it was the main force.
May 07, 1942 – Australian cruiser force sent ahead to block Japanese invasion fleet.
May 07, 1942 – Both sides decide against a night battle and prepare for dawn air attacks.
May 07, 1945 – Germany surrenders unconditionally to General Eisenhower at Rheims, France, and to the Soviets in Berlin. President Truman pronounces the following day, May 8, V-E Day. The U.S., Russia, England, and France agree to split occupied Germany into eastern and western halves.
See more WWII timeline events at http://wwarii.com/db/timeline.php
Today in WWII History
World War II History for April 14
Audio Clip: CBS Reports on FDR’s Death Apr 13, 1945
Apr 14, 1931 – Spanish Republic proclaimed; recognized by US and western nations. (More…)
Apr 14, 1940 – 350 British Royal Marines landed at Namsos, Norway to prepare for the arrival of the 146th Territorial Brigade. These Marines were the first British forces to land in Norway. (More…)
Apr 14, 1941 – German troops reached the Aliakmon River in Greece. (More…)
Apr 14, 1941 – Tobruk’s defenders beat back a determined assault by the German 5th Light Div on the encircled city. (More…)
Apr 14, 1941 – Yugoslavia sues for peace, seeking to negotiate a surrender with Germany. (More…)
Apr 14, 1942 – Adm Nimitz assigned to South Pacific. Sends Yorktown (CV-5, RAdm Fletcher) to Tongatabu, south of Samoa, to replenish for anticipated defense of New Guinea and Solomon Islands at the end of the month. (More…)
Apr 14, 1942 – Destroyer USS Roper sinks U-85, the 1st submarine kill by a US ship. (More…)
Apr 14, 1942 – Marshal Petain became Vichy French chief of state, and Pierre Laval became chief of government. Laval thus assumed actual direction of the Vichy administration, and the aging Petain remained to perform an essentially ceremonial function. (More…)
Apr 14, 1942 – British forces began destroying the Yenangyaung oil fields in Burma as the Japanese pressed their drive northward. (More…)
Today in WWII History
World War II History for March 19
Audio Clip: March 19, 1944 edition of CBS World News Today
19 Mar 1940 – The French government of Daladier fell.
19 Mar 1940 – 50 RAF bombers strike Hornum, the German seaplane base on the island of Sylt, but inflict no significant damage.
19 Mar 1941 – Admiral Raeder met with the Japanese ambassador in Berlin to discuss his desire for Japan to attack Singapore.
19 Mar 1945 – About 800 people were killed as Japanese kamikaze planes attacked the U.S. carrier Franklin off Japan.
19 Mar 1945 – Adolf Hitler issued his “Nero Decree” which ordered the destruction of German facilities that could fall into Allied hands as German forces were retreating.
19 Mar 1945 – General Fromm executed for plot against Hitler
On this day, the commander of the German Home Army, Gen. Friedrich Fromm, is shot by a firing squad for his part in the July plot to assassinate the Fuhrer, as portrayed in the movie Valkyrie. The fact that Fromm’s participation was half-hearted did not save him.
By 1945, many high-ranking German officials had made up their minds that Hitler must die. He was leading Germany in a suicidal war on two fronts, and they believed that assassination was the only way to stop him. According to the plan, coup d’etat would follow the assassination, and a new government in Berlin would save Germany from complete destruction at the hands of the Allies. All did not go according to plan, however. Col. Claus von Stauffenberg was given the task of planting a bomb during a conference that was to be held at Hitler’s holiday retreat, Berchtesgaden (but was later moved to Hitler’s headquarters at Rastenburg). Stauffenberg was chief of staff to Gen. Friedrich Fromm. Fromm, chief of the Home Army (composed of reservists who remained behind the front lines to preserve order at home), was inclined to the conspirators’ plot, but agreed to cooperate actively in the coup only if the assassination was successful.
On the night of July 20, Stauffenberg planted an explosive-filled briefcase under a table in the conference room at Rastenburg. Hitler was studying a map of the Eastern Front as Colonel Heinz Brandt, trying to get a better look at the map, moved the briefcase out of place, farther away from where the Fuhrer was standing. At 12:42 p.m. the bomb went off. When the smoke cleared, Hitler was wounded, charred, and even suffered the temporary paralysis of one arm-but was very much alive.
Meanwhile, Stauffenberg had made his way to Berlin to meet with his co-conspirators to carry out Operation Valkyrie, the overthrow of the central government. Once in the capital, General Fromm, who had been informed by phone that Hitler was wounded but still alive, ordered Stauffenberg and his men arrested, but Fromm was located and locked in an office by Nazi police. Stauffenberg and Gen. Friedrich Olbricht began issuing orders for the commandeering of various government buildings. Then the news came through from Herman Goering that Hitler was alive. Fromm, released from confinement by officers still loyal to Hitler, and anxious to have his own association with the conspirators covered up quickly, ordered the conspirators, including two Stauffenberg aides, shot for high treason that same day. (Gen. Ludwig Beck, one of the conspiracy leaders and an older man, was allowed the “dignity” of committing suicide.)
Fromm’s last-ditch effort to distance himself from the plot failed. Within the next few days, on order of Heinrich Himmler, who was now the new head of the Home Army, Fromm was arrested. In February 1945, he was tried before the People’s Court and denigrated for his cowardice in refusing to stand up to the plotters. But because he went so far as to execute Stauffenberg and his partners on the night of July 20, he was spared the worst punishment afforded convicted conspirators-strangulation on a meat hook. He was shot by a firing squad on March 19.[1]
[1] “General Fromm executed for plot against Hitler,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=6747 (accessed Mar 19, 2009).
Today in WWII History
World War II History for March 17
St. Patricks Day
Audio Clip: CBS World News Today (03.14.1943)
17 Mar 1940 – Dr. Fritz Todt was appointed Germany’s Minister for Weapons and Munitions.
17 Mar 1941 – The US Senate begins debating the Lend-Lease bill.
17 Mar 1942 – United States assumes strategic defense of the Pacific Ocean.
17 Mar 1942 – MacArthur arrives Australia by B-17 during Japanese attack and became the Supreme Commander of the United Nations forces in the Southwestern Pacific.
17 Mar 1943 – British forces capture Medenine in Tunisia, but US and British forces in other North African fronts begin falling back in the face of heavy German armor attacks. The Mark IV tanks prove effective for the Germans since their introduction.
17 Mar 1944 – US forces bomb Vienna.
Today in WWII History
World War II History for March 12
Audio Clip: Below you will find President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first Fireside Chat from 1933 “On the Bank Crisis.” Included is a link to the full text and a video clip.
12 Mar 1933 – President Paul von Hindenburg dropped the flag of the German Republic and ordered that the swastika and empire banner be flown side by side.
12 Mar 1933 – Outside Berlin, the first concentration camp opened at Oranienburg.
12 Mar 1933 – FDR gives first fireside chat “On the Bank Crisis.”
Full text of the On the Bank Crisis speech from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
Video clip of Roosevelt speech at History.com.
On this day in 1933, eight days after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gives his first national radio address or “fireside chat,” broadcast directly from the White House.
Roosevelt began that first address simply: “I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking.” He went on to explain his recent decision to close the nation’s banks in order to stop a surge in mass withdrawals by panicked investors worried about possible bank failures. The banks would be reopening the next day, Roosevelt said, and he thanked the public for their “fortitude and good temper” during the “banking holiday.”
At the time, the U.S. was at the lowest point of the Great Depression, with between 25 and 33 percent of the work force unemployed. The nation was worried, and Roosevelt’s address was designed to ease fears and to inspire confidence in his leadership.
Roosevelt went on to deliver 30 more of these broadcasts between March 1933 and June 1944. They reached an astonishing number of American households, 90 percent of which owned a radio at the time.
Journalist Robert Trout coined the phrase “fireside chat” to describe Roosevelt’s radio addresses, invoking an image of the president sitting by a fire in a living room, speaking earnestly to the American people about his hopes and dreams for the nation. In fact, Roosevelt took great care to make sure each address was accessible and understandable to ordinary Americans, regardless of their level of education. He used simple vocabulary and relied on folksy anecdotes or analogies to explain the often complex issues facing the country.
Over the course of his historic 12-year presidency, Roosevelt used the chats to build popular support for his groundbreaking New Deal policies, in the face of stiff opposition from big business and other groups. After World War II began, he used them to explain his administration’s wartime policies to the American people. The success of Roosevelt’s chats was evident not only in his three re-elections, but also in the millions of letters that flooded the White House. Farmers, business owners, men, women, rich, poor-most of them expressed the feeling that the president had entered their home and spoken directly to them. In an era when presidents had previously communicated with their citizens almost exclusively through spokespeople and journalists, it was an unprecedented step.[2]
12 Mar 1938 – The “Anschluss” took place as German troops entered Austria.
The German term Anschluss, meaning “unification” or “political union,” is most frequently used in reference to the Nazis’ 1938 annexation of Austria into Greater Germany. When the Nazis entered Austria to enforce the Anschluss, they encountered no military opposition and quickly took control of the newly created German province. The US, USSR, and UK signed a declaration proclaiming the Anschluss null and void in 1943.
Union with Germany had been a dream of Austrian Social Democrats since 1919. The rise of Adolf Hitler and his authoritarian rule made such a proposition less attractive, though, which was an ironic twist, since a union between the two nations was also a dream of Hitler’s, a native Austrian. Despite the fact that Hitler did not have the full approval of Austrian Social Democrats, the rise of a pro-Nazi right-wing party within Austria in the mid-1930s paved the way for Hitler to make his move. In 1938, Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, bullied by Hitler during a meeting at Hitler’s retreat home in Berchtesgaden, agreed to a greater Nazi presence within Austria. He appointed a Nazi minister of police and announced an amnesty for all Nazi prisoners. Schuschnigg hoped that agreeing to Hitler’s demands would prevent a German invasion. But Hitler insisted on greater German influence on the internal affairs of Austria-even placing German army troops within Austria- and Schuschnigg repudiated the agreement signed at Berchtesgaden, demanding a plebiscite on the question. Through the machinations of Hitler and his devotees within Austria, the plebiscite was canceled, and Schuschnigg resigned.
The Austrian president, Wilhelm Miklas, refused to appoint a pro-Nazi chancellor in Schuschnigg’s stead. German foreign minister Hermann Goering then faked a crisis by engineering a “plea” for German assistance from inside the Austrian government (really from a German agent). On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria. Hitler announced his Anschluss, and a plebiscite was finally held on April 10. Whether the plebiscite was rigged or the resulting vote simply a testament to Austrian terror at Hitler’s determination, the Fuhrer garnered a whopping 99.7 percent approval for the union of Germany and Austria.
Austria was now a nameless entity absorbed by Germany. It was not long before the Nazis soon began their typical ruthless policy of persecuting political dissidents and, of course, all Jewish citizens.[1]
12 Mar 1940 – During World War II, Finland and the Soviet Union concluded an armistice.
12 Mar 1942 – US Army lands on New Caledonia (French) to establish base at Noumea.
12 Mar 1942 – Fall of the East Indies (Netherlands) to the Japanese.
[1]”Hitler announces an Anschluss with Austria,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=6740 (accessed Mar 12, 2009).
[2]”FDR gives first fireside chat,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=4829 (accessed Mar 12, 2009).
Audio Clip: 02.19.1945 – Live Coverage Of U.S. Marines Landing On Iwo Jima
“The battle of Iwo Island has been won. The United States Marines by their individual and collective courage have conquered a base which is as necessary to us in our continuing forward movement toward final victory as it was vital to the enemy in staving off ultimate defeat.
By their victory, the 3rd, 4th and 5th Marine Divisions and other units of the Fifth Amphibious Corps have made an accounting to their country which only history will be able to value fully. Among the Americans who served on Iwo Island, uncommon valor was a common virtue.”
–Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
Members of the Marine Corps Dog platoon head to the front lines – great assets in this type of operation due to their ability to find snipers and as speedy messengers
On 02.19.1945 at 0905 hrs, the first of 30,000 US Marines land on Iwo Jima.
Battle for Iwo Jima Photo Gallery
Audio Clip: Arthur Prim Reports the First Strikes on Iwo Jima
Amphibious Tractors landing on Iwo Jima Feb 1945 Iwo Jima, which means Sulfur Island, was strategically important as an air base for fighter escorts supporting long-range bombing missions against mainland Japan. Because of the distance between mainland Japan and U.S. bases in the Mariana Islands, the capture of Iwo Jima would provide an emergency landing strip for crippled B-29s returning from bombing runs. The seizure of Iwo would allow for sea and air blockades, the ability to conduct intensive air bombardment and to destroy the enemy’s air and naval capabilities.
Photo & Text source: http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/battleiwojima.htm
Today in WWII History
World War II History for February 19
Audio Clip: 02.18.1943 Soong Mei-Ling Appeals to Congress to Aid Chinese Nationalists
02.19.1932 – The Sino-Japanese dispute was referred to the Assembly by the League of Nations Council.
02.19.1937 – An attempt was made in Addis Ababa to assassinate the Italian viceroy of Ethiopia, General Rodolfo Graziani. Though he was only wounded, the Italians launched large scale reprisals vowing to keep the Ethiopians in line.
02.19.1938 – The British Cabinet rejects Foreign Secretary Eden’s proposal to have Italian troops withdraw from Spain. Their hope was misplaced, believing that Italy would check any further advances by Germany (they had already occupied Austria).
02.19.1938 – Nazis were permitted to join the ruling party of Austria, the Fatherland Front.
02.19.1939 – A trade agreement was signed between the Soviet Union and Poland in an attempt to strengthen Poland as a buffer against Germany.
02.19.1940 – Ambassador Hull extends the US moral embargo to the Soviet Union.
02.19.1941 – The 8th Australian Division lands in Singapore.
02.19.1942 – Executive Order 9066 is signed by President Roosevelt, authorizing the transfer of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans living in coastal Pacific areas to concentration camps in various inland states (and including inland areas of California). The interned Japanese-Americans lose an estimated 400 million dollars in property, as their homes and possessions are taken from them.
02.19.1942 – Japanese air raids on Darwin, Australia. Considered the “Pearl Harbor of Australia”, they largest attacks ever mounted by a foreign power against Australia. The raids were the first of almost 100 air raids against Australia during 1942-43.
02.19.1942 – Battle of Badoeng Strait begins; ABDA force attacks retiring Japanese Bali occupation force with 1 Dutch DD sunk, 2 CL and 1 DD damaged.
02.19.1942 – Mandalay came under aerial attack for the first time. Defending forces are ordered back from the Bilin River.
02.19.1942 – Japanese troops landed on the Portuguese island of Timor in the East Indies. Tokyo says the action is taken in self-defense and that its forces would withdraw when the area was secure. The neutral Portuguese accept the occupation.
02.19.1942 – Canada’s Parliament vote to begin military conscription.
02.19.1942 – The Supreme Court of Vichy France begin trials in Riom to establish responsibility for the defeat in 1940.
02.19.1943 – Allied defenses in Tunisia are restructured in the face of a deteriorating position. The Axis forces begin frontal assaults on American positions in the Kasserine Pass.
02.19.1943 – German Army Group South opens a counteroffensive toward Kharkov and Belgorod.
02.19.1944 – US forces land on Engebi Island, Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
02.19.1945 – Units of the US 8th Div begin encircling German troops trapped within the Siegfried Line.
02.19.1945 – Himmler makes his first peace overtures to Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte of the Red Cross.
02.19.1945 US troops land on Samar and Capul Islands in the Philippines.
02.19.1945 (0905 hrs) – The first of 30,000 US Marines land on Iwo Jima. /via World War II Database
Today in WWII History
World War II History for January 18
Podcast: 01.18.1940 – CBS Today In Europe
1942 – Russian forces under General Timoshenko launched a fresh offensive against the Germans on the central front. The southern front was marked by strong gains by the Red Army in the Ukraine.
1942 – Burma’s Premier U Saw was “detained” by the British for allegedly being in communication with the Japanese.
1942 – Germany, Italy, and Japan sign a military convention in Berlin, laying down “guidelines for common operations against the common enemies.”
1943 – U.S. commercial bakers stopped selling sliced bread. Only whole loaves were sold during the ban until the end of World War II.
1944 – Soviet forces began to arrive at Leningrad, effectively ending the three-year Siege of Leningrad, but fighting would continue for more than another week before German troops withdrew from the area. (from http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=125)
Sink the Bismarck: 1941-05-31 BBC First Sea Lord A V Alexander On Sinking Of Bismarck
This is a short clip from the BBC about the Sinking of the Bismarck (31 May 1941).
The story spawned its own 1960 feature film Sink the Bismarck!
Audio Clip: BBC Charles Gardner Reports On Convoy Attack & Dogfight (14 July 1940)
Today in WWII History
World War II History for July 13
13 July 1941 – Britain and the Soviet Union signed a mutual aid pact, that provided the means for Britain to send war material to the Soviet Union.
13 July 1944 – Soviet General Konev establishes a new western border for the USSR
On this day in 1944, General Ivan Konev, one of the Soviet Union’s most outstanding officers, pursues an offensive against 40,000 German soldiers to capture the East Galician city of Lvov. When the battle was over, 30,000 Germans were dead, and the USSR had a new western border.
The Red Army’s “Operation Bagration” was the westward thrust from June to August 1944, which included the First and Second Ukrainian Fronts, was moving swiftly across Ukraine and Poland.
Konev consults with 38th Army Commander Moskalenko Joseph Stalin had declared that he wanted the western border of the Soviet Union to be pushed back across the River Bug, territory that was part of prewar Poland, but was now occupied German territory. General Konev, who had led the first offensive against the Germans when they invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 (and who had created the “Konev ambush,” a strategy by which troops retreat from the center of a battle area, only to allow troops from the flanks to close into the breach, used to defeat German General Heinz Guderian’s tank offensive against Moscow), led the Red Army’s new attack westward. He encircled 40,000 German soldiers in the town of Brody. After seven days, 30,000 German soldiers were dead, and Lvov was Soviet-occupied territory and would remain a part of the new postwar Soviet map.
General Konev would go on to cross Poland into Germany and, meeting up with U.S. and other Soviet forces, enter Berlin to see the final downfall of the Axis power.
“Soviet General Konev establishes a new western border for the USSR,” History.com, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=6518 (accessed Jul 13, 2009).
D-Day Audio History
65 years ago today …
President Franklin D. Roosevelt gives his Fireside Chat just prior to D-Day 1944-06-05 (14:11m)
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
D-Day Audio History
65 years ago today …
1944-06-05 Eisenhowers Pre D-Day Announcement to Troops (1:42s)
General Eisenhower and Field Marshall Montgomery
D-Day Audio History
65 years ago today …
Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery’s Address on Eve of D-Day 1944-06-05 (BBC – 0:53s)
Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery
Winston Churchill – We Shall Never Surrender
4 June 1940
Audio of the Speech
Text of the Speech (Read the full text)
“[…] I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
-Winston Churchill
Today in WWII History
Audio Clip: It’s getting close to the WWII’s 65th D-Day Anniversary. Hear from BBC Robin Duff onboard a sealed ship just prior to D-Day (1944-06-03).
World War II History for June 3
3 JUN 1938 – The German Reich voted to confiscate so-called “degenerate art.”
3 JUN 1940 – Paris is bombed by the Luftwaffe for the first time, killing 254 people. Most of the people killed were civilians and school children.
Paris Bombed by Luftwaffe 3 JUN 1940 – Holocaust: Franz Rademacher proposes the Madagascar Plan.
3 JUN 1940 – In France, the allied evacuation of Dunkirk ended.
Today in WWII History
Audio Clip: Working up to D-Day we bring you a clip from the BBC with Resistance Messages – 05 Jun 1944
World War II History for June 1
1 JUN 1942 – News of death camp killings became public for first time. The report came from the Polish Socialist newspaper known as Liberty Brigade. The paper stated that tens of thousands of Jews had been gassed at the death camp Chelmno.
1 JUN 1943 – During World War II, Germans shot down a civilian flight from Lisbon to London.
On June 1, 1943 actor Leslie Howard, on a BOAC flight from England to Portugal, was killed when Nazi war planes shot his plane out of the sky over the Bay of Biscay killing all aboard. Enlisted by the British government, Howard, who will forever be known as Ashley Wilkes in the movie Gone With the Wind, had been evangelizing the Allied cause to Portuguese and Spanish audiences. Rumors persist that the Germans believed Winston Churchill on board and so attacked the pane. Evidence points to the contrary, and that Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels ordered the attack thinking Howard was a dangerous propagandist and a threat to the German Reich. Read about the monument being erected in Spain. View a clip from Gone with the Wind. [1]
Actor Leslie Howard 1 JUN 1944 – The French resistance was warned by a coded message from the British that the D-Day invasion was imminent.
[1] Farewell Ashley, Victory Theater: Hollywood And World War II http://hollywoodatwar.blogspot.com/2009/05/farewell-ashley.html
Today in WWII History
Audio Clip: For this memorial day weekend we bring you a couple clips. The first clip is a news report from 1941 about the sinking of the HMS Hood.
World War II History for May 22
22 May 1939 – Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini signed a military alliance between Germany and Italy known as the “Pact of Steel.”
22 May 1944 – Operation Chattanooga Choo-Choo began.
Operation Chattanooga Choo-Choo was an allied offensive by fighter-bombers of the British 2nd Tactical Air Force and US 9th Air force (21-28 May, 1944) against German locomotives and rolling stock in northern Europe. The object of the the offensive was to reduce the quantities of such equipment available to the Germans as a means of reinforcing their armies in north-west France once Operation ‘Overlord’ had been launched.
Today in WWII History
Audio Clips: Today we bring you a double-play!
Clip #2: is a BBC broadcast marking the fall of Monte Cassino to the allies.
World War II History for May 18
18 May 1942 – New York ended night baseball games for the duration of World War II.
18 May 1943 – Hitler gives the order for Operation Alaric
On this day in 1943, Adolf Hitler launches Operation Alaric, the German occupation of Italy in the event its Axis partner either surrendered or switched its allegiance.
This operation was considered so top secret that Hitler refused to issue a written order. Instead, he communicated verbally his desire that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel should assemble and ultimately command 11 divisions for the occupation of Italy to prevent an Allied foothold in the peninsula.[1]
18 May 1944 – Monte Cassino, Europe’s oldest Monastic house, was finally captured by the Allies in Italy.
On this day in 1944, the Polish Corps, part of a multinational Allied Eighth Army offensive in southern Italy, finally pushes into Monte Cassino as the battle to break German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring’s defensive Gustav Line nears its end.
The Allied push northward to Rome began in January with the landing of 50,000 seaborne troops at Anzio, 33 miles south of the Italian capital. Despite having met very little resistance, the Allies chose to consolidate their position rather than immediately battle north to Rome. Consequently, German forces under the command of Field Marshal Kesselring were able to create a defensive line that cut across the center of the peninsula. General Wladyslaw Anders, leader of the Polish troops who would raise their flag over the ruins of the famous Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, commenting on the cost of the battle, said, “Corpses of German and Polish soldiers, sometimes entangled in a deathly embrace, lay everywhere, and the air was full of the stench of rotting bodies.”[1]
[1] “Hitler gives the order for Operation Alaric,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=6457 (accessed May 18, 2009).
Today in WWII History
Audio Clip: BBC – Surrender of German forces in North Africa 13 May 1943
World War II History for May 12
12 May 1940 – The Nazi conquest of France began with the German army crossing Muese River.
12 May 1942 – The Soviet Army launched its first major offensive of World War II and took Kharkov in the eastern Ukraine from the German army.
12 May 1943 – The Axis forces in North Africa surrendered during World War II.
Today in WWII History
Audio Clip: Victory in Europe -VE- Day – NBC Special Broadcast (56min)
World War II History for May 8
8 May 1943 – The Germans suppressed a revolt by Polish Jews and destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto.
8 May 1945 – U.S. President Harry Truman announced that World War II had ended in Europe. He warned that victory “is but half won.”
Victory in Europe
On this day in 1945, both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine.
The eighth of May spelled the day when German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms: In Prague, Germans surrendered to their Soviet antagonists, after the latter had lost more than 8,000 soldiers, and the Germans considerably more; in Copenhagen and Oslo; at Karlshorst, near Berlin; in northern Latvia; on the Channel Island of Sark–the German surrender was realized in a final cease-fire. More surrender documents were signed in Berlin and in eastern Germany.
The main concern of many German soldiers was to elude the grasp of Soviet forces, to keep from being taken prisoner. About 1 million Germans attempted a mass exodus to the West when the fighting in Czechoslovakia ended, but were stopped by the Russians and taken captive. The Russians took approximately 2 million prisoners in the period just before and after the German surrender.
Meanwhile, more than 13,000 British POWs were released and sent back to Great Britain.
Pockets of German-Soviet confrontation would continue into the next day. On May 9, the Soviets would lose 600 more soldiers in Silesia before the Germans finally surrendered. Consequently, V-E Day was not celebrated until the ninth in Moscow, with a radio broadcast salute from Stalin himself: “The age-long struggle of the Slav nations…has ended in victory. Your courage has defeated the Nazis. The war is over.”[1]
[1] “Victory in Europe,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=54192 (accessed May 8, 2009).
Today in WWII History
Audio Clip: CBC Reports Victory in Tunis 07-May-1943
World War II History for May 6
6 May 1941 – Joseph Stalin assumed the Soviet premiership.
6 May 1941 – Bob Hope gave his first USO show at California’s March Field.
6 May 1942 – During World War II, the Japanese seized control of the Philippines. About 15,000 Americans and Filipinos on Corregidor surrendered to the Japanese.
6 May 1945 – Axis Sally made her final propaganda broadcast to Allied troops.
Today in WWII History
Audio Clip: CBS World News Today from 18 April 1943.
World War II History for April 23
23 Apr 1942 – German bombers attacked, nicknamed the “Baedeker Raids,” Exeter and later Bath, Norwick, York, and other “medieval-city centres.” Almost 1,000 English civilians were killed.
On March 28 of the same year, 234 British bombers struck the German port of Lubeck, an industrial town of only “moderate importance.” The attack was ordered (according to Sir Arthur Harris, head of British Bomber Command) as more of a morale booster for British flyers than anything else, but the destruction wreaked on Lubeck was significant: Two thousand buildings were totaled, 312 German civilians were killed, and 15,000 Germans were left homeless.
As an act of reprisal, the Germans attacked cathedral cities of great historical significance. The 15th-century Guildhall, in York, as an example, was destroyed. The Germans called their air attacks “Baedeker Raids,” named for the German publishing company famous for guidebooks popular with tourists. The Luftwaffe vowed to bomb every building in Britain that the Baedeker guide had awarded “three stars.”[1]
23 Apr *1942* – In Texas, Kenedy Alien Detention Camp began receiving prisoners. It housed more than 3,500 Japanese, German and other foreign nationals during WWII.
[1] “Germans begin “Baedeker Raids” on England,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=6430 (accessed Apr 23, 2009).
President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech delivered December 8, 1941.
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives:
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941- a date which will live in infamy- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.
Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.
Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.
As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.
But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounding determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
Today in WWII History
Audio Clip: News clip of the End of the Russo Finnish War from 13 April 1940.
World War II History for April 14
14 Apr 1941 – Rommel attacks Tobruk.[1]
14 Apr 1945 – The U.S. Fifth Army joined the British in the assault on the German occupiers of Italy.
[1] http://hollywoodatwar.blogspot.com/
Today in WWII History
Audio Clip: CBS World News Today from 11 April 1943
World War II History for April 10
10 Apr 1932 – Paul von Hindenburg was elected president of Germany with 19 million votes. Adolf Hitler came in second with 13 million votes.
10 Apr 1938 – Germany annexed Austria. 99.75 percent of Austrians had voted in a referundum to merge with Germany.
10 Apr 1941 – In World War II, U.S. troops occupied Greenland to prevent Nazi infiltration.
10 Apr 1941 – U.S. troops occupied Greenland to prevent Nazi infiltration.
10 Apr 1944 – The German merchant ship Barenfels was sunk by a British midget submarine in Bergen harbor in Norway.
10 Apr 1945 – German Me 262 jet fighters shot down ten U.S. bombers near Berlin.
Today in WWII History
Audio Clip: CBS World News Today for 5 April 1945
World War II History for April 6
6 Apr 1938 – The United States recognized the German conquest of Austria.
6 Apr 1941 – German forces invaded Greece and Yugoslavia.
Today in WWII History
Audio Clip: CBS World News Today on 28 March 1943.
World War II History for March 27
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1933 – About 55,000 people staged a protest against Hitler in New York City.
1941 – Tokeo Yoshikawa arrived in Oahu, HI, and began spying for Japan on the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor.
1942 – The British raided the Nazi submarine base at St. Nazaire, France.
1943 – North Pacific Battle of the Komandorski Islands. It was the last US Naval battle without air cover. Outcome: a wash. [1]
1944 – One-thousand Jews left Drancy, France, for the Auschwitz concentration camp.
1944 – Thousands of Jews were murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania.
[1] http://hollywoodatwar.blogspot.com/
Today in WWII History
Don’t miss our Contest for a brand new copy of World War II 365 Days!
World War II History for March 23
23 Mar 1933 – The German Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act. The act effectively granted Adolf Hitler dictatorial legislative powers.
23 Mar 1936 – Italy, Austria & Hungary signed the Pact of Rome.
23 Mar 1942 – The Japanese occupy the Anadaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.
23 Mar 1942 – During World War II, the U.S. government began evacuating Japanese-Americans from West Coast homes to detention centers.
Today in WWII History
World War II History for March 19
Audio Clip: March 19, 1944 edition of CBS World News Today
1940 – The French government of Daladier fell.
1945 – About 800 people were killed as Japanese kamikaze planes attacked the U.S. carrier Franklin off Japan.
1945 – Adolf Hitler issued his “Nero Decree” which ordered the destruction of German facilities that could fall into Allied hands as German forces were retreating.
1945 – General Fromm executed for plot against Hitler
On this day, the commander of the German Home Army, Gen. Friedrich Fromm, is shot by a firing squad for his part in the July plot to assassinate the Fuhrer, as portrayed in the movie Valkyrie. The fact that Fromm’s participation was half-hearted did not save him.
By 1945, many high-ranking German officials had made up their minds that Hitler must die. He was leading Germany in a suicidal war on two fronts, and they believed that assassination was the only way to stop him. According to the plan, coup d’etat would follow the assassination, and a new government in Berlin would save Germany from complete destruction at the hands of the Allies. All did not go according to plan, however. Col. Claus von Stauffenberg was given the task of planting a bomb during a conference that was to be held at Hitler’s holiday retreat, Berchtesgaden (but was later moved to Hitler’s headquarters at Rastenburg). Stauffenberg was chief of staff to Gen. Friedrich Fromm. Fromm, chief of the Home Army (composed of reservists who remained behind the front lines to preserve order at home), was inclined to the conspirators’ plot, but agreed to cooperate actively in the coup only if the assassination was successful.
On the night of July 20, Stauffenberg planted an explosive-filled briefcase under a table in the conference room at Rastenburg. Hitler was studying a map of the Eastern Front as Colonel Heinz Brandt, trying to get a better look at the map, moved the briefcase out of place, farther away from where the Fuhrer was standing. At 12:42 p.m. the bomb went off. When the smoke cleared, Hitler was wounded, charred, and even suffered the temporary paralysis of one arm-but was very much alive.
Meanwhile, Stauffenberg had made his way to Berlin to meet with his co-conspirators to carry out Operation Valkyrie, the overthrow of the central government. Once in the capital, General Fromm, who had been informed by phone that Hitler was wounded but still alive, ordered Stauffenberg and his men arrested, but Fromm was located and locked in an office by Nazi police. Stauffenberg and Gen. Friedrich Olbricht began issuing orders for the commandeering of various government buildings. Then the news came through from Herman Goering that Hitler was alive. Fromm, released from confinement by officers still loyal to Hitler, and anxious to have his own association with the conspirators covered up quickly, ordered the conspirators, including two Stauffenberg aides, shot for high treason that same day. (Gen. Ludwig Beck, one of the conspiracy leaders and an older man, was allowed the “dignity” of committing suicide.)
Fromm’s last-ditch effort to distance himself from the plot failed. Within the next few days, on order of Heinrich Himmler, who was now the new head of the Home Army, Fromm was arrested. In February 1945, he was tried before the People’s Court and denigrated for his cowardice in refusing to stand up to the plotters. But because he went so far as to execute Stauffenberg and his partners on the night of July 20, he was spared the worst punishment afforded convicted conspirators-strangulation on a meat hook. He was shot by a firing squad on March 19.[1]
[1] “General Fromm executed for plot against Hitler,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=6747 (accessed Mar 19, 2009).
Today in WWII History
World War II History for March 18
Audio Clip: Today we have a short clip from the BBC from D-Day (June 6, 1944)
18 Mar 1940 – Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini held a meeting at the Brenner Pass. The Italian dictator agreed to join in Germany’s war against France and Britain during the meeting.
18 Mar 1942 – The third military draft began in the U.S. because of World War II.
18 Mar 1942 – War Relocation Authority is established in United States
On this day, the War Relocation Authority is created to “Take all people of Japanese descent into custody, surround them with troops, prevent them from buying land, and return them to their former homes at the close of the war.”
Anger toward and fear of Japanese Americans began in Hawaii shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor; everyone of Japanese ancestry, old and young, prosperous and poor, was suspected of espionage. This suspicion quickly broke out on the mainland; as early as February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered that German, Italian, and Japanese nationals-as well as Japanese Americans-be barred from certain areas deemed sensitive militarily. California, which had a significant number of Japanese and Japanese Americans, saw a particularly virulent form of anti-Japanese sentiment, with the state’s attorney general, Earl Warren (who would go on to be the chief justice of the United States), claiming that a lack of evidence of sabotage among the Japanese population proved nothing, as they were merely biding their time.
While roughly 2,000 people of German and Italian ancestry were interned during this period, Americans of Japanese ancestry suffered most egregiously. The War Relocation Authority, established on March 18, 1942, was aimed at them specifically: 120,000 men, women, and children were rounded up on the West Coast. Three categories of internees were created: Nisei (native U.S. citizens of Japanese immigrant parents), Issei (Japanese immigrants), and Kibei (native U.S. citizens educated largely in Japan). The internees were transported to one of 10 relocation centers in California, Utah, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming.
The quality of life in a relocation center was only marginally better than prison: Families were sardined into 20- by 25-foot rooms and forced to use communal bathrooms. No razors, scissors, or radios were allowed. Children attended War Relocation Authority schools.
One Japanese American, Gordon Hirabayashi, fought internment all the way to the Supreme Court. He argued that the Army, responsible for effecting the relocations, had violated his rights as a U.S. citizen. The court ruled against him, citing the nation’s right to protect itself against sabotage and invasion as sufficient justification for curtailing his and other Japanese Americans’ constitutional rights.
In 1943, Japanese Americans who had not been interned were finally allowed to join the U.S. military and fight in the war. More than 17,000 Japanese Americans fought; the all-Nisei 442nd Regiment, which fought in the Italian campaign, became the single most decorated unit in U.S. history. The regiment won 4,667 medals, awards, and citations, including 1 Medal of Honor, 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, and 560 Silver Stars. Many of these soldiers, when writing home, were writing to relocation centers.
In 1990, reparations were made to surviving internees and their heirs in the form of a formal apology by the U.S. government and a check for $20,000. [1]
18 Mar 1943 – The Reich called off its offensive in Caucasus.
18 Mar 1943 – American forces took Gafsa in Tunisia.
18 Mar 1944 – The Russians reached the Rumanian border in the Balkans during World War II.
18 Mar 1945 – 1,250 U.S. bombers attacked Berlin.
[1] “War Relocation Authority is established in United States,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=6746 (accessed Mar 18, 2009).
World War II History Podcast
As we wrote about in Today in WWII History – World War II History for March 12, on 12 Mar 1938 the “Anschluss” took place as German troops entered Austria solidifying the unification of Austria and it’s new pro-Nazi government.
Here is the radio broadcast describing the ongoing process in Austria and throughout Europe about the Anschluss. The second audio clip is from German Joseph Gobbels – “Proklamation Hitlers zum Anschluss Osterreichs.”
Today in WWII History
World War II History for March 12
Audio Clip: Below you will find President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first Fireside Chat from 1933 “On the Bank Crisis.” Included is a link to the full text and a video clip.
12 Mar 1933 – President Paul von Hindenburg dropped the flag of the German Republic and ordered that the swastika and empire banner be flown side by side.
12 Mar 1933 – Outside Berlin, the first concentration camp opened at Oranienburg.
12 Mar 1933 – FDR gives first fireside chat “On the Bank Crisis.”
Full text of the On the Bank Crisis speech from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
Video clip of Roosevelt speech at History.com.
On this day in 1933, eight days after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gives his first national radio address or “fireside chat,” broadcast directly from the White House.
Roosevelt began that first address simply: “I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking.” He went on to explain his recent decision to close the nation’s banks in order to stop a surge in mass withdrawals by panicked investors worried about possible bank failures. The banks would be reopening the next day, Roosevelt said, and he thanked the public for their “fortitude and good temper” during the “banking holiday.”
At the time, the U.S. was at the lowest point of the Great Depression, with between 25 and 33 percent of the work force unemployed. The nation was worried, and Roosevelt’s address was designed to ease fears and to inspire confidence in his leadership.
Roosevelt went on to deliver 30 more of these broadcasts between March 1933 and June 1944. They reached an astonishing number of American households, 90 percent of which owned a radio at the time.
Journalist Robert Trout coined the phrase “fireside chat” to describe Roosevelt’s radio addresses, invoking an image of the president sitting by a fire in a living room, speaking earnestly to the American people about his hopes and dreams for the nation. In fact, Roosevelt took great care to make sure each address was accessible and understandable to ordinary Americans, regardless of their level of education. He used simple vocabulary and relied on folksy anecdotes or analogies to explain the often complex issues facing the country.
Over the course of his historic 12-year presidency, Roosevelt used the chats to build popular support for his groundbreaking New Deal policies, in the face of stiff opposition from big business and other groups. After World War II began, he used them to explain his administration’s wartime policies to the American people. The success of Roosevelt’s chats was evident not only in his three re-elections, but also in the millions of letters that flooded the White House. Farmers, business owners, men, women, rich, poor–most of them expressed the feeling that the president had entered their home and spoken directly to them. In an era when presidents had previously communicated with their citizens almost exclusively through spokespeople and journalists, it was an unprecedented step.[2]
12 Mar 1938 – The “Anschluss” took place as German troops entered Austria.
The German term Anschluss, meaning “unification” or “political union,” is most frequently used in reference to the Nazis’ 1938 annexation of Austria into Greater Germany. When the Nazis entered Austria to enforce the Anschluss, they encountered no military opposition and quickly took control of the newly created German province. The US, USSR, and UK signed a declaration proclaiming the Anschluss null and void in 1943.
Union with Germany had been a dream of Austrian Social Democrats since 1919. The rise of Adolf Hitler and his authoritarian rule made such a proposition less attractive, though, which was an ironic twist, since a union between the two nations was also a dream of Hitler’s, a native Austrian. Despite the fact that Hitler did not have the full approval of Austrian Social Democrats, the rise of a pro-Nazi right-wing party within Austria in the mid-1930s paved the way for Hitler to make his move. In 1938, Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, bullied by Hitler during a meeting at Hitler’s retreat home in Berchtesgaden, agreed to a greater Nazi presence within Austria. He appointed a Nazi minister of police and announced an amnesty for all Nazi prisoners. Schuschnigg hoped that agreeing to Hitler’s demands would prevent a German invasion. But Hitler insisted on greater German influence on the internal affairs of Austria-even placing German army troops within Austria–and Schuschnigg repudiated the agreement signed at Berchtesgaden, demanding a plebiscite on the question. Through the machinations of Hitler and his devotees within Austria, the plebiscite was canceled, and Schuschnigg resigned.
The Austrian president, Wilhelm Miklas, refused to appoint a pro-Nazi chancellor in Schuschnigg’s stead. German foreign minister Hermann Goering then faked a crisis by engineering a “plea” for German assistance from inside the Austrian government (really from a German agent). On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria. Hitler announced his Anschluss, and a plebiscite was finally held on April 10. Whether the plebiscite was rigged or the resulting vote simply a testament to Austrian terror at Hitler’s determination, the Fuhrer garnered a whopping 99.7 percent approval for the union of Germany and Austria.
Austria was now a nameless entity absorbed by Germany. It was not long before the Nazis soon began their typical ruthless policy of persecuting political dissidents and, of course, all Jewish citizens.[1]
12 Mar 1940 – During World War II, Finland and the Soviet Union concluded an armistice.
[1]”Hitler announces an Anschluss with Austria,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=6740 (accessed Mar 12, 2009).
[2]”FDR gives first fireside chat,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=4829 (accessed Mar 12, 2009).
Today in WWII History
World War II History for March 11
Audio Clips: Today we bring you an audio broadcast from March 1945… a MBS broadcast from a battleship shooting down an enemy plane.
11 Mar 1935 – The German Air Force became an official organ of the Reich.
11 Mar 1941 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the Lend-Lease Act, which authorized the act of providing war supplies to the Allies.
11 Mar 1942 – General Douglas MacArthur left Bataan for Australia. He vowed, “I shall return.”
The Philippines had been part of the American commonwealth since Spain ceded it at the close of the Spanish-American War. When the Japanese invaded China in 1937 and signed the Tripartite Pact with fascist nations Germany and Italy in 1940, the United States responded by, among other things, strengthening the defense of the Philippines. General MacArthur was called out of retirement and took command of 10,000 American Army troops, 12,000 Filipino enlisted men who fought as part of the U.S. Army, and 100,000 Filipino army soldiers, who were poorly-trained and -prepared. MacArthur radically overestimated his strength and underestimated that of Japan’s. The Rainbow War Plan, a defensive strategy for U.S. interests in the Pacific drawn up and refined by the War Department, required that MacArthur withdraw his troops into the mountains of the Bataan Peninsula and await better-trained and equipped American reinforcements. Instead, MacArthur decided to take the Japanese head on-and never recovered.
The day of the Pearl Harbor bombing also saw the Japanese destruction of almost half of the American aircraft based in the Philippines. Amphibious landings of Japanese troops along the Luzon coast followed. By late December, MacArthur had to pull his forces back defensively to the Bataan Peninsula-the original strategy belatedly pursued. By January 2, 1942, the Philippine capital, Manila, fell to the Japanese. President Roosevelt had to admit to himself (if not to the American people, who believed the Americans were winning the battle with the Japanese in the Philippines), that the prospects for the American forces were not good–and that he could not afford to have General MacArthur fall captive to the Japanese. A message arrived at Corregidor on February 20, ordering MacArthur to leave immediately for Mindanao, then on to Melbourne, Australia, where he was to assume command of all United States troops. MacArthur balked; he was fully prepared to fight alongside his men to the death, if necessary. MacArthur finally obeyed the president’s order on March 11.[1]
[1] “MacArthur leaves the Philippines,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=6739 (accessed Mar 11, 2009).
Today in WWII History
World War II History for March 9
Audio Clip: BBC Broadcaster Ian Wilson reports that the American forces have crossed the Rhine into Germany – 1945-03-08.
9 Mar 1936 – The German press warned that all Jews who vote in the upcoming elections would be arrested.
9 Mar 1940 – Britain and France told Finland that troops and planes would be sent to fight the Russians if Helsinki requested such aid. [2]
9 Mar 1940 – Admiral Raeder told Hitler that the British and French might occupy Norway and Sweden under the pretext of aiding the Finns and encouraged an invasion of Norway at the earliest time. [3]
9 Mar 1942 – The Dutch formally surrendered Java to the Japanese. [4]
9 Mar 1945 – During World War II, U.S. B-29 bombers launched incendiary bomb attacks against Japan.
U.S. warplanes launch a new bombing offensive against Japan, dropping 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo over the course of the next 48 hours. Almost 16 square miles in and around the Japanese capital were incinerated, and between 80,000 and 130,000 Japanese civilians were killed in the worst single firestorm in recorded history.
Early on March 9, Air Force crews met on the Mariana Islands of Tinian and Saipan for a military briefing. They were planning a low-level bombing attack on Tokyo that would begin that evening, but with a twist: Their planes would be stripped of all guns except for the tail turret. The decrease in weight would increase the speed of each Superfortress bomber-and would also increase its bomb load capacity by 65 percent, making each plane able to carry more than seven tons. Speed would be crucial, and the crews were warned that if they were shot down, all haste was to be made for the water, which would increase their chances of being picked up by American rescue crews. Should they land within Japanese territory, they could only expect the very worst treatment by civilians, as the mission that night was going to entail the deaths of tens of thousands of those very same civilians. “You’re going to deliver the biggest firecracker the Japanese have ever seen,” said U.S. Gen. Curtis LeMay.
The cluster bombing of the downtown Tokyo suburb of Shitamachi had been approved only a few hours earlier. Shitamachi was composed of roughly 750,000 people living in cramped quarters in wooden-frame buildings. Setting ablaze this “paper city” was a kind of experiment in the effects of firebombing; it would also destroy the light industries, called “shadow factories,” that produced prefabricated war materials destined for Japanese aircraft factories.
The denizens of Shitamachi never had a chance of defending themselves. Their fire brigades were hopelessly undermanned, poorly trained, and poorly equipped. At 5:34 p.m., Superfortress B-29 bombers took off from Saipan and Tinian, reaching their target at 12:15 a.m. on March 10. Three hundred and thirty-four bombers, flying at a mere 500 feet, dropped their loads, creating a giant bonfire fanned by 30-knot winds that helped raze Shitamachi and spread the flames throughout Tokyo. Masses of panicked and terrified Japanese civilians scrambled to escape the inferno, most unsuccessfully. The human carnage was so great that the blood-red mists and stench of burning flesh that wafted up sickened the bomber pilots, forcing them to grab oxygen masks to keep from vomiting.
The raid lasted slightly longer than three hours. “In the black Sumida River, countless bodies were floating, clothed bodies, naked bodies, all black as charcoal. It was unreal,” recorded one doctor at the scene. Only 243 American airmen were lost-considered acceptable losses.[1]
[1] “Firebombing of Tokyo,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=6736 (accessed Mar 9, 2009).
[2-4] Goralski, Robert. World War II Almanac 1931-1945: A Political and Military Record. New York, NY: Perigee Books, 1981.
Podcast – The Sinking of the Graf Spee
These are the actual radio broadcasts from Dec 17-18, 1939 about the sinking of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Speein South America.
Graf Spee was a German pocket battleship of 10,000 tons launched in 1936. The Graf Spee was more heavily gunned than any cruiser and had a top speed of 25 knots and an endurance of 12,500 miles (20,000 km).
The Graf Spee had sunk several merchant ships in the Atlantic before being attacked by a British search group consisting of the cruisers Exeter, Ajax, and Achilles. The damage on the 13th to Graf Spee forced her to seek refuge in Montevideo, Uruguay for several days to make repairs. On the 17th Graf Spee left Montevideo and was scuttled by the crew. Captain Langsdorff of the Graf Spee committed suicide three days later. Most of the crew had been secretly taken off when they were in port and teh rest were rescued after the ship being scuttled.
Roosevelt’s Fireside Chat immediately after the outbreak of war in Europe
“The telephone in Franklin Roosevelt’s bedroom at the White House rang at 2:50 a. m. on the first day of September. In more ways than one it was a ghastly hour, but the operators knew they must ring. Ambassador Bill Bullitt was calling from Paris. He had just been called by Ambassador Tony Biddle in Warsaw. Mr. Bullitt told Mr. Roosevelt that World War II had begun. Adolf Hitler’s bombing planes were dropping death all over Poland.”[1]
On September 3, 1939 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation during his Fireside Chat #14. In the speech he maintains that the United States will do it’s best ability remain neutral during the conflict in Europe, but will still be supporting the Allies. He encourages each and every American keep an open mind about what is going on in the world.
Excerpts from the speech by FDR:[2]
My fellow Americans and my friends:
Tonight my single duty is to speak to the whole of America.
Until four-thirty this morning I had hoped against hope that some miracle would prevent a devastating war in Europe and bring to an end the invasion of Poland by Germany.
For four long years a succession of actual wars and constant crises have shaken the entire world and have threatened in each case to bring on the gigantic conflict which is today unhappily a fact.
It is right that I should recall to your minds the consistent and at time successful efforts of your Government in these crises to throw the full weight of the United States into the cause of peace. In spite of spreading wars I think that we have every right and every reason to maintain as a national policy the fundamental moralities, the teachings of religion (and) the continuation of efforts to restore peace — (for) because some day, though the time may be distant, we can be of even greater help to a crippled humanity.
It is right, too, to point out that the unfortunate events of these recent years have, without question, been based on the use of force (or) and the threat of force. And it seems to me clear, even at the outbreak of this great war, that the influence of America should be consistent in seeking for humanity a final peace which will eliminate, as far as it is possible to do so, the continued use of force between nations.
It is, of course, impossible to predict the future. I have my constant stream of information from American representatives and other sources throughout the world. You, the people of this country, are receiving news through your radios and your newspapers at every hour of the day.
[…]
We have certain ideas and certain ideals of national safety and we must act to preserve that safety today and to preserve the safety of our children in future years.
That safety is and will be bound up with the safety of the Western Hemisphere and of the seas adjacent thereto. We seek to keep war from our own firesides by keeping war from coming to the Americas. For that we have historic precedent that goes back to the days of the Administration of President George Washington. It is serious enough and tragic enough to every American family in every state in the Union to live in a world that is torn by wars on other Continents. And those wars today (they) affect every American home. It is our national duty to use every effort to keep (them) those wars out of the Americas.
And at this time let me make the simple plea that partisanship and selfishness be adjourned; and that national unity be the thought that underlies all others.
This nation will remain a neutral nation, but I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well. Even a neutral has a right to take account of facts. Even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind or close his conscience.
I have said not once but many times that I have seen war and that I hate war. I say that again and again.
I hope the United States will keep out of this war. I believe that it will. And I give you assurance(s) and reassurance that every effort of your Government will be directed toward that end.
As long as it remains within my power to prevent, there will be no blackout of peace in the United States.
Resources:
Full FDR Fireside Chat 14 Transcript
World War II History Image Archives >> United States Government gallery
[1] Time, “Preface to War.” September 11, 1939.http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,711734,00.html (accessed January 15, 2009).
[2] Roosevelt, Franklin D. “Fireside Chat 14: On the European War.” September 3, 1939. http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3315 (accessed January 15, 2009).
Review: VALKYRIE
Valkyrie
Starring: Tom Cruise
Release: December 26, 2008
Review of VALKYRIE
United Artists latest feature film, VALKYRIE, starring Tom Cruise, is a vivid drama based on a true story. This film gives an up close and personal view of the conspiracy to assassinate one of history’s most evil dictators, Adolph Hitler.
Read the full review and see the trailers on our Valkyrie Review page!
Starring Tom Cruise, VALKYRIE, is the true story of the assassination plot against Adolf Hitler that took place on July 20, 1944 and which was led by, among others, German staff officer Klaus Von Stauffenberg (whom Cruise portrays).
This video of the making of VALKYRIE featurette contains behind the scenes shots, interviews from the directors and producers, and multiple clips of the film not seen in the trailer.
The July 20th Plot on Hitler’s life is one of the most heroic, but least known episodes of World War II history. Severely wounded in combat, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg returns from Africa to join the German Resistance, and help create Operation Valkyrie, the complex plan that will allow a shadow government to replace Hitler’s once he is dead. But fate and circumstance conspire to thrust Stauffenberg from one of many in the plot to a double-edged central role. Not only must he lead the coup and seize control of his nation’s government–he must kill Hitler himself.
Today in WW II History
World War II History for October 20
1942 – Pierre Laval told the French labor that they must serve in Germany.
1944 – Allied forces invaded the Philippines. U.S. General Douglas MacArthur landed on the island of Leyte fulfilling his promise to return to the area where he was forced to flee in 1942.
More than 100,000 American soldiers land on Leyte Island, in the Philippines, as preparation for the major invasion by Gen. Douglas MacArthur. The ensuing battles of Leyte Island proved among the bloodiest of the war in the Pacific and signaled the beginning of the end for the Japanese.
The Japanese had held the Philippines since May 1942, when the awful defeat of American forces led to General MacArthur’s departure and General Wainwright’s capture. MacArthur was back, as he promised, but his invasion of Luzon required a softening up of the enemy. Thus, the amphibious landing of the American forces at Leyte and the concomitant goal of destroying the Japanese fleet in the gulf was undertaken.
The Japanese anticipated the American landing by launching Operation Sho-Go, an attempt to divert the U.S. 3rd Fleet north and away from the fighting on the island. The Japanese fleet assembled was the largest ocean task force assembled during the war, including seven battleships, 11 heavy cruisers, and 19 destroyers. American submarines and aircraft carriers met the Japanese fleet and the Battle of Leyte Gulf began on October 23.
Meanwhile on Leyte Island, the American troops took on the Japanese garrison, which was composed of 80,000 soldiers. It took 67 days to subdue the island, with extraordinary acts of physical bravery and courage demonstrated on both sides. Even after the Americans had taken control of the island, Japanese soldiers who had been hidden away continued to emerge and fight on, preferring to die than surrender. All told, the Japanese lost more than 55,000 soldiers during the two months of battle and approximately another 25,000 in mopping up operations in early 1945. The U.S. forces lost about 3,500-compared with the Japanese loss of 80,000 total.
The sea battle of Leyte Gulf was the same story. The loss of ships and sailors was horrendous for both sides. The sinking of the American carrier Princeton resulted in the drowning deaths of 500 men. When the Japanese battleship Musashi was destroyed by a massive American aerial attack, more than 1,000 sailors died, including the captain who stood on his bridge and literally went down with his ship. Three days of sea battle saw the destruction of 36 Japanese warships-compared with America’s three. It also saw the introduction of the Japanese kamikaze-“divine wind”–suicide bombers. The St. Lo, an American aircraft carrier, was one of the first casualties, when one kamikaze pilot drove his plane straight into its flight deck.
More than 5,000 kamikaze pilots died in this gulf battle-taking down 34 ships. But when all was said and done, the Japanese had not been able to prevent the loss of their biggest and best warships, signaling the virtual end of the Japanese Imperial Fleet. The American victory on land and sea opened the door for General MacArthur’s invasion and the recapture of the Philippines.
1944 – During World War II, the Yugoslav cities of Belgrade and Dubrovnik were liberated.
Starring Tom Cruise, VALKYRIE, is the true story of the assassination plot against Adolf Hitler that took place on July 20, 1944 and which was led by, among others, German staff officer Klaus Von Stauffenberg (whom Cruise portrays).
Although there is some public awareness of the plot against Hitler, few people know the details of that plot and the plan that was set up to wrest control of Germany away from Hitler’s SS and Gestapo. When Von Stauffenberg’s carefully placed bomb exploded inside Hitler’s briefing room in East Prussia, all communications were immediately cut off and Von Stauffenberg flew to Berlin with the belief that Hitler was dead. Unbeknownst to most people, Hitler’s emergency plan to maintain control of the government in Germany, was then used against him to begin arresting key SS and Gestapo officials in the capital and preparations were made to hand over control of the government to saner minds.
The events that led up to that brief but dramatic uprising make fascinating drama and VALKYRIE presents these moments in a suspenseful, carefully researched and detailed story that also features, in addition to Cruise, a wonderful supporting cast that includes Kenneth Branagh (Hamlet), Bill Nighy
(Pirates of the Caribbean), Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton), Carice van Houten (Black Book), Thomas Kretschmann (King Kong), Eddie Izzard (Ocean’s 12), Christian Berkel, (The Downfall) and Terence Stamp (Wall Street).
In the next few days we will be adding the Making of VALKYRIE Featurette so check back!
This audio clip is of the CBS European News report 28 AUG 1939 just a couple days before the start of World War II when Germany invades Poland.
Below are some of the transcripted notes from the audio file.
The London news desk reports on the rail transportation along the Polish corridor with German transports moving back and forth across the border.
The Chinese and Japanese ambassadors both called at the foreign office together. Something London hasn’t seen in a long while.
Germans have been instructed to leave Hong Kong.
The admiralty have forbidden the use of any wireless transmitter from any seagoing ship in British territorial waters.
Voluntary censorship over certain forms of communication expected in the next 24 hours.
The first Defense Order (Decree) is put in place. issues. Covered a lot of territory.
- Power is given to order compulsory evacuation over people and animals.
- Compulsory billeting is provided for, for houses in the country.
- Traffic may be regulated, the carrying of cameras in certain areas may be prohibited.
- Private residences may be taken over.
- No person shall have under his control, or liberate any racing or homing pigeons.
- Prices of food and other commodities may be controlled.
- There are more than 100 items in the list.
“There is still hope,” to avoid war, but it is slimming.
There is news of Poland and of the build up and waiting for tensions to break one way or the other.
Londoner’s believe that a decision will be made within the next 36 hours (which proved very accurate).
The report, by William L. Shire from Germany, Sir Neville Henderson the British Ambassador to Germany, is meeting with Hitler to finally decide if it will be war, or peace.
The Reich will not bend or compromise, and tension is terrific, knowing the world will follow in one direction or another.
Notes about the German rationing, the German woman in her supporting role, and pride in defending Germany.
Though the talking stage has yet to be abandoned, the preparations for war were evident everywhere.
Listen to the full report to hear more of life just before the beginning of World War II (01 Sept 1939).
Today in WW II History
World War II History for September 28
1939 – During World War II, Germany and the Soviet Union agreed upon a plan on the division of Poland.
1942 – General Arnold fights for unique bombers
On this day in 1942, Gen. Henry “Hap” Arnold gives highest priority to the development of two exceptional aircraft–the B-35 Flying Wing and the B-36 Peacemaker–intended for bombing runs from bases in the United States to targets in Europe.
General Arnold was a man of distinction from the beginning of his career: Not only was he one of the first pilots in the U.S. Signal Corps, he was taught to fly by none other than one of the Wright brothers. During World War I, Arnold was director of aviation training for the Army. Between the wars, he embraced a controversial military philosophy that emphasized strategic bombing, eliminating the need for the use of ground forces altogether.
At the time of the United States’ entry into the Second World War, the Army Air Forces had become an increasingly distinct military service. Arnold was made its first chief. Along with this honor came the opportunity of a seat with the Joint Chiefs of Staff; initially intended to boost his status to that of his counterpart in Britain, it also increased the stature and independence of the Army Air Forces. Arnold was able to form alliances with British RAF allies who also favored the use of strategic bombing in lieu of ground-force operations.
In 1942, Arnold gave the highest priority to the development of two extra long-distance transatlantic planes that would prove most useful to his strategic bombing game plan: the B-35 and the B-36 transatlantic bombers. The B-35 had been first proposed in early 1941, intended for use in defending an invaded Britain. But the design was so radical (it was tailless), the plane was put on the back burner. It was finally revived because of advantages the plane afforded over the B-36–bombing range in relation to gross weight, for example. Fifteen B-35 planes were ordered for construction–but the first did not take flight until 1946. Designs for the B-36 were also developed early in 1941, on the assumption that the United States would inevitably be drawn into the war and it would need a bomber that could reach Europe from bases in America. It was to be a massive plane–162 feet long with a 230-foot wingspan. But its construction lagged, and it was not completed until after the war.
Although Hap’s “high priority” could not cut through the military bureaucracy, 1947 would see the Nation Defense Act establish an autonomous Air Force–a dream for which he had worked. The B-35 would become the prototype for the B-2 Stealth bomber built in 1989. And the B-36 was used extensively by U.S. Strategic Air Command until 1959, but never dropped a bomb.
==========
Also included as a special feature in today’s post is an audio clip of President Franklin D. Roosevelt giving the speech ‘There Can Be No Peace’ from Aug 1939, almost two years before the United States joined the war.
The speech start out with this quote: “It is becoming increasingly clear that peace by fear has no higher or more enduring quality than peace by the sword.”
Today in WW II History
World War II History for September 26
1944 – Operation Market-Garden failed when thousands of British and Polish troops were killed in an attempt to seize bridges in the Dutch town of Arnhem.
British Gen. Bernard Montgomery conceived an operation to take control of bridges that crossed the Rhine River, from the Netherlands into Germany, as a strategy to make “a powerful full-blooded thrust to the heart of Germany.” The plan seemed cursed from the beginning. It was launched on September 17, with parachute troops and gliders landing in Arnhem. Holding out as long as they could, waiting for reinforcements, they were compelled to surrender. Unfortunately, a similar drop of equipment was delayed, and there were errors in locating the proper drop location and bad intelligence on German troop strength. Added to this, bad weather and communication confused the coordination of the Allied troops on the ground.
The Germans quickly destroyed the railroad bridge and took control of the southern end of the road bridge. The Allies struggled to control the northern end of the road bridge, but soon lost it to the superior German forces. The only thing left was retreat-back behind Allied lines. But few made it: Of more than 10,000 British and Polish troops engaged at Arnhem, only 2,900 escaped.
Claims were made after the fact that a Dutch Resistance fighter, Christiaan Lindemans, betrayed the Allies, which would explain why the Germans were arrayed in such numbers at such strategic points. A conservative member of the British Parliament, Rupert Allason, writing under the named Nigel West, dismissed this conclusion in his A Thread of Deceit, arguing that Lindemans, while a double agent, “was never in a position to betray Arnhem.”
Winston Churchill would lionize the courage of the fallen Allied soldiers with the epitaph “Not in vain.” Arnhem was finally liberated on April 15, 1945.
1944 – Allied planes drop American paratroopers behind German lines in Italy to establish the same sort of resistance network that had been so successful in helping the Allies capture France.
1945 – President Truman announces the equitable division of what is left of the German fleet between the three principal Allies.
//
World War II History – Audio Feature
Podcast: Columbia News Broadcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 8
Today we bring you the 8th installment of the radio news broadcast after the landings in Normandy on D-Day (44-Jun-06) that went out to the United States.
Here are links to the first set of broadcasts in the series:
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 1
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 2
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 3
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 4
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 5
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 6
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 7
Please remember to subscribe to WWarII.com on iTunes with this link!
Here is a quick audio clip of a BBC broadcast during World War II from 1939 featuring a Gas Mask drill.
Today in WW II History
World War II History for September 17
1939 – The Soviet Union invaded Poland. Germany had invaded Poland on September 1.
Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov declares that the Polish government has ceased to exist, as the U.S.S.R. exercises the “fine print” of the Hitler-Stalin Non-aggression pact-the invasion and occupation of eastern Poland.
Hitler’s troops were already wreaking havoc in Poland, having invaded on the first of the month. The Polish army began retreating and regrouping east, near Lvov, in eastern Galicia, attempting to escape relentless German land and air offensives. But Polish troops had jumped from the frying pan into the fire-as Soviet troops began occupying eastern Poland. The Ribbentrop-Molotov Non-aggression Pact, signed in August, had eliminated any hope Poland had of a Russian ally in a war against Germany. Little did Poles know that a secret clause of that pact, the details of which would not become public until 1990, gave the U.S.S.R. the right to mark off for itself a chunk of Poland’s eastern region. The “reason” given was that Russia had to come to the aid of its “blood brothers,” the Ukrainians and Byelorussians, who were trapped in territory that had been illegally annexed by Poland. Now Poland was squeezed from West and East-trapped between two behemoths. Its forces overwhelmed by the mechanized modern German army, Poland had nothing left with which to fight the Soviets.
As Soviet troops broke into Poland, they unexpectedly met up with German troops who had fought their way that far east in a little more than two weeks. The Germans receded when confronted by the Soviets, handing over their Polish prisoners of war. Thousands of Polish troops were taken into captivity; some Poles simply surrendered to the Soviets to avoid being captured by the Germans.
The Soviet Union would wind up with about three-fifths of Poland and 13 million of its people as a result of the invasion.
1944 – Operation “Market Garden” was launched by Allied paratroopers during World War II. The landing point was behind German lines in the Netherlands.
World War II History – Audio Feature
Podcast: Columbia News Broadcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 7
Today we bring you the 7th installment of the radio news broadcast after the landings in Normandy on D-Day (44-Jun-06) that went out to the United States.
Here are links to the first set of broadcasts in the series:
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 1
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 2
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 3
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 4
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 5
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 6
Please remember to subscribe to WWarII.com on iTunes with this link!
Today in WW II History
World War II History for September 9,
1941 – Iran surrenders to the Allies
Agreeing, among other things, Iran deports Axis spies posing as diplomatic and tourist staff. Iran will order the “diplomats” and others out on the 13th.
1942 – Japan dropped incendiaries over Oregon in an attempt to set fire to the forests in Oregon and Washington. The forest did not ignite.
A Japanese floatplane dropped incendiary bombs on an Oregon state forest-the first and only air attack on the U.S. mainland in the war.
Launching from the Japanese sub I-25, Nobuo Fujita piloted his light aircraft over the state of Oregon and firebombed Mount Emily, alighting a state forest–and ensuring his place in the history books as the only man to ever bomb the continental United States. The president immediately called for a news blackout for the sake of morale. No long-term damage was done, and Fujita eventually went home to train navy pilots for the rest of the war.
1943 – During World War II Allied forces landed at Taranto and Salerno.
Operation Avalanche, the Allied land invasion of Salerno, and Operation Slapstick, the British airborne invasion of Taranto, both in southern Italy, are launched.
The U.S. 5th Army under Lt. Gen. Mark Clark landed along the Salerno coastline while British Commando units and their American counterparts, the U.S. Rangers, landed on the peninsula itself. Salerno had been chosen as the first site for invasion of the peninsula because it was the northern-most point to which the Allies could fly planes from its bases in Sicily, which they had already invaded and occupied. Rockets launched from landing craft provided cover, and the beach landings went relatively smoothly. It wasn’t until two days later that the Germans, with some Italian troops coerced into service, mounted a heavy counterattack on the beachhead. But Clark called in the 82nd Airborne for support, and by the 15th, Salerno was in Allied hands.
Meanwhile, the British 1st Airborne Division, having successfully landed at Taranto, captured the airfield at Foggia.
Today in WW II History
World War II History for September 5,
1934 – Adolf Hitler predicted that the Reich would last for 1,000 years.
1939 – The U.S. proclaimed its neutrality in World War II.
1939 – German troops cross the Vistula River in Poland.
1943 – U.S. forces seize more of New Guinea
On this day in 1943, Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s 503rd Parachute Regiment land and occupy Nazdab, just east of Lae, a port city in northeastern Papua New Guinea, situating them perfectly for future operations on the islands.
New Guinea had been occupied by the Japanese since March 1942. Raids by Allied forces early on were met with tremendous ferocity, and they were often beaten back by the Japanese occupiers. Much of the Allied response was led by forces from Australia, as they were most threatened by the presence of the Japanese in that sphere.
The tide began to turn in December 1942, as the Australians recaptured Buna-but despite numerical superiority, the Japanese continued to hang on, fighting to keep every square mile they had captured. Many Japanese committed suicide, swimming out to sea, rather than be taken prisoner. In January 1943, the Americans joined the Aussies in assaults on Sanananda, which resulted in huge losses for the Japanese–7,000 killed–and the first land defeat of the war. As Japanese reinforcements raced for the next Allied targets, Lae and Salamauam, in March, 137 American bombers destroyed the Japanese transport vessels, drowning 3,500 Japanese, as well as their much-needed fuel and spare parts.
On September 8, almost 2,000 American and Australian Airborne Division parachutists landed and seized Nazdab, which held a valuable airfield. The Allies quickly established a functioning airstrip and prepared to take the port city of Lae, one more step in MacArthur’s strategy to recapture New Guinea and the Solomons-and eventually go back for the Philippines.
1945 – Iva Toguri D’Aquino was arrested. D’Aquino was suspected of being the wartime radio propagandist “Tokyo Rose”. She served six years before being pardoned by U.S. President Ford.
Today in WW II History
World War II History for September 3,
1939 – Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany.
On this day in 1939, in response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Britain and France, both allies of the overrun nation, along with Australia and New Zealand, declare war on Germany.
The first casualty of that declaration was not German-but the British ocean liner Athenia, which was sunk by a German U-30 submarine that had assumed the liner was armed and belligerent. There were more than 1,100 passengers on board, 112 of whom lost their lives. Of those, 28 were Americans, but President Roosevelt was unfazed by the tragedy, declaring that no one was to “thoughtlessly or falsely talk of America sending its armies to European fields.” The United States would remain neutral.
As for Britain’s response, it was initially no more than the dropping of anti-Nazi propaganda leaflets-13 tons of them-over Germany. They would begin bombing German ships on September 4, suffering significant losses. They were also working under orders not to harm German civilians. The German military, of course, had no such restrictions. France would begin an offensive against Germany’s western border two weeks later. Their effort was weakened by a narrow 90-mile window leading to the German front, enclosed by the borders of Luxembourg and Belgium-both neutral countries. The Germans mined the passage, stalling the French offensive.
1940 – Adolf Hitler planned Operation Sealion. The plan was for the invasion of Britain.
1943 – Italy was invaded by the Allied forces during World War II.
Today in WW II History
**World War II Ends****
World War II History for September 2,
1944 – A U.S. Navy squadron was given the assignment to take out a radio tower on the island Chichi Jima. Ensign George H.W. Bush scored four direct hits on the tower and then headed out to sea where he ejected. He was rescued by the crew of the USS Finback.
1945 – Japan surrendered to the U.S. aboard the USS Missouri, ending World War II. The war ended six years and one day after it began.
VJ Day!
On this day in 1945, the USS Missouri hosts the formal surrender of the Japanese government to the Allies. Victory over Japan was celebrated back in the States.
As Japanese troops finally surrendered to Americans on the Caroline, Mariana, and Palau islands, representatives of their emperor and prime minister were preparing to formalize their capitulation. In Tokyo Bay, aboard the Navy battleship USS Missouri, the Japanese foreign minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu, and the chief of staff of the Japanese army, Yoshijiro Umezu, signed the “instrument of surrender.” Representing the Allied victors were Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of the U.S. Army forces in the Pacific, and Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, now promoted to the newest and highest Navy rank, fleet admiral. Among others in attendance was Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, who had taken command of the forces in the Philippines upon MacArthur’s departure and had been recently freed from a Japanese POW camp in Manchuria.
Shigemitsu would be found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to seven years in prison subsequent to the surrender. The grand irony is that he had fought for concessions on the Japanese side in order to secure an early peace. He was paroled in 1950 and went on to become chairman of Japan’s Progressive Party. MacArthur would fight him again when he was named commander in chief of the United Nations forces in Korea in 1950.
Today in WW II History
World War II History for August 29,
1942 – Red Cross announces Japan refuses passage of supplies for U.S. POWs
On this day in 1942, the international humanitarian agency, the Red Cross, reveals that Japan has refused free passage of ships carrying food, medicine, and other necessities for American POWs held by Japan.
In January 1941, the U.S. government requested that the American Red Cross begin a blood-donor program to provide ready and ample supplies of blood plasma and serum albumin for transfusions for wounded soldiers. More than 13 million donations (each about a pint) were collected.
Among other grassroots efforts organized by local Red Cross chapters were bandage-making “assembly lines,” working out of local churches, synagogues, and town halls. Abroad, volunteers worked in military hospitals, reading and writing letters for the wounded. Tens of millions of food packages were prepared and funneled to Allied POWs through Geneva, which served as a clearinghouse. But getting such packages to prisoners in Japan proved particularly difficult. Japan refused to allow even “neutral” ships to enter Japanese waters, even those on humanitarian errands. Despite protests by the Red Cross, Japan allowed just one-tenth of what POWs elsewhere received to reach prisoners in their territories.
As the war came to a close, the Red Cross followed on the heels of liberating military forces to supply relief and aid to those suffering from the ravages of battle. Approximately 20,000 professional Red Cross workers served during the war, along with countless other volunteers.
1944 – During the continuing celebration of the liberation of France from the Nazis, 15,000 American troops marched down the Champs Elysees in Paris.
1945 – U.S. General Douglas MacArthur left for Japan to officially accept the surrender of the Japanese.
Today in WW II History
World War II History for August 28
1941 – In occupied Ukraine, more than 23,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered by the Gestapo.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union had advanced to the point of mass air raids on Moscow and the occupation of parts of Ukraine. On August 26, Hitler displayed the joys of conquest by inviting Benito Mussolini to Brest-Litovsk, where the Germans had destroyed the city’s citadel. The grand irony is that Ukrainians had originally viewed the Germans as liberators from their Soviet oppressors and an ally in the struggle for independence. But as early as July, the Germans were arresting Ukrainians agitating and organizing for a provisional state government with an eye toward autonomy and throwing them into concentration camps. The Germans also began carving the nation up, dispensing parts to Poland (already occupied by Germany) and Romania.
But true horrors were reserved for Jews in the territory. Tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews had been expelled from that country and migrated to Ukraine. The German authorities tried sending them back, but Hungary would not take them. SS General Franz Jaeckeln vowed to deal with the influx of refugees by the “complete liquidation of those Jews by September 1.” He worked even faster than promised. On August 28, he marched more than 23,000 Hungarian Jews to bomb craters at Kamenets Podolsk, ordered them to undress, and riddled them with machine-gun fire. Those who didn’t die from the spray of bullets were buried alive under the weight of corpses that piled atop them.
All told, more than 600,000 Jews had been murdered in Ukraine by war’s end.
Today in WW II History
World War II History for August 27
1939 – Nazi Germany demanded the Polish corridor and Danzig.
1941 – Japanese prime minister requests a summit meeting with FDR
On this day in 1941, Prince Fumimaro Konoye, prime minister of Japan, announces that he would like to enter into direct negotiations with President Roosevelt in order to prevent the Japanese conflict with China from expanding into world war.
Konoye, a lawyer by training and well studied in Western philosophy, literature, and economics, entered the Japanese Parliament’s upper house by virtue of his princely status and immediately pursued a program of reform. High on his agenda was a reform of the army general staff in order to prevent its direct interference in foreign policy decisions. He also sought an increase in parliamentary power. An antifascist, Konoye championed an end to the militarism of Japanese political structures, especially in light of the war in Manchuria, which began in 1931.
Appointed prime minister in 1933, Konoye’s first cabinet fell apart after full-blown war broke out between Japan and China. In 1940, Konoye was asked to form a second cabinet. But as he sought to contain the war with China, relations with the United States deteriorated, to the point where Japan was virtually surrounded by a U.S. military presence and threats of sanctions. On August 27, 1941, Konoye requested a summit with President Roosevelt in order to diminish heightening tensions. Envoys were exchanged, but no direct meeting with the president took place.
In October, Konoye resigned because of increasing tension with his army minister, Tojo Hideki, who would succeed him as prime minister. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Konoye was put under military surveillance, his political career all but over until 1945, when the emperor considered sending him to Moscow to negotiate peace terms. That meeting never came off either.
The grand irony of Prince Konoye’s career came at the war’s conclusion, when he was served with an arrest warrant by the U.S. occupying force for suspicion of war crimes. Rather than submit to arrest, he committed suicide by drinking poison.
1945 – American troops landed in Japan after the surrender of the Japanese government at the end of World War II.
World War II History – Audio Feature
Podcast: Columbia News Broadcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 6
Today we bring you the 6th installment of the radio news broadcast after the landings in Normandy on D-Day (44-Jun-06) that went out to the United States.
Here are links to the first four broadcasts in the series:
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 1
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 2
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 3
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 4
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 5
Please remember to subscribe to WWarII.com on iTunes with this link!
Today in WW II History
World War II History for August 22
1941 – Nazi troops reached the outskirts of Leningrad during World War II.
1944 -Romania captured by the Soviet Union
On this day in 1944, Soviet forces break through to Jassy, in northeastern Romania, convincing Romania’s king to sign an armistice with the Allies and concede control of his country to the USSR.
As early as 1937, Romania had come under control of a fascist government that bore great resemblance to that of Germany’s, including similar anti-Jewish laws. Romania’s king, Carol II, dissolved the government a year later, but was unable to suppress the fascist Iron Guard paramilitary organization. In June 1940, the Soviet Union co-opted two Romanian provinces, and the king searched for an ally to help protect it and appease the far right within its own borders. So on July 5, 1940, Romania allied itself with Nazi Germany. Later that year, it would be invaded by its “ally” as part of Hitler’s strategy to create one huge eastern front against the Soviet Union.
King Carol would abdicate in September 1940, leaving the country in the control of fascist Prime Minister Ion Antonescu and the Iron Guard. While Romania would recapture the territory lost to the Soviet Union when the Germans invaded Russia, it would also have to endure the Germans’ raping of its resources as part of the Nazi war effort.
As the war turned against Germany, and the Soviet Union began to run roughshod over Eastern Europe, Antonescu started looking west for allies to save it from Soviet occupation. At this stage, King Michael, son of the late King Carol, emerged from the shadows and had the pro-German Antonescu arrested, imploring Romanians, and loyal military men, to fight with, not against, the invading Soviets. The king would finally sign an armistice with the Allies and declare war against an already-dying Germany in 1944.
King Michael would, ironically, be forced to abdicate by the Soviets, who would maintain a puppet communist government in Romania until the end of the Cold War. The king had virtually destroyed his nation in order to save it.
Today in WW II History
World War II History for August 14
1941 – U.S. President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter. The charter was a statement of principles that renounced aggression.
1944 – The U.S. federal government allowed the manufacture of certain domestic appliances to resume on a limited basis.
1945 – It was announced by U.S. President Truman that Japan had surrendered unconditionally. The surrender ended World War II.
Today in WW II History
World War II History for August 12
1938 – The German military was mobilized.
1938 – Hitler institutes the Mother’s Cross
On this day in 1938, Adolf Hitler institutes the Mother’s Cross, to encourage German women to have more children, to be awarded each year on August 12, Hitler’s mother’s birthday.
The German Reich needed a robust and growing population and encouraged couples to have large families. It started such encouragement early. Once members of the distaff wing of the Hitler Youth movement, the League of German Girls, turned 18, they became eligible for a branch called Faith and Beauty, which trained these girls in the art of becoming ideal mothers. One component of that ideal was fecundity. And so each year, in honor of his beloved mother, Klara, and in memory of her birthday, a gold medal was awarded to women with seven children, a silver to women with six, and a bronze to women with five.
1941 – Roosevelt and Churchill confer, map out short- and long-term goals
On this day in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill meet on board a ship at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, to confer on issues ranging from support for Russia to threatening Japan to postwar peace.
When Roosevelt and Churchill met for the first time as leaders of their respective nations, chief among the items on their agenda was aid to the USSR “on a gigantic scale,” as it was desperate in its war against its German invaders. A statement was also drafted, which Roosevelt chose to issue under his name, that made it plain to Japan that any further aggression would “produce a situation in which the United States government would be compelled to take counter-measures,” even if it meant “war between the United States and Japan.”
The president and the prime minister also agreed to compose and make public a document in which the United States and Britain declared their intention “to ensure life, liberty, independence, and religious freedom, and to preserve the rights of man and justice.” They also promised to strive for a postwar world free of “aggrandizement, territorial or other,” addressing those nations currently under German, Italian, or Japanese rule, offering hope that the integrity of their sovereign borders would be restored to them. This document would be called the Atlantic Charter and, when finally ratified by 26 nations in January 1942, would comprise the founding principles of the United Nations.
1944 – In France, Pierre Laval released Edouard Herriot.
Today in WW II History
World War II History for August 11
1942 – During World War II, Pierre Laval publicly announced, “the hour of liberation for France is the hour when Germany wins the war.”
1943 – Germans begin to evacuate Sicily
On this day in 1943, German forces begin a six-day evacuation of the Italian island of Sicily, having been beaten back by the Allies, who invaded the island in July.
The Germans had maintained a presence in Sicily since the earliest days of the war. But with the arrival of Gen. George S. Patton and his 7th Army and Gen. Bernard Montgomery and his 8th Army,
the Germans could no longer hold their position. The race began for the Strait of Messina, the 2-mile wide body of water that separated Sicily from the Italian mainland.
The Germans needed to get out of Sicily and onto the Italian peninsula. While Patton had already reached his goal, Palermo, the Sicilian capital, on July 22 (to a hero’s welcome, as the Sicilian people were more than happy to see an end to fascist rule), Montgomery, determined to head off the Germans at Messina, didn’t make his goal in time. The German 29th Panzer-grenadier Division and the 14th Panzer Corps were brought over from Africa for the sole purpose of slowing the Allies’ progress and allowing the bulk of the German forces to get off the island. The delaying tactic succeeded. Despite the heavy bombing of railways leading to Messina, the Germans made it to the strait on August 11.
Over six days and seven nights, the Germans led 39,569 soldiers, 47 tanks, 94 heavy guns, 9,605 vehicles, and more than 2,000 tons of ammunition onto the Italian mainland. (Not to mention the 60,000 Italian soldiers who were also evacuated, in order to elude capture by the Allies.) Although the United States and Britain had succeeded in conquering Sicily, the Germans were now reinforced and heavily supplied, making the race for Rome more problematic.
and in…
1945 – The Allies informed Japan that they would determine Emperor Hirohito’s future status after Japan’s surrender.
World War II History – Olympics Audio Feature
Podcast: The Opening of the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Today in honor of the Opening of the Olympic games in Beijing (08/08/08), we bring you a radio broadcast from the 1936 Berlin Olympics, just before WW II.
72 years ago RRG sends out a speech by Adolph Hitler opening the Olympic Games in Berlin. (Adolf Hitler – Eroffnungsfeierlichkeiten Im Olympiastadion Berlin)
1936 Olympic History: Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events. His German competitor Lutz Long offered Owens advice after he almost failed qualifying in the long jump and was posthumously awarded the Pierre de Coubertin medal for sportsmanship.
“The sportive, knightly battle awakens the best human characteristics. It doesn’t separate, but unites the combatants in understanding and respect. It also helps to connect the countries in the spirit of peace. That’s why the Olympic Flame should never die.”
– Adolf Hitler, commenting on the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games
Today in WW II History
World War II History for August 8
1940 – The German Luftwaffe began a series of daylight air raids on Great Britain.
1942 – Six Nazi saboteurs were executed in Washington after conviction. Two others were cooperative and received life in prison.
1945 – The United Nations Charter was signed by U.S. President Truman.
1945 – During World War II, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan.
On this day in 1945, the Soviet Union officially declares war on Japan, pouring more than 1 million Soviet soldiers into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, northeastern China, to take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army.
The dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima by the Americans did not have the effect intended: unconditional surrender by Japan. Half of the Japanese inner Cabinet, called the Supreme War Direction Council, refused to surrender unless guarantees about Japan’s future were given by the Allies, especially regarding the position of the emperor, Hirohito. The only Japanese civilians who even knew what happened at Hiroshima were either dead or suffering terribly.
Japan had not been too worried about the Soviet Union, so busy with the Germans on the Eastern front. The Japanese army went so far as to believe that they would not have to engage a Soviet attack until spring 1946. But the Soviets surprised them with their invasion of Manchuria, an assault so strong (of the 850 Japanese soldiers engaged at Pingyanchen, 650 were killed or wounded within the first two days of fighting) that Emperor Hirohito began to plead with his War Council to reconsider surrender. The recalcitrant members began to waver.
Today in WW II History
World War II History for August 7
1942 – U.S. forces landed at Guadalcanal, marking the start of the first major allied offensive in the Pacific during World War II.
On this day in 1942, the U.S. 1st Marine Division begins Operation Watchtower, the first U.S. offensive of the war, by landing on Guadalcanal, one of the Solomon Islands.
On July 6, 1942, the Japanese landed on Guadalcanal Island and began constructing an airfield there. Operation Watchtower was the codename for the U.S. plan to invade Guadalcanal and the surrounding islands. During the attack, American troops landed on five islands within the Solomon chain. Although the invasion came as a complete surprise to the Japanese (bad weather had grounded their scouting aircraft), the landings on Florida, Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tananbogo met much initial opposition from the Japanese defenders.
But the Americans who landed on Guadalcanal met little resistance-at least at first. More than 11,000 Marines had landed, and 24 hours had passed, before the Japanese manning the garrison there knew of the attack. The U.S. forces quickly took their main objective, the airfield, and the outnumbered Japanese troops retreated, but not for long. Reinforcements were brought in, and fierce hand-to-hand jungle fighting ensued. “I have never heard or read of this kind of fighting,” wrote one American major general on the scene. “These people refuse to surrender.”
The Americans were at a particular disadvantage, being assaulted from both the sea and air. But the U.S. Navy was able to reinforce its troops to a greater extent, and by February 1943, the Japanese had retreated on secret orders of their emperor (so secret, the Americans did not even know it had taken place until they began happening upon abandoned positions, empty boats, and discarded supplies). In total, the Japanese had lost more than 25,000 men, compared with a loss of 1,600 by the Americans. Each side lost 24 warships.
The first Medal of Honor given to a Marine was awarded to Sgt. John Basilone for his fighting during Operation Watchtower. According to the recommendation for his medal, he “contributed materially to the defeat and virtually the annihilation of a Japanese regiment.”
Today in WW II History
World War II History for August 5
1944 – Polish insurgents liberated a German labor camp in Warsaw. 348 Jewish prisoners were freed.
On this day in 1944, Polish insurgents liberate a German forced-labor camp in Warsaw, freeing 348 Jewish prisoners, who join in a general uprising against the German occupiers of the city.
As the Red Army advanced on Warsaw in July, Polish patriots, still loyal to their government-in-exile back in London, prepared to overthrow their German occupiers. On July 29, the Polish Home Army (underground), the People’s Army (a communist guerilla movement), and armed civilians took back two-thirds of Warsaw from the Germans. On August 4, the Germans counterattacked, mowing down Polish civilians with machine-gun fire. By August 5, more than 15,000 Poles were dead. The Polish command cried to the Allies for help. Churchill telegraphed Stalin, informing him that the British intended to drop ammunition and other supplies into the southwest quarter of Warsaw to aid the insurgents. The prime minister asked Stalin to aid in the insurgents’ cause. Stalin balked, claiming the insurgency was too insignificant to waste time with.
Britain succeeded to getting some aid to the Polish patriots, but the Germans also succeeded-in dropping incendiary bombs. The Poles fought on, and on August 5 they freed Jewish forced laborers who then joined in the battle, some of whom formed a special platoon dedicated solely to repairing captured German tanks for use in the struggle.
The Poles would battle on for weeks against German reinforcements, and without Soviet help, as Joseph Stalin had his own plans for Poland.
Hear today’s podcast of this article on iTunes or play it below!
World War II History – Audio Feature
Podcast: Columbia News Broadcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 5
Today we bring you the 5th installment of the radio news broadcast after the landings in Normandy on D-Day (44-Jun-06) that went out to the United States.
Here are links to the first four broadcasts in the series:
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 1
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 2
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 3
Podcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 4
Please remember to subscribe to WWarII.com on iTunes with this link!
Today in WW II History
World War II History for August 4
1944 – Anne Frank and her family arrested by Gestapo
On this day in 1944, a German-born Jewish girl and her family, who had been hiding in German-occupied Holland, are found by the Gestapo and transported to various concentration camps. The young girl’s diary of her time in hiding was found after her death and published. The Diary of Anne Frank remains one of the most moving testimonies to the invincibility of the human spirit in the face of inhuman cruelty.
She was born Annelies Marie Frank, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on June 12, 1929. Her father, Otto Frank, a businessman, moved his wife and two daughters to Holland early in the Hitler regime. After the German invasion and occupation of the Netherlands, the Franks were threatened with deportation to a forced-labor camp and so went into hiding. They spend the next two years, from July 9, 1942, until August 4, 1944, in the back of Otto’s food products warehouse, along with four other Jews. Gentile friends and neighbors smuggled in food and other supplies.
Acting on a tip from Dutch informers, the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police), discovered the Franks and arrested them. They then transported them to the Auschwitz concentration camps in Poland in September. Anne and her sister, Margot, were transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany a month later. There Anne died of typhus, in March 1945, not long before the camp was liberated by the Allies.
Otto Frank was found, still alive, in Auschwitz by the Russian troops that liberated the camps there (Anne’s mother had died in January). Friends back in Holland who had searched the Franks’ former hiding place found a stash of personal papers; among the collection was Anne’s diary, which described her emotional and intellectual development during the two years spent eluding detection by the Nazis. Otto had it published in 1947 as The Diary of a Young Girl. It has since been translated into more than 50 languages and adapted for stage and screen. The most memorable line remains: “In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart.”
The Franks’ hiding place, on the Prinsengracht Canal in Amsterdam, has been turned into a museum.
World War II History – Audio Double Feature Part #2
Podcast: The Opening of the 1936 Berlin Olympics #2
Today we bring you two radio broadcasts from the 1936 Berlin Olympics, just before WW II.
The second broadcast was on this day 72 years ago. RRG again sends out a speech by Adolph Hitler opening the Olympic Games in Berlin. (Adolf Hitler – Eroffnungsfeierlichkeiten Im Olympiastadion Berlin)
World War II History – Audio Double Feature
Podcast: The Opening of the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Today we bring you two radio broadcasts from the 1936 Berlin Olympics, just before WW II.
The first broadcast was sent out 1936-07-31 via the RRG Radio Report – Olympic Fire Handed Over At The Czech-German Border
World War II History – Audio Feature
Podcast: World War II History for August 1
Read the audio text at http://wwarii.com/blog/archives/world-war-ii-history-for-august-1.
World War II History – Audio Feature
Podcast: Columbia News Broadcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 4
This audio program is the 4th part of the news broadcast after the landings in Normandy on D-Day (44-Jun-06) that went out to the United States.
World War II History – Audio Feature
Podcast: World War II History for July 25
Read the audio text at http://wwarii.com/blog/archives/world-war-ii-history-for-july-25.
World War II History – Audio Feature
Podcast: Columbia News Broadcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 3
This audio program is the 3rd part of the news broadcast after the landings in Normandy on D-Day (44-Jun-06) that went out to the United States.
World War II History – Audio Feature
Podcast: Columbia News Broadcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 2
This audio program is the 2nd part of the CBS news broadcast after the landings in Normandy on D-Day (44-Jun-06) that went out to the United States, BBC news updates, and more.
World War II History – Audio Feature
Podcast: Columbia News Broadcast – D-Day Broadcast Pt 1
This audio program is the initial news broadcast after the landings in Normandy on D-Day (44-Jun-06) that went out to the United States. President Roosevelt leads the nation in prayer, BBC news updates, and more.