US Sherman Tank with Troops Riding during the Battle of the Bulge, World War II
US Trooper manning frozen Jeep mounted machine gun during the Battle of the Bulge, WWII
Technorati Tags: WWII, WWarII, History, Photos, Tank, Machine Gun, Battle of the Bulge
Today in WWII History
World War II History for May 30
1942 - Brits bombard Cologne in Operation Millennium
On this day in 1942, a thousand-plane raid on the German city of Cologne is launched by Great Britain. Almost 1,500 tons of bombs rain down in 90 minutes, delivering a devastating blow to the Germans’ medieval city as well as its morale.
Air Marshal A.T. (later Sir Arthur) Harris, commander in chief of the Bomber Command, planned Operation Millennium. It was his goal to prevent significant losses of Royal Air Force bombers by concentrating air attacks in massive bomber raids, overwhelming the enemy by numbers and delivering decisive, crippling blows. Harris would need to beef up the relatively small number of 416 “first line” aircraft needed, though; to those he had to add second-line and training squadron bombers, thus creating an aircraft force of 1,046.
On the night of May 30, Cologne was besieged: 600 acres of the city sustained heavy damage, 45,000 Germans were left homeless and 469 were killed. The chemical and machine tool industries, the main targets of the raid, were rendered useless. The cost to the British: 40 bombers, or less than 4 percent of the total that participated.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who approved the raid, telegraphed President Franklin Roosevelt the next day: “I hope you were pleased with our mass air attack … there is plenty more to come.”
1943 - American forces secured the Aleutian island of Attu from the Japanese during World War II.
Technorati Tags: WWII, WWarII, History, Cologne, Churchill, Roosevelt, Alaska, Aleutian, Japanese
Today in WWII History
World War II History for May 29
1942 - Adolf Hitler ordered all Jews in occupied Paris to wear an identifying yellow star on the left side of their coats.
On this day in 1942, on the advice of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler orders all Jews in occupied Paris to wear an identifying yellow star on the left side of their coats.
Joseph Goebbels had made the persecution, and ultimately the extermination, of Jews a personal priority from the earliest days of the war, often recording in his diary such statements as: “They are no longer people but beasts,” and “[T]he Jews … are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is pretty barbaric and is not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews.”
But Goebbels was not the first to suggest this particular form of isolation. “The yellow star may make some Catholics shudder,” wrote a French newspaper at the time. “It renews the most strictly Catholic tradition.” Intermittently, throughout the history of the papal states, that territory in central Italy controlled by the pope, Jews were often confined to ghettoes and forced to wear either yellow hats or yellow stars.
2004 - The World War II Memorial, approved by the U.S. Congress in 1993, was dedicated on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The memorial features 56 granite pillar representing the states, territories of that time and the District of Columbia, and two arches that symbolize the two theaters of the war (Atlantic and Pacific). A wall is also featured with 4,000 sculpted gold stars to commemorate the more than 400,000 Americans killed in the war. The memorial covers seven landscaped acres.
Technorati Tags: WWII, WWarII, History, Hitler, Jews, Paris, Memorial
Today in WWII History
World War II History for May 28
1937 - Neville Chamberlain Becomes Prime Minister of England
Chamberlain served as prime minister of the UK from 1937 to 1940. His political legacy is defined by his controversial policy of “appeasement” toward Hitler, which culminated in the Munich Pact in 1938. When Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, he pledged military support to Poland and led Britain to war. He was forced to resign in 1940, after the British debacle in Norway.
1940 - Belgium surrendered unconditionally to Germany.
On this day in 1940, after 18 days of ceaseless German bombardment, the king of Belgium, having asked for an armistice, is given only unconditional surrender as an option. He takes it.
German forces had moved into Belgium on May 10, part of Hitler’s initial western offensive. Despite some support by British forces, the Belgians were simply outnumbered and outgunned from the beginning. The first surrender of Belgium territory took place only one day after the invasion, when the defenders of Fort Eben-Emael surrendered.
Disregarding the odds, King Leopold III of Belgium had tried to rally his forces, evoking the Belgian victory during World War I. The Belgian forces fought on, courageously, but were continually overcome by the invaders.
By May 27, the king of Belgium, realizing that his army was depleted and that even retreat was no longer an option, sent an emissary through the German lines to request an armistice, a cease-fire. It was rejected. The Germans demanded unconditional surrender. Belgium’s government in exile, stationed in Paris, repudiated the surrender, but to no avail. Belgium had no army left to fight. In the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill defended King Leopold’s decision, despite the fact that it made the British troops’ position, attempting to evacuate Dunkirk, in northern France, more precarious.
King Leopold refused to flee the country and was taken prisoner by the Nazis during their occupation, and confined to his palace. A Belgian underground army grew up during the occupation; its work including protecting the port of Antwerp, the most important provisioning point for Allied troops on the Continent, from destruction by the Germans.
1941 - The Allies began their evacuation of Crete.
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Today in WWII History
World War II History for May 27
1941 - U.S. President Roosevelt proclaimed an “unlimited national emergency” amid rising world tension.
1941 - The German battleship Bismarck was sunk by British naval and air forces. 2,300 people were killed.
On February 14, 1939, the 823-foot Bismarck was launched at Hamburg. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler hoped that the state-of-the-art battleship would herald the rebirth of the German surface battle fleet. However, after the outbreak of war, Britain closely guarded ocean routes from Germany to the Atlantic Ocean, and only U-boats moved freely through the war zone.
In May 1941, the order was given for the Bismarck to break out into the Atlantic. Once in the safety of the open ocean, the battleship would be almost impossible to track down, all the while wreaking havoc on Allied convoys to Britain. Learning of its movement, Britain sent almost the entire British Home Fleet in pursuit. On May 24, the British battle cruiser Hood and battleship Prince of Wales intercepted it near Iceland. In a ferocious battle, the Hood exploded and sank, and all but three of the 1,421 crewmen were killed. The Bismarck escaped, but because it was leaking fuel it fled for occupied France. On May 26, it was sighted and crippled by British aircraft, and on May 27 three British warships descended on the Bismarck and finished it off.
1942 - German General Erwin Rommel began a major offensive in Libya with his Afrika Korps.
1944 - U.S. General MacArthur landed on Biak Island in New Guinea.
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The following press release is from Footnote.com:
Collection Features More than 80,000 Photos from WWII and Vietnam Now Freely Accessible at Footnote.com
Lindon, UT May 22, 2008 – In commemoration of Memorial Day, Footnote.com today announced their entire collection of military photos will be made permanently free on the site. The collection features over 80,000 photos from WWII and Vietnam making it the largest collection of its kind on the web.
Technorati Tags: WWII, Footnote, Photos, WWarII
Through their partnership with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Footnote.com has digitized and indexed the photos, which include images of downed aircraft, aerial photos of bombings, fighter groups and combat photos. What makes the photos unique are the short captions included with the photos, which provide interesting details about the events and people featured. To view these photos click here.
The announcement follows closely behind Footnote.com’s recent release of an interactive version of the Vietnam War Memorial. The online memorial is one of the largest images on the web and features a full-size photo of the memorial in Washington, DC. Visitors to the interactive memorial can search for names of fallen veterans, connect with other people, and create tributes by adding their own photos and stories to the site. To view the Vietnam War Memorial, go to www.footnote.com/thewall/.
“Making history accessible is only one facet to our mission,”explains Russ Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “Our goal is to create a site that enables people to interact with history; to add their own ‘footnote’ to history.”
Footnote.com encourages everyone to upload their own shoeboxes containing photos, letters and documents. Members then can add their own comments, insights and create web pages highlighting their discoveries. The web pages can also be used to create online memorials where family and friends can also contribute.
Footnote.com features over 35 million images on the site with two million new historical records being added each month. To view the unique content on Footnote.com and see what the Footnote Community has been doing, visit www.footnote.com.
About Footnote.com
Footnote.com is a subscription website that features searchable original documents, providing users with an unaltered view of the events, places and people that shaped the American nation and the world. At Footnote.com, all are invited to come share, discuss, and collaborate on their discoveries with friends, family, and colleagues. For more information, visit www.footnote.com.
World War II History for May 22
1939 - Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini signed a military alliance between Germany and Italy known as the “Pact of Steel.”
1944 - Operation Chattanooga Choo-Choo began. The plan involved the systematic bombing of railroads in Germany and other parts of northern Europe.
Technorati Tags: WWII, WWarII, History, Today, Hitler, Mussolini, Operation, Chattanooga, Choo-Choo
SS Robin Moor
In May 21, 1941 the first U.S. ship, the SS Robin Moor, was sunk by a U-boat.
The SS Robin Moor was a merchant steamship that sailed under the American flag from 1919 until May 1941. A German submarine, U-69, sank the ship on 21 May, 1941, before the United States had entered World War II. This sinking of a neutral nation’s ship in an area considered until then to be relatively safe from U-boats, and the plight of her crew and passengers, created an international uproar.
In May 1941 the Robin Moor was carrying nine officers, 29 crewmen, seven or eight passengers, and a commercial cargo from New York to Mozambique via South Africa, without a protective convoy. On 21 May, the ship was stopped by U-69 in the tropical Atlantic 750 miles west of the British-controlled port of Freetown, Sierra Leone. Although the Robin Moor was flying the flag of a neutral country, her mate was told by the U-boat crew that they had decided to “let us have it.” After a brief period for the ship’s crew and passengers to board her four lifeboats, the U-boat fired a torpedo and then shelled the vacated ship. Once the ship sank beneath the waves, the submarine’s crew pulled up to Captain W.E. Myers’ lifeboat, left him with four tins of ersatz bread and two tins of butter, and explained that the ship had been sunk because she was carrying supplies to Germany’s enemy.
Technorati Tags: WWII, WWarII, Steamship, U-boat, Merchant, Photo
World War II History for May 21
1940 - A Nazi “special unit” began murdering more than 1,500 hospital patients in East Prussia. The operation of killing the “unfit” mentally ill patients took 18 days.
Mentally ill patients from throughout East Prussia had been transferred to the district of Soldau, also in East Prussia. A special military unit, basically a hit squad, carried out its agenda and killed the patients over an 18-day period, one small part of the larger Nazi program to exterminate everyone deemed “unfit” by its ideology. After the murders, the unit reported back to headquarters in Berlin that the patients had been “successfully evacuated.”
1941 - The first U.S. ship, the SS Robin Moor, was sunk by a U-boat.
1942 - 4,300 Jews were deported from Chelm, Poland, to the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor.
Sobibor had five gas chambers, where about 250,000 Jews were killed between 1942 and 1943. A camp revolt occurred in October 1943; 300 Jewish slave laborers rose up and killed several members of the SS as well as Ukrainian guards. The rebels were killed as they battled their captors or tried to escape. The remaining prisoners were executed the very next day.
1942 - The German company IG Farben set up a factory just outside of Auschwitz, in order to take advantage of Jewish slave laborers.
IG Farben, as well as exploiting Jewish slave labor for its oil and rubber production, also performed drug experiments on inmates. Tens of thousands of prisoners would ultimately die because of brutal work conditions and the savagery of the guards. Several of the firm’s officials would be convicted of “plunder,” “spoliation of property,” “imposing slave labor,” and “inhumane treatment” of civilians and POWs after the war. The company itself came under Allied control. The original goal was to dismantle its industries, which also included the manufacture of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, so as to prevent it from ever posing a threat “to Germany’s neighbors or to world peace.” But as time passed, the resolve weakened, and the Western powers broke the company up into three separate divisions: Hoechst, Bayer, and BASF.
Technorati Tags: WWII, WWarII, History, Nazi, Uboat, Sobibor, Auschwitz
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