Today in WWII History
World War II History for July 6
1942 - Diarist Anne Frank and her family took refuge from the Nazis in Amsterdam.
1942 - Japanese forces landed on Guadalcanal Island and began constructing an airfield. On February 1, 1943 the Japanese forces began to withdraw.
Japanese Machine Gunners on Guadalcanal
1944 - Hartford Circus Fire
The Hartford Circus Fire was one of the worst fire disasters in US history. While thousands of spectators were enjoying an afternoon performance of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, a fire broke out on the southwest sidewall of the tent. The big top, waterproofed with a coating of paraffin and gasoline, quickly collapsed in flames, trapping hundreds beneath it. Circus Bandleader Merle Evans is said to be the person who first spotted the flames, and immediately directed the band to play Stars and Stripes Forever, the tune that traditionally signaled distress to all circus personnel.
1944 - Georges Mandel, French patriot, is executed
On this day in 1944, Georges Mandel, France’s minister of colonies and vehement opponent of the armistice with Germany, is executed in a wood outside Paris by collaborationist French.
Born into a prosperous Jewish family (his given name was Louis-Georges Rothschild, though no relation to the banking family) in 1885, Mandel’s political career began at age 21 as a member of the personal staff of French Premier Georges Clemenceau. He went on to serve in the National Assembly from 1919 to 1924, and then again from 1928 to 1940. Although a political conservative, he fell into conflict with fellow conservatives over their too-often pro-German sympathies, especially during the two world wars.
In 1940, he was transferred to the Ministry of the Interior by then French Premier Paul Reynaud, with whom he shared the conviction that no armistice should be made with the German invaders, and that the battle should continue, even if only from France’s colonies in Africa. After the resignation of Reynaud and the establishment of the Petain/Vichy government, Mandel sailed to Morocco, where he was arrested and sent back to France and imprisoned. He was then handed over to the Germans, and put in concentration camps in Oranienburg and Buchenwald. On July 4, 1944, he was shipped back to Paris, where the French security police, the Milice, took him out to a wood and shot him. As he was being handed over to his countrymen by the German SS, he said: “To die is nothing. What is sad is to die without seeing the liberation of the country and the restoration of the Republic.” [1]
[1] “Georges Mandel, French patriot, is executed,” History.com, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=6511 (accessed Jul 6, 2009).
