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World War II History for May 8

08 May

Today in WWII History

Audio Clip: Victory in Europe -VE- Day – NBC Special Broadcast (56min)

 Victory in Europe -VE- Day NBC Special Broadcast 1945-05-08 [56:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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).

 
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Posted in Country - Germany, Europe Theater, Facts, Media, North America, Podcast, Today

 

World War II History for October 2

02 Oct

World War II History for October 2

1940 - During World War II, the HMS Empress was sunk while carrying child refugees from Britain to Canada.

1941 - Operation Typhoon was launched by Nazi Germany. The plan was an all-out offensive against Moscow.
The plan was to send the Wehrmacht into the Soviet capital of Moscow.

With most of the Jews of Paris either dead or deported, the Nazi Gestapo turns its eye toward the destruction of synagogues.

The Germans began their surge to Moscow, led by the 1st Army Group and Gen. Fedor von Bock. Russian peasants in the path of Hitler’s army employ a “scorched-earth” policy.

Hitler’s forces had invaded the Soviet Union in June, and early on it had become one relentless push inside Russian territory. The first setback came in August, when the Red Army’s tanks drove the Germans back from the Yelnya salient. Hitler confided to General Bock at the time: “Had I known they had as many tanks as that, I’d have thought twice before invading.” But there was no turning back for Hitler–he believed he was destined to succeed where others had failed, and capture Moscow.

Although some German generals had warned Hitler against launching Operation Typhoon as the harsh Russian winter was just beginning, remembering the fate that befell Napoleon–who got bogged down in horrendous conditions, losing serious numbers of men and horses–Bock urged him on. This encouragement, coupled with the fact that the Germany army had taken the city of Kiev in late September, caused Hitler to declare, “The enemy is broken and will never be in a position to rise again.” So for 10 days, starting October 2, the 1st Army Group drove east, drawing closer to the Soviet capital each day. But the Russians also remembered Napoleon and began destroying everything as they fled their villages, fields, and farms. Harvested crops were burned, livestock were driven away, and buildings were blown up, leaving nothing of value behind to support exhausted troops. Hitler’s army inherited nothing but ruins.

1942 - The Queen Mary, sailing in an evasive zigzag pattern off the coast of Ireland, accidentally slices through its escort, the Curacao, which sinks, claiming 338 lives.

1944 - The Nazis crushed the Warsaw Uprising.

After two months of fierce urban warfare, the Germans crush the Polish resistance in Warsaw. As many as 250,000 Poles have died during the struggle.

The Allies break into the Siegfried Line, a defensive line running along Nazi Germany’s western border. The breach is in the north, near Aachen, and it is there that U.S. troops will penetrate western Germany.

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Posted in Atlantic Theater, Europe Theater, Ground, Today

 

World War II History for September 27

27 Sep

Today in WW II History

World War II History for September 27

1939 - Poland surrenders

On this day in 1939, 140,000 Polish troops are taken prisoner by the German invaders as Warsaw surrenders to the superior mechanized forces of Hitler’s army. The Poles fought bravely, but were able to hold on for only 26 days.

On the heels of its victory, the Germans began a systematic program of terror, murder, and cruelty, executing members of Poland’s middle and upper classes: Doctors, teachers, priests, landowners, and businessmen were rounded up and killed. The Nazis had given this operation the benign-sounding name “Extraordinary Pacification Action.” The Roman Catholic Church, too, was targeted, because it was a possible source of dissent and counterinsurgency. In one west Poland church diocese alone, 214 priests were shot. And hundreds of thousands more Poles were driven from their homes and relocated east, as Germans settled in the vacated areas.

This was all part of a Hitler master plan. Back in August, Hitler warned his own officers that he was preparing Poland for that “which would not be to the taste of German generals”–including the rounding up of Polish Jews into ghettos, a prelude to their liquidation. All roads were pointing to Auschwitz.

1940 - The Tripartite Pact is signed by Germany, Italy, and Japan

On this day in 1940, the Axis powers are formed as Germany, Italy, and Japan become allies with the signing of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin. The Pact provided for mutual assistance should any of the signatories suffer attack by any nation not already involved in the war. This formalizing of the alliance was aimed directly at “neutral” America–designed to force the United States to think twice before venturing in on the side of the Allies.

The Pact also recognized the two spheres of influence. Japan acknowledged “the leadership of Germany and Italy in the establishment of a new order in Europe,” while Japan was granted lordship over “Greater East Asia.”

A footnote: There was a fourth signatory to the Pact-Hungary, which was dragged into the Axis alliance by Germany in November 1940.

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World War II History for August 5

05 Aug

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 for August 5 [1:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (4032)

 
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Posted in Europe Theater, Media, Podcast, Today

 

World War II History for July 22

22 Jul

Today in WW II History

World War II History for July 22

1942 - Deportations from Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka begin

On this day in 1942, the systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto begins, as thousands are rounded up daily and transported to a newly constructed concentration/extermination camp at Treblinka, in Poland.

On July 17, Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi SS, arrived at Auschwitz, the concentration camp in eastern Poland, in time to watch the arrival of more than 2,000 Dutch Jews and the gassing of almost 500 of them, mostly the elderly, sick, and very young. The next day, Himmler promoted the camp commandant, Rudolph Hoess, to SS major and ordered that the Warsaw ghetto, (the Jewish quarter constructed by the Nazis upon the occupation of Poland, enclosed first by barbed wire and then by brick walls), be depopulated-a “total cleansing,” as he described it and the inhabitants transported to what was to become a second extermination camp constructed at the railway village of Treblinka, 62 miles northeast of Warsaw.

Within the first seven weeks of Himmler’s order, more than 250,000 Jews were taken to Treblinka by rail and gassed to death, marking the largest single act of destruction of any population group, Jewish or non-Jewish, civilian or military, in the war. Upon arrival at “T. II,” as this second camp at Treblinka was called, prisoners were separated by sex, stripped, and marched into what were described as “bathhouses,” but were in fact gas chambers. T.II’s first commandant was Dr. Irmfried Eberl, age 32, the man who had headed up the euthanasia program of 1940 and had much experience with the gassing of victims, especially children. He compelled several hundred Ukrainian and about 1,500 Jewish prisoners to assist him. They removed gold teeth from victims before hauling the bodies to mass graves. Eberl was relieved of his duties for “inefficiency.” It seems that he and his workers could not remove the corpses quickly enough, and panic was occurring within the railway cars of newly arrived prisoners.

By the end of the war, between 700,000 and 900,000 would die at either Treblinka I or II. Hoess was tried and sentenced to death by the Nuremberg Tribunal. He was hanged in 1947.

1943 - American forces led by Gen. George S. Patton captured Palermo, Sicily.

 
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World War II History for July 15

15 Jul

Today in WW II History

World War II History for July 15

1941 - Garbo makes an appearance

On this day in 1941, master spy Juan Pujol Garcia, nicknamed “Garbo,” sends his first communique to Germany from Britain. The question was: Who was he spying for?

Juan Garcia, a Spaniard, ran an elaborate multiethnic spy network that included a Dutch airline steward, a British censor for the Ministry of Information, a Cabinet office clerk, a U.S. soldier in England, and a Welshman sympathetic to fascism. All were engaged in gathering secret information on the British-Allied war effort, which was then transmitted back to Berlin. Garcia was in the pay of the Nazis. The Germans knew him as “Arabel,” whereas the English knew him as Garbo. The English knew a lot more about him, in fact, than the Germans, as Garcia was a British double agent.

None of Garcia’s spies were real, and the disinformation he transmitted to Germany was fabricated–phony military “secrets” that the British wanted planted with the Germans to divert them from genuine military preparations and plans.

Among the most effective of Garcia’s deceptions took place in June 1944, when he managed to convince Hitler that the D-Day invasion of Normandy was just a “diversionary maneuver designed to draw off enemy reserves in order to make a decisive attack in another place”–playing right into the mindset of German intelligence, which had already suspected that this might be the case. (Of course, it wasn’t.) Among the “agents” that Garcia employed in gathering this “intelligence” was Donny, leader of the World Aryan Order; Dick, an “Indian fanatic”; and Dorick, a civilian who lived at a North Sea port. All these men were inventions of Garcia’s imagination, but they leant authenticity to his reports back to Berlin–so much so that Hitler, while visiting occupied France, awarded Garcia the Iron Cross for his service to the fatherland.

That same year, 1944, Garcia received his true reward, the title of MBE—Member of the British Empire–for his service to the England and the Allied cause. This ingenious Spaniard had proved to be one of the Allies’ most successful counterintelligence tools.

1942 - The systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto began. Thousands were rounded up and transported to a newly constructed concentration/extermination camp in Treblinka, Poland.

 
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Posted in Europe Theater, Facts, Ground, Today

 

World War II History for April 19

19 Apr

Today in WWII History

World War II History for April 19

1943 - The Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazi rule began.

On April 19, 1943, Passover, Himmler sent more than 2,000 Waffen SS soldiers to combat the Jewish resistance. German tanks, howitzers, machine guns, and flamethrowers were met with Jewish pistols, rifles, homemade grenades, and Molotov cocktails. The Jews were able to fend off the German assault for 28 days. Finally, SS General Jurgen Stroop set the entire ghetto block, now reduced to an area 1,000 yards by 300 yards, on fire and blew up the synagogue. By May, 56,065 Jews were dead. It is estimated that the Germans lost 300, with 1,000 wounded.

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