Sunday, June 13, 2021

June 13, 1941. The Lutzow damaged, the Resistance receives supplies from the air, Vichy arrests Jewish residents

The Royal Air Force commenced dropping supplies to the French Resistance.

Today in World War II History—June 13, 1941

The Australians defeated the French in the Battle of Jezzine in Lebanon.

On the same day, the French announced the commencement of a campaign to arrest 12,000 Jews for "plotting to hinder Franco-German cooperation".

In spite of a Luftwaffe escort, the RAF torpedoes and damages the German battleship Lutzow, which then returns to port.

The Lutzow torpedoed by Coastal Command

The Lutzow would return to service and end up being sort of emblematic of the German surface navy. In 1943 she was involved in a failed effort to intercept a convoy off of Norway which so enraged Hitler that he ordered the surface navy broken up for scrap. That event lead Admiral Raeder to resign his position. Raeder therefore missed the last two years of the war, but was convicted of war crimes in any event, serving prison time until 1955.

His successor, Karl Doenitz, convinced Hitler not to scrap the navy, and the Lutzow went on to serve for the remainder of the war, subsequently being damaged by the RAF in an air raid, and then her fate remained undetermined for years. It turned out that the ship had been sunk as a target by the Soviets in 1947.

The name of the ship itself is interesting in that the ship had originally been named the Deutschland, after the nation whose service she was in, but Hitler had required the name to be changed. The German navy had a cruiser by the name of Lutzow which was slightly newer than the Deutschland. Indeed, the ship was incomplete when the Soviets asked to buy her in 1940 and she was, bizarrely, sold to the USSR.

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Lex Anteinternet?

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Our answer to the question was: "The intent of this blog is to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?"

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