Saturday, May 18, 2024

Thursday, May 18, 1944. Monte Cassino ends.

And in more ways than one.

The Germans had withdrawn, leaving only 30 men too wounded to be moved. The Poles were the first Allied troops in the monastery.

It would be rebuilt.

Stalin ordered the Crimean Tartars deported from their homeland. The action was carried out on the excuse that some Tartars had collaborated with the Germans, which was actually true of every Soviet ethnicity, including, in large numbers, the Russians.  Repression of the Tartars would carry on for decades after the war, and the disaster has never been sufficiently redressed.


The Admiralty Islands Campaign and the Battle of Wakde ended in Allied victories.

Gerd von Runstedt as Commander in Chief of German forces in the west.

Von Runstedt was an old soldier by this point, having been born in 1875 and having entered the Prussian Army in 1892.  Like MacArthur in the U.S. Army, he'd retired before the war, having left service in 1938, although he was five years older than MacArthur, who was old for a U.S. Army commander.  An erasable character, he was not personally fond of Hitler, knew of plots to kill him which he kept to himself, but would not participate in them as he felt the concept disloyal.

After the war he was imprisoned for four years and upon his release found himself separated from his wife due to the division of Germany. She was in the American Zone of occupation, but he could not secure permission to visit her, as the US was upset by the British decision to release him.  He died in 1953 at age 77.

It can be argued that his decision not to support the July 20 plotters was instrumental in the coup's failure.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, May 17, 1944. Landing at Wakde.

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