German Wehrmacht driving in to surrender near Prague (1945)

Really fascinating film clip of German troops surrendering in Prague at the end of the Second World War.

Some observations.

At 1:07, a US soldier can be seen with a C96 "broomhandle" Mauser pistol in a holster.  In a few scenes down the film, the same soldier requires a bunch of German officers to surrender their sidearms.

Overall, these German soldiers are heavily armed with small arms and are still under arms.

At 4:46 an American Lt. Col speaks with a German officer and his driver. The officer, and maybe the driver, have pulled the Nazi cap devices off of their caps.

The German troops are accompanied by a lot of women who are riding out with them.  As they are not in Germany, it'd be interesting to know the circumstances that caused the women to be rather obviously riding with them.

June 25, 1941. The Continuation War, Murder and Executive Order 8802

Finland declared war on the Soviet Union with the goal of reclaiming territories lost in the Winter War.  It's goals were limited in the war to the recovery of territory lost to the Soviets, which it advanced into, took strategic positions, and then stopped.  This date is noted here:

Today in World War II History—June 25, 1941

The action put the Finns in bed with the Germans, and it wasn't a spur of the moment decision.  The Finns knew that Barbarossa was coming, and had agreed to the prestaging of German troops on its soil.  It was a calculated move betting on a German victory in the war, or at least on Germany obtaining a sufficiently advantageous result such that Finland would regain the territories it had lost.

Dealing with the Continuation War has always been a bit of a problem for Western historians as it does cut slightly against the grain in regard to the story of World War Two. Finland, with one slight exception, is the big exception to the rule regarding the Axis. Finland protected its Jewish population, with the exception of 8 individuals, and refused to hand them over to the Germans.  It halted its advance and went on the defensive as soon as it regained the territory it had lost, which in context was probably a strategic failure as it could have gained ethnic Finnish ground in the far north which would have also choked off Murmansk to Allies, which would be a port of resupply to the Soviets during the war.

Finland gambled incorrectly, of course, and would pay the price, albeit not as much of a price as a person might have suspected it would receive from the Soviets.

Symbol of the German Army's 163d Infantry Division.

On the same day Sweden agreed to allow the Germans to transport the German 163rd Infantry Division across its territory from Norway into Finland. The request had been made several days prior and had provoked a crisis in the Swedish government in which the King intervened with the request that it be allowed. The motivations for allowing it are complicated but tied to aiding its neighbor.  It's an example of how the neutrals of the Second World War not only were neutral, but frankly made significant concessions to nearby belligerents none the less.

The 163d spent most of the war with the Finns, being transported back to Germany late in the war.  It was destroyed by the Red Army in Pomerania in March, 1945.

Anti Jewish pogroms broke out in Lithuania. Centered in Kovno, the murders were conducted by Lithuanian civilians, not the Germans, at first, as the Germans had not yet reached the city. Upon their reaching it the killing would continue under their direction.

In Serbia, the Utashi opened the Slana camp, an island concentration camp, and began transporting Jews, and later Serbian and Croatian communists, to the island to be murdered.  The killing would stop when the Italians would occupy the island.

President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which read:

EXECUTIVE ORDER 8802

Reaffirming Policy of Full Participation in the Defense Program by All Persons, Regardless of Race, Creed, Color, or National Origin, and Directing Certain Action in Furtherance of Said Policy

WHEREAS it is the policy of the United States to encourage full participation in the national defense program by all citizens of the United States, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin, in the firm belief that the democratic way of life within the Nation can be defended successfully only with the help and support of all groups within its borders; and

WHEREAS there is evidence that available and needed workers have been barred from employment in industries engaged in defense production solely because of considerations of race, creed, color, or national origin, to the detriment of workers' morale and of national unity:

NOW, THEREFORE, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the statutes, and as a prerequisite to the successful conduct of our national defense production effort, I do hereby reaffirm the policy of the United States that there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin, and I do hereby declare that it is the duty of employers and of labor organizations, in furtherance of said policy and of this order, to provide for the full and equitable participation of all workers in defense industries, without discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin;

And it is hereby ordered as follows:

1. All departments and agencies of the Government of the United States concerned with vocational and training programs for defense production shall take special measures appropriate to assure that such programs are administered without discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin;

2. All contracting agencies of the Government of the United States shall include in all defense contracts hereafter negotiated by them a provision obligating the contractor not to discriminate against any worker because of race, creed, color, or national origin;

3. There is established in the Office of Production Management a Committee on Fair Employment Practice, which shall consist of a chairman and four other members to be appointed by the President. The Chairman and members of the Committee shall serve as such without compensation but shall be entitled to actual and necessary transportation, subsistence and other expenses incidental to performance of their duties. The Committee shall receive and investigate complaints of discrimination in violation of the provisions of this order and shall take appropriate steps to redress grievances which it finds to be valid. The Committee shall also recommend to the several departments and agencies of the Government of the United States and to the President all measures which may be deemed by it necessary or proper to effectuate the provisions of this order.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt
June 25, 1941

Australia formed its Naval Auxiliary Patrol.

Wednesday June 18, 1941. The Middle East

 The Battle of Damascus began on this day in 1941.

Free French Circassian cavalry in Damascus.

The battle pitted Allied forces, lead by Indian troops on the ground, but including various Commonwealth countries and Free French forces against Vichy French and colonial Syrian troops.

The battle ran until June 21 and resulted in the surrender of the Vichy French administration to the Allies, thereby closing an Axis rear door in North Africa.

Germany and Turkey signed a treaty of friendship.

The treaty closed the door to the possibility, in German minds, of the Allies wooing Turkey, which was unlikely in the first place. Turkey, for its part, was on a dedicated path of neutrality.

The treaty would benefit both Germany and Turkey, with the Turks benefitting in some unexpected ways.  The Germans received a guaranteed supply of chromite from turkey through the treaty, putting the Turks basically in the same position as the Swedes in buying neutrality through raw materials, although in both instances the countries would have been a handful for the Germans to attack if they'd thought it necessary.  Indeed, in Turkey's situation the country was far more valuable to Nazi Germany as a neutral than as a combatant, as that closed the door to the British to the south who, as can be seen from the above, were defeating the Vichy French in Syria and who had already defeated an attempt at fascism in Iraq.  Unbeknownst to the Turks, the treat also shortened German lines, already pretty stretched, for Operation Barbarossa, which was just about to commence.

The Turks received cash, for chromite, but they also received a large guaranteed supply of arms which, in the dangerous world in which they were living, were something they very much needed.  Germany actually took advantage of this provision to supply the Turks with a large supply of unfinished Polish arms, which were of very high quality.  Polish small arms were partially based on German designs and the Germans themselves had put them to use in their own armed forces, but Poland had used "small ring" Mausers rather than the "large ring" ones used by the Germans which made finishing them off unattractive to the Germans.  This was not the case for the Turks.

The treaty did not preclude other nations, including belligerents, from trading with Turkey and the treaty would inspire a chromite buying effort on the part of the Allies.

The treaty's term was ten years, but the Turks would terminate the agreement in 1944, seeing which way the war was going, and they declared war on Germany on February 23, 1945.  Their declaration did not mean that they contributed troops in the final months of the war but can be seen as a means of attempting to protect themselves against a potential Soviet incursion into their territory.

Joe Louis knocked out Billy Conn in a heavyweight boxing match.

Sunday, June 8, 1941. The British Commonwealth invades the French Empire

On this day in 1941, Commonwealth forces and Free French forces invaded French Syria.

Today in World War II History—June 8, 1941

Britain invades French occupied Syria

The campaign is remarkable for a variety of reasons, including the use of cavalry by both sides.  The action was made necessary by legitimate British fears that Vichy would allow the Germans to occupy Syria, a threat made credible, if only from the Allied prospective, by the airborne invasion of Crete which had just occurred and by Vichy allowing the Luftwaffe airport rights in Syria.  Indeed, the action had been proceeded by Royal Air Force strikes on French airfields and retaliatory French raids on British ones in Transjordan.

The campaign was short, but it was marked by notable French resistance to the Commonwealth invasion and a decline of an offer of German Luftwaffe assistance.  The action overall is one of several that cast some legitimate doubt on the common concept of all Frenchmen being pro Ally at the time.

Surprisingly, the action did not result in a Vichy declaration of war against the United Kingdom and in fact Vichy's forces in Syria fairly rapidly fell in spite of their stout resistance.  The British had battlefield superiority, but this required diversion of Commonwealth forces from Libya, where their loss was keenly felt.  The action also, however, saw the deployment of Free French forces in what might be regarded as a near civil war being fought, and really for the first time, in a French colony.

The Free French were given military administration of Syria and Lebanon following the Allied victory, something that more or less made it clear that the British at least were recognizing a rival claim to the governance of France.  That administration, in keeping with the spirt of the age, recognized the independence of Lebanon and Syria, with Lebanon achieving a real measure of independence that Syria did not.  Lebanon declared war on the Axis powers in 1943.

DeGaulle, who was effectively the head of the Free French state by the war's end, was not sympathetic to Syrian independence and as with Algeria, the end of the war brought on demands for immediate statehood. Demonstrations in Damascus turned violent in May, 1945 which resulted in French troops being deployed inside of Syria to quite the demonstrations.  This didn't work and the British intervened with their troops having authorization to fire on the French if necessary, which it did not turn out to be, one of two instances of the British intervening in favor of a post war independence movement against a European colonial power (the other being in the Dutch East Indies).  This ended with the French leaving and the British briefly staying, until they were able to withdraw.

March 20, 1921. The Upper Silesian Plebiscite

"Vote for Poland and you will be free", a pro Polish campaign poster.  Interestingly, while the vote would go on largely ethnic lines, this poster was in Polish and German.

A plebiscite was held in Upper Silesia to determine its national fate. The result apportioned the territory between Poland, Germany and Czechoslovakia. 

This would, of course, help set the game board for World War Two, as did the Treaty of Riga from the day prior.  Germany wasn't content with the results, and in actuality Poland really wasn't either.  When Germany dismembered Czechoslovakia in the following decade, Poland took a piece, although I think of lower Silesia and other border areas, before it soon faced Germany's territorial expansion itself.  Czechoslovakia took them back in October 1939 and then the border returned to its 1920 line following World War Two.

Also following World War Two almost all of Upper Silesia was placed in Poland.  Interestingly, unlike Lower Silesia, not all of its ethnic German population was expelled as some of it was bilingual and as the Germans in Upper Silesia were Catholic, and somewhat intermixed with the Polish population, some were allowed to remain.  The region currently has a small autonomy movement.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 10, 1945. The Closure of the Heart Mountain Internment Camp.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 10: 1945  Heart Mountain interment center closed.

See also:  

Today in World War II History—November 10, 1940 & 1945

October 14, 1920. End of the Heimosodat

On this day in 1920, Finland and the Soviet Union entered into the Treaty of Tartu which fixed Finland's first post war borders with Soviet Russia.  This came in the context of ending the Heimosodat, a Finnish sponsored effort in the Finnish regions of Russia that sought to join the land inhabited by Russian Baltic Finns with Finland.

The story is complicated as the entire story involves a series of wars including wars of independence in neighboring states that were formerly part of Imperial Russia.  In some instances Finnish volunteers sought to aid independence movements in hopes of a friendly state being established, in others they hoped for outright annexation of Finnish lands that lay inside of Russia's boundaries.  The entire matter demonstrated, as the wars of the Poles we've recently dealt with, that former European imperial boundaries were rarely ethnic ones.

Finland itself occupies about 60% of the landmass inhabited by the Baltic Finns.  Estonia is the second state that has a Baltic Finn population, with Estonians also being Baltic Finns, but Baltic Finns speaking a branch of the overall Finnish language.  Finns from Finland sent volunteer units into Estonia to support it independence movement, which was successful at the time, a fairly remarkable thing to do as it was more or less concurrent with the Finnish Civil War.

Finnish volunteers in Estonia.

More serious, from a Russian prospective, were a series of Finnish supported efforts to secure the annexation of the large Finnish landmass to Finland's east.  This lead to a complicated series of wars, the Heimosodat, that are now largely forgotten outside the region but which form an important aspect of the situation from that point forward.

From March 1918 until October 1918, Finnish volunteers attempted, and nearly succeeded, in taking Karelia from Russia.  They were defeated not by Russian troops, with Russia collapsing into civil war at the time, but by British ones who feared the Germans securing access to the White Sea.  Conservative Finns, the Finnish Whites, had support from Imperial Germany and the British saw the Finnish effort in that context. British efforts successfully caused the Finnish advance to fall apart and the Finns ultimately retreated. Following that, the British attempted unsuccessfully to sponsor Karelian independence.

Murmansk Legion, a British organized and equipped Finnish unit in Karelia that fought the Finnish volunteers in that region. The unit was made up of, in part, refugee Finnish Red Guards, making it essentially a Finnish communist unit organized to fight the Finnish whites in Karelia.  When the British left Russia in 1919, many of its members went to Canada, with some securing reentrance to a less than enthused Finland. Some officers stayed in Soviet Russia and would later fight for the reds in the Spanish Civil War.

Also in 1918 Finnish volunteers attempted to annex Petsamo, the large northern landmass bordering the Arctic Sea, but were also pushed back by the British.

Finnish volunteers in Petsamo in 1918.

Finnish volunteers tried again for Karelia in 1919 in the Aunus expedition, now that Russia was fully in turmoil. The plan depended upon a Karelian uprising that didn't materialize, and after two months it retreated back into Finland.

In 1920 they also tried for Petsamo again, but were pushed back this time by Soviet troops.

In 1920 an uprising in North Ingria, the southern part of Karelia, ended up establishing a putative independent state that had the goal of being annexed to Finland, but which would have required the balance of Karelia to join Finland in order to succeed.

The Treaty of Tartu largely followed the former Imperial Russian boundaries of the Grand Duchy of Finland, excepting that the Finns received a portion of Petsamo including a port, which had been promised to them by the Imperial Russian government in 1864. They withdrew from some territory taken in in the other expeditions and abandoned support for North Ingria.  The treaty largely held until the Soviet's unwarranted invasion in 1939 although the Finns supported an uprising in Karelia in 1921-22 which severely strained their relations with the USSR at the time.

The entire matter is another example of the mess of imperial boundaries and the complicated nature of the break apart of imperial regimes.  By and large, Finns who dreamed of incorporating all Finnish lands into their newly independent state were justified in that goal.  Imperial Germany ironically ended up supporting their aspirations and the British helped crush them. German support of Finnish whites helped prevent Finland from becoming a Soviet state that would have been annexed to the Soviet Union in the 1920s, but its probable that had the Finns succeeded in establishing themselves beyond their imperial boundaries the Soviets would have taken that territory back in any event, and perhaps the rest of Finland as well.  At any rate, a good deal of Finnish ethnic territory remains outside of modern Finland today, and the territory, such as it was, that was gained by Finland in the Treaty of Tartu was lost at the end of the Continuation War.

August 23, 1920. Portents

From the Sandusky Ohio Star Journal, August 23, 1920.  "The Sky Is Now Her Limit".

The achievement of the franchise was being heralded as a major advance for women in society by the press around the country, which of course, it was.

Poland's dramatic reversal of military fortunes, and the Soviet Unions, was also being noted.  The Poles were on the verge of defeat just a few days ago but now were defeating the Soviet Union.  Red Army soldiers were departing Trotsky's forces for captivity with the Poles.

At the same time, German workers in Danzig organized a Communist Soviet which took action to disrupt Allied shipments to embattled Poland.

Danzig's German dockworkers present an interesting item here, in that the Danzig Corridor was one of the contention points between Germany and Poland that the Nazi's would use as a basis for war.  At least in 1920, however, those German workers were Red.  They'd lose their homes in 1945 when the Soviet Union came in and pushed the Germans out and the city has since been known by its Polish name, Gdansk.  It's Polish dockworkers were instrumental in bringing down Poland's Communist government in 1989 which was the first step of the end of Communism as a serious entity anywhere.

August 15. A day for big events.

A sample of big events for this day.  More can be found on: Today In Wyoming's History: August 15:

Today is Victory over Japan Day

 VJ Day Crowd in  Times Squire, New York City.

1842  John C. Fremont raised the Stars and Stripes from the top of the Wind River Range, naming the location "Fremont's Peak."

1920  Dedication of St. Anthony of Padua Church in Casper.

St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, Casper Wyoming

This large Roman Catholic Church is located one block from St. Mark's Episcopal Church, the First Presbyterian Church, and the St. Anthony's Convent otherwise pictured on this blog. Built in the late teens and completed in 1920, funds to construct the church were raised from the parishioners.  The church was formally dedicated by Bishop McGovern on August 15, 1920.  The church rectory is next to it, and can be seen in the bottom photograph. To the far right, only partially visible in this photograph, is the Shepherd's Staff, the church offices.

This church served as the only Roman Catholic church in Casper Wyoming up until 1953, when Our Lady of Fatima was opened. The church also currently serves the St. Francis Mission in Midwest Wyoming.

St. Anthony's was recently updated (Spring 2014) to include a Ten Commandments monument.

My parents were married in this church in 1958 and I was baptized here.

The church has, within the entryway, a memorial to its parishioner's killed during World War Two.

I've noticed that this particular entry had tended to remain in the top three of the most observed entries on this blog, not that there's a lot of traffic on this blog. My theory is that people are hitting it looking for the Parish website. That being the case, you can find the parish website by hitting this link here.

 
Epilog:

St. Anthony's recently received a new set of steps. The old cement was decaying after a century of use.  So, as a result, the front of the church now has a slightly different appearance.

1940  Ft. Laramie publicly dedicated as a National Monument.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1942  The first landing at the Casper Air Base took place when Lt. Col. James A. Moore landed a Aeronca at the base.

1945    The Allies proclaimed V-J Day, one day after Japan agreed to surrender unconditionally.  Hirohito's surrender message is broadcast to the Japanese people.  Japanese aircraft raid TF 38, 12 hours after Hirohito's surrender order.  Soviet aircraft sink 860 ton frigate Kenju off Hokkaido; last Japanese warship lost during World War II.A two-day holiday is proclaimed for all federal employees. In New York, Mayor La Guardia pays tribute to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the deceased president, in a radio broadcast.  US Task Force 38 launches massive air strikes on the Tokyo area, encountering numerous Japanese fighters but the aircraft are recalled upon receipt of the surrender announcement. Vice-Admiral Ugaki, commanding Kamikaze operations, leads a final mission but the 7 dive-bombers are shot down off Tokyo before they can reach Okinawa. South Korea was liberated after nearly 40 years of Japanese colonial rule.  US gasoline rationing ends.

Quite a day.

The anniversary of nuclear strikes on Japan. Was it justified and moral?

I'll be frank, I don't think it was.

Hiroshima let, Nagasaki right.

I find all of the arguments that are used to support the use of atomic weapons against Japan to be unconvincing.  For that matter, I find some of the counter arguments also unconvincing.  At the end of the day, what convinces me is that it was a deliberate use of a weapon calculated to cause mass loss of life against civilians.

The United States went to war in 1917 as it was horrified by the German targeting of ships indiscriminately.  But by the end of the First World War we seemed to have gotten over such things.  The U.S. kept up attacks in November 1918 right until the last moment of the war, causing the loss of life and losing lives that didn't need to die with an Armistice about to take effect.  Pershing made statements making it clear that his view was that killing Germans right up to the end was a laudable goal as they posed such a danger to peace.  Some would argue that the events of 1939 to 1945 proved him right, but the reality of it is that those November 11, 1918 deaths, were just deaths. They didn't make the world any safer.

But what they do achieve is to demonstrate how the First World War had changed the view of western, and largely Christian, society.  By 1918 we were used to the concept of death from above and below, and by means of chemical and fire.  In the interwar years people worried, and frankly assumed, that a future war would mean airborne attacks upon cities.  The Germans had in fact paved the way with this, as with so many other things, by shelling Parish with long range rail artillery. That had no tactical goal and the strategic one was terror.

By 1920 and throughout the 30s it was assumed that cities would be bombed in a future war and that came to be truly fairly early in World War Two.  All sides kept to to targeting only military targets at first, but during the Battle of Britain the Germans began targeting cities, something they at first did accidentally but soon did intentionally.  Ironically, that change in targets aided the British as it provided relief to industrial targets and served only to give the British people resolve.

The British retaliated with nighttime raids on Germany which were ostensibly aimed at industrial targets but nighttime accuracy was so bad that large scale civilian deaths were inevitable.  When the United States entered the war it attacked targets in Europe during the day in order to be more accurate, but wide scale civilian deaths still occurred.  Targeting civilians, however, was never the goal of the USAAF in Europe.

In the war against Japan it became one as the US grew frustrated with Japanese stalwart resistance to US advances and good sense.  Japan's industrial base was minor compared to other combatants and ultimately the still controversial decision to fire bomb Japanese cities was made by the US with the intentional goal of making Japanese workers homeless. No home, no work, was the concept. Whatever the logical merits of that argument are, the results are inescapable  Civilians were targeted in a way that would result in fiery death.

It is at that point, it seems to me, that we crossed into the clearly immoral.  By the time that action was taken Japan's industry was already destroyed and we were acting to a degree in frustration.  Even to the extent it wasn't, targeting people in their homes for death isn't a legitimate military action of any kind.

Nor is simply blasting a city into oblivion.  No matter what Nagasaki and Hiroshima contained in the way of military targets, that was the goal.  We thought that Japan simply wouldn't surrender and it was an attempt to teach them a lesson so they would.  It seemed to work.

We know retrospectively that by August 1945 the Japanese were looking for a way out of the war, but we didn't know that then, and we still don't know if they would have found it. Even after the two atomic strikes some Japanese military figures were against surrender and the Japanese military was not above using force to get their way.  They might not have surrendered.

And that might have meant a bloody campaign in Japan in 1946.

But, as horrific as it is to say, that would have been a military campaign, and a just one.  It wouldn't have been a campaign against civilians with the idea of killing a lot of them in order to force our point.

And it wouldn't have left us with the legacy of being the only nation in the world to use an atomic bomb, and the only one to have used atomic bombs against cities.

That doesn't mean that most of our role in World War Two, and indeed the roles of the Allies in general, wasn't just.  It was.  And that doesn't take away the legacy of the servicemen who fought in the war. They deserve to be remembered.  And it doesn't discount the fact that World War Two was so horrific that we can't even imagine a war like that today.  It's simply beyond us.

Rather, it should remind us that in times of stress and strain, it's easy to forget our better selves.  And later, it's easy to discount actions we've taken, if taken overall all in the context of a noble goal.

The Grim Measure of Force.

Yesterday, tragedy struck Beirut, Lebanon, a city that's had more than its fair share of misery.



As has been reported, the explosion was caused by a fire that spread and detonated a very large quantity of nitrate fertilizer stored at a warehouse on the docks.  The explosion was of a gigantic magnitude.  So large, in fact, that some Lebanese authorities at first wondered if they'd been hit by an atomic device.  That speculation, ironically enough, was strangely timely, as today is the 75th anniversary of the American use of an atomic device on Hiroshima.

So how does this historic event compare to other such blasts?

Should we even make that comparison for that matter? Well, we will, simply because perhaps such things are important to know.

As big as the blast was, and it was really huge, it still doesn't replace the accidental blast that's oddly analogous that occured at Halifax on December 6, 1917.  We marked the centennial of that tragedy here:

Roads to the Great War: Halifax: A Tragedy with a Unique Dimension

Roads to the Great War: Halifax: A Tragedy with a Unique Dimension: By most measures, the greatest non-nuclear explosion in history occurred in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in December 1917. The approximate casual...

Halifax was a 2.9 kiloton explosion.  Absolutely massive, and actually now larger than the lowest low yield atomic weapons in terms of their potential, but thankfully unexploited, yields. 

In contrast, the Beirut blast seems to be about 2.04 kt.  Massive, but still 1/3d less than the huge Halifax detonation.  Still, that yield is below the lowest, low yield nuclear weapons, although weapons in that class could legitimately be regarded as extremely low yield, in context.

Indeed, that's what makes them dangerous.  As big as the Beirut explosion was, it so far below Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which we'll mention below, that there's no comparison. That fact is what might tempt the use of a very low yield nuclear weapon. . .which might provoke use of higher yield ones.

Hiroshima's mushroom cloud taken some minutes later and from a distance of six miles.

Hiroshima, whose 75th anniversary is today, was a 15kt atomic bomb.

Imagine that.  It was seven times as powerful as the blast in Beirut earlier this week.

May 8, 1945. Victory In Europe. Seventy Five Years Ago Today.

The mission of this Allied force was fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7th, 1945.

Dwight Eisenhower.

The official surrender, however, came today.

Today In Wyoming's History: May 8:

May 8

1945    The German surrender becomes official.  President Harry S. Truman announced in a radio address that World War II had ended in Europe.  End of the Prague uprising.  Hundreds of Algerian civilians are killed by French Army soldiers in the Sétif massacre, ushering in what would ultimately become the French Algerian War.  In day two of rioting, 10,000 servicemen in Halifax Nova Scotia loot and vandalize downtown Halifax during VE-Day celebrations.

Lex Anteinternet: December 13, 1918. Crossing the Rhine. . and on March 7, 1945

Same bridge, same Army, crossed under fire the second time in 1945 on this day.

Lex Anteinternet: December 13, 1918. Crossing the Rhine:

December 13, 1918. Crossing the Rhine

American soldiers crossing the Rhine at Remagen, over the Ludendorff Bridge. This same bridge would be fought over fiercely in March, 1945 and was so badly damaged by German efforts and the battle itself that it would ultimately collapse.  By that time, it had served, for the second time, as a major American conduit across the Rhine.

75th Anniversary of the March 6, 1945 tank duel in Cologne

December 13, 1918. Crossing the Rhine

American soldiers crossing the Rhine at Remagen, over the Ludendorff Bridge. This same bridge would be fought over fiercely in March, 1945 and was so badly damaged by German efforts and the battle itself that it would ultimately collapse.  By that time, it had served, for the second time, as a major American conduit across the Rhine.

Gen. Plummer takes the salute for the Canadian 1st Division as it marches into Germany over the Rhine, December 13, 1918.

Movies In History: Downfall

This movie is excellent.

Perhaps ironically best known to zillions of Youtube viewers for the highly lifted scene of a Hitler tirade, which has been adapted in caption form to every scenario known to man for comedic relief, this European production deals with the last days of Adolph Hitler and those in his Berlin bunker in the final days of 1945. 

With the central figure somewhat being the true story of a secretary that was brought into Hitler's service during this period (I'm amazed that anyone would have agreed to be taken on at the time) the film is almost documentary like in dealing with those in Hitler's orbit as things came crashing down. Excellently acted, the film is gripping.

Material and historical details of the film are of the highest order.  Uniforms, which in the case of the Germans amounted to a blistering array of the same, are correct.  Weapons are also correct, including the unusual number of Stg44s that were in German hands by this time of the war.  Characters appear to be portrayed precisely correctly based on what descriptions of those characters reveal. 

The film is simply excellent.

The German language film is on Netflix and is well worth watching.  Indeed, for a student of World War Two, it's a must.