Showing posts with label Albania. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Albania. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Monday, March 6, 1944. "Black Monday"

The first large scale daylight bombing raid on Berlin occured.  The raid, remembered as Black Monday, involved 814 bombers and 944 fighters from bases in southern England.  69 bombers were lost.

Miss Donna Mae II sustaining damage after the B-17 drifted under another B-17 dropping its bomb load. The plane would go down with all eleven crewmen.

P-51 pilot Donald Blakeslee would fly the first such aircraft over the city.  An early American fighter pilot, he first joined the RCAF in 1941, he served in the USAF until 1965 and passed away in 2008 at age 80.

For those watching Masters of the Air, it is depicted in Episode 7.

The Red Army took Volochysk.

Finland rejected a Soviet peace proposal that included interning German troops that were inside of Finland and restoring the 1940 borders.  The proposal was very similar to what the Finns would accept the following September and represented, effectively, a defeat, which is likely why it was not accepted, in part, at this time, although it was also surprisingly generous on Moscow's part.


Company B, 2nd Chemical Bn. Cassino area, Italy. 6 March, 1944.

The U-744 was sunk in the Atlantic, and the U-973 was sunk in the Arctic.

Orderlies from 25th Field Hospital loading wounded Chinese soldiers into airplane.

Albanian partisan Ramize Gjebrea age 20, was executed by a partisan firing squad for "immoral behavior", that being having intercourse with a male partisan.  She was engaged to another person.  The charge was denied by both parties, but she was convicted and, on this day, shot.


This is interesting partially as Albanian partisans were Communist dominated, but as was often the case with Communist partisan groups, and even Communist societies, traditional morality was strictly observed even though Marx had expressly rejected it and Communist revolutionaries most definitely did not observe them.

Baker City, Oregon, weather station.


Friday, February 23, 2024

Saturday, February 23, 1924. Electric Trucks.

The Saturday magazines hit the stands, including this issue of Colliers:
The issue had some good articles on it, including one that would still be considered timely.

Politics and oil were a topic.

On oil, the issue had an Autocar Truck advertisement advertising gas and electric trucks. . . the latter being something that locals now insist just can't happen.


And Colt had an advertisement on handguns in a national magazine, something that wouldn't happen now.  While the government is referenced, it's really home protection, a theme we still see, that is being suggested.

The Royal Navy intervened in the ongoing dockworkers strike to move 4,500 bags of mail from the United States.

Albanian Prime Minister Ahmet Zogu was shot twice by an anarchist would be assassin, but survived.

Saturday, February 10, 2024

Sunday, February 10, 1924. Federals take Ocotlán.

Mexican Federal troops won a significant contest at Ocotlán.

Yugoslavian troops carried out the massacre of 25 Albanian-minority civilians in the Kosovan town of Dubnica, then set fire to the town as part of the effort of suppressing the Drenica-Dukagin Uprisings.

Sunday, December 10, 2023

Monday, December 10, 1923. Mexican rebels and cheese empires advance.

The Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution, which has not been ratified, was first introduced in Congress.


At the time, many suffragettes opposed it out of fear that it would eliminate statutory protection of female laborers, which it likely would have.


Rebels were advancing on Mexico City.

Coolidge was encouraging commercial aviation, and running for reelection.

The National Dairy Products Corporation was founded by a merger of Thomas H. McInerney's Hydrox Corporation and Edward E. Rieck's Rieck—McJunkin Dairy Company. In 1930, it would acquire Kraft-Phenix Cheese Company, and then rebrand itself in 1969 as Kraftco Corporation and then Kraft, Inc.

It is now Kraft Heinz as of this very year.

Kraft cheese is, in my opinion, hideous.

The U.S. Supreme Court held in Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co. that only it, in appropriate Federal questions, could review state supreme court decisions.

The Italian parliament was prorogued, i.e., dissolved, by King Victor Emmanuel III at the request of Benito Mussolini.

Turkey and Albania signed a treat of friendship.

Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Monday, November 8, 1943. Lebanese declaration of independence, Battle for Piva Trail, Albanian landing.

The Lebanese legislature voted to end the French League of Nations mandate.  The French would accordingly arrest the government.

Radio Moscow reported only one Jew remained alive in Kyiv out of a prewar population of 140,000.

The two-day Battle for Piva Trail commenced on Bougainville.


From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—November 8, 1943: US C-53 cargo plane carrying 13 flight nurses & 13 medics of the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadroncrash-lands in Nazi-occupied Albania.

She reports they walked out over a period of two months.

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

Monday, October 4, 1943. Monstrous

Himmler delivered the first of his Posen speeches to SS officers and German administrators, in which he stated, in part:

I also want to speak to you here, in complete frankness, of a really grave chapter. Amongst ourselves, for once, it shall be said quite openly, but all the same we will never speak about it in public. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30, 1934, to do our duty as we were ordered, and to stand comrades who had erred against the wall and shoot them, and we never spoke about it and we never will speak about it. It was a matter of natural tact that is alive in us, thank God, that we never talked about it amongst ourselves, that we never discussed it. Each of us shuddered and yet each of us knew clearly that the next time he would do it again if it were an order, and if it were necessary. I am referring here to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. This is one of the things that is easily said: "The Jewish people are going to be exterminated," that's what every Party member says, "sure, it's in our program, elimination of the Jews, extermination - it'll be done." And then they all come along, the 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has his one decent Jew. Of course, the others are swine, but this one, he is a firstrate Jew. Of all those who talk like that, not one has seen it happen, not one has had to go through with it. Most of you men know what it is like to see 100 corpses side by side, or 500 or 1,000. To have stood fast through this - and except for cases of human weakness - to have stayed decent, that has made us hard. This is an unwritten and never-to-be-written page of glory in our history, for we know how difficult it would be for us if today - under bombing raids and the hardships and deprivations of war - if we were still to have the Jews in every city as secret saboteurs, agitators, and inciters. If the Jews were still lodged in the body of the German nation, we would probably by now have reached the stage of 1916-17. 

The wealth they possessed we took from them. I gave a strict order, which has been carried out by SS Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl, that this wealth will of course be turned over to the Reich in its entirety. We have taken none of it for ourselves. Individuals who have erred will be punished in accordance with the order given by me at the start, threatening that anyone who takes as much as a single Mark of this money is a dead man. A number of SS men - they are not very - many committed this offense, and they shall die. There will be no mercy. We had the moral right, we had the duty towards our people, to destroy this people that wanted to destroy us. But we do not have the right to enrich ourselves by so much as a fur, as a watch, by one Mark or a cigarette or anything else. We do not want, in the end, because we destroyed a bacillus, to be infected by this bacillus and to die. I will never stand by and watch while even a small rotten spot develops or takes hold. Wherever it may form we will together burn it away. All in all, however, we can say that we have carried out this most difficult of tasks in a spirit of love for our people. And we have suffered no harm to our inner being, our soul, our character.... 

He also stated:

What happens to the Russians, what happens to the Czechs, is a matter of utter indifference to me, Such good blood of our own kind as there may be among the nations we shall acquire for ourselves, if necessary by taking away the children and bringing them up among us. Whether the other races live in comfort or perish of hunger interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture. 

He went on to refer to these people as animals, noting how the Germans were, he claimed, the only people in the world to have a decent attitude towards animals.

These were words from a German leader, it might be noted, celebrating German murder.

The Germans took the Greek island of Kos, following which they killed 100 Italian officers, following orders from Hitler regarding Italian officers who had followed their government into action against the Germans.

Corsica was liberated from the Axis.

Australian commanders at Dampu.

The Australians prevailed in the Battle of Dampu.

Albanian resistance fighters prevailed in the Battle of Drashovica.

An RAF raid on Frankfurt hit a children's hospital's air raid shelder, resulting in 529 civilian deaths, of which 90 were children.

The U-279, U-389, U-422 and U-460 were all destroyed by aircraft in the Atlantic.

The U.S. Navy attacked German shipping at Bodø, Norway with aircraft from the USS Ranger in Operation Leader.  Five German ships were sunk, four damaged and two aircraft lost for a loss of four Navy aircraft.

Dauntless dive bomber in Opeation Leader.

The operation in far northern Norway was the U.S. Navy's only carrier assault on German targets during World War Two, outside of operations against submarines and in the Mediterranean.

Bing Crosby recorded I'll Be Home for Christmas.

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Sunday, September 19, 1943. Wars within the war.

The Markham, Ramu and Finisterre campaigns on New Guinea began with an Allied offensive in the Ramu Valley.


The Ramu Valley campaign would continue on through November, with the overall campaign carrying on until April 1944.

The Battle of Turjak Castle in Slovenia ended in a Slovene partisan victory against the Anti Communist Volunteer Militia, formerly allied to the Italian Army.  Part of the wars within the war feature of World War Two.

German forces and Cham Albanians began the Paramythia executions of Greeks in Paramythia.

Lebanese Maronite Christian leader Bechara El Khoury met with Lebanese Sunni Muslim senior politician Riad Al Solh and worked out the National Pact.  Under it, an arrangement was arrived upon in which a free Lebanon would have a Christian President and a Muslim Prime Minister.

The St. Louis Cardinals took the National League pennat with a 2 to 1 victory over the Chicago Cubs.

Friday, September 8, 2023

Saturday, September 8, 1923. The Honda Point Disaster.

Captain Edward H. Watson ordered a squadron of 14 ships to make a fast passage to San Diego in heavy fog resulting in the USS Delphy, USS S. P. Lee, USS Young, USS Woodbury, USS Nicholas, USS Fuller and USS Chauncey beaching and sustaining irreparable damage. 

It remains the largest peacetime loss in U.S. Navy History.

Watson was court-martialed for the event.  He was not universally condemned for the disaster, which some attributed to a failure in newly developed technology.  He went on to be Assistant Commandant of the Fourteenth Naval District in Hawaii until he left active duty in November 1929.  He died at age 67 in 1942.

After killing innocent people to achieve them, Italy's demands were adopted by the ambassadors appointed to mediate the dispute.


Boston's Logan airport opened.

Tuesday, August 29, 2023

Wednesday, August 29, 1923 Scaling Heights.

Teton's, 1902.

The South Teton was scaled for the first time. The climbers were Albert R. Ellingwood and Eleanor Davis. That same day, Ellingwood became the first person to climb the 12,809 feet (3,904 m) high Middle Teton.

Granite Peak, in Montana, was scaled for the first time.  The climbers were Elers Koch, James C. Whitham, and R.T. Ferguson, 

Italy, taking a page out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's book, delivered a seven point ultimatum to Greece, in response to the assassination in an ambush of an Italian general on a League of Nations', not an Italian, mission from the day prior.

It demanded:

  • An official apology at the Italian legation in Athens, even though guilt was not established.
  • A solemn funeral in the Catholic cathedral in Athens in the presence of the whole of the Greek government, quite a demand for anti-religious Mussolini to an Orthodox republic.
  • Military honors for the bodies of the victims, who were Italian, and who deserved an Italian funeral, not a Greek one.
  • Full honors by the Greek fleet to the Italian fleet which would be sent to Piraeus, as if that had anything to do with his at all.
  • Capital punishment for the guilty, who were not known in the first place.
  • An indemnity of 50 million lire within five days.
A reply was demanded within 24 hours. Surprisingly, Greece replied on August 30, 1923, accepting four of the demands which with modifications as follows:
  • The Piraeus commandant would express the Greek Government's sorrow to the Italian Minister.
  • A memorial service would be held in the presence of members of the government,
  • A detachment of the guard would salute the Italian flag at the Italian legation
  • The Greek military would render honors to the remains of the victims when they were transferred to an Italian warship.

The conditional acceptance was beyond reasonable.

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Monday, August 27, 1923. Irish Free State's first election.

The Irish Free State held its first election.  The Cumann na nGaedheal party, led by Prime Minister W. T. Cosgrave, won 63 seats and the Irish Republicans led by Éamon de Valera received 44.   That left Cosgrave short of the 77 seats he needed for a majority, but the Republicans, exercising the goofball strategy of abstentionism, refused to take their seats, and the Irish Farmers Party joined Cosgrave in a coalition.

The Farmers Party was an agrarian party that faded in the 20s, ceasing to exist in 1932.

Italian General Enrico Tellini, on a League of Nation's mission to inspect the border between Greece and Albania, was ambushed and killed.  The Italians blamed the Greeks which would soon result in a crisis, although they identity of the killers was never established. 

Miss Washington, D.C. Lorraine Bunch was photographed.



A train derailed at Suman, Indiana.







Sunday, January 1, 2023

Friday, January 1, 1943. New Year's Day

 


Today in World War II History—January 1, 1943: The Rose Bowl returns to Pasadena: Georgia beats UCLA 9-0. Incoming California Gov. Earl Warren serves as Tournament of Roses grand marshal.

So reports Sarah Sundin, who also notes that California Governor Earl Warren served as Grand Marshall, but the parade was cancelled due to the war.

At that game, the George Bulldogs beat the UCLA Bruins 9 to 0.

The Soviets announced that 175,000 Germans had been killed at Stalingrad and 137,650 captured, which lead to headlines on those numbers in the U.S. that very day.

Albanian resistance fighters began a rebellion against the Italians at Gjorm. They'd win, but it would be a Pyrrhic victory, resulting in Italian reprisals.

For Catholics in the U.S., it was a Holy Day of Obligation.  It would normally have been a day off for most people in the Western World, but due to wartime conditions, for many it would not be.

Friday, September 16, 2022

Wednesday, September 16, 1942. Unintended consequences.

The U-156 and U-507 picking up the survivors from the Laconia.

A United States Army Air Force B-24 attacked the U-156 while survivors of the Laconia were on the foredeck.  The U-156 dove, leaving the survivors abandoned at sea, although later German U-boats surface and try to recover the survivors.  Karl Donitz thereafter issued the following order:

  1. All efforts to save survivors of sunken ships, such as the fishing out of swimming men and putting them on board lifeboats, the righting of overturned lifeboats, or the handing over of food and water, must stop. Rescue contradicts the most basic demands of the war: the destruction of hostile ships and their crews.
  2. The orders concerning the bringing-in of captains and chief engineers stay in effect.
  3. Survivors are to be saved only if their statements are important for the boat.
  4. Be harsh. Remember that the enemy has no regard for women and children when bombing German cities!

On the same day, the Germans penetrated the northwest suburbs of Stalingrad.

The Communist Albanian National Liberation Movement was founded.

Monday, November 8, 2021

Tuesday November 8, 1921. Dignatary.


Crow Chief Plenty Coups, (b circa 1908), a Crow leaders since 1876 when he was 28 years old, was back East in order to serve as the Native American representative at the upcoming dedication of the Tomb of the Unknowns.

The US Austrian peace treaty came into effect, officially ending the state of war between the US and Austria.  On the same day, Yugoslavian troops advanced into Albanian territory.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

April 20, 1941. Reversals in the Balkans.

 

Jubilant crowed in Skopje caring portraits of Bulgarian Tsar Boris III and Adolph Hitler.  Macedonia had a significant Bulgarian minority and Bulgarian troops occupied much of it during the war.  Given this, the region was at first sympathetic to the Axis in the form of Bulgaria.  Tsar Boris was a popular figure in Bulgaria who did not live to see the war completed.  He participated in the repression of his country's Jewish population but he would not agree to deportation to the death camps, nor would he agree to participate in the war against the Soviet Union.  He died in 1943 shortly after meeting with Hitler and some have suspected he was poisoned.

Things were not going well for the Allies in the Balkans.  

On this day Albania surrendered to Italy, something that was perhaps inevitable but which is remarkable not for occurring, but for how long Albania was able to manage to avoid that result.  It had held out with Greek support until the German intervention in the war reversed Greek and Albanian fortunes in the region.  Also on this day the Greek III Army Corps surrendered to the Germans.


The British did conduct a successful commando raid at Bardia, behind German lines in North Africa, causing the Germans to have to detail troops to their rear.

Sunday, January 10, 2021

January 10, 1941. War Materials.

The Germans ordered the registration of all Jews in the Netherlands take place on this day in 1941.

In the United States, the Lend Lease Act passed Congress.

The bill was premised on the thesis that the United States had, or could build, war materials that it could then loan to the Allied powers. This was a big step towards war and that was appreciated at the time.  Lending a person a gun in a fight is pretty close to being in the fight yourself.  The act acknowledged that the Allies, and at that time particularly the British, were struggling to keep themselves supplied with weapons in their fight against the Germans and Italians, but of course the act would soon apply to the USSR as well.

Related to the problems of supply, the Royal Navy launched Operation Excess in the Mediterranean.  The effort was a supply effort for forces on Malta and Greece. The Royal Navy encountered the Luftwaffe for the first time in the operation.

HMS Illustrious.

During the operation the HMS Illustrious was damaged by a Ju87, Stuka dive bomber, attack.  We tend not to think of the Stuka engaging ships in World War Two, but this gives us an early instance of that occurring.   The Illustrious was defended by Fairey Fulmars, a combination fighter and reconnaissance aircraft, which did engage the Stukas during their second run, but largely unsuccessfully.

Fulmars on the Illustrious.

The Fulmar itself was frankly not a great plane, but it reflected the state of Royal Navy aviation at the time.  The Royal Navy had a lot of ships, with some of them being very modern, and some not, but their aviation was not as advanced either technologically or conceptually as the United States' or Japan's at the time.

In spite of the successful Luftwaffe attack the convoy run was successful and no British ships were lost. The Italians, however, lost the Vega, a torpedo ship, which was destroyed in a surface engagement.  Of her 128 crewmembers, only 6 survived.

More on this can be read about here:

10 January 1941: Luftwaffe Swoops on Convoy – Illustrious an Inferno

The British effort reflected the fact that fighting was going on in Greece and Malta was threatened.  This is important, however, in that the Italians were getting beat by the Greeks, a fact that was altering Germany's tactical thinking.  On this day Greek forces took Kilsura Pass in Albania.  Albania had been invaded by Italy in April, 1939, for reasons that would only make sense to fascist Italy.  Now Greece was advancing into Albania.

Greek troops at Kilsura Pass.

More on the events of World War Two on this day can be read here:


And here:


And in the United States, preparation for the coming war continued.

Hanger under construction on this day at Alaska's Ft Wainright.  B17 in the foreground.

On the same day, Arsenic and Old Lace premiered on Broadway.

Monday, August 20, 2018

The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact Invade Czechoslovakia. August 20, 1968.

Czechs with their flag walking past a burning Warsaw Pact tank. 

On this day in 1968 the Warsaw Pact nations invaded Czechoslovakia.

The action commenced very late in the day, at 11:00 p.m. to be precise, and featured an armored invasion by forces from the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria and Hungary.  The total combined Warsaw Pact forces totaled 500,000 troops, the same number of men that the United States committed to Vietnam at the height of the Vietnam War.  It was not a small operation.


The Czechs had not prepared for the invasion and the government quickly called on its citizenry to not resist, a call that wasn't fully headed.  In part the Czechs were of the view that resistance was futile, which explains a lack of preparation, but they had also assumed that they would not be invaded by fellow Communist countries, a naive assumption.  Having said that, Romania, Yugoslavia an Albania refused to participate.  Indeed, the invasion was denounced by Romania on the day it occurred and Albania reacted by withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact.