Good Friday, April 7, 1944. The Vrba-Wetzler Report.

Troops of Companies E and G, 132nd Inf. Regt., 23rd Division, cross a stream in an area devastated by shellfire during their advance on Japanese pillboxes near the Torokina River. 7 April, 1944.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—April 7, 1944: Slovak Jews Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escape from Auschwitz; they will write a detailed report that will be published in Geneva on May 17.

All laws in Berlin were suspended and Joseph Goebbels was made the sole administator of the city.

The land bridge held by the German 17th Army connecting Crimea to Ukraine came under Red Army attack.

The German 1st Panzer Army broke out of encirclement at Buchnach.

The Britisih XXXIII Corps was encirced by the Japanese at Josama, Burma.  Fighting will shortly become hand to hand.

The U-856 was scuttled in the Atlantic after sustaining heavy damage from U.S. ships.

It was Good Friday.

Polish troops observed the day in Jeresualem.

Saturday, March 25, 1944. Ioannina.

Young woman weeps during the deportation of Jews from Ioannina, Greece - March 25, 1944. Budesarchive on Wikipedia.  87% of Greek Jews perished in the Holocaust.  91% of those from Ioannina, the oldest and ancient Greek Jewish settlement, would die at Auschwitz.

Adolf Hitler ordered the execution of recaptured POWS who were part of the mass escape from Stalag Luft III.  While his order would mostly be carried out, it would not entirely. 

Germany was, of course, inescapably going down in defeat. As it was, it was covering itself in gore.

The Battle of the Kaments-Podolsky Pocket began as the Red Army attempted to surround the 1st Panzer Army South at Tarnopol.

U.S. forces eliminate most of the remaining Japanese forces on Manus.

In the Caroline Islands, Japanese patrols sight large American naval forces heading for Palau.

Thursday, November 4, 1943. Island hopping.

 A seaplane tender in Aleutian waters trains a 40mm battery on an unidentified aircraft, November 4, 1943.

The U.S. War Department concluded that attacking Japan from mainland China was impracticable.  Therefore, the island strategy was solidly recommended.

An uprising broke out at the Szebnie concentration camp in Poland following the execution of over 1,000 of its prisoners. The SS rapidly suppressed it and the inmates are shipped to Auschwitz.

The Red Army broke out of its Dniepr bridgeheads.

A newly arrived Japanese Imperial Navy task force consisting of ten cruisers and ten destroyers is spotted by the U.S. Navy near Rabaul resulting in Task Force 38 preparing to strike it from the air.

The Allies achieve full lateral communications through Isernia in Italy.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—November 4, 1943: Plutonium processing plant opens at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for atomic bomb development as the X-10 graphite reactor reaches criticality.

Monday, October 18, 1943. Jewish Romans transported to Auschwitz.

Germany transported Roman Jews to Auschwitz.   Rome had one of the oldest Jewish populations in Europe.

Japan transferred four provinces of British Malaya to its ally Thailand.

Perry Mason was broadcast on the CBS Radio Network for the first time.  It would run until December 20, 1955.

Wednesday, August 18, 1943. Air Space.

President Roosevelt, via Executive Order, revoked deferments for striking defense plant workers.

The RAF hit Peenemünde with three waves of bombers in Operation Hydra.  Damage was so extensive that Luftwaffe General Jeschonnek, charged with defense of the Reich's airspace and well ware of his failings in that regard, and further having an inwardly timid personalty masked by a harden affectation, killed himself the following day, leaving a note that stated; „Mit dem Reichsmarschall kann ich nicht mehr zusammenarbeiten. Es lebe der Führer!“ ("I can no longer work together with the Reichsmarschall. Long live the Führer!").  He left a further note excluding Ulrich Dieseing and Bernd von Brauchitsche from his funeral.  A memorandum he left called upon Hitler to change leadership in the Luftwaffe, but was confiscated by Göring.

Ultimately, in some way, Jeschonnek was a victim of his personality, knowing internally that the air war was lost, but lacking the will to do something about it.

Sarah Sundin noted Jeschonnek's fate on her blog, and also noted the following:

Today in World War II History—August 18, 1943: Army Air Force barrage balloon battalions are inactivated in the US. Betty Smith’s bestselling novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is published.

The U.S. Navy bombarded Palmi and Gioai Taura in Italy.

The Allies prevailed in the Battle of Mount Tambu.

46,000 mostly Jewish Greeks arrived at Auschwitz.

Saturday, May 26, 1923. The Twenty Four Hours of Le Mans

The first Le Mans automobile race took place.

The French executed some Germans who were committing acts of sabotage and the like against their occupation of the Ruhr.

One of the terrorist was one Albert Leo Schlageter, a former German officer of the Great War and a Freikorps officer who had engaged in acts of sabotage against the French.  He was not a "Red" and would go on to obtain mythic status in the German far right, including the early Nazis, who in fact murdered his betrayer.  The killers of that individual were one Rudolf Höss and Martin Bormann, who would later go on to roles in the Third Reich.  They were first captured and sentenced for their role in the murder.  

Bormann is well known, but Höss less so.  He was Auschwitz's longest commanding officer and was executed in 1947.  Facing execution, he came to see his actions as gravely immoral and wrote this out to his wife prior to his execution:

My conscience compels me to make the following declaration. In the solitude of my prison cell, I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against humanity. As Commandant of Auschwitz, I was responsible for carrying out part of the cruel plans of the 'Third Reich' for human destruction. In so doing I have inflicted terrible wounds on humanity. I caused unspeakable suffering for the Polish people in particular. I am to pay for this with my life. May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done. I ask the Polish people for forgiveness. In Polish prisons I experienced for the first time what human kindness is. Despite all that has happened I have experienced humane treatment which I could never have expected, and which has deeply shamed me. May the facts which are now coming out about the horrible crimes against humanity make the repetition of such cruel acts impossible for all time.

On this same day, a Communist lead strike in the Ruhr expanded.

The British made the Emirate of Transjordan autonomous, but not independent of British oversight. It would achieve full independence in 1946.

Turkey waived reparations claims against Greece at Lausanne in exchange for the Thracian territory.

May 24, 1943. Dönitz recalls the U-boats

Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz recalled the German fleet of U-boats following the reduction by 1/3 of that force in May, 22 out of 60, due to Allied action.  All together, 41 German U-boats would be lost in May.

Germany had effectively lost the Battle of the Atlantic.  While the submarines would redeploy, they'd never again pose the threat they had up to May, 1943.  This also meant the effective victory for the Allies against the Germans in a second front, although the fighting would go on, with the first being in North Africa.

Sarah Sundin notes the event on her blog, also noting that rationing of cheese in the US expanded to include all but cream and cottage cheese.

Josef Mengele was posted to Auschwitz.

Tuesday, March 22, 1943. Expanding Murder of European Jews by the Nazis, U.S. Army takes Maknassy, Tunisia, Italian port disaster.

Jewish women in Paris, 1942.  By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-N0619-506 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5367011

Germany began deportation of 4,000 Jews from occupied France.  They were sent to Sobibor, where only five of them would survive.

The initial deportation of 4,000 was shortly followed by an additional 1,000.

The Germans also began to deport Yugoslavian Jews from Skopje to Treblinka.

The Germans made the first executions of Gypsies at Auschwitz.

The Waffen SS attacked and destroyed Khatyn, Byelorussia in retaliation for the killing of four German officers, including Hans-Otto Woellke of the Order Police.  Woelke had been an Olympic shot putter.

Sarah Sundin notes:

Today in World War II History—March 22, 1943: Nazis extend work week in the occupied Netherlands to 54 hours. US II Corps under Lt. Gen. George Patton occupies Maknassy, Tunisia.

Sundin also has a very interesting photograph on her blog, of troops in Maknassy.  I wouldn't normally repost it, but the details are quite interesting.

The quality of the photograph isn't fantastic, but the details are really interesting as noted.  All of the soldiers except the one on the far right are wearing coveralls, suggesting they're armored vehicle crewmen.  They are armed, left to right, as follows:  M1903 Springfield, M1 Carbine, M1903 Springfield, M1903 Springfield, unclear, unclear.

British Colonel Edward Orlando Kellett DSO, parliamentarian, British Army officer, and big game hunter was killed in action during the fighting in Tunisia as a colonel of the Royal Armoured Corps. 

The U-524 and U-665 were sunk by Allied aircraft in the Atlantic.

The Allesandro Volta (Italy) exploded in port, devasting the harbor, after being hit by bombs from a B-24. The same raid took out the Franco M, the Labor, the Lentini, the Manzoni, the Maria Louisa, the Modena, the Mondovi,  hte Moni, the Renato, the Rosa and the Trentino.

It was a bad day for Italian shipping.

The German tanker Eurosee sank in an air raid on Wilhelmshaven.

The British Harbour Defense Motor Launches HMML 1157 and HMML 1212 sank in an air raid in Portugal.

The Imperial Japanese Army (yes, army) auxiliary transport ship Meigan Maru was sunk off of Java by the USS Gudgeon.

Clark Gable appeared on the cover of Look magazine in his airman attire.

Tuesday, March 2, 1943. Japanese disaster commences. Jewish residents of Berlin deported to their deaths.

The Battle of the Bismarck Seas started on this day in 1943, in which aircraft of the U.S. Fifth Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force  attacked a Japanese convoy carrying troops to Lae, New Guinea,

The Japanese knew that the convoy run was risky, but considered it worthwhile as it stood to be more effective than marching the troops overland.  The Allies had detected preparations for the convoy, and then deciphered Japanese communications regarding it so that the details concerning it were well known.

Around 2,900 Japanese servicemen lost their lives in the battle.  Thirteen Allied airmen were killed.  All eight Japanese transport vessels went down, and four of the eight destroyer escorts over a two day period.

1,500 Jewish residents of Berlin were deported to Auschwitz, with 1,350 of them being murdered immediately upon arrival there.

The Honouliuli Internment Camp opened in Waipahu, Ohau, Hawaii. Hawaiian Nisei are sometimes mistakenly believed to have escaped internment.  It was not as widespread as it was on the North American Pacific coast, but it did occur.

Built to house 3,000 people, it initially held 160 Japanese Americans and 69 Japanese citizens.  Ultimately it came to house  more than 4,000 Okinawans, Italians, German Americans, Koreans, and Taiwanese civilians.

A fire occurred in Douglas:

Today In Wyoming's History: March 2:1943 The Pepsi Cola bottling plant in Douglas was damaged by fire.  While soft drink bottling plant operations are not unknown in the state now, at that time smaller ones were more common.  Casper had a Coca Cola bottling plant.

Wednesday, September 23, 1942. Departures, bad health, appointments and tragedies.

Rommel left North Africa o this day in 1942 for six weeks of recuperation in Germany.  He was suffering from exhaustion, sinusitis, high blood pressure, and stomach ailments.  On the way home he stopped in Rome to talk to Mussolini.

Perhaps ironically, George Stumme, who suffered from high blood pressure as well, was put in command in Rommel's absence where he'd die a month later in combat, probably from a heart attack or stroke.

The East African 22nd Infantry Brigade captured the capital of Madagascar.

Sarah Sundin reports:

Today in World War II History—September 23, 1942: René Blum, founder of Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and brother of former French prime minister Léon Blum, is deported to Auschwitz, where he will be killed.

She also noted that Gen. James Doolittle was appointed to command the 12th Air Force. 

Sunday, August 9, 1942. The murder of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein).

Popularly known by her birth name, Edith Stein, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, died on this day in Auschwitz along with her sister, Rosa.  Both were Carmelite nuns.

Stein as a doctoral student.

Born into an observant Jewish family in Poland, she was a convert to Catholicism, as was her sister, in her adult years, converting from agnosticism.  She was extremely highly educated, having pursued a doctoral degree, and converted following her reading of the works of St. Teresa of Ávila during summer holidays.  She was of course sent to Auschwitz due to her Jewish heritage.  She was fifty years old at the time.

Today saw the Leningrad premiere of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7.

Mentioned yesterday, today saw the US cruisers Astoria, Quincy and Vincennes, and the Australian cruiser Canberra, go down in the Battle of Savo Island.  The American destroyer Jarvis was sunk off of Guadalcanal.  Admiral Turner withdraws the Naval task force, with most of the heavy equipment and food for the ground expedition still on board his ships.

The Japanese retook the Kokoda airfield from the Australians.

The Germans took Krasnodar and the oil producing center of Maykop. The Soviets had destroyed the oil facilities before they evacuated.

British police arrested Gandhi and fifty fell members of the Indian National Congress.

The movie Bambi, taken from Felix Salten's book, which was translated from the German by Whitaker Chambers, was released in London.

I've never seen it, nor do I care to.

Tuesday, August 4, 1942. Bracero's

In a move with enormous long term consequences, the Bracero Program was initiated on this day in 1942 with the U.S. execution of the Mexican Farm Labor Act.

Bracero's, a term meaning manual laborers.

The act, designed to relieve wartime labor shortages, particularly in the agricultural sector, allowed controlled, and actually relatively small, numbers of Mexican agricultural workers into the country.  It was designed to make up for wartime shortages, and it accordingly exempted the laborers from conscription, which aliens in the U.S. were otherwise subject to.  It also provided for a basic minimum living wage and housing conditions.

Long term, it helped acclimate the American agricultural section to the concept of migrant labor, which was already there to some extent.  Following the war, the numbers of Americans employed in the type of labor that bracero's occupied decreased greatly and even during the war the program was expanded to include railroad workers, something Hispanic Americans were already employed in to a significant degree.  

It would not be true that the correlation of the shift of the American seasonal agricultural sector to Mexican migrant labor was 100% due to the Bracero program by any means, but it was a factor in it.  Other factors included Americans becoming used to higher wages in other types of jobs due to the Second World War and moving for higher wages, something that also had a permanent impact on the agricultural sector.

The German 4th Panzer Army crossed the Aksay River in the drive on Stalingrad.  Soviet general Yermenko flew to the city in a C-47, where he was met by Commissar Nikita Khrushchev.

The British accused Mahatma Gandi and the Indian National Congress Party of working towards appeasement of the Japanese following a raid on the party's headquarters and seizure of papers there.

Sarah Sundin reports:

Today in World War II History—August 4, 1942: First P-38 aerial combat and victory in the Pacific. Movie premiere of musical Holiday Inn[SS1] , starring Bing Crosby & Fred Astaire.

Holiday Inn is a well known film, but I've never seen it.

She also reports that the first trainload of Belgian Jews arrived at Auschwitz as the European tragedy expanded.

Tuesday, July 7, 1942. The sinking of the U-701.

Heinrich Himmler authorized sterilization experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz, increasing Nazi barbarity to new perverse levels.

It's hard to appreciate how deeply weird the Nazis truly were.  As their reign expanded, and authority deepened, they not only turned to greater levels of killing, but also acts that were more and more perverse on every level.

The U-701 was sunk by a Lockheed Hudson off of Cape Hatteras.  This was noted by Sara Sundin in her blog, in which she stated:

Today in World War II History—July 7, 1942: US Army Air Force opens Wideawake Field on Ascension Island. US Army Air Force sinks its first submarine off the US East Coast.

Seven men survived the sinking, including the captain, and were picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard.  Seventeen has escaped the submarine through the conning tower, of which ten died before being rescued.  Another 29 went down with the ship.

While I haven't been noting it, while the Germans were losing submarines in this period, they were also commissioning new ones almost every day.  An outside observer would have real reason at this point to ask who was winning the war.  Having said that, the human toll of submarine losses, which would ultimately be over 50,000 for the Germans, was truly horrific.

On that topic, the U-457 sank the British fleet oiler FRA Alderdale which had been part of the embattled convoy PQ 17.  It had been disabled and abandoned two days prior.  The U-355 sank the SS Hartlebury. The U-255 sank the SS Alcoa Ranger.  PQ 17 was becoming a major naval disaster.

The U-571 sank the SS Umtata off of Miami.  It was under tow for repairs at the time.

Sundin also noted the item about Wideawake Field on Ascension Island and has a further website entry on that here:

 Of Terns and Planes: While the armies of democracy battled the armies of totalitarianism, a smaller battle raged between US Army Engineers and a little bird called the sooty tern.

Ascension Island figured most recently in wartime in the Falklands War, when the British, whose possession it is, used it as a military staging area.   The United Kingdom continues to maintain communications installations there.  During World War Two the use of the island by the Air Force was able to extend the range of airborne protection to convoys on the southern route in the Atlantic.

Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, in a debate in the Canadian parliament on manpower, stated that the government's policy was "not necessarily conscription, but conscription if necessary".

Friday, February 27, 1942. The Battle of the Java Sea, Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, The Raid on Brunvel.

February 27, 1942: Battle of Java Sea begins—Allied ships fail to prevent Japanese landing at Java, take heavy losses. Nazis order construction of gas chambers at Auschwitz. Seattle school board accepts forced resignation of Japanese-American teachers.

Sarah Sundin's blog notes a series of significant events for this day.

The big one, in the context of the fighting, was the beginning of the Battle of Java Sea, which would be an Allied defeat.  In human misery and global crime context, the beginning of the construction of the gas chambers at Auschwitz can't help but be noted.  And then there's the forced resignation of Japanese American teachers in Seattle.

A grim day all the way around.

Radar station at Brunvel, with surprisingly modern looking dish.

The British conducted Operation Biting, an airborne raid on a radar station in France.  The raid on Brunvel secured the radar array which the troops took with them when they withdrew by sea, giving the British a first-hand example of new type of German radar.  It was a completely successful raid.