Monday, August 31, 1942. The arrest of the Schulze-Boyen's.

Today in World War II History—August 31, 1942: Australians launch offensive against the Japanese at Milne Bay, New Guinea. Canada requires unemployed men and women to take war work.

An interesting entry on Sarah Sundin's blog.

I wonder how many unemployed Canadian men there really were by this point in 1942?

The aptly named Libertas Schulze-Boyen, a German aristocrat, and her husband Harro, a Luftwaffe officer, were arrested by the authorities.

The couple had in fact gone from being Nazis or radical right winters, Harro even had a swastika carved into his leg, to being the focal point of the Red Orchestra, a resistance group that was centered on providing information to the Soviet Union.

Libertas was a French protestant by birth, but fit into that oddly European class of aristocratic families that were nearly stateless.  She attended school in Switzerland and moved to Germany in 1933 where she joined the Nazi Party and was, at first, an ardent Nazi. She married Harro in 1936, after having lived with him a year, something very unusual at the time.  Herman Goering gave her away at the wedding, showing how close they were to senior Nazi figures.

Harro, in contrast, had opposed the Nazis since 1933, being therefore a really early resistance figure.  He had been part of the "Radical Nazi" organization Black Front, which was a Nazi splinter group formed by Otto Strasser which kept the original socialistic Nazi economic policy which the party abandoned under Adolph Hitler.  He was also from an aristocratic family, and one that had ties to publishing. Both Harro and Liberas were writers.  He became a pilot in 1933, and in spite of being an anti-Nazi joined the Luftwaffe.

In spite of their common opposition to the Nazis, their marriage was not a united one. Harro was a self-confessed libertine, and she had caught him in bed with an actress, which nearly led to their divorce.  Only the fact that they were both involved in their resistance movement kept this from occurring.

They were both executed in December. She was 29 and he was 33.

German tanks made it through the minefields at Alam el Halfa and turned north to attack what he supposed to be the Allied rear, only to be met with anti tank guns and tanks staged there by Montgomery.  Montgomery, moreover, did not deploy his tanks in the old cavalry melee style that the British had done previously, although German and British tank losses, 22 and 21 respectively, were about equal.  The Afrika Korps lost one of its senior commanders, Georg von Bismarck, due to a mine.

The British small scale raid Operation Anglo attacked Rhodes.

Thursday, August 27, 1942. An exchange of embassy staffs.

The Kamakura Maru and Tatuta Maru put in at Lourenco Marquest, Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique) with Allied embassy staff and civilians to be exchanged with the same from Japan, which were arriving by ship from the United Kingdom and Australia.

The Kamakura Maru.

The Japanese attempted but failed to resupply their forces at Milne Bay.  Australian forces held their lines at Isurava on Papua.

The German battleship Admiral Scheer shelled Soviet military installations on Dikson Island in the Kara Sea, damaging two Soviet freighters in port there.

Tuesday, August 25, 1942. The Battle of Milne Bay.

The Japanese, again acting with poor intelligence, landed marines at Milne Bay in New Guinea.  The battle would rage until September 7, in part because Australian aircraft destroyed Japanese landing craft and therefore the Japanese force, which was outnumbered from the onset, could not withdraw and chose to push inland.  Ultimately, it would be defeated by the Austsralians in what is regarded as the first defeat for Japanese ground forces against the Western Allies of the Second World War.

Today in World War II History—August 25, 1942: RAF officer Prince George, Duke of Kent is killed in a plane crash in Scotland, the first death of a member of the Royal family in military service in 450 years

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

Shott Sunderland MkV, the type of aircraft Prince George was flying at the time.

Prince George, like much of royalty everywhere, is not without a collection of rumors regarding personal vices.  He married Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark in 1934, which interestingly featured first an Anglican ceremony at Westminster Abbey followed by a Greek Orthodox ceremony at Buckingham Palace.  The couple had three children.  Prior to their marriage there were strong rumors that he had engaged in affairs with at least three individuals, one woman and two men.  He had an extramarital affair with a woman of nobility after his marriage.

He'd originally served in the Royal Navy, and then as a civil servant while remaining a naval reservist.  He'd been aide-de-camp to King Edward VIII and then naval aide-de-camp to George VI upon Edward's resignation.  He was to have been Governor General of Australia before the Second World War caused him to return to naval service, during which he took a voluntary reduction in rank so as to not disrupt service among younger pilots.  He was one of fourteen passengers killed in the crash.  He was 39 years old.

All three of his children are living.

The Battle of the Eastern Solomons, addressed yesterday, concluded on this day, during which B-17s obtained a rare success against a ship, sinking the Japanese destroyer Mutsuki with a fatal direct hit.

The Soviets began to evacuate the civilian population of Stalingrad.