While other dates are also used, this is generally regarded as the end of the Battle of the Bulge. The 3d Army was across the Clerf and advancing.
German advances in the Ardennes had been completely eliminated by this date.
The US sustained, 19,000 kia, 47,500 wia and 23,000 mia. The British suffered 200 killed and 1200 other casualties. The Germans sustained 100,000 total losses.
The Red Army reached the Baltic north of Elbing, cutting off Army Group North. The greatest mass evacuation in human history begins with the Germans removing 1.5M to 2M people from the region with 40 large passenger ships and other vessels.
Hitler relieved General Reinhart and appointed General Rendulic to what was renamed Army Group North.
The Germans blue up the Wolf's Lair.
This is a good place to interject a couple of things, which I was pondering on how to interject.
Starting with the evacuation of East Prussia, it was a monumental human tragedy. One the Germans brought on themselves, but tragic nonetheless. The character of the fighting at this point began to radically change as the Germans fought on their own ground. That was in due in part to the character of the Red Army's troops, which we will get to below. German troops of all types fought tooth and nail at this point, and not simply because they were servants of a monstrous dictatorship that didn't care if they lived or died. They were fighting to give time to their families to get out of the way of the Red Army.
The Red Army was an armed mob and quite frankly crap. That's a really controversial opinion, but its hte case. The Imperial Russian Army had been crap, the Red Army was also crap, and the current Russian Army is crap. It was tactically bereft of the most part and simply relied upon having a lot of men to get killed, and it didn't care if they lived or died.
That can be said about the Germans as well, but the Soviets had a lot more troops to get killed.
A very early edition of the excellent podcast We Have Ways addresses this (I think its Episode 13, Our Russian Allies). In truth, the myth that has come down of the Soviets doing more to win the war than the Western Allies is simply wrong. The difference between the two is that the Western Allies used technology and intelligence and didn't spend the lives of its mean. Most in uniform in the Western armies weren't even combat troops. Most in the Red Army were cannon fodder. As that episode explains, had the feared post war war between the West and the USSR actually broke out, the Western Allies would have defeated the Soviet Union.
One of the characteristics of the troops of the Red Army mob was that by this point it was a murderous band of rapist. There's no two ways about. They raped thousands of women, and often killed them immediately thereafter, leaving their ravished bodies by the side of the road. The modern Russian Army has never really gotten over this, and remains criminal in its behavior.
This leaves us with an awkward situation in regard to the late war fighting. There was really nothing admiral about the Red Army at all, save for a few exceptional leaders and a few exceptional pieces of equipment. As much as people hate to admit it, but for Western support during the war, the Soviets would have brokered a peace with the Germans in 1943.
It can, perhaps, be said that the Soviet's soldier capacity for enduring horrific conditions was admirable, although in no small part that helped turn them into a mob. Most of the men in the Red Army had grown up in deprivation and brutality and were therefore somewhat acclimated to suffering making them unique as combatants. The Soviet failure to control their men once past the borders of the Soviet Union, however, is unforgivable. Often missed, they weren't just mass rapist in Germany, but also at least in Hungary.
The other difficult portion of this is that late war German resistance to the Soviets was at this point such that its almost hard not to regard it as heroic. A person doesn't however, as the Germans had brought this disaster upon themselves and acted like monsters inside the USSR. At this point in many places they fought to the death for the German people, but upon reflection if they'd fought the onset of fascism in the 1930s none of this would have ever occurred.
The British land on Chedube Island south of Ramree in Burma.
The 37th Infantry Division occupies a large portion of Clark Field in the Philippines.
Grand Rapids Michigan became the first city in the United States to fluoridate their water.
Trump nominee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a wackadoodle, has suggested that Donald Trump will push to remove fluoride from drinking water. Nuts have always thought fluoride was bad, even though its revolutionary effect on dental health is well demonstrated. Trump tends to support whatever floats through his head, so we'll see.
Last edition:
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