Monday, February 4, 1944. Casting lots in the East.

U.S. infantryman near the Rapido, February 7, 1944.

Men of the 36th Infantry Division, near the Rapido, February 7, 1944.

Franklin Roosevelt aimed at compromise today and asked Stalin not to allow the Polish border issue to undermine international cooperation, while asking the Polish Prime Minister to accept the Soviet land grab while altering his government without evidence of foreign pressure.

In other words, the Allies were selling the Poles down the river, although perhaps there wasn't much they could really do about it.

Prime Minister Jüri Uluots of Estonia broadcast a speech on the radio urging Estonians to fight alongside the Germans and join the German army.  Up until that point, he had resisted Estonian mobilization.

Estonia had declared itself to be neutral in 1938, which didn't save it from being occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940. The Soviets were particularly hard on Russians in Estonia, the same being refugees from the USSR.

With the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Estonian partisan bands formed and attacked the Soviet forces. An Estonian government was allowed to be formed by the Germans, but the long term plan for the Baltics was for them to be Germanized under a central Ostland entity. The Germans regarded the Estonians as partially Germanized from the onset, oddly, due to the influence of various Nordic nations.  As part of this, Germany imposed conscription upon the Estonians, which was largely evaded, with many Estonians crossing into Finland to join the Finnish armed forces. Estonia was not allowed to maintain its own armed forces under German occupation until just before the end came.

38,000 Estonians responded to Uluots' call, which was based on his belief that the Estonian lot was better with the Germans than with the Soviets, by volunteering to serve in the Germany military.  Estonians who were serving in the Finnish forces were allowed to return home and join the Territorial Defense Force, a newly formed Estonian defensive organization.

Estonian partisan groups, the Forest Brothers, would prove to be so strong that they actually controlled sizable areas of Estonia following World War Two and fought on against the USSR until 1953, with a few members carrying on until the 1970s.

Uluots died in exile in Sweden, of cancer, in 1945 at age 55.

Hitler agreed to allow German forces in the Korsun pocket to attempt to breakout.

The British 56th and American 45th Infantry Division arrive at Anzio.

Wednesday, January 26, 1944. Gatchina

Machine gun position, Borgen Bay, New Britain. January 26, 1944.

The Red Army captured Krasnogvardeisk.   The Germans set fire to Gatchina Palace and vandalizing much of the town's park on the way out.

Two days later, its pre-1923 name of Gatchina would was restored.

The US II Corps established a bridgehead over the Rapido.  The Free French Corps captured Colle Belvedere and advanced toward Monte Abate.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—January 26, 1944: British landing ship LST-422 is damaged by a mine off Anzio; of 700 aboard, 454 US soldiers & 29 British sailors are killed.

Argentina severed diplomatic relations with the Axis powers.

 A.T.F. 9 Ordnance Section. 26 January, 1944. Kiska.

US Communist figure Angela Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama.

She remains a radical leftist and is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz currently.

Tuesday, January 25, 1944. Shaggy Ridge.

The Australian Army captured Shaggy Ridge in New Guinea.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—January 25, 1944: Soviets surround 60,000 German troops in Korsun-Cherkassy pocket in Ukraine. US II Corps successfully crosses the Rapido River north of Cassino in Italy.

 The USS Ponape sank the destroyer Suzukaze

Parts of the world experienced an eclipse.

Thursday, January 20, 1944. Crossing the Rapido, Trying to persuade the Poles.

The Battle of the Rapido River began in Italy when the 36th Infantry Division crossed the river at night.  They'd establish a beachhead, but things would not go well.  Within a couple of days, the 36th would have to withdraw back across the river.

The attack, widely regarded as producing a disaster, was ordered by Gen. Mark Clark over the objection of the 36th's commanding officer, Gen. Fred Walker, who had experience with a disastrous river crossing in World War One. 

Walker, who at 56 years of age was the oldest divisional commander in the Army at the time, was correct in his assessment.

The 36th Infantry Division assigned to the task was a division of the Texas National Guard.

Walker, who complained that Clark and Gen. Keys were ignorant of the difficulties of the assault, was in ill health at the time, but a very good officer.  Helping to make up for his physical condition was the fact that two of his sons were on his staff.  He was returned to the United States in June, where he went on to command the Infantry School.  In spite of ill health, he lived until 1969, dying at age 82.

Winston Churchill met with the Polish Government In Exile to attempt to convince the Poles to accept the Curzon Line for discussion purposes.  Churchill promised that he'd resist Soviet efforts, in exchange, to influence the makeup of the post-war government.

By radek.s - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1720759

The Curzon Line had been first proposed as a demarcation between the Second Polish Republic and the Soviet Union following World War One by Lord Curzon and Herbert James Paton, and it was based on demographics. Poles did live to the east of the line, but they became increasingly mixed with other populations in what has been termed, quite appropriate, as "the Bloodlands' in a fantastic book on the post World War One era of the region by Timothy D. Snyder.  Like every other imperial domain in Europe, Imperial Russia had regions of strong ethnic uniformity and others of mix ethnicity.  The region that became the westernmost region of Poland had a large Polish population, but also had a Belarusian population and a Ukrainian one, as well as many areas of Jewish populations.  From 1918 into the early 1920s, every country in the region, to include Lithuania, had fought to establish their borders.  Poland had been remarkably successful, throwing back a massive Red Army assault in the Russo Polish War, but even at that the Second Polish Republic did not extend as far to the east as it had originally sought to.

Ethnographic map of Poland, based on pre World War One census data.

None of the parties in Post World War One Eastern Europe were ready to accept the Curzon Line and so the proposal went nowhere at the time, contributing to the wars between Poland and the USSR (which would have occured anyhow), Poland and Ukraine, and Poland and Lithuania.   The result of those disputes resulted in the post-war border, but Communist Russia had always had an appetite that stretched into Germany.  The mixed population in the area to the east of the line, however, guaranteed that it would be uniquely subject to bloodletting, with the Soviets wanting the territory, the Germans wanting to eliminate the Slavs entirely, and the nationalist Ukrainians wanting to expel the Polish and Jewish population on lands that they had claimed or wanted to.  Every culture in the region, for that matter, disliked the native Jewish population in varying degrees.

With the Soviets crossing the frontier of pre-war Poland, the Polish Government In Exile became increasingly concerned that the Soviet Union would annex what it wanted and replace the Polish government with a Communist one.  It was completely correct in both of those fears.

A 40mm gun of the 251st Coastal Artillery (AA), 14th Corps, California National Guard, on Bougainville. Mt Bagana, 6560 feet, an active volcano, is in the background.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 20: 1944  Marjorie Woodsworth and Paul Kelly, motion picture actors, appeared at the University of Wyoming to open the 4th War Loan Drive.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.