Tuesday, November 24, 1942. The end of Case Blue.

Case Blue, the 1942 German summer offensive on the Eastern Front, came to an end having not achieved its goals, which had been to capture the oil fields of Baku, Grozny and Maikop.

The thought was that without oil, the Soviets couldn't fight, and the Germans would be able to.  Indeed, taking Soviet oil production had been part of the original goal of Operation Barbarossa, with the thought being that the Germans needed it to wage war against the United Kingdom.

By User:Gdr - Own work information from Overy, Richard (2019) World War II Map by Map, DK, pp. 148−150 ISBN: 9780241358719., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=443854

It's strategic aims, often criticized, were sound and grasped the importance of petroleum on the ability to wage modern war.  Hitler had a major role in forming the campaign's development and direction and frankly, while the campaign is often criticized for redirecting German assets to southern Russia rather than the north, with the focus being Moscow, the plan demonstrated a good gasp on resources and modern warfare, and the protracted nature of the latter.  Had the campaign succeeded in its goals, which were problematic in more ways than one, it would have at least deprived the Soviet Union of significant war fighting assets.  It probably would not have succeeded in providing those to the Germans, however, as the Soviets would have destroyed oil production facilities prior to the Germans taking them.  Whether the Germans had the capacity to restore production is doubtful.

The plan was, moreover, overambitious and its initial success caused the Germans to take actions which reduced its potential effectiveness.  

In spite of its ultimate failure, the offensive was remarkably successful at first, which encouraged the Germans to overextend themselves.  By November the offensive had lost steam, without succeeding in its goals, and Operation Uranus soon demonstrated that the Germans were now grossly overextended. The Soviets, additionally, managed to increase the size of their army throughout the campaign and by its end had over 1,000,000 more men in the field than the Germans did. The Germans, for their part, lost 200,000 men during the campaign and the Romanian army was effectively ground down to semi ineffective.  By the campaign's end, moreover, the Germans were relying on Romanian, Hungarian and Italian troops to a dangerous extent.

The end of the campaign came with the Soviets launching a series of winter offensives.

Case Blue brought the Germans to their high water mark of World War Two.  Its failure was followed by losing ground in the East in the winter of 1942, which they were also doing in North Africa at the same time.  Indeed, due to its failure it should have been obvious to the Germans that wining the war was not impossible.

Rabbi Wise.

Rabbi Stephen Wise, president of the World Jewish Congress, held a press conference in which he revealed information leaked from Europe of German atrocities against the Jews.

Rabbi Wise had the information for three months, but has been asked not to reveal it by the U.S. Government as it could not be confirmed, which of course it could not.  At this point, however, he correctly felt that releasing the information was necessary.

Wise had been born in Hungary, but came to the US as an infant with his parents. His father and grandfather were also rabbis.

Peadar Kearney, writer of the Irish National Anthem A Soldiers Song, "Amhrán na bhFiann" died at age 58.

Wednesday, September 9, 1942. The Japanese raid on Mt. Emily, Oregon.

A Yokosuka E14Y launched from the Japanese submarine I25 near Cape Blanco, Oregon dropped incendiary bombs on Mount Emily, Oregon, in an attempt to start a forest fire.

Pilot Nobuo Fujita who bombed Mt. Emily.

The effort did in fact result in a small fire, but the rain drenched bush wasn't conducive to a conflagration.  One small fire was put out by the Forest Service.

No damage was done, but Franklin Roosevelt ordered a news blackout of the event.  

It was the first areal bombing of the continental United States.

The pilot, Nobuo Fujita, survived the war and later visited nearby Brookings.  He donated his family's 400-year-old samurai sword to the city.  He died in 1997 at age 85.

Hitler relieved Wilhelm List of command of Army Group A and took over command of it personally.  List never returned to service.  He was charged with war crimes after the war and sentenced to life imprisonment.  However, he was released in 1952.  He died in 1971 at the age of 91.

The British landed at Majunga in western Madagascar in order to end remaining Vichy French resistance on the island.

Sunday, September 6, 1942. Positioning

Irish Army recruiting poster.  By this point, the Irish Army could really have needed a hand, given that so many military age men had entered the British Army that Ireland was effectively incapable of defending itself, and was relying on overage, and underage, men in the Home Guard.

On this day in 1942, the German U-375 stopped the Egyptian sailboat Turkian and sank her with 13 rounds from a deck gun.

All 19 crewmen were allowed to abandon ship.

British coast artillery replied, but to no effect.

A spectacular example of poor marksmanship on both sides and pointless destruction.

The Germans captured Novorossiysk.

Two policemen were shot dead in Belfast in day two of rising tensions in Ireland.

Arvid and Midlread Harnack, nee Fish, of the Red Orchestra were arrested.

East German postage stamp commemorating the Harnack's.

Mildred was American born and had moved to Germany as an academic in the 1920s.  Her husband Arvid Harnack was a German Communist and a lawyer.  Their arrest effectively brought about the end of the Red Orchestra.

Dorothy Dandridge, the first African American actress to be nominated for an Academy Award, married Harold Nicholas in Hollywood.  They would divroce in 1951.

Wednesday, September 2, 1942. The carrier escorted PQ-18

The escort carrier, the HMS Avenger.  She'd be sunk by a German submarine in November 1942, following Operation Torch, which would take all but 12 of her crew of over 500.

Today in World War II History—September 2, 1942: Allied convoy PQ-18 departs Scotland for USSR, the first Arctic convoy with an escort carrier and the first since the PQ-17 disaster; 13/40 ships will be lost.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

Escort carriers were game changers.  While losing 13 out of 40 ships wasn't good, it was better than what the PQ-17 had experienced. With air cover, submarines were at a disadvantage.  The PQ-18 task force was, in fact, the largest and most successful Arctic run up to that time.

The carrier was the HMS Avenger, as Sundin's blog entry notes.

The U-222 and the U-626, German training submarines, collided in the Baltic sinking the U-222 which took 42 of her crew with her.

The German 46th Infantry Division, which had been dishonored following an unauthorized withdrawal due to Soviet landings on the Kerch peninsula in December 1941, crossed the Kerch Straits while the German 17th Army advanced into Novorossisk, putting Soviet positions on the Eastern Black Sea coast at extreme risk.  The Soviets began, on this night, evacuations from Black Sea ports which were harassed by German and Italian patrol boats.

The Germans sustained heavy material losses at Alam el Halfa resulting in an Afrika Korps withdrawal.

British commandos took a lighthouse and its occupants near Alderny without the Germans noticing and without loss in Operation Dryad.

Tom Williams of the Irish Republican Army was executed for the felony murder of Royal Ulster Constabulary officer Patrick Murphy.  This occurred when an IRA unit Williams was in command of staged a diversionary action against the RUC in order to allow parades commemorating the Easter Rebellion to occur.  Who killed Murphy is actually not known, but Williams was the acknowledged commander of the unit.

Tuesday, September 1, 1942. Miscarriages of Justice.

On this 1st day of September 1942, the United States District Court in Sacramento, California ruled wartime detention of Japanese Americans to be legal.

Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō (東郷 茂徳) who had opposed war with the United States on the basis that it was unwinnable, resigned and went into retirement.  The cause of his resignation was his opposition to the creation of a special ministry for occupied territories.  He was appointed thereafter to the upper house of the Japanese Diet, but did not take an active role in it.

He returned to his former position in April 1945 and worked towards acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration.  He advocated Japanese surrender after the atomic strikes of August of that year.  

In spite of his opposition to the war, he was tried as a war criminal in 1948 and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.  He died as a prisoner two years later at age 67.

He was an unusual man in multiple ways.  He'd studied in Germany when young and then entered the foreign ministry.  He served as ambassador to Germany in 1937 and then later was assigned to the Soviet Union, where he'd negotiated a peace settlement between the USSR and Japan following Khalkhin Gol.  He married German Carla Victoria Editha Albertina Anna de Lalande, who was a wide of was well known German architect, with Japanese marriages to Westerners being uncommon then, which remains the case today.  She survived him and died in 1967.

Tōgō's family, including his wife's daughter by her first marriage and the couple's daughter.  His descendants have continued to have diplomatic careers.

Both of the examples above provide interesting examples of the miscarriage of official justice.  Internment should have been deemed illegal, particularly as to U.S. citizens who were truly being deprived of their liberty without due process.  And while there were Japanese war criminals, Tōgō''s conviction seems to have been for simply being on the losing side of the war.

Royal Air Force Wellingtons bombed Afrika Korps supply lines at night, destroying fuel supplies, which halted Panzerarmee Afrika for most of the day.  

Wellingtons over Europe.

We don't think of Wellington bombers much in the story of the war, but they did in fact see combat service.

The Germans took the Black Sea port of Anapa.

According to the Wyoming State Historical Association, on this day in 1942 official approval was given to commence use of the Casper Air Base, which had been constructed in an incredibly small amount of time.  The existing county airport was Wardwell Field, the Casper area's second airport (the first was in what is now Evansville).  Today, what was Casper Air Base is the Natrona County International Airport, which actually uses at least one fewer runway than was constructed by the Army in 1942.  Wardwell Field's runways, in contrast, are city streets in the Town of Bar Nunn.

Sunday, August 23, 1942. The beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad.

Today in World War II History—August 23, 1942: 80 Years Ago—Aug. 23, 1942: Battle of Stalingrad officially begins: German Army Group B reaches the Volga River near Stalingrad.

Stalingrad is claimed to be the largest battle in history.

In addition to what is noted above, the Luftwaffe bombed the city, resulting in 40,000 civilian deaths and the reduction of much of the city to rubble.  Troops of the German 16th Panzer Division almost reached the Stalingrad Tractor Factory, the USSR's largest tank producer.

Martha Hanson, age 45, was mauled by a bear at Yellowstone National Park near her tourist cabin. She would die from her injuries on the 27th.

Saturday, August 22, 1942. Brazil declares war on Germany and Italy.

Brazil, having endured several days of German U-boat attacks, declared war on Germany and Italy.  The Germans has presumed, incorrectly, that Allied ships were taking refuge in South American territorial waters.

Brazil would contribute some ground forces to the war in Europe, but its major contribution would be in regard to providing its massive coastline in the war effort.

On this day, the German 16th Panzer Division crossed the Don, with the path to Stalingrad now open before it.

A renewed naval battle in the Savo Sound occurred between the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy in the early morning hours, resulting in the ultimate loss of the USS Blue.

The Chinese captured Yuijiang.

In the Caribbean, an American B-18, a plane we hardly think of in the context of World War Two, sank the U-654.

B-18.

The USS Ingraham sank off of Nova Scotia after she was hit in fog by the oil tanker Chemung.

Friday, August 21, 1942. The Battle of Tenaru. Summiting Mount Elbrus.

The Japanese, grossly underestimating Marine Corps strength at Henderson Field, sends 100 troops across the Tenaru who are met and wiped out by 2,500 Marines supported by 37mm anti tank rifles and artillery.  When the first attempt fails, he sends another group of slightly larger size, which meat the same result.  Even a third attempt was tried.

Japanese dead following battle.

Given the Japanese losses, the Marines follow up with a counterattack inland and surround the Japanese force on the coast, advancing on it with M3 Stuart tanks and supported by fighter aircraft.  Nearly the entire force of Japanese troops, over 700, are killed, to the loss of 44 Marines.  The battle demonstrated the casual disregard of the life common to the Japanese military, and was frankly ineptly fought on their part.

The Japanese land additional forces at Buna.

The Germans crossed the Don in inflatable rafts at Luchinsky.

The Germans sent an expedition of Gebirgsjäger, their mountain troops ("mountain hunters") to the summit of Mount Elbrus in the Caucuses.  The 18,500-foot peak is the highest in Europe.

Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in Europe.  By JukoFF - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4285464

The effort was clearly a stunt, resulting only in the planting of the Nazi era German flag at the summit.  When Hitler learned of it, he was enraged.

Thursday, August 13, 1942. Pedastal hit, Montgomery takes command, Japan enacts laws against what they had committed, Stalin writes a memo, Bambi opens in the United States.

The Pedestal convoy was hit again by German and Italian torpedo boats.  They sank four freighters and damaged the HMS Manchester.

Torpedo hitting the Ohio.

The oil tanker Ohio, manned for the trip by a British crew, was attacked by aircraft and finally immobilized and then abandoned, but with fuel tanks intact.  She did not sink.

It's of note here that much of what we're told about World War Two naval action really isn't applicable to the war in the Mediterranean, and as we saw from the Battle of Savo Island earlier, it isn't to the early war in the Pacific either.  It's often claimed that torpedo boats were worthless in World War Two, but as late as 1942 they certainly were not.  Indeed, this is just once of several instances in the first half of the war of torpedo boats performing successfully just as they were meant to, making surface raids at high speed against larger war ship and coming out on top.  Additionally, air cover clearly wasn't adequate or wasn't cutting it for convoy escort in the Mediterranean.  This convoy had an aircraft carrier with it, but it was itself one of the first vessels to be sunk.

On this day, the Italian Navy, still a major force in the Mediterranean, had to recall, however, a major task force that was attempting to intercept Pedestal due to a lack of German air cover, and British submarine action.

The excellent, but unfortunately discontinued, blog World War II Day-By-Day also notes this naval action on this day:

Caribbean. U-600 and U-658 attack as 2 USA-South America convoys pass the strait between Cuba and Haiti. At 5.07 AM, U-658 sinks Dutch SS Medea in convoy WAT 13 (5 killed, 23 rescued by convoy escorts). At 9.48 AM, U-600 sinks Latvian SS Everelza (23 killed, 14 rescued by convoy escorts) and American passenger/cargo ship SS Delmundo (8 killed including 3 passengers, 50 survivors including 5 passengers picked up by British destroyer HMS Churchill) in convoy TAW 12.

At 7.50 AM in the Gulf of Mexico 25 miles off the coast of Louisiana, U-171 stops US tanker SS R.M. Parker Jr. with 2 torpedoes and finishes her off with the deck gun (all 37 crew and 7 gunners rescued 8 hours later by US Coast Guard auxiliary craft USS Pioneer).

South Atlantic. At 7.40 AM 400 miles Southwest of Freetown, Sierra Leone, U-752 sinks American SS Cripple Creek carrying 7500 tons of war supplies from USA to British 8th Army in Egypt (1 killed, 38 crew and 13 gunners in 3 lifeboats rescued after 4 days by British armed trawler HMS St. Winstan). 1400 miles West of Freetown, Italian submarine Reginaldo Giuliani sinks American SS California with the deck gun and torpedoes (1 killed, 35 survivors)

Bernard Law Montgomery took over the British 8th Army in the wake of the death of Gen. Gott.

Montgomery in August 1942.  He had a love of irregular uniform items, and ins this case is wearing an Australian slouch hat, although that item was popular with British officers.

Montgomery, one of the most controversial senior commanders of the Second World War, had been considered for the post prior to Gott being appointed, but had lost out to Gott. With Gott's death, he was the natural choice. He was of Scots ancestry and from what might be regarded as a sort of Scottish variant of the Anglo-Irish community. While born in England, his father was a Church of Ireland minister who would ultimately be sent to Tasmania, where Montgomery grew up.  While his father Henry had inherited the family estate in Ulster, there was not sufficient money to support the family until his father took the position in Tasmania.

His father was a dutiful clergyman and spent much of his time on the road in the rural areas of what remained a British colony at the time.  While he was gone, his mother, only in her twenties, constantly beat and then ignored the children.  This treatment made Bernard something of a bully in his youth and caused lasting animosity between him and his mother, whose funeral he did not attend in 1949.

The family returned to England in 1897.  Bernard joined the Army in 1908.  By all accounts he had a difficult personality, but in spite of American claims to the contrary, he was a brilliant tactician with a great appreciation of how to use troops who were inadequately equipped with thin resources.

The Germans took Elista on the Eastern Front.

The Australians retreated at Deniki on New Guinea, and the Japanese landed troops at Buna.

The Japanese, acting with rich hypocrisy, passed the Enemy Airman's Act.  It stated:

Article I: This law shall apply to all enemy airmen who raid the Japanese homeland, Manchukuo, and the Japanese zones of military operations, and who come within the areas under the jurisdiction of the China Expeditionary Force.

Article II: Any individual who commits any or all of the following shall be subject to military punishment:

Section 1. The bombing, strafing, and otherwise attacking of civilians with the objective of cowing, intimidating, killing or maiming them.

Section 2. The bombing, strafing or otherwise attacking of private properties, whatsoever, with the objectives of destroying or damaging same.

Section 3. The bombing, strafing or otherwise attacking of objectives, other than those of military nature, except in those cases where such an act is unavoidable.

Section 4. In addition to those acts covered in the preceding three sections, all other acts violating the provisions of International Law governing warfare.

Article III: Military punishment shall be the death penalty [or] life imprisonment, or a term of imprisonment for not less than ten years.

The hypocrisy was that Japan had used air assets extensively against Chinese civilian populations by this point in the war.  Using air assets against civilians is in fact a crime, but in this case, the Japanese were familiar with that crime by having done it.  Not only this, the murder, rape and enslavement of civilian populations was a common practice by Japanese ground forces.

Seemingly oblivious to the fact that 1) the British had arrested the German advances in North Africa but were nowhere near reversing them; 2) the Japanese were still advancing in the South Pacific and the recent U.S. offensive in the Solomons was now imperiled by a lack of progress on Guadalcanal and the Japanese Navy driving the U.S. Navy from that island's coast; 3) British efforts to contest for the Mediterranean were hardly an unqualified success; and 4) tens of ships were going down in the Atlantic every day, Joseph Stalin wrote a memo protesting the Allied decision not to land in France in 1942.

What Stalin seemingly was missing is that while he was losing the war inside of Russia at that moment, all the evidence was that the Allies were still losing it in the Pacific and barely hanging on in North Africa.  A landing in France was simply impossible.

Bambi opened in the United States.

Aerial view (altitude 3,000 ft.) looking northwest at the start of construction of Dry Dock No. 4. East terminus of Palou Avenue, San Francisco, San Francisco County, CA.

Wednesday, August 12, 1942 The Second Moscow Conference commences.

The Second Moscow Conference opened on this day in 1942.  Averrell Harriman attended for the United States.  Churchill was there in person for the United Kingdom and, of course, Joseph Stalin was there, where he would have been anyway, for the USSR.

At least from an external view, the war was really not going well at this time for the Allies.  The Soviets were being pushed back inside their own borders every day, and it would have been rational to conclude that the latest big city to be entered, Stalingrad, would fall within days.  British Commonwealth forces had been pushed back to El Alamein, where they had however arrested the German advance.  The Japanese were advancing in New Guinea, and while the US had landed Marines on Guadalcanal, the Japanese Navy had driven the U.S. Navy from its coast.

Stalin's trip to the USSR would be regarded an ordeal by modern travelers.  He met with Stalin at 7:00 p.m. that night, having just arrived from Tehran, and informed Stalin immediately that there would not be a second front in 1942, although he then went on to inform Stalin about developing plans for Operation Torch, the landings in North Africa, which by any rational measure was a boosting of an existing second front.

Churchill promised landings in France in 1943.

On this day the Germans took Slavyansk and, in Operation Pedestal, the British ships Cairo and Foresight were sunk and the tanker Ohio badly damaged. The Ohio had to be taken under tow.  The convoy was constantly under attack from the air and sea by German and Italian forces.  

The Germans, however, transferred forces from Case Blue to the siege at Leningrad, which weakened the offensive which was already running into trouble.  Erich von Manstein was dispatched with those forces to Leningrad.

Actor Phillips Holmes died in a midair collision while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force.  Actor and future aircrewman Clark Gable joined the U.S. Army as a private.  He was 41 years old.

Tuesday, August 11, 1942. Inventive Actress, Distressed Convoy, No Vino.

This is a particularly interesting day for entries on Sarah Sundin's blog.

First, she notes:

Today in World War II History—August 11, 1942: Actress Hedy Lamarr and musician George Antheil receive a patent for a frequency-hopping system to prevent interception and jamming of radio communications.

This is, I'd note, a big deal.

Sundin goes on to note that the technology did not go on to be used in World War Two, but it is in cellular phones.

Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, was an Austrian by birth.  Her father was Jewish and from Lviv, in what is now Ukraine, and her mother had been born Jewish and converted to Catholicism, and was from Budapest.  Her film career commenced in Czechoslovakia where she received notoriety for the film Ecstasy, which featured a plot involving a neglected young wife.  The film included brief nude scenes, which the 18-year-old Lamarr may have been genuinely tricked into through the use of high power lenses, as they clearly embarrassed her.  The film became a sort of blue hit in Europe, but was not allowed to be shown in the United States or Germany.

Ultimately married six times, she fled to Paris to escape her first husband in 1937.  He was a wealthy Austrian ammunition manufacturer whom she had married when she was 18, and before Ecstasy was released.  Highly controlling, the marriage fell apart for that reason.  Her American discovery, so to speak, came in London when she ran into Louis B. Mayer, who put her under contract.

Inventive by nature, the frequency hopping design noted above was designed to prevent the detection of torpedoes.  It was adopted ultimately by the Navy, but not until the 1960s.

Larmarr had a notable American career in film during Hollywood's Golden Age.  That career went into a steep decline in the 1950s which effectively ended it.  She began to descend into reclusiveness, with her final marriage, to her divorce lawyer, ending in 1965.  She became estranged from one of her children when he was only 12.  In her final years she was nearly a complete reclusive, but did reach out by telephone, spending up to six hours a day talking to other people in that fashion.  She was 85 when she died in 2000, and her ashes were spread in an Austrian forest according to her wishes.

Her unusual stage name became an odd comedic trope in Mel Brook's film Blazing Saddles, with one of the characters being named "Headley Lamar" and therefore needing to constantly correct the pronunciation of his name.

The stricken HMS Eagle.

Sundin also notes that the HMS Eagle went down in the Mediterranean.  The Eagle was an aircraft carrier and part of the convoy that we noted yesterday that was headed to attempt to relieve Malta's material shortages.  She took only four minutes to sink after being hit by four torpedoes fired from the U-73.

The Japanese dispatched a large naval task force from Tokyo to Truk Lagoon, where they are tasked with escorting troops and supplies to Guadalcanal.

The Soviets began desperately evacuating the port of Novorossisk on the Black Sea in advance of oncoming German forces.

Sundin also notes in her blog that the U.S. War Production Board ordered that the entire American grape wine crop for the year be diverted into raisins for the military.

This recalls actions by the U.S. Government to prohibit brewing and distilling during World War One in order to divert the use of cereals for food, rather than alcohol.

Monday, August 10, 1942. Churchill takes lunch in Iran.

Today in World War II History—August 10, 1942: Germans cross the Don River and enter outskirts of Stalingrad. Kaiser Richmond Field Hospital opens for employees of Kaiser Shipyard in Richmond, CA.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.  The Germans also took Maikop unopposed due to a Brandenburger Commando unit posing as NKVD troops, who ordered the Red Army unit there to retreat.

Meanwhile, the Battle of the Atlantic was raging, with U-boats taking impressive tolls daily.

In that context, on a day full of shipping losses, a heavily escorted British convoy of thirteen freighters including the American oil tanker SS Ohio passed through the Straits of Gibraltar headed towards Malta.  The Germans and Italians deploy submarines to intercept.

Winston Churchill, on his way to Moscow, stopped in Iran and had lunch with the Shah.

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.

Saturday, August 8, 1942. Set Backs and Executions.

Six of the eight German saboteurs were executed on this day in 1942. The two who were not, were the two who cooperated with authorities.

It's notable how extremely rapid the sentencing to death was.  This all took place very quickly, far more quickly than would occur today.  Also of note is that the sentences have been, ever since, subject to some controversy.

It was the second day of action in the Solomons.

Photograph from Japanese ship during the Battle of Savo Island.

The Marines captured the unfinished Japanese airbase on Guadalcanal.  

On the same day, the Battle of Savo Island began off of the island between the U.S. Navy, Australian Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy.  The Japanese task force had originally been formed to escort additional ground forces to Guadalcanal, but that had been called off when the Japanese realized the size of the US ground element.  Instead, it was decided to challenge the U.S. Navy off of the island.  The Japanese timed their action for night, having trained extensively for nighttime action prior to the war, something the Allies were not aware of.

The battle was a Japanese victory which impaired the Navy's ability to resupply the campaign on Guadalcanal. Four Allied heavy cruisers were lost as a result of the battle, before the Japanese withdrew so as to avoid exposure of their own forces to aircraft during the day.

On the same day, the Japanese sunk the troop/cargo ship, the USS George F. Elliot, off of Guadalcanal in an attack from a "Betty" bomber.

The Japanese action resulted in the Navy having to recalculate how to resupply the offensive at Guadalcanal, and in fact it resulted in reduced supplies.  The Navy's decisions on running supplies to the island in smaller vessels was sound, but it resulted in animosity with the Marines, who were unaware of what was occurring at sea and assumed that the Navy was being overcautious.

The Germans took Surovikino.

Gandhi made his "Quit India Speech", which stated:

Before you discuss the resolution, let me place before you one or two things I want you to understand two things very clearly and to consider them from the same point of view from which I am placing them before you. I ask you to consider it from my point of view, because if you approve of it, you will be enjoined to carry out all I say. It will be a great responsibility. There are people who ask me whether I am the same man that I was in 1920, or whether there has been any change in me or you. You are right in asking that question.

Let me, however, hasten to assure that I am the same Gandhi as I was in 1920. I have not changed in any fundamental respect. I attach the same importance to non-violence that I did then. If at all, my emphasis on it has grown stronger. There is no real contradiction between the present resolution and my previous writings and utterances.

Occasions like the present do not occur in everybody’s and rarely in anybody’s life. I want you to know and feel that there is nothing but purest Ahimsa in all that I am saying and doing today. The draft resolution of the Working Committee is based on Ahimsa, the contemplated struggle similarly has its roots in Ahimsa. If, therefore, there is any among you who has lost faith in Ahimsa or is wearied of it, let him not vote for this resolution. Let me explain my position clearly. God has vouchsafed to me a priceless gift in the weapon of Ahimsa. I and my Ahimsa are on our trail today. If in the present crisis, when the earth is being scorched by the flames of Himsa and crying for deliverance, I failed to make use of the God given talent, God will not forgive me and I shall be judged unworthy of the great gift. I must act now. I may not hesitate and merely look on, when Russia and China are threatened.

Ours is not a drive for power, but purely a non-violent fight for India’s independence. In a violent struggle, a successful general has been often known to effect a military coup and to set up a dictatorship. But under the Congress scheme of things, essentially non-violent as it is, there can be no room for dictatorship. A non-violent soldier of freedom will covet nothing for himself, he fights only for the freedom of his country. The Congress is unconcerned as to who will rule, when freedom is attained. The power, when it comes, will belong to the people of India, and it will be for them to decide to whom it placed in the entrusted. May be that the reins will be placed in the hands of the Parsis, for instance-as I would love to see happen-or they may be handed to some others whose names are not heard in the Congress today. It will not be for you then to object saying, “This community is microscopic. That party did not play its due part in the freedom’s struggle; why should it have all the power?” Ever since its inception the Congress has kept itself meticulously free of the communal taint. It has thought always in terms of the whole nation and has acted accordingly. . . I know how imperfect our Ahimsa is and how far away we are still from the ideal, but in Ahimsa there is no final failure or defeat. I have faith, therefore, that if, in spite of our shortcomings, the big thing does happen, it will be because God wanted to help us by crowning with success our silent, unremitting Sadhana for the last twenty-two years.

I believe that in the history of the world, there has not been a more genuinely democratic struggle for freedom than ours. I read Carlyle’s French Revolution while I was in prison, and Pandit Jawaharlal has told me something about the Russian revolution. But it is my conviction that inasmuch as these struggles were fought with the weapon of violence they failed to realize the democratic ideal. In the democracy which I have envisaged, a democracy established by non-violence, there will be equal freedom for all. Everybody will be his own master. It is to join a struggle for such democracy that I invite you today. Once you realize this you will forget the differences between the Hindus and Muslims, and think of yourselves as Indians only, engaged in the common struggle for independence.

Then, there is the question of your attitude towards the British. I have noticed that there is hatred towards the British among the people. The people say they are disgusted with their behaviour. The people make no distinction between British imperialism and the British people. To them, the two are one. This hatred would even make them welcome the Japanese. It is most dangerous. It means that they will exchange one slavery for another. We must get rid of this feeling. Our quarrel is not with the British people, we fight their imperialism. The proposal for the withdrawal of British power did not come out of anger. It came to enable India to play its due part at the present critical juncture. It is not a happy position for a big country like India to be merely helping with money and material obtained willy-nilly from her while the United Kingdom is conducting the war. We cannot evoke the true spirit of sacrifice and valor, so long as we are not free. I know the British Government will not be able to withhold freedom from us, when we have made enough self-sacrifice. We must, therefore, purge ourselves of hatred. Speaking for myself, I can say that I have never felt any hatred. As a matter of fact, I feel myself to be a greater friend of the British now than ever before. One reason is that they are today in distress. My very friendship, therefore, demands that I should try to save them from their mistakes. As I view the situation, they are on the brink of an abyss. It, therefore, becomes my duty to warn them of their danger even though it may, for the time being, anger them to the point of cutting off the friendly hand that is stretched out to help them. People may laugh, nevertheless that is my claim. At a time when I may have to launch the biggest struggle of my life, I may not harbor hatred against anybody.

Gandhi and his immediate fellows were arrested in less than twenty-four hours.

The Saturday Evening Post featured an illustration of a smiling woman and Naval officer in whites, with the pair being an obvious couple.  She's admiring a medal with a blue ribbon around his neck, but we can't tell what the decoration is.  Colliers featured a very serious looking Navy officer at a wooden ship's wheel.

Thursday, August 6, 1942. Treason.

Detroit restaurant owner Max Stephan was sentenced to death for aiding an escaped German prisoner of war. The sentence, which was commuted to life in prison by President Roosevelt, was the first such example since the Whiskey Rebellion.

German forces took Tikhoretsk and Armavir in their advance in the southern Soviet Union.

The Germans murdered several thousand Jewish residents of the Zdzieciol Ghetto in the Dzyatlava Massacre.  The city was a Polish one, although it is now in Belorussian.

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.

Friday, July 31, 1942. More Case Blue confusion. Canada establishes the Wrens. Marines depart to invade Guadalcanal.

From Sarah Sundin's blog

Today in World War II History—July 31, 1942: Germans cross River Don in Ukraine. Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service is established; 7000 will serve in the WRCNS as Wrens.

Canada had been reluctant to bring women into naval service.

FWIW, a relative of mine served in the Wrens during the war, even though it had already taken women into the army and the RCAF. For that reason, the Wrens were actually established slightly after the WAVES.

As a perhaps slightly salacious side note, starting in 1943 the Wrens started publishing their own newspaper, the Tiddly Times.  The name came from a British seams nickname for something extra to decorate uniforms, but that was an odd choice of titles for more than one reason.

As a note, it's interesting the extent to which we're reading of the Germans as aggressors trying to conquer the same lands that the Russians are now attempting to conquer 80 years later.

Regarding Case Blue, Hitler reversed his recent order which had taken the 4th Panzer Army away from the attack on Stalingrad and reassigned it, reversing its direction, and creating additional confusion.

The 1st Marine Divisions embarked on US and Australian ships for the invasion of Guadalcanal.    US aircraft bombed Japanese airfields on the island.

Wednesday, July 29, 1942. More Axis Victories.

The Japanese took the Kokoda airfield.   The Germans took Proletarsk and crossed the Manych.

The RAF bombed Saarbrucken causing severe damage to the ironworka and engineering plant there.

Tuesday, July 28, 1942. Not one step back.

Postage stamp commemorating the phrase coined in Order 227.

Stalin issued his "not one step back" order in the face of advancing Axis forces near Stalingrad.  The order, which was actually quite lengthy and detailed, read in part:

Moscow, Nr. 227, July 28, 1942

The enemy throws new forces to the front without regard to heavy losses and penetrates deep into the Soviet Union, seizing new regions, destroying our cities and villages, and violating, plundering and killing the Soviet population. Combat goes on in region Voronezh, near Don, in the south, and at the gates of the Northern Caucasus. The German invaders penetrate toward Stalingrad, to Volga and want at any cost to trap Kuban and the Northern Caucasus, with their oil and grain. The enemy already has captured Voroshilovgrad, Starobelsk, Rossosh, Kupyansk, Valuyki, Novocherkassk, Rostov on Don, half Voronezh. Part of the troops of the Southern front, following the panic-mongers, have left Rostov and Novocherkassk without severe resistance and without orders from Moscow, covering their banners with shame.

The population of our country, who love and respect the Red Army, start to be discouraged in her and lose faith in the Red Army, and many curse the Red Army for leaving our people under the yoke of the German oppressors, and itself running east.

Some stupid people at the front calm themselves with talk that we can retreat further to the east, as we have a lot of territory, a lot of ground, a lot of population and that there will always be much bread for us. They want to justify the infamous behaviour at the front. But such talk is a falsehood, helpful only to our enemies.

Each commander, Red Army soldier and political commissar should understand that our means are not limitless. The territory of the Soviet state is not a desert, but people - workers, peasants, intelligentsia, our fathers, mothers, wives, brothers, children. The territory of the USSR which the enemy has captured and aims to capture is bread and other products for the army, metal and fuel for industry, factories, plants supplying the army with arms and ammunition, railways. After the loss of Ukraine, Belarus, Baltic republics, Donetzk, and other areas we have much less territory, much fewer people, bread, metal, plants and factories. We have lost more than 70 million people, more than 800 million pounds of bread annually and more than 10 million tons of metal annually. Now we do not have predominance over the Germans in human reserves, in reserves of bread. To retreat further - means to waste ourselves and to waste at the same time our Motherland.

Therefore it is necessary to eliminate talk that we have the capability endlessly to retreat, that we have a lot of territory, that our country is great and rich, that there is a large population, and that bread always will be abundant. Such talk is false and parasitic, it weakens us and benefits the enemy, if we do not stop retreating we will be without bread, without fuel, without metal, without raw material, without factories and plants, without railways.

This leads to the conclusion, it is time to finish retreating. Not one step back! Such should now be our main slogan.

The order went on to require unit commanders to form penal battalions and blocking detachments to block, detain, and shoot the non-compliant.

Jewish youth organizations formed the first Jewish combat organizations in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Yugoslav Partisans and Croatian forces started to fight each other at the Bosnian town of Kupres, giving an example of the odd wars within the war feature of the World War Two in the East.

Arthur "Bomber" Harris made a radio broadcast to the Germans, warning them they were about to face around the clock bombing and the only solution to preventing this was to overthrow the Nazis and make peace.

Spike Jones and his City Slickers released their song Der Fuehrer's Face.

Disney would use the song as the basis for a cartoon the following year.

Sunday, July 26, 1942. Gene Autry joins the Army.

Today in World War II History—July 26, 1942: In a live radio broadcast, Gene Autry, cowboy singer/actor, is inducted into the US Army Air Force as a technical sergeant.

Via Sarah Sundin's blog.

I had no idea that Gene Autry had served in the military during World War Two.

I'm not an Autry fan, and indeed when I first read this in the early morning hours, I confused Autry with Roy Rogers.  Roy Rogers didn't serve in World War Two.  He was a few years younger than Autry, who did.

The other blog which had this correct, I'd note, noted this regarding Rogers:

Rogers and Wayne "are forever tainted with the stigma of opting out[,] unlike so many of their contemporaries from the Hollywood community who put country first before family [and] career," Bruce Hickey wrote. Seventy years later, people still have heated opinions about it. Wayne's lack of service has been written about more extensively than Rogers', but both are perennial topics of speculation, justification, and scorn.

I posted on the entry twice, once in error, and then to correct my error.

I suspect that Autry wasn't inducted as a Technical Sergeant so much as becoming one.  He was a private pilot and really wanted to be an Army Air Force pilot, and eventually did so in 1944, then holding the rank of Flight Officer.  He flew a C-109, a cargo variant of the B-24, which was not an easy plane to fly, and moreover, was one of those who flew "over the hump" in the CBI.

By the way, Autry did join the Army on a Sunday.  As readers of this blog may have noted, a lot of official government business of all types was conducted on Sunday during World War Two.  I don't know what the official policy was, but the government was clearly working at least partially seven days a week.

At El Alamein the British launched the counteroffensive Operation Manhood, with the combined British, South African and New Zealand forces taking most of their initial objectives.

The Japanese defending forces at Oivi on the Kokoda track, with the Papuan and Australian forces conducing a delaying action.

The German 6th Army broke through the Red Army's 62nd and 64th armies, reaching the Don just south of Stalingrad.

The Royal Air Force conducted a nighttime raid on Hamburg which resulted in the destruction of 823 homes, and which rendered 14,000 of its residents homeless.