Saturday, March 4, 1944. The resisting defeated.

The USCGC Makinaw was commissioned on this date in 1944. She'd serve as an ice breaker until 2006.

The German military, evil cause notwithstanding, was proving itself to be as amazing in defeat as it had been in victory.  Never as well-equipped or modern as its propaganda would have it, it was nonetheless a potent fighting force, both in defeat as well as victory.  On this day, the Second Narva Offensive resulted in a German victory.

Outnumbered, the Germans took thousands of casualties, but not as many as the Red Army. Both armies had a disregard for life.  The Germans were, frankly quite surprisingly, aided by the presence of able Estonian recruits who had only recently entered service.

The latter was a portent of what was to come. As 1944 marched on, the German frontiers contracted, and as they did, the bloodletting, in part due to increased German resistance, meant that 1945, not 1944, was to be the bloodiest year of the war.

The Red Army launched a new series of offensive actions in Ukraine.  Stalwart German resistance notwithstanding, and the frankly primitive state of much of the Red Army, the tide had irrevocably turned.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—March 4, 1944: 80 Years Ago—Mar. 4, 1944: Maj. Gen. Alexander Patch assumes command of US Seventh Army in Algiers, to prepare for landings in southern France.

Germany's battlefield performance on the Baltic coast and in Italy notwithstanding, the direction the war was headed in was obvious and the Allies were preparing not only for Operation Overlord, but Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France.  Patch was placed in command of that operation.

Patch had already seen combat command in the war in the Pacific, and more specifically Guadalcanal, making him one of a handful of U.S. generals who served against the Germans and Japanese. His health in the Pacific had been very poor, and he suffered from pneumonia while serving there.

Patch was born into an Army family and had originally wanted to be a cavalryman, but foresaw its obsolesce so he instead chose the infantry when he graduated from West Point in 1913  He saw action in the Punitive Expedition and in World War One.  He never recovered from his respiratory ailments and died on November 21, 1945, just after the end of the war.  He was 55.

Other things were also occurring in Algiers.

French industrialist, and fascist, Piere Firmin Pucheu went on trial in Algiers in spite of conditions that probably should have led to his safe presence in Algeria, Vichy role notwithstanding.  He had been the Vichy minister of the interior.  He was the first person tried under the French Committee of National Liberation's September 1943 edict charging all Vichy ministers with treason, something that was frankly political and extralegal.  He would be found guilty and executed on March 20, 1944, going to his death after shaking hands with his own firing squad and giving the order to fire himself.

Pucheau is an uncomfortable example as to how some examples of Allied justice were not just. Pucheau was largely not admirable. He was a fascist, and he had a hatred of Jews.  His execution, however, can be viewed for his being on the losing side of the war.

The 8th Air Force targeted Berlin, but only 29 bombers made it through due to weather.

Fighting was going on at Los Negros, where Troy McGill performed an act of heroism that would result in his receiving a posthumous Medal of Honor.

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy at Los Negros Island, Admiralty Group, on 4 March 1944. In the early morning hours Sgt. McGill, with a squad of eight men, occupied a revetment which bore the brunt of a furious attack by approximately 200 drink-crazed enemy troops. Although covered by crossfire from machine guns on the right and left flank he could receive no support from the remainder of our troops stationed at his rear. All members of the squad were killed or wounded except Sgt. McGill and another man, whom he ordered to return to the next revetment. Courageously resolved to hold his position at all costs, he fired his weapon until it ceased to function. Then, with the enemy only five yards away, he charged from his foxhole in the face of certain death and clubbed the enemy with his rifle in hand-to-hand combat until he was killed. At dawn 105 enemy dead were found around his position. Sgt. McGill's intrepid stand was an inspiration to his comrades and a decisive factor in the defeat of a fanatical enemy.

Chinese and American troops who have just received first aid treatment are seen in a 2½ ton truck for transfer to the rear.  March 4, 1944.  Note the tanker's helmet and the M1917 helmets

The U-472 was sunk in the Barents Sea.  She never sank a single ship.

China and Afghanistan entered into a pointless treaty of friendship.

Mobster Louie Lepke, birth name Louis Buchalter and also known as Louis Lepke or Lepke Buchalter, was executed.

Louis Capone met the same fate on this day, for the same reason.

The Phillies attempted to introduce a blue jay logo.

Thursday, March 2, 1944. And the Oscar goes to. . .

Men of the 5th Cavalry Rgt. were landed on Los Negros to back up the previous landings.  Momote Airfield was taken.

Lend Lease aid to Turkey was cut off.  That it was ever extended is interesting, in that Turkey had not joined the war and in fact was still being courted by both sides.

Maj. Graham Batchelor, Milledgeville, Ga., U.S. Army Infantry Liaison Officer, eating with Chinese officers, March 2, 1944.

The 16th Academy Awards were held at Grauman's Chinese Theater, the first time the awards were held in a large public venue. 

Casablanca won Best Picture and Best Director. Other films that were nominated were, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Heaven Can Wait, The Human Comedy, In Which We Serve, The More the Merrier, The Ox-Bow Incident, The Song of Bernadette and Watch on the Rhine.  Of those, I've only seen Casablanca, The Ox-Bow Incident and The Song of Bernadette all of which are truly excellent.

Paul Lukas won best actor for Watch on the Rhine.  Jennifer Jones won best actress for The Song of Bernadette.

May 7, 1941 An Enigma Solved

On this day in 1941, as you can read in the item below, the British destroyer HMS Somali captured the German weather ship München off of Iceland.

Today in World War II History—May 7, 1941

With the ship the British also captured her July Enigma code book.  In fact, she was targeted for that.

Benchley Park had figured out that the fatal flaw of Enigma was the universality of the code books and they guessed that weather ships would have them, even though they didn't transmit in code, and that they'd have the following month's in a safe.  The plan was to fire over a weather ship and frighten the crew in the hopes they'd fail to dump the second book, which they in fact did.

Weather ships were a critical part of the German U-boat campaign but also a weakness in it.  In the days before satellite weather forecasting, weather forecasting relied upon weather readings and observations.  This meant that the Germans had no choice but to put weather ships in the North Atlantic and to also land men on Iceland and Greenland, and even Labrador. All of these efforts were vulnerable to Allied detection and they had to rely on the remoteness of their locations for protection.

On the same day, the Germans released the film Sieg Im Westen (Victory in the West).  It proved to be premature.

Also on this day, the Royal Air Force took its first delivery of B-17s.  The RAF would never use a large number of the American bomber, but they did employ some.  They would not see combat until July, when they were used in a high altitude bombing raid which served to confirm in British minds that daylight bombing was too costly.

The Battle of South Shanxi began in China and would result in one of the worst defeats for the Nationalist Chinese in the Second World War.  Critical to the result, Communist Chinese forces refused to come to the aid of encircled Nationalist Chinese forces due to embittered communist feelings over the New Fourth Army Incident of earlier that year.

That earlier incident had occurred in early 1941 and saw the Chinese communist sustain about 7,000 casualties at Nationalist Chinese hands. Accounts of the incident vary enormously and it is therefore almost impossible to figure out who broke the truce between the Nationalist and the Communist that was brokered in order to contest the Japanese, the bigger enemy.   At any rate, the Nationalist sustained over 100,000 casualties in the South Shanxi battle, so the Communist more than evened the score.

March 14, 1941. The Blitz over Scotland, Italian submarines in the North Atlantic, Japanese offensive in China.

British troops took meals and were photographed on this day in St. Andrew's House, which is now the seat of the Scottish Parliament.

Serving during what is now regarded as Britain's dark days of the war, these men would have nonetheless have had a hard time imagining a United Kingdom with more than one parliament and being in the current state of being at least somewhat disunited, let alone that kingdom not having an Empire.

In Leeds, the city would sustain the worst night of the Leeds Blitz. Clydeside was destroyed on the second night of raids against it.  You can read more about that here:

Clydeside bombed again

In  China, the Japanese would launch as assault at Shanggao which would result in a decisive Chinese victory.

The SS Western Chief, formerly a U.S. naval cargo vessel but now a civilian cargo ship, was sunk by an Italian submarine in the North Atlantic.

We tend to not even think of the Italians having submarines in the Battle of the Atlantic, but in fact their submarine fleet was the largest in the world at the start of World War Two and their commitment to the Atlantic early in the war equaled that of the Germans.

A  Marcello class submarine in German service in the Inland Sea, Japan, in August, 1944. This submarine had been Comandante Cappelini in Italian service prior to their surrender to the Allies and would go on to Japanese service as the  IJN I-503 after Germany's surrender to the Allies.

The submarine in question was the Emo, a Marcello class submarine that was sunk in the Mediterranean in 1942.  

The story of Italian submarines during the war is not only largely forgotten, but complicated as well.  About half their fleet was destroyed in action as the war went on, and a surprising number of their boats were converted to transport craft to run to the Far East.

On the topic of submarines, German film maker Wolfgang Petersen, who filmed the submarine masterpiece Das Boot, was born on this day in 1941.

And speaking of the Japanese, President Roosevelt met with the Japanese Ambassador late in the day, on this day in 1941.