Sunday, May 16, 1943. Warsaw Ghetto falls, Dam Busters

The end of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising occurred after nearly a month of fighting.  It concluded by the demolition of the Warsaw Synagogue.

Warsaw Synagogue in 1910.

The RAF destoryed the Möhne and Edersee dams with a mere nineteen bombers in the famous "Dam Busters" raid.  At the time it was regarded as a success by the Germans, who were puzzled why the destruction of the hydroelectric dams by bouncing bombs was not followed up upon, while the RAF's Bomber Harris regarded it as a failure that wasted resources.

While the raids caused civilian loss of life, German civilians regarded the destruction of the hydroelectric generating dams as legitimate.  German authorities accurately reported the resulting loss of civilian lives.  Albert Speer wrote of the attack; "employing just a few bombers, the British came close to a success which would have been greater than anything they had achieved hitherto with a commitment of thousands of bombers. But they made a single mistake which puzzles me to this day: They divided their forces and that same night destroyed the Eder Valley dam, although it had nothing whatsoever to do with the supply of water to the Ruhr."

While enormously celebrated as a British success by the population, perhaps the reaction of Harris, who seems to have had a particularly cold view of the destruction of Germany from the air, isn't too surprising. In reality, however, the raid demonstrated a very clever deployment of British resources with a real understanding of how industrial infrastructure worked.

The raid did cause the British to switch aerial munitions, going thereafter for massive "Earthquake Bombs" which caused a seismic effect when detonated.

Eight of the British aircraft were lost in the raid.

Monday, January 18, 1943. Encirclement of Leningrad broken.

The Red Army broke the encirclement of Leningrad.  Zhukov was accordingly promoted to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union on the same day.

The relief came with the capture of the city of the somewhat ironically named, given its very German character, Shlisselburg (Шлиссельбу́рг,) or, in German: Schlüsselburg.  Given the nature of the region, we'll note its name in Finnish: Pähkinälinna and Swedish: Nöteborg.  The city dates to 1323 when a fort was built at the location by Grand Prince Yury of Moscow, in his capacity as Prince of Novgorod on behalf of the Novgorod Republic in 1323. In 1348 Swedish King Magnus Eriksson took the fortress.  It was retaken by the Novgorodians in 1351. In 1478 the Novgorod Republic was absorbed by Muscovy and a new fortress was constructed there. In 1611 the fortress was taken by the Swedes again.  The Russians took it back in 1702, at which time Peter the Great renamed it Shlisselburg, a Russian aliteration of the German word "key fortress", which is what Peter was trying to name it, in German.

It's just to the west of St. Petersburg, then called Leningrad, on Lake Lagoda.

Zhukov was lucky, and the Soviet Union accordingly lucky, to have been stationed in the Soviet East during the purges, or he likely would have been killed with so many others.  He was well liked by his superior and protected by him, with his superior likewise remaining in Stalin's fickle favor while so many else were killed in a sea of blood that remains almost incapable of being grasped.

The first Warsaw Ghetto Uprising occurred when the Germans began their second deportation from the ghetto.  Members of the Jewish resistance organization Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ZOB) took on the SS with pistols and disrupted the deportation sufficiently to halt it after four days of fighting.  ZOB was lead by Mordechai Anielewicz who was only about 24 at the time.

In the U.S. War Food Order No. 1 went into effect requiring white bread be enriched with niacin, riboflavin, thiamin and iron, something that became standard by law in some states, and simply by custom generally, thereafter.  

Also:

January 18, 1943 – Wartime Ban on Sale of Sliced Bread Goes into Effect in the U.S.