Showing posts with label German Wehrmacht. Show all posts
Showing posts with label German Wehrmacht. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Sunday, May 13, 1945. "There is still a lot to do".

Churchill delivered a radio address warning that there was still a lot to do.

It was five years ago on Thursday last that His Majesty the King commissioned me to form a National Government of all parties to carry on our affairs. Five years is a long time in human life, especially when there is no remission for good conduct. However, aided-by loyal and capable colleagues and sustained by the entire British nation at home and all our fighting men abroad, and with the unswerving cooperation of the Dominions far across the oceans and of our Empire in every quarter of the globe, it became clear last week that things had worked out pretty well and that the British Commonwealth and Empire stands more united and more effectively powerful than at any time in its long romantic history. Certainly we were in a far better state to cope with the problems and perils of the future than we were five years ago.

For a while our prime enemy, our mighty enemy, Germany, overran almost all Europe. France, who bore such a frightful strain in the last great war was beaten to the ground and took some time to recover. The Low Countries, fighting to the best of their strength, were subjugated. Norway was overrun. Mussolini's Italy stabbed us in the back when we were, as he thought, at our last gasp. But for ourselves, our lot, I mean the British Commonwealth and Empire, we were absolutely alone.

In July, August, and September, 1940, forty or fifty squadrons of British fighter aircraft broke the teeth of the German air fleet at odds of seven or eight to one in the Battle of Britain. Never before in the history of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. The name of Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding will ever be linked with this splendid event. But conjoined with the Royal Air Force lay the Royal Navy, ever ready to tear to pieces the barges, gathered from the canals of Holland and Belgium, in which an invading army could alone have been transported. I was never one to believe that the invasion of Britain would be an easy task. With the autumn storms, the immediate danger of invasion in 1940 had passed.

Then began the blitz, when Hitler said he would rub out our cities. This was borne without a word of complaint or the slightest signs of flinching, while a very large number of people-honor to them all-proved that London could take it and so could the other ravaged centers.

But the dawn of 1941 revealed us still in jeopardy. The hostile aircraft could fly across the approaches to our island, where 46,000,000 people had to import half their daily bread and all the materials they need for peace or war, from Brest to Norway in a single flight or back again, observing all the movements of our shipping in and out of the Clyde and Mersey and directing upon our convoys the large and increasing numbers of U-boats with which the enemy bespattered the Atlantic-the survivors or successors of which are now being collected in British harbors.

The sense of envelopment, which might at any moment turn to strangulation, lay heavy upon us. We had only the northwestern approach between Ulster and Scotland through which to bring in the means of life and to send out the forces of war. Owing to the action of Mr. de Valera, so much at variance with the temper and instinct of thousands of southern Irishmen, who hastened to the battlefront to prove their ancient valor, the approaches which the southern Irish ports and airfields could so easily have guarded were closed by the hostile aircraft and U-boats.

This was indeed a deadly moment in our life, and if it had not been for the loyalty and friendship of Northern Ireland we should have been forced to come to close quarters with Mr. de Valera or perish forever from the earth. However, with a restraint and poise to which, I say, history will find few parallels, we never laid a violent hand upon them, which at times would have been quite easy and quite natural, and left the de Valera Government to frolic with the German and later with the Japanese representatives to their heart's content.

When I think of these days I think also of other episodes and personalities. I do not forget Lieutenant-Commander Esmonde, V.C., D.S.O., Lance-Corporal Keneally, V.C., Captain Fegen, V.C., and other Irish heroes that-I could easily recite, and all bitterness by Britain for the Irish race dies in my heart. I can only pray that in years which I shall not see the shame will be forgotten and the glories will endure, and that the peoples of the British Isles and of the British Commonwealth of Nations will walk together in mutual comprehension and forgiveness.

My friends, we will not forget the devotion of our merchant seamen, the vast, inventive, adaptive, all-embracing and, in the end, all-controlling power of the Royal Navy, with its ever more potent new ally, the air, which have kept the life-line open. We were able to breathe; we were able to live; we were able to strike. Dire deeds we had to do. The destruction or capture of the French fleet which, had it ever passed into German hands would, together with the Italian fleet, have perhaps enabled the German Navy to face us on the high seas. The dispatch to Wavell all round the Cape at our darkest hour, of tanks-practically all we had in the island-enabled us as far back as November, 1940, to defend Egypt against invasion and hurl back with the loss of a quarter of a million captives the Italian armies at whose tail Mussolini had planned a ride into Cairo or Alexandria.

Great anxiety was felt by President Roosevelt, and indeed by thinking men throughout the United States, about what would happen to us in the early part of 1941. This great President felt to the depth of his being that the destruction of Britain would not only be a fearful event in itself, but that it would expose to mortal danger the vast and as yet largely unarmed potentialities and future destiny of the United States.

He feared greatly that we should be invaded in that spring of 1941, and no doubt he had behind him military advice as good as any in the world, and he sent his recent Presidential opponent, Mr. Wendell Willkie, to me with a letter in which he had written in his own hand the famous lines of Longfellow, which I quoted in the House of Commons the other day:

Sail on, O Ship of State!

Sail on, O Union strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

We were in a fairly tough condition by the early months of 1941 and felt very much better about ourselves than in the months immediately after the collapse of France. Our Dunkirk army and field force troops in Britain, almost a million strong, were nearly all equipped or re-equipped. We had ferried over the Atlantic a million rifles and a thousand cannon from the United States, with all their ammunition, since the previous June.

In our munition works, which were becoming very powerful, men and women had worked at their machines till they dropped senseless with fatigue. Nearly one million of men, growing to two millions at the peak, working all day had been formed into the Home Guard, armed at least with rifles and armed also with the spirit "Conquer or Die."

Later in 1941, when we were still all alone, we sacrificed, to some extent unwillingly, our conquests of the winter in Cyrenaica and Libya in order to stand by Greece, and Greece will never forget how much we gave, albeit unavailingly, of the little we had. We did this for honor. We repressed the German-instigated rising in Iraq. We defended Palestine. With the assistance of General de Gaulle's indomitable Free French we cleared Syria and the Lebanon of Vichyites and of German intrigue. And then in June, 1941, another tremendous world event occurred.

You have no doubt noticed in your reading of British history that we have sometimes had to hold out all alone, or to be the mainspring of coalitions, against a Continental tyrant or dictator for quite a long time-against the Spanish Armada, against the might of Louis XIV, when we led Europe for nearly twenty-five years under William III and Marlborough and 130 years ago, when Pitt, Wellington, and Nelson broke Napoleon, not without the assistance of the heroic Russians of 1812. In all these world wars our island kept the lead of Europe or else held out alone.

And if you hold out alone long enough there always comes a time when the tyrant makes some ghastly mistake which alters the whole balance of the struggle. On June 22, 1941, Hitler, master as he thought himself of all Europe, nay indeed soon to be, he thought, master of the world, treacherously, without warning, without the slightest provocation, hurled himself on Russia and came face to face with Marshal Stalin and the numberless millions of the Russian people. And then at the end of the year Japan struck her felon blow at the United States at Pearl Harbor, and at the same time attacked us in Malaya and at Singapore. Thereupon Hitler and Mussolini declared war on the republic of the United States.

Years have passed since then. Indeed every year seems to me almost a decade. But never since the United States entered the war have I had the slightest doubt but that we should be saved and that we had only to do our duty in order to win. We have played our part in all this process by which the evildoers have been overthrown. I hope I do not speak vain or boastful words. But from Alamein in October, 1942, through the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa, of Sicily and of-Italy, with the capture of Rome, we marched many miles and never knew defeat.

And then last year, after two years' patient preparation and marvelous devices of amphibious warfare-in my view our scientists are not surpassed by any nation, specially when their thought is applied to naval matters-last year on June 6 we seized a carefully selected little toe of German-occupied France and poured millions in from this island and from across the Atlantic until the Seine, the Somme, and the Rhine all fell behind the advancing Anglo-American spearheads. France was liberated. She produced a fine Army of gallant men to aid her own liberation. Germany lay open.

And now from the other side, from the East, the mighty military achievements of the Russian people, always holding many more German troops on their front than we could do, rolled forward to meet us in the heart and center of Germany. At the same time in Italy Field-Marshal Alexander's Army of so many nations, the largest part of which was British or British Empire, struck their final blow and compelled more than 1,000,000 enemy troops to surrender. This Fifteenth Army Group, as we call it, are now deep in Austria joining their right hand with the Russians and their left with the United States Armies under General Eisenhower's command.

It happened that in three days we received the news of the unlamented departures of Mussolini and Hitler, and in three days also surrenders were made to Field-Marshal Alexander and Field-Marshal Montgomery of over 2,500,000 soldiers of this terrible warlike German Army.

I shall make it clear at this moment that we have never failed to recognize the immense superiority of the power used by the United States in the rescue of France and the defeat of Germany.

For our part we have had in action about one-third as many men as the Americans, but we have taken our full share of the fighting, as the scale of our losses shows. Our Navy has borne incomparably the heavier burden in the Atlantic Ocean, in the narrow seas and Arctic convoys to Russia, while the United States Navy has used its massive strength mainly against Japan. It is right and natural that we should extol the virtues and glorious services of our own most famous commanders, Alexander and Montgomery, neither of whom was ever defeated since they began together at Alamein, both of whom had conducted in Africa, in Italy, in Normandy and in Germany battles of the first magnitude and of decisive consequences. At the same time we know how great is our debt to the combining and unifying of the command and high strategic direction of General Eisenhower.

Here is the moment when I must pay my personal tribute to the British Chiefs of the Staff with whom I have worked in the closest intimacy throughout these hard years. There have been very few changes in this powerful and capable body of men who, sinking all Service differences and judging the problems of the war as a whole, have worked together in the closest harmony with each other. In Field-Marshal Brooke, Admiral Pound, Admiral Andrew Cunningham, and Marshal of the R.A.F. Portal a power was formed who deserved the highest honor in the direction of the whole British war strategy and its agreement with that of our Allies.

It may well be said that never have the forces of two nations fought side by side and intermingled into line of battle with so much unity, comradeship, and brotherhood as in the great Anglo-American army. Some people say, "Well, what would you expect, if both nations speak the same language and have the same outlook upon life with all its hope and glory." Others may say, "It would be an ill day for all the world and for the pair of them if they did not go on working together and marching together and sailing together and flying together wherever something has to be done for the sake of freedom and fair play all over the world."

There was one final danger from which the collapse of Germany has saved us. In London and the southeastern counties we have suffered for a year from various forms of flying bombs and rockets and our Air Force and our Ack-Ack Batteries have done wonders against them. In particular the Air Force, turned on in good time on what then seemed very slight and doubtful evidence, vastly hampered and vastly delayed all German preparations.

But it was only when our Armies cleaned up the coast and overran all the points of discharge, and when the Americans captured vast stores of rockets of all kinds near Leipzig, and when the preparations being made on the coasts of France and Holland could be examined in detail, that we knew how grave was the peril, not only from rockets and flying bombs but from multiple long-range artillery.

Only just in time did the Allied Armies blast the viper in his nest. Otherwise the autumn of 1944, to say nothing of 1945, might well have seen London as shattered as Berlin. For the same period the Germans had prepared a new U-boat fleet and novel tactics which, though we should have eventually destroyed them, might well have carried anti-U-boat warfare back to the high peak days of 1942. Therefore we must rejoice and give thanks not only for our preservation when we were all alone but for our timely deliverance from new suffering, new perils not easily to be measured.

I wish I could tell you tonight that all our toils and troubles were over. Then indeed I could end my five years' service happily, and if you thought you had had enough of me and that I ought to be put out to grass, I assure you I would take it with the best of grace. But, on the contrary, I must warn you, as I did when I began this five years' task-and no one knew then that it would last so long-that there is still a lot to do and that you must be prepared for further efforts of mind and body and further sacrifices to great causes if you are not to fall back into the rut of inertia, the confusion of aim, and the craven fear of being great. You must not weaken in any way in your alert and vigilant frame of mind, and though holiday rejoicing is necessary to the human spirit, yet it must add to the strength and resilience with which every man and woman turns again to the work they have to do, and also to the outlook and watch they have to keep on public affairs.

On the continent of Europe we have yet to make sure that the simple and honorable purposes for which we entered the war are not brushed aside or overlooked in the months following our success, and that the words freedom, democracy, and liberation are not distorted from their true meaning as we have understood them. There would be little use in punishing the Hitlerites for their crimes if law and justice did not rule, and if totalitarian or police governments were to take the place of the German invaders.

We seek nothing for ourselves. But we must make sure that those causes which we fought for find recognition at the peace table in facts as well as words, and above all we must labor that the world organization which the United Nations are creating at San Francisco, does not become an idle name; does not become a shield for the strong and a mockery for the weak. It is the victors who must search their hearts in their glowing hours and be worthy by their nobility of the immense forces that they wield.

We must never forget that beyond all lurks Japan, harassed and failing but still a people of a hundred millions, for whose warriors death has few terrors. I cannot tell you tonight how much time or what exertions will be required to compel them to make amends for their odious treachery and cruelty. We have received-like China so long undaunted-we have received horrible injuries from them ourselves, and we are bound by the ties of honor and fraternal loyalty to the United States to fight this great war at the other end of the world at their side without flagging or failing.

We must remember that Australia, New Zealand, and Canada were and are all directly menaced by this evil Power. They came to our aid in our dark times, and we must not leave unfinished any task which concerns their safety and their future. I told you hard things at the beginning of these last five years; you did not shrink, and I should be unworthy of your confidence and generosity if I did not still cry, "Forward, unflinching, unswerving, indomitable, till the whole task is done and the whole world is safe and clean."

The Battle of Pokoku and the Irrawaddy River operations in Burma ended in a British victory.

Riots took place outside of a Catholic Church in Santiago Chile where a memorial Mass for Mussolini was being offered.

German Army Group E surrendered for the most part, although some of it continued to fight on in Slovenia.

In Czechoslovakia German forces continued to retreat to the west in spite of the war having ended in hopes of surrendering to the Americans rather than the Soviets, but they were not putting up an armed resistance.

Marines took Dakeshi Ridge on Okinawa.

Last edition:

Saturday, May 12, 1945. Shortened futures.

Friday, May 9, 2025

Wednesday, May 9, 1945. The last Wehrmachtbericht, Stalin's congrats.

"Pvt. Wallace F. Burket, left, bazooka man with the 80th Infantry Division, U.S. Third Army, finds his brother, Sgt. Wm. C. Burket who was shot down over Africa two years and three months ago. Branau, Austria. 9 May, 1945. Company C, 318th Infantry Regiment, 80th Infantry Division. Photographer: Zinni."

The last Wehrmachtbericht was broadcast, which reported Germany's defeat.   The address read:

FROM THE GRAND ADMIRAL'S HEADQUARTERS, May 9-The High Command of the Armed Forces announces:

In East Prussia - German divisions even yesterday gallantly defended to the very last the Vistula mouth and the western part of the Frisches Nehrung. The Seventh Division distinguished itself particularly in this fighting. To their Commander in Chief, General of Tank Troops von Saucken, were awarded diamonds to the Oak Leaves with swords to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross in recognition of the exemplary gallantry of his soldiers.

As an advanced bulwark, our armies in Courland [Latvia], under the well-proved command of Colonel General Guenther, tied down superior Soviet rifle and armored formations through many months and acquired eternal glory in six great battles. They refused any premature surrender. Only the wounded, and later numerous children, were transported in full order by aircraft that still left for the west. Staffs and officers remained with their troops.

At midnight all fighting and all movements were suspended on the German side, under the conditions that had been signed.

The defenders of Breslau, who resisted Soviet attacks for more than two months, succumbed to enemy superiority in the last hour after a heroic struggle.

On the Southeast and East Fronts, from Fiume to Brno [Bruenn] to the Elbe near Dresden, all the higher military authorities have received the order to cease fire.

A Czech rising is taking place in the whole of Bohemia and Moravia and may threaten the execution of the capitulation conditions as well as communications in that area.

The High Command of the Armed-Forces so far has not received any reports regarding the situation of the army groups Loehr, Rendulic and Schoerner.

Far from home, the defenders of the Atlantic bases, our forces in Norway and garrisons of the Aegean Islands have maintained the military honor of the German soldier in obedience and discipline.

Since midnight all weapons have been silent on all fronts on orders of the Grand Admiral, and the armed forces have ceased the fighting, which has now become hopeless, thus ending a heroic struggle that lasted almost six years. This struggle brought us great victories. But also heavy defeats. In the end the German Wehrmacht succumbed with honor to enormous superiority.

Loyal to his oath, the German soldier's performance in a supreme effort for his people can never be forgotten. Up to the last moment the homeland had supported him with all its strength in an effort entailing the heaviest sacrifices. The unique performance of the front and homeland will find a final appraisal in the later, just judgment of history.

The enemy, too, will not deny his tribute of respect to the performance and sacrifices of German soldiers on land, at sea and in the air. Every soldier, therefore, may lay aside his weapon proud and erect and set to work in these gravest hours of our history with courage and confidence to safeguard the undying life of our people.

In this grave hour the Wehrmacht remembers its comrades who have died in battle. The dead impose upon us an obligation of unconditional loyalty, obedience and discipline toward the Fatherland, which is bleeding from countless wounds.

(There followed three minutes of silence).

The German radio has transmitted the last High Command communiqué of this war. We close our news bulletin with an official announcement as follows:

"It is officially announced that effective May 9, 1945, blackout regulations are lifted. Effective also from today the ban on listening to foreign stations has been lifted."

An often missed oddity of this period is that while Germany had surrendered, it's government was still functioning. The Flensburg Government still had a military command, in spite of the surrender, and in some areas it had troops under arms.

Indeed, in spite of the surrender, German forces of German Army Group Ostmark (Lohr) continued to resist in Croatia and to the north.

Stalin congratulated the Red Army. This is regarded by the Russians as VE Day.

Comrades! Men and women compatriots!

The great day of victory over Germany has come. Fascist Germany, forced to her knees by the Red Army and the troops of our Allies, has acknowledged herself defeated and declared unconditional surrender.

On May 7 the preliminary protocol on surrender was signed in the city of Rheims. On May 8 representatives of the German High Command, in the presence of representatives of the Supreme Command of the Allied troops and the Supreme Command of the Soviet Troops, signed in Berlin the final act of surrender, the execution of which began at 24.00 hours on May 8.

Being aware of the wolfish habits of the German ringleaders, who regard treaties and agreements as empty scraps of paper, we have no reason to trust their words. However, this morning, in pursuance of the act of surrender, the German troops began to lay down their arms and surrender to our troops en masse. This is no longer an empty scrap of paper. This is actual surrender of Germany’s armed forces. True, one group of German troops in the area of Czechoslovakia is still evading surrender. But I trust that the Red Army will be able to bring it to its senses.

Now we can state with full justification that the historic day of the final defeat of Germany, the day of the great victory of our people over German imperialism has come.

The great sacrifices we made in the name of the freedom and independence of our Motherland, the incalculable privations and sufferings experienced by our people in the course of the war, the intense work in the rear and at the front, placed on the altar of the Motherland, have not been in vain, and have been crowned by complete victory over the enemy. The age-long struggle of the Slav peoples for their existence and their independence has ended in victory over the German invaders and German tyranny.

Henceforth the great banner of the freedom of the peoples and peace among peoples will fly over Europe.

Three years ago Hitler declared for all to hear that his aims included the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the wresting from it of the Caucasus, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic lands and other areas. He declared bluntly: “We will destroy Russia so that she will never be able to rise again.” This was three years ago. However, Hitler’s crazy ideas were not fated to come true—the progress of the war scattered them to the winds. In actual fact the direct opposite of the Hitlerites’ ravings has taken place. Germany is utterly defeated. The German troops are surrendering. The Soviet Union is celebrating Victory, although it does not intend either to dismember or to destroy Germany.

Comrades! The Great Patriotic War has ended in our complete victory. The period of war in Europe is over. The period of peaceful development has begun.

I congratulate you upon victory, my dear men and women compatriots!

Glory to our heroic Red Army, which upheld the independence of our Motherland and won victory over the enemy!

Glory to our great people, the people victorious!

Eternal glory to the heroes who fell in the struggle against the enemy and gave their lives for the freedom and happiness of our people!

The Battle for Czech Radio in Prague ended in Czech victory.

General Alexander Löhr, Commander of German Army Group E near Topolšica, Slovenia, signed the capitulation of German occupation troops in that region.

British forces took the surrender of troops occupying Jersey and Guernsey.

The Stuffhof concentration camp was liberated.  It had been the first to be established outside of Germany's borders and was the last one liberated.

Vidkun Quisling and other members of  his regime in Norway surrendered to the Resistance (Milorg) and police at Møllergata 19 in Oslo.

The British began Operation Doomsday with the British 1st Airborne Division landing in Norway to act as a police and military force.

Walter Frank, 40, German Nazi historian, committed suicide.

The US 145th Infantry Regiment captured Mount Binicayan on Luzon.

Marines captured Height 60 on Okinawa.

The British 82nd West African Division occupied Sandoway, Burma.
Last edition:

Sunday, May 4, 2025

Friday, May 4, 1945. The war ends in northwest Europe.

British Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery accepted the unconditional surrender of the German forces in the Netherlands, northwest Germany including all islands, Denmark and all naval ships in those areas. 

The US Seventh United States Army captured Innsbruck, Salzburg and Berchtesgaden.

German forces in northeast Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria begin rearguard actions in an attempt to reach Anglo American lines.

The Red Army too the Oranienburg concentration camp.

Konrad Barde, 47, German Generalmajor committed suicide.

Fedor von Bock, 64, German field marshal was killed by a strafing British aircraft while traveling by car.

Yugoslav partisans entered Fiume.

Last edition:

Thursday, May 3, 1945. Dönitz sends a surrender delegation.

Monday, April 21, 2025

Saturday, April 21, 1945. Steiner refuses to attack, Hitler decides on suicide, Model kills himself, May dies heroically in action.

Hitler ordered a last ditch, all out, attack by German forces in Berlin.  The Berlin forces were under the command of SS Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner., who called Gen. Heinrici and informed him that the plan could not be implemented because the 5th Jäger Division and the 25th Panzergrenadier Division were deployed defensively and could not be redeployed until the 2nd Naval Division arrived from the coast to relieve them. This left only two battalions of the 4th SS Panzergrenadier Division available, and they were poorly equipped.

Heinrici, appreciating Steiner's assessment, called General Hans Krebs, Chief of Staff of the German General Staff of the Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres or OKH), and told him that the plan could not be implemented and he  further asked to speak to Hitler.  He was informed that Hitler was too busy.  Hitler did become aware that Steiner had no intention of attacking, however, and fell into a rage, declared the war lost, and blamed his generals.  He expressed his intention to remain in Berlin until the defeat was final and kill himself.

What a selfish asshole.

The Battle of Bautzen, one of the last battles of the Eastern Front, began around Bautzen, Germany.

The Battle of the Ruhr Pocket ended in an Allied victory.  It was notable as German anti Nazi resistance  in Düsseldorf attempted to surrender the city to the Allied armies in the so-called "Aktion Rheinland" in order to spare Düsseldorf.

The Polish II Corps captured Bologna.  

American soldiers being greeted by civilians in Genoa. 21 April, 1945. Photographer: Leviton, 196th Signal Photo Co.

The U-636 was sunk off of Ireland by the Royal Navy.

German born Jewish representative for Sweden to the Jewish World Congress Norbert Masur met, in Germany, with Heinrich Himmler to agree the release of women from Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Diehard Nazis who weren't willing to go down with Hitler were beginning to attempt to cut their deals.

A mutual assistance treaty was concluded between the Soviet government and the Provisional Government of Poland

Field Marshall Walter Model, age 54, killed himself.

Model had not come from a military family, which is interesting in relation to his death.  Many high ranking officers who did saw no reason to take this step at all, and their post war lives showed the wisdom of their decision.  Many joined the Bundesheer, and even very high ranking officers were not really subject to much but temporary punishment.  Model would no doubt not have been able to join the post war West German Army, but he likely would not have been punished all that much.

Model's middle class background likely had much to do with his despair.  Perhaps ironically, those who came from the military class were acclimated to German and Prussian regimes failing.

Gen. Karl Decker, age 47, German panzer general killed himself.  What is noted above for Model, is even more the case for Decker.

PFC Martin O. May, agee 23,preforemd the actions that resulted in his winning the Medal of Honor.  His citation reads:

He gallantly maintained a 3-day stand in the face of terrible odds when American troops fought for possession of the rugged slopes of legusuku-Yama on Ie Shima, Ryukyu Islands. After placing his heavy machinegun in an advantageous yet vulnerable position on a ridge to support riflemen, he became the target of fierce mortar and small arms fire from counterattacking Japanese. He repulsed this assault by sweeping the enemy with accurate bursts while explosions and ricocheting bullets threw blinding dust and dirt about him. He broke up a second counterattack by hurling grenades into the midst of the enemy forces, and then refused to withdraw, volunteering to maintain his post and cover the movement of American riflemen as they reorganized to meet any further hostile action. The major effort of the enemy did not develop until the morning of 21 April. It found Pfc. May still supporting the rifle company in the face of devastating rifle, machinegun, and mortar fire. While many of the friendly troops about him became casualties, he continued to fire his machinegun until he was severely wounded and his gun rendered useless by the burst of a mortar shell. Refusing to withdraw from the violent action, he blasted fanatical Japanese troops with hand grenades until wounded again, this time mortally. By his intrepidity and the extreme tenacity with which he held firm until death against overwhelming forces, Pfc. May killed at least 16 Japanese, was largely responsible for maintaining the American lines, and inspired his comrades to efforts which later resulted in complete victory and seizure of the mountain stronghold.

Last edition:

Friday, April 20, 1945. Shelling Berlin. Departing Berlin. The Morotai Mutiny.

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Tuesday, April 17, 1945. Flak Bait.

 

The B-26 Marauder Flak Bait, which completed 200 missions on this day.

Winston Churchill eulogized the late Franklin Roosevelt in Parliament.

I beg to move:

"That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty to convey to His Majesty the deep sorrow with which this House has learned of the death of the President of the United States of America and to pray His Majesty that in communicating his own sentiments of grief to the United States Government, he will also be graciously pleased to express on the part of this House their sense of the loss which the British Commonwealth and Empire and the cause of the Allied Nations have sustained, and their profound sympathy with Mrs. Roosevelt and the late President's family and with the Government and people of the United States of America."

My friendship with the great man to whose work and fame we pay our tribute to-day began and ripened during this war. I had met him, but only for a few minutes, after the close of the last war and as soon as I went to the Admiralty in September, 1939, he telegraphed, inviting me to correspond with him direct on naval or other matters if at any time I felt inclined. Having obtained the permission of the Prime Minister, I did so. Knowing President Roosevelt's keen interest in sea warfare, I furnished him with a stream of information about our naval affairs and about the various actions, including especially the action of the Plate River, which lighted the first gloomy winter of the war.

When I became Prime Minister, and the war broke out in all its hideous fury, when our own life and survival hung in the balance, I was already in a position to telegraph to the President on terms of an association which had become most intimate and, to me, most agreeable. This continued through all the ups and downs of the world struggle until Thursday last, when I received my last messages from him. These messages showed no falling off in his accustomed clear vision and vigour upon perplexing and complicated matters. I may mention that this correspondence which, of course, was greatly increased after the United States entry into the war, comprises, to and fro between us, over 1,700 messages. Many of these were lengthy messages and the majority dealt with those more difficult points which come to be discussed upon the level of heads of Governments only after official solutions had not been reached at other stages. To this correspondence there must be added our nine meetings at Argentia, three in Washington, at Casablanca, at Teheran, two at Quebec and, last of all, at Yalta, comprising in all about 120 days of close personal contact, during a great part of which I stayed with him at the White House or at his home at Hyde Park or in his retreat in the Blue Mountains, which he called Shangri-La.

I conceived an admiration for him as a statesman, a man of affairs, and a war leader. I felt the utmost confidence in his upright, inspiring character and outlook and a personal regard-affection I must say-for him beyond my power to express to-day. His love of his own country, his respect for its constitution, his power of gauging the tides and currents of its mobile public opinion, were always evident, but, added to these, were the beatings of that generous heart which was always stirred to anger and to action by spectacles of aggression and oppression by the strong against the weak. It is, indeed, a loss, a bitter loss to humanity that those heart-beats are stilled for ever. President Roosevelt's physical affliction lay heavily upon him. It was a marvel that he bore up against it through all the many years of tumult-and storm. Not one man in ten millions, stricken and crippled as he was, would have attempted to plunge into a life of physical and mental exertion and of hard, ceaseless political controversy. Not one in ten millions would have tried, not one in a generation would have succeeded, not only in entering this sphere, not only in acting vehemently in it, but in becoming indisputable master of the scene. In this extraordinary effort of the spirit over the flesh, the will-power over physical infirmity, he was inspired and sustained by that noble woman his devoted wife, whose high ideals marched with his own, and to whom the deep and respectful sympathy of the House of Commons flows out to-day in all fullness. There is no doubt that the President foresaw the great dangers closing in upon the pre-war world with far more prescience than most well-informed people on either side of the Atlantic, and that he urged forward with all his power such precautionary military preparations as peace-time opinion in the United States could be brought to accept. There never was a moment's doubt, as the quarrel opened, upon which side his sympathies lay.

The fall of France, and what seemed to most people outside this Island, the impending destruction of Great Britain, were to him an agony, although he never lost faith in us. They were an agony to him not only on account of Europe, but because of the serious perils to which the United States herself would have been exposed had we been overwhelmed or the survivors cast down under the German yoke. The bearing of the British nation at that time of stress, when we were all alone, filled him and vast numbers of his countrymen with the warmest sentiments towards our people. He and they felt the blitz of the stern winter of 1940~1, when Hitler set himself to rub out the cities of our country, as much as any of us did, and perhaps more indeed, for imagination is often more torturing than reality. There is no doubt that the bearing of the British and, above all, of the Londoners kindled fires in American bosoms far harder to quench than the conflagrations from which we were suffering. There was also at that time, in spite of General Wavell's victories-all the more, indeed, because of the reinforcements which were sent from this country to him-the apprehension widespread in the United States that we should be invaded by Germany after the fullest preparation in the spring of 1941. It was in February that the President sent to England the late Mr. Wendell Willkie, who, although a political rival and an opposing candidate, felt, as he did on many important points. Mr. Willkie brought a letter from Mr. Roosevelt, which the President had written in his own hand, and this letter contained the famous lines of Longfellow:

". . . Sail on, O ship of State!

Sail on O Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"

At about that same time he devised the extraordinary measure of assistance called Lend-Lease, which will stand forth as the most unselfish and unsordid financial act of any country in all history. The effect of this was greatly to increase British fighting power and for all the purposes of the war effort to make us, as it were, a much more numerous community. In that autumn I met the President for the first time during the war at Argentia in Newfoundland and together we drew up the Declaration which has since been called the Atlantic Charter and which will, I trust, long remain a guide for both our peoples and for other peoples of the world.

All this time, in deep and dark and deadly secrecy, the Japanese were preparing their act of treachery and greed. When next we met in Washington Japan, Germany and Italy had declared war upon the United States and both our countries were in arms, shoulder to shoulder. Since then we have advanced over the land and over the sea through many difficulties and disappointments, but always with a broadening measure of success. I need not dwell upon the series of great operations which have taken place in the Western Hemisphere, to say nothing of that other immense war proceeding at the other side of the world. Nor need I speak of the plans which we made with our great Ally, Russia, at Teheran, for these have now been carried out for all the world to see.

But at Yalta I noticed that the President was ailing. His captivating smile, his gay and charming manner, had not deserted him but his face had a transparency, an air of purification, and often there was a faraway look in his eyes. When I took my leave of him in Alexandria harbour I must confess that I had an indefinable sense of fear that his health and his strength were on the ebb. But nothing altered his inflexible sense of duty. To the end he faced his innumerable tasks unflinching. One of the tasks of the President is to sign maybe a hundred or two hundred State papers with his own hand every day, commissions and so forth. All this he continued to carry out with the utmost strictness. When death came suddenly upon him "he had finished his mail." That portion of his day's work was done. As the saying goes, he died in harness and we may well say in battle harness, like his soldiers, sailors and airmen, who side by side with ours, are carrying on their task to the end all over the world. What an enviable death was his. He had brought his country through the worst of its perils and the heaviest of its toils. Victory had cast its sure and steady beam upon him. He had broadened and stabilised in the days of peace the foundations of American life and union.

In war he had raised the strength, might and glory of the great Republic to a height never attained by any nation in history. With her left hand she was leading the advance of the conquering Allied Armies into the heart of Germany and with her right, on the other side of the globe, she was irresistibly and swiftly breaking up the power of Japan. And all the time ships, munitions, supplies, and food of every kind were aiding on a gigantic scale her Allies, great and small, in the course of the long struggle.

But all this was no more than worldly power and grandeur, had it not been that the causes of human freedom and of social justice to which so much of his life had been given, added a lustre to all this power and pomp and warlike might, a lustre which will long be discernible among men. He has left behind him a band of resolute and able men handling the numerous interrelated parts of the vast American war machine. He has left a successor who comes forward with firm step and sure conviction to carry on the task to its appointed end. For us. it remains only to say that in Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the new world to the old.

Question put, and agreed to, nemine contradicente.

Resolved:

"That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty to convey to His Majesty the deep sorrow with which this House has learned of the death of the President of the United States of America and to pray His Majesty that in communicating his own sentiments of grief to the United States Government, he will also be graciously pleased to express on the part of this House their sense of the loss which the British Commonwealth and Empire and the cause of the Allied Nations have sustained, and their profound sympathy with Mrs. Roosevelt and the late President's family and with the Government and people of the United States of America."

German troops flooded the Wieringermeerpolder to aid in their retreat.  However, on the same day, German units in the Ruhr began mass surrenders.

US troops landed in the Moro Gulf at Cotabatu.

The Battle of the Hongorai River began in New Guinea.

Historian Tran Trong Kim was appointed the Prime Minister of the Empire of Vietnam, the short lived Japanese supported Vietnamese monarchy.

One armed baseball Peter Gray made his major league debut.

Berlin: Sprint To The Finish Line – Dawn Of The Truman Era – April 17, 1945

Last edition:

Monday, April 16, 1945. The final battle in the West.

Saturday, April 5, 2025

Thursday, April 5, 1945. Rebellion of the Georgian Legion.

The Soviet Union renounced the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact of April 1941.

The Georgian Legion, a German foreign legion, rose up against the Germans on the Dutch island of Texel.  The battle would result in large-scale casualties incurred until the end of the war by both sides.

The uprising is regarded as heroic, but the late war uprising was naive.  It counted on an Allied landing which did not occur, and it presumed favorable post war treatment by the Allies.

Arrested officers.

African American members of the 477th Bombardment Group attempted to integrate an all-white officers' club at Freeman Field, Indiana, resulting in the predictable scuffles and arrests although the ultimate punishment was minor.

Gen. MacArthur was appointed control of all Army forces in the Pacific and Adm. Nimitz all naval forces.  The move was made in anticipation of the Invasion of Japan.

Japanese Prime Minister Kuniaki Koiso (小磯 國昭), frustrated in his attempts to be involved in military decisions, resigned.

The U-242 sank in St. George's Channel after hitting a mine.

Last edition

Wednesday, April 4, 1945. The Third Army liberates the Ohrdruf Subcamp.

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Monday, March 19, 1945. The Nero Decree.

Hitler issued the Nero Decree, which stated:

I. Hitler’s Order of March 19, 1945

RE: Destruction Measures within Reich Territory

Our nation’s struggle for existence forces us to utilize all means, even within Reich territory, to weaken the fighting power of our enemy and to prevent further advances. Any opportunity to inflict lasting damage on the striking power of the enemy must be taken advantage of. It is a mistake to believe that undestroyed or only temporarily paralyzed traffic, communications, industrial, and supply installations will be useful to us again after the recapture of lost territories. During his retreat, the enemy will leave behind only scorched earth and will abandon all concern for the population.

I therefore command

1. All military traffic, communications, industrial and supply installations as well as objects within Reich territory that might be used by the enemy in the continuation of his fight, either now or later, are to be destroyed.

2. It is the responsibility of the military command posts to execute this order to destroy all military objects, including traffic and communications installations.

The Gauleiters and Commissioners for Reich Defense are responsible for destroying the industrial and supply installations, as well as of other objects of valuable; the troops must give the Gauleiters and Commissioners for Reich Defense the assistance they need to carry out this task.

3. This command is to be transmitted to all troop commanders as promptly as possible; orders to the contrary are null and void.

Adolf Hitler

Albert Speer and various officers of the Wehrmacht conspired against its implementation.

Ostensibly a war measure, at this point in the war Hitler was lashing out against the German people themselves, whom he was punishing for, in his mind, having failed him by losing the war, something he now clearly knew had occurred.  

Also at this point, internal German attitudes were rapidly changing.  While still fighting in the field, German troops were now surrendering in large numbers to the Western Allies, rather than die in the final weeks of the war.  German commanders, including some in the SS, were seeking to make back deals with the Western Allies, unsuccessfully, and without Hitler's knowledge.  Some were preparing for their own post war futures.  Members of the German government and military were starting to conspire to save what they could.

Again, there's a lesson here.  Hitler was a populist politician who had risen to power backed by lies.  His policies inevitably lead Germany to shame and ruin.  Rather than resign when things turned bad, he hung on, supported by fanatic supporters, and in the end sought to destroy the very country he claimed to represent.

All U-boats in the Baltic were transferred to the west.

The British Indian Army took Mandalay.

The USS Franklin was hit by kamikazes and badly damaged.


724 men were killed and 265 wounded.   Captain Gehres regarded those who had jumped into the sea during the event as having acted improperly, leading to post incident tension and ultimately his relief. She'd return to service and was ultimately stricken in 1964.

The Soviet Union notified Turkey that their non aggression pact would not be renewed after it expired in November.  It demanded territorial concessions from Turkey, which Turkey rejected.

Last edition:

Sunday, March 18, 1945 Landings in the Philippines, the largest air attack on Berlin.

Friday, March 14, 2025

Wednesday, March 14, 1945. Large bombs.

"Mortar team of the 99th Infantry Division, U.S. First Army, prepares to fire 81mm mortar shell to halt advance of enemy patrol in woods between American-held Ariendorf, and Germany-held Honningen.
14 March, 1945. Company M, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division."

The Red Army took Zvolen, Czechoslovakia.

Army Group South committed its reserves in Hungary.

The RAF used a 22,000 lbs bomb, the largest conventional bomb of the war, for the first time on a raid on the Bielfeld viaduct.

The U-714 and U-1021 were sunk by British and South African surface ships, and a mine, respectively.

Last edition:

Tuesday, March 13, 1945. The road to Mandalay.