Showing posts with label Netherlands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Netherlands. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Sunday, April 29, 1945. Dachau.

U.S. troops liberated Dachau.  In outrage over what they discovered, some SS Guards were executed along with the camp commandant.

Hitler married Eva Braun, his long time mistress.

Braun had been in a relationship with Hitler for a long time.  She was a photographer by picked up trade and relatively young when she met Hitler.  She had already attempted suicide twice in her relationship with the dictator by this point in time.

Braun's family survived the war.  Her mother Franziska, died aged 91 in January 1976.  Her father, Fritz, died in 1964. Her sister Gretl, left a widow by the execution of Fegelein, gave birth to a daughte on May 5 1945 and later married Kurt Beringhoff, a businessman.  She died in 1987.  Braun's elder sister was not part of the Hitler inner cricle and Ilse died in 1979.

Hitler's German Shepard Blondi was given cyanide capsules as a test of their lethality and died.

Germans signed the terms of surrender in Italy and Austria which provided that the fighting would end on May 2.  This effected the surrender of 1,000,000 Axis troops.

The Battle of Collecchio ended in Allied victory.

SS Obergruppenführer Matthias Kleinheisterkamp committed suicide after being captured by Soviet troops.

Italian fascist Achille Starace was killed by Italian partisans.

The Allies began dropping food to the people of the Netherlands:

29 April 1945

Last edition:

Saturday, April 28, 1945. The fate of the fascists.

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.

Monday, April 7, 2025

Saturday, April 7, 1945. Desperate efforts.

The Japanese Imperial Navy launched an ill advised doomed kamikaze attack with ten warships, including the Yamato off of Okinawa.  The Yamato was sun k with a loss of 2,055 of its 2,332 crewmembers, and five other Japanese ships went down as well.


The Luftwaffe also engaged in a suicide mission, sending out 120 student pilots about against a 1,000 plane US raid.  They were to ram their aircraft into the Americans ones, and hopefully parachute out.

Most of the pilots missed their targets and most were shot down.

Operation Amherst commenced which saw the Free French and SAS launch an effort to capture Dutch canals, bridges and airfields intact.

Kantarō Suzuki replaced Kuniaki Koiso as Prime Minister of Japan.

Last edition:

Friday, April 6, 1945. Operation Ten-Go.

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Monday, January 22, 1945. Relentless.


Cavalrymen of the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps approaching Allenstein, Prussia, now Olsztyn, Poland.  January 22, 1945.  A least a few of these horses appear to be panjes, Russian peasant ponies.  Allenstein dates back to 1334, when it was founded as a military outpost by the Teutonic Knights.  It rebelled against those knights in 1454 and joined the Kingdom of Poland.  Nicholas Copernicus, famous scientist and Catholic Deacon, lived there from 1516 to 1521.  It became part of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1772 during the First Partition of Poland.  Given this, in reality, the post World War Two result simply returned it to what it had originally been, Polish.


The Red Army took Insterburg, Allenstein and Deutsch Eylau in Prussia as well as Gneizo.

The British Army took St. Joost and other towns near Sittard. The US 1st Army attacked all along the front between Houffalize and St. Vith.

Kriegsmarine torpedo boats attacked a convoy north of Dunkirk while other torpedo penetrated into the Thames Estuary.

The British IV Corps took Htilin in Bruma and the Battle of Hill 170 began. The British also took Tilin.

M4 Sherman of the 19th King George's Own Lancers, Burma, 22 January 1945

The Royal Air Force destroyed a liquid oxygen factory in  Alblasserdam in a Spitfire raid.  The oxygen was used for rockets.

The 1st Corps engaged the Japanese in heavy fighting near Carmen and Rosario on Luzon.

Last edition:

Saturday, January 18, 2025

Thursday, January 18, 1945. Advances in Poland, losses in Hungary.

The Soviet 2nd Belorussian Front captured Modlin. The 1st Belorussian Front and the 1st Ukrainian Front approached encircling Lodz and Krakow, and the Germans withdrew from the latter.

The 4th SS Panzer Division nearly destroyed the Soviet 135th Rifle Corps while attempting to relieve Budapest.

The Red Army liberated the Budapest ghetto.

British commandos landed on the Dutch island of Schouwen.

Last edition:

Wednesday, January 17, 1945. The Red Army enters a destroyed Warsaw.

Saturday, December 14, 2024

Thursday, December 14, 1944. The tragedy of Lupe Vélez.


The great Mexican actress Lupe Vélez, pregnant with the baby of her recent fiance,  Harald Ramond (Harald Maresch) committed suicide after a dinner with friends in Los Angeles, leaving this note:

To Harald, May God forgive you and forgive me too, but I prefer to take my life away and our baby's before I bring him with shame or killing him. – Lupe.

How could you, Harald, fake such a great love for me and our baby when all the time, you didn't want us? I see no other way out for me, so goodbye, and good luck to you, Love Lupe.

Ramond confessed confusion, declaring that even after their recent break up he had promised to marry her.  In spite of the official ruling of suicide, there has been ongoing speculation about her death.


She had, at one time, been married to Johnny Weismuller.


May God rest her soul, and that of her child.

The Japanese murdered 150 Allied Prisoners of war near Puerto Princesa in the Philippine province of Palawan to prevent their liberation by American troops.

The Japanese attempted, but failed, to mount a large scale air attack on the U.S. Navy's invasion task force heading to Mindoro.    The U.S. Navy hit airfields on Luzon.

The HMS Aldenham was sunk in the Adriatic by a mine.  It was the last Royal Navy destroyer lost in World War Two.

Congress authorized the five start senior officer rank to address American commanders technically being junior to high ranking British ones.

The Germans banned the use of electricity in Holland.

Last edition:

Wednesday, December 13, 1944. USS Goshen commissioned.

Wednesday, December 4, 2024

Monday, December 4, 1944. The Dutch Famine.

"Sailors, aboard USS LST 392, discussing D-Day, when Ernie Pyle was their passenger and left his signature on their guns. Shown, left to right: SM3 Chas T. Repik, USNR; SC2c James F. Reardon, USNR; S1c Edward T. Wholley. (Bottom) BM2c Martin A. Reilly, USNR and RM2C Gint Middleton, USNR. Photograph released December 4, 1944."

The Germans cut Dutch bread rations to two pounds per week.

Martial law was declared in Greece.

" Troops of the 14th Chinese Division detruck at North Airstrip, Myyitkyina, Burma, and go into bivouac for night preparatory to boarding planes for China. 4 December, 1944."

Heilbroon was firebombed, resulting in the deaths of 7,147 people.

The Kishinami was sunk in the South China Sea by the USS Flasher.

Last edition:

Sunday, December 3, 1944. Dekemvriana (Δεκεμβριανά)

Sunday, November 17, 2024

Friday, November 17, 1944. Horrific losses at sea.

The Japanese aircraft carrier Shin'yō was sunk in the Yellow Sea by the USS Spadefish.  The Japanese landing craft depot ship Mayasan Maru was sunk in the East China Sea by the USS Picuda with the 3,856 lives.

Over the last few days, American submarines had effectively destroyed the numerical equivalent of an entire Japanese Army division.

The British 2nd Army took Wessem, Netherlands.

U.S. light tank destroyed by a German anti tank mine.  November 17, 1944.

The Allies agree with the Belgian government to have Belgian resistance forces lay down their arms.

Disarming resistance groups, which posed a danger to the governments of the liberated territories, was becoming a problem.

Last edition:

Thursday, November 16, 1944. Attack on the Siegfried Line.

Sunday, November 10, 2024

Friday, November 10, 1944. The Explosion of the Mount Hood.

The USS Mount Hood, an ammunition ship, exploded at Seeadler Harbor at Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, killing all on board and damaging 22 other ships.

Imperial Japanese forces took U.S. airfields in China as part of Operation Ichi-Go.  The Japanese were gaining ground in China.

The Germans rounded up over 50,000 Dutch me in Rotterdam as slave labor, and effectively as hostages.

"Sgt. Sam S. McNealy, Morgantown, N.C., stands watch by his machine gun during the first snowfall of the year in this sector of the western front. 1st Army, Monschau, Germany. 10 November, 1944."

Last edition:

Thursday, November 9, 1944. Sorge meets his end.

Today in World War II History—November 10, 1939 & 1944

Today in World War II History—November 10, 1939 & 1944: 80 Years Ago—Nov. 10, 1944: Japanese take US Fourteenth Air Force air bases at Kweilin and Liuchow in their drive through southern China.

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Monday, November 6, 1944.. The photo.


"Husband and wife serving in uniform meet for the first time on the continent--Lt. Jane I. Sunderbruch, Army Nurse Corps, assigned to an evacuation hospital, and her husband, Lt. Richard K. Sunderbruch, Davenport, Iowa. Signal Corps photographic officer. He was wounded in the Battle of Aachen, has since returned to duty. 6 November, 1944."  They survived the war. He died in 1992, she in 2006. They are buried together in Scott County, Iowa.

Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne, DSO & Bar, TD, PCk, British minister of state in the Middle East was assassinated by the Jewish terrorist group Lehi in Cairo.

The struggle over post war Palestine had begun.

Well, maybe begun again.  British rule in Palestine had never been particularly easy.

The German garrison at Middleburg in the Netherlands surrendered to the Canadian Army.

The French government repealed Vichy anti Semitic laws, but implementation would prove to be difficult to implement in terms of restoring their possessions and occupations.

Penicillin began production in large scale in Liverpool.

Last edition:

Sunday, November 5, 1944. The air and sea war off of Luzon.

Friday, November 1, 2024

Wednesday, November 1, 1944 Death of Greek Catholic Archbishop of Lviv and Metropolitan of Halych Andrey Sheptytsky



Andrey Sheptytsky, OSBM (Polish: Andrzej Szeptycki; Ukrainian: Митрополит Андрей Шептицький, romanized: Mytropolyt Andrei Sheptytskyi; had been the Greek Catholic Archbishop of Lviv and Metropolitan of Halych from 1901 until his death at age 79 on this day in 1944.  His maintained his office through numerous wars and six political regimes: Austrian, Ukrainian, Soviet, Polish, Nazi German, and again Soviet.  While he briefly supported the Ukrainian forces raised by the Germans in Poland, he recanted once the nature of the Nazi regime became apparent and openly opposed the Holocaust in Poland.  He wrote the pastoral letter, "Thou Shall Not Kill" protesting Nazi atrocities, which states:
Із Послання Митрополита Андрея Шептицького “Не убий” [21 листопада 1942 року]

Андрей Шептицький
Божою Милістю і Святого Апостольського Римського Престолу Благословенням Митрополит, Архієпископ Галицький і Львівський Єпископ, Кам’янецький Духовенству й вірним Мир о Господі і благословенство

НЕ УБИЙ!

[...] Дивним способом обманюють себе і людей ті, що політичне вбивство не уважають гріхом, наче би політика звільняла чоловіка від обов’язку Божого закону та оправдувала злочин, противний людській природі. Так не є. Християнин є обов’язковий заховувати Божий закон не тільки в приватному житті, але й в політичному та суспільному житті. Людина, що проливає неповинну кров свого ворога, політичного противника, є таким самим чоловіковбивником, як людина, що це робить для рабунку, і так само заслуговує на кару Божу і на клятву Церкви.

Християнин, і не тільки християнин, а кожна людина обов’язана з людської природи до любови ближнього. І не тільки християн, але й усіх людей буде Всев[вишній] Бог І[сус] Христос, справедливий Суддя, судити по всім ділам життя, а передусім по ділам милосердя і любови ближнього, як це описане в притчі про страшний суд (Мат. XXV). Чоловіковбивник не тільки, що не мав милосердя до вбитого, терплячого, ув’язненого, але ближньому зробив найтяжчу кривду, яку тільки міг зробити, відбираючи йому життя, і то може в хвилі, коли той ближній, на смерть не приготований, стратив через неї всяку надію на вічне життя! Тим вчинком скривдив він усі діти вбитого, жінку, старих батьків, які без помочі вбитого, засуджені, може, на голод і нужду. Та не тільки вбив ближнього, але й свою душу позбавив надприродного життя, Божої благодаті, та ввів її у пропасть, з якої, може, вже й не буде спасіння! Бо прокляттям неповинної крові викликав, може, в своїй душі демонів пожадливости, які кажуть йому в терпіннях і болях ближнього шукати власної радости.

[...] Світ гине з браку любови, гине з людської ненависти! Не переставаймо ж благати Всевишнього про обильні, теплі дощі його святої благодати з неба.

Вкінці звертаюся ще до вас усіх, Дорогих Братів, вірних та усильно взиваю до заховування якнайбільшого супокою. Воєнні часи приносять нам неодно терпіння і неодну спокусу. Йде лиш про це, щоб з Божою благодаттю тривати при Божому законі і сильно надіятися на Всевишнього, що його пресвята ласка оберне на наше добро всі терпіння, які нам зіслав. Досвіди принимаємо з Божих рук; нічого не діється без волі Небесного Отця, Бог, добрий Батько, змилосердиться над нами, простить наші гріхи і дасть діждатися благословенного часу миру.

The British and Canadians commenced Operation Infatuate with the goal of opening the port of Antwerp.

British troops landed on Walcheren island.

James Ralston resigned as Canadian Defence Minister after Prime Minister Mackenzie King rejected his request to impose conscription for overseas service.

The Royal Navy sank three Kriegsmarine vessels in combat off of Croatia.

A B-29 conducted the first overflight of Japan since the Doolittle Raid.  It was a reconnaissance mission.

The Japanese released paper balloons carrying bombs intended to reach North America for the first time.

The USS Abner Read was sunk in a kamikaze attack in the Leyte Gulf.

The HMS Whitaker was damaged beyond repair when torpedoed by the U-483 off of Ireland.

Pfc. Lawrence Hoyle, left, of Bangham, Ill., Browning Automatic Rifle man, and Pvt. Andrew Fachak, right, of McKeesport, P.A., both members of an infantry unit take shelter behind a blasted wall and keep an eye out for enemy snipers, near Maizeres Les Metz, France. 1 November, 1944. 357th Infantry Regiment, 90th Infantry Division.

Last edition: