Saturday, July 4, 1942. The first wartime Independence Day since 1918.

The National Publishers Association orchestrated United We Stand Campaign basically hit the newsstands today as the country's weekly magazines all featured patriotic covers.

The country also engaged in the usual 4th of July festivities, such as this gathering in Saint Mary's County, Maryland.  Having said that, the 4th was dampened both by the war, and by President Roosevelt's directive that fighting the war should be the focus of the day, rather than celebration.

War related tasks went on.

Aircraft spotters assistants, Dentsville Maryland.

Closer to home, I don't know what occurred on this Saturday of 1942, other than that the day would have been observed somehow.

President Roosevelt had issued a desire to see U.S. forces in action on this day, if at all possible. As a result, the 15th Bombardment Squadron participated in a raid on the Netherlands, thereby making it the first US Air unit to bomb occupied territory in Europe.  The low level daytime raid was conducted with British DB7 bombers (A-20s), with the American crewmen borrowing British aircraft.

The A-20 was the most produced attack bomber of the war, even though to a large degree its forgotten now.  It served in multiple air forces, including the US, the British, and the Soviet air arms.

The American Volunteer Group, the "Flying Tigers", were converted from a mercenary bad serving Nationalist China in the war against Japan, to the China Air Task Force of the United States Army Air Corps.  Almost all of the pilots chose to be released, however, so they could go on and return to their prewar service, or join the service, and fly elsewhere.

A debate between Hitler and General von Bock results in Von Bock prevailing in his desire to commit the 4th Panzer Army to an assault on Voronezh, but the infantry is sent south without support towards Stalingrad.

The gas chambers commenced operation at Auschwitz.  This was in part a result of recent German battlefield successes, as the Germans had now taken in so many Eastern European Jews that they could not kill them efficiently enough.

Torpedo bombers harass Convoy PQ17 in the Barents Sea all day, sinking three of the cargo ships in the embattled convoy.

Sunday, November 4, 1941. Expanding operations.

Catalina's from Patrol Squadron 14 in November 1941.

U.S. Navy Patrol Squadron 14 arrived in Oahu.

The United States Army occupied Dutch Guiana (Surinam), which is now Suriname.

Today the country is a South American republic we frankly hardly ever think of, which all in all may generally be a good thing.  At this point in history, however, it was a Dutch colony, which it had been since the 1600s.  During the war, the Dutch government reconsidered its status, and it obtained a type of dominion status in 1954, and full independence in 1975.

The US had been concerned about its bauxite deposits prior to this date, not wanting them to fall to the Axis, although exporting bauxite from northern South America to Germany would have been impossible. The occupation did secure them for the Allies, however.

This time is noted here:

Today in World War II History—November 23, 1941

Also noted there, trucks were now crossing Lake Lagoda, having followed a  horse-drawn mission of the day prior.

The British were thrown back at Sidi Rezegh in the desert.

A bomb went off outside the U.S. Consulate in occupied Saigon, although there were no injuries. Shades of things to come.

A large fire damaged parts of Seward Alaska.

The Forgotten Battle (De Slag Om De Schelde)

Alligator amphibious vehicle passing Terrapin amphibious vehicle on the Schledt.

This is a 2020 Dutch film which has been released with dubbed English, in place of Dutch, on Netflix.

The Battle of the Scheldt, which this film deals with, is hardly a "forgotten" battle, but it is a battle which is no doubt more remembered by the Dutch and the Canadians than it is for Americans.  A continual complaint of European audiences is that American films tend to treat World War Two as if the United States was the only Allied nation in it.  The complaint really isn't true, as there are certainly plenty of contrary examples, but this film is a little unusual for an American audience as it doesn't involve the US at all, while still dealing with a very important battle.

The Battle of the Scheldt was an October 1944 to November 1944 series of Allied campaigns that were aimed at opening up control of the Scheldt estuary so that Allied shipping could make it to Antwerp.  Antwerp had been taken intact, but because the Germans controlled the banks of the Scheldt it was of no use to the Allies, which desperately needed the port.   The task fell to the Canadian army which, in a series of attacks beginning on October 2, 1944, and running through November 8, 1944, took the banks of the Scheldt. It was a hard fought campaign.

This fictionalized portrayal of those events are centered on three principal characters.  One is a Dutch a young Dutch woman,Teuntje Visser, played by Dutch actress and model Susan Radder, who comes into the underground basically both accidentally and reluctantly, a British paratrooper, William Sinclair, played by Jamie Flatters, and a young Dutchman who is a German soldier, Marinus van Staveren, played by Gijis Blom.  The story involves three intersecting plot lines in order to construct a story that involves the climatic battle.

The story actually starts off, surprisingly for a Dutch film, with the Van Staveren character, opening up with a battle on the Russian front.  Van Staveren, who is wounded in the battle, turns out to be a willing volunteer.  While the Dutch are justifiably remember for their opposition to the Nazis, a little over 20,000 Dutch citizens did serve in the German armed forces.  Cornelius Ryan noted in his book A Bridge Too Far that the number was significant enough that parents in some regions of the country worried about what to do with photographs of their sons in uniform taken while they were in the German Army.

Van Stavern is befriended by a mentally decaying wounded SS lieutenant in the same hospital who, as his last act, gets him transferred to a desk job in the west, in what turns out to be a unit that's going to Holland, his native country. That's where he first encounters Visser, who reports with her father to a newly appointed German commander who calls them in as he's aware that Visser's brother was involved in an incident in which he threw a camera through a windshield of a German truck, resulting in a fatal accident.

That ties into an earlier scene setting up that the brother is part of the Dutch underground.  We're introduced to the Visser's there while they watch the Germans retreating in a scene that's much reminiscent of the opening scenes of A Bridge Too Far.

William Sinclair we're introduced to in the context of the topic Ryan's book addresses. He's a British glider pilot in the British airborne whose glider is damaged over the Scheldt and is cut loose to crash on a flooded island.  This occurs before the offensive on the Scheldt commences and he and the party of men he is with try to make their way towards dry land and the Allies.  Sinclair eventually makes it to the Canadian army and is in the battle with it.

The stories all, as noted, intertwine.

The film is well presented and presents good, and credible, drama.  It's realistically portrayed but avoids the post Saving Private Ryan gore that American films have tended to engage in.  None of the characters, interestingly, is without significant personal failings, thereby presenting a much less heroic and more nuanced picture of people at war than is usually the case.  A Dutch film, the central portrayed Dutch characters all have significant personal defects and are not heroic. As a movie, its a good movie.

So how does it do on history?

Well, fairly good  It is a dramatized version of history, but the battle on the Scheldt did come after Market Garden and it was a Canadian effort, as the battle portrays.  The reasons for the battle are accurately presented.  It's nicely done.  Perhaps my only real criticisms are based on things that I don't know if they're accurate or not.  One is that the British paratrooper ends up fighting with the Canadians in Canadian uniform.  I tend to think that he would have simply been evacuated upon crossing into Allied lines.  And I'm skeptical that the Germans would have assigned a Dutch private in their service to a unit serving in Holland, as it opens up the obvious loyalty problem.  Having said that, this is speculation on my part.

In terms of material details, this film also does quite well.  Uniforms and equipment are all presented accurately  The glider scenes are unique for a film as far as I'm aware of, and are really horrifying.

So, well worth watching.

Sunday August 7, 1921. The waiters go on strike.

 In the Netherlands, that is.

The Waitress

Delia Kane, age 14.  The Exchange Luncheon, Boston.  January 31, 1917.

They were seeking an end to the tip system and established regular wages.

Teusday July 29, 1941. The Dutch Oil Embargo

On this day, the Dutch Government In Exile joined the United States and the United Kingdom and froze Japanese assets.

The impact of this on Japan was real, but not as great as sometimes suggested, nor was the "pressure" put on the Dutch as great as suggested.  The Netherlands were already at war with Germany and already an Allied power which was fully invested in a German defeat.  Aligning with the UK and the US was a foregone conclusion.

Japan actually had received 80% of it oil from the United States prior to the US embargo.  While the early focus of Japanese efforts would in fact be the Dutch East Indies, due to its oil supplies, that goal was to obtain a replacement source for oil, not to restore an existing primary source.  Of course, the Dutch embargo meant that Japan could not simply switch to the Dutch East Indies as a source.

Having said that, the Japanese were having success with occupied administrations, which was evidenced by their entering into a mutual defense treaty with Japan for the defense of Indochina, which was a practical matter already occupied by Japan.

It should be noted that this entire story has become somewhat distorted in recent years, with it commonly being claimed the embargoes "forced" Japan into war.  This isn't really directly correct, although it may be if given only a very short term analysis. 

The cause of the embargoes was Japan's intervention in Indochina.  US reaction to that, followed by the UK's and the Netherlands, was due to those nations being left with no other action at that time.  The US had already exhausted its diplomatic efforts in regard to Japan in protest of its actions in China.

The Japanese war in China itself was the reason for Japanese intervention in Indochina.  The Japanese may have been confused at the time of their intervention on what the US reaction would be, as early US signals concerning that were muddled, but the US had to react or had to acquiesce to the action. Acquiescence would have also acquiesced, effectively, to the French Indochinese colony passing to Japan and to the Japanese aggression in China.

On the Japanese in China, the US had consistently opposed that imperial effort.  It was really that action that led to the US countering of Japan economically.

Dutch cartoon from 1916 depicting Indonesia as its crown jewel.

It's sometimes been noted that Japan was simply acting like any other colonial power, but frankly this wasn't really true.  By the 1920s, when Japan really started becoming active in China, the colonial era was passing and China was a neighbor.  Without meaning to defend colonialism in any fashion, the era of colonizing immediate neighbors was long over and what little excuse remained for it was always focused on underdeveloped, if a person cares to look at it that way, regions of the globe.  In truth, the condition of the average Chinese citizen wasn't hugely different from the average Japanese citizen, and Japanese aggression was based to a very large degree on a combination of greed and racism.

By 1941 Japan had placed itself in a hopeless spiral towards war.  It couldn't leave Indochina and save face, and the US, which did not have a real colonial history, could not allow the aggression in Asia to go unnoticed.

The Dutch decision isn't without its long term ironies.  The Dutch were in fact cruel administrators in Indonesia and came to be hated.  They moreover fostered the development of a Chinese administrative class that came to the islands as immigrants and whom were favored by the Dutch over the native Indonesians.  Their record was so bad that the British did not allow the Dutch to return to power in Indonesia, and actually turned the post-war government over to politicians who had been Japanese collaborators. So somewhat ironically the ultimate Dutch invasion of Indonesia might be the one location where its propaganda for expansion accidentally came true.  More ironic yet, Indonesian oil never did become a significant oil replacement source for Japan, given the difficulties of actually importing it in wartime conditions.

February 23, 1941. Storms

Today In Wyoming's History: February 23: 1941  Blizzard conditions stalled traffic in the state.  This was, of course, in the pre 4x4 days.  Prior to World War Two 4x4 vehicles were almost unheard of and were limited to industrial vehicles. Almost every vehicle was a rear wheel drive 2x4.

On the same day Mussolini gave a speech admitting that Italy was experiencing "gray days", but states that such things happen and all wars and promising better days ahead as Italy marched towards a promised fascist victory.

The Germans continued their round up of Amsterdam's Jewish population.

And plutonium was discovered.

February 22, 1941. Disaster in Amsterdam. British advance in Somalia. The British promise to Greece.

Following a meeting in Athens, the British committed to sending an expeditionary force to Greece.  Anthony Eden promised more British troops to the Greeks than were really available.  To compound matters, the strategy for defense depended upon Yugoslavian territory being unavailable in the case of almost certain German intervention.

Greece had just turned down an offer from the Germans to mediate the armed dispute with Italy. While that's understanding, frankly a better course of action at this point would have been to encourage the Greeks to make peace with Italy, as they had held their own, at great cost, and that would have taken Greece out of the war at this point and spared it a German invasion.

On the same day, British Commonwealth forces took Jilib in Somalia.

You can read more about those events here:

Day 541 February 22, 1941

On this day in 1941 the first German mass arrest of Jews in Amsterdam occurred.  The Germans also lowered the already desperately low food rations to Jews in Warsaw.  More on those events here:

Today in World War II History—February 22, 1941

February 11, 1941. Remounts and Resistance.

 

Arrival of new horse, Front Royal Remount Station.  February 11, 1941.  Remounts still figured into the Army's plans at the time.

On this day fighting broke out between Dutch Jews and Germans and Dutch fascists in Amsterdam.  Such instances of Jewish open resistance, prior to the insurrection in the Warsaw Ghetto, were rare.

Other events of this day:

Day 530 February 11, 1941

Today in World War II History—February 11, 1941

May 17, 1920. More flights.

"Annual May Festival of the Friends Select School, Washington D.C. Held at the Friends Country Club."  Pageants like this were common at the time.

It was a day for flight.

The Canadian Air Force, a Canadian air militia that principally served as an airman trainer, came into being.  It was not a standing air force and it would very soon be replaced by one, which would be the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1924.

On the same day, KLM, the Dutch airlines which is the oldest airline in the world, made its first flight, that being from London to Amsterdam. There were only two passengers and some mail, but then the flight was made in a leased DH16, which is not a giant aircraft.

Airco Aircraft Transport and Travel DH16

The plane was leased from the British Aircraft Transport and Travel company.

Meanwhile, Carranza was still holding out in Mexico in what the newspapers were calling a "heroic" last stand.

And President Wilson, in a speech, warned that the United States had used 40% of its proven oil reserves and only had 20 years of petroleum production left.

May 8, 1945. Victory In Europe. Seventy Five Years Ago Today.

The mission of this Allied force was fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7th, 1945.

Dwight Eisenhower.

The official surrender, however, came today.

Today In Wyoming's History: May 8:

May 8

1945    The German surrender becomes official.  President Harry S. Truman announced in a radio address that World War II had ended in Europe.  End of the Prague uprising.  Hundreds of Algerian civilians are killed by French Army soldiers in the Sétif massacre, ushering in what would ultimately become the French Algerian War.  In day two of rioting, 10,000 servicemen in Halifax Nova Scotia loot and vandalize downtown Halifax during VE-Day celebrations.

Wednesday, January 13, 1909. A 100 Mile Ride.

President Theodore Roosevelt, having actually just been censured but determined to demonstrate his prowess in his remaining months in office, set off on a 100-mile horseback ride, accompanied by his military aid Captain Archibald Butt, Navy Surgeon General Presley M. Rixey, and Surgeon C. D. Grayson.

He left at 3:40 a.m., just about the same time in the morning I started typing this, from Warrenton, Virginia and returned to the White House, having completed the ride, at 8:40 that evening.  Asked for a quote from a reporter, he stated, "It was bully."

More on that event:

Roosevelt’s Ride

Carrie Nation was arrested at Newcastle upon Tyne for vandalizing a British pub. Nation, on a visit to the United Kingdom, was later released on bail.

Marinus van der Lubbe, charged with the burning of the Reichstag in 1933, was born in Leiden, Netherlands.