Friday, November 26, 1943. The sinking of the HMT Rohna.

The HMT Rohna was struck by a HS-293 guided bomb and sank, killing 481 officers men in the initial explosion and 534 who subsequently drowned.  Details of the death of the 1,015 men off of the coast of North Africa were not released until after the war.

HMT Rohna.

Yank published "Jungle Mop Up" in its November 26, 1943 edition, with photographs of combat on the Islands of Arundel and Sagekasa in the New Georgia Group.

Wounded, now dead, Japanese soldier left by withdrawing comrades

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Company commander spotting artillery fire on mortar fire.

U.S. machine gun crew with M1919 machine gun.

The Red Army took Gomel, Belarus.

Medal of Honor winner and the Navy's first ace of World War Two, Lieutenant Commander Edward Henry O'Hare, failed to return from a combat mission, being a casualty of it.

A 7.2 magnitude earthquake resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people in Turkey.

The MGM hit musical comedy Girl Crazy was released.

Wednesday, October 6, 1943. The last Japanese naval victory and the second Posen speech.

Himmler reprised his prior day by giving the second of his Posen speeches, in which he stated:

The question will be asked: 'What about women and children?' I did not consider myself entitled to exterminate the men, to kill them or have them killed, and then allow their children to grow up to revenge themselves on our own sons and grandsons. The painful decision had to be taken, to remove this people from the face of the earth...

The Battle of Vella Lavella commenced, in which six U.S. Navy destroyers intercepted nine Imperial Japanese destroyers sent to evacuate troops from New Georgia.  Regarded as the last Japanese naval victory of World War Two, each side lost two vessels but the Japanese were able to complete the withdrawal of troops.

USS Selfridge after the battle and USS O'Bannon.  The O'Bannon was damaged in a collision during the action.  They were both repaired and put back ino action.

Friday, August 27, 1943. Wunderwaffe, French arrests, the 43d Infantry at Arundel, Red Army at Kotleva and Sevsk, USS Eldridge doesn't disappear.

A German Henschel Hs 293 struck and sank the HMS Egret in the first successful anti shipping guided missile strike in history.

German Wunderwaffe were beginning to come online.

Former French President Albert Lebrun was arrested by the Gestapo, as was André François-Poncet, the former French ambassador to Germany.  Lebrun would survive the war, albeit in ill health, and breifly maintain to DeGaulle that he remained head of state, which DeGaulle ignored and which was legally incorrect in any event.  François-Poncet would as well, and would repreise his pre-war role as ambassador to West Germany.

Insignia of the island hopping 43d Infantry Division. The 43d was a unit made up of mobilized National  Guardsmen from New England.  It was inactivated as a unit in 1963.

Elements of the US 43d Infantry Division landed on the Nauro Peninsula on Arundel in the Solomon's without opposition.

Unless you are exceptionally well versed on the war in the Pacific, you probably are unaware of this action, but it fit into many such forgotten landings by the Army and the Marine Corps during the war.

The Red Army retook Kotleva and Sevsk.

Following up on the US and British example, the Soviet Union and China gave limited recognition to the French Committee of National Liberation.

The USS Eldridge was commissioned. The Eldridge is famous for being part of a 1950s vintage hoax, in which merchant seaman Carl Meredith Allen fairly successfully convinced people that the ship had been made to disappear as part of a dangerous naval experiment during World War Two. There are people who still believe the hoax.

Wednesday, August 25, 1943. Victory on New Georgia.

The Red Army prevailed in the Migorod Direction Offensive.  On the same day, the Red Army took Zenkov and Akhtyrka, near Kharkiv.

Contrary to what I posted yesterday, some sources have today as the day Lord Mountbatten took command of the Southeast Asia theater, and the sources for today would be correct.

German "Fritz X" glide bomb, of the type most widely used and first used on this day in 1943.

Germany used glide bombs for the first time, with that deployment being made in the Bay of Biscay against Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy escort destroyers.  Some crewmen were killed on the HMS Bideford.

In the same bay, the Royal Navy sank the U-523.

The last Japanese resistance on New Georgia was eliminated.

The Quebec Conference having ended, President Roosevelt made an address in Ottoawa to the Canaidan parliament.

August 25, 1943

Your Excellency Mr. Prime Minister, Members of the Parliament, and all my good friends and neighbors of the Dominion of Canada:

It was exactly five years ago last Wednesday that I came to Canada to receive the high honor of a degree at Queen's University. On that occasion- one year before the invasion of Poland, three years before Pearl Harbor— I said:

"We in the Americas are no longer a far away continent, to which the eddies of controversies beyond the seas could bring no interest or no harm. Instead, we in the Americas have become a consideration to every propaganda office and to every general staff beyond the seas. The vast amount of our resources, the vigor of our commerce and the strength of our men have made us vital factors in world peace whether we choose it or not."

We did not choose this war—and that "we" includes each and every one of the United Nations.

War was violently forced upon us by criminal aggressors who measure their standards of morality by the extent of the death and the destruction that they can inflict upon their neighbors.

In this war, Canadians and Americans have fought shoulder to shoulder—as our men and our women and our children have worked together and played together in happier times of peace.

Today, in devout gratitude, we are celebrating a brilliant victory won by British and Canadian and American fighting men in Sicily.

Today, we rejoice also in another event for which we need not apologize. A year ago Japan occupied several of the Aleutian Islands on our side of the ocean, and made a great "to-do" about the invasion of the continent of North America. I regret to say that some Americans and some Canadians wished our Governments to withdraw from the Atlantic and the Mediterranean campaigns and divert all our vast supplies and strength to the removal of the Japs from a few rocky specks in the North Pacific.

Today, our wiser councils have maintained our efforts in the Atlantic area, and the Mediterranean, and the China Seas, and the Southwest Pacific with ever-growing contributions; and in the Northwest Pacific a relatively small campaign has been assisted by the Japs themselves in the elimination of that last Jap from Attu and Kiska. We have been told that the Japs never surrender; their headlong retreat satisfies us just as well.

Great councils are being held here on the free and honored soil of Canada- councils which look to the future conduct of this war and to the years of building a new progress for mankind.

To these councils Canadians and Americans alike again welcome that wise and good and gallant gentleman, the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Mr. King, my old friend, may I through you thank the people of Canada for their hospitality to all of us. Your course and mine have run so closely and affectionately during these many long years that this meeting adds another link to that chain. I have always felt at home in Canada and you, I think, have always felt at home in the United States.

During the past few days in Quebec, the Combined Staffs have been sitting around a table—which is a good custom—talking things over, discussing ways and means, in the manner of friends, in the manner of partners, and may I even say in the manner of members of the same family.

We have talked constructively of our common purposes in this war-of our determination to achieve victory in the shortest possible time—of our essential cooperation with our great and brave fighting allies.

And we have arrived, harmoniously, at certain definite conclusions. Of course, I am not at liberty to disclose just what these conclusions are. But, in due time, we shall communicate the secret information of the Quebec Conference to Germany, Italy, and Japan. We shall communicate this information to our enemies in the only language their twisted minds seem capable of understanding.

Sometimes I wish that that great master of intuition, the Nazi leader, could have been present in spirit at the Quebec Conference- I am thoroughly glad that he wasn't there in person. If he and his generals had known our plans they would have realized that discretion is still the better part of valor and that surrender would pay them better now than later.

The evil characteristic that makes a Nazi a Nazi is his utter inability to understand and therefore to respect the qualities or the rights of his fellow men. His only method of dealing with his neighbor is first to delude him with lies, then to attack him treacherously, then beat him down and step on him, and then either kill him or enslave him. And the same thing is true of the fanatical militarists of Japan.

Because their own instincts and impulses are essentially inhuman, our enemies simply cannot comprehend how it is that decent, sensible individual human beings manage to get along together and live together as good neighbors.

That is why our enemies are doing their desperate best to misrepresent the purposes and the results of this Quebec Conference. They still seek to divide and conquer allies who refuse to be divided just as cheerfully as they refuse to be conquered.

We spend our energies and our resources and the very lives of our sons and daughters because a band of gangsters in the community of Nations declines to recognize the fundamentals of decent, human conduct.

We have been forced to call out what we in the United States would call the sheriff's posse to break up the gang in order that gangsterism may be eliminated in the community of Nations.

We are making sure- absolutely, irrevocably sure—that this 'time the lesson is driven home to them once and for all. Yes, we are going to be rid of outlaws this time.

Every one of the United Nations believes that only a real and lasting peace can justify the sacrifices we are making, and our unanimity gives us confidence in seeking that goal.

It is no secret that at Quebec there was much talk of the postwar world. That discussion was doubtless duplicated simultaneously in dozens of Nations and hundreds of cities and among millions of people.

There is a longing in the air. It is not a longing to go back to what they call "the good old days." I have distinct reservations as to how good "the good old days" were. I would rather believe that we can achieve new and better days.

Absolute victory in this war will give greater opportunities to the world, because the winning of the war in itself is certainly proving to all of us up here that concerted action can accomplish things. Surely we can make strides toward a greater freedom from want than the world has yet enjoyed. Surely by unanimous action in driving out the outlaws and keeping them under heel forever, we can attain a freedom from fear of violence.

I am everlastingly angry only at those who assert vociferously that the four freedoms and the Atlantic Charter are nonsense because they are unattainable. If those people had lived a century and a half ago they would have sneered and said that the Declaration of Independence was utter piffle. If they had lived nearly a thousand years ago they would have laughed uproariously at the ideals of Magna Charta. And if they had lived several thousand years ago they would have derided Moses when he came from the Mountain with the Ten Commandments.

We concede that these great teachings are not perfectly lived up to today, but I would rather be a builder than a wrecker, hoping always that the structure of life is growing— not dying.

May the destroyers who still persist in our midst decrease. They, like some of our enemies, have a long road to travel before they accept the ethics of humanity.

Some day, in the distant future perhaps—but some day, it is certain—all of them will remember with the Master, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

Monsieur le Premier: Ma visite a la ville historique de Quebec rappelle vivement a mon esprit que le Canada est une nation fondee sur l'union de deux grandes races. L'harmonie de leur association dans l'egalite peut servir d'exemple a l'humanite toute entiere—un exemple partout dans le monde.

Monday, August 9, 1943. Blessed Franz Jägerstätter

 

Franz Jägerstätter, 36, Austrian farmer and conscientious objector, was executed by the Germans.

Born into poverty and illegitimacy, he was the son of a farmer and chambermaid who could not afford to marry.  He was initially raised by his grandmother, the pious Elisabeth Huber.  His father was killed in World War One and his mother latter married Heinrich Jägerstätter, who adopted him and who gave him his farm upon his marriage.

Irreligious in his youth, he underwent a sudden religious conversion after fathering an illegitimate child and spending a period of time in community exile, during which he worked for several years in iron mines.  Upon returning he became profoundly religions and in turn married a deeply religious spouse.  Upon the German invasion of Austria he openly opposed the Nazis and while he did serve in the German Army in 1940 he refused to take the Hitler oath.  Called back into service in 1943 he refused combat duty, although he did offer to serve as a medic, which was ignored.  He was ultimately died and executed on this day.

He was beatified in 2007.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—August 9, 1943: 80 Years Ago—Aug. 9, 1943: On New Georgia in the Solomon Islands, US northern and southern landing forces link.

The US signed a military assistance treaty with Ethiopia.

Life Magazine hit the stands with an article on female steelworkers.

August 4, 1943. Famine in India.

Churchill and his cabinet decided not to ship British wheat to India, a decision which has been claimed to have resulted in the devastating Bengali famine of that year.

In actuality, the story is quite complicated, and the wheat request didn't have a 1 to 1 correlation with food supplies.  In the UK the request for wheat shipments was interpreted as an attempt to reduce grain inflationary prices and that a famine was ongoing was not appreciated.   The cause of the famine itself isn't particularly clear, as it was not associated with drought, which prior then recent Indian famines had been.  When the Indian Viceroy took action, belatedly, the famine was brought under control, but not before huge numbers of people had died.

Indeed, the Indian wheat harvest had been at a record level that year.

Claims that Churchill, who opposed Indian independence, was vicariously responsible for the famine didn't really come about until the 21st Century and to some extent reflect a post-colonial tendency, particularly in regard to India, to blame the British for every bad thing that occured during their imperial period.

Germany made the decision to employ concentration camp inmates at Peenemünde.

US forces prevailed in the Battle of Munda Point.

Sarah Sundin notes the beginning of the US assault on San Frantello Ridge in Sicily.

Tuesday, July 20, 1943. On to the Gilberts and Marshalls

The Joint Chiefs of Staff determined to invade the Gilbert Islands and Nauru, to be followed by the Marshalls.

The Battle of Bairoko was fought on New Georgia, in which the U.S. Army and Marine Raiders attacked Japanese defensive positions unsuccessfully.

B-17 crew photographed on this day.

A stateside soldier's letter this day:

JULY 20, 1943, SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA

Sunday, July 18, 1943. Alexander appointed governor of Sicily.

Showing how far the invasion of Sicily already gone, British Gen. Harold Alexander was appointed the Allied Military Governor of Sicily. 

For his first act, he banned the Fascist Party.

The U.S. airship K-74 depth charged the German U-134, which returned fire with its 20mm deck guns. The K-74 was shot down.  The unsuccessful attack was the only such instance of an airship attacking a submarine during World War Two.

K class airship.

Japan's counteroffensive on New Georgia ended in failure.

MGM released Stormy Weather, showcasing a host of African American talent. The movie featured 20 musical pieces in 77 minutes.

Saturday, July 17, 1943. Hitler orders the battle to stop.

Hitler ordered his commanders to withdraw and take defense positions at Kursk, following up on his July 13 order to end the offensive.  Von Manstein and others urged Hitler to continue on, but he overruled them.  At this point in the battle, the Germans had lost 252 tanks and sustained 64,000 casualties, whereas the Soviets had lost over 2,000 and had sustained 320,000 casualties, so Von Manstein's arguments were not without merit.

Erich von Manstein. By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H01758 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5363524

It would soon prove to be the case that the Red Army had not been as damaged as Von Manstein believed, but a person can ponder what carrying on in Operation Citadel would have meant, keeping in mind that there was no reversing German fortunes, only delaying them, at this point.

We've dealt with Von Manstein's post-war fate a bit here:

Von Manstein, who would lose a son in the war, was an excellent German general who was known to openly clash with Hitler. However, that fact and his post-war writings have glossed over his culpability for horrific German actions during the war, something that was not uncommon with surviving officers of the German army who operated to create the "clean army" myth.  Von Manstein was one of those German figures who regarded Communism and Judaism as part and parcel of each other.

Von Manstein served a prison term post war for war crimes and did not rejoin the West German Army when it was formed, but did receive a secret veto over which German officers could be members of it.  He died at age 85 in 1973.

We didn't note in that entry that when he died, he was buried with full military honors.

The Krasnodara Trial, the first war crimes trial, concluded in the Soviet Union with all 20 Soviet citizens, collaborators with the Germans, convicted and 18 of them to receive the death penalty.

The Polish Uderzeniowe Bataliony Kadrowe (Striking Cadre Battalions, UBK), attacked East Prussian villages in the area of Johannisburg (Pisz) in retaliation for German atrocities in Bezirk Bialystok.  Oddly, Pisz is now in Poland and Bezirk Bialystok in Belarus.

The U.S. offensive at Munda Point in New Georgia concluded with limited tactical success. This was in part because the US troops and their leadership were green, which was recognized by the U.S. and resulted in reorganization of the command structure.  On the same day, the Japanese launched a counteroffensive, which would prove to be costly and unsuccessful.

Monday, July 12, 2043. Axis victories at Prokhorovka and Kolombangara.

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-219-0553A-36 / Koch / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5410458.  German (probably SS) soldier examining destroyed T-34 at Prokorovka.

The II SS Panzer Korps and Red Army 5th Guards Tank Army fought a protracted engagement at Prokhorovka resulting in large numbers of German and Red Army tanks fighting each other over a four-day period.  The first day was critical, although the details are murky, something that's common for the Battle of Kursk.

German armor numbers vary from 240 some tanks to 900 some tanks, that latter number being very unlikely.  Over 600 tanks were deployed by the Red Army.  It was a Red Army counterattack, not a German assault.  AT the end of the day, German forces still held a critical topographic feature, Hill 252.2.  The Germans had advanced on neighboring terrain.  July 12, and the following few days, resulted in a German tactical defensive victory in the engagement, upsetting Stalin, who briefly considered making command changes as a result.  Having said that, the battle served to arrest German advances in the area, and it resulted in huge German armor losses, as well as Soviet ones. The Soviets could afford to lose more tanks.  Havintg said that, Germans, on this day, lost somewhere between 40 and 80 tanks, and the Soviets probably around 300 to 400 tanks.  German manpower losses of all types were around 800, whereas the Soviets were over 5,000.

The battle is one of the largest tank engagements in history.  It is also unfortunately shrouded in myth and suffers from having been fought between two dictatorial regimes, making it difficult to really know what actually occured in the battle.  This is particularly true with the Red Army, which did not tend to exhibit candor about its battlefield losses.

Of some interest, this particular battle featured three well equipped SS armor divisions whereas in Sicily the Germans presently had one armored division and one Panzergrandier division, both of which were good.  Of course, the primary Axis force at this time in Sicily was Italian, consisting of 200,000 Italian troops, although the Germans would soon commit additional forces.

Canadian troops on this day, in Sicily.

The Axis scored another tactical victory in the Battle of Kolombangara off of the island of that name when the Imperial Japanese Navy sank the USS Gwin, but lost the Japanese cruiser Jintsū, the only Japanese loss. 

 USS St. Louis (CL-49) and HMNZS Leander (75) firing during the Battle of Kolombangara

The Japanese were "running the slot" to resupply their ground forces, and at this stage of the war were superior at nocturnal naval engagements.

The United States Army Pharmacy Corps was established.

Saturday, July 3, 1943. Oak Ridge sees its first residents.

The first residents of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a government constructed town dedicated to the Manhattan Project, arrived.

U.S. howitzer being fired during battle.

The Battle of Wickham Anchorage on Vangunu concluded in an American victory.

The island today retains a small population of subsistence farmers.

Friday, July 2, 1943. The U.S. Army lands on New Georgia.

Men of the 37th Infantry Division on New Georgia.

The U.S. Army's 37th and 43d Infantry Divisions landed on New Georgia, the largest Solomon Island occupied by Japan.  Fighting would last over a month.

Rendova had been used as a staging area for the operation.

Sunday, June 20, 1943. Race riots in Detroit, Action in the Pacific.

A three-day race riot that would result in the deaths of 34 people broke out in Detroit, starting at the Belle Island park as a fistfight.

Race riots were a feature of Detroit life for many years. The city had been a major destination during the Great Migration, given its industrial employment opportunities.

The Allies commenced the New Georgia Campaign against the Japanese.  The first action was a Marine Corps landing on the Kula Gulf on New Georgia.

The Battle of Lababia Ridge began on New Guinea, with Australians advancing on Japanese positions.  The battle would last for three days and result in an Australian victory.

Sarah Sundin noted that Oscar Holmes became the first black pilot in the U.S. Navy on this day, but only because the Navy was not aware that the light skinned Holmes was in fact black.

The Navy did discover his ethnicity later on, but by that point judged that it would have been too embarrassing to note it in any fashion.

A U.S. meteorological flight over northern Quebec discovered the The Pingualuit Crater (Cratère des Pingualuit:), formerly called the "Chubb Crater" and later the "New Quebec Crater" (Cratère du Nouveau-Québec).