Tuesday, November 24, 1942. The end of Case Blue.

Case Blue, the 1942 German summer offensive on the Eastern Front, came to an end having not achieved its goals, which had been to capture the oil fields of Baku, Grozny and Maikop.

The thought was that without oil, the Soviets couldn't fight, and the Germans would be able to.  Indeed, taking Soviet oil production had been part of the original goal of Operation Barbarossa, with the thought being that the Germans needed it to wage war against the United Kingdom.

By User:Gdr - Own work information from Overy, Richard (2019) World War II Map by Map, DK, pp. 148−150 ISBN: 9780241358719., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=443854

It's strategic aims, often criticized, were sound and grasped the importance of petroleum on the ability to wage modern war.  Hitler had a major role in forming the campaign's development and direction and frankly, while the campaign is often criticized for redirecting German assets to southern Russia rather than the north, with the focus being Moscow, the plan demonstrated a good gasp on resources and modern warfare, and the protracted nature of the latter.  Had the campaign succeeded in its goals, which were problematic in more ways than one, it would have at least deprived the Soviet Union of significant war fighting assets.  It probably would not have succeeded in providing those to the Germans, however, as the Soviets would have destroyed oil production facilities prior to the Germans taking them.  Whether the Germans had the capacity to restore production is doubtful.

The plan was, moreover, overambitious and its initial success caused the Germans to take actions which reduced its potential effectiveness.  

In spite of its ultimate failure, the offensive was remarkably successful at first, which encouraged the Germans to overextend themselves.  By November the offensive had lost steam, without succeeding in its goals, and Operation Uranus soon demonstrated that the Germans were now grossly overextended. The Soviets, additionally, managed to increase the size of their army throughout the campaign and by its end had over 1,000,000 more men in the field than the Germans did. The Germans, for their part, lost 200,000 men during the campaign and the Romanian army was effectively ground down to semi ineffective.  By the campaign's end, moreover, the Germans were relying on Romanian, Hungarian and Italian troops to a dangerous extent.

The end of the campaign came with the Soviets launching a series of winter offensives.

Case Blue brought the Germans to their high water mark of World War Two.  Its failure was followed by losing ground in the East in the winter of 1942, which they were also doing in North Africa at the same time.  Indeed, due to its failure it should have been obvious to the Germans that wining the war was not impossible.

Rabbi Wise.

Rabbi Stephen Wise, president of the World Jewish Congress, held a press conference in which he revealed information leaked from Europe of German atrocities against the Jews.

Rabbi Wise had the information for three months, but has been asked not to reveal it by the U.S. Government as it could not be confirmed, which of course it could not.  At this point, however, he correctly felt that releasing the information was necessary.

Wise had been born in Hungary, but came to the US as an infant with his parents. His father and grandfather were also rabbis.

Peadar Kearney, writer of the Irish National Anthem A Soldiers Song, "Amhrán na bhFiann" died at age 58.

Monday, November 23, 1942. Operation Uranus concludes.

The Red Army completed encircling the German 6th Army, which was trapped in Stalingrad.

In a matter of mere days, the Red Army had blasted through Romanian lines north and south of the city and completely routed it. German efforts at counter-attacks failed.  250,000 German troops were besieged in the city.  It was a brilliantly planned and executed Red Army offensive, featuring massive use of artillery and rapid advancement of armor and horse cavalry.

Romanian stamp showing a Romanian and German servicemen serving in the "Holy War against Bolshevism."  The designer of the stamp probably didn't realize that the symbol that he put on the German's helmet would make him part of the Luftwaffe.

The offensive also showed that the Germans had committed a fatal error in trusting the front near Stalingrad to their allies. To the north of the city the front was defended by Romanian, Hungarian and Italian armies. To the south, Romanian. The Romanian Army had already shown itself to be worn out earlier in 1942.

The Governor General of French West Africa accepted the authority of Admiral Darlan.

Japanese general Tomitarō Horii, age 52, was swept out to sea after trying to canoe to his troops in the Battle of Buno-Gona.  This resulted in his death due to drowning.

Sunday, November 22, 1942. Trapped.

The Red Army established a bridgehead across the Don at Kalach-na-Donu, trapping 250,000 German and Romanian troops at Stalingrad.

The Germans, facing plenty of problems on the Don, formed Army Group Don with Erich von Manstein as its commander.  The group was located between Group A, in the south, and Group B, in the north.

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.

Paul Ludwig von Kleist was made commander of Army Group A on this day as well.

Von Keist would not be as lucky as Von Manstein, post-war.  He was turned over by the Western Allies to Yugoslavia and convicted of war crimes there.  The Yugoslavians then turned him over to the Soviets, who also convicted him of war crimes.  He died in Soviet captivity of a heart attack in 1954 at age 73.

Saturday, November 21, 1942. Hitler orders no withdrawal from Stalingrad.

Hitler issued an order precluding the German 6th Army from retreating from Stalingrad.

Hitler and Stalin were both fans of the "not one step back" type of order, which is easy to decree, harder to make a reality, and robs the local commanders of operational flexibility.

Tweety Bird appeared in a Warner Brothers cartoon for the first time, the same being A Tale of Two Kitties.

Tweety Bird in A Tale of Two Kitties.

Friday, November 20, 1942. The Axis reels in defeat.

The Siege of Malta ended after 2.5 years.

The Axis effort to isolate and eliminate Malta as a British asset had been conducted principally from the air, but had also been heavily supported by the German and Italian navies.  For almost all the siege the defense of the of the island, which used numerically inferior numbers of aircraft, had been a strictly British affair, aided only in the end by the U.S. Navy assisting in ferrying aircraft to Malta.  It was a resolute British victory.

The tide had been turning since the British had been able to reinforce the island with new aircraft in 1942 and emergency supplies had been run in, keeping the island from starvation. The Germans had more or less given up in October, but Axis defeats in North Africa made maintaining the siege impossible, as the Axis had been required to switch its air assets to the failing campaign in North Africa.

Malta had been independent until 1798, having been governed by the monastic Order of Saint John, which lost power to Napoleon.  The Maltese rebelled and asked for British help, with the island becoming a British protectorate in 1800.  It became a Crown Colony in 1813, obtaining home rule in 1947 and independence in 1964.

The British 8th Army retook Benghazi, Libya.

The Red Army opened up phase two of Operation Uranus with Stalingrad Front commander Andrei Yeremenko opening up the southern prong after the fog lifted.  Again, Romanian troops failed and collapsed, with German forces attempting to react.  By then end of the day, only the 6th Romanian Cavalry Regiment stood between the Red Army and the Don.

The Alaska Highway officially opened.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 20: 1942 NHL abolishes regular season overtime until World War II is over.

Hockey fans weren't the only lonely ones.  Life magazine went to press with a black and white photograph of a woman smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee on its cover, entitled "Lonely Wife".

Joseph Robinette Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania.  Norman Greenbaum, famous for his song Spirit In The Sky, was born in Malden, Massachusetts.

Joe Biden is the oldest person to ever be elected President.  In case a person wonders, he's only four years older, however, than Donald Trump.

Thursday, November 19, 1942. Operation Uranus launched.

 

By Lưu Ly - Own workVẽ lại dựa vào nguồn tham khảo http://victory.mil.ru/war/maps/023.jpg, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10483516

The decisive turning of the tables on the Eastern Front commenced on this day in 1942 with the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, their 1942 winter offensive in the Stalingrad region.

The massive attack had been postponed for two days while the air element of the offensive was fully readied.  When it commenced on this day, initial operations were against the Romanian Army that held the positions north of Stalingrad.

The Romanians broke by the end of the day and the massive pincer movement's north claw, therefore, started to advance.

The fact that the Germans had placed the Romanians in such an important position itself was a stunning failure showing either hubris or a real lack of understanding of the situation they were in.  The Romanian Army was primitive in comparison to the German army and its rank and file was made up of peasantry.

Much further to the north, the Red Army began an advancement on Velikiye Luki designed to relieve it.

The British launched a glider assault on Telemark. The gliders did not land near their objective, Operation Freshman was a failure, and 41 British soldiers were killed.  The attack was aimed at trying to sabotage the chemical plant at Telemark in order to disrupt any German nuclear plans associated with it.

Polish artist and literary critic Bruno Schultz was murdered by a Gestapo agent in a bizarre act of personal revenge.

Schultz was Jewish, but had been extended protection by Gestapo agent Felix Landau in exchange for Schultz painting a mural for Landau in his children's bedroom.  On this day, however, another Gestapo agent, Karl Günther, shot and killed him in an act of revenge against Landau for Landau having murdered Gunther's "personal Jew", who was a dentist.  The murals were painted over, but have since been rediscovered.

The entire matter shows how perverse Nazi Germany really was.

Landau, an Austrian by birth, survived the war and served a decade in the 1960s for his crimes.  He died a natural death in 1983 at age 72.  He kept a diary which documented the plight of the Jews, including his own crimes in regard to them.

Fashion designer Calvin Klein was born.