Saturday, October 21, 1944. The Nemmersdorf Massacre.

Troops of the Red Army killed 74 German civilians as well as 50 French and Belgian POWs at Nemmersdorf (Mayakovskoye, Kaliningrad Oblast). As was typical for the Red Army, females victims were first raped.  The POWs had been detailed to care for German horses, and its likely that the Soviets were unaware that they were Allied POWs.

Mass rape, as well as the murder of German civilians and the murder of raped women, would soon become a feature of the Red Army advance into Germany. Rape and murder would also be a feature of its advance into Hungary.  The Red Army in many ways was a very primitive fighting force with mob aspects and declined into barbarous behavior.

Aachen was taken by the US.

This German prisoner of war was one of the many who surrendered with the capture of Aachen, Germany. Here he smokes a cigar as he proudly displays a torpedoman's medal he won as a former sailor in the Nazi Navy. 21 October, 1944.

Organized Japanese resistance on Angaur ends.

Sgt. Howard Preuss, Bronx, N.Y., one of the engineers, leads Filipinos who are being evacuated to Dulag, Leyte Island, P.I. 21 October, 1944.

The US took Dulag airfield on Leyte.

Franklin Roosevelt rode 51 miles in an open car in the rain in New York, which was foolish, but which was to demonstrate he was fit enough for another term of office, which of course, her really was not.

Last edition:

Friday, October 20, 1944. "This is the Voice of Freedom, General MacArthur speaking. People of the Philippines: I have returned."

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Battle of Leyte, Belgrade Offensive, Douglas MacArthur, Guatemalan Revolution, Operation Pheasant, Operation Sho-go, Philippines Campaign, Red Army, World War Two, Yugoslav Partisans, Yugoslavia

Saturday, October 14, 1944. Rommel kills himself.

A German Mark V Panther tank has been knocked out by the U.S. Army Air Corps. It stands alone in this field near Ploy, France. 14 October, 1944.

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, rather than face trial for his remote association with the July 20 plot, killed himself.  He was met first by representatives of the German government and his house surrounded and given the choice between suicide with a state funeral and immunity from prosecution for his family, vs a trial.  The German public was told that he died from wounds associated with an Allied strafing run on his car.

German observation posts in Aachen, Germany, are targets for these M10s and their three-inch guns of "A" Co., 634th TD Bn. 14 October, 1944.  Company A, 634th Tank Destroyer Battalion attached to 1st Infantry Division.

The Allies took Athens and the Piraeus.  British forces landed at Corfu.

German and Italian Social Republic forces took Domodossola, Italy from partisans.

Troops in Italy eating K rations, looking a lot like Bill Mauldin's Willie and Joe depictions.

Two soldiers with a tapped keg of some kind.

The Germans withdrew from Niš, Yugoslavia.

The 81st Infantry Division replaced the 1st Marine Division at Peleliu.

Formosa was hit again by Task Force 38.  Task Force 38.4 conducted air raids on Luzon.

The Canadian frigate Magog was damaged beyond repair in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by the U-1223.

Last edition:

Friday, October 13, 1944. Black Friday for the Black Watch.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Antwerp Belgium, Army, British Army, Canadian Army, France, Greece, Italy, Lapland War, Latvia, Netherlands, Red Army, Taiwan, U.S. Navy, World War Two

Today in World War II History—October 13, 1939 & 1944

Today in World War II History—October 13, 1939 & 1944: 80 Years Ago—Oct. 13, 1944: US secures Palau Islands in the Pacific. Port of Le Havre, France opens for Allied ships, improving the supply situation.

Saturday, September 23, 1944. The Fala Speech.

The Red Army entered Hungary.  In Estonia, they reached the Baltic.

The Canadians crossed the Escaut Canal in an attack designed to clear the Germans from the north bank of the Scheldt.  30th Corps, however, was halted and the Germans made a successful counterattack north of Eindhoven.

The RAF destroyed an aqueduct on the Dortmund-Ems Canal wiping out a route of transport for prefabricated U-boat parts.

President Roosevelt delivered a speech in front of Washington Teamsters in which he defended himself against false accusations by Republicans that he had a Navy destroyer restrive his dog Fala from the Aleutians.  In it, he stated:

These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family don't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I'd left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find him – at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars – his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself ... But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog.

The crowd laughed at the joke.

The 81st Infantry Division took the unoccupied Ulithi Atoll to the north of Palau.  Work would immediately commence on building an airstrip.

Last edition:

Friday, September 22, 1944. Stiffening resistance in the Netherlands.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Battle of Peleliu, British Army, Canadian Army, Estonia, Italy, Operation Market Garden, Operation Undergo, Paratroopers, Pas-de-Calais France, Polish Army, World War Two

Saturday, March 25, 1944. Ioannina.

Young woman weeps during the deportation of Jews from Ioannina, Greece - March 25, 1944. Budesarchive on Wikipedia.  87% of Greek Jews perished in the Holocaust.  91% of those from Ioannina, the oldest and ancient Greek Jewish settlement, would die at Auschwitz.

Adolf Hitler ordered the execution of recaptured POWS who were part of the mass escape from Stalag Luft III.  While his order would mostly be carried out, it would not entirely. 

Germany was, of course, inescapably going down in defeat. As it was, it was covering itself in gore.

The Battle of the Kaments-Podolsky Pocket began as the Red Army attempted to surround the 1st Panzer Army South at Tarnopol.

U.S. forces eliminate most of the remaining Japanese forces on Manus.

In the Caroline Islands, Japanese patrols sight large American naval forces heading for Palau.