Showing posts with label Polish Resistance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Polish Resistance. Show all posts

Thursday, October 26, 2023

Tuesday, October 26, 1943. Extending Conscription.


President Roosevelt extended registration for the draft beyond the 48 states to the territories of Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

Residents of those territories had until the end of the year to register.

Today in World War II History—October 26, 1943: US Thirteenth Air Force and US Navy bombers and fighters attack Japanese-occupied Bougainville in the Solomon Islands in advance of the Allied invasion.
From Sarah Sundin's blog.

They'd been arriving at various locations in the US this week as well.

The Polish Home Political Representation created Social Anticommunist Committee to combat activities of the Polish Workers (Communist) Party.

Today was the first flight of the Dornier Do 335 of which a mere 37 were built.

The U-420 was sunk by a Canadian B-24.  She was one of 15 ships lost on this day.

The 1943 Hurricane Season came to an end when the last storm dissipated.

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Monday, October 25, 1943. Another October day.

The Red Army's 3d Ukrainian Front captured Dnepropetrovsk.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—October 25, 1943: 80 Years Ago—Oct. 25, 1943: Adm. Sir Bertram Ramsay becomes Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief Expeditionary Force (ANCXF) for Operation Overlord (D-day).

The U.S. Army Air Force raided airfields near Rabaul destroying twenty Japanese aircraft on the ground.


Hong Beom-do (홍범도; Хон Бом До) Korean hunter who became a revolutionary, died on this day at age 75.

Reacting to the Japanese ban on Koreans owning firearms, which precluded hunters from their trade, he formed the 1907 Righteous Army of Jeongmi.  Upon Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910 he moved to China and became, by 1919, the commander of the Korean Independence Army.  It did well, but ultimately was forced to retreat to the Soviet Union in 1921, which resulted in the disarming of the army.  He joined the Red Army in hopes that it might liberate Korea from the Japanese, a forlorn hope at the time.

In 1937 he was deported along with other Koreans to Kazakhstan where he died on this day.  His body was repatriated to Korea in 2021.

Akcja Fruhwirth (Operation Fruhwirth) was attempted by the Polish underground. The aim was to assassinate S-Scharführer Engelberth Frühwirth but SS-Scharführer Stephan Klein was shot by mistake.  He was, however, also a target of the Polish underground.

The newspaper comic strip Batman and Robin debuted.

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

Sunday, August 15, 1943. Joint Operations.

U.S. and Canadian forces landed on Kiska and found it abandoned.

Canadian soldier looking down the sites of a Japanese light machine gun.

There were casualties.  Four American soldiers were killed by mines and 24 by friendly fire by troops operating in fog. The island was expected to be heavily defended and the Japanese withdrawal was a surprise.

Americans and New Zealanders landed on Vella Lavella in the Solomons.

U.S. troops on Vella Lavella.

The British took Taormina in Sicily. The U.S. conducted another amphibious landing on the northern Sicilian coast.

Karachev fail to the Red Army.

The Polish Uderzeniowe Bataliony Kadrowe raided Mittenheide.

Saturday, August 12, 2023

Thursday, August 12, 1943. German withdrawals, Polish and Albanian raids, German reports, Pacific staging.

The Germans, in one of the most successful withdrawals of the Second World War, carried on with day two of its evacuation of Axis forces from Sicily.

Franklin Roosevelt broadcast a message to the Filipino people, promising to establish full sovereignty for the nation upon liberation from the Japanese.  The scheduled date for that was already July 4, 1946.  As it was, liberation of the island would not come until July 1945 and the scheduled date was kept.

The Polish Home Army executed Operation Góral and recovered a massive amount of cash being taken out of the country by the Germans.  On the same day, the Albanian resistance ambushed a German convoy successfully in the Kurtës Ambush

The German Sicherheitsdienst, the SD reported on the attitude of young Germans. Among other things, it reported:

Most boys and girls have not the slightest interest in becoming a member of the NSDAP. All attempts by the relevant authorities to get them involved have been in vain. For the boys it's the Wehrmacht which is now the thing not the Party.

And: 

The reserve shown towards the Party is also encouraged by the unresolved Party-Church question. Since a large section of youth, and above all their parents, are still loyal to the Church, remarks aimed at the "sacred beliefs which they have held hitherto" by Party comrades, cadres and HJ leaders have a negative impact. This is particularly the case at the present time because, as a result of the current war situation, young people too notice that the Church pays great attention, for example, to caring for the relatives of those who have been killed, and that the priests give clear answers on questions concerning life and the present time. In addition, rumors about alleged positive remarks about the churches by leading personalities, soldiers who have been decorated etc. have a big impact.

The SD and related organizations carried on a lot of secret polling of this type during the war. 

Things were happening in the North Pacific. 

USS Tennessee (BB-43) at Adak, Aleutians, August 12, 1943, just before the Kiska landings.

On the Eastern Front, Luftwaffe Hptm Hans-Ulrich Rudel completed his 1300th mission and his tail gunner OFw Hentschel’s completed his 1000th.

Friday, July 14, 2023

Wednesday, July 14, 1943. Airborne landing at Primosole Bridge, Belarussians ordered to blow up the rail lines, US War Crime in Sicily,

British airborne dropped in Sicily in Operation Fustion, which was designed to take the Primosole Bridge. The action was one of two in Sicily which saw the oddity of Allied paratroopers fighting German paratroopers who initially thought the British were reinforcements. The German paratroopers had come in on the 9th as reinforcements.

Primosole Bridge after capture.

While the bridge was ultimately taken, the action itself had mixed results.

Following a meeting with Stalin, Gen. Panteleimon Ponomarendo leader of the Belarusian pro Soviet partisans, issued Order No. 42 directing 123 partisan units to destroy the rail lines that had been used by the invading Germans, thus making their retreat from Russia, particularly with heavy weapons, difficult.

Communist, or at least anti-German, Belorussian partisans, 1943.

Ponomarendo was an ethnic Ukrainian who had been either in the Red Army or a Communist politician/functionary since the early days of the Russian Civil War.  Destruction of the railways was something he'd urged.  During the war, his troops killed around 300,000 Germans, a massive number.

They also killed some members of the Polish underground, executing some of its officers.  It's claimed that his forces provided information on Polish underground members to the Germans.  His views on western Poland may be summed up by this statement:

The western oblasts of Soviet Belarus are an integral part of the Republic of Belarus. The nationalist divisions and groups formed by Polish reactionary circles should be isolated from the population by creating Soviet troops and groups consisting of working people of Polish nationality. Nationalist units and groups should be fought by all means.

Ponomarendo died at age 81 in 1984.

Belorussia lost 25% of its pre-war population during World War Two.  Young men were typically faced with no options other than joining the partisans or joining Nazi collaborationist elements.

The Battle of Mubo in New Guinea ended in an Allied victory.  The battle, between Australian troops and the Japanese, had been going on since April.

The Biscari Massacre occured when troops of the 180th Infantry Regiment, which had been performing so poorly that thought had been given to relieving its commander, killed 71 Italian and 2 German POWs in two separate incidents.

In the first incident, Maj. Roger Denman ordered Sgt. Horace T. West to take a group of POWs to the rear and hold them in an inconspicuous place for questioning.  He separated eight of them to be taken to S-2 for questioning, borrowed a Thompson submachine gun, and killed them.  The bodies were found the next day and the chaplain, Lt. Col. William E. King, took the matter up.

In the second incident, Cpt. John T. Compton, who was extremely sleep-deprived, ordered 35 Italian POWs shot on the belief that they had been snipers who had been firing at his command. They were executed by firing squad.  Compton later told the following to investigators about the incident:

Q. How did you select the men to do the firing?

A. I wished to get it done fast and very thoroughly, so I told them to get automatic weapons, the BAR [Browning Automatic Rifle] and Tommy Gun.

Q. How did you get the men? Did you ask for volunteers?

A. No, sir. I told the [SGT] to get the men.

Q. Do you remember exactly what you told him?

A. I don't remember exactly.

Q. What formation did you get them in before they were shot?

A. Single file on the edge of a ridge.

Q. Were they facing the weapons or the other side?

A. They were in single file, in a column, rifle fire from the right.

Q. Were the prisoners facing the weapons or the other side?

A. They were facing right angle of fire.

Q. What formation did you have the firing squad (sic)?

A. Lined 6 foot away, about 2 yards apart, on a line.

Q. Did you give any kind of a firing order?

A. I gave a firing order.

Q. What was your firing order?

A. Men, I am going to give ready fire and you will commence firing on the order of fire.

While first passing off on it, Gen. Patton ordered that the participating soldiers be court-martialed.  West was convicted of pre meditated murder, stripped of his rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment.  His sentence was remitted in 1944, and he served the rest of the war, ironically gaining a semi heroic status as a sniper.


He died in Oklahoma in 1974.

Compton was court-martialed and acquitted, but a Judge Advocate review declared that the action had been unlawful.  Compton was transferred and then killed in Italy in 1943.

Both West and Compton sited a speech by Patton as the partial basis of their action.  Compton specifically stated:

During the Camberwell operation in North Africa, George S.Patton, in a speech to assembled officers, stated that in the case where the enemy was shooting to kill our troops and then that we came close enough on him to get him, decided to quit fighting, he must die. Those men had been shooting at us to kill and had not  marched up to us to surrender. They had been surprised and routed, putting them, in my belief, in the category of the General's  statement.

Patton was cleared of wrongdoing by investigators, and this was likely at least in part a defense crafted by their lawyers.

While not really knowing the story of either men, West was 32 years old at the time of the incident and seems to have likely been a fairly tough Texan/Oklahoman.  He may really not have seen anything wrong with his actions.  Compton seems to have been extremely fatigues, although that offers a poor excuse.

Beyond that, this event offers a rare glimpse into a well documented US war crime during the war.  Allied war crimes are not much discussed, and were not discussed at all until relatively recently, but they did occur.  Executions of POWs such as the West example, while certainly never sanctioned, were more common in the ETO than we might like to imagine, and taking Japanese POWs was something that was only rarely done, for a variety of reasons, after the fairly early stages of the war, one of those reasons being that the Japanese weren't inclined to surrender.  The strafing of farmers was also much more common in the ETO than recognized for the most part.

For this same day, on Sarah Sundin's blog, the following is noted:

Today in World War II History—July 14, 1943: On Sicily, British Eighth Army takes Vizzini, Lentini, and Simeto. In Krasnodor, Russia, Soviets try 11 Germans in the first war crimes trial of the war.


Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Monday, February 22, 1943 Execuitions of the White Rose.

Christoph Probst, 23; Hans Scholl, 24; and his sister Sophie Scholl, 21, were beheaded by guillotine by Nazi Germany for their role in the White Rose resistance movement, of which they were principal members.  

Their resistance was remarkable. Also remarkable, so few Germans resisted.

By Gryffindor - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=355013

Bulgaria agreed to deliver 20,000 Jews up for slave labor to the Germans.

On the same Alfred Nossig, Polish sculptor, was shot and killed by the ZOB, the Jewish Polish resistance organization.  Nossig had supplied reports to the German occupiers regarding Jewish residents of Warsaw.

Thursday, June 2, 2022

Tuesday, June 2, 1942. The BBC reports news from the Polish underground of Nazi mass extermination of Jews.

Members of the Death's Head SS, Germans who ran the death camps.
Today in World War II History—June 2, 1942: 80 Years Ago—June 2, 1942: BBC reports news from the Polish underground of Nazi mass extermination of Jews. Henry J. Kaiser proposes building auxiliary carriers; the Navy awards him a contract for the Casablanca class by the end of the month.

Sarah Sundin's blog notes that news broke in the West, and indeed the world, of one of the biggest crimes ever committed in human history, the German efforts to exterminate the Jews.

This has been controversial, in terms of "when did they know" and "what could have been done", ever since.  But in retrospect, the news actually broke relatively quickly after the effort truly became industrial.  Up until that time, the Germans had been killing Jews on a large scale, to be sure, but it had been mostly done by deployed SS field units with that specific task, which accomplished it largely via small arms fire. A lot of people were killed in that fashion, and also by Eastern European unofficially allied bands, but it had taken place in conditions which precluded the news from being much more than rumors.  SS, and Eastern European, murders of this fashion had taken place either in chaotic conditions as the Germans marched in, or in actual field conditions just behind the lines.  As a result, they took place in areas where reporting was limited to what the Germans chose to report.  As the only significant opposition force in these regions was the Red Army, which had not recaptured any of these areas by this point in the war, news getting out simply didn't.

Industrial scale murder, however, was impossible to keep a secret.  The Poles reported it first, in an underground opposition newspaper.  The BBC picked it up the next day.

On the same day the Germans deployed an 800mm (31") railroad gun at Sevastopol.  For comparison, battleships typically had 16" guns.

The insanely large gun was a devastating weapon, but the crew required to man it was also insanely large.

Size comparison to Russian OTR-21 rocket launcher, which delivers a similarly sized payload.

The gun would be part of a five-day artillery barrage of the city, which also featured large raids by the Luftwaffe.

In North Africa the Afrika Korps was threatening to have its most recent offensive halt due to logistical problems.

U.S. Naval forces in the Pacific rendezvous at Point Luck, uniting Task Force 16 and Task Force 17, which are then under the command of Admiral Fletcher. They are there in anticipation of a Japanese assault on Midway Atoll, which they know is coming due to breaking the Japanese code.