Monday, August 1, 1944. The Warsaw Uprising Starts.

The Polish uprising commenced in Warsaw.  A massive uprising, and part of a series of the same, it was the most tragic of the group. The Red Army, which was already on the outskirts of the city, and which had been advancing, ground to a halt and allowed the insurrection to go on for 63 days.

Polish fighter with German MP3008, a rarely scene German copy of the British Sten gun.

The US prevailed on Tinian.

The Philadelphia Transit Strike of 1944 began.

British scientists announced that DDT was an effective insecticide.

Manuel L. Quezon, age 65, died and Sergio Osmeña thereupon became the 4th President of the Philippines.

The film Wilson, about the 28th President, which is nearly a piece of hagiography, was released.

Lasts edition:

Monday, July 31, 1944. Cobra concludes.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, German Wehrmacht, Normandy, Operation Cobra, Operation Overlord, Red Army, Warsaw Poland, World War Two

Tuesday, July 25, 1944. Operation Cobra commences. Operation Spring does as well.

The operation would begin the breakout from the bocage company and the unrelenting advance towards the Rhine.

The operation saw the use of U.S. Army Air Corps heavy bombers in the close air support/tactical role, which was a novelty for the US.  Gen. Lesley J. McNair, observing the strikes, was killed by a bomb that landed short.  He was not alone. About 100 US service men were killed in this fashion on this day.

The Canadian II Corps launched Operation Spring in support of Operation Cobra to draw off German forces.

The British launched Operation Gaff, a mission designed to kill or kidnap Erwin Rommel.  The six man SAS unit would learn three days later that Rommel had been wounded and then advanced on foot to American lines.

The Battle of Auvere in Estonia ended with a German victory.  The  Battle of Verrières Ridge in France likewise did.

Goebbels was named "Reich Plenipotentiary for the Total War Effort".  He cancelled vacation leave for women involved in war related work on the same day.

A dismantled V2 rocket captured by the Polish Resistance was flown out of occupied Poland to London.

Last edition:

Monday, July 24, 1944. Marines land on Tinian.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Battle of Saint-Lô, boats and ships, Eastern Front, Marianas, Narva Offensive, Operation Cobra, Red Army, Royal Air Force, The Holocaust, Tinian, World War Two

Wednesday, June 14, 1944. Flag Day

 

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

For many years June 14 has been set aside as Flag Day, observed throughout the Nation as a day of earnest rededication to those high principles of humanity and civilization which constitute the foundations of the Republic.

It is not necessary to recite that the stars and stripes of our flag symbolize the patriotic and loyal unity of one hundred and thirty-five million people in a widely diversified land. Nor is it necessary to dwell on the struggles through which we have marched, under that flag, to our present great part in the world's affairs. What we are, and what we do, speak of these things far more eloquently than any words.

Ours is a flag of battles. On the ships of our Navy, in the vanguard of our soldiers and marines, it is carrying liberation and succor into stricken lands. It is carrying our message of promise and freedom into all comers of the world.

Ours is also a flag of peace. Under its protection, men have found refuge from oppression. Under its promise, men have found release from hatreds and prejudice, from exploitation and persecution. It is the flag under which men and women of varied heritage, creed, and race may work and live or, if need be, fight and die together as only free men and women can.

Let us then display our flag proudly, knowing that it symbolizes the strong and constructive ideals—the democratic ideals—which we oppose to the evil of our enemies. Let us display our flag, and the flags of all the United Nations which fight beside us, to symbolize our joint brotherhood, our joint dedication, under God, to the cause of unity and the freedom of men.

Now, Therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do hereby ask that on Flag Day, June 14, 1944, the people of our Nation honor especially the members of the armed forces—men and women equally—whose unfaltering devotion to our national ideals has given the Nation's flag a new and hopeful meaning for those struggling against oppression in lands still held by our enemies.

I direct the officials of the Federal Government and I request the officials of the State and local governments to have our colors displayed on all public buildings on Flag Day, and I urge the people of the United States on that day to fly the American flag from their homes, and to arrange, where feasible, for joint displays of the emblems of the freedom-loving United Nations without whose staunch collaboration we could not have hoped for victory.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington this 3rd day of May, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and forty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and sixty-eighth.

Signature of Franklin D. Roosevelt

FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT

By the President:

CORDELL HULL

Secretary of State.

Operation Perch concluded in failure.

The U.S. 9th Infantry Division, moving north from Utah, took Quinéville, where the regional German command had been located.

Charles de Gaulle visited the Normandy beachhead.  His touring of French cities proved to be a problem as the large gatherings were signals to the Germans of his presence.

The provisional French government located itself at Bayeux.

A RAF Mosquito shot down a V-1 over the English Channel, the first such victory.

The Battle of Porytowe Wzgórze between Polish and Soviet partisans and the Germans took place, leading to a partisan breakout of a surrounded position, but at high cost.

The British 8th Army captured Orvieto, Terni and Todi in Italy.

B-29s raided Japan for the first time. Four of the aircraft were lost on a 48 plane, ineffective, raid on the Yawata steel works.

The U.S. Navy continued to bombard Saipan and Tinian.

After an extended and costly period of time leading up to it, the U.S. 6th Infantry Division took Lone Tree Hill in New Guinea.

The USS Golet was sunk by ships and aircraft off of Honshu.

Eleanor Roosevelt opened the White House Conference on How Women May Share in Post-War Policy-Making.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, June 13, 1944. D+7. Heavy fighting in Normandy.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Armor, Battle of Bloody Gulch, Bernard Law Montgomery, Caen France, Carentan France, German Army, Operation Overlord, Operation Perch, Russo Ukrainian War, Waffen SS, Weapons, World War Two

Saturday, May 20, 1944. Dismantling a V-2

 US troops captured Gaeta and Itri.

Forces of the Polish resistance recovered a German V-2 rocket which they would dismantle and ship to the UK for analysis.  The rocket had landed near the Bug River in a test flight.

The Communist Party USA dissolved and voted to continue as the Communist Political Association.  Apparently it got over it, as there's still a Communist Party USA.  They did not run a candidate for the Oval Office in 1944.

Last prior edition:

Friday, May 19, 1944. Dewey take the GOP nomination.

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.

October 26, 1943 – PoWs Arrive in RMNP

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.