Monday, July 19, 1943. Hitler haranges Mussolini, Allies bomb Rome.

Benito Mussolini met with Adolf Hitler at Feltre.  The purpose of the meeting was an Italian withdrawal from the war, but Mussolini apparently never brought it up.  Instead, the discussion turned to forming a defensive line across the Italian peninsula upon the inevitable upcoming Allied invasion, a strategy which ignored Italy's long coasts and the fact that the Italian Army was beaten in the field in Sicily, and the Italian people rapidly switching their allegiances towards the Allies.  It did, however, take advantage of Italy having rough terrain and only being 75 miles wide, for the most part.

It further was never more than a plan for a defensive withdrawal, with a defensive war not being winnable.

U.S. troops advancing in Sicily, July 19, 1923.

The meeting featured a long harangue by Hitler on the many virtues of war which Mussolini, well aware the war was lost, mostly endured silently, a fact aided by his poor understanding of German.  Hitler, for his part, had already ordered his General Staff to make plans for the occupation of Italy in the event of an Italian surrender or armistice.  Mussolini, however, assured the Germans that the Italians would continue fighting on.

The Allies bombed Rome.  The raid went on for two hours.

Pope Pius XII left the Vatican for the first time since 1940 to observe the bombing damage.  He attempted to comfort the wounded, resulting in his white soutaine being bloodstained. A statue in his honor was later erected on the location.  

The Pope's actions became a symbol of opposition to the violence of war. The bombing itself, however, shocked Romans, even though it was directed at military targets (rail yards) of the era.  The bombing helped accelerate the already increasing Italian abandonment of Mussolini.

The War Department ordered that difficult German POWs and those with Nazi ideology be kept at Camp Alva in Alva, Oklahoma.

Konzentrationslager Warschau was opened in Warsaw.

Shirley Slade, a WASP pilot trainee, although the WASPs were at that time the WAFS, appeared on the cover of Life Magazine in a photo that would go on to have cult status.  After training, Slade ferried Bell P-39 Airacobras and Martin B-26 Marauders, the latter of which was a notoriously difficult aircraft nicknamed "The Widowmaker".  She moved to Chicago after the war and married Major William Berkeley, an Air Force veteran and later Eugene "Gene" Lafitte Teer.

She passed away in 2000 at age 79. 

The first New York Fashion Week was held, with the object of giving women an alternative to French fashions.

The Army's news flyer warned troops of potential German use of poison gas, something the Germans did not, in fact, resort to in World War Two.

Wednesday, May 19, 1943. Penicillin.

The Army Medical Corps cleared the release of penicillin.  It would be administered for the first time two days later to an unidentified soldier.

Penicillin's possibilities had been known for fifteen years, but it wasn't until 1942 when a particularly potent strain of the mold it is from was discovered in Peoria, Illinois, the critical sample of which was donated by an unknown woman who brought in a moldy antelope.

Churchill addressed Congress.

The speech is a famous one, but I cannot find a written transcript of it, which is unusual for his speeches.  There are some well known exerts of it, including:

Sure I am that this day, now, we are the masters of our fate. That the task which has been set us is not above our strength. That its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our cause, and an unconquerable willpower, salvation will not be denied us.

And:

All this gives the lie to the Nazi and Fascist talk that the parliamentary democracies are incapable of waging an effective war. We will punish them with further examples.

Joseph Goebbels declared Berlin to be free of Jews.

He was incorrect.

Berlin had certainly suffered an enormous decline in its Jewish population, and there had been a large effort to detain and expel (to fatal consequences) Jewish Berliners in the Spring of 1943.  8,600 Jews were expelled in the early months of hte year.  However, 6,790 Mischlinge (half Jews), members of Mischehen (mixed marriages), Jewish widows and widowers of non-Jews, and Jewish citizens of neutral countries or German allies still resided in the city in the summer of the year.  Over the course of the war, 55,000 Jewish Berliners would be reduced down, however, to only about 1,000 by the war's end.

The U-954 was sunk off of Greenland, taking down with it Peter Dönitz, a son of the head of the German Navy, Karl Dönitz.  Of Dönitz's three children, only his daughter would survive the war, dying in 1990, outliving her father by only a decade.  His son Klaus had been withdrawn from combat duties under a Nazi policy regarding the deaths of other sons of leading figures, but was killed on an E-boat after persuading friends to allow him to ride along on a raid.

Pope Pius XII wrote to Franklin Roosevelt

Your Excellency,

Almost four years have now passed since, in the name of the God the Father of ail and with the utmost earnestness at Our command, We appealed (August 24, 1939) to the responsible leaders of peoples to hold back the threatening avalanche of international strife and to settle their differences in the cairn, serene atmosphere of mutual understanding. «Nothing was to be lost by peace; everything might be lost by war». And when the awful powers of destruction broke loose and swept over a large part of Europe, though Our Apostolic Office places Us above and beyond ail participation in armed conflicts, We did not fail to do what We could to keep out of the war nations not yet involved and to mitigate as far as possible for millions of innocent men, women and children, defenceless against the circumstances in which they have to live, the sorrows and sufferings that would inevitably follow along the constantly widening swath of desolation and death cut by the machines of modern warfare.

The succeeding years unfortunately have seen heart-rending tragedies increase and multiply; yet We have not for that reason, as Our conscience bears witness, given over Our hopes and Our efforts in behalf of the afflicted members of the great human family everywhere. And as the Episcopal See of the Popes is Rome, from where through these long centuries they have ruled the flock entrusted to them by the divine Shepherd of souls, it is natural that amid all the vicissitudes of their complex and chequered history the faithful of Italy should d feel themselves bound by more than ordinary ties to this Holy See, and have learned to look to it for protection and comfort especially in hours of crisis.

In such an hour today their pleading voices reach Us carried on their steady confidence that they will not go unanswered. Fathers and mothers, old and young every day are appealing for Our help; and We, whose paternal heart beats in unison with the sufferings and sorrows of ail mankind, cannot but respond with the deepest feelings of Our soul to such insistent prayers, lest the poor and humble shall have placed their confidence in Us in vain.

And so very sincerely and confidently We address Ourselves to Your Excellency, sure that no one will recognize more clearly than the Chief Executive of the great American nation the voice of humanity that speaks in these appeals to Us, and the affection of a father that inspires Our response.

The assurance given to Us in 1941 by Your Excellency’s esteemed Ambassador Mr. Myron Taylor and spontaneously repeated by him in 1942 that «America has no hatred of the Italian people» gives Us confidence that they will be treated with consideration and understanding; and if they have had to mourn the untimely death of dear ones, they will yet in their present circumstances be spared as far as possible further pain and devastation, and their many treasured shrines of Religion and Art, – precious heritage not of one people but of ail human and Christian civilization – will be saved from irreparable ruin. This is a hope and prayer very dear to Our paternal heart, and We have thought that its realization could not be more effectively ensured than by ex- pressing it very simply to Your Excellency.

With heartfelt prayer We beg God’s blessings on Your Excellency and the people of the United States.

Tuesday, May 18, 1943. Reaching out.

The Allies commenced bombing Pantelleria, 100 miles from Tunis and 60 miles off of Sicily.  

On a clear day, Tunisia is actually visible from Pantelleria.  The island, while it has had some occasional human residences since pre historic times, has been continually occupied since taken by the Carthaginians at the beginning of the 7th Century, B.C.

Pope Pius XII

Pope Pius XII appealed to Franklin Roosevelt to spare Rome from bombing.