Tuesday, January 8, 1924. Telling Trotsky to pack.

Pravda reported that Leon Trotsky was ill, which savvy Kremlin watchers took, accurately, to mean that he'd be told to hit the skids soon.

Some kids hit the skates in Washington, D.C.

Tuesday, December 28, 1943. Battle of the Bay of Biscay.

The Battle of the Bay of Biscay was fought between the Royal Navy and the Kriegsmarine. Numerically outmatched, two British light cruisers fought a destroyer and a torpedo boat flotilla of the German Kriegsmarine, the British sank the T26, T25 and the destroyer Z27.  The German contingent included a combined eleven destroyers and torpedo boats and had been intended to escort the blockade runner Alsterufer, which had been sunk the day prior.

Mickey Rooney visited the USS Intrepid.

Mickey Rooney on board USS Intrepid (CV 11), December 28, 1943.

The Australian Army prevailed in the Battle of the Pimple in New Guinea.

The Soviet Union began the forcible relocation of 100,000 Kalmyk's to Siberia, having abolished the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic the prior day, as punishment for a Soviet conception that they had supported the Germans. Survivors were allowed to return in 1957 and the region granted autonomy again in 1958.

The Kalmyk's are the only traditionally Buddhist ethnic group in Europe, having relocated originally from Northern China.

The Battle of Ortuna ended in a Canadian victory.

U.S. Army Air Force pilot Lt. Douglas McDow and aviation cadet Clarence A. Thompson disappeared on a training mission after taking off from Douglas, Arizona.  The wreckage of their plane, and their remains, were not located until 1974.

Navy dance, Oregon.

Wednesday, December 19, 1923. Spreading revolution.

 The fastest expression of Revolution in Mexico was continuing on.

The newly elected Greek government wanted the royals of that country to leave, and on this day they did.  King George II and Queen Consort Elisabeth left Greece for Romania, where the Queen Consort was from.

They'd ultimately come back, both to the country, and their offices.

Marie Curie was granted an annual pension by France in the amount of 40,000 Francs.

The Soviet Union executed six prisoners at Solovki Prison Camp for protesting conditions on the Solovetsky Islands.

China executed Sun Meiyao, age 25, the bandit who masterminded the Lincheng Outrage.

Sunday, November 29, 1943. The Tehran Conference starts.

The Tehran Conference commenced in Iran between Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.

Tehran was chosen as Stalin was reluctant, for legitimate reasons, to leave the USSR.  Roosevelt had tried to have him travel to Cairo, but he had refused.

The USSR's Council of People's Commissars issued Resolution 1325 creating a Department of Russian Orthodox Christian Affairs.  It provided for a process to open new churches, and while that was progress, the process was a difficult one.

The Kolari Raid on Bougainville, which would end quickly in failure, was commenced by the Marines.

From Sarah Sundin's blog, today is the founding day for the Alamo Scouts. The independent unit of the 6th Army served in New Guinea.

Alamo Scouts in 1944.

Friday, November 23, 1923. Law and Radio.

President Coolidge was visited by members of Delta Theta Phi, a law fraternity.

On the same day, the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union was established.

Germany banned the Communist and Nazi parties.  A third party, the Nationalist Party, was also banned.

Gustav Stresemann lost a vote of confidence in the Reichstag and resigned as the  Chancellor of Germany.

Australian radio station 2SB went on the air, giving Australia regular radio programming for the first time.  It is still on the air as Radio Sydny.

Monday, November 12, 1923. The red flag.

The Soviet Union adopted a new flag.

The red represented the seas of blood the Communist were causing to flow in the country and the yellow hiding behind the fortress of the Red Army to avoid being overthrown. . .  well okay actually not.

The flag had always been red, that being the color of socialism every single place on Earth except for the very US, very recently, where some pinhead decided that would now be the symbol of conservatism, because his sense of history was impaired.  During the revolutionary period, the Communists had just used red flags with no symbols.  In 1922 they had adopted this hideous banner:

Starting in July, 1923, they'd strated experimengint with this:

That wasn't great, and even has sort of a Pokémon appearance to it.  They gave up on that, and went with the example above.

The red flag with the bordered hammer & sickle lasted only until April 18, 1924, when a flag closely approximating the final design was adopted:

The near final version was adopted on December 5, 1936, with the last version coming in as late as 1955.  The 36 variant and the 55 variant weren't really improvements on the 24 variant, in my view.

Interestingly, the flag of Nazi Germany was also mostly red.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of states to ban aliens from owning or leasing agricultural land.

Thursday, October 25, 1973. Ramping up to and backing down from war.

The US military was alerted that the Soviet Union was "planning to send a very substantial force" to intervene in the Yom Kippur War.  On the same day, perhaps ironically, Egypt and Israel accepted United Nations Security Council Resolution 340 creating a peacekeeping force between them that would omit US and Soviet troops.

The Local Government (Scotland) Act of 1973 was given royal assent.

Lebanon, which was not in a good place in relation to petroleum bans, provided that cars with even-numbered plates could only drive on even-numbered days, those with odd-numbered plates only on odd-numbered day.

Abebe Bikila (Amharic: ሻምበል አበበ ቢቂላ), Olympic marathon runner who won the1960 Summer Olympics in Rome marathon while running barefoot and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics marathon died as a result of an automobile accident sustained in 1969

Both his 60 and 64 runs were world records.

Wednesday, October 24, 1973. War Powers.

President Nixon vetoed the War Powers Act.  His veto was overridden on November 7.

A second ceasefire between Egypt and Israel went into effect in the Yom Kippur War.  By this point in the war Egyptian gains had been more than reversed.

At the same time, the Soviet Union threatened to deploy its troops to aid Syria, giving a warning to the US to that effect. As a result, the U.S. went to Defcon 3

Kojak premiered.

The day was the first UN World Development Information Day, which coincided with United Nations Day.

Mittwoch, October 24, 1923. Das Ende des Hamburger Aufstandes

Heinrich Vogeler: Hamburger Werftarbeiter

The Hamburg uprising came to an end in arrests of hundreds of Communists. Many more fled the city.  The end was precipitated by news that Hamburg, due to a courier error, was in a working class revolution all by itself.  The Communist Party, realizing what had occured, ordered its red troops to retreat.

Germany was in dire straights at the time, and a nationwide Communist revolution was not an impossibility, although the Moscow ordered uprising would likely have resulted in a civil war which the Red Army could not have joined due to Poland having defeated it earlier in the decade.

The collapse of the Communist uprising may have spared Germany from a thuggish totalitarian regime for almost a decade, as there's no reason to believe that the German Communists would have been any less bloody in victory than the Russian, Chinese, etc., ones were.

Wednesday, October 21, 1943. Indian declaration.

The Provisional Government of Azad Hind ("Free India") was declared with Subhas Chandra as president.  Its territory, such as it was, were those portions of Indian occupied by Japan.

It immediately declared it was entering the war on the Japanese side, an example of really not grasping the direction things were headed in, and in fact already well advanced towards.

On the same day, Japan began drafting high school and university students.

The Germans began liquidating the Minsk Ghetto as they were retreating from Belarus.

The RAF made a highly destructive raid on Kassel.

Algerian Jews, 140,000 in number were restored French citizenship, which had been restricted, along with the same for Algerian Arabs, on March 17, 1942 by Gen. Henri Giraud.  Arabs had to apply for restoration of their French citizenship.

Friday, October 19, 1973. The Oil Embargo spreads.

Libya announced that it would completely halt oil exports to the United States.  The U.S. Federal Reserve regards this as the beginning of the full Arab Oil Embargo.

President Nixon rejected the Appeals Court decision that he turn over tapes to Federal investigators.  Instead, he proposed to have them transcribed, and then reviewed by Democratic Senator John C. Stennis.  Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox rejected the offer and resigned the following day.

Solutions for the Yom Kippur War were being discussed on an international level.

Elizabeth II, on a trip to Australian, signed the Royal Styles and Titles Act and assumed the title of "Queen of Australia".  She had previously been "Elizabeth the second, by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom, Australia and her other realms and territories, queen, head of the Commonwealth.".

Monday, October 15, 1923. The Declaration of Forty Six. Teapot Dome Hearings begin.

The Yankees won the World Series, beating the Giants in game six 4 to 2.

Germany issued new currency, scheduled on the prewar gold backed Mark, but backed by land and businesses which were subject to a forced mortgage.

Forty Six members of the Soviet Communist Party signed a declaration regarding their concerns about the party.  It stated:

15 October 1923

Top Secret

TO THE POLITBURO OF THE CC OF THE RCP(b)

The extreme seriousness of the situation forces us (in the interests of our party, in the interests of the working class) to tell you openly that continuation of the policy of the majority of the Politburo threatens the entire party with grave misfortune. The economic and financial crisis beginning at the end of July this year, with all the political consequences flowing from it, including those within the party, has mercilessly revealed the inadequacy of the party leadership, both in the economic realm, and especially in the area of inner-party relations.

The haphazard, poorly thought through, and unsystematic decisions of the CC, which hasn't made ends meet in the economy, have led to a situation where, given the presence of undoubtedly major successes in the realm of industry, agriculture, finances and transport, - successes which were achieved by the economy of the nation spontaneously, not thanks to but in spite of the inadequate leadership, or, to be more precise, the absence of any leadership, - we are faced not only with the perspective of the halting of these successes, but with a severe crisis of the economy as a whole.

Chervonets 1922

We stand before the approaching break-down of the chervonets currency, which spontaneously turned into the basic currency before the liquidation of the budget deficit; we face a credit crisis in which the State Bank cannot, without the risk of severe shocks, finance not only industry and the trade of industrial goods, but even the purchase of grain for export; we face the cessation of the sale of industrial goods because of high prices, which can be explained, on the one hand, by the complete absence of planned, organizational leadership in industry, and on the other, by incorrect credit policy; we face the impossibility of carrying out the grain export program because of the inability to purchase grain; we face extremely low prices for food products, which are ruinous for the peasantry and which threaten massive cutbacks in agricultural production; we face the interruption of wage payments, which evokes the natural dissatisfaction of the workers; we face budget chaos, which directly creates chaos in the government apparatus; "revolutionary" means of cutbacks in drawing up the budget and new, unplanned cutbacks during its realization have gone from being temporary measures to a permanent phenomenon, which relentlessly jolts the state apparatus and, as a result of the absence of planning in the cutbacks - causes accidental and spontaneous shocks to it.

The Scissors: retail and wholesale prices of agricultural and industrial goods in the Soviet Union July 1922 to November 1923.

All these are elements of an economic, credit and financial crisis which has already begun. If we do not immediately take extensive, well thought out, planned and energetic measures, if the present lack of leadership continues, we face the possibility of unusually sharp economic shocks, inevitably bound up with domestic political complications and with the complete paralysis of our foreign activity and capability. And the latter, as everyone understands, is now more necessary than ever before; upon it depends the fate of the world revolution and the working class of all countries.

In precisely the same way, we see in the realm of inner-party relations the same incorrect leadership, paralyzing and demoralizing the party, which is particularly clearly felt during the crisis we are passing through.

We explain this not by the political incapability of the present party leaders; on the contrary, no matter how much we differ with them in evaluating the situation and in choosing the methods to change it, we think that today's leaders under any conditions couldn't help but be appointed by the party to leading posts in the workers' dictatorship. Rather we explain it by the fact that, under the guise of official unity, we actually have a one-sided selection of personnel, who can adapt to the views and sympathies of a narrow circle, and a one-sided direction of activity. As a result of the party leadership being distorted by such narrow considerations, the party has to a significant degree ceased to be that living, independent collective which is sensitive to the changes in living reality, precisely because it is connected with thousands of threads to this reality. Instead of this, we observe an ever progressing, barely disguised division of the party into a secretarial hierarchy and into "laymen", into professional party functionaries, chosen from above, and the other party masses, who take no part in social life.

This is a fact which is well known to every member of the party. Members of the party who are dissatisfied with this or that directive from the CC or even a provincial committee, or who are plagued by doubts, or who have noted "to themselves" various mistakes, things out of line or disorder of some sort, are afraid to speak about it at party gatherings; even worse, they are afraid to talk to one another unless they consider their interlocutor to be absolutely reliable, in the sense of not being "talkative"; free discussion within the party has virtually disappeared, party public opinion has been stifled. Now it is not the party, it is not the party's broad masses who nominate and choose provincial conferences and party congresses, which in turn nominate and choose provincial committees and the Central Committee of the RCP. On the contrary, it is the secretarial hierarchy, the party hierarchy which to an ever greater degree chooses the delegates to the conferences and congresses, which to an ever greater degree are becoming the executive conferences of this hierarchy. The regime which has been established within the party is absolutely intolerable; it is killing the independence of the party, replacing the party with a selected bureaucratic apparatus which functions smoothly during normal times, but which inevitably misfires during moments of crisis, and which threatens to become absolutely helpless when confronted with the serious events which lie ahead.

The situation which has developed is explained by the fact that the regime of fractional dictatorship within the party which unfolded after the Xth Congress has outlived itself. Many of us consciously chose not to resist such a regime. The about-face of 1921, followed by Lenin's illness, demanded, as far as some of us were concerned, a dictatorship within the party as a temporary measure. Other comrades from the very beginning reacted to it skeptically or opposed it. In any case, by the XIIth Party Congress this regime had become obsolete. It began to show the other side of the coin. The inner-party bonds began to weaken. The party began to wither. Extreme oppositional, even openly unhealthy, tendencies within the party began to take on an anti-party character, for there was no inner-party, comradely discussion of the most acute questions. And such a discussion could have revealed, without any difficulty, the unhealthy character of these tendencies, both to the party masses, and to the majority of their participants. As a result, we have seen the formation of illegal groupings, which draw party members away from the party, and we have witnessed the party losing contact with the working masses.

If the situation which has developed is not radically changed in the very near future, the economic crisis in Soviet Russia and the crisis of the fractional dictatorship within the party will strike heavy blows to the workers' dictatorship in Russia and to the Russian Communist Party. With such a burden on its shoulders, the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, and its leader, the RCP, cannot enter the field of the impending new international shocks in any other way than with the perspective of failure along the entire front of proletarian struggle. Of course, it would at first glance be easiest of all to resolve the question in the following sense: in view of the situation, there is not and there cannot be any place now for raising the questions of changing the party's course, of placing on the agenda new and complex tasks, etc., etc. But it is absolutely clear that such a point of view would be a position of officially closing one's eyes to the actual situation, since the entire danger lies in the fact that there is no genuine ideological or practical unity in the face of exceedingly complex domestic and foreign situations. In the party, the more silently and secretly the struggle is waged, the more ferocious it becomes. If we raise this question before the Central Committee, then it is precisely in order to find the swiftest and most painless resolution of the contradictions which are tearing the party apart, and to rapidly place the party on healthy foundations. We need real unity in discussions and in actions. The impending ordeals require the unanimous, fraternal, absolutely conscious, extremely energetic, and extremely unified activity of all the members of our party.

The fractional regime must be eliminated, and this must be done first of all by those who have created it; it must be replaced by a regime of comradely unity and inner-party democracy.

In order to realize all that has been outlined above, and to take the necessary measures to extricate ourselves from the economic, political and party crisis, we propose that the CC, as a first and most urgent step, call a conference of members of the CC with the most prominent and active party cadres, in order that the list of those invited include a number of comrades who have views concerning the situation which differ from the views of the majority of the CC.

E. Preobrazhensky

B. Breslav

L. Serebriakov

While not agreeing with certain points in this letter explaining the causes of the situation which has developed, and feeling that the party has come up against problems which cannot fully be resolved by the methods employed up until now, I fully endorse the final conclusion of the present letter.

A. Beloborodov 11 October 1923

I am in complete agreement with the proposals, although I differ with several points concerning motives.

A. Rosengolts

M. Alsky

In general, I share the thoughts of this appeal. The need for a direct and open approach to all our sore points is so overdue, that I fully support the proposal to call the indicated conference, in order to choose the practical ways capable of leading us out of the accumulated difficulties.

Antonov-Ovseenko

A. Venediktov

I. N. Smirnov

G. Piatakov

V. Obolensky (Osinsky)

N. Muralov

T. Sapronov

A. Goltsman

The situation in the party and the international situation are such that they demand the extraordinary concentration and unity of party forces more than ever before. While ascribing to the declaration, I view it exclusively as an attempt to create unity in the party and to prepare it for upcoming events. Naturally, at the present moment there can be no talk of inner-party struggle in any form whatsoever. It is necessary for the CC to soberly assess the situation and to adopt urgent measures to eliminate dissatisfaction within the party, as well as within the non-party masses.

12 October 1923. A. Goltsman

11 October 1923. V. Maksimovsky

L. Sosnovsky

Danishevsky

P. Mesyatsev

G. Khorechko

I do not agree with a number of assessments in the first part of the declaration; I do not agree with a number of characterizations of the inner-party situation. At the same time I am deeply convinced that the state of the party demands the adopting of radical measures, for things are not well in the party at the present time. I fully share the practical proposal.

A. Bubnov 11 October 1923

A. Voronsky

V. Smirnov

E. Bosh

I. Byk

V. Kosior

F. Lokatskov

I am in complete agreement with the evaluation of the economic situation. I consider the weakening of the political dictatorship at the present moment to be dangerous, but things must be aired out. I find a conference to be absolutely necessary.

Kaganovich

Drobnis

P. Kovalenko

A. E. Minkin

V. Yakovleva

I am in complete agreement with the practical proposals.

B. Eltsin

I sign with the same reservations as comrade Bubnov.

M. Levitin

I sign with the same reservations as Bubnov, sharing neither the form, nor the tone, which all the more convinces me to agree with the practical part of the given declaration.

I. Poliudov

O. Shmidel

V. Vaganian

I. Stukov

A. Lobanov

R. Farbman

S. Vasilchenko

Mikh. Zhakov

A. Puzakov

N. Nikolaev

Since during recent times I have been somewhat removed from the work of the party centers, I abstain from the judgements of the two leading paragraphs of the introductory part; I agree with the rest.

Averin

I am in agreement with the part outlining the economic and political situation of the country. I feel that in the part which depicts the inner-party situation, a certain exaggeration has been allowed. It is absolutely necessary to immediately take measures to preserve the unity of the party.

M. Boguslavsky

I am not fully in agreement with the first part, which speaks about the economic situation of the country; the latter is indeed very serious and demands great attention, but up until now the party has not advanced people who would have been able to lead better than those who have been leading until now. Regarding the question of the inner-party situation, I feel that there is a significant portion of truth in everything which has been said, and I consider it necessary to take emergency measures.

F. Dudnik

Most of them would end up with bullets in the back of their heads during Stalin's long reign.

Jal P. Bapasola, Rustom B. Bhumgara and Adi B. Hakim set out from Bombay with the goal of bicycling around the world, which they would achieve by March 18, 1928.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Public Lands and Surveys began hearings on California and Teapot Dome oil leases.

Equine transport, Ireland, October 15, 1923.

Wednesday, October 10, 1973. Vice President Agnew resigns.

Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned as Vice President and then, on the same day, plead no contest to income tax evasion, this baack in the day when such accusations would doom your position in office.

Angew was the son of a Greek immigrant father and an American mother of English background.  Mixed marriages were unusual for those of Greek ethnicity in the first place and even more unusually, he was raised as an Episcopalian rather than as Greek Orthodox.  He served in the Army during World War Two and entered politics thereafter.

His tax troubles lead Maryland to disbar him as "morally obtuse", back when there was such a thing as a state bar that would disbar somebody for being morally obtuse.  He died in 1996.

The USSR began airlifting military equipment to Egypt and Syria.

The Senate passed the War Powers Act.  It'd be vetoed, but Congress over road the veto.

Famed economist Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises died in New York at age 92.

Friday, October 1, 1943. The Germans depart, and destroy, Naples.

The U.S. 5th Army entered Naples.  The Germans burned the University of Naples and the Teatro di San Carlo on the way out.

German wartime poster attempting to recruit Italians to an SS formation.

The German appeal to the Italians didn't seem to be well calculated.

Hitler ordered Kesselring to hold a line south of Rome.

As a total aside, it was this date in 1943 that the German police and the Waffen SS adopted the M43 field cap, the famous billed cap that was patterned on the Bergmütze that had long been worn by German alpine troops. A similar hat had long been in Finnish use, nicknamed the "blood ladle".  German and Austrian alpine troops still wear a variant of it, as do many German hunters.

A very practical cap, the design had spread from mountain troops to the regular German Heer in a variant for North Africa, early versions of which had the ear flaps fixed in place, as some variants still do (including a variant now used as the Ukrainian field cap), but which the later versions allowed for them to be folded down, as with the Bergmütze.  The Afrika Korps version had a longer bill, which was retained for the M43.  When adopted by the Heer, it replaced the flat cap (garrison cap) which had been adopted in the 1930s.  The flat cap is a fairly useless cap, and the Bergmütze was a very practical one.  

As Waffen SS mountain units had already adopted the Bergmütze, they were allowed to fix the Edelweiss cap badge to their caps on this day, that being a symbol previously used only by the Heer.

Sarah Sundin noted the liberation of Naples and another item:

Today in World War II History—October 1, 1943: In Italy, US Fifth Army and British X Corps enter Naples. US Third War Loan Drive ends, raising $19 billion (quota $15 billion).

W. Averll Harriman was named Ambassador to the USSR

September 27, 1923. Disaster at Cole Creek.

Today In Wyoming's History: September 27: 1923  Thirty railroad passengers were killed when a CB&Q train wrecked at the Cole Creek Bridge, which had been washed out due to a flood, in Natrona County.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

It was a horrific event.

Flooding had taken out the railroad bridge over Cole Creek near Casper Wyoming, which was unknown to the railroad.   The night train to Denver approached the bridge on a blind curve, and the headlights detected its absence too late to stop the train.  Half of the people on the train were killed.

It's the worst disaster in Wyoming's railroad history.

Italian forces withdrew from Corfu.

Bulgarian troops took Ferdinand, ending the September Uprising.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court allowed a referendum to proceed to recall the legislature to take up impeachment.

German Army Maj. Bruno Buchrucker sent out an order directing 4,500 men of the paramilitary Black Reichswehr to assemble to overthrow the government on September 30.

The Soviet Union deported anarchists Senya Fleshin and Molly Steimer to Germany after they went on a hunger strike.

Col. M.C. Buckey & Laddee Buck, the the half-brother of President Warren Harding’s Laddie Boy, who belonged to the Coolidge family. Mrs. Coolidge changed his name to Paul. September 27, 1923.

Saturday, September 18, 1943. German evacuations and atrocities.

The Germans executed Plan Asche, evacuating 25,800 German troops from Sardinia to Corsica.

This yielded the island's important airfields to the Allies.

The Germans began mass deportation of Jews from Paris and the liquidation of Jews in Minsk commenced.

The British occupied the Aegean islands of Simi, Stampalia and Icaria.

The Red Army took Soviet forces capture Priluki, Lubny and Romodan  Pavlograd, Krasnograd, Pologi and Nogaysk.

Sarah Sundin, on her blog, notes:

Today in World War II History—September 18, 1943: US opens Central Pacific offensive as Seventh Air Force Navy Task Force 15 aircraft begin bombing Tarawa, Makin, and Apemama in the Gilbert Islands.

Sunday, September 12, 1943. The Germans spring Mussolini

Italian Social Republic poster.

German commandos under the command of Otto Skorzeny rescued Benito Mussolini from Italian imprisonment at the Campo Imeriale Hotel in the Abruzzi Mountains.  A less than enthusiastic Mussolini was spirited away as a passenger on a Fieler Storch after the combined glider/paratrooper raid.

The raid allowed Mussolini to be installed in a puppet fascist state called the Italian Social Republic, which would not have a happy end for Il Duce.  While in photos of this event, he's all smiles, he was a shadow of his former bombastic self by this time.  His fascistic state embedded within a monarchy had been destroyed and was going to be defeated no matter what was done at this point.  Italian troops were now fighting the Germans, although not terribly effectively.  A partisan movement was developing. The sympathies of the Italian people had gone over to an Allied peace.

The raid itself, while regarded as quite a feat of arms, emphasized the sad state of the Axis war effort itself by this point.  Mussolini could be regarded as nothing other than a puppet with an Axis alliance that was basically down to one power and associates.  Some of those associates, such as Romania and Finland, had concluded the Axis cause was doomed and were looking for a way out of the war.

Patriarch Sergius was installed as the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, the first such formal installation since the Russian Revolution.

Tuesday, September 7, 1943. Verbrannte Erde

Heinrich Himmler issued his "scorched earth" order requiring that German forces completely denude areas in the East they were retreating from in every sense.

German recruiting poster aimed at the Dutch. Around 20,000 to 25,000 Dutch nationals joined the SS, the largest group of foreign nationals, outside of Soviet citizens, to volunteer to serve Germany.

Scorched early orders are surprisingly common in warfare, and are designed to prevent an advancing army from using a conquered area's resources.  More than most armies of World War Two, both the Germans and the Soviets depended on local resources. For some areas in the East this would be the second time they'd been subjected to this during the war, as the Soviets also practiced it, and for Ukraine, it was part of an ongoing series of disasters afflicting residents of the region.

Sarah Sundin notes for this day:

Today in World War II History—September 7, 1943: German 17th Army begins evacuating the Kuban bridgehead in southern Russia as the Soviets advance. Actor Orson Welles marries actress Rita Hayworth.

I honestly didn't know that Welles and Hayworth had ever been married. 

Saturday, September 4, 1943. British advance in Italy, Australians land in New Guinea, Russian Orthodox services return.

The British took Reggio Calabria and San Giovanni de Gerace in Italy.

The Australian 9th Division landed on New Guinea at Lae.  They were the first Allied forces to land on the island since the Japanese had taken it early in the war.

Joseph Stalin hosted the acting Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church and two Metropolitans.  No installed Patriarch was in place.  In the meeting, he offered to open up religious services if the Church recognized the legitimacy of the Soviet state and abstained from criticizing its policies.  They agreed, and the end of restrictions on religious services was announced the following day.

Among the concessions granted by Stalin were the permission to open the Moscow Theological Seminary and Academy, the release of imprisoned clerics, the return of some church property.  The Church was put under the control, however, of Soviet secret services.

TBF’s returning o the USS Ranger, September 4, 1943.

Thursday, August 26, 1943. War bond baseball.

$800,000,000 worth of War Bonds were sold for an exhibition baseball game that features seven of the then twelve living members of the Baseball Hall of Fame; Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, Honus Wagner, Eddie Collins, George Sisler, and Connie Mack as the manager.

The event also featured entertainment from James Cagney, Ethel Merman, Cab Calloway, Milton Berle, Joe E. Lewis, Carole Landis and Ralph Bellamy.

Babe Ruth hit his last home run during the game, more of which can be read about here:

1943 All Pacific Recreation Fund – Service All-Stars vs Los Angeles & Hollywood

The 800 million dollars was equivalent to over 10.7 billion dollars in current funds.

The Germans occupied the Alpine passes with Italy in anticipation of the Italians surrendering.

The USSR recognized Egypt.

The US, Canada and British governments give limited recognition to the Free French Committee of National Liberation.