The final phase of the destruction and reoccupation of the Warsaw Ghetto commenced under SS Polizeifuhrer Jürgen Stroop.
Stroop was an unrepentant Nazi and was sentenced to death in a post-war war crimes trial in 1947, and then handed over to Poland, which also convicted him. He was executed in Poland in 1952.
233 Belgian Jews bound for Auschwitz escaped when a raid by three members of the Belgian resistance attacked the train. 118 were able to ultimately escape.
Fourteen members of the White Rose resistance group are found guilty of crimes against the German state and executed.
The General Directorate of Counterintelligence ("SMERSH" СМЕРШ) of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR came into existence, but secretly, and maybe actually earlier. It was a counterintelligence directorate. Like most Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence agencies, it was sinister and scary by its nature, and average citizens of the USSR had reason to fear it, a fact that was compounded by circumstances inside contested and occupied regions of the Soviet Union which caused average Soviet citizens to collaborate with the Germans in large and small ways.
The British government removed the restriction on ringing church bells that had been put in effect when the UK was under threat of invasion. The move marked the passing of that phase of the war.
RCAF P-40 being recovered at Fort Greeley Kodiak Island, Alaska, on this day. It had overshot the runway.
The Red Army broke the encirclement of Leningrad. Zhukov was accordingly promoted to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union on the same day.
The relief came with the capture of the city of the somewhat ironically named, given its very German character, Shlisselburg (Шлиссельбу́рг,) or, in German: Schlüsselburg. Given the nature of the region, we'll note its name in Finnish: Pähkinälinna and Swedish: Nöteborg. The city dates to 1323 when a fort was built at the location by Grand Prince Yury of Moscow, in his capacity as Prince of Novgorod on behalf of the Novgorod Republic in 1323. In 1348 Swedish King Magnus Eriksson took the fortress. It was retaken by the Novgorodians in 1351. In 1478 the Novgorod Republic was absorbed by Muscovy and a new fortress was constructed there. In 1611 the fortress was taken by the Swedes again. The Russians took it back in 1702, at which time Peter the Great renamed it Shlisselburg, a Russian aliteration of the German word "key fortress", which is what Peter was trying to name it, in German.
It's just to the west of St. Petersburg, then called Leningrad, on Lake Lagoda.
Zhukov was lucky, and the Soviet Union accordingly lucky, to have been stationed in the Soviet East during the purges, or he likely would have been killed with so many others. He was well liked by his superior and protected by him, with his superior likewise remaining in Stalin's fickle favor while so many else were killed in a sea of blood that remains almost incapable of being grasped.
The first Warsaw Ghetto Uprising occurred when the Germans began their second deportation from the ghetto. Members of the Jewish resistance organization Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ZOB) took on the SS with pistols and disrupted the deportation sufficiently to halt it after four days of fighting. ZOB was lead by Mordechai Anielewicz who was only about 24 at the time.
In the U.S. War Food Order No. 1 went into effect requiring white bread be enriched with niacin, riboflavin, thiamin and iron, something that became standard by law in some states, and simply by custom generally, thereafter.
The Lockheed Constellation flew for the first time on this day in 1942.
The plane was a major leap forward in transport aviation and reflected a remarkable advancement in which the US, which already was fielding the best transport aircraft in the sky, the DC3/C47, was making it effectively obsolete.
Heinrich Himmler visited the Warsaw Ghetto and came away irate that 40,000 Jews remained residents there. He ordered SS Colonel Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg to wipe the ghetto out by February 15.
On the same day, Jews in the Khmelnytskyi Oblast in Ukraine were removed by the Germans from the towns of Ostropol, Krasyliv, Hrytsiv and Syniava and shot.
There's some tragic irony here that these events would happen on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.
Postage stamp commemorating the phrase coined in Order 227.
Stalin issued his "not one step back" order in the face of advancing Axis forces near Stalingrad. The order, which was actually quite lengthy and detailed, read in part:
Moscow, Nr. 227, July 28, 1942
The enemy throws new forces to the front without regard to heavy losses and penetrates deep into the Soviet Union, seizing new regions, destroying our cities and villages, and violating, plundering and killing the Soviet population. Combat goes on in region Voronezh, near Don, in the south, and at the gates of the Northern Caucasus. The German invaders penetrate toward Stalingrad, to Volga and want at any cost to trap Kuban and the Northern Caucasus, with their oil and grain. The enemy already has captured Voroshilovgrad, Starobelsk, Rossosh, Kupyansk, Valuyki, Novocherkassk, Rostov on Don, half Voronezh. Part of the troops of the Southern front, following the panic-mongers, have left Rostov and Novocherkassk without severe resistance and without orders from Moscow, covering their banners with shame.
The population of our country, who love and respect the Red Army, start to be discouraged in her and lose faith in the Red Army, and many curse the Red Army for leaving our people under the yoke of the German oppressors, and itself running east.
Some stupid people at the front calm themselves with talk that we can retreat further to the east, as we have a lot of territory, a lot of ground, a lot of population and that there will always be much bread for us. They want to justify the infamous behaviour at the front. But such talk is a falsehood, helpful only to our enemies.
Each commander, Red Army soldier and political commissar should understand that our means are not limitless. The territory of the Soviet state is not a desert, but people - workers, peasants, intelligentsia, our fathers, mothers, wives, brothers, children. The territory of the USSR which the enemy has captured and aims to capture is bread and other products for the army, metal and fuel for industry, factories, plants supplying the army with arms and ammunition, railways. After the loss of Ukraine, Belarus, Baltic republics, Donetzk, and other areas we have much less territory, much fewer people, bread, metal, plants and factories. We have lost more than 70 million people, more than 800 million pounds of bread annually and more than 10 million tons of metal annually. Now we do not have predominance over the Germans in human reserves, in reserves of bread. To retreat further - means to waste ourselves and to waste at the same time our Motherland.
Therefore it is necessary to eliminate talk that we have the capability endlessly to retreat, that we have a lot of territory, that our country is great and rich, that there is a large population, and that bread always will be abundant. Such talk is false and parasitic, it weakens us and benefits the enemy, if we do not stop retreating we will be without bread, without fuel, without metal, without raw material, without factories and plants, without railways.
This leads to the conclusion, it is time to finish retreating. Not one step back! Such should now be our main slogan.
The order went on to require unit commanders to form penal battalions and blocking detachments to block, detain, and shoot the non-compliant.
Jewish youth organizations formed the first Jewish combat organizations in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Yugoslav Partisans and Croatian forces started to fight each other at the Bosnian town of Kupres, giving an example of the odd wars within the war feature of the World War Two in the East.
Arthur "Bomber" Harris made a radio broadcast to the Germans, warning them they were about to face around the clock bombing and the only solution to preventing this was to overthrow the Nazis and make peace.
Spike Jones and his City Slickers released their song Der Fuehrer's Face.
Disney would use the song as the basis for a cartoon the following year.
This actually took place only along the Atlantic seaboard at first. It was actually a measure taken to save rubber, rather than gasoline.
The Germans reached the great bend of the Don, near Stalingrad.
It was a very active day of combat at El Alamein. Among the Australians, was Private Stan Gurney, who was killed there in an action that resulted in a posthumous Victoria's Cross. The citation stated:
No.WX.9858 Private Arthur Stanley Gurney, Australian Military Forces. For gallant and unselfish bravery in silencing enemy machine-gun posts by bayonet assault at Tell El Eisa on 22 July 1942, thus allowing his Company to continue the advance.
During an attack on strong German positions in the early morning of 22 July 1942, the Company to which Private Gurney belonged was held up by intense machine-gun fire from posts less than 100 yards ahead, heavy casualties being inflicted on our troops, all the officers being killed or wounded.
Grasping the seriousness of the situation and without hesitation, Private Gurney charged the nearest enemy machine-gun post, bayoneted three men and silenced the post. He then continued on to a second post, bayoneted two men and sent out a third as a prisoner. At his stage a stick grenade was thrown at Private Gurney which knocked him to the ground. He rose again, picked up his rifle and charged a third post using the bayonet with great vigour. He then disappeared from view, and later his body was found in an enemy post.
By this single-handed act of gallantry in the face of a determined enemy, Private Gurney enabled his Company to press forward to its objective, inflicting heavy losses upon the enemy. The successful outcome of this engagement was almost entirely due to Private Gurney's heroism at the moment when it was needed.
At least for the time being, anyhow. It would of course be taken by the Germans in 1939, and then by the Soviets at the end of World War Two, who would create a Communist government that would endure until Poland's self liberation heralded the beginning of the end of Communism.
It was also a primary election Tuesday, just as tomorrow will be, in Wyoming.
