Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

February 2, 1942
Quisling becomes prime minister of puppet regime in Norway

On this day, Vidkun Quisling, a collaborator with the German occupiers of Norway, is established as prime minister of a puppet government.
On April 9, 1940, German warships entered major Norwegian ports, from Narvik to Oslo, deployed thousands of German troops, and occupied Norway. German forces were able to slip through the mines Britain had laid around Norwegian ports because local garrisons were ordered to allow the Germans to land unopposed. The order came from a Norwegian commander, Vidkun Quisling, who was loyal to Norway's pro-fascist former foreign minister.
Hours after the invasion, the German minister in Oslo demanded Norway's surrender. The Norwegian government refused, and the Germans responded with a parachute invasion. In September 1940, "commissarial counselors" in the control of the Germans replaced Norway's administrative council. Chief of these "counselors" was Quisling, who was given dictatorial powers and who proceeded to earn the enmity of Norwegians as he sent thousands of people to German concentration camps and executed members of the resistance movement.
On February 1, 1942, the commissarial counselors formed a formal government loyal to Germany, with Quisling as its prime minister. When Germany finally surrendered in May 1945, Quisling was arrested by Norway's Allied liberators, tried for treason, and executed. His name continues to be a synonym for "traitor."

[Peter Clare]

2 February 1943: Germans surrender at Stalingrad

The Soviet Government has announced the final defeat of the German 6th Army at the port of Stalingrad, in southern Russia.

A statement late this evening said: "Our forces have now completed the liquidation of the German Fascist troops encircled in the area of Stalingrad.
"The last centre of enemy resistance in the Stalingrad area has thus been crushed."
The declaration brings to an end five months of heavy fighting for the city. The battle has been described as among the most terrible of the war so far.
Another 45,000 German soldiers have been taken prisoner in the last two days, bringing the total in custody to over 90,000 officers and men.
The prisoners are understood to be in an appalling condition after enduring months of starvation in temperatures down to -30°C.
They are the remains of the 330,000-strong German force sent to take Stalingrad.
The rest - about a quarter of a million men - have died, as many from illness, starvation and frostbite as from the fighting itself.
The 6th Army has been trapped inside the city, completely surrounded by the Red Army, for almost three months during the harshest part of the Russian winter.
They have had to rely totally on air drops by the Luftwaffe for food.
Atrocious weather conditions have reduced the amount getting through to just 90 tonnes a day - less than a third of what they needed.
The German commander of the 6th Army, Field-Marshal Friedrich Paulus, gave himself up two days ago.
He had been in a hopeless position since early December, when a last-ditch rescue attempt was driven back by Soviet troops.
He was given one earlier chance to surrender, on 8 January, by Soviet Regional Commander, Marshal Rokossovsky.
But Hitler repeated his order to the 6th Army that surrender would not be contemplated, and two days later the final Soviet offensive began to flush the Germans out of Stalingrad.
Paulus lost his last German-controlled airfield ten days later, on 22 January, and with it the last hope of any more regular supplies.
By 29 January the desperately weak 6th Army was split into two pockets of men.
The surrender of Field-Marshal Paulus brought the ordeal to an end for one of the groups. The defeat of the second remnant today closes at last one of the most horrific chapters of the war so far.

[Bodston]

Sunday 2 February 1941

Are German Aircraft Landing in Libya?
London; The British Reuters News Agency announced:
The German Luftwaffe has begun to operate on the Libyan Front. The attacking planes, which raided an advanced British position in Libya, could not be identified with certainty, but observers were convinced that they were German because of the style of the attack. Also, the planes did not appear to carry the standard Italian markings.

[Bodston]

Monday 2 February 1942

The Advance of the Afrika Panzer Army
The German Wehrmacht High Command announced:
Despite violent snowstorms, vigorous fighting has once again ensued in the southern sector of the Eastern Front.
In Cyrenaica, German troops of the Afrika Panzer Army have occupied Barce and El Abiar.

[Bodston]

Tuesday 2 February 1943

End Comes in Stalingrad
The German Wehrmacht High Command announced:
After an extremely heavy preliminary artillery barrage, an enemy force of overwhelmingly superior numbers has attacked the last bastion of the German defenders in Stalingrad, the tractor factory. During the night, after our heroically fighting troops had used up almost all their ammunition, the enemy succeeded in penetrating at several points and breaking up the defensive perimiter of XI Corps, which had been unbroken until then.

[Peter Clare]

U.S.A.T. DORCHESTER (February 3, 1943)
Ex-coastal luxury passenger ship of 5,649 tons converted to a troop carrier, sunk by torpedo from the U-223 (Kptlt. Karl-Jung Wächter). The Dorchester was bound for the American base at Nararssuck in Greenland from St. John's, Newfoundland, as part of Convoy SG-19. With 902 passengers and crew on board, the ship was attacked at 03.55hrs about 150 miles south of Cape Farewell. Of the passengers, most were US troops. In addition she carried 1,000 tons of cargo. Escort ships of the Greenland Patrol rescued 229 persons from the stricken vessel, 132 by the US Coast Guard cutter USCGC Escanaba, and another 97 rescued by a sister ship, the USCGC Comanche. In all, 672 souls were lost including 404 soldiers. Hundreds of dead bodies, kept afloat by their lifejackets, were picked up from the sea. Later, even the Escanaba fell victim to a German submarine, being torpedoed in the Belle Isle Straits with only two members of the crew surviving. On board the Dorchester were four Army chaplains of different denominations who helped distribute life jackets and help the injured. When the storage locker was empty they removed their own life jackets and handed them to the next man in line. As the ship went down, survivors in the water could see the four chaplains standing on the sloping deck, arms linked and praying while awaiting their fate. A special Medal for Heroism was authorized by Congress and along with the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Service Cross, were posthumously awarded to the four chaplains. The U-223 was sunk in the Mediterranean just north of Palermo, Sicily, on March 30, 1944, by depth from British destroyers. Twenty-three of her crew were killed but twenty-seven survived.

[Peter Clare]

February 3, 1944
U.S. troops capture the Marshall Islands

On this day, American forces invade and take control of the Marshall Islands, long occupied by the Japanese and used by them as a base for military operations.
The Marshalls, east of the Caroline Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, had been in Japanese hands since World War I. Occupied by the Japanese in 1914, they were made part of the "Japanese Mandated Islands" as determined by the League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles, which concluded the First World War, stipulated certain islands formerly controlled by Germany--including the Marshalls, the Carolines, and the Marianas (except Guam)--had to be ceded to the Japanese, though "overseen" by the League. But the Japanese withdrew from the League in 1933 and began transforming the Mandated Islands into military bases. Non-Japanese, including Christian missionaries, were kept from the islands as naval and air bases--meant to threaten shipping lanes between Australia and Hawaii--were constructed.
During the Second World War, these islands, as well as others in the vicinity, became targets of Allied attacks. The U.S. Central Pacific Campaign began with the Gilbert Islands, south of the Mandated Islands; U.S. forces conquered the Gilberts in November 1943. Next on the agenda was Operation Flintlock, a plan to capture the Marshall Islands.
Adm. Raymond Spruance led the 5th Fleet from Pearl Harbor on January 22, 1944, to the Marshalls, with the goal of getting 53,000 assault troops ashore two islets: Roi and Namur. Meanwhile, using the Gilberts as an air base, American planes bombed the Japanese administrative and communications center for the Marshalls, which was located on Kwajalein, an atoll that was part of the Marshall cluster of atolls, islets, and reefs.
By January 31, Kwajalein was devastated. Repeated carrier- and land-based air raids destroyed every Japanese airplane on the Marshalls. By February 3, U.S. infantry overran Roi and Namur atolls. The Marshalls were then effectively in American hands--with the loss of only 400 American lives.

[Bodston]

Wednesday 3 February 1943

The Red Army High Command reported in a special announcement:
Yesterday our Don Front troops completed the final liquidation of the Fascist troops encircled in the cauldron of Stalingrad. The Red Army has broken the resistance of the enemy surrounded north of Stalingrad and forced him to surrender. The last seat of enemy resistance in the Stalingrad area has been annihilated.

Daily Keynote from the Reich Press Chief
3 February 1943:
The heroic struggle for Stalingrad has come to an end. . . In the light and spirit of the OKW special announcement expected today, the German press must issue an appreciation of this moving event, which outshines the greatest feats of arms in all of world history, and show this exalted example of supreme heroism and of the will to make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of victory as a sacred beacon to the German people.

[Peter Clare]

February 4, 1945
The Yalta Conference commences

On this day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Premier Joseph Stalin meet at Yalta, in the Crimea, to discuss and plan the postwar world--namely, to address the redistribution of power and influence. It is at Yalta that many place the birth of the Cold War.
It had already been determined that a defeated Germany would be sliced up into zones occupied by the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, the principal Allied powers. Once in Germany, the Allies would see to the deconstruction of the German military and the prosecution of war criminals. A special commission would also determine war reparations.
But the most significant issue, the one that marked the conference in history, was Joseph Stalin's designs on Eastern Europe. (Stalin's demands had started early with his desire that the location of the conference be at a Black Sea resort close to the USSR. He claimed he was too ill to travel far.) Roosevelt and Churchill attempted to create a united front against the Soviet dictator; their advisers had already mapped out clear positions on Europe and the creation and mission of the United Nations. They propounded the principles of the Atlantic Charter, formulated back in August 1941, that would ensure "life, liberty, independence, and religious freedom" for a free Europe and guarantee that only those nations that had declared war on the Axis powers would gain entry into the new United Nations.
Stalin agreed to these broad principles (although he withdrew his promise that all 16 Soviet republics would have separate representation within the United Nations), as well as an agreement that the Big Three would help any nation formerly in the grip of an Axis power in the establishment of "interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population...and the earliest possible establishment through free elections of governments responsive to the will of the people." Toward that end, Roosevelt and Churchill gave support to the Polish government-in-exile in London; Stalin demurred, insisting that the communist-dominated and Soviet-loyal Polish Committee of National Liberation, based in Poland, would govern. The only compromise reached was the inclusion of "other" political groups in the committee. As for Poland's new borders, they were discussed, but no conclusions were reached.
The conference provided the illusion of more unanimity than actually existed, especially in light of Stalin's reneging on his promise of free elections in those Eastern European nations the Soviets occupied at war's end. Roosevelt and Churchill had believed Stalin's promises, primarily because they needed to--they were convinced the USSR's support in defeating the Japanese was crucial. In fact, the USSR played much less of a role in ending the war in the East than assumed. But there was no going back. A divisive "iron curtain," in Churchill's famous phrase, was beginning to descend in Europe.

[Peter Clare]

WEDNESDAY, 4 FEBRUARY 1942

SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA- HQ 7th Bombardment Group (Heavy), 9th Bombardment Squadron (Heavy), and 88th Reconnaissance Squadron begin a movement from Brisbane, Australia to Karachi, India. The 9th is operating from Jogjakarta, Java with B-17's; the 88th is operating from Hickam Field, Territory of Hawaii with B-17's.

New Guinea - Six Japanese flying boats bombed Port Moresby 3-3:30am, although no great damage was done this set the stage for the future living conditions in town. One man is KIA.