Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

May 22, 1939
The Pact of Steel is signed; the Axis is formed

On this day in 1939, Italy and Germany agree to a military and political alliance, giving birth formally to the Axis powers, which will ultimately include Japan.
Mussolini coined the nickname "Pact of Steel" (he had also come up with the metaphor of an "axis" binding Rome and Berlin) after reconsidering his first choice, "Pact of Blood," to describe this historic agreement with Germany. The Duce saw this partnership as not only a defensive alliance, protection from the Western democracies, with whom he anticipated war, but also a source of backing for his Balkan adventures. Both sides were fearful and distrustful of the other, and only sketchily shared their prospective plans. The result was both Italy and Germany, rather than acting in unison, would often "react" to the precipitate military action of the other. In September 1940, the Pact of Steel would become the Tripartite Pact, with Japan making up the third constituent of the triad.

1944 Operation Chattanooga Choo-Choo is launched

On this day in 1944, U.S. and British aircraft begin a systematic bombing raid on railroads in Germany and other parts of northern Europe, called Operation Chattanooga Choo-Choo. The operation is a success; Germany is forced to scramble for laborers, including foreign slave laborers, to repair the widespread damage exacted on its railway network.

[Peter Clare]

HMS GLOUCESTER (May 22, 1941)

British cruiser of the Mediterranean Fleet (Force C) sunk by bombs from German JU87s during Operation Merkur, the German airborne attack on the island of Crete. The crippled ship lay dead in the water, on fire and listing to port. The "Abandon Ship" order was given and she sank at 5.15pm. The Gloucester's commander, Captain Rowley, 45 officers and 648 crewmembers were lost.

[Peter Clare]

HMS FIJI (May 22, 1941)

British cruiser of 8,000 tons (Captain P.William- Powlett) sunk by bombs from German and Italian aircraft during the Battle of Crete. She sank forty nautical miles south-west of Crete near the island of Antikithera. In September, 1940, the Fiji was torpedoed off the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, while escorting troop transports heading for the port of Dakar (Operation Menace). After repairs which lasted almost six months, she returned to duties in the Mediterranean. The Fiji had survived about twenty bomb attacks during the four hour engagement off Crete but later another three direct hits proved fatal. Casualties were 17 officers and 224 ratings killed. A total of 523 survivors were picked up by the destroyers Kingston and Kandahar which had earlier rescued survivors from the sunk destroyer Greyhound. The Fiji's place was taken by the Australian cruiser HMAS Australia.

[Peter Clare]

May 23, 1941
Lord Mountbatten, cousin to a king, sunk by German dive-bombers

On this day in 1941, Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten, second cousin of King George VI of Britain and the only man other than the king to hold rank in all three military services simultaneously, is among those thrown into the Mediterranean Sea when his destroyer, the HMS Kelly, is sunk.
Mountbatten's ship was among several British cruisers, destroyers, and battleships sunk off Crete by German dive-bombers. The Kelly was attacked by 24 bombers alone; 130 crewmembers were killed. Mountbatten was still on the bridge of the ship when it finally flipped over; nevertheless, he managed to swim to shore and take control of the rescue operation. He would ultimately accept, as senior Allied officer present, the surrender of Japanese land forces within Southeast Asia by General Sieshiro Itagaki.
Side note: Just a day before the sinking of the Kelly, the battleship Valiant was damaged but not sunk during an equally vicious German air attack, also off Crete, which succeeded in sinking two cruisers and four destroyers. Among the crewmen of the Valiant was Lord Mountbatten's nephew, Prince Philip of Greece.
Mountbatten survived the terror of war against the Axis powers, only to be killed by an Irish Republic Army bomb, planted on his boat, on August 26, 1979

[Peter Clare]

23 May 1945 Himmler commits suicide

On this day in 1945, Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS, assistant chief of the Gestapo, and architect of Hitler's program to exterminate European Jews, commits suicide one day after being arrested by the British.
As head of the Waffen-Schutzstaffel ("Armed Black Shirts"), the military arm of the Nazi Party, and assistant chief of the Gestapo (the secret police), Himmler was able over time to consolidate his control over all police forces of the Reich. The power he would ultimately wield would rival that of the German army; it would also prove highly effective in eliminating all opposition to Hitler and the party, as well as in carrying out the Fuhrer's Final Solution. It was Himmler who organized the creation of death camps throughout Eastern Europe and a pool of slave laborers.
Himmler's megalomania, which included a plan to surrender to the Western Allies late in the war in order to pursue the fight against Russia unimpeded, caused Hitler to strip him of all his offices and order his arrest. Himmler attempted to slip out of Germany disguised as a soldier, but was caught by the British. He swallowed a cyanide capsule a day later.

[Peter Clare]

May 24, 1941
The Bismarck sinks the Hood

On this day in 1941, Germany's largest battleship, the Bismarck, sinks the pride of the British fleet, HMS Hood.
The Bismarck was the most modern of Germany's battleships, a prize coveted by other nation's navies, even while still in the blueprint stage (Hitler handed over a copy of its blueprints to Joseph Stalin as a concession during the days of the Hitler-Stalin neutrality pact). The HMS Hood, originally launched in 1918, was Britain's largest battle cruiser (41,200 tons)-but also capable of achieving the relatively fast speed of 31 knots. The two met in the North Atlantic, northeast of Iceland, where two British cruisers had tracked down the Bismarck. Commanded by Admiral Gunther Lutjens, commander in chief of the German Fleet, the Bismarck sunk the Hood, resulting in the death of 1,500 of its crew; only three Brits survived.
During the engagement, the Bismarck's fuel tank was damaged. Lutjens tried to make for the French coast, but was sighted again only three days later. Torpedoed to the point of incapacity, the Bismarck was finally sunk by a ring of British war ships. Admiral Lutjens was one of the 2,300 German casualties.

[Peter Clare]

HMS HOOD (May 24, 1941)

Britain's largest battle cruiser, (44,600 tons) sunk by the German battleship Bismarck commanded by Admiral Lütjens and captained by Captain Ernest Lindemann. In an early morning action in the Denmark Strait, between Iceland and Greenland, the Bismarck, accompanied by the cruiser Prince Eugen (Captain Helmuth Brinkmann), were en route from Bergen in Norway to the Atlantic when they intercepted the Hood, the Prince of Wales and six escorting destroyers. From 26,000 yards, the Bismarck opened fire and at 16,500 yards scored a direct hit on the Hood's magazine causing the 112 tons of explosives to blow up. The battleship, commanded by Vice Admiral Sir Lancelot Holland, went down in about four minutes. Of a crew of 1,417 (94 officers and 1,323 ratings and Royal Marines) there were only three survivors, a death toll of 1,414. The mighty battleship had only fired its guns once in anger, at Mers El Kebir in 1940. The day the Hood sailed from Scapa Flow repairs were attempted on a defect in the magazines hydraulic system which failed to lift the cartridge into the loading position. In the heat of battle, could this defect have caused the cartridge and the whole magazine to explode? Did the Hood in fact, self destruct? For the Bismarck to score a direct hit on the magazine at this distance must be the luckiest shot of the war. The second question is why did the German battleships break off the engagement instead of pursuing and engaging the Prince of Wales?
For more, see the excellent Battle Cruiser Hood website at http://www.H.M.S.hood.com/.

Britain's largest battle cruiser of WWII, HMS Hood

[Peter Clare]

CONTE ROSSO (May 24, 1941)

Italian passenger liner of 17,879 tons, built in 1921 and converted to a troopship in 1940, and now belonging to the Italian Merchant Marine, was sunk by the British submarine HMS Upholder (Lt-Cdr. Malcolm Wanklyn) about 80 miles off Tripoli, North Africa. The Conte Rosso was carrying 2,729 Italian troops on their way to Tripoli when attacked. A total of 1,209 lives were lost. Lt-Cdr. Wanklyn was awarded the Victoria Cross in recognition of this. Also sunk by the Upholder were the two 19,475 ton motor vessels Neptunia and Oceania part of a convoy bound for the Axis occupied part of Libya. On September 18, 1941 the Italian passenger liner Neptunia, taken over for service as a troop transport, was torpedoed fifty-eight miles from Tripoli. The same day, the Upholder sank her sister ship Oceania, also converted to a troop carrier. The death toll from both ships was 384 men, some 6,500 being rescued. On April 14, 1942, the Upholder and its entire crew were lost when depth-charged while on its 23rd. patrol.

[Peter Clare]

24 May 1943 Auschwitz gets a new doctor: "the Angel of Death"

On this day in 1943, the extermination camp at Auschwitz, Poland, receives a new doctor, 32-year-old Josef Mengele, a man who will earn the nickname "the Angel of Death."
Born March 16, 1911, in Bavaria, Mengele studied philosophy under Alfred Rosenberg, whose racial theories highly influenced him. In 1934, already a member of the Nazi Party, he joined the research staff of the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene.
Upon arriving at Auschwitz, and eager to advance his medical career by publishing "groundbreaking" work, he began experimenting on live Jewish prisoners. In the guise of medical "treatment," he injected, or ordered others to inject, thousands of inmates with everything from petrol to chloroform. He also had a penchant for studying twins, whom he used to dissect.
Mengele managed to escape imprisonment after the war, first by working as a farm stableman in Bavaria, then by making his way to South America. He became a citizen of Paraguay in 1959. He later moved to Brazil, where he met up with another former Nazi party member, Wolfgang Gerhard. In 1985, a multinational team of forensic experts traveled to Brazil in search of Mengele. They determined that a man named Gerhard, but believed to be Mengele, had died of a stroke while swimming in 1979. Dental records later confirmed that Mengele had, at some point, assumed Gerhard's identity, and was in fact the stroke victim.

[Peter Clare]

May 25, 1944
Operation Knight's Move is launched

On this day in 1944, Germany launches Operation Knight's Move, in an attempt to seize Yugoslav communist partisan leader Tito.
Using parachute drops and glider troops, German forces landed in the Yugoslavian village of Drvar, where Josep Broz Tito, leader of the anti-Axis guerilla movement, was believed to be. The village was decimated: Men, women, and children were all killed by German troops in search of Tito, who escaped.