Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

22 June 1941: Hitler invades the Soviet Union
German forces have invaded the Soviet Union.

In a pre-dawn offensive, German troops pushed into the USSR from the south and west, with a third force making their way from the north towards Leningrad.
At 0500 GMT, an hour after the invasion began, the Nazi Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, went on national radio to read a proclamation by Adolf Hitler promising that the mobilisation of the German army would be the "greatest the world has ever seen".

The invasion breaks the non-aggression pact signed by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939.
The pact has since been described by the German leader, Adolf Hitler, as a stain on Germany's record.
Initial reports suggest that the German troops have made rapid progress.
A correspondent with the German Army on the northern front reported the Soviet Army opened fire immediately at the German advance, but German soldiers overran the first of the Soviet positions and within a few minutes had captured the frontier posts.
Germany is thought to have committed a massive force of more than three million men, supported by more than 3,000 tanks, 7,000 guns and nearly 3,000 aircraft.
They are nonetheless vastly outnumbered by the Red Army which has about nine million men under arms with another 500,000 in reserve.
Soviet arms and ability, however, are considered vastly inferior to the Germans.
The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, appears to have been taken completely by surprise.
Despite warnings from Britain and secret intelligence reports that war was imminent, Stalin has refused to prepare for an invasion, insisting that it would not happen until next summer.
In London the War Cabinet met early this morning to discuss the implications.
The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, condemned the invasion in a broadcast on BBC radio, in which he said it marked a turning point in the war.
Calling Hitler a "bloodthirsty guttersnipe", he said his own outspoken opposition to communism had "faded away" in the light of today's events, and pledged Britain's help for the Soviet Union in any way possible. "The Russian danger is... our danger," he said, "and the danger of the United States, just as the cause of any Russian fighting for his hearth and home is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe."

[Gage]

June 22nd 1940 Compiegne
French surrender is signed.

[Peter Clare]

June 23, 1940
Hitler takes a tour of Paris

On this day in 1940, Adolf Hitler surveys notable sites in the French capital, now German-occupied territory.
In his first and only visit to Paris, Hitler made Napoleon's tomb among the sites to see. "That was the greatest and finest moment of my life," he said upon leaving. Comparisons between the Fuhrer and Napoleon have been made many times: They were both foreigners to the countries they ruled (Napoleon was Italian, Hitler was Austrian); both planned invasions of Russia while preparing invasions of England; both captured the Russian city of Vilna on June 24; both had photographic memories; both were under 5 feet 9 inches tall, among other coincidences.
As a tribute to the French emperor, Hitler ordered that the remains of Napoleon's son be moved from Vienna to lie beside his father.
But Hitler being Hitler, he came to do more than gawk at the tourist attractions. He ordered the destruction of two World War I monuments: one to General Charles Mangin, a French war hero, and one to Edith Cavell, a British nurse who was executed by a German firing squad for helping Allied soldiers escape German-occupied Brussels. The last thing Hitler wanted were such visible reminders of past German defeat.
Hitler would gush about Paris for months afterward. He was so impressed, he ordered architect and friend Albert Speer to revive plans for a massive construction program of new public buildings in Berlin, an attempt to destroy Paris, not with bombs, but with superior architecture. "Wasn't Paris beautiful?" Hitler asked Speer. "But Berlin must be far more beautiful. When we are finished in Berlin, Paris will only be a shadow."

[Peter Clare]

June 24, 1945
Russians enjoy a victory parade

On this day in 1945, Soviet troops parade past Red Square in celebration of their victory over Germany. As drums rolled, 200 soldiers performed a familiar ritual: They threw 200 German military banners at the foot of the Lenin Mausoleum. A little over 130 years earlier, victorious Russian troops threw Napoleon's banners at the feet of Czar Alexander I.
Also on this day in 1945, British bombers destroy the "Bridge Over the River Kwai." Thousands of British and Allied prisoners of war, forced into slave labor by their Japanese captors, had built a bridge, under the most grueling conditions, over the River Kwai, linking parts of the Burma-Siam (now Thailand) railway and enabling the Japanese to transport soldiers and supplies through this area. British aircraft bombed the bridge to prevent this link between Bangkok and Moulein, Burma. This episode of the war was dramatized in extraordinary fashion in the 1957 film Bridge on the River Kwai, directed by David Lean, and starring Alec Guinness and William Holden.

[Peter Clare]

TAMAHOKO MARU (June 24, 1944)

Part of a convoy sailing towards Japan with 772 Australian, British and American prisoners of war on board. With the lights of Japan in sight, one of the ships in the convoy, exploded after being torpedoed by the US submarine USS Tang. Nearby, the Tamahoko Maru was almost blown apart and water poured in through a gaping hole in her side. On top of the main hatch cover 80 men were sleeping. Not one of them survived. As the Tamahoko (6,780 tons) settled in the water, hundreds of prisoners jumped into the sea and soon a Japanese whale-chaser appeared and started picking up survivors. The final count was that 560 POW's had died. Of the 267 Australians on board only 72 survived. Fifteen US soldiers and sailors were killed as well as thirteen merchant seamen rescued from the sunk freighter American Leader. Next day, 212 survivors of the Tamahoko Maru were brought into the harbour at Nagasaki to spend the rest of the war in the POW camp, Fukuoka 13.

[Peter Clare]

June 25, 1900
Lord Louis Mountbatten is born

On this day in 1900, Lord Louis Mountbatten, British admiral and second cousin to King George VI, is born.
Louis Mountbatten was born in Windsor, England, the fourth child of Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife, Princess Victoria, granddaughter of Queen Victoria. He entered the Royal Navy at age 13. Among his many assignments was that of aide-de-camp to the then Prince of Wales in 1921. He attained the rank of captain in 1932 and became a French and German interpreter shortly thereafter. When the Second World War broke out, he was given the command of the destroyer Kelly, which was attacked by 24 German bombers off the coast of Crete and sunk in 1941. (Mountbatten swam to shore and took control of the rescue effort.)
An able commander and a courageous soldier, Mountbatten was given ever greater responsibilities: first that of command of Combined Operations, then that of Supreme Allied Commander of Southeast Asia. His cousin, the king, would have to fend off accusations of nepotism in granting such appointments, despite Mountbatten's gifts.
Mountbatten led the capture of Burma from Japanese control and later accepted the surrender of Japanese land forces in September 1945. He then went on to become the last British viceroy of India and an able negotiator of independence for both India and Pakistan. He was created Viscount Mountbatten of Burma in 1946 and admiral of the Royal Mediterranean fleet in 1956. Other positions he later held include that of chief of the U.K. defense staff, chairman of the chiefs of staff committee, and finally governor and lord lieutenant of the Isle of Wight.
Mountbatten's distinguished career came to an end on August 26, 1979, when an Irish Republican Army bomb exploded on his boat, killing him.

[Peter Clare]

25-26 Jun 1942 - The third 1,000-bomber raid; of the 960 aircraft launched against Bremen, 49 fail to return. Despite heavy cloud, considerable damage is caused, in particular to the Focke-Wulf aircraft factory which was hit by a 4,000lb (1,800 kg) bomb.

[Peter Clare]

June 26, 1940
Turkey declares nonbelligerency

On this day in 1940, Turkey announces neutrality in the widening world war.
Turkey was precariously positioned, prime real estate for both the Soviet Union to the north and the Axis Powers to the west. For the Soviets, an occupied or "satellite" Turkey could be yet another buffer zone, protection against invasion. For Germany, it was a means to an end, a bridge to conquests in the Middle East. Turkey could not afford to antagonize one or the other.
But that position would not hold. By the time the Soviet Union had reconquered Crimea from Germany in 1944, Turkey needed to be seen as an "ally" of the Russian Bear so as not to invite, unwittingly, Russian troops onto its territory. Consequently, Turkey stopped chrome shipments to Germany and--with added prodding by Winston Churchill--declared itself "pro-Allied" but still not a belligerent. But by February 1945, Turkey, anticipating Hitler's defeat, finally formally declared war on Germany.

[Peter Clare]

June 27, 1944
U.S. troops liberate Cherbourg, France

On this day in 1944, the Allies capture the fortified town and port of Cherbourg, in northwest France, freeing it from German occupation. Hitler had for all intents and purposes anticipated his own defeat when, in contrast with the analysis of his advisers, he accurately predicted that the D-Day invasion would be focused on Normandy. He knew the Allies needed to take a large port-and Cherbourg fit the bill. (The Brits had actually handpicked Cherbourg as the target for a "Cross-Channel" landing back in 1942.) Once the Allies actually landed on Normandy beaches June 6, the fall of Cherbourg was only a matter of time.

[Peter Clare]

USS BUNKER HILL (CV-17) (June 27, 1945)

Aircraft carrier operating off the island of Okinawa, hit by a Japanese kamikaze suicide plane piloted by Kiyoshi Ogawa. The ship suffered the loss of 373 crewmen when the re-armed and re-fuelled planes on deck exploded and caught fire. The Bunker Hill did not sink but made it home to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for repairs. Air attacks by Japanese planes on American ships off Okinawa killed 2,658 men during ten kamikaze attacks in which eleven ships were sunk and 102 damaged. During the Pacific War, 288 United States Navy ships were hit by kamikazes, 34 were sunk. (Kamikaze units, was first formed in October 1944, as a Special Attack Force called 'Shimpu' by Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi and included 23 volunteer pilots) A second unit was formed soon afterwards under the name Kamikaze "Divine Wind" after a typhoon that destroyed a Mongol invasion fleet way back in 1281 AD. In their suicide attempts, 1,465 kamikaze aircraft were destroyed.

Damage caused to a British aircraft carrier by a Japanese Kamikaze aircraft

The picture above shows the damage that was caused by a Japanese kamikaze aircraft after it had targeted and crashed on the deck of a British aircraft carrier. These Japanese 'death pilots' aimed at different points depending on the type of ship that they were going to attack. On an aircraft carrier they aimed for the central elevator, on larger ships such as battleships and heavy cruisers they aimed just below the bridge and anywhere between the center and the bridge of smaller ships and transports. Later British aircraft carriers generally suffered less damage than the American aircraft carriers because they had specially reinforced steel flight decks whereas a kamikaze could easily penetrate the wooden decks of the American carriers.