Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

22 Aug 1944 - The Balkan Air Force organises the evacuation of 1,059 wounded Yugoslav partisans from Polje, in the Serbian region of Yugoslavia to Italy by RAF, USAAF and Russian aircraft.

[Peter Clare]

August 23, 1939
The Hitler-Stalin Pact

On this day in 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact, stunning the world, given their diametrically opposed ideologies. But the dictators were, despite appearances, both playing to their own political needs.
After Nazi Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia, Britain had to decide to what extent it would intervene should Hitler continue German expansion. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, at first indifferent to Hitler's capture of the Sudetenland, the German-speaking area of Czechoslovakia, suddenly snapped to life when Poland became threatened. He made it plain that Britain would be obliged to come to the aid of Poland in the event of German invasion. But he wanted, and needed, an ally. The only power large enough to stop Hitler, and with a vested interest in doing so, was the Soviet Union. But Stalin was cool to Britain after its effort to create a political alliance with Britain and France against Germany had been rebuffed a year earlier. Plus, Poland's leaders were less than thrilled with the prospect of Russia becoming its guardian; to them, it was simply occupation by another monstrous regime.
Hitler believed that Britain would never take him on alone, so he decided to swallow his fear and loathing of communism and cozy up to the Soviet dictator, thereby pulling the rug out from the British initiative. Both sides were extremely suspicious of the other, trying to discern ulterior motives. But Hitler was in a hurry; he knew if he was to invade Poland it had to be done quickly, before the West could create a unified front. Agreeing basically to carve up parts of Eastern Europe-and leave each other alone in the process-Hitler's foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, flew to Moscow and signed the non-aggression pact with his Soviet counterpart, V.M. Molotov (which is why the pact is often referred to as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact). Supporters of bolshevism around the world had their heretofore romantic view of "international socialism" ruined; they were outraged that Stalin would enter into any kind of league with the fascist dictator.
But once Poland was German-occupied territory, the alliance would not last for long.

[ramacal]

29 October 1944

Breda, Noord-Brabant in the Netherlands was liberated by the Polish !st Armoured Division commanded by General Stanislaw Maczek.

It is important to me as my Mother lived/worked in Breda and was to meet her future husband, my Father, a British soldier.

Also to the memory of the same General Maczek who died in Edinburgh in 1994 at the age of 102. Unable to return to the country of his birth, he was buried in the Polish Military Cemetary in Breda alongside his fallen comrades.

[Peter Clare]

August 24, 1942
Brave volunteers save the day in the Battle of the East Solomon Islands

On this day in 1942, U.S. forces continue to deliver crushing blows to the Japanese, sinking the aircraft carrier Ryuho in the Battle of the East Solomon Islands. Key to the Americans' success in this battle was the work of coastwatchers, a group of volunteers whose job it is to report on Japanese ship and aircraft movement.
The Marines had landed on Guadalcanal, on the Solomon Islands, on August 7. This was the first American offensive maneuver of the war and would deliver the first real defeat to the Japanese. On August 23, coastwatchers, comprised mostly of Australian and New Zealander volunteers, hidden throughout the Solomon and Bismarck islands and protected by anti-Japanese natives, spotted heavy Japanese reinforcements headed for Guadalcanal. The coastwatchers alerted three U.S. carriers that were within 100 miles of Guadalcanal, which then raced to the scene to intercept the Japanese.
By the time the Battle of the Eastern Solomons was over, the Japanese lost a light carrier, a destroyer, and a submarine and the Ryuho. The Americans suffered damage to the USS Enterprise, the most decorated carrier of the war; the Enterprise would see action again, though, in the American landings on Okinawa in 1945.
As for the coastwatchers, Vice Adm. William F. Halsey said, "The coastwatchers saved Guadalcanal, and Guadalcanal saved the Pacific."
Footnote: It was a coastwatcher who arranged for the deliverance and safe return of John F. Kennedy and his crew when they were stranded in the Solomons in 1943.

[Peter Clare]

HMS PENZANCE (August 24, 1940)

Royal Navy sloop of 1,025 tons sunk by the German submarine U-37. The Penzance (Cdr. Allan Wavish) was escorting Convoy SC-1 south-west of Iceland when torpedoed. A total of 90 crewmen died leaving only 7 survivors to be picked up by the merchant vessel Blairmore which later that night was herself torpedoed by the same U-boat. The seven survivors had again to be rescued, this time by the Swedish merchant ship Eknaren.

[Peter Clare]

TSUSHIMA MARU (August 24, 1944)

Passenger/cargo ship of 6,754 tons, sunk by the US submarine USS Bowfin just north-west of the island of Akuseki. The Tsushima, unmarked and unlighted, was evacuating some 1,788 persons including children, school teachers and some parents, from Okinawa to the mainland of Japan prior to the American landings on the Ryukyu Islands. The attack on Convoy Namo 103, which included the Tsushima, was carried out at night between 10 and 11.30 pm. The ship sank in less than fifteen minutes and took the lives of 1,529 souls. Some survivors managed to cling to rafts for three days before being picked up. Of the 826 children on board, 741 drowned. There were only 59 child survivors.

[Peter Clare]

UKISHIMA MARU (August 24, 1945)

In the Aomori Prefecture, in the far north of Japan, around 5,000 Korean slave labourers had spent the last few years of the war digging a major underground complex of tunnels and storage facilities. With the work completed and the end of the war just a few weeks away, the five thousand labourers including many Korean sex slaves, the so-called 'Comfort Women', were put aboard the Japanese warship Ukishima Maru with the promise that they were being returned to their homeland. The warship sailed south along the west coast until it reached the Maisaru Naval Base in Kyoto. There, the hatches to the holds were sealed down and the ship taken offshore and scuttled. Explosives were placed inside the hull, the resulting explosions sinking the ship within minutes. There were only some 80 survivors. Fifty-seven years later, in August 2001, fifteen of the survivors who were still alive, won a lawsuit for compensation against the Japanese government. They were paid the paltry sum of $30,000.

[Peter Clare]

24/25 Aug 1940 - German bombs fall on central London for the first time. The following night, 43 aircraft from Bomber Command retaliate by bombing Berlin.

[Peter Clare]

August 25, 1944
Liberation of Paris

On this day in 1944, French General Jacques Leclerc enters the free French capital triumphantly. Pockets of German intransigence remained, but Paris was free from German control.
Two days earlier, a French armored division had begun advancing on the capital. Members of the Resistance, now called the French Forces of the Interior, proceeded to free all French civilian prisoners in Paris. The Germans were still counterattacking, setting fire to the Grand Palais, which had been taken over by the Resistance, and killing small groups of Resistance fighters as they encountered them in the city. On August 24, another French armored division entered Paris from the south, receiving an effusion of gratitude from French civilians who poured into the streets to greet their heroes-but still, the Germans continued to fire on French fighters from behind barricades, often catching civilians in the crossfire.
But on August 25, after Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was assured by Gen. Charles de Gaulle, leader of the French Resistant forces, that Allied troops could now virtually sweep into Paris unopposed, Ike ordered Gen. Jacques Philippe Leclerc (a pseudonym he assumed to protect his family while under German occupation; his given name was Philippe-Marie, Vicomte De Hauteclocque) to enter the capital with his 2nd Armored Division. The remnants of German snipers were rendered impotent, and many German soldiers were led off as captives. In fact, the animus toward the Germans was so great that even those who had surrendered were attacked, some even machine-gunned, as they were being led off to captivity.
More than 500 Resistance fighters died in the struggle for Paris, as well as 127 civilians. Once the city was free from German rule, French collaborators were often killed upon capture, without trial.

[Peter Clare]

August 26, 1944
DeGaulle enters a free Paris

On this day in 1944, French General Charles de Gaulle enters Paris, which had formally been liberated the day before. As he entered the Place de l'Hotel, French collaborationists took a few sniper shots at him. "There are many moments that go beyond each of our poor little lives," he was quoted at the time. "Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyrized! But Paris liberated!"
For de Gaulle, the liberation of Paris was the end of a long history of fighting Germans. He sustained multiple injuries fighting at Verdun in World War I. He escaped German POW camps five times, only to be recaptured each time. (At 6 feet, 4 inches tall, it was hard for de Gaulle to be inconspicuous.)
At the beginning of World War II, de Gaulle was commander of a tank brigade. He was admired as a courageous leader and made a brigadier general in May 1940. After the German invasion of France, he became undersecretary of state for defense and war in the Reynaud government, but when Reynaud resigned, and Field Marshal Philippe Petain stepped in, a virtual puppet of the German occupiers, de Gaulle left for England. On June 18, de Gaulle took to the radio airwaves to make an appeal to his fellow French not to accept the armistice being sought by Petain, but to continue fighting under his command. Ten days later, Britain formally acknowledged de Gaulle as the leader of the "Free French Forces," which was at first little more than those French troops stationed in England, volunteers from Frenchmen already living in England, and units of the French navy.
De Gaulle would prove an adept wartime politician, finally winning recognition and respect from the Allies and his fellow countrymen. He returned to Paris from Algiers, where he had moved the headquarters of the Free French Forces and formed a "shadow government" in September 1943. On the eve of the Normandy invasion, de Gaulle demanded that his government be regarded as the "official" government of all liberated areas of France. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, commander of the D-Day invasion, agreed to "not recognize" any government entity other than de Gaulle's. De Gaulle went on to head two provisional governments before resigning. In 1970, he died suddenly of an aneurysmal rupture at the age of 79.