Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

October 7, 1940
German troops enter Romania

On this day in 1940, Hitler occupies Romania as part of his strategy of creating an unbroken Eastern front to menace the Soviet Union.
As early as 1937, Romania had come under the control of a fascist government that bore great resemblance to that of Germany's, including similar anti-Jewish laws. Romania's king, Carol II, dissolved the government a year later because of a failing economy and installed Romania's Orthodox Patriarch as prime minister. But the Patriarch's death and a peasant uprising provoked renewed agitation by the fascist Iron Guard paramilitary organization, which sought to impose order. In June 1940, the Soviet Union co-opted two Romanian provinces, and the king searched for an ally to help protect it and appease the far right within its own borders. So on July 5, 1940, Romania allied itself with Nazi Germany-only to be invaded by its "ally" as part of Hitler's strategy to create one huge eastern front against the Soviet Union.
King Carol abdicated on September 6, 1940, leaving the country in the control of fascist Prime Minister Ion Antonescu and the Iron Guard. While Romania would recapture the territory lost to the Soviet Union when the Germans invaded Russia, it would also have to endure the Germans' raping its resources as part of the Nazi war effort. Nevertheless, with German troops now occupying his nation, Antonescu would go on to sign the Tripartite (Axis) Pact in November, tying Romania to the military machinations of not only Germany, but Italy and Japan as well.

[Peter Clare]

7 Oct 1940 - No. 80 (Signals) Wing is formed - the RAF's first electronic warfare unit.

[Peter Clare]

October 8, 1941
Germans overrun Mariupol, in southern Russia

On this day in 1941, the German invasion of the Soviet Union begins a new stage, with Hitler's forces capturing Mariupol. The Axis power reached the Sea of Azov.
Despite the fact that Germany and Russia had signed a "pact" in 1939, each guaranteeing the other a specific region of influence without interference from the other, suspicion remained high. Despite warnings from his advisers that Germany could not fight the war on two fronts (as Germany's experience in World War I proved), Hitler became convinced that England was holding out against repeated German air assaults, refusing to surrender, because it had struck a secret deal with Russia. Fearing he would be "strangled" from the East and the West, he created, in December 1940, "Directive No. 21: Case Barbarossa"--the plan to invade and occupy the very nation he had actually asked to join the Axis only a month before. On June 22, 1941, after having postponed the invasion of Russia when Italy's attack on Greece forced Hitler to bail out his struggling ally in order to keep the Allies from gaining a foothold in the Balkans, three German army groups struck Russia hard by surprise. The Russian army was larger than German intelligence had anticipated, but they were demobilized. Stalin had shrugged off warnings from his own advisers, even Winston Churchill himself, that a German attack was imminent. By the end of the first day of the invasion, the German air force had destroyed more than 1,000 Soviet aircraft. And despite the toughness of the Russian troops, and the number of tanks and other armaments at their disposal, the Red Army was disorganized, enabling the Germans to penetrate up to 300 miles into Russian territory within the next few days.
Hitler's battle for Stalingrad and Moscow still lay ahead, but the capture of Mariupol, at the sea's edge, signaled the beginning of the end of Russia-as least as far as Hitler's propaganda machine was concerned. "Soviet Russia has been vanquished!" Otto Dietrich, Hitler's press chief, announced to foreign journalists the very next day.

[Peter Clare]

ORKAN (October 8, 1943)

Former British ‘M’ Class destroyer HMS Myrmidon, served under the Polish flag and renamed Orkan. It was this ship which carried the coffin of General Sikorski from Gibraltar to Plymouth. On the 8th of October, 1943, the Orkan was torpedoed by the U-boat U-378 (or the U-610) and sank with 178 Polish and 20 British crewmembers. There were only 23 survivors. Mostly engaged in escort duties for convoys between Loch Ewe in Scotland and the Russian port of Murmansk. It during such a trip that the Orkan was attacked and sunk by an acoustic torpedo from the U-boat. On July 25, 1943, the Orkan rescued 41 German sailors who had survived the sinking of the U-459 in the North Atlantic. The U-459 had been sunk by depth charges dropped from a RAF plane.

[Peter Clare]

USS BUCK (October 8/9, 1943)

On patrol in the Gulf of Salerno, the destroyer was hit by two torpedoes from the U-616 (Cpt. Lt. Siegfried Koitschka) The devastating result of the exploding torpedoes caused a depth charge to explode and cover the ship in a pall of smoke and flame. Brought to a standstill, she settled swiftly by the bow and four minutes later disappeared beneath the sea. Detonations of depth charges that hadn't been set on 'safe' continued underwater as fuel oil rose to the surface choking many of the survivors in the water. Soon rescue vessels appeared on the scene and within 48 hours had plucked 76 men from the sea, but her captain, Lt. Cmdr. M. Klein and 150 crew members perished.

[Peter Clare]

8 October 1943


U 643 surfaces and surrenders to Liberator FK223 T/120 squadron on 8 October 1943. The U-boat had been attacked by Liberator Z/86 (F/O. C W. Burcher) and T/120 (F/O. D. Webber) U 643 was then scuttled by its crew.

[Peter Clare]

October 9, 1944
Churchill and Stalin confer

On this day in 1944, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin begin a nine-day conference in Moscow, during which the war with Germany and the future of Europe are discussed.
Germany's defeat now seemed inevitable, and Stalin was prepared to commit the USSR to intervening in the war against Japan once Germany had formally surrendered. This optimistic outlook enabled a significant portion of the talks to center on the relative spheres of influence of the two superpowers in a postwar European environment. Churchill ceded the disposition of Romania, which Stalin's troops were liberating from German control even as the conference commenced, to the Soviet Union. But the British prime minister was keen on keeping the Red Army away from Greece. "Britain must be the leading Mediterranean power." They made a deal: Romania for Greece.
Churchill was more accommodating elsewhere, willing to divvy up the spoils of war. Yugoslavia could be cut down the middle, east for Russia, west for the West. Churchill also laid out a plan by which the German populations of East Prussia and Silesia would be moved into the interior of Germany, with East Prussia split between the USSR and Poland, and Silesia handed over to Poland as compensation for territories Stalin already occupied and intended to keep.
But Churchill was insistent on one issue that would be harder to negotiate in 50-50 terms-freedom. Churchill wanted every nation to be free to select the government most amenable to its people, especially smaller, more vulnerable nations. "Let them work out their own fortunes during the years that lie ahead." Churchill was frank about the West's fear of expansionist communism. But none of what was discussed was carved in stone or even put on paper--a fact that would be all too obvious as the Cold War commenced.

[Peter Clare]

9 Oct 1940 - The Western Desert Air Force is formed under the command of Air Vice-Marshal Arthur Coningham to conduct air operations in North Africa. Strength of the force amounts to three squadrons of Wellington bombers, five squadrons of Blenheims, three of Hurricanes and one Gladiator squadron. In addition, three squadrons of Lysanders are assigned to Army co-operation duties

[Peter Clare]

October 9, 1940
St. Paul's Cathedral bombed

During the Battle of Britain, the German Luftwaffe launches a heavy nighttime air raid on London. The dome of St. Paul's Cathedral was pierced by a Nazi bomb, leaving the high altar in ruin. It was one of the few occasions that the 17th-century cathedral suffered significant damage during Germany's nearly ceaseless bombing raids on London in the fall of 1940.
According to tradition, a Roman temple to the goddess Diana once stood on Ludgate Hill at the site of St. Paul's Cathedral. In 604 A.D., King Aethelberht I dedicated the first Christian cathedral there to St. Paul. That cathedral burned, and its replacement was destroyed by Vikings in 962. A third cathedral was destroyed by fire in 1087 and was replaced by a grand Norman structure that was completed in the 13th century. In the 16th century, the fourth cathedral fell into disrepair and was damaged by fire, and further harm was done during the English civil wars of the 17th century. In the 1660s, the English architect Sir Christopher Wren was enlisted to repair the cathedral, but the Great Fire of London intervened, destroying Old St. Paul's Cathedral in 1666.
In the aftermath of the fire, Wren designed a new St. Paul's Cathedral, with dozens of smaller new churches ranged around it like satellites. The cathedral was Wren's masterpiece, featuring a baroque design and a prominent, stately dome. Wren himself set down the foundation block in 1675 and in 1710 put the final stone in place. When the architect died in 1723, he was buried with great ceremony in St. Paul's. An inscription near his tomb reads, Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice--Latin for "Reader, if you seek a monument, look about you." Many other notable British citizens later joined him in St. Paul's crypts, including the military heroes Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington.
St. Paul's Cathedral became an inspiration to the British people during World War II. In the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe attempted to bomb Britain into submission by pounding London and other major cities, but St. Paul's miraculously escaped major bomb damage, even as historic buildings nearby were reduced to rubble. Images of St. Paul's framed by smoke and fire became a symbol of Britain's indomitable spirit. Civilian defense brigades, including the St. Paul's Fire Watch, protected the structure from fire, and at one point an unexploded bomb was removed at great risk from the roof of the cathedral. Despite the damage caused on the night of October 9, 1940, the cathedral survived the Blitz largely intact. In 1944, St. Paul's bells rang out to celebrate the liberation of Paris, and in 1945 services marking the end of the war in Europe were attended by 35,000 people.

[Peter Clare]

October 10, 1944
Eight hundred children are gassed to death at Auschwitz

On this day in 1944, 800 Gypsy children, including more than a hundred boys between 9 and 14 years old are systematically murdered.
Auschwitz was really a group of camps, designated I, II, and III. There were also 40 smaller "satellite" camps. It was at Auschwitz II, at Birkenau, established in October 1941, that the SS created a complex, monstrously orchestrated killing ground: 300 prison barracks; four "bathhouses," in which prisoners were gassed; corpse cellars; and cremating ovens. Thousands of prisoners were also used as fodder for medical experiments, overseen and performed by the camp doctor, Josef Mengele ("the Angel of Death").
A mini-revolt took place on October 7, 1944. As several hundred Jewish prisoners were being forced to carry corpses from the gas chambers to the furnace to dispose of the bodies, they blew up one of the gas chambers and set fire to another, using explosives smuggled to them from Jewish women who worked in a nearby armaments factory. Of the roughly 450 prisoners involved in the sabotage, about 250 managed to escape the camp during the ensuing chaos. They were all found and shot. Those co-conspirators who never made it out of the camp were also executed, as were five women from the armaments factory-but not before being tortured for detailed information on the smuggling operation. None of the women talked.
Gypsies, too, had been singled out for brutal treatment by Hitler's regime early on. Deemed "carriers of disease" and "unreliable elements who cannot be put to useful work," they were marked for extermination along with the Jews of Europe from the earliest years of the war. Approximately 1.5 million Gypsies were murdered by the Nazis. In 1950, as Gypsies attempted to gain compensation for their suffering, as were other victims of the Holocaust, the German government denied them anything, saying, "Gypsies have been persecuted under the Nazis not for any racial reason but because of an asocial and criminal record." They were stigmatized even in light of the atrocities committed against them.