Remembering History by day WW2

[Kitty]

Seeing as I forgot yesterday, I'll combine it with today.

18-9-1944 10,000 troops are dropped or land by glider in Arnhem.
18-9-1948 7,000 tonnes of food supplies and petrol are airlifted into Berlin by British and American aircraft, defying a three month Soviet blockade.

19-9-1945 British traitor William Joyce - Lord Haw Haw - is sentenced to be hanged after his treason trial at the Old Bailey.

[Kitty]

20-9-1944 Wing Commander Guy Gibson and his navigator J Warwick are killed when their Mosquito crashed in the Netherlands after acting as Master Bomber on a raid.
20-9-1946 The Cannes film festival was launched.

[Gerry Chester]

22nd September

1940: Japanese forces enter Indochina with only token resistance from some Vichy French troops.

1943: The Soviet Thirteenth Army crossed the Dniepr River south of Kiev.
Britain's 78th (Battleaxe) Infantry Division lands at Bari preparatory to advancing to capture Foggia and its valuable airfield.

[Gerry Chester]

September 23rd

1943: Mussolimi, who had been rescued eleven days earlier, announced the formation of the Italian Social Republic in north-west Italy. As the area was under German control its significance was minimul.

[jacobtowne]

GERMAN MILITARY REPORTS

HEERESLAGE

Afrika, 23 Sept., 1940

Because of the destroyed coastal-road Sollum – Sidi Barani it is not possible to continue advancing because supply with water is highly needed. All dwells are destroyed by the British by throwing salt-sacks into the water.


LUFTLAGE WEST
9.Armee

Enemy air attacks on Boulogne in the night 22./23.Sept.

6 fires in the harbour-area. One church on fire in the city-center.

Losses: 3 small motorships and 1 harbor-guard-boat sunk, 1 dead, 1 wounded.

60 bombs on Le Havre: Artillery position, stock market, theater, weather-station, petroleum-harbour, mayors office, train-sation, Flak-position and two suburbs hit. 4 soldiers, 4 civilians killed, several wounded.

Additional report from 25.Sept.1940: Casualties at attack on Le Havre 22./23.Sept.: 13 soldiers light-, 6 severely-injured, 24 civilians killed, 23 injured.

Shed of A.V.L. destroyed by fire.

13.30 Spitfire crashes into the sea near harbor entrance of Fécamp. A british Leutnant was recovere by a rescue-boat and handed over to L.Nachr.Rgt.31.

JT

[jacobtowne]

And on Sept. 23, 1942:


A dour, corpulent brigadier general of the US Army Corps of Engineers is summoned to the War Department. The general is asked what he knows of atomic theory. The general knows about atoms being split.
That's been accomplished, the general is told. Now the general is to supervise a program that will handle every aspect, from construction to final delivery, of an "atomic device."
The general asks what his levels of priority and funding are. He is told neither are a problem. Anything he wants is his for the asking. All he has to do is maintain strictest secrecy.
The general's name: Leslie R. Groves. The program's codename: "Manhattan Project."

Back on Guadalcanal, two Japanese officers complete a three-
day inspection trip and fire off a radio appreciation of the
situation to Rabaul. After whining about Guadalcanal's lack of
decent billets and a good officers' club, they report that Maj.
Gen. Kiyotaki Kawaguchi is in bad shape, his men exhausted and
starving, barely holding their own. Kawaguchi needs help -- 150
mm howitzers to shell Henderson Field, and more troops.

JT

[Kitty]

23-9-1940 The George Cross, the highest British civilian award for acts of courage, is instituted.

[spidge]

September 24th:

1943 Soviet forces reconquer Smolensk
1941 9 Allied governments pledged adherence to Atlantic Charter
1941 Bomb explosion in German headquarters in Hotel Continental in Kiev
1940 Luftwaffe bombs Spitfire-factory in Southampton

[Peter Clare]

1942 : Gestapo headquarters targeted in Norway

On this day in 1942, British bombers attempt to take out the local headquarters of the German secret state police, the Gestapo, in Norway. They miss--but send some Nazis running for their lives.

Germany invaded Norway in April 1940, in a stunning blitzkrieg campaign, a response to Britain's laying of mines in Norwegian waters--which was itself a response to Norway's iron-ore trade with the Axis power. But in one short month, the British and French troops that had landed in Norway to aid in its defense were chased out, as well as Norway's royal family, who set up a government-in-exile in London. The Germans immediately established a Reich commissioner to rule the occupied territory. The commissioner outlawed all political parties but one--the pro-Nazi National Unity Party. It was led by Vidkun Quisling, the former Norwegian minister of war. His name would become synonymous with acquiescence and collaboration. Quisling, now a German puppet, ruled as a Nazi wannabe, an overlord who would brook no dissent, even sending thousands of his own countrymen to German concentration camps. A majority of Norwegians despised both Quisling and his German masters. Teachers and clergy resigned their positions in the state-sponsored church in order not to be implicated in the new fascist regime.

One means of keeping defiant locals of newly occupied countries under control was the use of the Gestapo. An office was typically set up in conquered nations to terrorize the populace. On September 25, during a Nazi Party rally in Oslo, British aircraft, aiming to destroy the records of the Norwegian Resistance (kept in Gestapo headquarters, but not as yet acted upon), bombed the building. The bombs missed their target, but surrounding buildings were hit, and four people were killed. The Brits did put a scare into the Nazis, though, who ran from the city, leaving their Party's rally in ruins.

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[Gerry Chester]

25th September

1940: Nazi sympathiser Vidkun Quisling proclaims himself to be Norway's leader. Hence, a new word in dictionaries.

1943: Soviet forces recapture Smolensk.