Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

1940 : Britain strikes back at Italy


On this day in 1940, Britain demonstrates that it will not remain on the defensive, by bombing Italian targets in response to Mussolini's declaration of war on England and France.
Having already marked out an offensive strategy in the event of Italian aggression, Britain bombed targets within the cities of Genoa and Turin. Africa was also another theater of conflict, as Italy and Britain were imperial neighbors. Italy had just bombed targets in the British-controlled Suez Canal territory, as well as the British-controlled island of Malta, in the Mediterranean. Britain retaliated with a raid on the Italian military installation in Eritrea. Even the Pacific would see fallout from this new conflict, with an Australian merchant cruiser giving chase to an Italian vessel, which ended up scuttling itself rather than surrendering.

[Peter Clare]

1940 - The first Italian air raid of the war on the Island of Malta destroys one of the four Gloster Sea Gladiator fighters defending the island. The islanders or airmen will not name the remaining three. However 'Faith', 'Hope' and 'Charity' are the names bestowed by newsmen. These names have been repeated and become part of the lore about WWII

[Peter Clare]

1940 : Paris on the verge of invasion


On this day in 1940, 54,000 British and French troops surrender to German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel at St. Valery-en-Caux, on the northern Channel border, as the Germans continue their gains in France.
Even after the evacuation of Dunkirk by the British Expeditionary Force, tens of thousands of British and Allied troops remained in France. Overwhelmed by the German invaders, over 3,000 Allied troops attempted to escape by sea but were stopped by German artillery fire. Surrender was the order of the day; among those taken prisoner were 12 Allied generals.
But all was not lost, as Britain refused to leave France to German occupation. Prime Minister Winston Churchill had already ordered more British troops back into France, and British bombers were also attacking German lines of communication. British and Allied troops were still active in other parts of France-some 50 British fighters and 70 bombers were moving on German forces.
But despite the British reinforcements and encouragement (Churchill flew to France himself to encourage the French leaders), General Maxime Weygand ordered the French military governor of Paris to ensure that the French capital remained an open city-that is, there was to be no armed resistance to the Germans. In short, he was pushing for an armistice, in effect, capitulation. The enemy would be allowed to pass through unchallenged. Weygand addressed his cabinet with his assessment of the situation: "A cessation of hostilities is compulsory." He bitterly blamed Britain for France's defeat, unwilling to take responsibility for his own inept strategies and failed offensives. Paris was poised for occupation.

[Peter Clare]

1944 : Germans launch V-1 rocket attack against Britain


On this day in 1944, Germany launches 10 of its new V1 rockets against Britain from a position near the Channel coast. They prove to be less than devastating.
Mired in the planning stages for a year, the V1 was a pilotless, jet-propelled plane that flew by air-driven gyroscope and magnetic compass, capable of unleashing a ton of cruise missile explosives. Unfortunately for the Germans, the detonation process was rather clumsy and imprecise, depending on the impact of the plane as the engine quit and the craft crash-landed. They often missed their targets.
This was certainly the case against Britain. Of the 10 V1, or Reprisal 1, "flying bombs" shot at England, five crashed near the launch site, and one was lost altogether-just four landed inside the target country. Only one managed to take any lives: Six people were killed in London. The Germans had hoped to also mount a more conventional bombing raid against Britain at the same time the V1s were hitting their targets-in the interest of heightening the "terror" effect. This too blew up in their faces, as the Brits destroyed the German bombers on the ground the day before as part of a raid on German airfields.

[Peter Clare]

1940 : Germans enter Paris


On this day in 1940, Parisians awaken to the sound of a German-accented voice announcing via loudspeakers that a curfew was being imposed for 8 p.m. that evening-as German troops enter and occupy Paris.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had tried for days to convince the French government to hang on, not to sue for peace, that America would enter the war and come to its aid. French premier Paul Reynaud telegrammed President Franklin Roosevelt, asking for just such aid-a declaration of war, and if not that, any and all help possible. Roosevelt replied that the United States was prepared to send material aid-and was willing to have that promise published--but Secretary of State Cordell Hull opposed such a publication, knowing that Hitler, as well as the Allies, would take such a public declaration of help as but a prelude to a formal declaration of war. While the material aid would be forthcoming, no such commitment would be made formal and public.
By the time German tanks rolled into Paris, 2 million Parisians had already fled, with good reason. In short order, the German Gestapo went to work: arrests, interrogations, and spying were the order of the day, as a gigantic swastika flew beneath the Arc de Triomphe.
While Parisians who remained trapped in their capital despaired, French men and women in the west cheered-as Canadian troops rolled through their region, offering hope for a free France yet.
The United States did not remain completely idle, though. On this day, President Roosevelt froze the American assets of the Axis powers, Germany and Italy.

[Peter Clare]

1943 : The "Blobel Commando" begins its cover-up of atrocities


On this day in 1943, Paul Blobel, an SS colonel, is given the assignment of coordinating the destruction of the evidence of the grossest of Nazi atrocities, the systematic extermination of European Jews.
As the summer of 1943 approached, Allied forces had begun making cracks in Axis strongholds, in the Pacific and in the Mediterranean specifically. Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, the elite corps of Nazi bodyguards that grew into a paramilitary terror force, began to consider the possibility of German defeat and worried that the mass murder of Jews and Soviet prisoners of war would be discovered. A plan was devised to dig up the buried dead and burn the corpses at each camp and extermination site. The man chosen to oversee this yearlong project was Paul Blobel.
Blobel certainly had some of that blood on his hands himself, as he was in charge of SS killing squads in German-occupied areas of Russia. He now drew together another kind of squad, "Special Commando Group 1,005," dedicated to this destruction of human evidence. Blobel began with "death pits" near Lvov, in Poland, and forced hundreds of Jewish slave laborers from the nearby concentration camp to dig up the corpses and burn
them-but not before extracting the gold from the teeth of the victims.

[Peter Clare]

TRENTO (June 15, 1942)
Italian cruiser badly damaged by British torpedo-carrying aircraft south-west of Crete while attacking the Harpoon convoy en route to Malta. The Trento was taken in tow by its escorting destroyer but was then hit by two torpedoes from a British submarine and sinks. Of its complement of 1,151 men there were 602 survivors, a death toll of 549.

[Peter Clare]

SS CHEROKEE (June 15, 1942)
US passenger/freighter proceeding down from Iceland, joined up with a convoy heading for Boston. On board the freighter were 41 army enlisted men, 4 Russian naval officers and an army air force pilot. Around midnight, two torpedoes from a German U-boat struck the Cherokee causing two huge explosions which sank the ship almost immediately and taking to the depths 89 men including 65 of her crew and one Armed Guard gunner. There were 22 survivors rescued by the US Coast Guard cutter UCCGC Escanaba.

[Peter Clare]

1940 : Marshal Petain becomes premier of occupied France


On this day in 1940, Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain, World War I hero, becomes prime minister of the Vichy government of France.
As Germany began to overrun more French territory, the French Cabinet became desperate for a solution to this crisis. Premier Paul Reynaud continued to hold out hope, refusing to ask for an armistice, especially now that France had received assurance from Britain that the two would fight as one, and that Britain would continue to fight the Germans even if France were completely overtaken. But others in the government were despondent and wanted to sue for peace. Reynaud resigned in protest. His vice premier, Henri Petain, formed a new government and asked the Germans for an armistice, in effect, surrendering.
This was an ironic position for Petain, to say the least. The man who had become a legendary war hero for successfully repelling a German attack on the French city of Verdun during the First World War was now surrendering to Hitler.
In the city of Vichy, the French Senate and Chamber of Deputies conferred on the 84-year-old general the title of "Chief of State," making him a virtual dictator-although one controlled by Berlin. Petain believed that he could negotiate a better deal for his country--for example, obtaining the release of prisoners of war--by cooperating with, or as some would say, appeasing, the Germans.
But Petain proved to be too clever by half. While he fought against a close Franco-German military collaboration, and fired his vice premier, Pierre Laval, for advocating it, and secretly urged Spain's dictator Francisco Franco to refuse passage of the German army to North Africa, his attempts to undermine the Axis while maintaining an official posture of neutrality did not go unnoticed by Hitler, who ordered that Laval be reinstated as vice premier. Petain acquiesced, but refused to resign in protest because of fear that France would come under direct German rule if he were not there to act as a buffer. But he soon became little more than a figurehead, despite efforts to manipulate events behind the scenes that would advance the Free French cause (then publicly denying, even denouncing, those events when they came to light).
When Paris was finally liberated by General Charles de Gaulle in 1944, Petain fled to Germany. He was brought back after the war to stand trial for his duplicity. He was sentenced to death, which was then commuted to life in solitary confinement. He died at 95 in prison. The man responsible for saving his life was de Gaulle. He and Petain had fought in the same unit in World War I and had not forgotten Petain's bravery during that world war.

[Peter Clare]

1940 : British and Allied troops continue the evacuation of France, as Churchill reassures his countrymen


On this day in 1940, British troops evacuate France in Operation Ariel, an exodus almost on the order of Dunkirk. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill offers words of encouragement in a broadcast to the nation: "Whatever has happened in France ... [w]e shall defend our island home, and with the British Empire we shall fight on unconquerable until the curse of Hitler is lifted."
With two-thirds of France now occupied by German troops, those British and Allied troops that had not participated in Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Dunkirk, were shipped home. From Cherbourg and St. Malo, from Brest and Nantes, Brits, Poles, and Canadian troops were rescued from occupied territory by boats sent from Britain. While these men were not under the immediate threat of assault, as at Dunkirk, they were by no means safe, as 5,000 soldiers and French civilians learned once on board the ocean liner Lancastria, which had picked them up at St. Nazaire. Germans bombers sunk the liner; 3,000 passengers drowned.
Churchill ordered that news of the Lancastria not be broadcast in Britain, fearing the effect it would have on public morale, since everyone was already on heightened alert, fearing an imminent invasion from the Germans now that only a channel separated them. The British public would eventually find out-but not for another six weeks--when the news finally broke in the United States. They would also enjoy a breather of another kind: Hitler had no immediate plans for an invasion of the British isle, "being well aware of the difficulties involved in such an operation," reported the German High Command.