Remembering History by day WW2

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Originally Posted by Peter Clare

1942 : Allies surrender at Tobruk, Libya

Unable to resist any longer, South African General Henrik Klopper ordered his officers to surrender early on the morning of the 21st. Rommel took more than 30,000 prisoners, 2,000 vehicles, 2,000 tons of fuel, and 5,000 tons of rations. Adolf Hitler awarded Rommel the field marshal's baton as reward for his victory. "I am going on to Suez," was Rommel's promise.

Would there have ever been a thought of destroying the fuel? This surely would have been "Liquid Gold" to Rommel who suffered from shortages of most things at some time or another.

This was also a very sad day for the Australian 9th div & 7th div (18th Brigade) who had taken over 3,000 casualties holding Tobruk for nearly 8 months in those dark days of 1941.

[Peter Clare]

1941 : Germany launches Operation Barbarossa--the invasion of Russia


On this day in 1941, over 3 million German troops invade Russia in three parallel offensives, in what is the most powerful invasion force in history. Nineteen panzer divisions, 3,000 tanks, 2,500 aircraft, and 7,000 artillery pieces pour across a thousand-mile front as Hitler goes to war on a second front.
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. When the Soviet Union invaded Rumania in 1940, Hitler saw a threat to his Balkan oil supply. He immediately responded by moving two armored and 10 infantry divisions into Poland, posing a counterthreat to Russia. But what began as a defensive move turned into a plan for a German first-strike. 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 German 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, having postponed the invasion of Russia after 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. (Although Hitler had telegraphed his territorial designs on Russia as early as 1925--in his autobiography, Mein Kampf.) 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.
Exactly 129 years and one day before Operation Barbarossa, another "dictator" foreign to the country he controlled, invaded Russia--making it all the way to the capital. But despite this early success, Napoleon would be escorted back to France--by Russian troops.

[Peter Clare]

1940 - K class destroyer HMS Khartoum in company with HMS Kandahar & Kingston and sloops HMS Shoreham & Indus find Italian submarine Torricelli and fight it out for 40 minutes on the surface. Khartoum suffers a hit from a 10 cm shell which splinters the air vessel of a torpedo, and as the resulting fire could not be contained, the ship is beached on Perim Island in the Red Sea at 12 38N 43 24E. About 35 minutes into the fight one of the destroyers scored a direct hit on the sub's conning tower, disabling the steering and wounding the commander, Lt-Commander Pelosi. Shortly thereafter Pelosi ordered the boat to be scuttled. This was a quite remarkable surface action, from the Italian point of view. The Toricelli had been damaged in a previous encounter off Djibouti, and was unable to submerge. It therefore had no choice (other than surrender) but to fight it out, despite the fact that, faced with three destroyers and two gunboats, it disposed a single 100mm deck gun and four 13.2mm machine guns to face 18 x 4.7-inch and four 4-inch guns on the five British warships. Yet the Toricelli had begun the fight, firing the first shot, and its second shot hit the gunboat Shoreham, forcing it from the fight. The Italian sub also emptied all its torpedo tubes during the action, but without effect, except to force evasive maneuvers and thus prolong the fight. The British, who fired off 700 rounds of 4 and 4.7-inch to achieve their one hit, were impressed enough to fete Pelosi and his officers at a formal dinner. The survivors of the Italian sub were picked up and taken to Aden. One British officer toasted, "though we were five to one, we were able neither to sink you, nor capture you, nor force you to surrender". The British commanding admiral made a point of meeting the Italian sub skipper

[Peter Clare]

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. [W]hen we are finished in Berlin, Paris will only be a shadow."

[Peter Clare]

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]

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]

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]

1940 - The British government releases a paper revealing the Lancastria tragedy. Recent estimates give nearly 5 000 dead. Official reports are still sealed the most likely reason unfortunately being so as to negate claims laid by survivors and their relatives against the British government

[spidge]

Originally Posted by Peter Clare

1940 - The British government releases a paper revealing the Lancastria tragedy. Recent estimates give nearly 5 000 dead. Official reports are still sealed the most likely reason unfortunately being so as to negate claims laid by survivors and their relatives against the British government

2040 I believe.

100 years later for release, there must have been 10,000 aboard.