Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

ALBERTO DA BARBIANO and ALBERICO DI GIUSSANO (December 13, 1941)
Two Italian cruisers, both sunk by torpedoes fired from the British destroyers Sikh, Maori, Legion and the Dutch destroyer Isaac Sweers. The destroyers were proceeding from Gibraltar to Alexandria when they sighted the Italian cruisers. Around 900 men from the two cruisers were killed.

[Bodston]

From 'Tank War' by Janusz Piekalkiewicz

Friday 13th December 1940, Cairo
The Headquarters of General Wavell (The British Middle East Commander) announced:
Operations in the direction of Sollum (Libya) are proceding as planned and we are winning rapid victories. British motorised troops have encircled and disarmed sizeable Italian units in the Bukbuk area (Egypt, close to Libyan border).

On Friday 13th December 1940, Hitler signed Directive 20, a plan for Operation Marita, the German attack on Greece. It provided for Field Marshall List's powerful Twelfth Army to attack from Bulgaria and occupy the Greek Aegean coast.

[Bodston]

From 'Tank War' by Janusz Piekalkiewicz

Saturday 13th December 1941, Moscow
The Soviet High Command announced in a special communiqué signed by Marshal Timoshenko and General Zhukov:
The sixth German offensive against Moscow has now undergone decisive collapse. German assault positions and defensive lines have been penetrated along the whole Moscow front, and in many sectors Soviet forces are fighting broken-up German troop elements encircled in pockets.

[Bodston]

From 'Tank War' by Janusz Piekalkiewicz

German OKW (Wehrmacht High Command) Dispatch dated Sunday 13th December 1942:
The East: Field Marshal von Manstein reports that he has been unable to achieve a decisive victory with his two attacking panzer divisions and that the available forces are inadequate, given his lengthening flanks. The Führer has decided that the 11th Panzer Division is to remain in its present deployment at the Chir river bridgehead because it is now under heavy enemy attack, and that instead of the 11th, the 17th Panzer Division is to be supplied to the Hoth Group (Fourth Panzer Army, the relief force sent to break through to Sixth Army at Stalingrad). The impession of Army Group B is that the enemy opposite the Italian Eighth Army may be only feigning an intention to attack in order to pin down our forces there.

[Peter Clare]

December 14, 1939
USSR expelled from the League of Nations

On this day, the League of Nations, the international peacekeeping organization formed at the end of World War I, expels the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in response to the Soviets' invasion of Finland on October 30.
Although the League of Nations was more or less the brainchild of President Woodrow Wilson, the United States, which was to have sat on the Executive Council, never joined. Isolationists in the Senate--put off by America's intervention in World War I, which they felt was more of a European civil war than a true world war--prevented American participation. While the League was born with the exalted mission of preventing another "Great War," it proved ineffectual, being unable to protect China from a Japanese invasion or Ethiopia from an Italian one. The League was also useless in reacting to German remilitarization, which was a violation of the Treaty of Versailles, the document that formally set the peace terms for the end of World War I.
Germany and Japan voluntarily withdrew from the League in 1933, and Italy left in 1937. The true imperial designs of the Soviet Union soon became apparent with its occupation of eastern Poland in September of 1939, ostensibly with the intention of protecting Russian "blood brothers," Ukrainians and Byelorussians, who were supposedly menaced by the Poles. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were then terrorized into signing "mutual assistance" pacts, primarily one-sided agreements that gave the USSR air and naval bases in those countries. But the invasion of Finland, where no provocation or pact could credibly be adduced to justify the aggression, resulted in worldwide reaction. President Roosevelt, although an "ally" of the USSR, condemned the invasion, causing the Soviets to withdraw from the New York World's Fair. And finally, the League of Nations, drawing almost its last breath, expelled it.

[Peter Clare]

HMS ALDENHAM (December 14, 1944)
British destroyer. After escorting several convoys to the besieged island of Malta, the Aldenham (Cdr. J. G. Farrent) hit a mine in the north-eastern Adriatic and sank with the loss of five officers and 116 ratings.

[Bodston]

From 'Tank War' by Janusz Piekalkiewicz

Monday 14th December 1942, Cairo
The British Reuters News Agency announced:
It is officially reported that the forces of Field Marshal Rommel have been thrown out of their strong positions at El Agheila and are now retreating west.

[Peter Clare]

14 December 1941

The RN Cruiser HMS Galatea torpedoed west of Alexandria by the German submarine U 557. The Cruiser sank almost immediately - 144 survivors were rescued by RN Destroyers.

[Peter Clare]

14 December 1939

The German escort F.9 torpedoed by the RN submarine Ursula off Heligoland. Ursula was firing at the cruiser Leipzig which with the Nurnberg, had been damaged the previous day by the RN submarine Salmon - F.9 was unlucky to cross the torpedo tracks.

[Peter Clare]

December 15, 1945
MacArthur orders end of Shinto as Japanese state religion

On this day, General Douglas MacArthur, in his capacity as Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in the Pacific, brings an end to Shintoism as Japan's established religion. The Shinto system included the belief that the emperor, in this case Hirohito, was divine.
On September 2, 1945 aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, MacArthur signed the instrument of Japanese surrender on behalf of the victorious Allies. Before the economic and political reforms the Allies devised for Japan's future could be enacted, however, the country had to be demilitarized. Step one in the plan to reform Japan entailed the demobilization of Japan's armed forces, and the return of all troops from abroad. Japan had had a long history of its foreign policy being dominated by the military, as evidenced by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye's failed attempts to reform his government and being virtually pushed out of power by career army officer Hideki Tojo.
Step two was the dismantling of Shintoism as the Japanese national religion. Allied powers believed that serious democratic reforms, and a constitutional form of government, could not be put into place as long as the Japanese people looked to an emperor as their ultimate authority. Hirohito was forced to renounce his divine status, and his powers were severely limited--he was reduced to little more than a figurehead. And not merely religion, but even compulsory courses on ethics--the power to influence the Japanese population's traditional religious and moral duties--were wrenched from state control as part of a larger decentralization of all power.