Remembering History by day WW2

[Bodston]

From 'Tank War' by Janusz Piekalkiewicz

Thursday 21 December 1939:
Today the Führer sent a telegram to Stalin congratulating him on the occasion of his 60th birthday. You may publish the German News Bureau report about this in a single column on Page One, but by no means may it be treated sensationally. It should recieve about a 30-line commentary which must be written in a cautious and restrained way and be concerned less with Stalin as a personality than with his foreign policy.

[Bodston]

From 'Tank War' by Janusz Piekalkiewicz

Saturday 21 December 1940, Cairo
The British Reuters News Agency reported:
The fight for Bardia (Libya) is continuing. The British are steadily drawing the ring tighter. The Italian defences, which have withdrawn behind the chain of forts that surround the harbour area, are putting up tough resistance; but military experts believe that the resistance must collapse if the British commander orders a decisive raid.

[Bodston]

From 'Tank War' by Janusz Piekalkiewicz

Thursday 21 December 1944
The German Wehrmacht High Command reported:
In the winter battle in Belgium yesterday, the American forces holding the Schnee-Eifel area were destroyed or captured far behind their front lines. We captured 8,000 Americans. Along the leading assault front, our troops have penetrated the Ardennes and crossed the Liège-Bastogne-Arlon road in a wide bend. Enemy supply columns pouring towards the Meuse have been overtaken and bypassed by German tanks; American units that had just been brought up were smashed while they still formed individual groups and failed to halt our advance. The toll of prisoners now exceeds 20,000. In yesterday's fighting, we captured 50 cannon and 43 tanks and armoured vehicles, and destroyed 36 tanks. The enemy keeps up his unsuccessful defence on the Western Front. Heavy defensive battles developed only in the area northwest of Bitche. Our V-1 launches against London and Antwerp are continuing.

[Peter Clare]

December 22, 1941
Churchill and Roosevelt discuss war and peace

On this day, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Washington, D.C. for a series of meetings with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on a unified Anglo-American war strategy and a future peace.
Now that the United States was directly involved in both the Pacific and European wars, it was incumbent upon both Great Britain and America to create and project a unified front. Toward that end, Churchill and Roosevelt created a combined general staff to coordinate military strategy against both Germany and Japan and to draft a future joint invasion of the Continent. Roosevelt also agreed to a radical increase in the U.S. arms production program: the 12,750 operational aircraft to be ready for service by the end of 1943 became 45,000; the proposed 15,450 tanks also became 45,000; and the number of machine guns to be manufactured almost doubled, to 500,000.
Among the momentous results of these U.S.-Anglo meetings was a declaration issued by Churchill and Roosevelt that enjoined 26 signatory nations to use all resources at their disposal to defeat the Axis powers and not sue for a separate peace. This confederation called itself the "United Nations." Lead by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, all 26 nations declared a unified goal to "ensure life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve the rights of man and justice." The blueprint for the destruction of fascism and a future international peacekeeping organization was born.

[Peter Clare]

22 December 1940

The RN Destroyer Hyperion torpedoed 24 miles (45 km) east of Cap Bon by the Italian submarine Serpente, taken into tow but later scuttled by HMS Janus.

[Bodston]

From 'Tank War' by Janusz Piekalkiewicz

Friday 22 December 1939, Damascus
The Italian newspaper La Stampa reported:
French General Weygand claims that the Allies can win the war both in the West and the East. Weygand's plans include occupation of the Soviet oil production zone in the Caucasus to make it impossible for the Germans and Soviets to obtain fuel to continue the war. One requirement of this plan is that Turkey declare war on the USSR, which the British think may be unlikely.

[Bodston]

From 'Tank War' by Janusz Piekalkiewicz

Wednesday 22 December 1943, Algiers
The American Associated Press News Agency reported:
General Juin has been appointed commander of the newly formed French Expeditionary Corps (in Italy). French units have been fighting in Italy for some time as part of the US Fifth Army. General Juin most recently came to public attention when he was commanding the French forces in the campaign in Tunisia.

The Evacuation Operations
This descriptive account by German propaganda reporter Captain Wilhelm Ritter von Schramm appeared in the 22 December 1943 issue of the newspaper Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung:
The mobility and improvisational skill of our army supply forces have proved themselves once again during the (German troop) evacuations (in the USSR).
For example, 80 evacuation trains have been running every day in the course of retreat maneuvers by a single large force in the south of the Eastern Front. Livestock transported include 198,000 cattle, 210,000 sheep, 128,000 horses. In addition, 40,000 small horsecarts had to be channelled across the Dnieper bridges and over 250,000 civilians transported home (to Germany). The details of all that was involved in evacuating all the depots, gear and supply camps, while simultaneously setting up fresh supply bases, can be revealed only in time to come... Our force could not allow a single transit crossing to stay blocked, a single bridge or defile to clog up, a single traffic jam to persist, if disaster was to be averted.

[Bodston]

From 'Tank War' by Janusz Piekalkiewicz

Friday 22 December 1944:
This large-scale offensive (i.e. The Battle of the Bulge) is a tactical weapon forming part of a strategic defence. The history of the whole war has taught us that mere defence of a fortification system, however strong and deeply extending, cannot in the long run enable a nation to resist attack from a determined assault army with superior forces... Von Rundstedt has led this surprise strike with all the weapons of modern warfare from the airplane to the tank and the guided rocket; he of course also employed paratroops in the Ardennes... Ultimately, the progress of operations must depend on the avaliable reserves of personnel and equipment. The German soldier has an advantage at the moment in that he has been able, in an surprise attack and with contentrated forces, to assault and to cave in a relatively thinly occupied enemy position of his own choosing. The American soldier has the means with which to parry the enemy's initiative as soon as he can gather enough strength to deliver a counterblow.

[Peter Clare]

December 23, 1944
The execution of Eddie Slovik is authorized

On this day, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower endorses the finding of a court-martial in the case of Eddie Slovik, who was tried for desertion, and authorizes his execution, the first such sentence against a U.S. Army soldier since the Civil War, and the only man so punished during World War II.
Private Eddie Slovik was a draftee. Originally classified 4-F because of a prison record (grand theft auto), he was bumped up to a 1-A classification when draft standards were lowered to meet growing personnel needs. In January 1944, he was trained to be a rifleman, which was not to his liking, as he hated guns.
In August of the same year, Slovik was shipped to France to fight with the 28th Infantry Division, which had already suffered massive casualties in the fighting there and in Germany. Slovik was a replacement, a class of soldier not particular respected by officers. As he and a companion were on the way to the front lines, they became lost in the chaos of battle, only to stumble upon a Canadian unit that took them in.
Slovik stayed on with the Canadians until October 5, when they turned him and his buddy over to the American military police, who reunited them with the 28th Division, now in Elsenborn, Belgium. No charges were brought; replacements getting lost early on in their tours of duty were not unusual. But exactly one day after Slovik returned to his unit, he claimed he was "too scared and too nervous" to be a rifleman and threatened to run away if forced into combat. His admission was ignored-and Slovik took off. One day after that he returned, and Slovik signed a confession of desertion, claiming he would run away again if forced to fight, and submitted it to an officer of the 28th. The officer advised Slovik to take the confession back, as the consequences would be serious. Slovik refused, and he was confined to the stockade.
The 28th Division had seen many cases of soldiers wounding themselves or deserting in the hopes of a prison sentence that would at least protect them from the perils of combat. So a legal officer of the 28th offered Slovik a deal: Dive into combat immediately and avoid the court-martial. Slovik refused. He was tried on November 11 for desertion and was convicted in less than two hours. The nine-officer court-martial panel passed a unanimous sentence: execution-"to be shot to death with musketry."
Slovik's appeal failed. It was held that he "directly challenged the authority" of the United States and that "future discipline depends upon a resolute reply to this challenge." Slovik was to pay for his recalcitrant attitude-and he was to be made an example. One last appeal was made-to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander. The timing was bad for mercy. The Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes forest was issuing in literally thousands of American casualties, not to mention the second largest surrender of an American Army unit during the war. Eisenhower upheld the sentence.
Slovik would be shot to death by a 12-man firing squad in eastern France in January of 1945. None of the rifleman so much as flinched, believing Slovik had gotten what he deserved.

[Bodston]

From 'Tank War' by Janusz Piekalkiewicz

Monday 23 December 1940, Singapore
The British Reuters News Agency reported:
A communiqué from Air Marshal Brooke Popham, the British commander-in-chief in the Far East, states that recently large transports of troops from every branch of service have arrived in the Malayan states. This has reinforced the already massive defences of Singapore and also the fighting power of the other sections of Far East Command.