Remembering History by day WW2

[Bodston]

Beromünster Radio (Switzerland)

Friday 2 January 1942:
For the first time in the war, full-scale military operations have been carried out with undiminished violence throughout the period of Christmas and New Year's. The contrast between this and the war's two previous winters reveals more than anything else the dramatic way that military events have intensified in the past few months, and indeed have stepped up even further in the past two weeks.

[Bodston]

Purchase ban on cars

Saturday 3 January 1942, Washington
The American United Press News Agency reported:
The US government has forbidden the purchase of private motor vehicles in a ban effective immediately. The purpose of the ban, which will apply for an indefinate period, is to free the US motor industry for the manufacture of arms. The automobile industry is now being converted to tank production.

[Bodston]

German defensive battles

Sunday 3 January 1943
The German Wehrmacht High Command (OKW) announced:
We are continuing hard defensive fighting in the area of the Don river. The enemy has been repulsed along the entire front and has lost 38 tanks. The 6th Panzer Division particularly distinguished itself in the fighting. Hungarian troops repulsed an attack by Soviet forces supported by heavy artillery.

Situation Report, German Army High Command (OKH) 3 January 1943

Eastern Front: No notable engagements in Stalingrad.

[Peter Clare]

January 3, 1945
MacArthur and Nimitz given new commands

On this day, in preparation for planned assaults against Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and mainland Japan, Gen. Douglas MacArthur is placed in command of all U.S. ground forces and Adm. Chester Nimitz is placed in command of all U.S. naval forces. This effectively ended the concept of unified commands, in which one man oversaw more than one service from more than one country in a distinct region.
Douglas MacArthur's career was one of striking achievement. His performance during World War I combat in France won him decorations for valor and earned him the distinction of becoming the youngest general in the Army at the time. He retired from the Army in 1934, but was then appointed head of the Philippine Army by its president (the Philippines had U.S. Commonwealth status at the time).
When World War II erupted, MacArthur was called back to active service as commanding general of the U.S. Army in the Far East. He was convinced he could defeat Japan if Japan invaded the Philippines. In the long term he was correct, but in the short term the United States suffered disastrous defeats at Bataan and Corregidor. By the time U.S. forces were compelled to surrender, he had already shipped out on orders from President Roosevelt. As he left, he uttered his immortal line: "I shall return."
Refusing to admit defeat, MacArthur took supreme command of a unified force in the Southwest Pacific, capturing New Guinea from the Japanese with an innovative "leap frog" strategy. True to his word, MacArthur returned to the Philippines in October 1944. With the help of the U.S. Navy, which destroyed the Japanese fleet and left the Japanese garrisons on the islands without reinforcements, the Army defeated the Japanese resistance. In January 1945, he was given control of all American land forces in the Pacific; by March, MacArthur was able to hand control of the Philippine capital back to its president.
Admiral Nimitz, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, fought in World War I as chief of staff to the commander of the Atlantic submarine force, an experience that forever convinced him of the efficacy of submarine warfare. Upon America's entry into World War II, Nimitz was made commander in chief of the unified Pacific Fleet (Ocean Area), putting him in control of both air and sea forces. He oversaw American victories at Midway and the Battle of the Coral Sea, and directed further victories at the Solomon Islands, the Gilbert Islands, the Philippines, and finally, as commander of all naval forces in the Pacific, in Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
Both MacArthur and Nimitz had the honor of accepting the formal Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri.

[Peter Clare]

USS TURNER (January 3, 1944)
Returning to the USA after completing her third Atlantic convoy duty, the destroyer Turner anchored in the Ambrose Channel off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, awaiting to enter the Brooklyn Navy Yard for repairs. At about 6.30am next morning, the destroyer was shaken by a series of internal explosions in her ammunition storage areas while the crew was preparing for breakfast. The explosion ignited the fuel tanks turning the ship into a raging inferno. Another explosion blew the bottom out of the vessel and the blazing ship began to sink by the stern. It is not known what caused the explosions which took the lives of 15 officers and 138 ratings. There were 165 survivors who were rescued by nearby ships and taken to the hospital at Sandy Hook. Many lives were saved when several cases of blood plasma were flown in from Brooklyn, New York, in a U.S. Coast Guard Hoverfly helicopter. This was the first recorded lifesaving flight conducted by a rotary-wing aircraft.

[Peter Clare]

3 January 1943

The Italian cruiser Ulpio Traiano (Fitting out for service) sunk at Palermo by explosive charges laid by RN human torpedo.

Human torpedo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Peter Clare]

January 4, 1944
United States begins supplying guerrilla forces

On this day, U.S. aircraft begin dropping supplies to guerrilla forces throughout Western Europe. The action demonstrated that the U.S. believed guerrillas were a vital support to the formal armies of the Allies in their battle against the Axis powers.
Virtually every country that experienced Axis invasion raised a guerrilla force; they were especially effective and numerous in Italy, France, China, Greece, the Philippines, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. Also referred to as a "partisan force," a guerrilla army is defined roughly as a member of a small-scale "irregular" fighting force that relies on the limited and quick engagements of a conventional fighting force. Their main weapon is sabotage-in addition to killing enemy soldiers, the goal is to incapacitate or destroy communication lines, transportation centers, and supply lines.
In Italy, the partisan resistance to fascism began with assaults against Mussolini and his "black shirts." Upon Italy's surrender, the guerrillas turned their attention to the German occupiers, especially in the north. By the summer of 1944, resistance fighters immobilized eight of the 26 German divisions in northern Italy. By the end of the war, Italian guerillas controlled Venice, Milan, and Genoa, but at a considerable cost--all told, the Italian resistance lost roughly 50,000 fighters.
Perhaps the most renowned wartime guerrilla force was the French Resistance--also known as the "Free French" force--which began as two separate groups. One faction was organized and led by Gen. Charles de Gaulle, who left France upon the Vichy/Petain armistice with Germany but rallied his forces via the British airwaves. The other arm of the movement began in Africa under the direction of the commander in chief of the French forces in North Africa, Gen. Henri Giraud. De Gaulle eventually joined Giraud in Africa after tension began to build between de Gaulle and the British. Initially, de Gaulle agreed to share power with Giraud in the organization and control of the exiled French forces, but Giraud resigned in 1943, apparently unwilling to stand in de Gaulle's shadow or struggle against his deft political maneuvering.
The Allies realized that guerrilla activity was essential to ending the war and supported the patriots with airdrops. The American support was critical, because guerrillas fought admirably in difficult conditions. Those partisans who were captured by the enemy were invariably treated barbarically (torture was not uncommon), as were any civilians who had aided them in their mission. Tens of thousands of guerillas died in the course of the war, but were never awarded the formal recognition given the "official" fighting forces, despite the enormous risks and sacrifices.

[Bodston]

New Soviet Tactics Fail

4 January 1944, Berlin
The German News Bureau announced:
The great winter battle at Zhitomir which the Soviets launched on December 24 is raging on with unabated ferocity. The vast erosion of personnel and equipment in the assault units has forced the Soviets again and again to bring up fresh units so that they can continue their winter offensive which aims to tear the German front wide open. Their tactics are to drive small groups of tanks and mobile infantry into the points of weakest resistance with the objective of penetrating the rear of the German defence. At the same time they are pushing more and more fresh infantry units into their breach lanes - which of course lie under heavy defensive fire from all our arms - trying to widen and expand them into spearheads. German troops have succeeded in foiling Soviet aims by maintaining a mobile, offensively conducted elastic defence.

[Peter Clare]

January 5, 1945
Soviets recognize pro-Soviet Polish Provisional Government

On the eve of a major offensive into Poland, the Soviet Union decides to recognize the pro-Soviet Lublin Committee as the Provisional Government of Poland instead of the government-in-exile that was temporarily being headquartered in London.
On September 1, 1939, a massive German army invaded Poland. Sixteen days later, the USSR invaded Poland from the east. During this tumultuous period, Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski became leader of a Polish government-in-exile in London. He developed a good working relationship with the Allies until April 1943, when Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin broke off Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations after Sikorski requested that the Red Cross investigate the alleged Soviet slaughter of Polish officers in the Katyn forest of eastern Poland in 1942.
As the war progressed and the Soviets battled the Germans in western Poland, the Polish government-in-exile began to fear that Soviet domination might follow if the Soviets defeated Germany for control of the Polish territory. Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, Sikorski's successor as the provisional government head, pleaded with the Allies to secure Poland's postwar borders and sovereignty, but no such assurances were granted. In August 1944, the Polish Home Army, fearful that the Soviets would march on Warsaw to battle the Germans and never leave the capital, led an uprising against the German occupiers. They hoped that if they could defeat the Germans, the Allies would help install the anti-Communist government-in-exile after the war.
Unfortunately, the Soviets, rather than aiding the uprising that they encouraged in the name of beating back their common enemy, stood idly by and watched as the Germans slaughtered the Poles and sent survivors to concentration camps.
With native Polish resistance eradicated, and in anticipation of one last offensive against the Germans, the Soviet Union created its own pro-communist Polish provisional government to counter the anti-communist government-in-exile. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Allies agreed that an interim government would be formed from both the pro- and anti-communist sides, with free elections to follow. The Soviets had other plans, though, and promptly turned the exhausted and battered Poland into a nondemocratic satellite country, which it remained until 1989.

[Bodston]

Battle of the Ardennes intensifies

Friday 5 January 1945
The German Wehrmacht High Command reported:
Yesterday the battle in the northern Ardennes increased in violence still further. In combined fire by all arms, the American divisions tried once again to break through but bogged down after slight initial success. In the area of Bastogne, our armoured forces continued to exert strong pressure; enemy attacks failed. Our front lines are shifting between Saargemünd and the Rhine. Despite counterattacks by enemy troop reinforcements, our soldiers are advancing again, especially in the lower Vosges mountains in northeastern France. We have liberated the town of Weissenburg in Alsace, as well as a number of places in Lorraine, and have crossed the Lauter river to the south...

Beromünster Radio (Switzerland)

Friday 5 January 1945:
On the Eastern Front, despite occasional violent actions, the front lines have for some time remained stable in (the west Latvian region of) Kurland on the Baltic, on the border of East Prussia, and in Poland. . . Meanwhile, the German Wehrmacht has found the strength in recent weeks to mount fresh offensive thrusts. The (official Nazi party newspaper the) Völkischer Beobachter's prediction remains unfulfilled that Rundstedt's offensive in the Ardennes would in a few weeks enable the Germans to regain the initiative. It is already being admitted in Berlin that the offensive initiative in the embattled Ardennes salient has once again passed to the Americans.