Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

USS ARGONAUT(January 10, 1943)
The Argonaut was the largest submarine ever built in the US. (until the advent of nuclear submarines) At 3,128 tons she was designed primarily as a minelayer but later, in 1942, was converted to a troop carrying submarine and based at Brisbane, Australia. In January, 1943, while on patrol in the dangerous waters between New Britain and Bougainville, just south of St. George's Channel, her captain, Lt. Cmdr. John Pierce, spotted a Japanese convoy of five freighters with their three destroyer escorts. When in position for an attack the Argonaut fired one torpedo at one of the freighters and was immediately counterattacked by the destroyers. Badly damaged by depth charges, the destroyers circled the Argonaut pumping shell after shell into her hull until she sank below the waves taking 105 officers and men with her to the sea bed. There were no survivors.

[Peter Clare]

January 11, 1945
Truce signed in Greek Civil War

On this day, fighting in the civil war stops when a political truce is signed between the British-backed Democratic National Army and the communist rebel National Liberation Front.
Upon the occupation of Greece by Germany (which invaded to bail out Italy after its failed invasion threatened to leave Greece open to Allied occupation), various resistance forces gave battle. Two stood out as particularly important: a communist-backed resistance movement called the National Liberation Front and a liberal, democratic movement called the Democratic National Army. While the factions operated within different ideological frameworks, they nevertheless occasionally cooperated in fighting the common German enemy. By early 1944, however, the National Liberation Front took to the hills to create a provisional government, rejecting the legitimacy of both the Greek king and his government-in-exile. It also disregarded its one remaining rival for ultimate political supremacy in Greece-the Democratic National Army.
When Germany withdrew from Greece in October 1944, victorious British forces brought together the communist and democratic factions in order to establish a coalition government. This government collapsed after the communist National Liberation Front refused to disband its guerrilla forces. On December 3, war broke out between the communists and the democrats. The National Liberation Front took control of most of Greece, with the exception of the capital and Salonika.
The British fought against the communists alongside the Democratic National Army, which began to move more and more to the right politically as it struggled for survival and support. On January 11, the National Liberation Front accepted the British terms for a truce; a month later, the rebels surrendered and disbanded their guerilla army altogether. The peace was short-lived, however, as civil war broke out again in the postwar environment and the tumultuous struggle for control over Greece continued.

[Bodston]

Thursday 11 January 1940

Belgians Lodge Protest in Berlin
The British Reuters News Agency announced:
The Belgian government has protested to the German goverment about the violation of Belgian neutrality by a German military aircraft that made an emergancy landing near Mechelen.

[Bodston]

Monday 11 January 1943

Secret Report of the German SS Security Service on internal affairs, No 349 of 11 January 1943 (extract):
I. General Comments: While the winter fighting in the east initially triggered nothing (in Germans) but concern for the personal fate of the participating soldiers, German people now generally regard the battle situation there with a feeling of calm security, despite the reports that we are fighting defensive battles. However, our present reports indicate that the continuation of heavy defensive fighting is leading to an increasing disquiet.

[Bodston]

Thursday 11 January 1945

Savage Street Fighting in Budapest
Berlin, The German News Bureau reported:
In the devastated terrain surrounding the eastern railway station in Budapest, fighting continued with the most extreme ferocity throughout the day. In general, we prevented further Soviet incursions in hand-to-hand and other fighting. Several enemy tanks broke through and approached a lead-in to Rodkokczi Street, one of the city's main shopping thoroughfares; but German storm guns set the tanks on fire. Counterattacking German and Hungarian troops have closed the dangerous gaps which had opened along the front.

[Peter Clare]

January 12, 1943
Soviet forces penetrate the siege of Leningrad

On this day, Soviet troops create a breach in the German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted for a year and a half. The Soviet forces punched a hole in the siege, which ruptured the German encirclement and allowed for more supplies to come in along Lake Ladoga.
Upon invading the Soviet Union in June 1941, German troops made a beeline for Leningrad, the second-largest city in the USSR. In August, German forces, approaching from the west and south, surrounded the city and rendered the Leningrad-Moscow railway useless. A German offensive attempted to occupy the city but failed; in light of this, Hitler decided to impose a siege, allowing nothing to enter or leave the former capital of Old Russia. Hitler intended to wait the Soviets out, then raze the city to the ground and hand the territory over to Germany's Finnish allies, who were advancing on the city from the north. (Finland would stop short of Leningrad, though, happy with regaining territory lost to the USSR in 1939.)
The siege began officially on September 8, 1941. The people of Leningrad began building antitank fortifications and succeeded in creating a stable defense of the city, but they were also cut off from all access to vital resources in the Soviet interior. In 1942, 650,000 Leningrad citizens died from starvation, disease, exposure, and injuries suffered from the siege and the continual German bombardment with artillery. Barges offered occasional relief in the summer and ice-borne sleds were able to do the same in the winter. A million sick, elderly, or especially young residents of Leningrad were slowly and stealthily evacuated, leaving about 2 million people to ration available food and use all open ground to plant vegetables.
A Soviet counteroffensive pushed the Germans westward on January 27, 1944, bringing the siege to an end. It had lasted for 872 days.

[Peter Clare]

KYLE V. JOHNSON (January 12, 1945)
En route to Lingayan Gulf as part of a hundred ship convoy, the Johnson was hit by a kamikaze plane which crashed on the starboard side of number three hatch, ploughing through the hull plates and into the deck below. On board the Johnson were 500 US Army troops and 2,500 tons of motor vehicles and gasoline in fifty gallon drums. The resulting explosion blew the steel hatch beams high into the air. Dropping out of the convoy the Johnson's gallant crew fought the fire until the flames were extinguished. She then rejoined the convoy but on board lay the bodies of 129 dead men and many injured. The Kyle V. Johnson survived the war and was scrapped in 1975 at Panama City.

[Bodston]

Tuesday 12 January 1943

The German Wehrmacht High Command announced:
Between the Caucasus and the Don, around Stalingrad and the Don river zone, the enemy has renewed his assaults with powerful forces along his previous focal attack lines. We repelled him in bitter fighting, at some points launching counteroffensives, and destroyed 63 of his tanks, 45 of them at Stalingrad. Mass deployment of infantry resulted in correspondingly heavy Soviet losses. When we moved to counterattack, we encircled and mauled an enemy infantry division.

Soviet Equipment is Top Priority
12 January 1943, Washington
The American Associated Press News Agency reported:
The US Government has informed all departments dealing with arms production and shipment that the Soviet Union has the number-one claim on shipment of any military supplies it may request.

[Bodston]

Wednesday 12 January 1944

Winston Churchill to Joseph Stalin
Personal and Secret - We are watching almost hour to hour the marvellous advances of the Soviet armies . . . If we were in Tehran again, I would be saying to you across the table: "Please let me know in plenty of time when we are to stop knocking down Berlin so as to leave sufficient billeting accommodation for the Soviet armies."
All plans for our Italian battle have been satisfactorily settled here. I return your handshake well and truly.

[Peter Clare]

January 13, 1942
Allies promise prosecution of war criminals

On this day, representatives of nine German-occupied countries meet in London to declare that all those found guilty of war crimes would be punished after the war ended. Among the signatories to the declaration were Polish Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski and French Gen. Charles de Gaulle. The core of the declaration was the promise of "the punishment, through the channels of organized justice, of those guilty of, or responsible for, these crimes, whether they have ordered them, perpetrated them, or participated in them."
Knowledge of German atrocities occurring in Poland and Russia were reaching both the Allied governments and the exiles from the countries in which the butchering of innocents was taking place. News of Jews, political dissidents, and clergy being systematically murdered, tortured, or transported to labor camps as the Nazi ideology advanced along with Hitler's armed forces increased the resolve and solidarity among the Allies to defeat the Axis.
Also on this day: President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the U.S. War Production Board, with business executive Donald M. Nelson as its chairman.
This was not the first time Roosevelt called on Nelson. In 1940, the president asked Nelson, then executive vice president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., to head up the National Defense Advisory Commission. As Roosevelt established agency after agency to coordinate the transition of industry from peacetime to wartime production, Nelson skipped among jobs, becoming director of purchases for the Office of Production Management and, in August 1941, director of the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board. The War Production Board, created to establish order out of the chaos of meeting extraordinary wartime demands and needs, replaced the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board.
As chairman, Nelson oversaw the largest war production in history, often clashing with civilian factories over the most efficient means of converting to wartime use and butting heads with the armed forces over priorities. Despite early success, Nelson made a major judgement error in June 1944, on the eve of the Normandy invasion, when he allowed certain plants that had reached the end of their government/military production contracts to reconvert to civilian use. The military knew the war was far from over and feared a sudden shortage of vital supplies. A political battle ensued, and Nelson was eased out of his office and reassigned by the president to be his personal representative to Chiang Kai-shek in China.