Remembering History by day WW2

[Bodston]

Wednesday 17 January 1945

Unprecedented Offensive
Berlin; The German News Bureau reported:
Dr. Max Krull, a military correspondant of the German News Bureau, writes concerning the (Soviet winter) offensive: The Soviets have poured masses of men, arms and matériel into the winter battle between the Carpathians (in the South) and the Memel river (in the North) on a scale unparalleled in the more than five years of military action preceding the present offensive. Infantry Divisions and armoured corps are erupting from the Soviet bridgeheads along the great bend of the Vistula in numbers which it has so far been impossible to count. This assault is more than just another of those innumerable Soviet attempts to break through our lines, which they have mounted against us again and again, with variable success, ever since 1943. Their present offensive is unprecedented in that it represents a total deployment of all avaliable forces. An attempt is being made to overthrow with a single blow the entire German front in the East and to open up all the paths onto the heart of Central Europe. German commanders are holding large stratigic forces in reserve in the various deployment zones and will send them into action only when the enemy spearheads have penetrated deeply enough so that vunerable areas open up along the flanks.

[Peter Clare]

January 18, 1943
Germans resume deportations from Warsaw to Treblinka

On this day, the deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the concentration camp at Treblinka is resumed-but not without much bloodshed and resistance along the way.
On July 18, 1942, Heinrich Himmler promoted Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Hess to SS major. He also ordered that the Warsaw ghetto, the Jewish quarter constructed by the Nazis upon the occupation of Poland and enclosed first by barbed wire and then by brick walls, be depopulated-a "total cleansing," as he described it. The inhabitants were to be transported to what became a second extermination camp constructed at the railway village of Treblinka, 62 miles northeast of Warsaw.
Within the first seven weeks of Himmler's order, more than 250,000 Jews were taken to Treblinka by rail and gassed to death, marking the largest single act of destruction of any population group, Jewish or non-Jewish, civilian or military, in the war. Upon arrival at "T. II," as this second camp at Treblinka was called, prisoners were separated by sex, stripped, and marched into what were described as "bathhouses," but were in fact gas chambers. T. II's first commandant was Dr. Irmfried Eberl, age 32, the man who had headed up the euthanasia program of 1940 and had much experience with the gassing of victims, especially children. He was assisted in his duties by several hundred Ukrainian and about 1,500 Jewish prisoners, who removed gold teeth from victims before hauling the bodies to mass graves.
In January 1943, after a four-month hiatus, the deportations started up again. A German SS unit entered the ghetto and began rounding up its denizens-but they did not go without a fight. Six hundred Jews were killed in the streets as they struggled with the Germans. Rebels with smuggled firearms opened fire on the SS troops. The Germans returned fire-machine-gun fire against the Jews' pistol shots. Nine Jewish rebels fell-as did several Germans. The fighting continued for days, with the Jews refusing to surrender and even taking arms from their Germans persecutors in surprise attacks.
Amazingly, the Germans withdrew from the ghetto in the face of the unexpected resistance. They likely did not realize how few armed resisters there were, but the fact that resistance was given at all intimidated them. But there was no happy ending. Before this new incursion into the ghetto was over, 6,000 more Jews were transported to their likely deaths at Treblinka.

[Bodston]

Thursday 18 January 1940

German General Staff Officer Loses His Way
London; The British Exchange News Agency announced:
A Daily Telegraph special correspondant in Liège has told how a plan of German military operations against Belgium alledgedly fell into the hands of the Belgian authorities. A German general staff officer had been ordered to carry important documents from the high command in Berlin to Cologne, and it was planned that he should travel by rail for greater safety. But the officer had only recently married a woman from Cologne, and when he heard that a friend of his in the German Luftwaffe was about to fly to Cologne, he decided to fly along so as to reach the city faster and spend the evening with his wife. But the pilot lost his way and on Wednesday last week landed in Mechelen, Belgium. The first thing the staff officer did upon landing was to ask a peasant for matches and to try and burn his documents. Belgian soldiers rushed up and forcibly prevented him. During his interrogation at the nearest Belgian military post, the German officer contrived to grab the documents and throw them into the fireplace; but a Belgian officer succeeded in rescuing them before they caught fire. The Daily Telegraph claims that the documents relate to the transfer of 22 newly formed German divisions from the Berlin area to the left bank of the Rhine. The transfer is said to be already in progress, and most of the divisions have been assigned to the Belgian border. The Belgian secret service quickly verified that the troop movements described are in fact taking place.

Bids to Buy Soviet Tanks
18 January 1940, Stockholm
The Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported:
The Finnish government has recieved inquiries from a number of foreign nations asking to buy captured Soviet tanks from Finland. Offers have been made for useable specimens of every type of Soviet tank.

The Mannerheim Line
18 January 1940, Brussels
The French Havas News Agency reported:
Belgian General Badoux, architect of the Manneheim Line (of Finnish fortifications on the Karelian isthmus), has compiled detailed data on the Finnish defensive system. He believes that the Karelain isthmus will be the main theatre of the Finnish-Russian war. The Finns have built tank hurdles in this area using giant boulders called "kivi." Even heavy tanks cannot overcome these rocks and so become easy prey for the antitank guns. The Finn's abundant supply of wood has enabled them to develop a special process whereby they can mix concrete even at a temperture of 20 degrees below zero Centigrade. As a result they have been able to double or triple the strength of the Manneheim Line at various points since the outbreak of hostilities.
Badoux is convinced that the Finnish army will hold the Manneheim Line.

[Bodston]

Sunday 18 January 1942

Rome; The Italian Stefani News Agency reported:
Concerning the surrender of our positions at Sollum and the Halfaya pass, it is explained that (nearby) Bardia was forced to surrender (to the British) on December 2, after one month of tenacious resistance.

[Bodston]

Monday 18 January 1943

French Victories in North Africa
Rabat; French Headquarters reported:
Despite stong enemy resistance, we were able to improve our positions south of Fondouk. We beat off an attack against our positions in the area of Casanet 30 miles east of Gafsa (Tunisia). There was vigorous aerial activity all along the front.

Monday 18 January 1943
The German Wehrmacht High Command announced:
In the south of the Eastern Front, the bitter winter battle which has gone on for two months is continuing with undiminished violence.
Yesterday in mobile fighting, the German-Italian panzer army in North Africa continued to ward off powerful enemy infantry and armoured attacks and inflicted very heavy losses on the enemy. We knocked out 20 enemy tanks. Luftwaffe units supported our defensive fighting.

[Bodston]

Thursday 18 January 1945

The German Wehrmacht High Command reported:
The battle in the great bend of the Vistula is continuing with unabated violence. We brought up reserves which intercepted the enemy spearheads between Krakow and Czestochowa. After fighting in the city streets, Czestochowa and Tomaszow have fallen into enemy hands. Soviet armoured wedges have penetrated the area between Lodz and the Vistula. Our forces are also engaged in heavy fighting against powerful enemy forces between Kielce and the lower Pilica river. A German panzer division from lower Saxony knocked out 85 tanks there in a single day.
We have evacuated our troops from Warsaw in the great bend of the Vistula. In the West, local assaults have developed into vigorous battles in the German salient bulging westward at Maaseik (Belgium), after the British moved strong forces into action. Bitter fighting is raging for individual towns and villages east and northeast of Bastogne.

[Peter Clare]

January 19, 1941
British attack Italians in Africa

On this day, British forces in East Africa, acting on information obtained by breaking the Italians' coded messages, invade Italian-occupied Eritrea-a solid step towards victory in Africa.
British Intelligence had been privy to secret Italian communiques from Africa for the past five months; every instruction sent from one Italian military unit to another was analyzed by the Brits. The Italian viceroy in Ethiopia was unwittingly receiving and transmitting every Italian military secret-and weakness. Consequently, British forces were able to organize a strategy to advance on Italian-occupied territory, with Italian troop movements in mind.
On January 19, news of an Italian withdrawal from the town of Kassala, in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, which the Italians had occupied since July 1940, reached British ears. The British garrison there had been slow to react initially to the Italian invasion of Sudan, preferring to wait to get a clearer picture of the Italian invasion strategy for East Africa. The British bided their time by beefing up their forces, especially tank forces, to something closer to parity with the Italians'. The Italian withdrawal from Kassala, a proactive defensive movement, provided the perfect opportunity for Gen. William Platt and the Indian divisions to launch an assault on Eritrea, which bordered Sudan and Ethiopia. It was not long before Italian-occupied Ethiopia and Somaliland fell.

[Peter Clare]

VAN IMHOFF (January 19, 1942)
Dutch merchant ship of 2,980 tons. Immediately after the German invasion of Holland, the Dutch East-Indies government arrested all Germans on their territory and imprisoned them in camps on Sumatra. With the threat of the Japanese invading Indonesia it was decided to move the prisoners to Ceylon. Accommodated on the ship Van Imhoff, the vessel set sail with the prisoners. Only one day out from Sumatra the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft. The damage done by the bombing was enough to sink the ship. The Dutch crew took to the lifeboats leaving the rafts for the internees but the ships captain (Capt. M.J. Hoeksema) was afraid to let the prisoners free without orders. The result being that many of the prisoners went down with the ship. Of the 477 German civilian prisoners and crew on board, 98 persons lost their lives.

[Peter Clare]

LADY HAWKINS (January 19, 1942) Passenger/cargo ship (7,988 tons) of the Canadian National Steamship Company, the Lady Hawkins was sunk by the U-66 (Korvkpt. Richard Zapp) midway between Cape Hatteras and Bermuda. The ship was carrying 212 passengers and 109 crew when hit by two torpedoes. About 162 passengers died as did 88 of the ships crew. The steamship Coamo rescued 71 persons from a lifeboat and brought them to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The liner Coamo was later torpedoed on December 9, 1942 and sank with the loss of 133 passengers and crew. The U-66 was sunk on May 6, 1944 by the destroyer escort USS Buckley. There were 36 survivors but 24 of the crew died.

[Bodston]

Tuesday 19 January 1943

Hard Fighting in Stalingrad
The German Wehrmacht High Command announced:
Our troops in the Stalingrad area are defending themselves staunchly in hard fighting against repeated enemy attacks.

The Relief of Leningrad
19 January 1943, London
The British Reuters News Agency reported:
Reports from Moscow about the Soviet success in breaking through the German blockade of Leningrad have made a deep impression in London. Several London newspapers have brought out special editions. The morning press published the special victory announcement from the Soviet High Command in headlines that cover the whole front page. This development is seen by everyone as the most significant so far in the entire offensive.
Several well-informed military specialists in direct contact with Moscow explain that the great advances made by Soviet troops around Leningrad could not be revealed to the public until now.