1942 : Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff established On this day, the United States and Great Britain agree to have the British Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. Joint Chiefs work together, either through meetings or representatives, to advise the leaders of both nations on military policy during the war. During the Arcadia Conference, which began on December 22, 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D.C., to discuss a unified Anglo-American war strategy and a future peace. Toward this end, the Combined Chiefs of Staff was created. The British Chiefs of Staff, composed of the three service heads (army, navy, air force), and their U.S. counterparts, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were made into one office, with the Combined Staff Planners and the Combined Secretariat offering administrative support.
1951 : The "Witch of Buchenwald" is sentenced to prison On this day, Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment in a court in West Germany. Ilse Koch was nicknamed the "Witch of Buchenwald" for her extraordinary sadism. Born in Dresden, Germany, Ilse, a librarian, married SS. Col. Karl Koch in 1936. Colonel Koch, a man with his own reputation for sadism, was the commandant of the Sashsenhausen concentration camp, two miles north of Berlin. He was transferred after three years to Buchenwald concentration camp, 4.5 miles northwest of Weimar; the Buchenwald concentration camp held a total of 20,000 slave laborers during the war. Ilse, a large woman with red hair, was given free reign in the camp, whipping prisoners with her riding crop as she rode by on her horse, forcing prisoners to have sex with her, and, most horrifying, collecting lampshades, book covers, and gloves made from the skin of tattooed camp prisoners. A German inmate gave the following testimony during the Nuremberg war trials: "All prisoners with tattooing on them were to report to the dispensary.... After the prisoners had been examined, the ones with the best and most artistic specimens were killed by injections. The corpses were then turned over to the pathological department, where the desired pieces of tattooed skin were detached from the bodies and treated further." Karl Koch was arrested, ironically enough, by his SS superiors for "having gone too far." It seems he had a penchant for stealing even the belongings of wealthy, well-placed Germans. He was tried and hanged in 1944. Ilse Koch was tried for crimes against humanity at Nuremberg and sentenced to life in prison, but the American military governor of the occupied zone subsequently reduced her sentence to four years. His reason, "lack of evidence," caused a Senate investigation back home. She was released but arrested again, tried by a West German court, and sentenced to life. She committed suicide in 1967 by hanging herself with a bedsheet.
1942. First "Blackout Caddy" is built. <!--StartFragment --> The first "blackout" Cadillacs were completed. Due to restrictions on materials necessary to the war effort, these cars had painted trim rather than chrome. They also lacked spare tires and other luxuries. JT
1945 : Hitler descends into his bunker On this day, Adolf Hitler takes to his underground bunker, where he remains for 105 days until he commits suicide. Hitler retired to his bunker after deciding to remain in Berlin for the last great siege of the war. Fifty-five feet under the chancellery (Hitler's headquarters as chancellor), the shelter contained 18 small rooms and was fully self-sufficient, with its own water and electrical supply. He left only rarely (once to decorate a squadron of Hitler Youth) and spent most of his time micromanaging what was left of German defenses and entertaining Nazi colleagues like Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler, and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Constantly at his side during this time were his companion, Eva Braun, and his Alsatian, Blondi. On April 29, Hitler married Eva in their bunker hideaway. Eva Braun met Hitler while working as an assistant to Hitler's official photographer. Braun spent her time with Hitler out of public view, entertaining herself by skiing and swimming. She had no discernible influence on Hitler's political career but provided a certain domesticity to the life of the dictator. Loyal to the end, she refused to leave the bunker even as the Russians closed in. Only hours after they were united in marriage, both Hitler and Eva committed suicide. Warned by officers that the Russians were only about a day from overtaking the chancellery and urged to escape to Berchtesgarden, a small town in the Bavarian Alps where Hitler owned a home, the dictator instead chose to take his life. Both he and his wife swallowed cyanide capsules (which had been tested for their efficacy on his "beloved" dog and her pups). For good measure, he shot himself with his pistol.
1944 : Allies make their move on Cassino, Italy On this day, Operation Panther, the Allied invasion of Cassino, in central Italy, is launched. The Italian Campaign had been underway for more than six months. Beginning with the invasion of Sicily, the Allies had been fighting their way up the Italian peninsula against German resistance--the Italians had already surrendered and signed an armistice with the Allies in September 1943. The ancient town of Cassino, near the Rapido River, was a strategic point in the German Gustav Line, a defensive front across central Italy and based at the Rapido, Garigliano, and Sangro rivers. Taking Cassino would mean a breach in the German line and their inevitable retreat farther north. Although the campaign to take Cassino commenced in January, the town was not safely in Allied hands until May. The campaign caused considerable destruction, including the bombing of the ancient Benedictine abbey Monte Cassino, which took the lives of a bishop and several monks.
HMS MATABELE (January 17, 1942) On duty in the Barents Sea, escorting convoy PQ-8 to Murmansk in northern Russia, the destroyer was hit by two torpedoes from the German submarineU-454 Both her magazines blew up sinking the ship within two minutes. Survivors swimming in the water were then killed when her depth charges detonated or froze to death in the icy waters. There were only two survivors from her crew of 200. The U-454 (Kptlt. Burckhard Hackländer) was later bombed and sunk in the Bay of Biscay. Thirty two of her crew were lost, 14 survived.
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.
Dear Peter C Forgive me for going a little "off thread" but I felt I had to make comment about Cassino. I was recently round at a friends house, where I was paying my weekly visit to help him brush up his computer skills. He had a particular problem on his computer that needed a solution from the company that had sold him the system and I found myself chatting on the phone with a computer expert. We went into a mode that allowed the expert to operate his computer by remote control and he was interested to see that the screen saver showed him visiting a cemetery. I pointed out that the photo displayed was my friend Lew re-visiting the CWGC Cemetery at Cassino and mentioned that he and I had both served in the same unit. The conversation then went something like this: Expert: Where did you say that was? Ron: Cassino Expert: Where's that? Ron: May I ask how old you are? Expert: Thirty-nine Ron: Are you seriously telling me that you've never heard of Cassino? Expert: No, where is it Ron: Italy.... and tell me, did you not have any relatives who served in WW2? Expert: Yes, one in the Navy and one in the RAF, but they have both since passed away. I finally got the expert to promise me that he would look up "Cassino" on GOOGLE after he had put the computer problem to rights and Lew and I simply stared at each other. Please tell me that other people of a similar age group have heard of Cassino, or am I asking too much ? Ron
17/18 January 1943 170 Lancasters and 17 Halifaxes repeated the raid on Berlin. The weather was better than on the previous night but the Pathfinders were again unable to mark the centre of the city and again the bombing fell mainly in the southern areas. The Bomber Command report stated that the Daimler-Benz factory was hit, either during this night or during the raid of the previous night, but this is not confirmed by the German report; however, a BMW aero-engine factory at Spandau was hit by incendiaries and slightly damaged. There was no damage of note in any part of Berlin. The routes taken by the bombers to and from Berlin were the same as those followed on the previous night and German night fighters were able to find the bomber stream. 19 Lancasters and 3 Halifaxes were lost, 11.8 per cent of the force. The experiments with this Lancaster/Halifax force, using target indicators against Berlin, now ceased until H<SUB>2</SUB>S became available. An observer of this raid was Richard Dimbleby, the BBC broadcaster, who flew in a 106 Squadron Lancaster piloted by Wing Commander Guy Gibson. <CENTER><TABLE><TBODY><TR><TD align=middle width=240>Berlin </TD></TR><TR><TD align=middle width=240></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></CENTER>
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.
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.
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.
On this day, 19 January: 1941 Hitler and Mussolini, accompanied by Ciano, met at Berchtesgarden to discuss the critical Italian situation. The Italians accept German operational leadership for the Mediterranean area, but ask that no German troops be sent to Albania. Hitler, in the presence of his military experts, informs the Duce about his decision to salvage Italy's military reputation in Greece and North Africa; he talks non-stop for about two hours but doesn't breathe a word about Barbarossa, his planned attack on the USSR. 1942 British forces in North Borneo surrender to the Japanese. The Germans retake Feodosiya in the Crimea. 1943 Red Army troops of the South-Eastern Front (previously called the Stalingrad Front) recapture Proletarskaya, along the Stalingrad-Novorossiysk railway east of the river Manych, and advance towards Rostov. In New Guinea the Australians mop up the coastal area west of the Soputa-Sanananda road, from which the Japanese are retreating. In London, thirty-nine schoolchildren are killed when a bomb hits a school in Lewisham in a daylight 'Tip and Run' raid. 1944 The Russian 2nd Assault Army takes Ropsha, and the 42nd takes Krasnoye Selo. They join forces south-west of Leningrad cutting off all German forces from the Gulf of Finland. In Italy, the British 5th and 56th Divisions widen their bridgeheads over the Garigliano river, taking Minturno and approaching Castelforte. 1945 Martin Bormann and Eva Braun arrive from Obersalzburg to join the Führer. Eva Braun was not to leave him again alive.
1942 : The Wannsee Conference On this day, Nazi officials meet to discuss the details of the "Final Solution" of the "Jewish question." In July 1941, Herman Goering, writing under instructions from Hitler, had ordered Reinhard Heydrich, SS general and Heinrich Himmler's number-two man, to submit "as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative, material, and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question." Heydrich met with Adolf Eichmann, chief of the Central Office of Jewish Emigration, and 15 other officials from various Nazi ministries and organizations at Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin. The agenda was simple and focused: to devise a plan that would render a "final solution to the Jewish question" in Europe. Various gruesome proposals were discussed, including mass sterilization and deportation to the island of Madagascar. Heydrich proposed simply transporting Jews from every corner Europe to concentration camps in Poland and working them to death. Objections to this plan included the belief that this was simply too time-consuming. What about the strong ones who took longer to die? What about the millions of Jews who were already in Poland? Although the word "extermination" was never uttered during the meeting, the implication was clear: anyone who survived the egregious conditions of a work camp would be "treated accordingly." Months later, the "gas vans" in Chelmno, Poland, which were killing 1,000 people a day, proved to be the "solution" they were looking for--the most efficient means of killing large groups of people at one time. The minutes of this conference were kept with meticulous care, which later provided key evidence during the Nuremberg war crimes trials.
IKOMA MARUAND, YASUKUNI MARU (January 20, 1944) Two Japanese freighters transporting 611 men of an 'Independent Brigade' were heading for New Guinea when in the early evening of the 20th they were sighted by the USS Seahorse (Cdr. Slade Cutter) Three torpedoes were fired from the Seahorse, aimed at the nearest ship. One torpedo missed the target but carried on, hitting the second transport. From a spread of three torpedoes, the Seahorse had scored hits on two ships. The Yasukuni Maru sank with the loss of 68 men. The Ikoma was attacked again by four torpedoes, all of which missed. On a third attack the torpedo hit the number three hold which contained gasoline. The vessel erupted in a brilliant sheet of flame and within minutes went down stern first taking with her forty-three of her crew. Also killed or drowned were 418 of the Indian soldiers on board.
M.V. CITTA' DI GENOVA (January 21, 1943) Built in 1930 (5413 tons) the Italian motor vessel leaves Patras on the 20th bound for Bari with 200 Italian troops and 158 Greek war prisoners on board. On the 21st at 1315hrs, twenty five miles west of Saseno Island, she is hit by two torpedoes from a salvo of five fired from the British submarine, HMS Tigres. She sinks in a few minutes with the loss of 173 men.
1941 : Brits and Australians take Tobruk On this day, British and Commonwealth forces enter the port at Tobruk, in Libya, and tens of thousands of Italian occupiers are taken prisoner. Italy declared war on Great Britain in June 1940. At that time, Gen. Rodolfo Graziani had almost 10 times the number of men in Libya than the British forces in Egypt under Gen. Archibald Wavell, who was commissioned to protect the North African approaches to the Suez Canal. A vast western desert stretched between the antagonists, who sat for months without confrontation. During that time, Italian forces passed into Egypt-but by that point Britain had reinforced its own numbers and decided to make a first strike. On December 9, Maj. Gen. Richard Nugent O'Connor launched a westward offensive from Mersa Matruh, in Egypt. Thirty thousand Brits warred against 80,000 Italians-but the British had the advantage of 275 tanks to the Italians' 120. Within three days, 40,000 Italian prisoners were taken. The battle marked the beginning of the end of the Italian occupation of North Africa. General O'Connor then began a sweep of Italian positions in Libya. Under his direction in early January 1941, the British 7th Royal Tank Regiment drove westward from Bardia, which it had just taken from the Italians, with the intention of isolating Tobruk until the 6th Australian Division could aid in an assault. The attack on the coastal fortress of Tobruk was finally launched on the 21st and it fell the next day, yielding 30,000 Italian prisoners, 236 guns, and 87 tanks. The 7th Royal Tank Regiment was a remarkable unit, winning a quick series of battles in Libya despite a paucity of resources.
Tobruk taken! From: Tobruk; Australian toughness beats Rommel The soil of Tobruk must be forever Australian. Australians, backed by British artillery and tanks, captured the fortress in the first Allied drive through Cyrenaica (Libya), and Australian troops, again backed by British artillery, held it against as great odds as have been faced by any garrison in history. The very dust of its bomb-pocked perimeter is hallowed with Australian blood, and Australian dead lie in its windswept cemetery. The cohesion between the Australian troops and British Artillery forces at Tobruk was unusually strong.
