November 4, 1944 Gen. Sir John Dill dies On this day in 1944, British Gen. John Dill dies in Washington, D.C., and is buried in Arlington Cemetery, the only foreigner to be so honored. Born on Christmas Day, 1881, in County Armagh, Ireland, Dill was a military man from his earliest years, serving in the South African War at age 18, then in World War I. He was promoted to the office of director of military operations and intelligence of the British War Office in 1934 and knighted for service to the empire in 1937. When the Second World War broke out he was already serving as chief of the imperial general staff and renowned for his gifts as a strategist. It was his decision to reinforce the British position in Egypt with 150 tanks in August 1940, despite a shortage of such armaments back home. And in March 1941, he championed Britain's defense of Greece against the Axis invasion. But such early strategic successes were followed up by more cautious decision-making, which disturbed Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who favored more aggressive maneuvers against the enemy. Consequently, Churchill removed Dill from his post and transferred him to the United States, to become chief British military representative to Washington. It was there that Dill developed a close personal friendship with George C. Marshall, the U.S. chief of staff, which resulted in a closer U.S.-British alliance. Upon Dill's death, it was Marshall who intervened to have Dill buried at Arlington National Cemetery, normally reserved only for Americans who had served their nation during wartime. Dill's plot is also marked by only one of two equestrian statues in the cemetery.
November 5, 1940 FDR re-elected president On this day in 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is re-elected for an unprecedented third term as president of the United States. Roosevelt was elected to a third term with the promise of maintaining American neutrality as far as foreign wars were concerned: "Let no man or woman thoughtlessly or falsely talk of American people sending its armies to European fields." But as Hitler's war spread, and the desperation of Britain grew, the president fought for passage of the Lend-Lease Act in Congress, in March 1941, which would commit financial aid to Great Britain and other allies. In August, Roosevelt met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to proclaim the Atlantic Charter, which would become the basis of the United Nations; they also drafted a statement to the effect that the United States "would be compelled to take countermeasures" should Japan further encroach in the southwest Pacific. Despite ongoing negotiations with Japan, that "further encroachment" took the form of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor-"a day that would live in infamy." The next day Roosevelt requested, and received, a declaration of war against Japan. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. Certain wartime decisions by Roosevelt proved controversial, such as the demand of unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, which some claim prolonged the war. Another was the acquiescence to Joseph Stalin of certain territories in the Far East in exchange for his support in the war against Japan. Roosevelt is often accused of being too naive where Stalin was concerned, especially in regard to "Uncle Joe's" own imperial desires
November 7, 1944 Soviet master spy is hanged by the Japanese On this day in 1944, Richard Sorge, a half-Russian, half-German Soviet spy, who had used the cover of a German journalist to report on Germany and Japan for the Soviet Union, is hanged by his Japanese captors. Sorge fought in World War I in the German army, and then earned his doctorate in political science at the University of Hamburg. He joined Germany's Communist Party in 1919, traveling to the USSR in 1924. His first major assignment for Soviet intelligence was in the late 1920s, when he was sent to China to organize a spy ring. Returning to Germany, he joined the Nazi Party in 1933 to perfect his cover as a loyal German. He proceeded to develop a reputation as a respected journalist working for the Frankfurter Zeitung, finally convincing his editors to send him to Tokyo as a foreign correspondent in the mid-1930s. Once in Japan, Sorge proceeded once again to create a spy ring, which included an adviser to the Japanese cabinet and an American communist, who was also working for Soviet intelligence as Sorge's interpreter. Sorge had so successfully ingratiated himself with the German diplomatic community in Japan that he was allowed to work out of the German embassy, giving him access to confidential files. At the same time, he also befriended Japanese government officials, attempting to convince them not to go to war with the Soviet Union. In May 1941, Sorge reported back to Moscow that Hitler was planning an invasion of the Soviet Union, and that 170 divisions were preparing to invade on June 20, but Stalin ignored the warning. Sorge was also able to report, in August 1941, that Japan had plans to attack targets in the South Pacific, not in the Soviet Union. This enabled Stalin to remove troops from the Manchurian border, freeing them up for when the Germans finally invaded, as there would be no "eastern front." But Sorge's brilliant spy career came to an end on October 18, 1941, when Japanese counterintelligence exposed his operation and he was arrested, along with 34 members of his ring. He was finally hanged in 1944. Twenty years later, he was officially declared a Hero of the Soviet Union.
HMS WALNEY (November 8, 1942) Escort sloop of 1,700 tons sunk during a commando raid on the harbour at Oran (Operation Torch). HMS Walney (Y 04) was the ex US Coast Guard cutter USCGC Sebago (CGC-51) transferred to Britain under the Lend-Lease agreement on May 12, 1941. On board were around 200 men of the 6th US Armored Infantry Division. After crashing through the log boom at the entrance to the harbour the Walney came under murderous cross fire from the French vessels and in particular the French sloop La Surprise which poured shell after shell into her hull at point blank range. Now a blazing hulk, the Walney capsized and sank. There were seventeen survivors including her commander, Captain Frederick Peters. The sloop La Surprise tried to escape the harbour but was cut off and sunk by HMS Brilliant. The survivors of Walney were taken prisoner by the French but released when Oran fell. Tragically, Captain Peters was killed when the plane carrying him back to Britain was shot down.
November 9, 1938 "The Night of Broken Glass" This day in 1938 saw the organized destruction of Jewish businesses and homes in Munich, as well as the beating and murder of Jewish men, women, and children. It was an exercise in terror that would be called "Kristallnacht," or "the Night of Broken Glass," because of the cost of broken glass in looted Jewish shops--$5 million marks ($1,250,000). On November 7, in Paris, a 17-year-old German Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, shot and killed the third secretary of the German embassy, Ernst vom Rath. Grynszpan had intended to avenge the deportation of his father to Poland and the ongoing persecution of Jews in Germany by killing the German ambassador. Instead, the secretary was sent out to see what the angry young man wanted and was killed. The irony is that Rath was not an anti-Semite; in fact, he was an anti-Nazi. As revenge for this shooting, Joseph Goebbels, Nazi minister of propaganda, and Reinhard Heydrich, second in command of the SS after Heinrich Himmler, ordered "spontaneous demonstrations" of protest against the Jewish citizens of Munich. The order, in the form of a teletyped message to all SS headquarters and state police stations, laid out the blueprint for the destruction of Jewish homes and businesses. The local police were not to interfere with the rioting storm troopers, and as many Jews as possible were to be arrested with an eye toward deporting them to concentration camps. In Heydrich's report to Hermann Goering after Kristallnacht, the damage was assessed: "...815 shops destroyed, 171 dwelling houses set on fire or destroyed...119 synagogues were set on fire, and another 76 completely destroyed...20,000 Jews were arrested, 36 deaths were reported and those seriously injured were also numbered at 36...." The extent of the destruction was actually greater than reported. Later estimates were that as many as 7,500 Jewish shops were looted, and there were several incidents of rape. This, in the twisted ideology of Nazism, was worse than murder, because the racial laws forbade intercourse between Jews and gentiles. The rapists were expelled from the Nazi Party and handed over to the police for prosecution. And those who killed Jews? They "cannot be punished," according to authorities, because they were merely following orders. To add insult to massive injury, those Jews who survived the monstrous pogrom were forced to pay for the damage inflicted upon them. Insurance firms teetered on the verge of bankruptcy because of the claims. Hermann Goering came up with a solution: Insurance money due the victims was to be confiscated by the state, and part of the money would revert back to the insurance companies to keep them afloat. The reaction around the world was one of revulsion at the barbarism into which Germany was sinking. As far as Hitler was concerned, this only proved the extent of the "Jewish world conspiracy."
November 10, 1942 Germans take Vichy France On this day in 1942, German troops occupy Vichy France, which had previously been free of an Axis military presence. Since July 1940, upon being invaded and defeated by Nazi German forces, the autonomous French state had been split into two regions. One was occupied by German troops, and the other was unoccupied, governed by a more or less puppet regime centered in Vichy, a spa region about 200 miles southeast of Paris, and led by Gen. Philippe Petain, a World War I hero. Publicly, Petain declared that Germany and France had a common goal, "the defeat of England." Privately, the French general hoped that by playing mediator between the Axis power and his fellow countrymen, he could keep German troops out of Vichy France while surreptitiously aiding the antifascist Resistance movement. Petain's compromises became irrelevant within two years. When Allied forces arrived in North Africa to team up with the Free French Forces to beat back the Axis occupiers, and French naval crews, emboldened by the Allied initiative, scuttled the French fleet off Toulon, in southeastern France, to keep it from being used by those same Axis powers, Hitler retaliated. In violation of the 1940 armistice agreement, German troops moved into southeastern-Vichy--France. From that point forward, Petain became virtually useless, and France merely a future gateway for the Allied counteroffensive in Western Europe, namely, D-Day.
November 12, 1944 Brits sink the battleship Tirpitz On this day in 1944, 32 British Lancaster bombers attack and sink the mighty German battleship Tirpitz. In January 1942, Hitler ordered the Germany navy to base the Tirpitz in Norway, in order to attack Soviet convoys transporting supplies from Iceland to the USSR. The Tirpitz also prevented British naval forces from making their way to the Pacific. Winston Churchill summed up the situation this way: "The destruction or even crippling of this ship is the greatest event at the present time.... The whole strategy of the war turns at this period on this ship...." Attacks had already been made against the Tirpitz. RAF raids were made against it in January 1942, but they failed to damage it. Another raid was made in March; dozens of RAF bombers sought out the Tirpitz, which was now reinforced with cruisers, pocket battleships, and destroyers. All of the British bombers, once again, missed their target. Sporadic attacks continued to be made against the German battleship, including an attempt in October 1942 to literally drive a two-man craft up to the ship and plant explosives on the Tirpitz's hull. This too failed because of brutal water conditions and an alert German defense. But in September 1943, six midget British subs set out to take the Tirpitz down for good. The midgets had to be towed to Norway by conventional subs. Only three of the six midgets made it to their target. This time, they were successful in attaching explosives to the Tirpitz's keel and doing enough damage to put it out of action for six months. Two British commanders and four crewmen were taken captive by the Germans and spent the rest of the war as POWs. But it wasn't until November 1944 that the Tirpitz was undone permanently. As the battleship lay at anchor in Norway's Tromso Fjord, 32 British Lancaster bombers, taking off from Scotland, attacked. Each bomber dropped a 12,000-pound Tallboy bomb and two hit their target, causing the Tirpitz to capsize, and killing almost 1,000 crewmen. Ironically, the mighty Tirpitz fired its guns only once in aggression during the entire extent of the war-against a British coaling station on the island of Spitsbergen.
November 13, 1941 Congress revises the Neutrality Act On this day in 1941, the United States Congress amends the Neutrality Act of 1935 to allow American merchant ships access to war zones, thereby putting U.S. vessels in the line of fire. In anticipation of another European war, and in pursuit of an isolationist foreign policy, Congress passed the Neutrality Act in August 1935, forbidding the sale of munitions by U.S. firms to any and all belligerents in any future war. This was a not-so-subtle signal to all governments and private industries, domestic and foreign, that the United States would play no part in foreign wars. Less than two years later, a second Neutrality Act was passed, forbidding the export of arms to either side in the Spanish Civil War. The original 1935 act was made even more restrictive in May 1937, forbidding not only arms and loans to warring nations, but giving the president of the United States the authority to forbid Americans from traveling on ships of any warring nation, to forbid any U.S. ship from carrying U.S. goods, even nonmilitary, to a belligerent, and to demand that a belligerent nation pay for U.S. nonmilitary goods before shipment--a "cash and carry" plan. But such notions of strict neutrality changed quickly once World War II began. The first amendment to the act came as early as September 1939; President Roosevelt, never happy with the extreme nature of the act, fought with Congress to revise it, allowing for the sale of munitions to those nations under siege by Nazi Germany. After heated debate in a special session, Congress finally passed legislation permitting such sales. Addressing the prospect of direct U.S. intervention in the war, President Roosevelt proclaimed, also in September 1939, that U.S. territorial waters were a neutral zone, and any hostile power that used those waters for the prosecution of the war would be considered "unfriendly" and "offensive." Finally, when the U.S. destroyer Reuben James was sunk by a German sub in October 1941, the Neutrality Act was destined for the dustbin of history. By November, not only would merchant ships be allowed to arm themselves for self-defense, but they would also be allowed to enter European territorial waters. America would no longer stand aloof from the hostilities.
Sixty Five years today the Italian Transport the S.S.Scillin was sunk of the Coast of Tunisia. Her Destination was Trapani. She was carrying 814 Allied P.O.W. of which twenty Seven Survived. It may be of interest to you Geoff that two of the Casualties had Australian Addresses,but were serving with British Units.
November 14, 1940 Germans bomb Coventry On this day in 1940, German bombers devastate the English city of Coventry, demolishing tens of thousands of buildings and killing hundreds of men, women, and children. The verb "Koventrieren" (to Coventrate) passed into the German language, meaning "to annihilate or reduce to rubble." On November 8, Adolf Hitler had to move up his scheduled speech in Munich on the anniversary of his 1923 attempted coup in Bavaria because British bombers were on their way to take out a railway yard. Hitler was determined to avenge this audacious offensive. The Fuhrer let his bomber pilots know that he was not "willing to let an attack on the capital of the Nazi movement go unpunished." And so, on this day, almost 500 German bombers unleashed some 150,000 incendiary bombs and more than 500 tons of high explosives on the British industrial city, taking out 27 war factories. Of the 568 people killed, more than 400 were burned so badly they could not be identified. Among the more than 60,000 buildings destroyed or severely damaged was St. Michael's Cathedral
USS PRESTON (November 14, 1942) Part of Task Force 64 racing to intercept a Japanese naval unit under the command of Vice Admiral Kondo, as it sailed into Savo Island Sound. The naval unit consisted of the battleship Kirishima, the heavy cruisers Atago and Takao, light cruisers Sendai and Nagara and nine destroyers. When radar contact was made on the Nagara the Task Force destroyers opened fire and scored several hits on the cruiser. The Nagara returned fire with a vengeance and the Preston came under a hail of 6-inch shells reducing the vessel to burning hulk. Minutes later the Preston listed heavily to port, rolled over and sank stern first. Among the tangled wreckage lay her dead captain, Cmdr. Max Stormes and 116 of his crew. Her survivors were rescued by the destroyer USS Meade.
WARWICK CASTLE (November 14, 1942) Passenger liner of 20,107 tons owned by the Union Castle Line of London. With 428 persons on board, including 295 crewmembers and 133 servicemen, the liner was torpedoed by the U-413 at 8.44am. The ship sank in 85 minutes. The Warwick Castle was being used as a troopship and had just disembarked troops during the North Africa landings and was returning empty as part of Convoy MFK-1X when attacked. A total of 114 lives were lost. (60 crew and 54 service personnel). There were 314 survivors.
November 16, 1941 Goebbels publishes his screed of hate On this day in 1941, Joseph Goebbels publishes in the German magazine Das Reich that "The Jews wanted the war, and now they have it"-referring to the Nazi propaganda scheme to shift the blame for the world war onto European Jewry, thereby giving the Nazis a rationalization for the so-called Final Solution. Just two days earlier, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, having read more than a dozen decoded messages from German police which betrayed the atrocities to which European Jews were being subjected, had written in a letter to the Jewish Chronicle that "The Jew bore the brunt of the Nazis' first onslaught upon the citadels of freedom and human dignity.... He has not allowed it to break his spirit: he has never lost the will to resist." And active Jewish resistance was increasing, especially in the USSR, where Jews were joining partisans in fighting the German incursions into Russian territory. But it was proving too little too late, as Goebbels, Himmler, and the rest of Hitler's henchmen carried out with fanatical glee the "elimination of the Jews," using propaganda and anti-Bolshevik rhetoric to infuse SS soldiers with enthusiasm for their work. As Goebbels wrote in Das Reich: "[T]he prophecy which the Fuhrer made...that should international finance Jewry succeed in plunging the nations into a world war once again, the result would not be the Bolshevization of the world...but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe. We are in the midst of that process.... Compassion or regret are entirely out of place here."
November 17, 1887 Monty is born On this day in 1887, Bernard Law Montgomery, British general and one of the most formidable Allied commanders of the war, as well as one of the most disliked, is born in London. A graduate of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, Montgomery fought in World War I with distinction, leading an infantry platoon in an attack at Ypres, Belgium, the site of three major battles and many British casualties. Between wars, Montgomery stayed in the army as an instructor, rising in reputation as a tough-minded leader. During the Second World War, Montgomery took command of the 3rd Army Division as part of the British Expeditionary forces in France, but had to be evacuated at Dunkirk. Two years later, in August 1942, Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave Montgomery command of the British 8th Army, which had been pushed across North Africa into Egypt by German General Erwin Rommel. Needless to say, British morale was low-but not for long. "We will stand and fight here. If we can't stay here alive, then let us stay here dead," Monty declared in his typical braggadocio style, and proceeded to push Rommel into retreat at the Battle of el-Alamein--all the way to Tunisia. Rommel was finally recalled to Europe, and the Germans surrendered their position in North Africa altogether in May 1943. It was during preparations for Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion of France, that Montgomery's prickly personality ran straight into Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of the operation. Montgomery and his 21st Army Group performed admirably in France, keeping the Germans turned in one direction as American forces attacked from the other. But Eisenhower often rejected many of Monty's strategic proposals, deeming them overly cautious (he was unwilling to move until all the resources and men necessary for optimum results were in place). Ike also thought Montgomery unable and unwilling to strain every last bit of advantage from every strategic gain. Monty, for his part, did little to hide a haughty disdain for Eisenhower-not to mention his desire to take complete control of land forces. After receiving the surrender of the German northern armies in 1945, Monty held a press conference in which he all but took credit for salvaging a disintegrating American-led operation. He was almost removed from his command for this outrageous, and groundless, contention. By war's end, virtually no American commanding officer, including Generals Omar Bradley and George Patton, was speaking to Montgomery. After the war, Monty was made a viscount and a knight of the garter. Among the offices he held was deputy commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers in Europe. He also went on to write a number of treatises on warfare, as well as his Memoirs (1958). He died in 1976 at the age of 88. He would be remembered as one of the most gifted British commanders of the war-but more by his troops than by his American counterparts.
USS McKEAN (November 17, 1943) US destroyer sunk at the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay by a direct hit from a Japanese torpedo plane. The after magazine, containing the depth charges, exploded and ruptured the fuel tanks. Minutes later the forward magazine blew up and the ship began to sink by the stern. The destroyer (Lt. Comdr. Ralph L. Ramsey) was transporting 185 Marines from Gaudalcanal to Bougainville when she was attacked. A total of 64 crew members and 52 marines were killed. Survivors were picked up by rescue ships.
November 18, 1940 Hitler furious over Italy's debacle in Greece On this day in 1940, Adolf Hitler meets with Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano over Mussolini's disastrous invasion of Greece. Mussolini surprised everyone with a move against Greece; his ally, Hitler, was caught off guard, especially since the Duce had led Hitler to believe he had no such intention. Even Mussolini's own chief of army staff found out about the invasion only after the fact! Despite being warned off an invasion of Greece by his own generals, despite the lack of preparedness on the part of his military, despite that it would mean getting bogged down in a mountainous country during the rainy season against an army willing to fight tooth and nail to defend its autonomy, Mussolini moved ahead out of sheer hubris, convinced he could defeat the inferior Greeks in a matter of days. He also knew a secret, that millions of lire had been put aside to bribe Greek politicians and generals not to resist the Italian invasion. Whether the money ever made it past the Italian fascist agents delegated with the responsibility is unclear; if it did, it clearly made no difference whatsoever-the Greeks succeeded in pushing the Italian invaders back into Albania after just one week. The Axis power spent the next three months fighting for its life in a defensive battle. To make matters worse, virtually half the Italian fleet at Taranto had been crippled by a British carrier-based attack. At their meeting in Obersalzberg, Hitler excoriated Ciano for opening an opportunity for the British to enter Greece and establish an airbase in Athens, putting the Brits within striking distance of valuable oil reserves in Romania, which Hitler relied upon for his war machine. It also meant that Hitler would have to divert forces from North Africa, a high strategic priority, to Greece in order to bail Mussolini out. Hitler considered leaving the Italians to fight their own way out of this debacle-possibly even making peace with the Greeks as a way of forestalling an Allied intervention. But Germany would eventually invade, in April 1941, adding Greece to its list of conquests.
November 19, 1940 Hitler urges Spain to grab Gibraltar On this day in 1940, Adolf Hitler tells Spanish Foreign Minister Serano Suner to make good on an agreement for Spain to attack Gibraltar, a British-controlled region. This would seal off the Mediterranean and trap British troops in North Africa. Spain had just emerged from a three-year (1936-39) civil war, leaving Gen. Francisco Franco in dictatorial control of the nation. Although Franco had accepted aid for his Nationalist forces from the fascist governments of Germany and Italy during his war against the left-wing Republicans, he had maintained a posture of "neutrality" once the Second World War broke out. Two factors led the Caudillo, or chief of state, to reconsider this stance: (1) the fact that early Italian victories in Africa and German victories in Europe made a fascist victory more than just a possibility, and (2) his own desire to regain control of Gibraltar, a tiny peninsula south of Spain and a British colony. Toward this end, Franco began manipulating his own people to the point of exercising frenzied mobs to demand war against England to retake Gibraltar, which Spain lost during the War of Spanish Succession in 1704. Gibraltar was a key strategic region, the only point of access to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean and long a significant air and naval base for the United Kingdom. If Spain could occupy Gibraltar, it would cut Britain off from its own troops in North Africa and frustrate plans to drive back Rommel and his Afrika Korps, as well as stop any British plans to invade Italy. Hitler was keen on pushing Spain in this direction. But when the Fuhrer emphasized the need to move quickly, the Spanish foreign minister, on orders from Franco, insisted that Spain would need 400,000 tons of grain before it could wage war against Britain. Hitler knew this was merely a delaying tactic; Franco did not want to commit his country to the war, even as he allowed German subs to refuel in Spanish ports and German spies to keep tabs on British naval forces in Gibraltar. But as the war began to turn against the Axis powers, so did Franco, who saw a future of negotiating trade deals with the Western democracies. The Caudillo began to cooperate with the Allies in a variety of ways, including allowing Free French forces to cross Spain from Vichy France to Resistance bases in North Africa. But the Allies saw Franco as a mere opportunist, and Spain was not allowed into the United Nations until 1955.
HMAS SYDNEY (November 19, 1941) Launched in 1940 under the name HMS Phaeton. Transferred to the Australian Navy under her new name HMAS Sydney. The cruiser of 7,000 tons, captained by Captain John Burnett, set sail from Fremantle in Western Australia on her way home for a refit, when she became engaged in a fire fight off the coast of Western Australia with the German raider Kormoran disguised as a Dutch merchantman, and commanded by Theodor Detmers. The Kormoran was one of the ten armed merchantmen employed by the German Navy during the war. Badly damaged and on fire, the Sydney disappeared into the night, never to be seen again. All of her crew of 645 men were lost in this, Australia's worst World War II sea tragedy. The Kormoran also sank with the loss of 85 men but 315 of her crew made it to the Australian shore. Controversy raged for decades as to whether there was a cover up by the Australian Government as to the circumstances of the ships disappearance. Will the truth ever be known? The only piece of wreckage found was a life-raft which can be seen in the Australian National War Memorial in Canberra. The Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney
November 20, 1945 Nuremberg war-crimes trials begin On this day in 1945, a series of trials of accused Nazi war criminals, conducted by a U.S., French, and Soviet military tribunal based in Nuremberg, Germany, begins. Twenty-four former Nazi officials were tried, and when it was all over, one year later, half would be sentenced to death by hanging. These trials of accused war criminals were authorized by the London Agreement, signed in August 1945 by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the provisional government of France. It was agreed at that time that those Axis officials whose war crimes extended beyond a particular geographic area would be tried by an international war tribunal (a trial for accused Japanese war criminals would be held in Tokyo). Nineteen other nations would eventually sign on to the provisions of the agreement. The charges against the 24 accused at Nuremberg were as follows: (1) crimes against peace, that is, the planning and waging of wars that violated international treaties; (2) crimes against humanity, that is, the deportation, extermination, and genocide of various populations; (3) war crimes, that is, those activities that violated the "rules" of war that had been laid down in light of the First World War and later international agreements; and (4) conspiracy to commit any and all of the crimes listed in the first three counts. The tribunal had the authority to find both individuals and organizations criminal; in the event of the latter, individual members of that organization could then be tried. Each of the four original signatories of the London Agreement picked one member and an alternate to sit on the tribunal. The chief prosecutor was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who was asked by President Harry S. Truman to create a structure for the proceedings. The defendants were arrayed in two rows of seats; each of the indicted listened to a simultaneous translation of the arguments through a headset. There were 216 court sessions. On October 1, 1946, verdicts on 22 of the 24 defendants were handed down (two were not present; one had committed suicide in his prison cell, another was ultimately deemed mentally unfit): 12 of the defendants were sentenced to be hanged, including Julius Streicher (propagandist), Alfred Rosenberg (anti-Semitic ideologue and minister of the occupied eastern territories), Joachim von Ribbentrop (foreign affairs minister), Martin Bormann (Nazi Party secretary), and Herman Goering (Luftwaffe commander and Gestapo head). Ten of the 12 were hanged on October 16. Bormann was tried and sentenced in absentia (he was thought to have died trying to escape Hitler's bunker at the close of the war, but was only declared officially dead in 1973). Goering committed suicide before he could be hanged. The rest of the defendants received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life. All of the defenses offered by the accused were rejected, including the notion that only a state, not an individual, could commit a war crime proper
URAKAZE (November 21, 1944) The Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Urakaze had an excellent record of Allied tonnage sunk. In company with the destroyers Hamakaze, Yukikaze and Isokaze, the three were escorting the home-bound damaged warships, Kongo, Nagato and Yamato from Brunei to Kure, Japan, when attacked by the USS Sealion in the Formosa Strait. As the Sealion gradually caught up with the battle fleet her commander, Captain Eli Reich, launched three stern torpedoes at the battleship Nagato. All missed but one carried on and hit the Urakaze on her port side. After a series of explosions the Urakaze simply blew apart and in less than two minutes the vessel sank. Her entire crew of fourteen officers and 293 men were lost.
