World War II Day by Day - Page 21 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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The Second World War (1939-1945).
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#15326394
Doug64 wrote:October 4, Friday

Italy doubts Fuhrer’s boasts of victory


“The war is won,” Hitler tells Mussolini today when the two dictators meet for a three-hour exchange of views in an armored train—a gift from the Fuhrer to the Duce—at the Brenner Pass. The British people are under an “inhuman strain” and, the Fuhrer claims, it is only a question of time before they crack. Hitler fails to mention that he has lost 400 aircraft over Britain in seven weeks and has decided to abandon daylight raids.

In Berlin, a foreign office spokesman tells neutral correspondents that the principal subject discussed by the two leaders and their foreign ministers may have been an appeal to the British to call off the war. However, the Italians are quick to note that Hitler no longer talks about invading Britain.

Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister, notes in his diary that this obvious setback for their Axis partner has put Mussolini in an exceptionally good mood. “Rarely have I seen the Duce in such good humor,” Ciano comments. Back in Rome, Ciano seems to have organized a briefing for the press. Il Popolo di Roma, commenting on the Brenner talks, speaks of a long war in prospect and says Hitler’s plans for invading Britain have failed, at least for this year.

Mussolini was utterly unimpressed by Hitler when they first met, and always regarded himself as the senior member of the Axis Powers. Mussolini therefore wanted Hitler to be successful, but not too successful. Lol.
#15326562
Potemkin wrote:Mussolini was utterly unimpressed by Hitler when they first met, and always regarded himself as the senior member of the Axis Powers. Mussolini therefore wanted Hitler to be successful, but not too successful. Lol.

Only if his powers of self-deception were at superhuman levels, which I kinda doubt. Though he probably consoled himself that the only reason Hitler overshadowed him was Germany's greater resources--also a self-deception, but a more reasonable one.
#15326578
Doug64 wrote:Only if his powers of self-deception were at superhuman levels, which I kinda doubt. Though he probably consoled himself that the only reason Hitler overshadowed him was Germany's greater resources--also a self-deception, but a more reasonable one.

Mussolini’s powers of self-deception were pretty impressive, it seems to me. Maybe not as superhuman as to remain convinced that he was the senior partner in the Axis, but that was certainly his attitude even after Hitler came to power in 1933. Adolf was a Johnny-come-lately who didn’t know how to dress properly or conduct himself properly in high society. He had no style. Mussolini was - initially at least - not impressed. Lol.
#15326581
Potemkin wrote:Mussolini’s powers of self-deception were pretty impressive, it seems to me. Maybe not as superhuman as to remain convinced that he was the senior partner in the Axis, but that was certainly his attitude even after Hitler came to power in 1933. Adolf was a Johnny-come-lately who didn’t know how to dress properly or conduct himself properly in high society. He had no style. Mussolini was - initially at least - not impressed. Lol.

All absolutely true. Even at this point, Mussolini might still be deluding himself that he's the senior member despite Hitler being able to mandate when he'd join the war after Germany invaded France. But it isn't going to last.
#15326591
Doug64 wrote:All absolutely true. Even at this point, Mussolini might still be deluding himself that he's the senior member despite Hitler being able to mandate when he'd join the war after Germany invaded France. But it isn't going to last.

Absolutely.
By Doug64
#15326598
October 7, Monday

German army occupies oil-rich Romania


The Axis powers have marched into Romania. Two divisions of German troops, totaling 30,000 men, along with token Italian units today pass through Hungary to take control of the oilfields and the harbors from which the oil is shipped. The Germans claim that their troops have been sent to Romania “in accordance with an agreement with the Romanian government for training and reorganizing the Romanian army with all the equipment essential for modern warfare.” In another announcement, however, the Germans claim their action was taken to protect Romania from British plans to sabotage the oilfields. Certainly the oilfields, developed largely by British capital, are the primary reason for the invasion.

Last week, the government of the dictator Ion Antonescu arrested British officials on allegations that they were plotting to set fire to the oilfields. Some of these officials have been subjected to ill-treatment. It is apparent that the Germans have entered with the consent and cooperation of the Antonescu regime. The Romanian army has evacuated barracks in the capital to make way for the Germans. An expeditionary force GHQ has been set up and contact established with the Romanian General Staff.

The invasion is seen as one of the first fruits of the meeting between Hitler and Mussolini at the Brenner Pass last Friday. It has no doubt been undertaken to ensure the supply of Romanian oil to the Axis, which is cut off from Middle Eastern sources. At this stage, there is little Britain can do against this latest example of Axis expansion.

Nationalist fervor ends Japanese party politics

Japan will become a one-party state with the inauguration of the ultra-nationalistic Imperial Rule Assistance Association next week, which will replace all existing political parties. The two leading mainstream parties, Rikken Seiyu-kai and Rikken Minseito, which dominate Japan’s parliament, will be voluntarily dissolved.

The new organization, the brainchild of the Premier, Prince Konoye, is intended to capitalize on the growing patriotic fervor among the Japanese and mobilize mass political support for land-hungry Japan’s plans to expand its territorial borders in China and southeast Asia.

The IRAA, with offices in every prefecture, will mirror precisely Japan’s current legislative structure. Discussions on the IRAA began in July, with moderates and nationalists battling over how closely it would imitate the totalitarian aspects of Europe’s Nazi and Communist parties.
By Rich
#15326608
When it came to air and naval power after the fall of France it was a case of the German David against the Anglo American Goliath. Germany couldn't compete with Britain in the production of aircraft never mind the USA. At first sight Hitler's empire after the fall of France looked impressive but actually blockaded in, it faced a number of mutually reinforcing crisis. A shortage of oil, a shortage of coal, a shortage of machine tools, a shortage of food, a shortage of fertiliser, a shortage of steel, a shortage of railway engines and rolling stock, declining agricultural productivity, declining industrial productivity, a man power shortage. Aside from a massive influx of labour, Germany extracted very little to support its war economy from its conquered possessions.

Nazi Germany was faced with an air based and Naval arms race against the British Empire and the United States which it couldn't possibly hope to win, at the same time it was utterly dependent on the soviet Union for primary resources and had to export large quantities of machine tools in return which it could ill afford to lose and that were contributing to the ever increasing industrial capacity of the Soviet Union. The war against France was not conceived as Bltzkrieg. The invasion of the Soviet Union was conceived as blitzkrieg. This did not come out of any sort of rationale calculation of Soviet power, but was merely wishful thinking based on the need to shift production back to its competition with the Anglosphere.

Barbarossa was not the culmination of Hitler's strategic master plan, but was hoped to be a quick side show before getting back to the main struggle. I think Hitler can actually be taken at his word when he told Mannerheim, that he would never have started the war with Russia if he had known the insane quantities of military equipment the Soviets possessed and they could produce. The Eastern Front was arguably the most titanic struggle in world history, but this titanic struggle came about by accident not by design.
By Doug64
#15326752
October 9, Wednesday

Churchill elected Tory Party leader


Winston Churchill is elected Tory Party leader this afternoon in succession to Neville Chamberlain, who retired from the government last week for health reasons. The decision—made at a private party meeting—is reported to have been unanimous.

Mr. Chamberlain had continued as Tory leader after relinquishing the premiership. Mr. Churchill had many enemies in the party before the outbreak of war, and there was an abortive attempt this morning by party establishment figures to formally appoint a deputy leader “to keep an eye on the boss.”

After his election, Mr. Churchill, who knew what had been going on, refers obliquely to his past differences with the party—sometimes while a member of it and sometimes not. “Varying opinions are entertained about my career,” he says with a grin. “But I think I can call myself a Tory.”

US pilots join RAF “Eagle Squadron”

These days, the accents of Ohio, New York, and Texas can be heard in an RAF mess as US citizens learn to fly for freedom. Although their homeland is neutral, these US idealists argue that they are defending the United States as well as Britain by joining a unique, all-American team known as the Eagle Squadron. Its leader, Squadron-Leader W.E. Taylor, left the Marine Corps Reserve to join.

There is a good historical precedent for the Eagles. During the Great War, 180 Americans switched from the French Foreign Legion to fly with the Lafayette Squadron, after service in the trenches. They shot down 199 enemy aircraft.
By Doug64
#15326877
October 11, Friday

HMS Ajax sinks three Italian warships


The Mediterranean may be “Italy’s boating lake” to a boastful Mussolini—but the Duce hasn’t reckoned with the Royal Navy. In a short and brutal confrontation eighty miles away (128 km) south of Sicily, HMS Ajax, the veteran of last year’s Graf Spee encounter, sinks three Italian naval vessels.

Ajax is participating in a massive 3,000-mile sweep of the eastern and central Mediterranean when contact is made. Her 6-inch guns make short work of two torpedo boats, which sink immediately, and a third makes off at speed.

In a later engagement with an Italian squadron, Ajax cripples a destroyer, the 1,620-ton Artigliere, which will be found the following morning and sunk by shellfire from HMS York after her crew abandons ship. Radio signals are transmitted on Italian frequencies giving the position of survivors, and a Sunderland flying boat guides an Italian hospital ship to the scene.
#15326908
Once again, Italy covers itself in military glory. :lol:
By Rich
#15326963
After World War 1, German patriots faced this immensely difficult task of how to restore Germany's power. Its not just that Germany needed to substantially rebuild its power before getting into a war with France, Britain, the United States or the Soviet Union, they also had to avoid triggering an arms race with those powers. Hitler started the arms race in earnest in 1936, but even by 1937, Hitler was being forced to scale back his rearmament plans. Germany just did not have the economic, financial or resource base to support the rearmament that Hitler wanted and frankly Germany needed if it was to enter a conflict with France and Britain with reasonable odds of success. Hitler ramped up his expansion and forced the war with France and Britain in 1938/9, because he'd triggered an arms race, that he just could not win and he calculated that his position was not going to improve in that arms race if he delayed general war longer.

Now I'm not a super economic determinist. If Hitler had not attacked the Soviet Union and had just sat tight, or if the Soviet regime had collapsed even as late as March 1943, I don't think a complete USA and British victory over Nazi Germany was guaranteed at all. In September 1940, when Hitler decided on Barbarossa, a serious scale strategic bombing campaign had not been undertaken by any nation. The effectiveness of strategic bombing, the damage inflicted over the investment of resources was no doubt grossly over estimated by all sides. "Will the strategic bomber always get through?" was the wrong question. The important question was, even if the strategic bomber does get through, has it got a cats chance in hell of actually hitting anything worth while?

From September 1940, it was going to take a long time for Britain, or even Britain and the US, if the US entered the war, to be able to mount a strategic bombing campaign that could do meaningful damage to the German war economy. If Germany had just sat tight and focused its resources on fighters, strategic AA, UBoats and long range, land based Naval air power, it could well have outlasted Britain and the US's will to pursue a strategic bombing against Germany for unconditional victory. If Germany had remained on the defensive it could very well have got Britain and the US to negotiate and accept its continental conquests.

But such a defensive, passive strategy was anathema to Hitler, and frankly would have been highly unpalatable to most leaders. Hence Hitler felt forced to gamble on knocking out the Soviet Union in a blitzkrieg. The campaigns against Poland, the Low Countries were not conceived as Blitzkriegs. Hitler's original plan conceived back in the the early 1920s was to conquer the Ukraine before going to war with France allowing him to fight a sustained war with France without the German people starving or starting a revolution. Blitzkrieg was a concept invented by the media not the military, but the Germans felt forced to adopt it as a strategy, or to be more accurate wishful thinking standing in for the absence of a credible strategy.
By Doug64
#15326968
October 12, Saturday

It’s business as usual for blitzed London


With a hole through the roof and its altar shattered, St. Paul’s carries on with its services. Parliament and the Law Courts, both damaged, are still sitting. St. Thomas’s, badly smashed, goes on operating. So does the Stock Exchange. In the early days, everything stopped with the “Alert”—now ministries, post offices, banks, and offices employ roof spotters and only take shelter when a raid is imminent. At night, only 40 percent of London’s population take shelter; the rest take their chances at home. West End shops sweep up their broken plate glass windows and try to stay open. Swan and Edgar and other stores and offices have made their basements into shelters, for which the public queues up at night. West End hotels such as the Dorchester and the Savoy offer their dinner-dance guests basement beds for the night and are always crowded. Some movie theaters stay open until the “All Clear.” Many take blankets and see the program round again, or standby films, before settling down beneath the circle.

There are few absentees. Office workers pick their way over the rubble and work by candlelight. Shops bear defiant signs—“More Open Than Usual.”

Myra Hess plays on at National Gallery

The National Gallery was hit by a bomb today, but Myra Hess carries on with her Gallery Concert as she has been doing for the past year. Against the bare walls of the central galleries (the pictures are safe in a Welsh slate quarry), lunchtime chamber music concerts are given to 1,500 people, who pay a shilling (5p/20¢) a head to hear pianists like Solomon and Denis Matthews as well as Myra Hess’s Bach and Beethoven. Much of the music—like the bomb damage—is German.
#15326970
Doug64 wrote:October 12, Saturday

It’s business as usual for blitzed London


Shops bear defiant signs—“More Open Than Usual.”

That’s very British. :lol:

Much of the music—like the bomb damage—is German.

Germany was, and still is, a central and essential part of European culture and civilisation. This was the elephant in the room during the Cold War which followed Germany’s military collapse in 1945. It could not be kept down forever; the only question was when and how it would rise again, not whether it would do so. Europe without Germany has a hole in its middle. This was the essential tragedy of the early 20th century - that Europe tore itself apart.
#15326980
Potemkin wrote:Germany was, and still is, a central and essential part of European culture and civilisation. This was the elephant in the room during the Cold War which followed Germany’s military collapse in 1945. It could not be kept down forever; the only question was when and how it would rise again, not whether it would do so. Europe without Germany has a hole in its middle. This was the essential tragedy of the early 20th century - that Europe tore itself apart.

I've heard WWI described as Europe's suicide, and compared to the Peloponnesian War. But truthfully, it was the entire cycle of the two wars bookending a disastrous peace in the middle.
#15327027
I'm currently reading Girl With A Sniper Rifle about a Soviet woman who fought as a sniper in WW2 starting in late 1944. It's a fantastic memoir that I heavily recommend. She was not a Pavlechenko, but its even more interesting IMO to read about the "normal sniper" in this conflict and get her perspective.

@Potemkin I disagree. I think Stalin's original plan for Germany could have worked. I similarly wish the union generals in the US civil war had been able to enact more policy to reshape their military victory ;)
By Doug64
#15327069
October 13, Sunday

Princess Elizabeth speaks to evacuees abroad in radio debut


The 13,000 children evacuated overseas to the Dominions and the United States hear a message from home tonight delivered by Princess Elizabeth. In her first broadcast, at the age of fourteen, her coolness and resemblance in voice to her mother, the queen, is striking.

“My sister, Margaret Rose, and I feel so much for you as we know from experience what it means to be away from those we love most of all,” says the princess. “We children at home are full of cheerfulness and courage and are trying to bear our own share of the danger and sadness of war.... My sister is by my side and we are going to say goodnight to you—come on, Margaret. Good night and good luck to you.”

The queen has decided that the princesses shouldn’t go to Canada.
#15327137
Doug64 wrote:I've heard WWI described as Europe's suicide, and compared to the Peloponnesian War. But truthfully, it was the entire cycle of the two wars bookending a disastrous peace in the middle.

The first comprehensive theory of history that i was introduced to, was the Christian theory of history. I went to Sunday School and Church, before we had a television. the second comprehensive theory I came across was the Hollywood Theory of History. The first has waned in influence, but I think the second still holds great weight. Really I don't think a better more accessible introduction to the Hollywood theory has been made, than this scene from the The Producers.



This is a comedy sketch, but underlying it seems to be a theory of history, that says we could all have lived in peace and harmony of it wasn't for these evil war mongers, men like Napoleon, the Kaiser and Adolph Hitler. A theory of history that we in the Anglosphere are peace lovers, while these other nations are prone to fall under the leadership of these demagogic war mongers.

However I have a problem. When I look back at the last quarter of a millennium of history of Britain and the United States, I feel compelled to conclude that either we are the most incompetent peace mongers that have ever existed, or we're not really peace mongers at all. When I look back at the last 250 years of history, when hasn't Britain or the Americans not been in some sort of war or at the very least pacifying the territories that they captured in their previous wars.

Similarly when I look at the peoples of Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and Italy in 1914, I see people who on the whole loved wars. It seems to me that in WW1, a lot of them discovered that it was a certain type of war they didn't like. Its in this context that I believe the so called great accident of 1914 should be viewed.
By Doug64
#15327141
@Rich, certainly, the catastrophe of the two-act world war of the early 20th century didn't spring up out of nothing, the natural result of militarizing your society is that that military will be used. But the world war was when all the chickens came home to roost.
By Doug64
#15327234
October 15, Tuesday

“Posthumous” VC is alive and well


Lieutenant (Acting Captain) Eric Charles Twelves Wilson of East Surrey Regiment, reported killed and awarded a VC posthumously last Saturday, is alive and a prisoner of war. The War Office has informed his parents, the Reverend Cyril and Mrs. Wilson of Hunsdon Rectory near Ware, Hertfordshire.

Wilson was awarded his VC, the 12th of the war, for outstanding bravery while attached to the Somaliland Camel Corps. Between August 11th and the 15th, he kept a machine-gun post on Observation Hill in action despite being wounded and suffering from malaria. His mother says tonight that she had never given up hope.
By Doug64
#15327312
October 16, Wednesday

Rumors of the invasion that never was


Despite official denials, rumors persist that the Germans attempted an invasion in the late summer and perished disastrously. Large numbers of dead Germans are believed to have been washed ashore on the south coast between the Isle of Wight (where the “invasion” was aimed) and Cornwall. One story is that the corpses were charred because the sea was set on fire.

A further theory is that the Germans held an ill-fated rehearsal of the invasion and that the barges were sunk in storms. No one has seen the bodies, but that is explained by the authorities concealing them. In fact, any bodies washed up are of German airmen shot down.
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