[Doug64]

October 18, Friday

Britain opens route to China, defying Japanese threats

The first trucks to bring war supplies along the re-opened Burma Road—closed three months ago by agreement between Japan and Britain—arrive in Kumming, China, this evening from Lashio, Burma. Drivers report an uneventful journey free from the air attacks threatened by Japan against the Chinese section of the road.

Sixty trucks arrive in the first convoy and another 2,000—given a banquet send-off in Burma—are expected tomorrow. Waiting at Rangoon are another 500,000 tons of war supplies, including planes and munitions. On the return leg, the trucks will carry tungsten, wood, tin, oil, and pig bristles for export to the US.

City children flee the Blitz once again

A second evacuation of the half a million children in the London area is underway. Under a “trickle” evacuation scheme, they are leaving in small parties at the rate of 2,000 a day—over 20,000 left in September. A further 89,000 mothers and young children are being assisted in leaving this month.

When the heavy bombing began on September 7th, thousands of East Enders fled from the devastation. Some 5,000 trekked to Epping Forest and camped there. Others took lorries to the Kent hopfields, where they bedded down on straw in the hop-pickers’ huts. About 10,000 Londoners and local people are now living in the Chislehurst caves in Kent. They are equipped with electric light and a canteen and sick bay. Families have taken over individual caves and installed beds and furniture.

Some 25,000 went to Paddington and took trains to places such as Reading, Basingstoke, and Oxford, which alone have billeted 15,000 refugees. Most of these “trekkers” have now returned. East Enders clearly hate leaving their familiar neighborhoods or being placed in West End billets—even when they are bombed out.

[Doug64]

October 19, Saturday

Donitz steps up U-boat convoy war

Royal Navy commanders are counting the cost of Admiral Donitz’s escalation of the U-boat war in the Atlantic tonight. German submarines are now ordered to hunt in “wolfpacks” of up to a dozen boats. One pack has sunk over thirty ships from two convoys and damaged another in the last two days.

The slaughter began when Lieutenant Heinrich Bleichrodt in U-48 spotted a slow convoy, SC-7, escorted by two sloops and a corvette. Without waiting for the rest of the pack to catch up, Bleichrodt attacked and sank two merchant ships. He was then chased by a Sunderland flying boat and a sloop.

After dark last night, he was joined by five other pack members. They struck together with devastating effectiveness, sinking fifteen ships in six hours. Tragically, the escorts could do little to help as they floundered around picking up survivors.

By this time U-48 and two others have used up all their torpedoes and head for home. The others stay to pick off some of the stragglers and to look for new prey. The pack leader is Gunther Prien, called the “Bull of Scapa Flow” in recognition of his daring sortie into the home of the British fleet. He homes in on the 49-ship convoy HX-79.

Cautiously Prien waits for three other submarines to join him, by which time the convoy has an escort of two destroyers, four corvettes, three trawlers, and a Dutch submarine. Again, Prien waits and then, after nightfall, strikes suddenly with his full force. Within hours he has hit six ships and his colleagues have hit seven—twelve sunk. In the chaos, the defending forces mistake the Dutch boat 014 for a German submarine and attack it twice.

Italian air raiders go far, but miss target

Four Italian aircraft have made an audacious long-range attack on the British oil refinery at Bahrain in the Gulf. The SM82 bombers are in the air for more than fifteen hours, flying 3,000 miles (4,800 km) from Rhodes in the Mediterranean to Massawa, in Eritrea, on a triangular route whose most easterly point is Bahrain island. Each aircraft drops 66 30-point bombs on the complex. Pilots will report that they “saw fires for hundreds of miles as we left the area.”

This doesn’t match British claims that there’s no damage. A refinery engineer will assert that safety flares were turned up to simulate uncontrolled fires.

[Potemkin]

Even when they make the effort, it never seems to work out for the Italians.

[Doug64]

Even when they make the effort, it never seems to work out for the Italians.

The modern Roman legions they were not!

[Doug64]

October 23, Wednesday

MPs slam Wells’s unpatriotic speech

MPs protest today at critical comments by the author H.G. Wells, now lecturing in the United States, about British politicians and generals, whom he has also criticized in the Sunday Pictorial magazine. The government has been asked why he was allowed to go abroad to denigrate his country in its hour of peril. Emanuel Shinwell, a Labour MP, deplores Wells’s speech but says that we are fighting for the right of free expression. Mr. Peake, the parliamentary under-secretary of the Home Office, says that Britain needs all the dollars it can earn; an American senator has said that Wells is harming Britain’s cause.

[Doug64]

October 24, Thursday

Petain and Franco rebuff Hitler’s pleas

A frustrated and furious Hitler has returned to Germany after journeying across France aboard his armored train Amerika in a bid to persuade Franco and Petain to help him against Britain.

At Montoire in German-occupied territory, he told Petain that he wants “closer collaboration” from him in the fight against Britain. But though compliance could have secured the release of 1.5 million French prisoners, Petain said he can’t go to war against Britain. Hitler had to be satisfied with a piece of paper that says that France wishes to see England defeated “as soon as possible.”

The slippery customer, however, was Franco, whom Hitler met at Hendaye on the Spanish border the previous day. Hitler and Mussolini had helped him win the Spanish Civil War. But now, when Hitler asked him to attack Gibraltar with the help of German experts, Franco responded loftily that Spanish honor required Gibraltar to be taken by Spaniards alone. The two dictators argued in vain for nine hours. “Rather than go through that again,” Hitler said afterward, “I’d have my teeth pulled out.”

[Potemkin]

October 24, Thursday

Petain and Franco rebuff Hitler’s pleas

A frustrated and furious Hitler has returned to Germany after journeying across France aboard his armored train Amerika in a bid to persuade Franco and Petain to help him against Britain.

At Montoire in German-occupied territory, he told Petain that he wants “closer collaboration” from him in the fight against Britain. But though compliance could have secured the release of 1.5 million French prisoners, Petain said he can’t go to war against Britain. Hitler had to be satisfied with a piece of paper that says that France wishes to see England defeated “as soon as possible.”

The slippery customer, however, was Franco, whom Hitler met at Hendaye on the Spanish border the previous day. Hitler and Mussolini had helped him win the Spanish Civil War. But now, when Hitler asked him to attack Gibraltar with the help of German experts, Franco responded loftily that Spanish honor required Gibraltar to be taken by Spaniards alone. The two dictators argued in vain for nine hours. “Rather than go through that again,” Hitler said afterward, “I’d have my teeth pulled out.”

Franco played Hitler like a cheap fiddle.

[Doug64]

October 25, Friday

Britain frees Belgian leaders from Spain

Belgian Prime Minister Hubert Pierlot and his Foreign Minister, Paul-Henri Spaak, have arrived in London after fleeing Vichy France and escaping arrest in Spain.

After the armistice, Pierlot and Spaak stayed on in France to maintain diplomatic links with the Vichy regime. But Vichy, under German orders, broke off relations. The two Belgians spent three nights in a field between the French and Spanish borders before being admitted to Spain, there to find themselves placed under arrest.

Their chance for freedom came on October 18th. Spanish guards, who had been ordered to keep the Belgians under strict surveillance in a Barcelona hotel, slipped up when they left their prisoners—who had promised faithfully not to try to escape—in order to watch an important soccer match. As soon as the game started, Spaak and Pierlot snuck out of the hotel in a van supplied by the Belgian consulate. For 24 hours they hid underneath the driver’s seat; finally, exhausted but relieved, they arrived in Lisbon. Yesterday, a British seaplane took them to Bournemouth. They will now start coordinating Belgian efforts to resist the Nazi occupation and, more importantly, to help the British war machine.

[Doug64]

October 26, Saturday

British railways next target for bombardment

Transport in London has taken a hammering as the Luftwaffe keeps up its nightly attacks on the capital. Railways in particular have been hard hit, not just at the docks but with main line stations regularly bombed. This week it was the turn of St. Pancras station, but the forecourt of Victoria station has also been badly damaged.

For travelers, train services, especially on the Southern Railway, often terminate in the suburbs, and commuters face new puzzles every day in finding “passable” routes to the office. Unexploded bombs closing many streets add to the frustration by diverting bus routes. So many buses and tramcars have been bombed that Londoners see the unfamiliar colors of buses borrowed from as far away as Aberdeen and Exeter on their streets.

The Underground has also been interrupted by bombs. Four stations have been hit, the worst being Balham, where 600 people sheltering were deluged with a river of sludge when the roads and water mains above caved in, suffocating 64 of them.

German bombers cripple Atlantic liner

The 42,348-ton Empress of Britain, Canadian Pacific’s flagship, which brought the king and queen back from their Canadian tour, is crippled today by German bombers 150 miles off the Irish coast. She is the latest, and the largest, victim of the Germans’ stepped-up campaign against British shipping in the Atlantic. The vessel is now limping back to port under the constant threat of renewed German attack, especially from U-boats.

Britain signs secret arms deal with US

Britain and the US have concluded a secret arms deal that should boost the British effort to turn the tide against Hitler, probably in 1942. Under the deal, signed two days ago and described by Churchill as “splendid,” the US promises to equip and maintain ten British divisions with weapons currently under production. Churchill receives more good news today when he is told that US military supplies destined for Britain include 250 aircraft engines, 2.5 million cartridges for the Thompson machine gun, and 78 million rounds of rifle ammunition.

[Doug64]

October 27, Sunday

De Gaulle woos French colonies

General de Gaulle has arrived at Brazzaville, the capital of French Equatorial Africa, and proclaims the creation of a Council of Defense of the French Empire. The governor, Felix Eboue, and huge crowds welcome him.

Most of French Equatorial Africa, with 12 million inhabitants, rallied to de Gaulle in late July after the arrival of emissaries sent from London led by General Leclerc. Attempts to rally French West Africa suffered a setback with de Gaulle’s failure to capture Senegal from Vichy in September.

[Doug64]

October 28, Monday

Mussolini orders troops into Greece

To the fury of Adolf Hitler, his Axis partner, Mussolini’s army invades Greece today in the firm belief that they will meet little opposition from the dictator General Metaxas’s forces. Italian tanks and infantry cross from occupied Albania into the mountains of Epirus before dawn. Hitler hears the news on his train Amerika between Munich and Florence. When he arrives, the Italian leader is delighted to tell him, in German, “Fuhrer, we are on the march!”

Hitler is rather less enthusiastic, to say the least. Five days ago, he failed to persuade General Franco to lead Spain into the war, and now, in his opinion, the Duce is making a critical strategic mistake. Hitler is convinced that the capture of Gibraltar, with assistance from Franco, and Italy’s conquest of Egypt, especially the great British naval base at Alexandria, would ensure Britain’s collapse.

Mussolini in his turn is convinced that the pro-German Metaxas—who has based his Asfalia secret police on Hitler’s Gestapo and abolished most democratic institutions in his country—will succumb quickly and offer little resistance. The Duce doesn’t reckon with Hellenic national integrity, however. Metaxas rejects the Italian ultimatum—which he receives in his bed from an Italian envoy at 6 am this morning—an hour after Italian troops cross the border.

Visconti Prasca, the Italian commander, has made what appears to be a serious mistake in not blocking the road to the north, thus allowing three newly mobilizing Greek divisions to move quickly to the front. He is moving slowly, clearly not having learned from the Blitzkrieg tactics of German Panzers. And Greece is mobilizing swiftly.

[Doug64]

October 29. Tuesday

Worst week at sea since war started

Allied shipping losses this week total a massive 88,000 tons, eight times greater than the weekly average loss in the spring. Mines and bombings have played their part, but U-boats made the change.

German use of French ports, with direct access to the Atlantic, enables even the smaller boats to reach the trade routes, and the new policy of hunting in packs is taking a heavy toll. There are also more U-boats now that the Norwegian campaign is over, and a crash-building program is boosting numbers even further.

China forces Japan to withdraw troops

Japan’s strategy for seizing control of southern China suffers a major setback today. Its troops are forced to withdraw south into Indochina after losing Nanning, the capital of Kwangsi, China’s southern border province. The loss of Nanning, a key city on the Hanoi-Peking line, counterbalances Japan’s recent gain in being allowed to station troops in French Indochina. Both sides suffered heavy losses during seven months of bitter fighting for Nanning.

Roosevelt promises “no foreign wars”

President Roosevelt, fighting off a surge by his Republican opponent in the presidential election, promises in Boston tonight, “I shall say it again and again and again: your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”

As polls show Wendell Willkie, the Republican candidate, cutting into his lead, the president has stressed his reluctance to lead America into war. A week ago in Philadelphia, he attacked “the fantastic misstatement” that he has made secret alliances. Willkie has cut Roosevelt’s lead in the polls to four points.

[Doug64]

October 30, Wednesday

French to cooperate with the Germans

Marshal Petain has called upon the French people to collaborate with Germany. This represents a major change from the originally announced purpose of Petain’s government, which sought peace with Germany, not alliance, and results from a number of diplomatic moves. On October 22nd, Pierre Laval, the Vichy Vice-Premier, saw Hitler at Montoire in occupied France. Later, Marshal Petain met Hitler on his train at Montoire and agreed to collaborate.

[Doug64]

October 31, Thursday

Builders recalled from army to repair London’s shattered homes

The government is to release 5,000 building workers from the army to try to catch up with the urgent task of repairing bomb damage. In London, 60,000 houses are uninhabitable, 130,000 are less badly damaged, and 16,000 are totally destroyed. Three-quarters of the houses in the East End area of Stepney are estimated to be wrecked.

So far, only 7,000 people have been rehoused by local authorities out of 250,000 who have been made homeless, at least temporarily. No more repair workers are to be called up until further notice. In the meantime, 5,000 men of the Pioneer Corps are clearing debris. London’s “Rest Centres” are badly overcrowded, with 25,000 homeless people seeking shelter each night.

[Potemkin]

[Doug64]

November 1940

November 3, Sunday

First quiet night in London in months

This night the sirens fail to sound in London. It is the first night without a raid since the Blitz began on September 7th, and it is an unnaturally quiet weekend; the All Clear went before midnight last night. As a result, Londoners find it hard to sleep. They miss the noise. When the sirens haven’t sounded by 6:30 pm, people ask, “What’s happened to Jerry?”

[Doug64]

November 5, Tuesday

German attack sinks the Jervis Bay

The armed merchant cruiser HMS Jervis Bay, a converted liner of the Aberdeen Commonwealth Line, sinks today after a heroic battle. She is the sole escort of convoy HX-84, and the 37 ships are halfway out from Canada when the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer attacks. Captain Fogarty Fegen realizes that his ship has no chance against the battleship’s firepower and tells the convoy to scatter under a smokescreen. He takes on the Admiral Scheer head-on. His guns can’t even reach the German ship, but he fights on with decks ablaze. Enough time is gained to save all the convoy except five small ships.

Landslide for Roosevelt

Early this morning, it becomes plain that President Roosevelt has won a third term in the White House. He is leading in states with a total of 427 Electoral College votes., while the Republican, Wendell Willkie, is ahead in states with a total of only 87 votes.

Shrugging off a strong late run by his Republican rival, Roosevelt is the first man in history to be elected president of the United States for a third time, and once again he has won by a landslide. The new vice-president is Henry A. Wallace, the publisher of a farm newspaper.

With Roosevelt already carrying Ohio, which has 26 electoral votes, it is plain that in New York—the largest state, with 47 votes—Pennsylvania, the second (36), and in Illinois, the third (29), the president’s lead among big-city voters in New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and Chicago will outweigh the vote for Wilkie in rural areas. And the consequences of Mr. Roosevelt’s electoral victory for the course of the war in Europe are incalculably great.

For the past year, while attempting to warn the American people about the dangers of fascism and the impossibility of isolationism, Mr. Roosevelt has had to take very great care to avoid alienating potentially isolationist sentiment by seeming too eager to involve the United States in the war. Now, he can be expected to move decisively to increase help for Britain.

[Doug64]

November 7, Thursday

RAF bombs German armaments factory

The RAF strikes at the heart of the German war machine tonight in a bombing raid that puts a torch to the Krupp armaments factory in the Ruhr. The complex is hit for four hours by successive waves of aircraft. After the first assault, flames 100 feet (31 meters) high are a beacon for follow-up bombers. Claims that these are decoy fires will be rejected by aircrews.

Ireland refuses to lend Britain naval bases

Despite Winston Churchill’s anger, Ireland will remain neutral and continue to refuse to allow the use of its ports as British bases, the prime minister, Eamon de Valera, tells the Dail (legislature) today. He denies rumors that German submarines are being refueled and reprovisioned in Ireland.

Woman jailed for helping Haw-Haw

Anna Wolkoff, the daughter of a former Russian naval attaché in London, has been jailed for ten years for offenses under Britain’s Official Secrets Act and the Defence Regulations. Mr. Justice Tucker says that she had tried to send a coded letter to Lord Haw-Haw, “a traitor who broadcasts from German for the purpose of weakening the war effort of this country.”

[Doug64]

November 9, Saturday

Greeks force Italian HQ to order retreat

Less than two weeks after crossing the Greek border in great strength, the Italian army is retreating in total disarray. The Italian commander, General Visconti Prasca, has been sacked and Mussolini’s crack Julia alpine division routed with huge losses in men and equipment. The Italians have been taken completely by surprise by the speed and ferocity of the Greeks.

Six days after the Italian invasion, Greece’s General Papagos ordered the counterattack. A small Greek force crossed the Albanian frontier and took Pissoderi, a mountain near the captured town of Koritsa. The main road out of Koritsa was cut by another Greek force. With their superior knowledge of the terrain, the tough and well-trained Greeks have abandoned the valleys and taken to the mountains from whence they can infiltrate enemy positions.

Fighting at an altitude of over 5,000 feet (1,524 meters)—in the most severe winter in years—Papagos’s single division has proved more than a match for the numerically superior Italians whose armor is confined to the lower ground. Italian tanks are being knocked out by anti-tank weapons dropped by the RAF.

The Italians have paid the penalty for having allowed the Greeks to hold the mountainous center of the front. The Julia division finds itself trapped. Five thousand men have surrendered, and the Greeks are claiming a further 25,000 dead and seriously wounded.

Chamberlain dies, dogged by failure of Munich mission

Neville Chamberlain dies this night at the age of 71. He was already suffering from cancer of the stomach when he was forced out of the premiership six months ago during the political crisis over how to fight the war. Mr. Chamberlain’s distinguished career as an austere and clear-minded administrator will be inevitably forgotten in the controversy over his policy of appeasement of the European dictators—and in particular the 1938 “peace for our time” Munich agreement with Hitler. His friends will insist that he bought precious time for rearmament and has been the most misunderstood statesman of the century. Mr. Churchill will say, “He acted in perfect sincerity according to his lights.”

British women in the services: tracking enemy targets, but men still fire the bullets

Despite gallant propaganda about plucky Land Girls and “Miss England” being “busier than ever,” more British women are now out of work than before the war. Some women are finding work with the services, but even here their contribution to the war effort is less dramatic than recruiting posters imply.

Each of the three services has a branch or an organization for women—the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) is the women’s branch of the army, the Wrens work alongside the Royal Navy, and the WAAFs are linked to the currently glamorous RAF. Many of their number do indeed play crucial roles. In RDF (radar) stations they help to plot enemy aircraft movements, for instance, and women can also be found in anti-aircraft batteries and naval command centers. But they are always in noncombatant roles; women may track the targets, but men fire the guns.

Lack of direct involvement is by no means the only complaint among women who answered the patriotic call to duty—and who overcame parental fears about presumed moral dangers. Many of those who have signed up have been dismayed by the menial tasks which they are asked to perform. Though women can be trained to do anything which doesn’t make them into combatants, in practice cooking and cleaning are the most common assignments.

Outside the services there are still vast numbers of women who were made redundant last autumn by nonessential industries who are still without jobs. Earlier this year a protest was made to Parliament by the Federation of Business and Professional Women. More than half of the nearly 7,000 women registered with them were unemployed. The government has so far resisted any coordinated redirection of redundant women into war work. But pressure is growing for some form of intervention, possibly even compulsory female mobilization, an unprecedented step.

[Doug64]

November 10, Sunday

Biggest mass raid by RAF on Europe

The RAF is hitting many targets in Germany tonight, according to its headquarters in Buckinghamshire. The raid has set a new RAF record for attacks on distant enemy locations. A total of 111 aircraft of Bomber Command have been dispatched to many targets, the largest—to which 25 Wellingtons are sent—being the German town of Gelsenkirchen. Bad weather over Europe makes the raid a hazardous business. Ice, thunder, and cloud in some cases from near ground level to 18,000 feet (5,500 meters) would have made this a difficult flight in peacetime.