World War II History Thread

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

May 5, 1938

 

• Mussolini put on a grand naval review of over 200 warships in the Gulf of Naples to impress Hitler.

 

Edited May 5, 2018 by Hugo Stiglitz

[DoobieWah 1433]

But were they on time?

[Armybrat 40815]

Bet those 200 gondoliers were pissed about being pressed into the Spaghetti Navy.

[RPM 26315]

My Dad was an LCVP coxswain at Iwo Jima. Pretty sure Cotton Hill was based on him.

[HouTex 1866]

My avatar needs to be in this thread.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

May 6, 1938

• The Soviet Union announced the appointment of Alexey Merekalov as the new Ambassador to Nazi Germany.

Edited May 6, 2018 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Armybrat 40815]

My Dad was an Infantry captain stationed at Fort Richardson, Alaska when Pearl Harbor went down. He served in the Aleutian Campaign of 1943 to kick the Japanese off that chain of islands, and spent a miserable 7 months living in a tent without taking a bath. He "brought back" a Nambu Type 94 pistol & holster as a souvenir from the Battle of Attu. He literally took it off the body of a dead Japanese officer, while another soldier got the deceased's Samurai sword.

He was transferred to Fort Benning in '44 to train with a new infantry regiment and was shipped out to Strasbourg, France a week after I was born in early December - just in time for The Bulge. My birth delayed his departure with the regiment by a week, and by the time he caught up with it in France, 7 of his fellow 13  battalion officers had been killed.

Parts of the regiment had been decimated by the Germans, so after narrowly avoiding capture by his kraut cousins, Dad was sent to the rear for reorganization into a new outfit. However, his malaria flared up again and he landed in a hospital for awhile - then subsequently was put in charge of a "90 Day Wonder" officers training program in Paris. 

Not long before VE Day in Paris he was put in charge of a railroad yard where vast amounts of damaged allied war materiel was brought in for sorting (they left the destroyed German vehicles on the battlefields as a propaganda thing). One morning Dad's sergeant walked in his office and said, "Colonel, a boxcar full of crates of new Lugers & P38s just rolled in. What should we do with them?".  Dad said, "Let the troops have them for souvenirs". An hour or so later Dad thought he'd go over a get several of the pistols for himself, but was chagrined to see they were already cleaned out. He came home to Missouri in July of '45 - earlier than most because of 39 months of overseas duty (Alaska was counted in)

He still "brought back" two Mauser 98K rifles, a couple of Nazi helmets, and a Belgian made BAR that had been captured by the Germans when they overran the Low Countries early in the War. In the 1950s I & my brothers used the BAR, Mausers,  helmets, & other equipment to play Army out in the woods behind our house in St. Louis. Nobody gave us a second look when we toted that lethal-looking hardware around the neighborhood. The FN manufactured BAR (a rare piece worth about $12,000 today) we donated to the Camp Mabry Military Museum a few years ago. It is in storage in their vault. I had one of the Mauser 98k rifles rebuilt into a nice .30-06 hunting piece - it now belongs to one of my sons.

Edited May 6, 2018 by Armybrat
old fingers

[Armybrat 40815]

BTW - there are a few interesting WWII threads in the History Forum over at the City-Data board:

 

 ahttp://www.city-data.com/forum/history/

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

May 7, 1938

• Ambassadors from Britain and France opened a discussion in Prague on Sudeten Germans. They advised Czechoslovakia to make greater concessions to ethnic Germans within its borders.^[5][12]
• Nine high justices were dismissed from the Austrian Supreme Court and replaced with Nazis.^[13]

[Armybrat 40815]

Quote

Sudeten Germans

Are you baiting Phlegm?

[High Plains Drifter 11024]

On 5/6/2018 at 5:25 AM, RPM said:

My Dad was an LCVP coxswain at Iwo Jima. Pretty sure Cotton Hill was based on him.

 

My gramps had that exact same job. He was at all the Pacific island battles. Was wounded and received the Bronze Star at Iwo Jima.

 

He used to tell me stories about watching Jap suicide bombers diving at the troop transport ship he was stationed on.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

May 8, 1938

• Nazi-controlled authorities in Austria issued a warrant for the arrest of Archduke Felix, accusing him of stealing silverware and linen from the Theresian Military Academy where he was a cadet.^[17]

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

May 9, 1938

• Hitler ended his state visit to Italy with a day of sightseeing in Florence with Mussolini.
• Archduke Albrecht Franz, Duke of Teschen lost his place in the House of Habsburg for marrying a commoner.
• An editorial in Mussolini's newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia fired back at the pope's recent statement by saying it was "very dangerous to speak of and wave the cross of Christ as if it were a weapon."
• Tybee National Wildlife Refuge was established in Jasper County, South Carolina by an executive order of President Roosevelt 

Edited May 9, 2018 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

May 10, 1938

• The Japanese began the Amoy Operation to blockade China.
• An underground explosion at the Markham Colliery in Duckmanton, England killed 79 men.^[20]

[wd40 1976]

 

[BearSchlong 8082]

I've been listening to Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers this past week on audible while driving. Will watch part of the broadcast tomorrow on HBO2 of the series.

Say what you will about aggy and fake army but they do have some real army men and women. My son just finished his sophomore year in the corps, he has had an army contract for a year, and he is celebrating Memorial Day at Fort Benning - and on Tuesday he starts Airborne school with real army.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

 

[Kennythetiger 9374]

That looks like it says "July 5".

[Sbbruin 21827]

Sort of ancillary, but I watched Schindler's List last night.  Damn powerful movie.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

June 3, 1938

Nazi Germany passed a law allowing for the confiscation of "degenerate art".

[Armybrat 40815]

Thought I'd get caught up on the news this morning......

[Armybrat 40815]

On ‎5‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 4:38 PM, Hugo Stiglitz said:

May 5, 1938

 

• Mussolini put on a grand naval review of over 200 warships in the Gulf of Naples to impress Hitler.

 

Speaking of Il Douche.... My April 8, 1940 issue....

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

June 4, 1938

• The third FIFA World Cup tournament began in Paris with Germany (including Austrian players) and Switzerland playing to a 1–1 draw. The French crowd jeered the German team when the players made the Nazi salute and threw bottles, eggs and tomatoes at them throughout the match.^[6]

 

• Pasteurized won the Belmont Stakes.^[7

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

June 5, 1938

• The famous psychoanalysist Sigmund Freud, 82 and frail, arrived in Paris on the Orient Express, having fled persecution by the Nazis in his homeland of Austria. After a few hours of rest he continued on his way to London where he had been granted asylum.^[8]

[Parliament 14227]

19 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

June 4, 1938

• The third FIFA World Cup tournament began in Paris with Germany (including Austrian players) and Switzerland playing to a 1–1 draw. The French crowd jeered the German team when the players made the Nazi salute and threw bottles, eggs and tomatoes at them throughout the match.^[6]

 

• Pasteurized won the Belmont Stakes.^[7

Perhaps the French woulda been better off, I don't know, PREPARING TO BE INVADED.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

2 hours ago, Parliament said:

Perhaps the French woulda been better off, I don't know, PREPARING TO BE INVADED.

Ain't nobody got time for THAT crazy talk....

[BabaYaga 15286]

6 hours ago, Parliament said:

Perhaps the French woulda been better off, I don't know, PREPARING TO BE INVADED.

Do you even Maginot Line bro?

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

1 hour ago, BabaYaga said:

Do you even Maginot Line bro?

The French apparently didn't either.....

[BabaYaga 15286]

I like to give the French as much shit as the next guy.  Free rifle.  Never fired, only dropped once....I've even been physically restrained from not throat-punching a dick-head waiter in Paris and generally have no love for the Frogs.  But the French army of WWII wasn't as feckless as they have been made out to be.    Their mechanized forces surpassed their German counterparts in numbers, as well as capability (to a certain extent).  The Maginot Line was more than capable.  Nor was it meant to be static.  The French army even war-gamed for the anticipatory flanking through the Ardennes.  They just could not match the mechanized speed and capability of the Germans.  Neither could the British expeditionary force.    You can spar for months in the gym to simulate Floyd Mayweather....but until you step in the ring, there is no way to simulate that speed.  The German coordinated ground/air/artillery attacks were too much.

[Kennythetiger 9374]

That, and they were a big help when we told King George to rightly fuck off. 

[Armybrat 40815]

Addendum to post #7 - When my Dad was recovering from his malaria flare-up in the hospital near Paris, he & his fellow patients who were physically able on the officers' ward would pass the time playing poker every day. During one evening game, one of the players excused himself to go to the restroom, where he quietly hanged himself. There was no previous indication at all that the officer was under stress or showed any signs of depression. One minute he was just one of the guys in a friendly card game, and the next dead at his own hand for no apparent reason.

Very little was known about PTSD in those days (Patton knew even less).

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

June 16, 1938

 

• Hundreds of civilians directed by brownshirts attacked Jews along the Grenadierstrasse and Dragonerstrasse in Berlin, assaulting them and writing anti-Jewish slogans on store windows.^[22]

 

• Vlas Chubar was arrested.^[23]

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

1 hour ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

June 16, 1938

 

• Hundreds of civilians directed by brownshirts attacked Jews along the Grenadierstrasse and Dragonerstrasse in Berlin, assaulting them and writing anti-Jewish slogans on store windows.^[22]

 

• Vlas Chubar was arrested.^[23]

Nazi version of a step class

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

June 20, 1938

• A federal grand jury in New York indicted 18 people, most of them Germans, for conspiring to steal military secrets from the United States.^[26]
• Died: Liselotte Herrmann, 28, German Communist Resistance fighter (executed)

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

June 23, 2018

• Hermann Göring decreed that effective July 1, all German men and women of any profession or trade could be conscripted to take up work for the state.^[29]

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

June 29, 1938

• 40,000 Austrian Jews and spouses of Jews were dismissed from their jobs in the private sector.^[36]

[BabaYaga 15286]

Has this become the "Hugo cut/pasting random factoids from Wikipedia about WWII" thread?

[AUinHsv 579]

A pretty good reference site. the author did a lot of work. The Pacific War On Line Encyclopedia

http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/index.htm

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

July 1, 1938

• Jewish schools in Nazi Germany lost tax exemption status.^[1]

 

July 4, 1938

• Benito Mussolini opened threshing season in Aprilia with the boast that Italy would never buy grain from "the so-called great democracies."^[7]

 

• The Cuban House and Senate passed a resolution proclaiming President Roosevelt "eminent citizen of the Americas" and "illustrious adoptive son of Cuba".^[8]

[Knoxtnhorn 5971]

I've been watching the Ken Burns doc on WWII.  Question.  Why did the Russians wait until after we dropped the first bomb to declare war on Japan.  Was it entirely self-serving or am I missing a historical link somewhere?  I understand they wanted to concentrate all of their effort on the western front as they were invaded; however, there seemed to be window after the WTO ended where they could have helped.  

Also, the doc mentioned that Japan tried to convince the Russians to help them settle for better terms with the US before they surrendered.  I'm assuming Russia told them to F off but the narrator didn't mention Russia's response.  Did Russia at least help us here?

[Knoxtnhorn 5971]

Also, I know the internment of the Japanese was wrong, but how in the hell was it justified when Hawaii was left alone?  I mean, I'm assuming, if the Japanese were truly a threat, Hawaii would have been the first place to start this process.

[Guest Lobo]

I like when Hugo starts delving into how myriad Russian and French military leaders were misunderstood geniuses.  

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

1 hour ago, Knoxtnhorn said:

I've been watching the Ken Burns doc on WWII.  Question.  Why did the Russians wait until after we dropped the first bomb to declare war on Japan.  Was it entirely self-serving or am I missing a historical link somewhere?  I understand they wanted to concentrate all of their effort on the western front as they were invaded; however, there seemed to be window after the WTO ended where they could have helped.  

Also, the doc mentioned that Japan tried to convince the Russians to help them settle for better terms with the US before they surrendered.  I'm assuming Russia told them to F off but the narrator didn't mention Russia's response.  Did Russia at least help us here?

They wanted to land grab in the name of to the victors go the spoils, before the Japanese could surrender.

[Armybrat 40815]

3 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

They wanted to land grab in the name of to the victors go the spoils, before the Japanese could surrender.

Yep, they wanted a seat at the divvying up table, plus they were still smarting from having their clocks cleaned by the Japanese in 1904.

[Knoxtnhorn 5971]

I seem to recall at one point earlier in the war that they wanted us to hurry up on our end to release pressure on them.  We weren't ready for Dday at that moment in time.  

[Saint Tacky 1614]

WWII Soldier Laid to Rest

I tried to attend this funeral today at DFW National Cemetery, but couldn't get away from work.  It's not everyday that an opportunity presents itself to honor a soldier killed in action in 1944.

[Armybrat 40815]

To celebrate the 100th birthday of the RAF, an English friend posted this story about her father's service in WWII:

There have been a lot of Military aircraft flying over me today, West to East. Happily, today that does not signify any tension in that direction, today they are on their way to London for a fly past to celebrate 100 years of the Royal Air Force. 
I thought it would be appropriate (and a little self indulgent) to celebrate Flying Officer H., my dad.

When dad was 12 years old, a group of US Barnstormers formed a Flying Circus which performed over fields near his house. He was completely hooked. In 1940, aged 18 , he left home and his father's dreams of his becoming a bank clerk, and joined the volunteer flying corps. After basic training he was transferred to Swift Current, Saskatchewan where he started his flying career, in a Tiger Moth...


Two months later, with a phenomenal 45 hours flying behind him, he moved on to his next stage of training  Medicine Hat, Alberta. Here he trained on Oxfords and Avro Anson aircraft, twin propellers. Age 19 he returned to England where he began operational training. He had a couple of forced landings, and one crash, but without injury. (His navigational skills were always iffy!) 
In October 1943, aged 21, dad joined Bomber Command and began training in the Wellington, Stirling and Lancaster Bombers. He was assigned to 514 Squadron,  based at Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire. His ops were always in Lancaster Mk 2 Bombers .
On March 18th, 1944, after 935 hours, 25 minutes of flying,  Flying Officer H. piloted his first bombing raid. It was a night operation over Frankfurt . He had a crew of 6 with him - navigator, bomb aimer, rear gunner , forward gunner, mid air gunner, radio operator. Three nights later the same crew flew again for a second raid over Frankfurt. Two nights later the squadron flew to Essen. Those three bombing operations were the first of 27 in total. In between there was constant training. The losses are recorded in his log book, 12 aircraft missing, 29 aircraft missing, 5 missing. But he always made it back....once it was touch and go!

This was dad's plane after a raid over a tactical target in Dreux in the Paris area on June 10th 1944.(the RAF were instructed to avoid dropping anything but leaflets on Paris itself) , during which 18 aircraft went missing, including the Flight Commander. His plane was attacked by a Junkers 88, and received damage by shells to the main spar and windshield. Dad had a deep scalp injury and sadly his navigator was killed. He flew low back over the channel and managed to land at base. He went to see the plane in daylight the next day and passed out cold. He refused to ditch in the English Channel because he hated swimming out of his depth! He was mentioned in despatches and in The London Gazette for his bravery, which means that his name was given to the King, and read out in Parliament. I have a framed letter signed by the King thanking him. He was back on operations on June 17th. I should mention that the 2nd pilot/ flight engineer/radio operator with dad on all these missions and training flights was always Sergeant McIntyre -Mac. Generally the same crews stayed together except when there were casualties. The rear gunner was in the most dangerous position, and on average could last five ops without injury or worse. 

Following DDay 514 Squadron was assigned to support the allied forces in Normandy. 
The logbook entry just says "Operation Villers Bocage"






Sco, Wobbly, we will probably be driving through that area at some point. There was severe damage and the town was virtually rebuilt to the south. Civilian casualties were not heavy. We visited Villers Bocage in 1958, and were welcomed with open arms, food, accommodation , wine and more wine.
From there 514 Squadron were assigned to bombing Flying Bomb sites in occupied Northern Europe. 

Flying Officer H. flew his 27th and final operation on August 1st 1944. His crew has completed 30, which was the maximum . He was assigned to training new pilots in Wellington and Oxford Bombers. 
He was demobbed in May 1946 , with a grand total of 1524 hours, 35 minutes flying time recorded. And a 3 month old son. In 1948 he was recalled to training duty until 1952, by which time he had a 6 year old son and a 2 year old daughter. 
The RAF was always in his blood, he remained a reserve officer until the late 1960s, and maintained his pilot's licence until he was in his 70s, then went up in gliders until the Dr told him enough was enough.

Edited July 10, 2018 by Armybrat
Edited out the lady's father's full name

[MAROON 445]

 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

Niiiiiice.......