U.S. PLANES TO BE FLOWN TO BRITISH IN NEAR EAST; FERRY SYSTEM TO RUN BY WAY OF WEST AFRICA (8/19/41)

Microfilm-New York Times archives, Monterey Public Library | 8/19/41 | Frank L. Kluckhohn, Daniel T. Brigham, C. Brooks Peters, Robert P. Post

[Homer_J_Simpson]

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[Homer_J_Simpson]

Free Republic University, Department of History presents World War II Plus 70 Years: Seminar and Discussion Forum
First session: September 1, 2009. Last date to add: September 2, 2015.
Reading assignment: New York Times articles delivered daily to students on the 70th anniversary of original publication date. (Previously posted articles can be found by searching on keyword “realtime” Or view Homer’s posting history .)
To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by freepmail. Those on the Realtime +/- 70 Years ping list are automatically enrolled. Course description, prerequisites and tuition information is available at the bottom of Homer’s profile. Also visit our general discussion thread

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Selections from West Point Atlas for the Second World War
German Invasion of Russia – Operations, 22 June-25 August 1941
The Mediterranean Basin
The Far East and the Pacific, 1941 – The Imperial Powers, 1 September 1939

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Fields Near Dakar – 2-3
The International Situation – 3
Nazis in Kingisepp – 3-4
Nazi Guns Shell Dnieper Retreat – 4-5
Budenny is Saving Bulk of His Army – 5
Churchill Home, Plans Radio Talk; Cheered by Convoy, Visited Iceland – 6
Exeter Brings 195; Sighted a U-Boat – 7
Vichy Nullifies Link to Dormoy Slayers – 7
Texts of the Day’s War Communiques – 8-9
French Pro-British, Freed Captives Say – 9
The Nazis Present (Pictorially) a New Battleship (photo) – 9
R.A.F. Flier Willed Fund for ‘Binge’ by Comrades – 9

[Homer_J_Simpson]

http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1941/aug41/f19aug41.htm

RAF fighting on the Eastern Front

Tuesday, August 19, 1941 www.onwar.com

In the Arctic... There are various British naval operations to the end of the month. The population of Spitsbergen is evacuated and the Norwegians taken to Britain and the Soviets to the USSR. The first small supply convoy is sent from Iceland to the Soviet Union. The carrier Argus also brings a cargo of Hurricanes to the Soviet Union, complete with RAF pilots who will fly them in combat for the first few weeks.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/19.htm

August 19th, 1941

FRANCE: Paris: Two demonstrators captured in the 13th are executed, “the Jew Szmul Tyszelman,... Henry Gautherot”.

GERMANY: U-87 commissioned
U-509 launched. (Dave Shirlaw)

NORWAY: A joint Anglo-Canadian-Norwegian expedition lands on Spitzbergen to sabotage the coal mines and bring the miners back to Britain.

U.S.S.R.: Submarine M-121 launched.

WAKE ISLAND: The Wake Detachment, 1st Marine defence Battalion, arrives in the cargo ship USS Regulus (AK-14) to begin work on defensive positions. (Jack McKillop)

CANADA: Corvette HMCS Sorel commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)

U.S.A..: In baseball, Pittsburgh Pirates manager Frankie Frisch is ejected by umpire Jocko Conlan from the second game of a doubleheader when he appears on the field with an umbrella to protest the playing conditions at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field. The rainy argument is later portrayed in a famous oil painting by artist Norman Rockwell. (Jack McKillop)

ATLANTIC OCEAN: The British liner AQUILA is sunk by a U-boat.

USS Hopewell (DD-181), commissioned as HNoMS Bath (I-17) (LtCdr Frederick Melsom) on 23 Sep. 1940; while escorting her sixth convoy (OG71) between Liverpool and Gibraltar, as part of the 5th Escort Group about 400 miles southwest of Ireland Bath is torpedoed by U-204 and sank rapidly today at 02.05 hours. The commander and 88 crewmembers were lost. (Ron Babuka and Dave Shirlaw)

U-201 sank SS Aguila and Ciscar in Convoy OG-71.
U-559 sank SS Alva in Convoy OG-71.

The surviving crew members from the British merchant ship Alva sunk by U-559 were picked up by corvette HMS Campanula and transferred to destroyer HMS Velox and landed at Gibraltar on 25 August 1941. (Dave Shirlaw)

ICELAND: The first convoy leaves Iceland for the USSR. The carrier HMS Argus is ferrying Hurricanes, complete with pilots, to Russia.

[BroJoeK]

August 19

"Einsatzkommando 8 as well as local collaborators in Mogilev, Belorussia, kill more than 3000 Jews."

"These two images portray Jews of Lvov, Ukraine, in July 1941.
Jews have been rounded up in Lvov, Ukraine, in July 1941 to be murdered.
A truck carries the bodies of executed Lvov Jews en route to burial.
Most likely, the men accompanying the corpses later buried them.
If they were Jews, they were probably shot at the end of their burial detail."

[fella]

My Dad was sent to South America to build the airfields to ship those planes across the Atlantic. For some reason our government got him a house that overlooked the German embassy in Bolivia and sent him into the jungle numerous times. My older brothers who were there said it was to recover nordan bomb-sights from crashed planes.

[CougarGA7]

• "It is not tolerable that the life of the peoples of the continent should depend upon England. The Ukraine, and then the Volga basin, will one day be the granaries of Europe. We shall reap much more than what actually grows from the soil...If one day Sweden declines to supply any more iron, that's alright. We'll get it from Russia." - Adolf Hitler

• "We talked about the Jewish problem. The Führer is convinced that his earlier prophecy in the Reichstag is proving correct, that if the Jews succeed again in provoking another world war it would end with the annihilation of the Jews. This is being proved in these weeks and months with an apparently eerie certainty. In the east the Jews must pay for this..." - Joseph Goebbels

• Admiral G.V. Zhukov is placed in command of the Odessa Defensive Region.

• The Stavka alters the defenses around Kiev first by ordering Kirponos to withdraw Potapov's 5th Army back across the Dnepr where it is to defend the west bank. Vlasov's 37th Army is assigned to defend a bridgehead around Kiev, and Lieutenant-General K.P. Podlas's 40th Army is deployed between the 21st and 13th Armies to protect the north from Guderian.

[CougarGA7]

What did your father do for a living that got him sent down there?

[fella]

He was a civil engineer for what later became the defense department. At the time he was working on the airfields in the Florida panhandle that were built to train the British pilots. Of course the bit where was a naturalized citizen born and raised in Peru made him especially attractive for that assignment.

[iowamark]

We talked about the Jewish problem. The Führer is convinced that his earlier prophecy in the Reichstag is proving correct, that if the Jews succeed again in provoking another world war it would end with the annihilation of the Jews.

I think that Hitler's desire to invade Russia stemmed largely from his desire to get at the large Jewish populations in order to kill them.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Isn’t Bolivia on the wrong side of the Andes to use as a stop on the way to Africa?

[CougarGA7]

I’m not so sure. Certainly a driving force behind the invasion of Russia was to acquire that lebensraum which he outlined in Mein Kampf, but he also was convince (wrongly) that the fall of Russia would force Britain to sue for peace.

As far as killing the Jews, it seem that this was more a case of not having another means to get rid of them. Nazi policy had long been designed to drive the Jews away from German territory more than to exterminate them (though if they died in the process they didn’t care either). The plan to ship European Jews to Madagascar was a legitimate plan right into 1941. It just was never a practical plan. When the Nazis invaded Russia they knew they would be re-inheriting many Jews they had driven from Poland previously along with many new populations. I think it was decided at this point that since they can’t seem to be able to get rid of them, they were just going to have to kill them instead. This is why as of this point we still only have Einsatzgruppen committing mass killings in the east and don’t yet have mass gassing which is far more efficient. There are some gas vans in operation at this point but this still is not a very efficient method of mass killing. The process is still in development as it were. The beginning of next month there will finally be a mass gassing at Auschwitz and it wont even be Jews that are gassed. 600 Soviet P.O.W. will be the first mass gassing at the facility. Chelmo, the first purpose built extermination camp won’t open until December which is about the same time that the Wannsee Conference was originally scheduled to happen (establishing an official structure to the extermination project).

I think that if they initially wanted nothing else but the extermination of the Jews they would have never even entertained the many different schemes to eject them from Europe, and they would have committed more forces in North Africa so they could have driven into Palestine eliminating the Jews in their homeland. Also I think there would have been a better plan for extermination from the beginning of the invasion than what was in place.

[CougarGA7]

That’s a good point. Was he sent into Brazil during the construction of these bases?

[Larry381]

I think that Hitler's desire to invade Russia stemmed largely from his desire to get at the large Jewish populations in order to kill them.

You could be right but remember, to Hitler, as well as a large part of Fascism, the Jews and the Communists were considered basically the same entity for purposes of their philosophy.

[fella]

In those days the east coast was all heavy jungle and certain occupied countries controled colonies there. It was easier to build fields on the Alto Plano and fly over the jungle to the mouth of the Amazon. Later on fields were built in the east. Ernie Pyle wrote about it in one of his early war books. Plus the Nazi’s were very busy all over South America and needed watching.

[CougarGA7]

The Nazi’s certainly were busy in South America. This would prove out at the end of the war and beyond. Interesting stuff. If you think of any stories your father shared with you, don’t hesitate to share them with us. I know I would like to hear them.

[fella]

The only 2 stories that I remember Dad telling about that time were just incidental. One was about him shooting an Anaconda that was attacking one of his men, he had the skin which was about 12 foot long. The other was about an Indian attack, they were in boats going along close to shore when they got a barrage of arrows shot at them they fired their guns blindly into the jungle and the arrows stopped.

After 43 Dad was allowed to have his family there so my brothers have some stories about their adventures. I didn't come along until after the war.