Posted on 08/31/2011 4:32:58 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance
The News of the Week in Review
Twenty News Questions – 12
The Western World, Trampled by Twenty-Four Months of War (map) – 13
Two Years of Steadily Widening War: A Chronological Survey – 14-16
Public Morale Viewed as a Defense Problem – 16
Answers to Twenty News Questions – 17
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1941/aug41/f31aug41.htm
British and Soviets link up in Iran
Sunday, August 31, 1941 www.onwar.com
In Iran... Soviet and British troops link up at Kazvin.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/31.htm
August 31st, 1941
UNITED KINGDOM: Grave doubts about Bomber Command’s claims of damage done to enemy targets are prompted by a new analysis of photographs of the targets. This is made by D.M.D. Butt, a civil servant member of the war cabinet secretariat.
Butt examined 633 flash photographs taken from aircraft at the time of bomb release. On 100 separate raids against 28 targets on 48 nights during June and July. He allowed as a hit any bomb falling within five miles of the target area: a zone of 75 square miles. He found that on average only one bomber in three got hits within the zone. In the industrial Rühr, the ratio lengthened to one in ten. Aided by a full moon, two out of five scored, but so did the enemy, for the better light aided night fighters. Since these figures excluded aircraft which did not find or attack the target area (and many did not), the proportion of hits to total sorties was well under one in three. The prime minister has said that the report demands urgent attention. Air Vice Marshal Robert Saundby, a senior air staff officer, accepted the report, but said that Butt’s figures “might be wide of the mark.”
FINLAND: After discussing with Marshal Mannerheim and Lt. Gen. Walden (the Minister of War) about the German request that Finland take part in the capture of Leningrad, President Ryti gives his permission that the Finnish troops can cross the pre-1939 border in Karelian Isthmus with few kilometres. The condition is that the Germans deliver 25 000 tons of rye. Mannerheim informs General Erfurth, the OKW representative, the next day. (Mikko Härmeinen)
The Finns learning of the withdrawal of eight Russian divisions from the Karelian Isthmus to bolster the defences of Leningrad, have made a rapid advance to the village of Kivennapa, on the Leningrad to Viipuri road.
They have thus recovered almost all the territory that they lost to the Russians in the “Winter War” last year. The Russians have abandoned, or been forced out of their fortifications based on the former Finnish defences of the Mannerheim Line, and have taken up new positions in the Stalin Line across the isthmus north of Leningrad.
SWITZERLAND: Cheese rationing is introduced. (More holes).(William Jay Stone from http://www.geschichte-schweiz.ch/en/worldwar2.html)
U.S.S.R.: Ukraine: German forces starting to run short of manpower and supplies, face a renewed Red Army offensive along the Dnepr river.
Leningrad: Field Marshal von Leeb is tightening his grip on Leningrad. The Red Army has abandoned Novgorod, 100 miles south of the city after a savage week-long battle, and tonight Moscow Radio admits “the enemy is at the approaches of Leningrad.” In the city posters proclaim: “The enemy is at the gates.”
But the autumn rains have started early turning the battlefield into a quagmire, halting the Panzers and grounding the Luftwaffe. The Russians are using the respite to turn the city into a fortress. Shop windows are full of sandbags, militia units march through the streets and every gate is guarded.
Everyone is expected to fight. Andrei Zhdanov, the city’s Communist Party secretary, says: “We must dig fascism a grave in front of Leningrad.”
Large fires started in the city by General Wolfram von Richthofen’s Fliegerkorps VIII are being fought by action groups organized by Zhdanov.
Special teams have also been organised to safeguard Leningrad’s treasures. Fire units are based on the city’s beautiful Tsarist palaces and churches, now kept as museums, ready to deal with incendiary bombs. The priceless painting of the Hermitage are already safe. An armoured train took 500,000 of the finest works to safety as the threat to the city developed.
Today, 70 days after the outbreak of war on the Eastern Front, the first Allied convoy, code named Dervish, arrives in Archangel, USSR. Convoys continued until the end of the war and succeeded in delivering almost a quarter of all war material received by the Soviet Union during the War. (Dave Shirlaw)
NEWFOUNDLAND: Corvette HMCS Prescott arrives St John’s to join NEF
U.S.A.: Admiral Hart has advised British Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton, Commander of the RN’s East Asia Squadron, that Washington was refusing to endorse proposed British plans for Allied cooperation should war come. (Marc Small)
British Air Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, commander of the garrison in Malaya and Singapore, has made two visits this month to Manila to confer with Hart and MacArthur. (Marc Small)
The radio show “The Great Gildersleeve” debuts on the NBC Red Network on Sundays at 1830 hours Eastern Time. The show is a spin off of the “Fibber McGee and Molly” show and stars Harold Peary as Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, a windbag, a most eligible bachelor, a bumbling-but-enthusiastic ladies’ man and the water commissioner of the town of Summerfield. (Jack McKillop)
"More than 3,600 Jewish men, women, and children are taken from Vilna, Lithuania, to nearby Ponary, where they are shot as retribution for the partisan ambush of a German patrol."
"Under the watchful eye of French police, a Jewish man complies with the government order forbidding Jews to own radios.
Such measures, enacted throughout 1941, were designed to oppress and isolate Jews as a prelude to their arrests and deportations.
Meanwhile, the Vichy government pursued a policy of Aryanization involving the seizure of Jewish property and businesses."
"From June 1941 to June 1942, Otto Ohlendorf commanded Einsatzgruppe D.
This extermination squad operated in the Crimea-Caucasus region, where Ohlendorf ordered the slaughter of 90,000 people.
"Justifying his actions at his trial in 1947, he asserted his utter conviction in the "military necessity" of the killings.
'Jews,' he argued, 'posed a continuous danger for German occupation troops and might someday attack Germany.'
As for murdering children, he reasoned they 'were people who would grow up and, being the children of parents who had been killed, would constitute a danger no smaller than that of the parents.'
"To ease the 'immense psychological burden' of personal responsibility, he ordered his executioners to shoot simultaneously at victims.
During the trial, women sent flowers to the cell of the handsome defendant, who was sentenced to hang for his crimes."
"A second world war began when the armies of Great Germany marched..."
First time I've noted the phrase, "a second world war" -- probably used before, but I missed it.
Have yet to see phrases like, "The Second World War" or "World War Two" or "WWII".
"National morale is not as good as it should be today to conduct a huge armament program or, if necessary, a war efort...It is reported in usually well-informed Washington circles that the President has become sufficently concerned about the problem of morale to consider placing Colonel William J. Donovan, Intelligence Coordinator, in charge of an intensified campaign to build up domestic morale.
Some of these reports go so far as to say that a detailed campaign already is being worked out..."
Wild Bill Donovan, in charge of "public morale"?
I wonder how Wild Bill thinks a major attack on the United States would effect Americans' fighting spirits?
FDR is definitely wrong. I think peace will come by the end of 1941, don’t you?
/s/
Hanson Baldwin used the term “second World War” as far back as September 1939, but note that the word “second” is not capitalized making it a comparative to the World War earlier this century, but not an official title. Though I’ve seen “second World War” a few times now, it still has not been presented in a way like you mention “Second World War” or “World War II”. I’m interested to see when it officially starts being called World War II.
I don’t see it. More likely scenario is the Wehrmacht high command eats their Christmas goose in the Kremlin. That is around the time Japan jumps on the Pacific end of the Soviet Union to take part in the spoils. Then Germany can return their full attention to finishing off Great Britain. That means we had better step up our production of war materials for the British so they can withstand the likely invasion next spring. Otherwise it will be America alone against the combined might of a triumphant Third Reich and their Asian ally.
I think when Russia does fall, Churchill will get voted out and once that happens I don’t see Britain staying in the war. I’d bet they’d sue for peace since becoming a vassal state like the Vichy would be better than to have the island occupied by the Wehrmacht.
That could be true. Maybe the UK could even keep its independence as long as they treat the German Europe with some respect and deference.
Um.... that does not sound good at all.
Same face, same hair, same uniform. Must be the same guy. That is remarkable. Did that photo come from your mystery collection?
Actually it came from the following Russian book, which thankfully has English translations for the many photos in it.:
Ohlendorf held both a law degree and a degree in Economics. Before [and after] his year with Einsatzgruppe “D”, he ran RSHA AMT III, SD Inland, sort of the Nazi Gallup poll.
Himmler hated Ohlendorf, and earlier on, kicked him out of the SS for a time.He posted him to the Einsatzgruppen as punishment. Ohlendorf was a hard core Nazi, who believed in the Fuehreprinzip more than any other credo of Naziism. Himmler referred to him, sarcastically, as “Parsifal”.
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