Posted on 02/15/2015 4:32:23 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
IB4TP :)
Stephen E. Ambrose, Band of Brothers
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/1/15.htm
February 15th, 1945 (THURSDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM:
Submarine HMS Sanguine launched.
Frigate HMS Start Bay launched.
NORTH SEA: U-1053 sunk near Bergen in position 60.24N, 05.13E, after an accident during diving trials. 45 dead (all hands lost).
GERMANY: Eighth Air Force’s 1st Air Division dispatched 224 B-17s to bomb oil targets at Ruhland. Weather conditions prevented them from finding their targets so 210 bombers hit the secondary target, Dresden, dropping 461.9 tons of bombs; two other B-17s hit targets of opportunity. One 3d Air Division B-17 also bombed Dresden as a target of opportunity releasing 2.5 tons of bombs.
Berlin: DNB (Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro) the German News Agency announces:
The Minister of Justice, Dr. Thierack, has issued the following order: The struggle for the survival of the German Reich demands the utmost resolution and devotion of every German. Anyone trying to evade his duty to the community, and especially those guilty of cowardice or selfishness, will immediately be brought to justice with all severity, lest the failure of one individual rebound to the discredit of the entire Reich. On the orders of the Führer, and with the full accord of the Ministry of Justice, the head of the Reichskanzlei, the Ministry of the Interior and the Parteikanzlei, it is therefore decreed that:
I) Summary Courts of Justice will be setup in all parts of the Reich threatened by the enemy.
II) Such courts will consist of a Judge as President, and a political leader or official of the NSDAP and an officer of the Wehrmacht, the Waffen-SS, or the Police as Assessors. Members of the Court and a Public Prosecutor will be appointed by the Regional Commander for defence.
III) The Summary Court will be competent to deal with all acts likely to undermine German resolution or fighting power. The procedure will be that laid down in the Penal Code.
IV) The Court will be competent to pass Death Sentences, acquit prisoners, or to refer cases to the common courts of justice. All Death Sentences must be confirmed by the Commissar for defence, who will also determine the place, time, and manner of execution. Whenever the Commissar for defence is not available, and immediate execution is deemed essential, the public prosecutor will act in his stead.
V) All regulations needed for the amplification, alteration, and implementation of the above decree will be passed by the Minister of Justice in conjunction with the Minister of the Interior and the head of the Parteikanzlei. (Party Chancellery.)
VI) The Decree comes into effect with it’s publication in the press and it’s announcement over the Deutsche Rundfunk (German Radio Network).
Soviet forces under Konev encircle Breslau, where martial law is declared and the death sentence decreed for “undermining German resolution or striking power.”
INDIA: HMIS Shivaji commissioned as the prime training establishment for the Indian Navy.
BURMA: Indian troops capture Pagan.
BONIN ISLANDS: LeMay sends out his B-29s in a support strike for the forthcoming Iwo Jima invasion.
Weather was bad over Tokyo and as a substitute target the planes bombed Mitsubishi’s engine works at Nagoya. At Chichi Jima, 15 B-24s bombed the airfield but failed to do much damage.
AUSTRALIA: Submarine USS Gabilan ends her 4th war patrol at Fremantle.
TERRITORY OF HAWAII: Submarine USS Picuda ended her fifth war patrol at Pearl Harbor.
U.S.A.: Frigate USS Davenport commissioned.
Escort carrier Badoeng Straits launched.
Destroyer USS Gurke launched.
SOUTH AMERICA: Venezuela and Uruguay declare war on Germany and Japan.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: Minesweeper HMCS Stratford commenced workups Bermuda.
"On V-E Day, May 8, 1945, men and women danced in the streets of American cities to celebrate the Allies' victory over Nazi Germany.
An ocean and a continent away, a more somber victory ceremony took place at Mauthausen.
This Nazi concentration camp stood about 12 miles southeast of the Austrian city of Linz, Adolf Hitler's hometown as a teenager--a place, he wrote in Mein Kampf, where his "happiest days" had been spent.
"There were no "happiest days" at Mauthausen. Established in May 1938, this especially harsh camp was dis-tinctive for the brutal work and sadism associated with its stone quarry.
During the war years, Mauthausen and its more than 60 subcamps--Gusen, Gunskirchen, and Ebensee among them--became an industrial empire controlled by the SS.
Of the 199,404 prisoners who passed through the camp at Mauthausen, about 119,000 perished, including 38,120 Jews.
"Soviet troops liberated Majdanek and Auschwitz, death camps on Polish soil, during July 1944 and January 1945, respectively.
In the West, units of the U.S. Army freed Buchenwald (pictured) and Dachau, concentration camps in Germany, on April 11 and April 29, 1945, while the British and Canadians reached Bergen-Belsen, Germany, on April 15.
At every camp, the liberators found carnage so vast that even battle-scarred veterans were shocked by what they saw.
"Members of the U.S. Army's 71st Infantry and 11th Armored divisions discovered some of the worst horrors.
The 71st liberated Gunskirchen, a Mauthausen satellite, on May 5.
The 11th took the city of Linz and freed the Gusen concentration camp on May 5.
Its tanks reached the Mauthausen camp itself at 11:30 a.m. on May 5, about 50 hours before Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally.
"Captain J. D. Pletcher particularly remembered the odor when he entered Gunskirchen.
"The smell," he said, "nauseated many of the Americans who went there.
It was a smell I'll never forget, completely different from anything I've ever encountered.
It could almost be seen and hung over the camp like a fog of death."
Mauthausen and its satellite camps, he said, were places of "foul bodily odors, smoldering trash fires," and "mud mixed with feces and urine."
Liberation could not prevent former prisoners from death.
For days, dehydration, starvation, disease, and exhaustion continued to take their toll.
"Liberation came late for Mauthausen and its subcamps--much too late for the vast majority of their defenseless victims--but those places were not the last Holocaust sites to be set free.
Not until May 9 did Soviet troops reach the Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, camp/ghetto, where they found 19,000 prisoners alive.
Polish and Soviet units freed the camp at Stutthof, Poland, on the 8th. Even after Nazi Germany's surrender, a fog of death continued to hang over the liberated camps, as it does at those sites to this day."
Canada Ping!
It would take a couple of days to get past the censors.
Strategic bombing, particularly that of Dresden over the last two days, is the lead story in today’s news. Not exactly a news blackout.
No, not what I meant. The degree of the attack would not be released for a couple of days. I READ the paper.
could anyone imagine a country having that many aircraft and tanks and ships again?
Wouldn’t need to. We could do as much damage today, pinpoint damage nonetheless, with a fraction of the aircraft.
Now that I think about it, we could do as much or more damage with one missile and its warhead.
yep
in WW2 they might launch 2,000 bombers against one ball-bearings factory
pretty amazing
It ain’t how much firepower you’ve got, it’s how much metal you can put on the target.
Of course, as that old tyrant Joseph Stalin said, “Quantity has a quality all its own.”
That is very true. Look at North Korea with all that Korean-war era equipment (planes, tanks) but LOTS of it.
One of the survivors of the bombing of Dresden was an American POW, Kurt Vonnegut, who had been taken prisoner with the 106th Division in the Schnee Eifel last month. His experience as a POW, and particularly in Dresden during the air raid, will inspire him to write “Slaughterhouse 5,” his best-known work.
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