Posted on 03/10/2015 4:22:50 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945
Major General H.W. Blakeley, USA, Ret., 32d Infantry Division in World War II
Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy
#1 - “Rum and Coca-Cola” - Andrews Sisters
#2 – “Accentuate the Positive” - Johnny Mercer, with Pied Pipers
#3 - “Don’t Fence Me In” – Bing Crosby, with the Andrews Sisters
#4 – “Accentuate the Positive” – Bing Crosby, with the Andrews Sisters
#5 - “Rum and Coca-Cola” – Abe Lyman, with Rose Blane
#6 - “Candy” - Johnny Mercer, with Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers
#7 - “I’m Beginning to See the Light” - Harry James, with Kitty Kallen
#8 - “Cocktails For Two” - Spike Jones, with Carl Grayson
#9 – “I’m Beginning to See the Light” - Duke Ellington, with Joya Sherrill
#10 - “A Little on the Lonely Side” - Frankie Carle, with Paul Allen
#10 - “I Dream of You” - Tommy Dorsey, with Freddie Stewart
#10 - “Dream” - Pied Pipers
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/2/10.htm
March 10th, 1945 (SATURDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: London: Unease appears to be growing in Britain and America about the air raids which devastated Dresden last month. Concern has been expressed in the House of Commons, while some US newspapers have echoed the German accusation that it was “terror bombing”. In order to counter this criticism, the authorities here are arguing that the city was an important rail junction and as such was a key centre for organizing German resistance to the Red Army. Nevertheless there is a strong feeling, particularly among British church leaders, that at this stage of the war such destruction and the death of so many civilians cannot be justified.
ENGLISH CHANNEL: U-275 (type ) is sunk south of Newhaven, in position 50.36N, 00.04E, by a mine. 48 dead (all hands lost).
U-681 (type VIIC) is sunk at 0930hrs west of Isles of Scilly, in position 49.52.433N, 06.38.633W, by depth charges from a US Liberator aircraft (VPB-103). 11 dead and 38 survivors. The boat struck a rock while submerged near the Bishop Rock and was forced to surface and was then attacked by the Liberator aircraft. It sank roughly 4 miles to the north-east of the Isles of Scilly.
(Alex Gordon)
NORTH SEA: Minesweeping trawler KNM Nordhav II torpedoed and sunk by U-714 off Dundee, Scotland. 6 of the crew went down with the ship with 17 survivors.
GERMANY: The Allied Line is on the West bank of the Rhine from Koblenz north.
The Germans destroy the Wessel Bridge on the River Rhine . (Michael Ballard)
Berlin: Hitler retires von Rundstedt, who alienated him by correctly predicting disaster in the Ardennes, from his post of C-in-C West.
German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring arrives from Italy to take command of the Western Front.
U-2366, U-2544, U-3041, U-3527 commissioned.
JAPAN: Tokyo: In an awesome firebombing attack, US B-29 Superfortresses last night gutted 15 square miles of closely-packed industrial areas in Tokyo, killing 83,793 people and wounding 40,918. The death toll could even be as many as 130,000; certainly around one million are homeless, and 267,171 buildings have been destroyed in the most destructive and lethal air raid of the war so far, anywhere in the world. 279 of 325 bombers attacked, led in over Tokyo by B-29 Pathfinders at 300mph, dropping a total of 1,665 tons of fire bombs. Bright flashes lit up the sky as the incendiaries fell. Fanned by a stiffening breeze the fires which blossomed in the flimsy wood-and-plaster buildings spread quickly into a giant inferno.
In order to ensure bombing accuracy the B-29s had to fly at low altitudes between 4,900ft and 9,200ft where they were vulnerable to Japanese AA guns and night fighters. However, surprise and the inadequacy of Japan’s defences resulted in only 14 B-29s being lost. The catastrophic raid has had a profound affect on Japanese morale. The dead are piled high on bridges and roads, and in canals.
Twenty other B-29s attack alternate targets.
Air forces leaders see, in the enormous destruction thus wreaked, evidence that the Japanese could be forced to surrender without the need for a ground invasion and the resulting carnage. It has confirmed the views of backers of strategic bombing.
Japan declares Vietnam to be independent. This increases the anti-colonial feeling that would leave the region war-torn for the next quarter century... A legacy of WWII. (Michael Ballard)
Japanese troops smash the French and take over the administration of Indochina.
MALAYA - (Mission 43) Twenty-four of 29 40th BG B-29’s attack marshalling yards at Kuala Lumpur with 100 tons of bombs; one of the B-29’s drops over half of its bombs at Alor Star Airfield and another attacks a freighter in the channel leading to Port Swettenham; and three B-29’s attack Khao Huakhang Thailand.
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: US troops land on Mindanao.
On the Villa Verde Trail, Luzon, Pfc Thomas E. Atkins, US Army, Company A, 127th Infantry, 32d Infantry Division, fights with such gallantry repelling an attack by two companies of Japanese infantry that he is later awarded the Medal of Honor. (Drew Philip Halévy)
Navy and civilian nurses interned at Los Banos, Philippines flown back to US. Navy nurses awarded Bronze Star.
CANADA: HMC MTB 485 and 491 paid off.
U.S.A.: The US Navy receives its first Boeing XF8B-1.
Minesweeper USS Waxwing launched.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: The unescorted SS Baron Jedburgh was torpedoed and sunk by U-532 NE of Bahia. One gunner was lost. The master, 52 crewmembers and five gunners were rescued - On 22 March, the master and 32 survivors landed at Cabedello, Brazil. The remaining 25 survivors were picked up on 16 March by the British SS Sandown Castle and landed at Montevideo ten days later.
John Toland, Tojo’s ever loyal spokesman.
A guy named Dan Carlin does history podcasts. He had a podcast talking about the ramping up of strategic bombing ultimately to the dropping of nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He called the whole process “logical insanity”.
Leaflets abandoned by the Germans prescribe elaborate methods for doughboys to simulate sore throats and heart disease to get on the sick list. ... "World War II is almost over. Are you going to be one of its victims?"
Yeah, it was quite logical to men who had a pretty good hunch they would die invading the Japanese mainland.
Pretty darned logical to their families, and a war-weary nation, too.
Well, this is the 70th anniversary of the day that I THOUGHT was the liberation of Kaiserslautern, but I am off by a week or two. Somewhere in my house I have the Kaiserslautern newspaper article from March 1995 about the 50th year anniversary but have not found it (yet).
Also, Churchill was really a gallant leader for liberty, it appears to me. His scolding of the Labor Minister is awesome!
There was an article in Military History Quarterly several years ago entitled “From Light to Heavy Duty,” which documents the progressive cycle of brutality in war. The American concept of strategic bombing was an example of this escalating brutality; an idea of just hitting military targets eventually evolved into destroying whole cities. And as Toland commented, Americans didn’t care. We just wanted to win, and didn’t want our own boys to die doing it. There is also a very good account of the progression of American strategic bombing doctrine in Richard Frank’s “Downfall, The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire.”
This progressive brutality in wars, as applied to the “American way of war,” didn’t begin with World War 2. In the Civil War, both Sherman and Sheridan decided smokehouses and corncribs had become military targets worthy of destruction. The southern armies were denied movement through entire swaths of their countryside by the lack of provisions in the wake of the Union forces. That’s what war is, and what it always has been.
As for Toland’s account, I never considered his book as apologia for Tojo or Japanese militarism. He spared no criticism for the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the atrocities of their troops in the Solomons and New Guinea, or for the wanton destruction of Manila. He never made the argument, fashionable in some self-loathing American universities, that the Japanese were “defending their unique culture.” The Japanese people needed to look no farther than their own ruling clique to blame for their misery. Toland is pretty clear about that.
Tojo’s book is no different than Cornelius Ryan’s “The Last Battle,” part of which described the ordeal of the average German civilian in Berlin as the Soviets crushed the Nazi regime. There is a story to be told that doesn’t necessarily carry an endorsement.
Finally, a comment on how Americans have come to view their military and its role at the end of World War 2. I believe most Americans suffer from a “white hat” complex when it comes to our military and what it does. During World War 2, our forces were viewed as “liberators” in most of the places we went. The French greeted us with the “apple cider” in Normandy. The Filipinos greeted us with fruit. Even the Germans greeted us with relief when it turned out we “weren’t so bad after all.” We were certainly a better alternative than the Russians.
Much of this had to do with the fact that we weren’t the brutal oppressors that the Japanese and Germans had been. Much of it had to do with the fact that we brought so much “stuff” with us: chocolate, cigarettes and nylons being the most well-known. Look at the “cargo cults” that abounded in the Pacific Islands after the war. Build a plane out of sticks, and the C-47s will come back with a load of Pall Malls and Lucky Strikes.
So we got the idea that wherever we went, people would love us. It’s a hubris that goes all the way up to the highest levels of American government. It’s cost us thousands of American lives in Afghanistan and Iraq and trillions of dollars of national treasure. And it’s led to the introduction of cheap heroin into our country that has devastated communities everywhere.
Because we were the “good guys” in World War 2, we like to think of ourselves as the “good guys” everywhere, all the time. Not necessarily. And the real loss is that it makes us forget what war is really about. It’s about killing people and destroying their stuff. It’s about burning corncribs, smokehouses and entire cities full of civilians. It is, as Leo Durocher said, where “nice guys finish last.”
I remember when these WW II posts started. There was articles about the bombings of Warsaw and Rotterdam and how horrific the casualties were. I commented and in the back of my mind how these events would seem like child play, perhaps a couple of thousands died in Warsaw and only 900 in Rotterdam, by 1945.
Interesting take.
So, it now makes perfect sense to me, too. I wouldn't even be here without the A-bombs.
Thank God you’re here.
Off by 10 days.
On 20 March 1945, as the last of the 1st Army crossed the Rhine at Remagen, the U.S. 80th Division, 319th Infantry, part of the 3rd US Army, seized Kaiserslautern without resistance.
Reading the wiki page on Kaiserslautern I see NATO has a post there 45,000 personell. Never heard of the place.
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