Posted on 04/11/2015 4:53:08 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945
I passed this to Roosevelt, with the following comment:
Prime Minister to President Roosevelt 11 Apr 45
I have a feeling that this is about the best we are going to get out of them, and certainly it is as near as they can get to an apology. However, before considering any answer at all from His Majesty’s Government please tell me how you think the matter should be handled so that we may keep in line together.
Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/3/11.htm
April 11th, 1945 (WEDNESDAY)
GERMANY: The US 9th Army reaches the River Elbe. The US 3rd Army takes Weimar.
Advancing close behind the US 6th Armoured Division, the 76th Division reaches the Butstaedt area. (Skip Guidry)
US troops find an intact V-weapon plant at Nordhausen, and remove as much material as possible to keep it from the Russians. The first troops arrive at 11.30am after being radioed in by Pvt. Galione who was calling them into neighbouring Mittelbau Dora camp. Instead they got lost and stumbled upon Nordhausen. (Mary Galione-Nahas)
Buchenwald concentration camp is liberated.
The Eighth Air Force flies Mission 941: 1,303 bombers and 913 fighters are dispatched to hit a variety of targets in Germany; 1 B-17 is lost:
- 300 B-17s bomb the Freiham oil depot and 133 attack the Kraiburg munitions plant; secondary targets hit are the munitions depot at Landshut and the marshalling yard at Treuchtlingen; 1 B-17 is lost. Escorting are 273 P-51s.
- 28 B-17s bomb the munitions depot and 82 hit the marshalling yard at Landshut; 131 attack the airfield and 79 hit the marshalling yard (79) at Ingolstadt; 70 bomb the marshalling yards at Treuchtlingen and 108 bomb the marshalling yards at Donauworth without loss. The escort is 281 P-51s.
- 79 B-24s bomb the Obertraubling Airfield, 31 hit a munitions depot while 80 attack an oil depot at Regensburg; 71 bomb the marshalling yards at Neumarkt and 73 hit the marshalling yards at Amberg. 211 P-47s and P-51s escort.
The Ninth Air Force dispatches 689 A-20s, A-26s and B-26s to strike marshalling yards at Bernburg, Oschersleben, Zwickau, and Kothen, the Naumburg ordnance depot, Bamberg motor transport plant, and several other targets; fighters escort the bombers, fly patrols, sweeps, a leaflet mission, and armed reconnaissance (claiming 43 aircraft shot down), and support the US 3d and 9th Armored Divisions in the Nordhausen and Ringleben-Sachsenburg-Rothenberga areas, the 2d Armored Division as it reaches the Elbe River south of Magdeburg in a record drive of 57 miles (92 km), the XVI Corps along the Ruhr River at Witten, the XX Corps as it crosses the Saale River at Weimar and overruns the Buchenwald concentration camp and Allied prisoner camp nearby, the XII Corps in the Coburg-Rottenbach area, and the VIII Corps as it approaches the Saale River south of Weimar.
40 Fifteenth Air Force P-38s dive-bomb the Rosenheim railroad bridge.
40 other P-38s and 29 P-51s strafe rail traffic in the Munich and Regensburg; Plzen, Czechoslovakia; and Linz and Salzburg, Austria areas.
An element of the US 6th (’Super Sixth’) Armored Division’s, 9th Armored Inf.Bn. [Task Force 9 - Combat Team Bennett]. entered the vast Thuringian camp at approx.1600 on April 11th, 1945. Driving in an M8 Armored recon vehicle, Capt. Frederic Keffer, Spokane, Wash., T/Sgt. Herbert Gottschalk, Bronx N.Y., Sgt. Harry Ward, Seattle, Wash., (driver), and Pfc.James Hoyt, Oxford, Iowa, radio-operator), were the first US Army troops to enter the infamous ‘KL Buchenwald’ eight (8) kilometres north of Weimar on the Ettersberg. There, an estimated 21,000 political and military prisoners, slave-labourers, and Jews, including ca.900 children, were found in various states of starvation and broken health after years of terror under the Nazi regime. Although it was not a site of planned Genocide such as Auschwitz or Treblinka, mass killings of prisoners (including military POWs) took place during the war years through selection, forced-labour, disease, starvation, and medical-experimentation imposed by the SS. More than 250,000 people were held captive in the camp between 1937 and 1945, and an estimated 50,000 prisoners perished during this period.
Gedenkstaette Buchenwald:
http://www.buchenwald.de/index.html
[See also:
http://www.koch-athene.de/6th/weimar-buchenwald/bu-hot2.htm
and:
http://members.aol.com/super6th/ - 6th Armored Div. Vet website.] (Russ Folsom)
AUSTRIA: Tolbukhin reaches the Danube Canal in Vienna.
ITALY: Carrera falls to the US 92nd Division.
During the night of 10/11 April, Twelfth Air Force A-20s and A-26s bomb bridges at Lavis, Ala, Rovereto, San Michele all’Adige, and San Ambrogio di Valpolicella, and hit vehicles, Po River crossings and targets of opportunity in the Po Valley; medium bombers continue to support British Eighth Army forces between Imola and Comacchio Lagoon, bomb guns south of La Spezia in front of the US Fifth Army advance, and bomb 4 bridges on the Brenner line; XXII Tactical Air Command fighter-bombers also fly support on the Eighth Army front, and hit communications (including the Brenner line) and fuel and ammunition dumps in the north.
544 Fifteenth Air Force B-24s and B-17s hit communications in northern Italy, concentrating on the transportation system feeding into the Brenner area, in an effort to hamper the enemy’s supply and escape routes; the bombers bomb bridges at Padua, Vipiteno, Campodazzo, Ponte Gardena, and Campo di Trens, marshalling yards at Bronzolo and Ora, a vehicle repair shop at Osoppo, and a fuel depot at Goito. 250+ fighters escort the bomber missions.
INDIAN OCEAN: Sabang is shelled by Admiral Walker’s British Eastern Fleet. BB Queen Elizabeth and French BB Richelieu are part of this fleet.
BURMA: British troops capture Pyawbe, opening the route to Rangoon.
54 Tenth Air Force fighter-bombers hit troop and supply concentrations near Mong Kung and Mong Nim, attack trucks and targets of opportunity in other areas behind the battleline, and sweep several roads south of the bomb line; transports fly 424 sorties carrying men and supplies to forward areas.
CHINA: 7 Fourteenth Air Force B-25s bomb Hsihhsiassuchi, 5 pound the Pinglo barracks and storage area, and a few others hit the Yanglowtung railroad yards and targets of opportunity east of Paoching; 150+ fighter-bombers attack troops, river, road and rail traffic, and a variety of targets of opportunity scattered throughout southern and eastern China and northern French Indochina.
FORMOSA: Far East Air Forces B-24s bomb Okayama Airfield while B-25s hit several industrial targets including the Ts’eng Wen sugar refinery, Seiko, Sunbon-sha, and Shasekiryo.
JAPAN: Off Okinawa, US BB Missouri and CV Enterprise are damaged by Kamikaze attacks.
Missouri opened fire on a low-flying suicide plane which penetrated the curtain of her shells to crash just below her main deck level. The starboard wing of the plane was thrown far forward, starting a gasoline fire at 5-inch Gunmount No. 3 (The one used by the Marine detachment on the ship). Yet the battleship suffered only superficial damage (a small dent in the side of the deck, still visible today), and the fire was brought quickly under control. The Missouri remained on station as part of Task Force 58.
RE: USS Enterprise (CV-6)
A single Kamikaze plummeted over her flight deck and glanced over the side and its engine damaged the ship at the waterline. The bomb the aircraft was carrying, exploded beneath the ship, lifting the hull about 3 feet (91 cm), rupturing eight fuel tanks and damaging some machinery. Enterprise retired to Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands for repairs.
Kamikazes also damage the destroyer USS Kidd (DD-661) [Note: The USS Kidd [DD-661] is now berthed on the Mississippi River at Baton Rouge. (Tom Hickox)] [The USS Kidd [DD-661] is also the only unaltered Fletcher class destroyer in the world. (Skip Guidry)], destroyer escort USS Samuel S. Miles (DE-183) and an LCS; the carrier USS Essex (CV-9) and destroyer USS Hale (DD-642) are damaged by bombs; and the destroyers USS Black (DD-666) and USS Hank (DD-702) are damaged by strafing.
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: A battalion combat team of the US Army’s 164th Regimental Team, Americal Division, makes an unopposed landing on Bohol Island (9.50N, 124.10E), Visayan Islands on a beach controlled by Filipino guerrillas.
24 Seventh Air Force 24 B-24s from Angaur Island, Palau Islands, hit the Cotabato supply and personnel areas on Mindanao.
Far East Air Forces B-24s bomb Cotabato on Mindanao. On Negros Island, B-24s hit Japanese defences northwest of Guadalupe and A-20s hit a bivouac east of Negritos. On Luzon Island B-24s, B-25s, A-20s, and fighter-bombers bomb numerous targets including Fuga Island, the Cagayan Valley areas, Santa Fe, bridges and other communications in Iligan, Naguilian, Manga, and Tuguegarao, and troops and supply concentration north of Imugan; troop support strikes are flown in the Solvec Cove area and east of Manila; Baguio and a troop concentration in the Batangas area and on the Bicol peninsula are bombed; at Iriga, defences are hit with napalm.
BORNEO: Far East Air Forces P-38s attack gun positions at Tarakan.
CAROLINE ISLANDS: 18 Guam Island-based B-24s bomb positions on Eten Island in Truk Atoll.
NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES: RAAF, USAAF”> USAAF 5th Air Force and USAAF 13th Air Force conduct preparation raids on targets throughout the East Indies (including Surabaya) before the landings by 1 Australian Corps in Borneo. (Mike Mitchell)
PACIFIC OCEAN: The Japanese lose 5 ships at sea:
- Submarine USS Parche (SS-384) sinks an auxiliary minesweeper off Todogasaki, Japan.
- Submarine USS Spadefish (SS-411) sinks an auxiliary minesweeper off Tokckok-Kundo, Japan.
- RAF Liberator G.R. Mk VIs of No. 203 Squadron based at Kankesanturai, Ceylon, sink a submarine chaser and an auxiliary netlayer in the Andaman Sea in the Bay of Bengal.
- A mine sinks an auxiliary submarine chaser off Futaoi-Jima, Shimonoseki, Japan.
TERRITORY OF ALASKA: ALEUTIAN ISLANDS: Eleventh Air Force P-38s together with USN aircraft pick up bomb filled paper balloons over Attu and east of Adak; one balloon over Attu is shot down and portions of the gondola are recovered in Massacre Bay.
The page 6 article on schools in Nazi Germany is very timely.
‘I Was Liberated at Buchenwald on April 11, 1945’
To the Editor:
This is a response to ‘’At Buchenwald, Ceremony of Bitter Memory’’ (page 1, April 14), which refers to a resistance of several hundred inmates who overwhelmed guards and took control of the concentration camp 40 hours before the American Third Army arrived.
I was liberated at the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald on April 11, 1945. For me it was a glorious day, full of sunshine, an instant awakening of life after long darkness.
The recollections are still vivid - black soldiers of the Third Army, tall and strong, crying like babies, carrying the emaciated bodies of the liberated prisoners.
I was 17, and my life was almost extinguished.
Concentration Camp Buchenwald, about five miles from Weimar, was divided into two: The ‘’big camp’’ consisted of Germans, French, Belgians and Italians with Communist records; even Leon Blum, Prime Minister of France before 1939, was imprisoned in Buchenwald. This was the ‘’superclass,’’ with privileges for survival.
Those imprisoned since 1940 enjoyed a special status, better food - some even received Red Cross food packages. These included a large group of Russian officer prisoners of war, who were killed by the Germans several days before the liberation. The ‘’small camp’’ consisted of Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Russians, Hungarians, the ‘’Untermenschen,’’ the lowest strata of the human race in the Nazi order of things. The span of survival was 30 to 45 days. The survival kit consisted of one slice of bread, watery soup with no contents, constant beating and hard work, cleaning the debris in Weimar from American air attacks. The guards in our Barracks 62 were Yugoslavs and Ukrainians, who excelled in brutality.
The survivors of Buchenwald owe their lives to the American people and not to the ‘’resistance fighters.’’ The short resistance uprising took place hours before the American forces entered Buchenwald. The German SS guards, sensing the approaching defeat, escaped en masse on bikes, on horses or just running. Credit for the liberation belongs totally and unequivocally to the American people, and not to cheap propaganda trying to erase the shameful memories.
I am one of 5 or 10 survivors from a group of 2,000 that was exterminated two days before the liberation. My brother was murdered in this group in a death march from Buchenwald to nowhere.
The Communist ‘’resistance fighters’’ could not and did not stop the daily toll of killing, which went on by the thousands. We at the small camp had the appearance of Ethiopians; we were called the ‘’Musulmans.’’ Those from the ‘’big camp’’ preserved the external human image.
Forty years after the liberation, the wounds are still open. To the end of my days I shall ponder human hatred and indifference to the suffering of others.
What are the real ingredients of hatred? Religion? Color of the skin? Obedience to the rules of a totalitarian state? Where does it start? At home, in school, in beer cellars? Or can the causes be found in the eternal search for the ‘’sacred’’ scapegoat?
BENJAMIN BENDER Brooklyn, April 14, 1985
After following this for nearly six years the feeling of the German collapse is euphoric.
Anticipating the events for the next few days, I can see why folks felt punched in the stomach. It’s as if “Moses” could not enter the promised land. (Not the feeling in either of my parents homes...)
"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."
"U.S. Army soldiers gather around one of the numerous piles of corpses at the Buchenwald, Germany, concentration camp.
The smell of rotting flesh was nauseating. U.S. GI John Glustrom said: 'My first impression of [Buchenwald] was of the odor.
The stench was all over the place, and there were a bunch of very bewildered, lost individuals who came to me pathetically at the door in their unkempt uniforms to see what we were doing and what was going to be done about them.' "
"Food rations at Buchenwald, which had never been sufficient for the heavy work required of the prisoners, shrank throughout the war.
In March 1945, for example, inmates received 250 grams (a little over a half-pound) of horse meat per week.
Prisoners sometimes stole food from the well-fed dogs that helped guard the camp.
At the time of liberation, surviving prisoners raided a supply of dog biscuits kept in the camp's kennel. The man closest to the camera, a Hungarian Jew, was so thin that one can see his spine from above.
Victims of such severe cases of starvation and malnutrition had little chance of survival."
"The human remains on this table, including two shrunken heads and a lampshade allegedly made from human skin, were taken from a laboratory run by Buchenwald's SS guards.
The commandant's wife, Ilse Koch, kept a collection of tattooed human skin.
The two heads were those of Polish prisoners who had escaped and were recaptured."
"As the Nazi extermination camps in Poland were emptied of prisoners late in the war, Buchenwald and other established concentration camps to the west became receiving centers for many thousands of Jews.
Twenty thousand arrived at Buchenwald between May 1944 and March 1945.
Here, a young war orphan sits astride the running board of a truck belonging to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
As they liberated Buchenwald, American soldiers found about 900 children, including this five-year-old.
Along with children from Poland, Russia, and other countries, he awaits transportation to Switzerland."
"In April 1945 Heinrich Himmler, frightened at last by the Allied advance, ordered a halt to evacuations of concentration camps in the enemy's paths, and insisted that the camps be left intact for the liberators.
Some guards were caught unprepared and had no time to escape before Allied troops arrived.
Here, a Russian prisoner points out a Buchenwald guard who had brutally beaten prisoners."
"German civilians dig graves at Buchenwald.
Whenever possible, the Allies forced the local population to bury the corpses left to rot in the camps.
This both relieved Allied soldiers of performing the grisly task and made the Germans personally confront the crimes committed by their countrymen."
"These male prisoners freed from Buchenwald all suffered from maladies of the legs and feet.
These problems were the product of working under horrific conditions with little to eat, not to mention shoes that did not fit--if the prisoners had shoes at all."
"Young Jews travel to Palestine after being released from Buchenwald.
The Americans liberated Buchenwald on April 11, 1945, freeing 21,000 inmates, including 4000 Jews.
Most were sent to displaced-persons camps, while others tried to enter Palestine--either legally or illegally."
"This exhibit of tattooed human skin was presented as evidence of German atrocities during a trial of SS members at Dachau, Germany.
The victims had been prisoners at Buchenwald, and their tattoos had attracted the attention of Ilse Koch, the 'Bitch of Buchenwald.'
She allegedly used their tattooed skin to make lampshades."
Re: the situation map on p.2 - - anyone know why Frankfort is near the Fulda gap close to the 3rd Army / 5th Army lines and Frankfort is also on the Russian line just due east of Berlin?
By firing straight ahead, a fighter could begin clearing decks from ~2,000 yards out at low altitude and from very high altitude in a dive.
The ability to hit where you aim with concentrated fire from any distance was a major advantage of the B-25 strafers and P-38s versus American single engine fighters.
Two different cities. Frankfurt is only part of their name. The name of river they are on is the other part of their names.
The Left has buried what these children who were otherwise "unfit" for work were used for the camps.
The Left has buried what these children who were otherwise "unfit" for work were used for inside the camps.
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