NAZIS STRIKE HARD FOR STALINGRAD; TOKYO CONCEDES SOLOMONS SETBACK (8/16/42)

Microfilm-New York Times archives, Monterey Public Library | 8/16/42 | Ralph Parker, Otto D. Tolischus, Raymond Daniell, Charles Hurd, Hanson W. Baldwin, Byron Darnton

[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
Papua, New Guinea, 1942
Japanese Advance, 21 July-16 Sept. 1942
The Solomons: Guadalcanal and Florida, 1942
Southwest Russia, 1942: German Advance to Stalingrad, Operations, 24 July-18 November 1942
The Far East and the Pacific, 1941: Status of Forces and Allied Theater Boundaries, 2 July 1942
India-Burma, 1942: Allied Lines of Communication, 1942-1943

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Richard Tregaskis, Guadalcanal Diary

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Volga Peril Grows (Parker) – 2-3
Georgievsk Taken in Nazis’ Advance – 4
U.S. Landing in Solomons a Surprise, Japan Admits – 5
War News Summarized - 5
Air Battle Feats Praised by Arnold – 6
Arnold’s Account of How Army Planes Smash at Enemy – 7-8
Nazis Kill First Dutch Hostages; Netherland Retribution is Vowed – 9
U.S. Victims Detail Japanese Torture (Tolischus) – 10-11
No R.A.F. Friction, Eisenhower Says (Daniell) – 11
The Texts of the Day’s Communiques on the War – 12-13

The News of the Week in Review
Twenty News Questions – 15
Axis Armies Drive On in the Battle of South Russia (map) – 16
Aid to Russia Weighed in Light of Nazi Gains (Hurd) – 17
Moscow Braves a Week’s Bad News (Parker) – 18
The Pacific, Battleground of Magnificent Distances (map) - 20
Difficult Battle Tasks Executed in Solomons (Baldwin) – 21
Action at Tulagi a Strategic Test (Darnton) – 22
American Soldier Strange to Britons (Daniell) – 23
Answers to Twenty News Questions – 23

[Homer_J_Simpson]

http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1942/aug42/f16aug42.htm

Japanese reinforce in New Guinea
Sunday, August 16, 1942 www.onwar.com

Japanese troops in New Guinea [photo at link]

In New Guinea... More Japanese reinforcements arrive for the fighting against the Australians on the Kokoda Trail near Buna.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm

August 16th, 1942

GERMANY: German railways have been running a large-scale campaign this summer designed to restrict private travel. “Will your journey help us to victory?” ask posters pasted up at railway stations. “Must you steal carriage space from the front?” demand newspaper advertisements in which soldiers in full kit glare menacingly at their compatriots. The campaign began in June and is continuing through the holiday season. Leisure or holiday trips, however, are the prime target of the “Wheels must roll for victory” campaign.

U.S.S.R.: Black Sea Fleet and Azov Flotilla: Shipping loss: MS “TSch-405 “Vzrivatel”” - by field artillery, close to Eupatoria (later raised) (Sergey Anisimov)(69)

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. envoy Averell Harriman leave Moscow after a five-day conference with Soviet Premier Josef Stalin. Despite recent retreats, Stalin says, the Soviet Union will not be defeated. He asks the British and Americans to send all the trucks they can to increase the Red Army’s mobility. (Jack McKillop)

EGYPT: US Army Air Force planes go into action for the first time, attacking German positions.

NEW GUINEA: Japanese reinforcements are landed near Buna. They will supplement the Japanese offensive towards Port Moresby through Kokoda over the Owen Stanley Mountains.

TERRITORY OF ALASKA: In the Aleutians, a US 11th Air Force B-24 Liberator aborts a photo reconnaissance flight over Adak Island because of mechanical failure. The IJA 32nd Independent Field Anti-aircraft Battery arrives on Attu Island.

U.S.A.: The unmanned USN non-rigid airship L-8, assigned to Airship Patrol Squadron Thirty Two (ZP-32) based at NAS Moffett Field, California, is involved in a bizarre incident that has never been completely solved to this day. The L-8 left Treasure Island, California at 0600 hours local on a routine patrol off the coast of San Francisco with a crew of 2, Lieutenant (jg) Cody and Ensign Adams. At 0738 hours, the crew radioed that they were 4 miles (6.4 km) east of the Farallon Islands and were investigating an oil slick.
Approximately 2 hours later the airship crashed in Dale City, California. The engines were not running even though there was adequate fuel; the radio equipment was operative but there was no one on board. No trace was ever found of either man and there was no indication of what happened to them. The airship had apparently drifted with the wind toward land, exceeded her pressure height and deflated, settling to earth on power lines at Dale City. The door was locked open with the safety bar down and the only items missing from the blimp were two life-preservers. The L-8 was salvaged and completely repaired. (Jack McKillop)

The 35,000-ton South Dakota Class battleship USS Alabama (BB-60) is commissioned at the U.S. Navy Yard in Norfolk, Virginia. Alabama is the last of four battleships to be completed this year; the others are South Dakota (BB-57), Indiana (BB-58) and Massachusetts (BB-59). (Jack McKillop)

Destroyers USS Conway and Murray launched.
Minesweeper USS Portent launched.
Submarine USS Sibyl commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)

ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-507 sinks SS Araraquara, SS Annibal Benévolo and SS Baependy.
U-596 sinks SS Suecia in Convoy SC-95. (Dave Shirlaw)

[1911a1freep]

Interesting to read at the time Arnold's assessment of our fighter aircraft. In hindsight the P-40 held it's own and the P-39 was definitely inferior in the Pacific. Interesting mention of the early P-51 performance which will not have the Rolls Royce Merlin engine in it for another year.

[mick]

Thanks again, Homer, for this wonderful series....however, I must complain that I just spent nearly an hour reading this days’ Times...To the detriment of my other duties. And now that we have taken the offensive in the Pacific, I can’t get enough of this stuff !! :)

[Homer_J_Simpson]

however, I must complain that I just spent nearly an hour reading this days’ Times...To the detriment of my other duties.

I do try to pack as much stuff as I can into the Sunday editions. Be careful, though. I wouldn't want to see any classmates get put on academic probation due to spending too much time on this one project.

[colorado tanker]

It must have felt pretty helpless to watch the Nazis advance in Russia and know our forces just weren't ready yet to open a second front.

Still, I look at the big map and see the Russians have pushed back a little in the north and wonder what the hell the Germans were thinking putting all their offensive power in the south??? Another gift from that great military strategist Hitler, I guess.

[Ecliptic]

I think Hitler was pushing for the oil fields as a first priority. And just because the Russians were yelling and crying for a second front, does not mean the rest of the world should hop to it. Seems like Stalin was bullying and putting undue pressure on the USA and the UK to help them out.
We were just not ready. We could have invaded France, but we did not have air superiority, we did not have the trained troops or equipment at this point in the war. It would have put our troops up for a slaughter.

If Stalin had not killed Generals and generally purged the military ranks, maybe he would have had experienced military leaders who could have made their fight less costly.
Besides, we already had our “second front” in the Pacific. I hate that so many Russians were killed, but it helped us, the UK and the rest of the world that Germany attacked Russia instead of the UK and that Hitler used so much of his resources (including about a million men lost) against Russia.

[colorado tanker]

I agree with all your points.

One of the principles of war I was taught (which we got from the Germans IIRC) is concentration. As much as he needed oil, instead of repeatedly dividing his forces Hitler should have gone for the jugular, Moscow and secondarily Leningrad, and only after securing the key objective turn south. Thank goodness he was a lousy general.

[Monterrosa-24]

Those German forces in North Africa may not have seemed like a decisive distraction based upon raw numbers but in training and in equipment they were tops. It was a second front and by November of 1942 the Americans had joined the Brits in North Africa. The Germans sure could have used a few of Rommels batallions backing up the flanks of Stalingrad that November.

[colorado tanker]

I know the Americans didn’t want to do it at first, but North Africa turned out to be the perfect operation for us. Almost no one besides very senior officers and NCO’s had seen combat. Clearly the Army was not ready for prime time and needed seasoning before hurtling into France.

[dfwgator]

Friedrich Christiansen who according to the article ordered the executions of the five Dutch hostages was not executed after the war:

From his Wikipedia entry:

From 29 May 1940 until 7 April 1945 Christiansen was Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber in den Niederlanden (Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht in the Netherlands,) and from 10 November 1944 until 28 January 1945 supreme commander of the 25th Army.
After the war Christiansen was arrested for war crimes. On 2 October 1944 he had ordered a raid on the village of Putten in Gelderland, the Netherlands, in retaliation, after one of his officers, a Leutnant Sommers, was killed there by the Dutch resistance. When he heard about the actions of the resistance near Putten, Christiansen is reported to have said, „Das ganze Nest muss angesteckt werden und die ganze Bande an die Wand gestellt!” (”Put them all against the wall and burn the place down!”) In compliance with this retributive sentiment, several members of the civilian population were shot, the village was burned, and 661 of the males of the town were deported to labor camps, the vast majority of whom never returned.
Christiansen was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment in 1948 in Arnhem for war crimes but was released in December 1951. He died in Aukrug in 1972.
His release from imprisonment in 1951 was an occasion for his native town, Wyk auf Föhr, to renew Christiansen’s honorary citizenship and reinstate a street name in honor of him, which had been changed by the British military administration in 1945. These honors sparked controversies in Germany and the Netherlands and they were revoked in 1980 by the town counsel.

[BroJoeK]

---

August 14, 1942:

• "The entire Jewish community from Gorlice, Poland, is deported to the Belzec extermination camp.

  August 14-15: "A woman named Rivka Yosselevska is one of just four Jews to survive a bloody burial-pit massacre outside Zagrodski, Poland, near Pinsk."

"Swedish Prince Gustavus Adolphus visits Germany in 1942.
Swedish policy was mildly pro-German until February 1943, when the German advance in Russia was stopped at Stalingrad--a crucial turning point in World War II.
At that point, the Swedes and most Europeans felt that the Allies would win the war.
As a result, Sweden decided to accept Jewish refugees. In October 1943 the country opened its doors to roughly 10,000 Danish Jews."

---

August 15, 1942:

• "The Germans open Jawiszowice, a slave-labor camp located near Auschwitz.

• "One thousand Belgian Jews, including 172 children, are deported to their deaths in the East."

"Polish Jews in the Kremenets (Ukraine) Ghetto violently resisted the Nazi deportations.
On September 9, 1942, 1500 Jews, among them the ghetto's leadership, were transported to a ghetto five miles away. Incensed, a young Jew shot and killed six Germans and Ukrainians who were part of the "liquidation squad," forcing the Nazis temporarily to retreat.
The next day another ten Nazis were killed.
On August 11, rather than accept deportation and certain death, the remaining Jews set the ghetto on fire.
Among the buildings destroyed was the ghetto's synagogue, pictured here."

---

August 16, 1942:

• Mid-August 1942: "A healthy Jewish teenage boy is removed from a deportation train at the Belzec death camp, stripped naked, hung upside down from gallows for three hours, and then killed as camp guards use sticks to force sand down his throat."

"Glimpsing freedom and safety ahead, Jewish refugees cross over the border into Switzerland.
Few were so fortunate as this group since the Swiss, citing their need to protect their neutrality, turned a cold shoulder toward most refugees, especially Jews.
One official referred to his country as a "crowded little lifeboat," and in 1942 the Swiss government instructed border officials to turn back refugees at the French border, essentially dealing death sentences to Jews."

---

[HenpeckedCon]

“Hitler used so much of his resources (including about a million men lost) against Russia.”
In almost 4 years of war, the German Wehrmacht lost an average of one regiment of soldiers killed in action a day. One day, every day. the Russian losses were much worse. These losses are inconceivable for Western countries.

[kristinn]

Do you remember where you got this entry, specifically the last photo from Aug. 16, 1942?

[BroJoeK]

kristinn: "Do you remember where you got this entry, specifically the last photo from Aug. 16, 1942?"

Holocaust Chronicle, page 351

Why do you ask?

[kristinn]

I received an inquiry from a researcher for a BBC documentary. Thanks!