Posted on 06/25/2010 5:37:09 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour
Thomas E. Griess, Series Editor, The Second World War: Europe and the Mediterranean
Halt at 12:35 A.M. – 2
Rumanian Blast Destroys Fortress Munition Stores – 2
Text of French Statement on British Aid – 3
The International Situation – 4
Final Six Hours in France Cap 1918 Pattern; Fighting Ends Hitler’s Armistice Reversals – 4
The Hitler Proclamation Giving Thanks to God – 4
France to Mourn – 5-6
Vatican Speaker Scores 1919 Peace – 6
Bulgaria Mobilizes Striking Workers – 6
Nazi Fliers Strike Widely in Britain – 7
Japan Sends Fleet to Indo-China Port – 8
The Texts of the Day’s War Communiques – 9-10
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/jun40/f25jun40.htm
Japan seeks concessions from France
Wednesday, June 25, 1940 www.onwar.com
In French Indochina... The Japanese put pressure on the French authorities in Indochina to block the transit of supplies to the Chinese Nationalists. They wish the rail line into China closed and a Japanese mission to be allowed in to inspect this.
In the United States... New considerably increased taxes are introduced which bring an additional 2,200,000 into the tax roll who have never formerly paid income tax. These increases of course reflect the armament expenditure.
On the Western Front... The Franco-German armistice comes into force.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/25.htm
June 25th, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM: Prime Minister Churchill said Britain had consented to French armistice. (Dave Shirlaw)
RAF Bomber Command: 4 Group (Whitley). Bombing - aircraft factory and industrial works.
10 Sqn. Six aircraft to aircraft factory Bremen. Five bombed.
51 Sqn. Six aircraft to industrial works Ruhr. All bombed.
FRANCE: RN: Operation ‘Aerial’ ends with over 215,000 servicemen and civilians saved.
Canadian destroyers HMCS Fraser (Crusader or C-class known as River class in the RCN, Cdr. Wallace Bourchier Creery, CBE, RCN, CO) and HMCS Restigouche (ex- HMS Comet) in company with cruiser HMS Calcutta (light anti-aircraft cruiser, Carlisle or C-class) are sailing towards Bordeaux, returning from evacuation duty, a destroyer on each of the cruiser’s bows. While still in the Gironde Estuary line astern is ordered and Fraser on Calcutta’s starboard bow, turned to port intending to turn inward and run down the cruiser’s starboard side. Calcutta thought she intended to cross her bow and run down the port side and she therefore turned to starboard and in poor visibility sheered through Fraser’s forecastle sinking her, with the loss of 60 lives (47 Canadian, 13 RN). Restigouche rescued 101 of Fraser’s crew. This happened at 45 44N 01 31W, during Allied evacuation operations. There are 130 survivors in total. (Alex Gordon and Dave Shirlaw)(108)
The Armistice between Germany and France becomes effective today.
After five days of costly fighting the Italians just manage to breach the French advanced positions at Maurienn and Queyras, but are unable to descend the high Alpine valleys. On the Cote d’Azur some Italian elements coming down from the mountains, infiltrate at Menton, but a little stronghold at Saint-Louise bridge, on the coast road at the frontier, manned by an officer, an N.C.O. and seven men, holds out until the armistice.
France observes a day of national mourning.
Despite a call by the Petain government in Bordeaux to cease hostilities, French colonies show no sign of giving up the battle against Germany. At least one commander, General Nogues in North Africa, has refused orders from Petain to return to France. French generals in Somaliland have cabled their support for the Allies; calls have come from Syria and Lebanon for France to continue the fight; and the French governor-general in Indochina has refused to lower the tricouleur.
MAP
GERMANY: Ten days of official celebrations begin.
ITALY: Count Ciano writes, “Starace, returning from the front, says that the attack on the Alps proved the total lack of preparation of our army, an absolute lack of offensive means, and complete lack of capacity in the higher officers. Men were sent to a useless death two days before the armistice, employing the same technique that was employed more than twenty years ago. If the war in Libya and Ethiopia is conducted in the same way, the future is going to hold many bitter disappointments for us…” Rodolfo Graziani, Army Chief-of-Staff at the start of Italy’s war, echoed Starace, admitting in private that Italian tactics had not progressed much beyond the level of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian phalanx.
(In 1940 Achille Starace was Chief-of-Staff of the Blackshirt militia.
For eight years (until 1939) he had been Secretary of the Fascist Party.
Fanatic in his devotion to both Mussolini and physical fitness, he ordered local Party functionaries to bicycle to work and do push-ups in their offices every morning; required all civil servants— including school-teachers— to wear uniforms; and gave demonstrations, clad in black gym attire, jumping from a springboard through flaming hoops. In Ethiopia, he led 3,400 Blackshirts in 435 trucks on a highly publicized but largely unopposed march to Gondar (the Italians had bought off the ranking local Ethiopian warlord). Starace was killed by Italian partisans in 1945, after being shown the body of Mussolini, which he gave the Fascist salute before being shot and strung up alongside the Duce. )
Marshal Badoglio presses Italo Balbo to plan for an invasion of Egypt but rules out an immediate advance. (Mike Yaklich)
FRENCH INDOCHINA: Japanese authorities pressure the French in Indochina to block the transit of supplies to the Chinese Nationalists. They ask for the closing of a railroad line and permission for a Japanese inspection of the closure.
Japan took advantage of the fall of France by warning the French administration in Indochina that it must stop helping the Chinese Nationalist government in Chungking immediately. The protest was delivered by Japan’s foreign minister, Mr. Tani, to the French ambassador.
He was warned that France’s governor in Indochina must stop the transit of war materials across the Chinese border or face severe repercussions. At the same time Japan has formally asked Germany and Italy to preserve the status quo in Indochina. Reports that Japanese forces are massing on Hainan Island have increased fears that Japan is about to invade the French colony. French and British ships have been told not to call at Indochinese ports. (Marc Small)
CANADA: Lt(A) Alexander Beaufort Fraser Fraser-Harris RN awarded DSC.
HMCS Givenchy commissioned as accommodation vessel for Fishermen’s Reserve. (Dave Shirlaw)
U.S.A.: The US Republican Party began its quadrennial political convention yesterday in Philadelphia. This year the party will select Wendell Wilkie as their presidential candidate. The vote is 654 to 318 over Senator Taft. The convention is overwhelmingly in favour of a policy of non intervention in the war. This convention will end the last day of June.
The Democratic Party platform for 1940 stated:
“To this generation of Americans it is given to defend this democratic faith as it is challenged by social maladjustment within and totalitarian greed without. The world revolution against which we prepare our defence is so threatening that not until it has burned itself out in the last corner of the earth will our democracy be able to relax its guard. ...
“We Must Strengthen Democracy Against Aggression
“The American people are determined that war, raging in Europe, Asia and Africa, shall not come to America.
“We will not participate in foreign wars, and we will not send our army, naval or air forces to fight in foreign lands outside of the Americas, except in case of attack. We favor and shall rigorously enforce and defend the Monroe Doctrine.
“The direction and aim of our foreign policy has been, and will continue to be, the security and defence of our own land and the maintenance of its peace.
“For years our President has warned the nation that organized assaults against religion, democracy and international good faith threatened our own peace and security. Men blinded by partisanship brushed aside these warnings as war-mongering and officious intermeddling. The fall of twelve nations was necessary to bring their belated approval of legislative and executive action that the President had urged and undertaken with the full support of the people. It is a tribute to the President’s foresight and action that our defence forces are today at the peak of their peacetime effectiveness.
“Weakness and unpreparedness invite aggression. We must be so strong that no possible combination of powers would dare to attack us. We propose to provide America with an invincible air force, a navy strong enough to protect all our seacoasts and our national interests, and a fully-equipped and mechanized army. ...
“Experience of other nations gives warning that total defence is necessary to repel attack, and that partial defence is no defence.”
The Republican Party platform said:
“Instead of Providing for the Common defence the Administration, notwithstanding the expenditure of billions of our dollars, has left the Nation unprepared to resist foreign attack. ...
“It has failed by disclosing military details of our equipment to foreign powers over protests by the heads of our armed defence.
“It has failed by ignoring the lessons of fact concerning modern, mechanized, armed defence. ...
“The Republican Party is firmly opposed to involving this Nation in foreign war. ...
“We declare for the prompt, orderly and realistic building of our national defence to the point at which we shall be able not only to defend the United States, its possessions, and essential outposts from foreign attack, but also efficiently to uphold in war the Monroe Doctrine. ... [W]e deplore explosive utterances by the President directed at other governments which serve to imperil our peace; and we condemn all executive acts and proceedings which might lead to war without the authorization of the Congress of the United States.
“Our sympathies have been profoundly stirred by invasion of unoffending countries and by disaster to nations whole ideals most closely resemble our own. We favor the extension to all peoples fighting for liberty, or whose liberty is threatened, of such aid as shall not be in violation of international law or inconsistent with the requirements of our own national defence.”
Will O’Neil
Changes in the US income tax laws are introduced in Congress. They will add an additional 2,200,000 people to the income tax rolls. The increase is necessary to pay for increased expenditures for armaments.
The War Department authorised the Parachute Test Platoon, thereby forming the first US airborne troops. (Gene Hanson)
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/
Day 299 June 25, 1940
At half past midnight, the French armistices with Germany and Italy come into effect and fighting is over in France. France has 92,000 dead, 250,000 wounded and 1.5 million taken prisoner. British losses are 68,111 killed, wounded or captured. German army and Luftwaffe losses are 29,640 dead, 133,573 wounded and missing. Since June 21, Italy has 631 dead, 2,631 wounded, 2,151 hospitalised with frostbite and 616 missing attacking Southern France, while French defenders suffered only 37 killed, 42 wounded and 150 missing.
To compound French misery, Hitler orders the destruction of the 1918 Armistice site at Compiègne. The railway carriage, a massive dedication tablet and the 1918 Alsace-Lorraine Monument (depicting a German eagle impaled by a sword) are removed to Germany. However, Hitler leaves the statue of French WWI victor, Maréchal Foch, watching over this wasteland. http://www.webmatters.net/france/ww1_rethondes_2.htm
Churchill makes a speech to the House of Commons on the Franco-German peace and, specifically, on the disposition of the French battleships and other warships. He notes “the solemn declaration of the German Government that they have no intention of using them for their own purposes during the war. What is the value of that? Ask half a dozen countries what is the value of such a solemn assurance”. He is clearly worried about the fate of the French fleet, despite the assurances of Admiral Darlan.
Between 3.45 and 7.30 PM, U-51 attacks convoy OA-172 about 370 miles west of Lands End sinking British steamer Windsorwood carrying 7100 tons of coal (all 40 crew rescued by steamer Ainderby & landed at Barry, Wales) and British tanker Saranac (4 lives lost, 39 survivors picked up by HMS Hurricane & trawler Caliph). http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/384.html http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/383.html
Operation Ariel. Canadian destroyers HCMS Fraser and Restigouche are sent with British cruiser HMS Calcutta to rescue 4,000 allied soldiers trapped on the Bordeaux coast. In rough seas and poor visibility, HCMS Fraser collides with the much larger HMS Calcutta and is cut into 3 pieces (47 die aboard Fraser; 19 lost on Calcutta). Many Fraser survivors transfer to HMCS Margaree and some are lost in another collision on October 22 with freighter MV Port Fairy.
Now I suppose it's our turn and though my morale is now pretty good...I can't believe that there's much hope for us, at any rate in Europe. Against a ferocious and relentless attack, the Channel's not much of an obstacle and with the army presumably un-equipped, I don't give much for our chances. Personally I have only two hopes; first that Churchill is more reliable than Reynaud and that we will go on fighting if England is conquered, and secondly that Russia, in spite of our blunders, will now be sufficiently scared to stage a distraction in the East. In America I have little faith; I suppose in God's own time God's own country will fight. But a present their army is smaller than the Swiss, their Air Force is puny and rather "playboy," and I doubt whether we need their Navy.
Hastings, Max. Winston's War: Churchill 1940-1945. p. 60.
The Slimes wrote in praise of Petain:
In Bordeaux during the day one met an official automobile in which rode a solitary man of dignified and sorrowful mien - Marshal Henri Phillippe Petain. All the hopes of a reconstructed France are based for the moment on the prestige and personality of this man, who has always kept aloof from party struggles and class warfare and now typifies everything that is best in the country.
Hmm, the New York Slimes: pro-Nazi then, anti-Israel now.
Regarding the author, I haven’t been able to learn much about G.H. Archambault, other than that his first name is Gaston. He has been writing about the Battle of France since it was an imaginary campaign back in September. I am curious to see if the Times continues to run his stories under Vichy.
It is unfortunate for the Republicans that their convention is overshadowed by the news from Europe. They had expected to campaign on the economy and the failure of the New Deal.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.