Posted on 12/08/2010 5:28:15 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour
A major character in Herman Wouk’s WWII novels is Armin von Roon, a former German General who wrote his memoirs from prison, where the Nuremberg courts sent him to do 20 years. These “memoirs” are excerpted in the novels from time to time to provide background on certain key events of the war. His voice is added to the narrative supposedly to provide the reader with the German point of view. Whether Wouk does this accurately or not I don’t know, but I thought the following bit about Roosevelt and Lend Lease was interesting enough to include with the actual letter by Churchill von Roon mentions.
Remember – Churchill and Roosevelt were real people. Armin von Roon was not.
Herman Wouk, The Winds of War
News of the Week in Review
Twenty News Questions – 6
Bombed Britain (map) – 8
War is Becoming a Race for Victory at Sea – 9-10
Answers to Twenty News Questions – 10
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/dec40/f08dec40.htm
Greeks push Italians back
Sunday, December 8, 1940 www.onwar.com
In the Balkans... The Greek forces capture Argyrocastro and Delvino.
Over Germany... British RAF bombers raid Dusseldorf during the night (December 7-8).
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/08.htm
December 8th, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM:
London: The House of Commons and the Tower of London are hit in a heavy Luftwaffe raid tonight.
Churchill telegrams Roosevelt with his summary of the events of 1940, the current situation and what he believes that Great Britain will need from the United States in order to survive and attain ultimate victory. Churchill requests that the US Navy extends its Neutrality Patrols much further out into the Atlantic and that the US brings pressure to bear on Eire to allow use of the western Irish ports by either US or Allied warships. In return Churchill promises to try to re-unite Ireland after the war by asking the people of Ulster to join with the South.
The main problem in 1941, explains Churchill, will be lack of merchant shipping to bring the 43 million tons of supplies that Britain needs annually and lack of escort vessels to protect them from the U-boats and long-range anti-shipping aircraft. He also requests 2,000 combat aircraft be supplied per month, the majority heavy-bombers.
Finally, Churchill points out that Britain may no longer be in a position to pay for these arms.
ALBANIA:
Greek forces capture Argyrocastro and Delvino as Italy pulls back towards Himara.
SPAIN:
Madrid: Franco refuses to co-operate with Hitler’s plan to invade Gibraltar, forcing the operation to be cancelled.
NORTH AFRICA:
Operation Compass:
RAF Wellingtons based in the Egyptian Delta destroy ten Italian aircraft at Benina in Libya.
The Allied troops are told that their advance is not a desert exercise, but the “real thing.”
PACIFIC OCEAN: German Auxiliary Cruiser KM Orion sinks the merchantmen Triadic and Triaster, while KM Komet sinks the Komata.
CANADA:
Ottawa: Both Houses of Parliament passed bills calling for a 25% excise tax on Canadian luxury manufactures and suspending importation from the US of practically all manufactured articles until after the war.
Bangor-class minesweepers HMCS Drummondville, Swift Current, Red Deer, Medicine Hat, Vegreville, Grandmere, Gananoque and Goderich ordered. (Dave Shirlaw)
U.S.A.:
$50 million is to be lent to Argentina to help stabilise her currency.
Both Eisenhower and Marquat write to MacArthur to inform him that the US had no definite plans to bolster the Philippine defenses and that the defence of the islands are on a back burner. (Marc Small)
WEST INDIES: The 5,000 ton German ship “Idarwald” is intercepted off Cuba by HMS Diomede. She is at once scuttled by her crew and sunk.
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/
Day 465 December 8, 1940
Operation Compass. General O’Connor’s Western Desert Force moves forward all day and into the night, covering the remaining 35 miles to the line of Italian forts. They move undetected through the gap between camps Nibeiwa and Sofafi and stop at 1 AM next day to rest for a few hours.
At 8.58 PM 295 miles West of Ireland, U-103 sinks British liner Calabria (carrying 4000 tons of iron, 3050 tons of tea and 1870 tons of oilcake from India to Britain) killing 129 crew, 1 gunner and 230 Indian sailors being brought to Britain to crew other ships. 21 crew members are picked up by destroyer HMS Sikh and landed at Londonderry. 75 miles West of Ireland, U-140 sinks Finnish barque Penang at 12.26 PM (all 18 hands lost). Penang is a 3-masted steel sailing ship, built in 1905, carrying 3250 tons of grain from Australia to Ireland. U-140 also sinks British SS Ashcrest at 8.25 PM (all 37 crew lost).
Destroyer HMS Windsor hits a mine off Aldeburgh, Surrey, on the east coast of England. She is towed to Harwich by destroyer HMS Garth and repaired to Chatham until April 24 1941.
Stormy weather prevents German armed merchant cruisers Komet and Orion from landing on the island of Nauru to raid phosphate mining facilities and drop off their prisoners as planned. However, they sink 3 freighters waiting offshore. Orion sinks Triadic (1 killed, 11 crew taken prisoner) and Triaster (64 crew taken prisoner) and Komet sinks Komata (2 killed, 33 crew taken prisoner). The German raiders and their support vessel Kulmerland now have 675 prisoners including 52 women and 8 children.
Franco wisely refuses to be drawn into the war. It is too bad that by 2010 Spain is back under atheistic socialist rule.
The lend-lease act hadn’t been passed yet?
Roosevelt hasn't even sprung the idea on the nation yet. According to my sort of reliable timeline he will sign the act next March 11.
Okay, but that letter would have made painfully clear that it was needed. Now I know where it started!
Good Grief... do I feel like the REAL Homer Simpson today.
I came here yesterday and today expecting to find news about Pearl Harbor... then, I remembered..
D’OH!
It’s 1940... we’re STILL a YEAR away! Wow... so much fighting has already gone on. I just can’t imaging that the US has not gotten more involved yet.
There MUST have been trememdous pressure in the country to to stay OUT of the war.
It’s just been incredible to read these, real-time... and, think about what must have been going through people’s minds. I loved the letters to the editor from Londoners yesterday.... “This bombing is adding a ZEST to life!”
I do not believe that the Government and people of the United States would find it in accordance with the principles which guide them to confine the help which they have so generously promised only to such munitions of war and commodities as could be immediately paid for. You may be certain that we shall prove ourselves ready to suffer and sacrifice to the utmost for the Cause, and that we glory in being such that ways and means will be found which future generations on both sides of the Atlantic will approve and admire.
Yes, or any crypto-neo-Nazi today.
And the next step is, they begin minimizing, or denying the Holocaust.
And so today's neo-National Socialists arrive at precisely the same conclusion as our paleo-International Socialists:
And the saddest part is that as the old WWII vets pass on, these other voices grow louder and louder. :-(
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