Posted on 01/03/2012 4:47:36 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1942/jan42/f03jan42.htm
Chinese leader to command all Allied forces
Saturday, January 3, 1942 www.onwar.com
General Chiang Kai-shekFrom Washington... By the authority of the Arcadia Conference, Chiang Kai-shek is named Commander in Chief of Allied Forces in China. General Wavell is appointed to the newly establish American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDA). Wavell’s task is to hold the Malay Barrier, the line from Malaya through the Dutch East Indies to Borneo against the Japanese.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/03.htm
January 3rd, 1941
UNITED KINGDOM:
RAF Fighter Command: The Luftwaffe bombs Bath.
War Cabinet gives conditional agreement to American relief programme of supplying medical supplies, milk and vitamin concentrates to the children of occupied France.
Ministry of Aircraft Production places an order for 250 Vickers Warwicks.
Cardiff: Over 100 Luftwaffe bombers make a reprisal attack for the RAF’s bombing of Bremen.
Corvette HMS Hydrangea commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
ÉIRE: Dublin: Prime Minister de Valera, lodges a protest to Germany after the third air raid on Eire in 24 hours.
VICHY FRANCE: Paul Baudouin resigns as Secretary of State in the Petain government.
GERMANY: U-335 is laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)
ALBANIA: The first Luftwaffe units arrive to back up the Italian forces.
MEDITERRANEAN SEA: Midshipman Prince Philip of Greece joins the battleship HMS Valiant, which, with the battleships HMS Barham and HMS Warspite, later bombards Bardia to assist with the British Army plans for its capture.
Prince Philip of Greece was the son of Prince Andrew of Greece and of Prince Andrew’s wife, Princess Alice of Battenberg [Mountbatten]. When Philip became a naturalized British citizen [during the war], he took his mother’s family name [Mountbatten]. Philip was most certainly in the line [5th in 1940] of succession for the Greek throne. (Glenn Steinberg)
NORTH AFRICA: Strengthened by the arrival of the 6th Australian Division from Palestine, O’Connor resumes his thrust forward towards Bardia on the border of Egypt and Libya.
Bardia: About 30,000 prisoners are taken in the first day of the attack by Australian troops.
O’Connor’s tactical plan for the capture of Bardia, with its 17 mile of perimeter defended by a continuous anti-tank ditch, wire obstacles and concrete blockhouses, was to send a battalion of infantry in first, establish a bridgehead on the far side of the anti-tank ditch and the wire, then bridge the ditch and clear the wire and minefields for the passage of tanks. The tanks would then be shepherded within the perimeter and fan out in attack, with two more infantry battalions close behind them. The main point of assault was to be the centre of the western face of the perimeter, where O’Connor believed the Italians least expected it.
It was the Australians first major action in World War II. The tank ditch was breached by infantry in less than an hour, crossing places quickly made and nearly a hundred land mines removed. The tanks were into the bridgehead by 7 am. Australian casualties to date are over 100 killed and at least 300 wounded. One Australian battalion suffered heavy casualties when it launched a diversionary attack. After the Australians penetrated the wire, the Italians met one of the companies with machine-guns, rifles and grenades.
Off shore, the battleships Warspite, Valiant and Barham added the weight of their heavy guns to the bombardment, and overhead heavy raids are undertaken by the RAF.
U.S.A.: Washington: President Roosevelt announced at a press conference here today a programme for building about 200 new merchant ships in one year to take the place of shipping being sunk in the war.
The plan, which will cost GBP 87.5 million, is based on the assumption that when the war ends there will be a world shipping shortage.
Mr Roosevelt said that the ships would look “ugly”, but they could be quickly and cheaply built.
The President also announced that he is sending his close confidant, Harry Hopkins, to London as his personal representative until a new ambassador can be sent to replace Joseph Kennedy.
A social worker before he became US Secretary of Commerce, Harry Hopkins loves to play poker. He is 50, and so close a friend of Mr Roosevelt that he has lived in the White House for the past year. His mission to London is evidence of the extreme importance the President attaches to maintaining close relations with Britain.
"Already shivering and suffering from frostbite, two Jewish prisoners endure the torture of sitting in the snow.
Reduced to skin and bones from months or years of malnutrition, few had the wherewithal to withstand the bitter cold.
One woman, Gerda Weissmann Klein, survived a winter death march only because her father, guided by intuition, had ordered her to wear her ski boots when deported from her native town of Bielitz, Poland--on a hot summer day in 1942."
I don't understand the details of this report -- exactly who is murdering whom and why?
Are these Catholics murdering Orthodox?
Christians murdering Jews?
Nazis murdering civilians & clergy of any denomination?
Regardless, it is the first published report I can remember detailing mass murders in the Nazi empire.
We should also bear in mind that those who write books about "Hitler's Pope" focus much attention (fairly or unfairly?) on the Catholic Church's silence or active support for Nazi operations in Yugoslavia.
The Ustashi, the Croatian Fascists [largely Roman Catholic] are killing the Orthodox [mostly Orthodox] Serbs.
The Ustashi are the only people I’ve ever come across in my readings who were written up by the SS [in reports to Berlin] for brutality to prisoners-at least twice.
I don't profess to have much knowledge about the Ustashi but my general understanding has gone along the lines of it being first and foremost Croatian nationalist. A member of the Ustashi could be Catholic or Muslim. The leader, Ante Pavelic had a personal theology that was a syncretic mix of Islam and Catholicism.
See Homers Nov 12, 1941 post about murders in Poland. 10K is only a fraction of what is reported by Homer today in the Balkans but still on a scale much larger than occasional reports of the 50 - 100 executed in France as reprisals for dead Germans:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f167/Lisa_Simpson/1941/November/1112/1112-germansg.jpg
For those who remember, I obtained a copy of this Polish Black Book and wrote a quick evaluation on it sometime in June that year (I think it was on the 11th or 12th). In the book is the claim that even at this early point, before the Holocaust had become official policy, the Nazis had already killed 1 million civilians in their invasion and occupation of Poland, 200,000 of those dead being children.
Though my evaluation of the Black Book is that these numbers are somewhat exaggerated, it still shows the scope of the wholesale slaughter that was going on in the newly conquered Nazi territory. And they were really just getting warmed up.
I have not yet found from where it was that I had the impression of MacArthur receiving significantly higher compensation. While I'm leaning towards my recollection/understanding being incorrect, I don't want to give up the search just yet.
No worries. I haven’t even gotten a chance to get back to you on your assessment on Filipino air power on December 8th yet.
Thanks for the link.
If I could figure out how you do that, I'd look it up myself.
Obviously missed seeing the report at the time, and hadn't realized that Nazi murders of Poland's leaders was reported in the news.
Amazing, and with no fan-fare or comment.
Makes you wonder if other groups were being murdered in large numbers and also not reported on...
Interesting.
The news report itself says nothing specific about "horrors" in Poland.
Indeed, it devotes more ink to Lady Armstrong and Colonel Donovan than to anything specific on Poland.
So fso301's link to the report on November 12, 1941, appears to be the first specific details of Nazi mass murders in Poland.
Today's report on Serbia appears to be the second.
“The Ustashi are the only people I’ve ever come across in my readings who were written up by the SS [in reports to Berlin] for brutality to prisoners-at least twice.”
Even Evil has standards...
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvenEvilHasStandards
No, the article itself doesn’t deal in specifics, it only states the this “Black Book” publication is coming out on May 30th describing the “horrors of the German occupation of Poland”. You would have had to have gotten a copy of the Black Book in that copy of “The Monthly Future” to read the details. For the people of New York at the time, that was easy. That issue was going to be made available at the World’s Fair there. For me I had to find out if a university carried back editions of “The Monthly Future” and obtain a copy. Fortunately, the University of Minnesota does and I got them to send this to me. But again, for me, as well as for those who read the Black Book of Poland in The Monthly Future back then, it was the earliest description of the brutality of the Nazis in their occupied areas.
Do you mean link to a specific FR post, or link to Homer's Photobucket image?
In this case, the question is: what were the earliest news reports of Nazi attrocities?
You produced this report: Pole accuses Nazis of Murdering 10,000 -- November 11, 1941
Curiously, the word "attrocities" does not appear in the report, nor does the word "murder" except in the headline.
So the question is: is this report something we can do a search on, and if so how, or do we just have to know where to look ahead of time?
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