Posted on 05/30/2014 4:12:35 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Major General H.W. Blakeley, USA, Ret., The 32d Infantry Division in World War II
Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1944/may44/30may44.htm#
Germans attacking in Romania
Tuesday, May 30, 1944 www.onwar.com
On the Eastern Front... German forces attack units of the Soviet 2nd Ukrainian Front (Konev), north of Jassy in Romania and achieve some gains.
In Italy... Elements of the British 8th Army capture Arce. At Anzio, the US 6th Corps approaches Velletri.
In Occupied France... French resistance forces sabotage equipment at Decazeville Colliery.
http://www.etherit.co.uk/frame.htm
May 30th, 1944 (TUESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: The USAAF’s Eighth Air Force based in England flies Mission 380: 928 bombers and 672 fighters in six forces are dispatched to hit aircraft industry targets in Germany and marshalling yards in France and Belgium; they claim 65-8-6 Luftwaffe aircraft; twelve bombers and nine fighters are lost:
1. 268 B-17s are dispatched to attack aviation industry targets at Dessau (83 bomb), Halberstadt (107 bomb) and Oschersleben (51 bomb); five other hit targets of opportunity; they claim 8-5-1 Luftwaffe aircraft; nine B-17s are lost.
2. 369 B-24s are dispatched to hit aviation depots at Oldenburg (135 bomb), Rotenburg (147 bomb) and Zwischenahn (71 bomb); one other hits a target of opportunity; one B-24 is lost.
3. 46 of 91 B-24s hit Munster/Handorf Airfield and 36 others hit Diepholz Airfield; two B-24s are lost.
4. 122 of 126 B-17s hit French marshalling yards; 62 hit Reims and 60 hit Troyes without loss.
5. 39 of 40 B-17s hit Brussels/Schaerbeck marshalling yard, Belgium without loss.
6. 76 of 84 B-17s hit V-weapon sites in the Pas de Calais, France without loss.
Escort is provided by 186 P-38s, 184 P-47 Thunderbolts and 302 P-51 Mustangs; P-47s claim 2-0-0 Luftwaffe aircraft with one aircraft lost;
P-51s claim 48-3-2 Luftwaffe aircraft in the air and 7-0-3 on the ground with the loss of eight P-51s (pilots are MIA); 637 Ninth Air Force fighters support the mission; they claim 8-0-2 aircraft in the air and 0-0-4 on the ground for the loss of three aircraft.
100 P-47s are dispatched to bomb 4 rail bridges in northwestern France; 37 hit Longueil bridge, 26 hit Beaumont-sur-Oise bridge, 23 hit Canly-le-Jouque bridge and 12 hit the Creil bridge; one P-47 is lost.
The USAAF’s Ninth Air Force in England dispatches 320+ B-26 Marauders to attack airfields at Denain/Prouvy and Mantes/Limay, and highway bridges at Meulan and Rouen, all in France. Nearly 400 P-47s dive-bomb targets in northwestern Europe.
Corvette HMS Bamborough Castle commissioned.
Frigates HMS Bigbury Bay, St Austell Bay and St Brides Bay laid down.
FRANCE:
D-Day Countdown
The German Perspective
Tuesday, 30 May, 1944
May 30th. Rommel has assembled most of his corps and army commanders at Caen to attend a weapons display at Riva Bella, just west of Ouistraham. Even Admiral Krancke and General von Funk. Featured in the show are some of Major Becker’s multiple rocket launchers. The whooshing missiles impress everyone there. Becker also takes the opportunity to sow off some the armored assault guns that he has fashioned onto captured French armored chassis. Also displayed are a number of smoke launchers.
After the presentation, General Marcks has a chance to talk to Fifteenth Army Commander General von Salmuth.
He mentions to him the problems that he has on his Calvados coastline. Both the 352nd and the 716th Division each had a 30-mile stretch of beach to defend.
“It’s the weakest sector of my whole corps,” he admits worriedly.
They dine off a small but adequate field mess, sitting at tables under a lovely canopy of trees. It is just as well.
Enemy air activity is, as usual these days, bustling.
Rommel is surprised that the Mantes bridges are still functional.
Rommel closes the proceedings by addressing all of his commanders. He pleads with them to stay alert, and to be ready at all times. “You shouldn’t count on the enemy coming in fine weather, and by day,” he tells them.
Sadly for him, he will end up ignoring his own advice.
After the demonstration, Rommel, Buhle and Jakob ride off to tour the defensive barriers along the coast.
It will be Rommel’s last tour of the invasion area before D-Day.
Eventually, Rommel, his staff, and the two visiting generals head back to the chateau. They stops at some deployment areas of the 21st Panzer Division.
Again he gives the `stay alert’ speech. Major Hans von Luck is present here again, as he was at the conference. He expresses his anxiety over the fact that the enemy has not yet come. Would they ever?
This long period of no activity is starting to have an effect on his men, even the new recruits, fresh from Germany. The peaceful French countryside and good wine is not helping matters.
Rommel, Buhle, and Jakob head back. It is none too soon. By evening the Mante bridges are gone, as is the one at Gaillon, about 20 km downriver from Vernon. In fact all the bridges along the Seine between Elbeuf * and Paris are down.
* Located on the Seine River, about two-thirds of the distance between Paris and Le Havre.
Pete Margaritis
GERMANY: Allied pilots who are shot down over Germany can no longer expect any mercy from the people. The Reichsleiter Martin Bormann has today issued a directive to all district and regional National Socialist leaders to the effect that lynch law is now approved by the government in Berlin.
This directive from Bormann, who is also Hitler’s secretary, follows a newspaper article by the Reich propaganda minister, Josef Goebbels, which was published on 27 May. Under the headline “Comments on the Enemy Air Terror”, Goebbels concluded that, in view of the “criminal combat methods” now employed by the Allied air forces, pilots had no right to prevent the German people, in their “seething rage”, from acting in their own defence and rewarding murder with murder. Bormann’s directive has given the government seal of approval to Goebbel’s incitement to mob justice.
U-3001 launched.
U-683 commissioned.
ROMANIA: Jessy: A long lull on the whole front is broken by powerful German Attack on Koniev’s Front in Romania.
U.S.S.R.: USS Herndon (DD-198), commissioned as HMS Churchill (I-45) on 9 Sep. 1940; is transferred to Russia as Dyatelnyi today. She will be torpedoed and sunk by U-956 on 16 Jan. 1945 while escorting a White Sea convoy; the last war loss of the class and the only one of the destroyers transferred to Russia to be lost. (Ron Babuka)
ITALY: The British 8th Army takes Arce.
The USAAF’s Fifteenth Air Force in Italy dispatches nearly 500 bombers to attack targets in Austria and Yugoslavia; B-17s attack the marshalling yard at Zagreb, Yugoslavia; B-24s attack aircraft factories at Wels, Ebreichadorf, Pottendorf, Neudorfl and Neunkirchen, Austria; P-38s and P-51s provide escort and many of the fighters strafe targets of opportunity in areas around Zut, Brod, Susak, Bihac, Medak, and along the Karlovac-Livno road, Yugoslavia.
NEW GUINEA: Minor skirmishes on Biak where the Americans are re-grouping. In the Wadke-Sarmi area the US 158 Infantry Regiment Combat Team establishes a new defensive line along the river Tirfoam. Japanese mount night attacks along the perimeter of the Arare mainland beachead opposite Biak. (Michael Kiddell)
U.S.A.:
Submarine USS Mapiro laid down.
Destroyer escort USS Hemminger commissioned.
Minesweeper USS Sentry commissioned.
ECUADOR: President Carlos Arroyo del Rio of Ecuador and his cabinet resigned after a revolutionary junta seized power in Guayaquil.
Senate Votes Pay Rises for Postmasters despite Protest on ‘Rewarding Wasteful’ – 11
%5 to 20% pay increases for postmasters. “In arguing against the pay boost, Senator [Clyde M.] Reed [R-KS] said he was opposed to “rewarding negligent public officials for rendering wasteful service.”
As an example of negligence and waste, Sen. Reed referenced overtime spending by the Postal Service, which had increased from about $10.4 million in 1942 to $67.6 million in 1944.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Oops. I wonder if it's a rather-fascist revolutionary junta, or a rather-Marxist revolutionary junta. I could look it up, but I have to cook eggs for a son.
Thank you very much for posting these articles. I have been reading them daily for the past few weeks and I think they are very interesting. It’s hard to imagine just how much World War II pervaded the everyday life of Americans. The articles on rationing and the draft show that this war was a constant part of daily life, something I have never experienced. I am also looking forward to future daily postings. Next week is D Day and I want to read what an average New Yorker read that day.
Thanks again.
Looks like our submarines have found the IJN, and after several months of hiding they look like they are ready to come out and fight. Gee, I wonder how we knew that we should position so many subs around the Tawi Tawi anchorage to look for the Japanese.
Nimitz won’t even hint of the Purple JN 25 decrypts in his own confidential diary.
The IJN is massing for Operation Kon, intended to attack the American amphibious forces invading Biak. The IJN will never execute Kon; it will be superceded by the need to execute A-Go.
"Two children clutch their father's hand while their mother, balancing on crutches, struggles to keep up during the deportation of Jews from the Sighet (Hungary) Ghetto.
From May 16 to 22, 1944, most of the nearly 8,600 Jews who had been crowded into the town's ghetto were deported to Auschwitz.
Among those sent from Sighet to Auschwitz was 14-year-old Elie Wiesel, who would later write of his experiences in Night."
"The little Hungarian town of Köszeg had only 80 Jews when a ghetto was created there on May 11, 1944.
The total population of the ghetto, which incorporated Jews from surrounding towns, was only 103.
This photograph shows the loading of the ghetto's population onto transport trains bound for Auschwitz.
Note the participation of troops from Hungary's Fascist organization, the Arrow Cross, in the deportation.
The organization's members, many of whom were poor and uneducated, participated vigorously in deportations."
The photo of German POWs marching to the rear is an image that will be repeated and magnified many times on every front in the next few months.
They are two photo albums that my friend acquired from a veteran in our town who liberated them from a hotel in Munich when his unit was there in 1945.
They are albums filled with Nazi propaganda photos from 1939 and 1940. In appearance they are well-made photo albums filled with 4" x 6" pictures, mounted on thick paper with onion skin dividers. I understand they were produced in limited quantity for selected recipients. Presumably the hotel where these were found is an example. The albums themselves are about 12 1/4" x 17" in size and quite thick. After looking through part of the 1939 album I estimate they each hold in excess 250 photos. I will post photos of the outer cover, the title page and a sample of photos below. Not remembering much of my high school German I am unable to decipher much of the text but there are two names on the title page, Ernst Braeckow and Prof. Heinrich Hoffman.
So, are any of you familiar with these albums? I should think they have historical value. They would be a great contribution to this project when it is time for WWII + 80 Years, but I don't want to start scanning pictures or otherwise putting the albums at risk before we know more about what my friend has.
“Greater Germany World Yearbook,” or something like that?
They remind me of the yearbooks my father received from his squadrons and ships when he was in the Navy, with photos of the personnel and accomplishments of the year.
I should have searched on the names before the previous post. The albums are well documented on the internet.
Title: Grossdeutschland im Weltgeschehen Tagesbilderberichte 1939 [-1942] Title Translation: Greater Germany in the affairs of the world.
Third Reich Collection (Library of Congress) DLC
Date Created/Published: Berlin : Verlag Joh. Kasper & Co., 1939-1942.
Summary: German photographs depicting the progress of the war at the battle fronts and at home, 1939-1942. Adolf Hitler giving speeches, receiving foreign diplomats, at Nazi party gatherings, kissing babies. Göring and Goebbels. German troops entering conquered cities, military equipment, submarines, ships, English prisoners of war, captured American troop transport, etc. Also aerial dogfight over England, 1940; formation of Junkers Ju88 bombers in flight, 1941; and Stuka (Junkers Ju 87) dive bombers flying in formation over Russia, 1942.
http://research.archives.gov/description/540206
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003690515/
Looks like your friend has a pretty cool artifact.
Does that book website originate in Germany? Hitler’s face and swastikas are censored.
Colorado tanker is correct in identifying the article. And it is quite a find. I’d love to spend an afternoon with it. Looking at the lower left hand photo, it appears to be Hitler receiving a bowing Goering while a high ranking Luftwaffe officer looks on. Given time I could probably ID him. Also, it looks like Rudolph Hess in profile in the partial photo on the right.
It’s hard to make out the description written under the photo; the resolution isn’t that good and it’s in the faux Gothic font the Germans were fond of using when they wanted to put on airs. It can be difficult to read, although I can make out some of it.
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.
