Posted on 04/24/2015 4:17:19 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/3/24.htm
April 24th, 1945
UNITED KINGDOM: The “dim-out” is abolished, except for a coastal belt five miles deep.
Minesweeper HMS Mary Rose commissioned.
GERMANY: Konev’s troops penetrate Berlin from the South.
Berlin: Hitler orders Göring to be arrested after receiving a telegram from him offering to take over command of the Reich.
The RAF joined in the final battle of Berlin today with fighter-bombers of Bomber Command pouncing on General Wenck’s Twelfth Army as it moves east after being switched from the western front to Berlin. The pilots report that the entire eastern half of the city is on fire. On the ground Konev’s men are crossing the heavily-defended Tetlow canal on bridges built by assault sappers under fire.
Dessau on the Elbe falls to the British 1st Army.
Guardsman Edward Colquhoun Charlton (b.1920), Irish Guards, stopped a German attack single-handed. He died of wounds. (Victoria Cross)
Shortly after liberation from the Berga Elster concentration camp, Norman Fellman of the US 70th Infantry Division, an American Jewish GI, is made to sign a “Security Certificate for Ex-Prisoners of War”. This states in its first clause: “Some activities of American prisoners of war within German prison camps must remain secret not only for the duration of the war against the present enemies of the United States, but in peacetime as well.” (Personal recollection of William J. Shapiro and Mordecai Hauer, The Lost Soldiers of Stalag IX-B, by Roger Cohen, New York Times, 27 February, 2005)
U-2371, U-2551 commissioned.
ITALY: The US 5th and British 8th Army cross the River Po, in large numbers.
La Spezia falls to the US 92nd Division.
VOLCANO ISLANDS: Iwo Jima: VII Fighter Command, United States’ Seventh Air Force bases the 506th Fighter Group flying P-47Ns at North Field.
JAPAN: The Japanese forces on Okinawa begin to pull back to the 2nd section of the Shuri Line.
BORNEO: Two BAT missiles are launched at Balikpapan. The only US use of guided missiles in the war. (Patrick Holscher)
U.S.A.: Destroyer USS Goodrich commissioned.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-363 was attacked by a hunter-killer group. During the depth charge attack the periscope was damaged so badly that the boat had to return to base.
USS Frederick C. Davis was participating in the operation Teardrop, a hunt for snorkel-equipped U-boats in the Western Atlantic and was part of the 4th Escort Division, which screened escort carrier USS Bogue in the Southern Surface Barrier. On 24 April 1945, U-546 discovered the USS Bogue about 570 miles east of Cape Race, Newfoundland and tried to attack on periscope depth, but the USS Frederick C. Davis discovered the U-boat and prepared herself for an attack. At this moment a Gnat struck forward on the portside. The ship broke in two and sank. The crew abandoned ship and were picked up within three hours by the other escort destroyers of the Division, after they had sunk U-546.
At 1414, the unescorted Monmouth Coast was torpedoed and sunk by U-1305 about 80 miles from Sligo. The master, 13 crewmembers and two gunners were lost. Irish fishermen rescued the sole survivor, mess room boy Derek Cragg.
Seeing all the U-boat activity this close to the end, reminded me of how the U-boats that survived the war all put to sea and scuttled, reminiscent of the high Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow nearly thirty years before.
First, the remains of 9th Army in the Beeskow pocket south-east of Berlin:
Wenck's weak 12th Army ordered to attack from the south-west to relieve Berlin. His army doesn't have a lot of strength, and the Soviets do. Only a madman would think it has any chance of success. Oh, wait...
And finally, Berlin itself. The Germans don't have specific Soviet unit locations identified. They have only roughly identified the areas were Soviet armies and tank corps are operating, and have listed their orders of battle. Heavy fighting north of Berlin where a cavalry corps and 1st Polish Army are engaged with 25th Panzer Grenadier Division, one of the last cohesive field units of the Wehrmacht:
I can see why, at this point, the German officers in the bunker were drinking a lot. Why not?
These telegram excerpts prove Stalin was reneging on his Yalta agreements from the very beginning.
Not all these boats scuttled. My Dad was serving on the Irex a Fleet Boat, he has told me his sub being assigned to take over U Boats after the war had ended. They would board the U boats in the Ocean and make sure there were no booby traps and that the self destruct mines hadn’t been activated.
He always though Germans were ‘dirty animals’ after this seeing they way they lived on the boats. No refrigeration for their food and no bath rooms, they would defecate and urinate in the bilge of the boat. He said the stench was the worse he ever experienced. He got a beautiful set of Zeiss binoculars off a boat.
He is 91 and still reads about the Patriots and politics every day.
37th Infantry, Capture Of Baguio, Mindanao, Philippine Islands, April 24, 1945
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_ucXNKIZR8
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Buchenwald/Liberation5.html
Congressmen & Reporters visit Buchenwald
After the liberation of Buchenwald on April 11, 1945, the rotting corpses were left unburied until General Dwight D. Eisenhower could arrange for a contingent of American congressmen and a group of newsmen, led by Joseph Pulitzer of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, to fly to Germany to view the camp on April 24, 1945.
April 24, 1945
Mao Zedong, ‘On Coalition Government’
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121326.pdf?v=4e62b7da5f815e5fd70fb2cb40d8f7f2
Which is another reason I contend we did not “give away” Poland at Yalta. We reached deals with Stalin to have free elections in Eastern Europe. He reneged. The Red Army had occupied Eastern Europe and would not leave voluntarily. At no point was the United Staes Army ever in possession of that territory; it was never “ours” to give away.
This was the inevitable outcome of having chosen Stalin over Hitler.I fail to see what else we could have done.
In this April 24, 1945 photo released by the U.S. National Archives, an American soldier stands among German loot stored in a church at Elligen,
Eyewitnesses provide filmed testimonies of Nazi atrocities 70 years ago today (Apr 24 1945)
I agree...but what I would have done was held hostage the materiel we sent them, without which I’m sure you know, they would have lost the war, to the continued good behavior of the Red Army in Eastern Europe; of course that would have meant even more death and destruction in the Soviet Union...war is hell
EDIT: After writing this, I realize that the time period I am hypothetically mentioning was nonexistent; not that the communist-infiltrated American government would have done it anyway, they were MUCH too sympathetic to the Russians for my liking. Sort of like now.
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