Today in WWII History

November 3, 1941

The order is given: Bomb Pearl Harbor
On this day in 1941, the Combine Japanese Fleet receive Top-Secret Order No. 1: In 34 days time, Pearl Harbor is to be bombed, along with Mayala, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines.

Relations between the United States and Japan had been deteriorating quickly since Japan's occupation of Indochina in 1940 and the implicit menacing of the Philippines (an American protectorate), with the occupation of the Cam Ranh naval base only eight miles from Manila. American retaliation included the seizing of all Japanese assets in the States and the closing of the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping. In September 1941, Roosevelt issued a statement, drafted by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, that threatened war between the United States and Japan should the Japanese encroach any further on territory in Southeast Asia or the South Pacific.

The Japanese military had long dominated Japanese foreign affairs; although official negotiations between the U.S. secretary of state and his Japanese counterpart to ease tensions were ongoing, Hideki Tojo, the minister of war who would soon be prime minister, had no intention of withdrawing from captured territories. He also construed the American "threat" of war as an ultimatum and prepared to deliver the first blow in a Japanese-American confrontation: the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

And so Tokyo delivered the order to all pertinent Fleet commanders, that not only the United States-and its protectorate the Philippines--but British and Dutch colonies in the Pacific were to be attacked. War was going to be declared on the West.

 

November 4, 1944

Gen. Sir John Dill dies
On this day in 1944, British Gen. John Dill dies in Washington, D.C., and is buried in Arlington Cemetery, the only foreigner to be so honored.

Born on Christmas Day, 1881, in County Armagh, Ireland, Dill was a military man from his earliest years, serving in the South African War at age 18, then in World War I. He was promoted to the office of director of military operations and intelligence of the British War Office in 1934 and knighted for service to the empire in 1937.

When the Second World War broke out he was already serving as chief of the imperial general staff and renowned for his gifts as a strategist. It was his decision to reinforce the British position in Egypt with 150 tanks in August 1940, despite a shortage of such armaments back home. And in March 1941, he championed Britain's defense of Greece against the Axis invasion.

But such early strategic successes were followed up by more cautious decision-making, which disturbed Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who favored more aggressive maneuvers against the enemy. Consequently, Churchill removed Dill from his post and transferred him to the United States, to become chief British military representative to Washington. It was there that Dill developed a close personal friendship with George C. Marshall, the U.S. chief of staff, which resulted in a closer U.S.-British alliance.

Upon Dill's death, it was Marshall who intervened to have Dill buried at Arlington National Cemetery, normally reserved only for Americans who had served their nation during wartime. Dill's plot is also marked by only one of two equestrian statues in the cemetery.

 

November 5, 1940

FDR re-elected president
On this day in 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is re-elected for an unprecedented third term as president of the United States.

Roosevelt was elected to a third term with the promise of maintaining American neutrality as far as foreign wars were concerned: "Let no man or woman thoughtlessly or falsely talk of American people sending its armies to European fields." But as Hitler's war spread, and the desperation of Britain grew, the president fought for passage of the Lend-Lease Act in Congress, in March 1941, which would commit financial aid to Great Britain and other allies. In August, Roosevelt met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to proclaim the Atlantic Charter, which would become the basis of the United Nations; they also drafted a statement to the effect that the United States "would be compelled to take countermeasures" should Japan further encroach in the southwest Pacific.

Despite ongoing negotiations with Japan, that "further encroachment" took the form of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor-"a day that would live in infamy." The next day Roosevelt requested, and received, a declaration of war against Japan. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

Certain wartime decisions by Roosevelt proved controversial, such as the demand of unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, which some claim prolonged the war. Another was the acquiescence to Joseph Stalin of certain territories in the Far East in exchange for his support in the war against Japan. Roosevelt is often accused of being too naive where Stalin was concerned, especially in regard to "Uncle Joe's" own imperial desires

 

NACHI (November 5, 1944)

Japanese heavy cruiser of 13,380 tons (Captain Kanooka Enpei) In an attempt to escape American air raids on Manila harbour, the Nachi headed for the open sea but another strike from Halsey's Task Force 38, caught the Nachi just off Corregidor. Immobilized with bomb hits and a torpedo strike in the starboard boiler room, the ship lay dead in the water only to be attacked again by another air strike, this time taking 5 torpedo hits. The Nachi simply blew apart and sank at 16:45hrs. A total of 807 of her crew died, plus 74 Fifth Fleet staff. There were 220 men who survived the blast. (This is according to the official US Navy report)

The latest version of the sinking of the NACHI. The cruiser was damaged in a collision with the Japanese cruiser Mogami and needed repairs in Japan. Before sailing she was loaded with 100 metric tons of looted gold bullion and towing a barge loaded with drums full of silver and gold coins, diamonds and gemstones. The Nachi sailed out into Manila Bay where she was deliberately torpedoed by a Japanese submarine lying in wait. All crew were machine-gunned to death in the water, there were to be no witnesses. The looted gold was to be retrieved after the war. In 1975 the first attempt was made to find the wreck but ended in failure. Later that year, President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines financed an expedition to recover the treasure and according to numerous sources finally recovered the gold which in 1975 was worth six billion US dollars. Gold at that time was selling at $65 an ounce. Other Marcus assets, deposited in Swiss banks, were frozen in 1998. Now (July 2003) these assets total 1.6 billion dollars. The Philippine Supreme Court has requested this money be returned to the Philippine Government. Swiss authorities have agreed to do this.

 

JERVIS BAY (November 5, 1940)

Originally built to carry emigrants to Australia, the Aberdeen and Commonwealth Line 14,164 ton liner was taken over by the Admiralty in 1939 and converted to an Armed Merchant Cruiser (MAC Ship) with a crew of 254 men. On the 5th of November the Jervis Bay was the sole escort for convoy HX-84 from Halifax to Britain and consisting of 37 freighters. When the convoy was attacked by the German battleship Admiral Scheer, the Jervis Bay engaged the Scheer in a desperate attempt to enable the convoy to escape.

In a twenty two minute battle the Bay's commander, Captain Fogarty Fegan, and most of his officers were killed. In all, 187 officers and crew were lost when the blazing ship sank 755 nautical miles (1,398 kilometres) south-southwest of Reykjavic, Iceland. Fifty six survivors were rescued by the Swedish freighter Stureholm (Capt. Sven Olander) but three died before reaching the port of Halifax. Captain Fogarty Fegan was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. On December 11, 1940, the Stureholm was sunk with all hands by the U-96. The Admiral Scheer went on to sink six other ships in the convoy which took the lives of another 251 men. On April 9, 1945, she was bombed and sunk by the RAF while at her anchorage in Kiel.

 

November 6, 1941

Stalin celebrates the Revolution's anniversary
On this day in 1941, the 24th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Joseph Stalin, premier and dictator of the USSR, delivers a speech to a rally of Moscow Party workers.

The rally was held underground, in the marbled halls of the Mayakovsky train station. There, Stalin encouraged the assembled Communist Party workers with the promise that if the Germans "want a war of extermination, they shall have one." The very next day, standing atop Lenin's Mausoleum in Red Square, Stalin took the salute of his troops and encouraged them to defend "holy Russia"--even as German tanks, previously mired in mud, began to roll over now--frozen ground in their advance toward the Soviet capital.

But Stalin would have more than just his military to rely on. As the Red Army marched down Gorky Street, President Franklin Roosevelt officially extended the scope of the Lend-Lease Act to include the Soviet Union. The USSR would now be eligible for an influx of American arms-including British weaponry manufactured in the United States. What had begun as a military aid program for Great Britain was growing to include other allies in their fight against fascism-even fascism's left-wing mirror image, Bolshevik Russia

 

November 7, 1944

Soviet master spy is hanged by the Japanese
On this day in 1944, Richard Sorge, a half-Russian, half-German Soviet spy, who had used the cover of a German journalist to report on Germany and Japan for the Soviet Union, is hanged by his Japanese captors.

Sorge fought in World War I in the German army, and then earned his doctorate in political science at the University of Hamburg. He joined Germany's Communist Party in 1919, traveling to the USSR in 1924. His first major assignment for Soviet intelligence was in the late 1920s, when he was sent to China to organize a spy ring. Returning to Germany, he joined the Nazi Party in 1933 to perfect his cover as a loyal German. He proceeded to develop a reputation as a respected journalist working for the Frankfurter Zeitung, finally convincing his editors to send him to Tokyo as a foreign correspondent in the mid-1930s. Once in Japan, Sorge proceeded once again to create a spy ring, which included an adviser to the Japanese cabinet and an American communist, who was also working for Soviet intelligence as Sorge's interpreter.

Sorge had so successfully ingratiated himself with the German diplomatic community in Japan that he was allowed to work out of the German embassy, giving him access to confidential files. At the same time, he also befriended Japanese government officials, attempting to convince them not to go to war with the Soviet Union.

In May 1941, Sorge reported back to Moscow that Hitler was planning an invasion of the Soviet Union, and that 170 divisions were preparing to invade on June 20, but Stalin ignored the warning. Sorge was also able to report, in August 1941, that Japan had plans to attack targets in the South Pacific, not in the Soviet Union. This enabled Stalin to remove troops from the Manchurian border, freeing them up for when the Germans finally invaded, as there would be no "eastern front."

But Sorge's brilliant spy career came to an end on October 18, 1941, when Japanese counterintelligence exposed his operation and he was arrested, along with 34 members of his ring. He was finally hanged in 1944. Twenty years later, he was officially declared a Hero of the Soviet Union.

 

Wow. Now I never heard what ever happened to him. This is the first time I've heard of him being executed. Interesting.

 

November 8, 1939

Hitler survives assassination attempt
On this day in 1939, on the 16th anniversary of Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch, a bomb explodes just after Hitler has finished giving a speech. He was unharmed.

Hitler had made an annual ritual on the anniversary of his infamous 1923 coup attempt, (Hitler's first grab at power that ended in his arrest and the virtual annihilation of his National Socialist party), of regaling his followers with his vision of the Fatherland's future. On this day, he had been addressing the Old Guard party members, those disciples and soldiers who had been loyal to Hitler and his fascist party since the earliest days of its inception. Just 12 minutes after Hitler had left the hall, along with important Nazi leaders who had accompanied him, a bomb exploded, which had been secreted in a pillar behind the speaker's platform. Seven people were killed and 63 were wounded.

The next day, the Nazi Party official paper, the Voelkischer Beobachter, squarely placed the blame on British secret agents, even implicating Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain himself. This work of propaganda was an attempt to stir up hatred for the British and whip the German people into a frenzy for war. But the inner-Nazi Party members knew better-they knew the assassination attempt was most probably the work of a German anti-Nazi military conspiracy.

In an ingenious scheme to shift blame, while getting closer to the actual conspirators, Heinrich Himmler, the Gestapo chief, sent a subordinate, Walter Schellenberg, to Holland to make contact with British intelligence agents. The pretext of the meeting was to secure assurances from the British that in the event of an anti-Nazi coup, the British would support the new regime. The British agents were eager to gain whatever inside information they could about the rumored anti-Hitler movement within the German military; Schellenberg, posing as "Major Schaemmel," was after whatever information British intelligence may have had on such a conspiracy within the German military ranks.

But Himmler wanted more than talk-he wanted the British agents themselves. So on November 9, SS soldiers in Holland kidnapped, with Schellenberg's help, two British agents, Payne Best and R.H. Stevens, stuffing them into a Buick and driving them across the border into Germany. Himmler now proudly announced to the German public that he had captured the British conspirators. The man who actually planted the bomb at their behest was declared to be Georg Elser, a German communist who made his living as a carpenter.

While it seems certain that Elser did plant the bomb, who the instigators were--German military or British intelligence--remains unclear. All three "official" conspirators spent the war in Sachsenhausen concentration camp (Elser was murdered by the Gestapo on April 16, 1945-so he could never tell his story). Hitler dared not risk a public trial, as there were just too many holes in the "official" story.

 

This is known in Holland as the "Venlo-incident", where Holland unexpectedly played a part in pre-war international spy mystery. As Holland was neutral and wished to remain so, not much pressure was put on the Germans to protest this flagrant breach of souvernity (sp?).

BTW I visited Sachsenhausen years ago and read a short story about the people who were incarcerated there; the three conspirators, a British Submarine crew and many more Allied soldiers who were deemed dangerous....

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp (Germany)

Table of Contents for Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp web site

 

HMS WALNEY (November 8, 1942)

Escort sloop of 1,700 tons sunk during a commando raid on the harbour at Oran (Operation Torch). HMS Walney (Y 04) was the ex US Coast Guard cutter USCGC Sebago (CGC-51) transferred to Britain under the Lend-Lease agreement on May 12, 1941. On board were around 200 men of the 6th US Armored Infantry Division. After crashing through the log boom at the entrance to the harbour the Walney came under murderous cross fire from the French vessels and in particular the French sloop La Surprise which poured shell after shell into her hull at point blank range. Now a blazing hulk, the Walney capsized and sank. There were seventeen survivors including her commander, Captain Frederick Peters. The sloop La Surprise tried to escape the harbour but was cut off and sunk by HMS Brilliant. The survivors of Walney were taken prisoner by the French but released when Oran fell.

Tragically, Captain Peters was killed when the plane carrying him back to Britain was shot down.

 

November 9, 1938

"The Night of Broken Glass"
This day in 1938 saw the organized destruction of Jewish businesses and homes in Munich, as well as the beating and murder of Jewish men, women, and children.

It was an exercise in terror that would be called "Kristallnacht," or "the Night of Broken Glass," because of the cost of broken glass in looted Jewish shops--$5 million marks ($1,250,000).

On November 7, in Paris, a 17-year-old German Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, shot and killed the third secretary of the German embassy, Ernst vom Rath. Grynszpan had intended to avenge the deportation of his father to Poland and the ongoing persecution of Jews in Germany by killing the German ambassador. Instead, the secretary was sent out to see what the angry young man wanted and was killed. The irony is that Rath was not an anti-Semite; in fact, he was an anti-Nazi.

As revenge for this shooting, Joseph Goebbels, Nazi minister of propaganda, and Reinhard Heydrich, second in command of the SS after Heinrich Himmler, ordered "spontaneous demonstrations" of protest against the Jewish citizens of Munich. The order, in the form of a teletyped message to all SS headquarters and state police stations, laid out the blueprint for the destruction of Jewish homes and businesses. The local police were not to interfere with the rioting storm troopers, and as many Jews as possible were to be arrested with an eye toward deporting them to concentration camps.

In Heydrich's report to Hermann Goering after Kristallnacht, the damage was assessed: "...815 shops destroyed, 171 dwelling houses set on fire or destroyed...119 synagogues were set on fire, and another 76 completely destroyed...20,000 Jews were arrested, 36 deaths were reported and those seriously injured were also numbered at 36...."

The extent of the destruction was actually greater than reported. Later estimates were that as many as 7,500 Jewish shops were looted, and there were several incidents of rape. This, in the twisted ideology of Nazism, was worse than murder, because the racial laws forbade intercourse between Jews and gentiles. The rapists were expelled from the Nazi Party and handed over to the police for prosecution. And those who killed Jews? They "cannot be punished," according to authorities, because they were merely following orders.

To add insult to massive injury, those Jews who survived the monstrous pogrom were forced to pay for the damage inflicted upon them. Insurance firms teetered on the verge of bankruptcy because of the claims. Hermann Goering came up with a solution: Insurance money due the victims was to be confiscated by the state, and part of the money would revert back to the insurance companies to keep them afloat.

The reaction around the world was one of revulsion at the barbarism into which Germany was sinking. As far as Hitler was concerned, this only proved the extent of the "Jewish world conspiracy."

 

November 10, 1942

Germans take Vichy France
On this day in 1942, German troops occupy Vichy France, which had previously been free of an Axis military presence.

Since July 1940, upon being invaded and defeated by Nazi German forces, the autonomous French state had been split into two regions. One was occupied by German troops, and the other was unoccupied, governed by a more or less puppet regime centered in Vichy, a spa region about 200 miles southeast of Paris, and led by Gen. Philippe Petain, a World War I hero. Publicly, Petain declared that Germany and France had a common goal, "the defeat of England." Privately, the French general hoped that by playing mediator between the Axis power and his fellow countrymen, he could keep German troops out of Vichy France while surreptitiously aiding the antifascist Resistance movement.

Petain's compromises became irrelevant within two years. When Allied forces arrived in North Africa to team up with the Free French Forces to beat back the Axis occupiers, and French naval crews, emboldened by the Allied initiative, scuttled the French fleet off Toulon, in southeastern France, to keep it from being used by those same Axis powers, Hitler retaliated. In violation of the 1940 armistice agreement, German troops moved into southeastern-Vichy--France. From that point forward, Petain became virtually useless, and France merely a future gateway for the Allied counteroffensive in Western Europe, namely, D-Day.

 

November 10th, 1938;
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk dies at 57 in Dolmabahce Palace, Istanbul.

 

November 11, 1942

Draft age is lowered to 18
On this day in 1942, Congress approves lowering the draft age to 18 and raising the upper limit to age 37.

In September 1940, Congress, by wide margins in both houses, passed the Burke-Wadsworth Act, and the first peacetime draft was imposed in the history of the United States. The registration of men between the ages of 21 and 36 began exactly one month later. There were some 20 million eligible young men-50 percent were rejected the very first year, either for health reasons or because 20 percent of those who registered were illiterate.

But by November 1942, with the United States now a participant in the war, and not merely a neutral bystander, the draft ages had to be expanded; men 18 to 37 were now eligible. Blacks were passed over for the draft because of racist assumptions about their abilities and the viability of a mixed-race military. But this changed in 1943, when a "quota" was imposed, meant to limit the numbers of blacks drafted to reflect their numbers in the overall population, roughly 10.6 percent of the whole. Initially, blacks were restricted to "labor units," but this too ended as the war progressed, when they were finally used in combat.

By war's end, approximately 34 million men had registered; 10 million had been inducted into the military.

 

November 12, 1944

Brits sink the battleship Tirpitz
On this day in 1944, 32 British Lancaster bombers attack and sink the mighty German battleship Tirpitz.

In January 1942, Hitler ordered the Germany navy to base the Tirpitz in Norway, in order to attack Soviet convoys transporting supplies from Iceland to the USSR. The Tirpitz also prevented British naval forces from making their way to the Pacific. Winston Churchill summed up the situation this way: "The destruction or even crippling of this ship is the greatest event at the present time.... The whole strategy of the war turns at this period on this ship...."

Attacks had already been made against the Tirpitz. RAF raids were made against it in January 1942, but they failed to damage it. Another raid was made in March; dozens of RAF bombers sought out the Tirpitz, which was now reinforced with cruisers, pocket battleships, and destroyers. All of the British bombers, once again, missed their target.

Sporadic attacks continued to be made against the German battleship, including an attempt in October 1942 to literally drive a two-man craft up to the ship and plant explosives on the Tirpitz's hull. This too failed because of brutal water conditions and an alert German defense. But in September 1943, six midget British subs set out to take the Tirpitz down for good. The midgets had to be towed to Norway by conventional subs. Only three of the six midgets made it to their target. This time, they were successful in attaching explosives to the Tirpitz's keel and doing enough damage to put it out of action for six months. Two British commanders and four crewmen were taken captive by the Germans and spent the rest of the war as POWs.

But it wasn't until November 1944 that the Tirpitz was undone permanently. As the battleship lay at anchor in Norway's Tromso Fjord, 32 British Lancaster bombers, taking off from Scotland, attacked. Each bomber dropped a 12,000-pound Tallboy bomb and two hit their target, causing the Tirpitz to capsize, and killing almost 1,000 crewmen.

Ironically, the mighty Tirpitz fired its guns only once in aggression during the entire extent of the war-against a British coaling station on the island of Spitsbergen.

 

November 13, 1941

Congress revises the Neutrality Act
On this day in 1941, the United States Congress amends the Neutrality Act of 1935 to allow American merchant ships access to war zones, thereby putting U.S. vessels in the line of fire.

In anticipation of another European war, and in pursuit of an isolationist foreign policy, Congress passed the Neutrality Act in August 1935, forbidding the sale of munitions by U.S. firms to any and all belligerents in any future war. This was a not-so-subtle signal to all governments and private industries, domestic and foreign, that the United States would play no part in foreign wars. Less than two years later, a second Neutrality Act was passed, forbidding the export of arms to either side in the Spanish Civil War.

The original 1935 act was made even more restrictive in May 1937, forbidding not only arms and loans to warring nations, but giving the president of the United States the authority to forbid Americans from traveling on ships of any warring nation, to forbid any U.S. ship from carrying U.S. goods, even nonmilitary, to a belligerent, and to demand that a belligerent nation pay for U.S. nonmilitary goods before shipment--a "cash and carry" plan.

But such notions of strict neutrality changed quickly once World War II began. The first amendment to the act came as early as September 1939; President Roosevelt, never happy with the extreme nature of the act, fought with Congress to revise it, allowing for the sale of munitions to those nations under siege by Nazi Germany. After heated debate in a special session, Congress finally passed legislation permitting such sales. Addressing the prospect of direct U.S. intervention in the war, President Roosevelt proclaimed, also in September 1939, that U.S. territorial waters were a neutral zone, and any hostile power that used those waters for the prosecution of the war would be considered "unfriendly" and "offensive."

Finally, when the U.S. destroyer Reuben James was sunk by a German sub in October 1941, the Neutrality Act was destined for the dustbin of history. By November, not only would merchant ships be allowed to arm themselves for self-defense, but they would also be allowed to enter European territorial waters. America would no longer stand aloof from the hostilities.

 

November 14, 1940

Germans bomb Coventry
On this day in 1940, German bombers devastate the English city of Coventry, demolishing tens of thousands of buildings and killing hundreds of men, women, and children. The verb "Koventrieren" (to Coventrate) passed into the German language, meaning "to annihilate or reduce to rubble."

On November 8, Adolf Hitler had to move up his scheduled speech in Munich on the anniversary of his 1923 attempted coup in Bavaria because British bombers were on their way to take out a railway yard. Hitler was determined to avenge this audacious offensive. The Fuhrer let his bomber pilots know that he was not "willing to let an attack on the capital of the Nazi movement go unpunished."

And so, on this day, almost 500 German bombers unleashed some 150,000 incendiary bombs and more than 500 tons of high explosives on the British industrial city, taking out 27 war factories. Of the 568 people killed, more than 400 were burned so badly they could not be identified. Among the more than 60,000 buildings destroyed or severely damaged was St. Michael's Cathedral

 

November 15, 1943

Himmler orders Gypsies to concentration camps
On this day in 1943, Heinrich Himmler makes public an order that Gypsies and those of mixed Gypsy blood are to be put on "the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps."

Himmler was determined to prosecute Nazism racial policies, which dictated the elimination from Germany and German-controlled territories all races deemed "inferior," as well as "asocial" types, such as hardcore criminals. Gypsies fell into both categories according to the thinking of Nazi ideologues and had been executed in droves both in Poland and the Soviet Union. The order of November 15 was merely a more comprehensive program, as it included the deportation to Auschwitz of Gypsies already in labor camps.

That Himmler would promulgate such a program should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his resume. As head of the Waffen-Schutzstaffel ("Armed Black Shirts"), the SS, the military arm of the Nazi Party, and assistant chief of the Gestapo (the secret police), Himmler was able over time to consolidate control over all police forces of the Reich. This power grab would prove highly effective in carrying out the Fuhrer's Final Solution. It was Himmler who organized the creation of death camps throughout Eastern Europe and the creation of a pool of slave laborers.

 

November 16, 1941

Goebbels publishes his screed of hate
On this day in 1941, Joseph Goebbels publishes in the German magazine Das Reich that "The Jews wanted the war, and now they have it"-referring to the Nazi propaganda scheme to shift the blame for the world war onto European Jewry, thereby giving the Nazis a rationalization for the so-called Final Solution.

Just two days earlier, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, having read more than a dozen decoded messages from German police which betrayed the atrocities to which European Jews were being subjected, had written in a letter to the Jewish Chronicle that "The Jew bore the brunt of the Nazis' first onslaught upon the citadels of freedom and human dignity.... He has not allowed it to break his spirit: he has never lost the will to resist." And active Jewish resistance was increasing, especially in the USSR, where Jews were joining partisans in fighting the German incursions into Russian territory.

But it was proving too little too late, as Goebbels, Himmler, and the rest of Hitler's henchmen carried out with fanatical glee the "elimination of the Jews," using propaganda and anti-Bolshevik rhetoric to infuse SS soldiers with enthusiasm for their work. As Goebbels wrote in Das Reich: "[T]he prophecy which the Fuhrer made...that should international finance Jewry succeed in plunging the nations into a world war once again, the result would not be the Bolshevization of the world...but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe. We are in the midst of that process.... Compassion or regret are entirely out of place here."