Today in WWII History

January 5, 1945

Soviets recognize pro-Soviet Polish Provisional Government

On the eve of a major offensive into Poland, the Soviet Union decides to recognize the pro-Soviet Lublin Committee as the Provisional Government of Poland instead of the government-in-exile that was temporarily being headquartered in London.

On September 1, 1939, a massive German army invaded Poland. Sixteen days later, the USSR invaded Poland from the east. During this tumultuous period, Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski became leader of a Polish government-in-exile in London. He developed a good working relationship with the Allies until April 1943, when Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin broke off Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations after Sikorski requested that the Red Cross investigate the alleged Soviet slaughter of Polish officers in the Katyn forest of eastern Poland in 1942.

As the war progressed and the Soviets battled the Germans in western Poland, the Polish government-in-exile began to fear that Soviet domination might follow if the Soviets defeated Germany for control of the Polish territory. Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, Sikorski's successor as the provisional government head, pleaded with the Allies to secure Poland's postwar borders and sovereignty, but no such assurances were granted. In August 1944, the Polish Home Army, fearful that the Soviets would march on Warsaw to battle the Germans and never leave the capital, led an uprising against the German occupiers. They hoped that if they could defeat the Germans, the Allies would help install the anti-Communist government-in-exile after the war.

Unfortunately, the Soviets, rather than aiding the uprising that they encouraged in the name of beating back their common enemy, stood idly by and watched as the Germans slaughtered the Poles and sent survivors to concentration camps.

With native Polish resistance eradicated, and in anticipation of one last offensive against the Germans, the Soviet Union created its own pro-communist Polish provisional government to counter the anti-communist government-in-exile. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Allies agreed that an interim government would be formed from both the pro- and anti-communist sides, with free elections to follow. The Soviets had other plans, though, and promptly turned the exhausted and battered Poland into a nondemocratic satellite country, which it remained until 1989.

 

CITTA' DI PALERMO (January 5, 1942)

Italian passenger ship (5,413 tons) built in 1930 and converted to an auxiliary cruiser, left Brindisi for Patras escorting the motor vessel Calino. On board the Palermo were around 600 Italian troops. At 08:00 hrs. when three miles north-west of Cape Dukato she was struck by two torpedoes launched from HMS Proteus. The Palermo took only six minutes to sink. There were a few survivors but almost all on board went down with the ship.

 

MOMI (January 5, 1945)

Japanese destroyer, sunk by an aerial torpedo from a plane of the American Escort Carrier Force during the US invasion of Luzon in the Philippines. The destroyer sank west of Manila Bay with all hands, a death toll of 210 souls.

 

January 6, 1942

Roosevelt commits to biggest arms buildup in U.S. history

On this day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces to Congress that he is authorizing the largest armaments production in the history of the United States.

Committed to war in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. had to reassess its military preparedness, especially in light of the fact that its Pacific fleet was decimated by the Japanese air raid. Among those pressing President Roosevelt to double U.S. armaments and industrial production were Lord William Beaverbrook, the British minister of aircraft production, and members of the British Ministry of Supplies, who were meeting with their American counterparts at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Beaverbrook, a newspaper publisher in civilian life, employed production techniques he learned in publishing to cut through red tape, improve efficiency, and boost British aircraft production to manufacturing 500 fighters a month, and he felt the U.S. could similarly beef up armament production.

Spurred on by Lord Beaverbrook and Prime Minister Churchill, Roosevelt agreed to the arms buildup. He announced to Congress that the first year of the supercharged production schedule would result in 45,000 aircraft, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 antiaircraft guns, and 8 million tons in new ships. Congressmen were stunned at the proposal, but Roosevelt was undeterred: "These figures and similar figures for a multitude of other implements of war will give the Japanese and Nazis a little idea of just what they accomplished."

 

USS ST AUGUSTINE (January 6, 1944)

Built as a luxury steel hulled yacht in 1929 and once owned by Barbara Hutton the Woolworth heiress. It was sold to the US Navy in 1940 and converted to a naval patrol vessel for coastal defence and convoy escort duties. While on escort duty during a full westerly gale off the coast of Delaware she was in collision with the Trinidad bound oil tanker the SS Camas Meadows which struck the Augustine on her starboard side when off Cape May, New Jersey. The vessel sank within four minutes taking to the bottom 115 men of her 145 man crew.

 

January 7, 1945

Monty holds a press conference

On this day, British Gen. Bernard Montgomery gives a press conference in which he all but claims complete credit for saving the Allied cause in the Battle of the Bulge. He was almost removed from his command because of the resulting American outcry.

On December 16, 1944, the Germans attempted to push the Allied front line west from northern France to northwestern Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge (so-called because the Germans, in pushing through the American defensive line, created a "bulge" around the area of the Ardennes forest) was the largest battle fought on the Western front. The German assault came in early morning at the weakest part of the Allied line, an 80-mile stretch of poorly protected, hilly forest that the Allies believed was too difficult to traverse, and therefore an unlikely location for a German offensive. Between the vulnerability of the thin, isolated American units and the thick fog that prevented Allied air cover from discovering German movement, the Germans were able to push the Americans into retreat.

Fresh from commanding the 21st Army group during the Normandy invasion, and having suffered an awful defeat in September as his troops attempted to cross the Rhine, Montgomery took temporary command of the northern shoulder of American and British troops in the Ardennes. He immediately fell into a familiar pattern, failing to act spontaneously for fear of not being sufficiently prepared. Montgomery was afraid to move before the German army had fully exhausted itself, finally making what American commanders saw as only a belated counterattack against the enemy. As the weather improved, American air cover raided German targets on the ground, which proved the turning point in the Allied victory. Monty eventually cut across northern Germany all the way to the Baltic and accepted the German surrender in May.

Montgomery had already earned the ire of many American officers because of his cautiousness in the field, arrogance off the field, and willingness to disparage his American counterparts. The last straw was Montgomery's whitewashing of the Battle of the Bulge facts to assembled reporters in his battlefield headquarters-he made his performance in the Ardennes sound not only more heroic but decisive, which necessarily underplayed the Americans' performance. Since the loss of American life in the battle was tremendous and the surrender of 7,500 members of the 106th Infantry humiliating, Gen. Omar Bradley complained loudly to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who passed the complaints on to Churchill. On January 18, Churchill addressed Parliament and announced in no uncertain terms that the "Bulge" was an American battle-and an American victory.

 

SS BENALBANACH (January 7, 1943)

The Ben Line 7,152-ton passenger/cargo ship launched in June, 1940 and sunk north-west of Algiers when the convoy KMS-6 she was part of was attacked by a single enemy aircraft. She was carrying 389 men of Motor Transport unit and a crew of 74 from the Clyde to Bona, North Africa. This was her second trip to the Allied landing area conveying troops and equipment. The Benalbanach was hit by two torpedoes launched from the aircraft. The ship caught fire, blew up and sank almost immediately taking the lives of 57 crewmembers and 353 service personnel. Her commander, Captain D. MacGregor, died in the water just as he was about to be rescued.

 

SS AQUARIUS (January 7, 1943)

The 6,094 ton Aquarius was sunk near Tjebia Island, Sumatra, by aerial bombing whilst on passage through the Durian Straits. Of the estimated 1,100 persons on board there were only three survivors. Picked up by the New Zealand launch ML-310, commanded by Lieutenant H. Bull, they were taken to Pulau Jeadia where unfortunately all three died.

 

January 8, 1940

Mussolini questions Hitler's plans

On this day, a message from Benito Mussolini is forwarded to Adolf Hitler. In the missive, the Duce cautions the Fuhrer against waging war against Britain. Mussolini asked if it was truly necessary "to risk all-including the regime-and to sacrifice the flower of German generations."

Mussolini's message was more than a little disingenuous. At the time, Mussolini had his own reasons for not wanting Germany to spread the war across the European continent: Italy was not prepared to join the effort, and Germany would get all the glory and likely eclipse the dictator of Italy. Germany had already taken the Sudetenland and Poland; if Hitler took France and then cowed Britain into neutrality--or worse, defeated it in battle--Germany would rule Europe. Mussolini had assumed the reigns of power in Italy long before Hitler took over Germany, and in so doing Mussolini boasted of refashioning a new Roman Empire out of an Italy that was still economically backward and militarily weak. He did not want to be outshined by the upstart Hitler.

And so the Duce hoped to stall Germany's war engine until he could figure out his next move. The Italian ambassador in Berlin delivered Mussolini's message to Hitler in person. Mussolini believed that the "big democracies...must of necessity fall and be harvested by us, who represent the new forces of Europe." They carried "within themselves the seeds of their decadence." In short, they would destroy themselves, so back off.

Hitler ignored him and moved forward with plans to conquer Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Mussolini, rather than tie Italy's fortune to Germany's--which would necessarily mean sharing the spotlight and the spoils of any victory--began to turn an eye toward the east. Mussolini invaded Yugoslavia and, in a famously disastrous strategic move, Greece.

 

8 Jan 1941 - RAF Wellingtons, flying from Malta attack the Italian fleet in Naples, badly damaging the battleship Giulio Cesare. This attack underlines the importance of Malta as an offensive base. Two days later, German and Italian aircraft begin a concerted air campaign against the island.

 

January 9, 1945

United States invades Luzon in Philippines

On this day, Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the American 6th Army land on the Lingayen Gulf of Luzon, another step in the capture of the Philippine Islands from the Japanese.

The Japanese controlled the Philippines from May 1942, when the defeat of American forces led to General MacArthur's departure and Gen. Jonathan Wainwright's capture. But in October 1944, more than 100,000 American soldiers landed on Leyte Island to launch one of one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific war-and herald the beginning of the end for Japan.

Newsreels captured the event as MacArthur waded ashore at Leyte on October 20, returning to the Philippines as he had famously promised he would after the original defeat of American forces there. What the newsreels didn't capture were the 67 days it took to subdue the island, with the loss of more than 55,000 Japanese soldiers during the two months of battle and approximately 25,000 more soldiers killed in smaller-scale engagements necessary to fully clear the area of enemy troops. The U.S. forces lost about 3,500.

The sea battle of Leyte Gulf was the same story. The loss of ships and sailors was horrendous for both sides. That battle also saw the introduction of the Japanese kamikaze suicide bombers. More than 5,000 kamikaze pilots died in this gulf battle, taking down 34 ships. But the Japanese were not able to prevent the loss of their biggest and best warships, which meant the virtual end of the Japanese Imperial Fleet.

These American victories on land and sea at Leyte opened the door for the landing of more than 60,000 American troops on Luzon on January 9. Once again, cameras recorded MacArthur walking ashore, this time to greet cheering Filipinos. Although the American troops met little opposition when they landed, they lost the light cruiser Columbia and the battleship Mississippi, to kamikazes, resulting in the deaths of 49 American crewmen.

The initial ease of the American fighters' first week on land was explained when they discovered the intricate defensive network of caves and tunnels that the Japanese created on Luzon. The intention of the caves and tunnels was to draw the Americans inland, while allowing the Japanese to avoid the initial devastating bombardment of an invasion force. Once Americans reached them, the Japanese fought vigorously, convinced they were directing American strength away from the Japanese homeland. Despite their best efforts, the Japanese lost the battle for Luzon and eventually, the battle for control over all of the Philippines.

 

M/S LAMORICIERS (January 9, 1942)

The French passenger ship Lamoriciers was crossing the Mediterranean from Algiers to France when she sank near the Balearic Isles. The cause of the sinking has never been determined but probably after hitting an uncharted mine during a heavy storm. The ship sank almost immediately. A total of 222 passengers and crew were lost. One of those lost was Jerzy Rozycki, one of the three Polish cryptologists who worked on cracking the German Enigma code in 1932. Rozycki and his team had travelled from France to Algiers in late 1941 to work on the Enigma codes and was returning on the Lamoriciers when disaster struck. Two other members of the code breaking team, Jan Gralinski and Piotr Smalenski also perished.

 

9 Jan 1941 - The Avro Manchester III makes its first flight equipped with four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines in place of the two Rolls-Royce Vultures used on earlier marks. Ordered into production as the Lancaster, it becomes possibly the most famous RAF bomber of all time, after bearing the brunt of the Bomber Command offensive in Europe.

 

January 10, 1941

Lend-Lease introduced into Congress

On this day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Lend-Lease program is brought before the U.S. Congress for consideration.

Roosevelt devised the Lend-Lease program as a means of aiding Great Britain in its war effort against the Germans. The program gave the chief executive the power to "sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of" any military resources he deemed in the ultimate interest of the defense of the United States. The idea was that if Britain were better able to defend itself, the security of the U.S. would be enhanced. The program also served to bolster British morale, as they would no longer feel alone in their struggle against Hitler.

Congress authorized the program on March 11. By November, after much heated debate, Congress extended the terms of Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union, even though Stalin's USSR had already been the recipient of American military weapons and had been promised $1 billion in financial aid.

By the end of the war, more than $50 billion in funds, weapons, aircraft, and ships were distributed to 44 countries through the program. After the war, the Lend-Lease program morphed into the Marshall Plan, which allocated funds for the revitalization of "friendly" democratic nations.

 

USS ARGONAUT(January 10, 1943)

The Argonaut was the largest submarine ever built in the US. (until the advent of nuclear submarines) At 3,128 tons she was designed primarily as a minelayer but later, in 1942, was converted to a troop carrying submarine and based at Brisbane, Australia. In January, 1943, while on patrol in the dangerous waters between New Britain and Bougainville, just south of St. George's Channel, her captain, Lt. Cmdr. John Pierce, spotted a Japanese convoy of five freighters with their three destroyer escorts. When in position for an attack the Argonaut fired one torpedo at one of the freighters and was immediately counterattacked by the destroyers. Badly damaged by depth charges, the destroyers circled the Argonaut pumping shell after shell into her hull until she sank below the waves taking 105 officers and men with her to the sea bed. There were no survivors.

 

January 11, 1945

Truce signed in Greek Civil War

On this day, fighting in the civil war stops when a political truce is signed between the British-backed Democratic National Army and the communist rebel National Liberation Front.

Upon the occupation of Greece by Germany (which invaded to bail out Italy after its failed invasion threatened to leave Greece open to Allied occupation), various resistance forces gave battle. Two stood out as particularly important: a communist-backed resistance movement called the National Liberation Front and a liberal, democratic movement called the Democratic National Army. While the factions operated within different ideological frameworks, they nevertheless occasionally cooperated in fighting the common German enemy. By early 1944, however, the National Liberation Front took to the hills to create a provisional government, rejecting the legitimacy of both the Greek king and his government-in-exile. It also disregarded its one remaining rival for ultimate political supremacy in Greece-the Democratic National Army.

When Germany withdrew from Greece in October 1944, victorious British forces brought together the communist and democratic factions in order to establish a coalition government. This government collapsed after the communist National Liberation Front refused to disband its guerrilla forces. On December 3, war broke out between the communists and the democrats. The National Liberation Front took control of most of Greece, with the exception of the capital and Salonika.

The British fought against the communists alongside the Democratic National Army, which began to move more and more to the right politically as it struggled for survival and support. On January 11, the National Liberation Front accepted the British terms for a truce; a month later, the rebels surrendered and disbanded their guerilla army altogether. The peace was short-lived, however, as civil war broke out again in the postwar environment and the tumultuous struggle for control over Greece continued.

 

January 12, 1943

Soviet forces penetrate the siege of Leningrad

On this day, Soviet troops create a breach in the German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted for a year and a half. The Soviet forces punched a hole in the siege, which ruptured the German encirclement and allowed for more supplies to come in along Lake Ladoga.

Upon invading the Soviet Union in June 1941, German troops made a beeline for Leningrad, the second-largest city in the USSR. In August, German forces, approaching from the west and south, surrounded the city and rendered the Leningrad-Moscow railway useless. A German offensive attempted to occupy the city but failed; in light of this, Hitler decided to impose a siege, allowing nothing to enter or leave the former capital of Old Russia. Hitler intended to wait the Soviets out, then raze the city to the ground and hand the territory over to Germany's Finnish allies, who were advancing on the city from the north. (Finland would stop short of Leningrad, though, happy with regaining territory lost to the USSR in 1939.)

The siege began officially on September 8, 1941. The people of Leningrad began building antitank fortifications and succeeded in creating a stable defense of the city, but they were also cut off from all access to vital resources in the Soviet interior. In 1942, 650,000 Leningrad citizens died from starvation, disease, exposure, and injuries suffered from the siege and the continual German bombardment with artillery. Barges offered occasional relief in the summer and ice-borne sleds were able to do the same in the winter. A million sick, elderly, or especially young residents of Leningrad were slowly and stealthily evacuated, leaving about 2 million people to ration available food and use all open ground to plant vegetables.

A Soviet counteroffensive pushed the Germans westward on January 27, 1944, bringing the siege to an end. It had lasted for 872 days.

 

KYLE V. JOHNSON (January 12, 1945)

En route to Lingayan Gulf as part of a hundred ship convoy, the Johnson was hit by a kamikaze plane which crashed on the starboard side of number three hatch, ploughing through the hull plates and into the deck below. On board the Johnson were 500 US Army troops and 2,500 tons of motor vehicles and gasoline in fifty gallon drums. The resulting explosion blew the steel hatch beams high into the air. Dropping out of the convoy the Johnson's gallant crew fought the fire until the flames were extinguished. She then rejoined the convoy but on board lay the bodies of 129 dead men and many injured. The Kyle V. Johnson survived the war and was scrapped in 1975 at Panama City.

 

January 13, 1942

Allies promise prosecution of war criminals

On this day, representatives of nine German-occupied countries meet in London to declare that all those found guilty of war crimes would be punished after the war ended. Among the signatories to the declaration were Polish Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski and French Gen. Charles de Gaulle. The core of the declaration was the promise of "the punishment, through the channels of organized justice, of those guilty of, or responsible for, these crimes, whether they have ordered them, perpetrated them, or participated in them."

Knowledge of German atrocities occurring in Poland and Russia were reaching both the Allied governments and the exiles from the countries in which the butchering of innocents was taking place. News of Jews, political dissidents, and clergy being systematically murdered, tortured, or transported to labor camps as the Nazi ideology advanced along with Hitler's armed forces increased the resolve and solidarity among the Allies to defeat the Axis.

Also on this day: President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the U.S. War Production Board, with business executive Donald M. Nelson as its chairman.

This was not the first time Roosevelt called on Nelson. In 1940, the president asked Nelson, then executive vice president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., to head up the National Defense Advisory Commission. As Roosevelt established agency after agency to coordinate the transition of industry from peacetime to wartime production, Nelson skipped among jobs, becoming director of purchases for the Office of Production Management and, in August 1941, director of the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board. The War Production Board, created to establish order out of the chaos of meeting extraordinary wartime demands and needs, replaced the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board.

As chairman, Nelson oversaw the largest war production in history, often clashing with civilian factories over the most efficient means of converting to wartime use and butting heads with the armed forces over priorities. Despite early success, Nelson made a major judgement error in June 1944, on the eve of the Normandy invasion, when he allowed certain plants that had reached the end of their government/military production contracts to reconvert to civilian use. The military knew the war was far from over and feared a sudden shortage of vital supplies. A political battle ensued, and Nelson was eased out of his office and reassigned by the president to be his personal representative to Chiang Kai-shek in China.

 

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