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Today in WWII History

Discussion in 'WWII General' started by PzJgr, Nov 16, 2006.

  1. DocCasualty

    DocCasualty Member

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    1945: Eisenhower declares the German army "whipped"
    General Dwight D. Eisenhower said today that the German army on the Western Front in Europe is a "whipped army" during a news conference. "General Eisenhower spoke at a moment when all official communiqués and battlefront dispatches clearly indicated complete collapse of all organized Nazi resistance," informed The Lima News on March 27, 1945. "Unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, he added, will be imposed and not negotiated." NOTE: V-E Day, the day in which the Allies announced the surrender of German forces, would eventually come on May 8, 1945.
     
  2. Liberator

    Liberator Ace

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    March 28, 1941

    Cunningham leads fateful British strike at Italians

    On this day, Andrew Browne Cunningham, Admiral of the British Fleet, commands the British Royal Navy's destruction of three major Italian cruisers and two destroyers in the Battle of Cape Matapan in the Mediterranean. The destruction, following on the attack on the Italian Fleet at Taranto by the British in November 1940, effectively put an end to any threat the Italian navy posed to the British.
    Admiral Cunningham was one of Britain's most distinguished naval officers, having served as Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's naval deputy. As Commander in Chief Mediterranean, he had a clear-cut goal: to disable the Italian navy. When the war began, Britain's ships were generally older than Italy's. By the fall of 1940, with the surrender of the French to the Germans the previous June, Britain was alone and shaky in the Mediterranean.
    Admiral Cunningham knew he had to confront the Italian navy soon and considered an offensive while the Italian Fleet was still in harbor the most prudent strategy. On November 11, 1940, the British aircraft carrier Illustrious was 170 miles southeast of the Italian navy port at Taranto in southern Italy. Twenty-one Swordfish aircraft took off from the Illustrious and launched a raid against the Italian Fleet. The Italians lost three battleships, sending a shockwave through the Italian navy.
    The next major engagement between the Royal and Italian fleets was at Cape Matapan, off Greece's southern tip. On March 25, 1941, British air reconnaissance picked up increased Italian naval activity off Greece and Crete, and further intelligence confirmed an Italian plan to attack a British convoy in the area. Two days later, Admiral Cunningham put his battle fleet to sea to meet up with Vice-Admiral Pridham-Wippell's cruiser force. The element of surprise was crucial, given that the Italian fleet was larger, faster, better armed, and more modern.
    The Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto spotted Pridham-Wippell's cruisers and opened fire. The Italians missed and the Brits got away; the RAF followed up with an air attack, but this time it was the Vittorio Veneto that got away. But, on March 28, the British battleship Warspite proved a better shot, firing five 15-inch shells at the Italian cruiser Fiume, crippling it. Another Italian cruiser, the Zara, was hit broadside by the Brits' Valiant and Barham and suffered a similar fate. The Pola was also struck by an 18-inch torpedo; it caught fire and lay dead in the water. Once the crew was taken off, torpedoes sank it. On top of these crushing losses, two escorting destroyers, the Alfieri and the Carducci, were also sunk by the Royal Navy.
    In total, the Italians lost 2,303 men from the five ships. The long-term effect on the Italian navy was to effectively render it impotent.

    Footnote: Exactly one year later, on March 28, 1942, a British sub near Antipaxo sunk the Italian ocean liner Galilea, which was being used to transport troops from North Africa back to Italy. The loss of the liner entailed the loss of 768 Italian soldiers and crewmen.
    __________________
     
  3. DocCasualty

    DocCasualty Member

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    1943: U.S. rations meat

    The rationing of meat, cheese, butter and cooking oils went into effect today, forcing American civilians to use the Point Rationing Program in order to purchase these foods during wartime. "Outstanding nutritionists are agreed that the public health can be maintained on the foods available for civilians. Under rationing everyone shares alike. What we don't get goes to our fighters and to our friends who are in the thick of the battle. By sharing our foods, we can all help to speed Victory," an ad in The Lima News explained on March 28, 1943. NOTE: Prior to the rationing going into effect, many grocery stores throughout the U.S. sold out of their red and cured meats when frantic buyers stocked up.

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    1936: Nearly 99 percent of voters support Hitler
    The German people voted overwhelmingly in favor of Hitler and his policies to reoccupy the demilitarized Rhineland zone and abandon the clauses of the Versailles treaty that restricted the military today. Early returns showed that 98.792 percent of the votes supported Hitler, although there was no place for an opposing vote on the ballot. "All an opponent of Hitler could do was to leave the ballot blank or – even more daringly – scrawl a 'nein' on it or otherwise deface it," reported the Charleston Daily Mail on March 30, 1936. "People who were on the doubtful list were visited by Nazis who offered to 'escort' them to the polls. NOTE: Frau Fritz Pasch, living in a Berlin suburb, gave birth to a son at 8:15 a.m. yesterday and a daughter at 8:30. At 10 she voted."
     
  4. PzJgr

    PzJgr Drill Instructor

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    On this day in 1940, German warships enter major Norwegian ports, from Narvik to Oslo, deploying thousands of German troops and occupying Norway. At the same time, German forces occupy Copenhagen, among other Danish cities.

    German forces were able to slip through the mines Britain had laid around Norwegian ports because local garrisons were ordered to allow the Germans to land unopposed.

    The order came from a Norwegian commander loyal to Norway's pro-fascist former foreign minister Vidkun Quisling. Hours after the invasion, the German minister in Oslo demanded Norway's surrender. The Norwegian government refused, and the Germans responded with a parachute invasion and the establishment of a puppet regime led by Quisling (whose name would become a synonym for "traitor"). Norwegian forces refused to accept German rule in the guise of a Quisling government and continued to fight alongside British troops. But an accelerating German offensive in France led Britain to transfer thousand of soldiers from Norway to France, resulting ultimately in a German victory.

    In Denmark, King Christian X, convinced his army could not fight off a German invasion, surrendered almost immediately. Hitler now added a second and third conquered nation to his quarry, which began with Poland.
     
  5. PzJgr

    PzJgr Drill Instructor

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    April 23, 1942

    On this day in 1942, in retaliation for the British raid on Lubeck, German bombers strike Exeter and later Bath, Norwick, York, and other "medieval-city centres." Almost 1,000 English civilians are killed in the bombing attacks nicknamed "Baedeker Raids."

    On March 28 of the same year, 234 British bombers struck the German port of Lubeck, an industrial town of only "moderate importance." The attack was ordered (according to Sir Arthur Harris, head of British Bomber Command) as more of a morale booster for British flyers than anything else, but the destruction wreaked on Lubeck was significant: Two thousand buildings were totaled, 312 German civilians were killed, and 15,000 Germans were left homeless.

    As an act of reprisal, the Germans attacked cathedral cities of great historical significance. The 15th-century Guildhall, in York, as an example, was destroyed. The Germans called their air attacks "Baedeker Raids," named for the German publishing company famous for guidebooks popular with tourists. The Luftwaffe vowed to bomb every building in Britain that the Baedeker guide had awarded "three stars."
     
  6. PzJgr

    PzJgr Drill Instructor

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    On this day in 1940, British forces, along with Australian, New Zealand, and Polish troops, begin to withdraw from Greece in light of the Greek army's surrender to the Axis invaders. A total of 50,732 men are evacuated quickly over a six-day period, leaving behind weapons, trucks, and aircraft.
     
  7. PzJgr

    PzJgr Drill Instructor

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    May 18, 1943
    Hitler gives the order for Operation Alaric

    On this day in 1943, Adolf Hitler launches Operation Alaric, the German occupation of Italy in the event its Axis partner either surrendered or switched its allegiance.

    This operation was considered so top secret that Hitler refused to issue a written order. Instead, he communicated verbally his desire that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel should assemble and ultimately command 11 divisions for the occupation of Italy to prevent an Allied foothold in the peninsula.

    1944 Polish Corps takes Monte Cassino
    On this day in 1944, the Polish Corps, part of a multinational Allied Eighth Army offensive in southern Italy, finally pushes into Monte Cassino as the battle to break German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring's defensive Gustav Line nears its end.

    The Allied push northward to Rome began in January with the landing of 50,000 seaborne troops at Anzio, 33 miles south of the Italian capital. Despite having met very little resistance, the Allies chose to consolidate their position rather than immediately battle north to Rome. Consequently, German forces under the command of Field Marshal Kesselring were able to create a defensive line that cut across the center of the peninsula. General Wladyslaw Anders, leader of the Polish troops who would raise their flag over the ruins of the famous Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, commenting on the cost of the battle, said, "Corpses of German and Polish soldiers, sometimes entangled in a deathly embrace, lay everywhere, and the air was full of the stench of rotting bodies."
     
  8. PzJgr

    PzJgr Drill Instructor

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    May 21, 1940Nazis kill "unfit" people in East Prussia

    On this day in 1940, a "special unit" carries out its mission-and murders more than 1,500 hospital patients in East Prussia.

    Mentally ill patients from throughout East Prussia had been transferred to the district of Soldau, also in East Prussia. A special military unit, basically a hit squad, carried out its agenda and killed the patients over an 18-day period, one small part of the larger Nazi program to exterminate everyone deemed "unfit" by its ideology. After the murders, the unit reported back to headquarters in Berlin that the patients had been "successfully evacuated."

    1942 Thousands of Jews die in Nazi gas chambers; IG Farber sets up factory
    On this day in 1942, 4,300 Jews are deported from the Polish town of Chelm to the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor, where all are gassed to death. On the same day, the German firm IG Farben sets up a factory just outside Auschwitz, in order to take advantage of Jewish slave laborers from the Auschwitz concentration camps.

    Sobibor had five gas chambers, where about 250,000 Jews were killed between 1942 and 1943. A camp revolt occurred in October 1943; 300 Jewish slave laborers rose up and killed several members of the SS as well as Ukrainian guards. The rebels were killed as they battled their captors or tried to escape. The remaining prisoners were executed the very next day.

    IG Farben, as well as exploiting Jewish slave labor for its oil and rubber production, also performed drug experiments on inmates. Tens of thousands of prisoners would ultimately die because of brutal work conditions and the savagery of the guards. Several of the firm's officials would be convicted of "plunder," "spoliation of property," "imposing slave labor," and "inhumane treatment" of civilians and POWs after the war. The company itself came under Allied control. The original goal was to dismantle its industries, which also included the manufacture of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, so as to prevent it from ever posing a threat "to Germany's neighbors or to world peace." But as time passed, the resolve weakened, and the Western powers broke the company up into three separate divisions: Hoechst, Bayer, and BASF.

    May 1944 West Loch Disaster
    On May 21, 1944, In an area of the vast naval base known as West Loch, almost three dozen large landing ships brimming with fuel, ammunition and other equipment sat lashed together in preparation for a brutal invasion code-named "Operation Forager." An explosion rocked one of the vessels. Within minutes, more explosions ripped open several other ships as flames engulfed men and machinery. Before the day ended, 163 were dead and 396 lay wounded. Nine of the landing ships were destroyed and several others damaged.

    Interviews and a review of dozens of decades-old military documents tell the widely unknown story of the 29th, a nearly all-black Army unit that was handling ammunition on the ship where the first explosions broke out.

    The unit arrived at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, in June 1942. Its mission was to decontaminate men and equipment after an enemy chemical attack, but its soldiers also were a handy source of manual labor, such as when brush fires erupted or when dengue fever required insecticide spraying.

    So it probably came as no surprise when the orders came down on May 21, 1944, for the unit to unload ammunition from a small Navy assault vessel, known as a Landing Craft, Tank, or LCT, even if they weren't trained for such work.

    More than a third of the total number of servicemen who perished that day belonged to the 29th. Some 44 sets of unidentified remains from the disaster lie in 36 graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. Some of them undoubtedly were from the men of the 29th.

    The grave markers once read simply "Unknown," but that was changed a few years ago at the behest of Congress to "Unknown, West Loch Disaster, May 21, 1944."
     
  9. jemimas_special2

    jemimas_special2 Shepherd

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    May 26: General Interest

    1897 : Dracula goes on sale in London

    The first copies of the classic vampire novel Dracula, by Irish writer Bram Stoker, appear in London bookshops on this day in 1897.
    A childhood invalid, Stoker grew up to become a football (soccer) star at Trinity College, Dublin. After graduation, he got a job in civil service at Dublin Castle, where he worked for the next 10 years while writing drama reviews for the Dublin Mail on the side. In this way, Stoker met the well-respected actor Sir Henry Irving, who hired him as his manager. Stoker stayed in the post for most of the next three decades, writing Irving's voluminous correspondence for him and accompanying him on tours in the United States. Over the years, Stoker began writing a number of horror stories for magazines, and in 1890 he published his first novel, The Snake's Pass.
    Stoker would go on to publish 17 novels in all, but it was his 1897 novel Dracula that eventually earned him literary fame and became known as a masterpiece of Victorian-era Gothic literature. Written in the form of diaries and journals of its main characters, Dracula is the story of a vampire who makes his way from Transylvania--a region of Eastern Europe now in Romania--to Yorkshire, England, and preys on innocents there to get the blood he needs to live. Stoker had originally named the vampire "Count Wampyr." He found the name Dracula in a book on Wallachia and Moldavia written by retired diplomat William Wilkinson, which he borrowed from a Yorkshire public library during his family's vacations there.
    Vampires--who left their burial places at night to drink the blood of humans--were popular figures in folk tales from ancient times, but Stoker's novel catapulted them into the mainstream of 20th-century literature. Upon its release, Dracula enjoyed moderate success, though when Stoker died in 1912 none of his obituaries even mentioned Dracula by name. Sales began to take off in the 1920s, when the novel was adapted for Broadway. Dracula mania kicked into even higher gear with Universal's blockbuster 1931 film, directed by Tod Browning and starring the Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi. Dozens of vampire-themed movies, television shows and literature followed, though Lugosi, with his exotic accent, remains the quintessential Count Dracula. Late 20th-century examples of the vampire craze include the bestselling novels of American writer Anne Rice and the cult hit TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

    ref - history.com

    special
     
  10. JagdtigerI

    JagdtigerI Ace

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    Today is Wednesday, Oct. 14, the 287th day of 2009. There are 78 days left in the year.

    On Oct. 14, 1939, during World War II, a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the HMS Royal Oak, a British battleship anchored at Scapa Flow in Scotland's Orkney Islands; 833 of the more than 1,200 men aboard were killed.

    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/14/us/AP-History.html
     
  11. STURMTRUPPEN

    STURMTRUPPEN Member

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    great info there pzjgr
     
  12. PzJgr

    PzJgr Drill Instructor

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    [​IMG]USS Block Island (CVE-21) shortly after leaving Norfolk, October 15, 1943, on her first anti-submarine cruise, with aircraft from Composite Squadron 1 (VC-1) on deck—9 FM-1 Wildcats (forward) and 12 TBF-1C Avengers. U.S. National Archives photo #80-G-87149.
    On January 11, 1944, FM-1 Wildcats and TBF-1C Avengers took off from the USS Block Island (CVE-21) to make the first aircraft rocket attack on a German submarine. While sinking the sub was unsuccessful, the anti-submarine hunter-killer task group, including the USS Corry (DD-463), eventually achieved their mission. During four anti-submarine cruises the hunter-killer task group sank two submarines.
    The first on March 17, the group sank the German sub, U-801 and rescued it’s survivors.
    Five months later the Block Island was sunk herself. A German sub slipped through undetected putting three torpedoes into the carrier.
     
  13. PzJgr

    PzJgr Drill Instructor

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    Jan 23, 1943: The ‘Battle’ of Marseille

    The ‘Vichy French’ relationship with the Nazi regime is never easy to summarise. Whilst some Frenchmen had fled France to continue the fight after the defeat in 1940, many did not have the opportunity. The Government established in the town of Vichy was nominally independent, running the southern half of France until the Germans took over the whole country in November 1942. Then the French Navy defied the Germans and had at least denied them the use of the French Fleet.
    Others in France were rather more enthusiastic in their cooperation and collaboration with the Nazis:
    For reasons of military order and to guarantee the safety of the population, the German military authorities notified the French administration of the order to proceed immediately with the evacuation of the north end of the Old Port.
    For its part, the French administration decided on the grounds of internal security to carry out a vast police operation to rid Marseille of certain elements the risks of whose activities weighed heavily on the population.
    The French administration worked hard to avoid mixing up the two operations. Sizeable police forces carried out numerous searches in the quarter. Entire neighbourhoods were surrounded and identity checks were made. More than 6,000 individuals were arrested and 40,000 identies were checked.
    The Prefecture of the Bouches-du-Rhône 24th January 1943

    [​IMG]
    On the 23rd January 1943 the French and Germans meet at the Marseille Town Hall to agree their plans. From left to right: SS-Sturmbannführer Bernhard Griese has travelled from Paris to meet local SS commander Mühler, Pierre Barraud, Mayor of Marseille, and Rene Bousquet, Head of the French Police, in fur trimmed coat

    [​IMG]
    German troops seal off the Old Port quarter of Marseille, the harbour side community.
     
  14. PzJgr

    PzJgr Drill Instructor

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    Jan 25, 1943:
    The desperate Italian retreat struggles on
    [​IMG]
    Soviet troops advance during an attack somewhere on the Eastern Front early in 1943.

    The Italian retreat from their positions outside Stalingrad continued. Around 130,000 had set off when their positions had been outflanked or overrun by the Red Army at the beginning of January. All along the way they were harried by attacks from the Russians trying to cut them off.

    There
    was no food, just what they carried or the scraps they could steal from the Russian peasants. There was no shelter apart from these peasant village houses. Eugenio Corti had been cut off in the small town of Chertkovo, under Russian fire.

    Mario Rigoni Stern had been walking across the open steppe since 10th January when his strongpoint on the front line had been outflanked. He had celebrated a grim New Year’s Daythere – but that was now just a distant memory:


    We pass another narrow deserted valley. We walk along it, anxiously; I feel as if I’m suffocating and wish we were out of it. I look everywhere apprehensively, listen and hold my breath. I’d like to run. At any moment I expect to see the turrets of tanks appear and hear bursts of machine-gun fire. But we pass through.
    I’m hungry. When did I eat last? I don’t remember. The column passes between two villages a mile or so apart. There’s sure to be my something to eat there. Little groups detach themselves from our column and set off towards the villages in search of food. The officers shout at them, tell them there might be partisans or Red patrols there.
    Some soldiers from my platoon also go off in search of food. During a short halt we stop for a drink at a well and then I go off to what seems the nearest isba [Russian house]. But it’s one of the biggest and has already been visited by many others. All I find is a handful of of dried apples which the Russians use to make syrup.
    We are still walking and night’s coming on. It’s cold; colder than ever, perhaps forty degrees. The breath freezes on our beards and moustaches; we walk on in silence with our blankets pulled up over our heads. We stop. There’s nothing. No trees, no houses, just the snow and the stars and us.
    I fling myself down on the snow; and even the snow doesn’t seem to be there; I close my eyes on nothingness. Perhaps death will be like this, or perhaps I’m sleeping. I’m in a white cloud.
    But who’s calling me? Who’s shaking me so violently? Let me be. ‘Rigoni! Rigoni! Rigoni! Get up. The column’s left. Wake up. Rigoni.’
    It’s Lieutenant Moscioni calling me anxiously, and I see him bending over me as I open my eyes. He gives me another couple of shakes and now I can see his face clearly, and his two dark eyes fixed on me, his beard hard and shiny with white frost, a blanket over his head,
    ‘Rigoni, take these,’ he says. And he gives me two little pills. ‘Swallow them, come along, make an effort.’ I get up, walk along with him and gradually we catch up with the company and I understand what’s happened . . .
    How many have thrown themselves down on the snow and never got up again? Cenci and Moscioni make me mount a horse. But it’s worse than waking up; I’m frightened of getting frostbite, dismount and walk on.
    Cenci gives me a cigarette and we smoke. ‘Say, Rigoni, what would you like most now?’ I smile, and they do too. They know the reply because I’ve said it at other times, walking along at night.
    ‘To get into a house, into a house like ours at home, take off all my clothes, be without boots, or pouches, without a blanket on my head; have a bath and put on a linen shirt, drink a cup of coffee, and then throw myself on to a bed, but a real bed with mattress sheets, a big bed in a warm room with an open fire; and then sleep and sleep and sleep; wake up, then, and hear the sound of bells and find a table laid; wine, spaghetti, fruit, grapes, cherries, figs; then go back to sleep and hear music.’
    Cenci laughs, Antonelli laughs, and my companions also laugh.
     
  15. PzJgr

    PzJgr Drill Instructor

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    4 Feb 1943: Churchill reviews victorious Eighth Army parade


    [​IMG]
    Winston Churchill greets an officer of 51st Highland Division during his visit to Tripoli to thank the 8th Army for its success in the North African campaign, 4 February 1943.


    The British Army that had finally been able to confront Rommel and turn him had been on the move since October. Now having driven the German forces out Libya there was a pause for many of the units as they re-equipped. There was time for a formal celebration for the men who had taken part in what was now recognised as a major victory from which the Axis forces in Africa could not recover. At home Britain had celebrated the victory at El Alamein with the ringing of church bells in November – church bells that had not rung since the threat of invasion had begun in 1940 . Now there was time for a Victory parade in Tripoli.

    The Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Alan Brooke, accompanying Churchill was amongst those who recorded the event in his diary.

    At 9.30 am we all assembled and started off by car for Tripoli. It was most interesting seeing the place for the tirst time. The streets and housetops were lined with sentries, who held back the local inhabitants. When we arrived on the main square and sea front we found there the bulk of the 51″ Division formed up on the sea front and main square.
    The last time we had seen them was near Ismailia just after their arrival in the Middle East. Then they were still pink and white, now they were bronzed warriors of many battles and of a victorious advance. I have seldom seen a finer body of men or one that looked prouder of being soldiers.
    We drove slowly round the line and then came back with the men cheering him all the way. We then took up our position on a prepared stand and the whole Division marched past with a bagpipe band playing. It was quite one of the most impressive sights I have ever seen.

    [​IMG]25-pdr field guns and ‘Quad’ artillery tractors parade past Winston Churchill during his visit to Tripoli to thank the 8th Army for its success in the North African campaign, 4 February 1943.

    [​IMG]
    The Prime Minister Winston Churchill gives a speech to men of the 8th Army at Tripoli, Libya, on 7 February 1943.
     
  16. Skipper

    Skipper Kommodore

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    this is also the day that Greek aviation Colonel and resistant (PEAN)[h=1]Konstantinos Pérrikos[/h] was shot by the Germans on Fev 4th 1943 at[TABLE="width: 100%"]
    [TR]
    [TD="colspan: 2"][h=1]Kaissariani.[/h][/TD]
    [/TR]
    [/TABLE]
     
  17. PzJgr

    PzJgr Drill Instructor

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    Feb 22, 1943: Sophie Scholl is beheaded in Munich


    [​IMG]

    The student resistance movement called the White Rose, active in Germany during the Third Reich. The image shows Hans Scholl (left), Sophie Scholl (center), and Christoph Probst (right)(Willi Graf and Alex Schmorell are missing on this picture), Munich, Germany, 1942. Photograph from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.


    In their school days Hans and Sophie Scholl had been fascinated by the Nazi movement. Hans had had a high rank in the Hitler Youth organisation and Sophie a similar position in the League of German Girls. Yet as they grew older and witnessed the progress of the war they became highly critical of the Nazi regime, realising that it ran counter to their most deeply held values.

    As a medical student Hans found himself posted to Russia on military service and witnessed the conduct of the German armed forces and the actions against the Jews. On returning to Munich University in 1942 he and a group of fellow students formed the ‘White Rose Resistance Movement’. When Sophie joined the University in 1942 she also joined the group.

    Between June 1942 and February 1943 the group distributed six different leaflets denouncing Hitler and the Nazi regime. Readers were urged to”Support the resistance movement!” in the struggle for “Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and protection of the individual citizen from the arbitrary action of criminal dictator-states”. These were the principles that would form “the foundations of the new Europe”. Thousands of leaflets were produced using a hand cranked printing machine and they reached most of the major cities in Germany.

    On the 18th February Hans and Sophie were distributing a suitcase full of leaflets in the University. They were intended to found by students attending lectures the following day. But they were caught in the act by University staff and handed over to the Gestapo.


    [​IMG]
    The People’s Court Judge Roland Freisler, sometimes known as ‘Raving Roland’ for his hysterical outbursts in court. He sentenced over 2,600 people to death in the last three years of the war.

    When the came up before the Nazi ‘People’s Court’ chaired by the notorious Roland Freisler on the 22nd February there was not much hope for them. He acted as prosecutor, judge and jury in his own conception of ‘Nazi justice’ and had a record of convicting over 90% of the people appearing in his court and sentencing them to death. Hans and Sophie were treated no differently. They remained defiant to the end, Sophie then aged 22, is recorded as saying “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just do not dare express themselves as we did.”

    Within hours of their conviction they were beheaded by guillotine at Munich’s Stadelheim Prison. Prison officials emphasized the courage with which Sophie walked to her execution. Her last words were “Die Sonne scheint noch”—”The sun still shines.”

     
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