[Doug64]

1939 August 23 Lithuania was part of the German sphere under the secret protocol.
1939 September 28 2nd secret protocol added.
1939 3rd October 3 1939 Stalin starts the dictation of terms to Lithuania.

According to Wikipedia, the second secret protocol moved Lithuania from the German to Russian sphere of influence, so Stalin didn’t violate the agreement with Hitler.

Because why on Earth would anyone dislike the Germans?

Why indeed.

[Doug64]

October 9, Monday

Germans capture the City of Flint

A US cargo ship, the City of Flint, has been captured by the German pocket battleship Deutschland as part of efforts to damage British trade. The Germans search the ship and seize her when they find supplies for Britain which they say are “contraband” under the Prize Rules for war at sea.

Now the City of Flint is heading for the Russian port of Murmansk with a German prize crew, which is hoping eventually to bring her to a German port.

[Doug64]

October 11, Wednesday

Einstein alerts US president to power of “atomic bomb”

President Roosevelt today orders American scientists to investigate the feasibility of building an “atomic bomb.”

A group of refugee European scientists is concerned that its German colleagues might use atomic energy to provide Hitler with a weapon with unimagined destructive power. It was Albert Einstein who persuaded a banker friend of Roosevelt, Alexander Sachs, to warn the US president of the possibility of an atomic bomb.

“What you’re after,” the president says, “is to see the Nazis don’t blow us up.” Then he calls an aide and says: “This requires action.”

The wartime hero who now leads France

Edouard Daladier today formally rejects Hitler’s peace proposals. Thus a man who won the Croix de Guerre and the Legion d’Honneur in the Great War becomes his country’s leader in what is now being called the Second World War.

Short and broad, Daladier exudes determination and courage. He has been called a Jacobin, with a passion for national defense. He was born in Carpentras in 1884, and entered national politics after the war when he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a Radical Socialist. He later became a minister in six different governments before becoming Prime Minister for the first time on the same day that Hitler became Chancellor.

[Doug64]

October 13, Saturday

Gestapo wages reign of terror as Jews are herded into ghettoes

Diplomats of neutral nations fear that the Germans are committing the most appalling, degrading cruelties against Polish Jewry. In one incident, on the Day of Atonement, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, several thousand were imprisoned in the synagogue at Bydgoszcz and, refused permission to use the lavatories, were forced to use their prayer shawls to clean up the resulting mess.

Hundreds are shot every day with casual brutality, but there are signs that the Gestapo’s campaign of terror is becoming more organized. Jews, even farmers, are being herded into ghettoes in the cities and allowed no contact with the rest of the city. They are thus under the complete control of the Gestapo and there must be fears for their ultimate fate.

[Rich]

Liberal historians, professional historians and media creators love debunking Hitler at every opportunity. One of the goals has been to debunk's the autobiographical elements of Mein Kampf. This endeavor has not been without success. However they don't seem to have fully thought through the implications of this for the question of "How did Hitler become Hitler?" How did Adolph Hitler become the Hitler that we know and love (or hate) from Mein Kampf to the Berlin Bunker. Its been long accepted that Hitler wasn't Hitler in 1914. However its becoming increasingly clear that Hitler did not become Hitler in 1918.

The British (and to a lesser extent the French) policy to the Germans in World War I was starve or surrender, this was backed up on the home front with a vociferousness campaign of racism against Germans, even the British monarchy had to pretend to be British. Arguable the current Israeli policy of desiccate or surrender to Gaza could be said to be more humane, starvation being a long drawn out death.

So in World War I the Germans were recongnised as evil, but as the war dragged on, this was not enough for the liberals. They not only recognised the Germans as evil, they wanted the Germans to recognise themselves as evil and seek atonement. Now of course at later point some Liberals when meditating on 1492 would come to question are we the baddies as well, are all "White" people evil not just the Germans. But that complication lies outside of the timeline of this thread, i just mention to say I'm aware of the complications any analysis must simplify somethings.

So during the war we had the Balfour declaration, where the British government rewarded Zionists for changing sides and bringing America into the war. As I've said before absolutely nothing evil about this, every other national, religious or ideological grouping was following its ideological agenda with scant regard for anyone that got in their way, why shouldn't Jewish nationalists focus on what they cared about them. However it should not surprise us that Germans did not take this well, especially later, when it would be combined with other things. As far as we can tell the Balfour Declaration didn't turn Hitler into Hitler in 1917.

So the armistice was signed, and again as far as we can tell this didn't turn Hitler into Hitler. But after the armistice where the Germans surrendered vast amounts of territory in return for nothing, it turned out the allied policy was not starve or surrender, it was starve and surrender. The sanctions or the blockade if you prefer would continue.

I'm gonna break this off for now and continue it in a later post.

[Doug64]

October 14, Saturday

U-boat ace sinks British battleship

In a daring raid a German U-boat strikes into the heart of Britain’s navy—the anchorage at Scapa Flow, the base of Britain’s Home Fleet. Luckily, most of the fleet is at sea. But the Royal Oak, a 29,150-ton battleship veteran of the Battle of Jutland, is sunk at anchor at 1 am.

German aerial reconnaissance photographs had revealed a gap in the Scapa Flow defenses. The entrance to Kirk Sound was only half blocked by cables and wires, leaving a 50-foot gap, quite big enough for a U-boat. Lieutenant-Commander Gunther Prien in U-47 was immediately dispatched to strike before the defenses were finished.

He spent the whole of yesterday on the seabed, and surfaced at 7 pm. There is no moon but the aurora borealis makes it seem like daylight to the Germans. There is a strong current against them so the U-boat has to stay on the surface. Boldly, the Germans just sail right into the harbor.

Three of the seven torpedoes fired hit, and in thirteen minutes the Royal Oak rolls over and capsizes. Altogether 414 of the crew are saved, but the other 810 perish as the blazing ship sinks in minutes.

Rumors feed on war’s uncertainty

In the UK the news blackout by censors has left people eager to listen to rumor. And on the propaganda front the Ministry of Information is being beaten by Germany. The Ministry’s posters are disliked. One says, “YOUR Courage, YOUR Cheerfulness, YOUR Resolution will bring US Victory,” making people ask whom they mean by “us”? The government and its friends? People are fed up with the leaflets carrying patronizing slogans such as “Kill that Rumour—It’s Helping Hitler!” “Fred Karno’s Army has nothing on the Ministry of Information,” says the Daily Mirror.

Meanwhile, an estimated one million people are tuning in to “Lord Haw-Haw,” broadcasting from Hamburg. He was nicknamed this by the Daily Express because of his upper-class drawl which announces “Jairmany Calling!” He presents amusing skits of old buffers in a London club grousing about the war or the “blasted socialists.” Sir Jasper Murgatroyd and Bumbleby Mannering (a clergyman) are two more of his characters. Posing as a well-meaning advisor to the British, Lord Haw-Haw needles them about food prices, war profiteers, and censors who keep them in the dark. “Where is the Ark Royal? Britons, ask your government!” He says working men should “demand social justice and call for peace.”

Senators attack Lindbergh neutrality talk

Colonel Charles Lindbergh has caused deep anger both in Canada and in many circles in the United States by his radio broadcast last night in which he questioned the right of Canada “to draw this hemisphere into a European war because they prefer the Crown of England to American independence.”

Senator Key Pittman of Nevada, the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, attacked Colonel Lindbergh’s speech. The New York Herald Tribune called it “as fantastic in logic as it is bad in taste.” Many Canadian leaders have already wired their fury to Washington and Canadian ex-servicemen’s groups have protested.

Lindbergh appeared to try to meet the charge that he is pro-German by calling for both Nazi and Communist influence in America to be “stamped out.” He also said that British and French colonies in the Caribbean should be handed to the US to pay war debts.

[Doug64]

October 16, Monday

Firth of Forth is first British target for Luftwaffe planes

RAF Spitfires harry Junkers Ju88 bombers across the Edinburgh rooftops this afternoon after a dozen of the Junkers attempted to bomb warships in the Firth of Forth. Passengers on a train crossing the Forth Bridge are amazed to see great waterspouts springing up alongside the bridge.

The bombs inflict casualties on the crew of the destroyer Mohawk which is one of four ships hit. Spitfires manned by the “part-time” pilots of the Glasgow and Edinburgh Auxiliary Air Force squadrons take off after the Junkers, and their cartridge cases fall like rain into the streets. They shoot down two of the raiders.

Knitting for victory is new British craze

Women across the country are taking up their knitting needles in accordance with instructions from the admiralty.

Basic specifications for every shape of garment, from the sea-boot stockings to the Balaclava helmet, have been issued and unending supplies are needed. A firm of wool experts is currently advising the admiralty on the production of detailed patterns, but in the meantime British knitters of all ages are being urged to get clicking.

[Doug64]

October 21, Saturday

France puts its trust in the Maginot Line

The official Allied communiques referring to offensive action against German forces in the Saar sector of the front are phony, like the war itself. Small French units last month advanced into territory evacuated by the enemy, and when a few weeks later, after the Polish campaign, the Germans advanced, the French pulled back.

On September 21st General Gamelin, the Allied C-in-C, said that he had no intention of attacking the Germans. He issued orders that if the enemy attacked in strength the French should retreat behind the Maginot Line. This is a series of elaborate fortifications built largely underground parallel to the German border.

The main forts are linked by a labyrinth of tunnels and protected by a battery of tank traps and gunposts. It is a formidable barrier, but one that has left the French army more intent on defense than attack. It also exists only along the border with Germany, leaving a long unprotected border with Belgium.

Behind Gamelin’s attitude is a profound distrust of the British. He believes that the British intend France to fight the war alone.

British troops plug the Maginot gap

Since they arrived in France last month the British have spent their time digging defense works along the Belgian border to fill in the gap between the end of the Maginot Line and the Channel coast. The lucky ones are behind the lines, in billets or temporary barracks. The food, generally, is the traditional bacon and eggs, meat and two veg, bread and jam, washed down with a mug of strong tea.

Half a million soldiers waiting for a fight

To the French it is La Drole de Guerre, and to the British the Phony War. With 110 French and British divisions in the Allied front line, the almost complete lack of action to help the battered Polish forces has left public opinion in the west confused and—in France—increasingly demoralized.

Although the western Allies don’t know it, the Germans had awaited an attack with apprehension. In the critical first ten days of the war, during the Polish campaign, General Alfred Jodl, the Wehrmacht’s Chief of Operations, could spare only 23 active German divisions for the Western Front. Nine more divisions were then added, but there was apparently not one German tank in the front line during September, and the stock of ammunition would not have lasted for more than three days. And the Luftwaffe was in the east.

As Polish resistance began to collapse, General Gamelin told a meeting of the Supreme War Council at Abbeville on September 13th that he was calling off any further military action on the Western Front. He says his report “brought a sense of relief to everyone.”

[Doug64]

October 24, Tuesday

Radio booms as families stay at home

A boom in sales of radio sets and record players is a sign of the way the blackout has transformed home life in Britain. Sales have leaped up by about 30 percent. The misery of traveling in the blackout (and the closing of theaters and cinemas after 6 pm) has disrupted social life. Entertaining has virtually ceased, so people stay at home and listen to records or radio shows such as Band Wagon or ITMA. Families whose children are not evacuated are being drawn closer together. “There are many firesides where the family groups itself as it has not done since Victorian days,” says the Daily Telegraph. “Some of us have begun to ponder what our ancestors did in the dark winter evenings to while away the hours before bedtime.”

The answer is that they sang their songs themselves, instead of playing records.

[Doug64]

October 26, Thursday

Frank starts annihilation of Polish Jewry

Hans Frank, the Nazi lawyer who was made governor of the General Government region of Poland two weeks ago, has issued his first proclamation. It bodes ill for Polish Jewry and all those Jews from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia who are being transported in sealed cattle trucks without food or water to “Jewish reservations” in Poland. The officer in charge of this mass movement of people is said to be called Adolf Eichmann, described as an efficient bureaucrat.

Under Frank’s orders all Jewish men between 14 and 60 are to be “obliged to work” on official labor projects. Some, organized into “work brigades,” will travel each day to work in projects near the cities. Others are to be sent to special labor camps. As none of these camps exist the Jews will have to build themselves shelter in the harshest of conditions.

It is not only the Jews who are suffering under the Nazi occupation. All Polish citizens of Torun have been told that they must “leave the pavement free” for Germans because “the street belongs to the conquerors, not the conquered.” They were also warned: “Whoever annoys or speaks to German women and girls will receive exemplary punishment. Polish women who speak to or annoy German nationals will be sent to brothels.” Frank has set out his policy: “The Poles will become the slaves of the greater German Reich.”

It is, however, the threat to the Jews which appears the more dangerous. The moves against them are so calculated that it is obvious that a long-term plan has been put into operation; there are now real fears for their future. This plan is believed to have been discussed at a meeting in Berlin, called by Reinhart Heydrich, of all SS commanders in Poland. Heydrich, rabidly anti-Semitic (possibly because he is falsely rumored to be part-Jewish), spoke chillingly of “the final solution of the Jewish question.”

[Doug64]

October 28, Saturday

Heinkel He111 is first German plane shot down over Britain

An He111 is brought down today by RAF fighters east of Dalkeith in southeastern Scotland—the first German aircraft to be shot down over the British Isles. Two of its four-man crew survive.

During the past two weeks there have been a number of small raids by aircraft of Luftflotte 2, which is based in the extreme north of Germany, against shipping targets off the northern and eastern coasts of Scotland. On October 16th and 17th, British fighters of the RAF’s No 13 Group fought off attempted German attacks.

Nazis clamp down on Czech parades

Czech students feel the full ferocity of Nazi occupation today—the 20th anniversary of their country’s birth. Students parading through the city are charged by armored cars and prisoners will be reported to have been tortured by the Gestapo.

Street fighting breaks out later in the city center with Sudeten Germans using pistols, whips, and rifle-butts against Czech patriots. One student is reported to have been killed by revolver shots, and more than 3,500 people are packing the city prisons. It is six months since the German army marched into Prague—on the pretext of “restoring order.”

[Doug64]

November 2, Thursday

British told of Dachau concentration camp

Fresh news of Nazi brutality at the Dachau concentration camp, set up near Munish in 1933, has reached the British public. A Jewish refugee from Vienna tells readers of the Daily Telegraph today how he was arrested without reason last year.

Crammed into a small railway compartment for fourteen hours, the transportees were forced to look upwards at the electric light for the whole journey; those who complained were shot or stabbed to death by the guards. Three were executed immediately on arrival at the camp. The refugee writes, “I was one of 18,000 prisoners. We slept 200 in a hut built to accommodate, perhaps, 50. There is a single washbasin for every two huts.” He tells how inmates who had not been able to reach the basin had buckets of ice-cold water thrown over them at 4:30am. Prisoners were made to stand in the square of the camp for up to ten hours in all weather, including sleet and snow.

Frequent executions are part of the brutal regime. Thus the Nazis hope to keep “undesirables” like Jews, homosexuals, communists, religious fundamentalists and gypsies under control. Camps operate at Ravensbruck, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. The signs are that the system is being extended into occupied Poland.

[Doug64]

November 4, Saturday

“Cash and carry” law ends United States arms embargo

President Roosevelt today signs the new Neutrality Act repealing the embargo on the export of arms to belligerent countries. His signature releases at least £44 million of arms ordered by Britain and France before the embargo came into effect with the declaration of war.

Between 300 and 400 aircraft are said to be waiting in crates in American ports for shipment to Britain and France, and orders for at least another 2,500 have been held up.

Congress passed the Neutrality Act in 1935 and renewed it in 1936 and 1937. It was backed by isolationists who believed that America was pressured into war against its interests in 1917 and who insist that it must remain neutral and keep out of any European conflict.

On September 21st the President went to Congress and asked it to repeal the law. The Senate responded on October 28th and the House of Representatives followed.

The vote reflects a perceptible shift in American public opinion towards the Allies, due mainly to stories of Nazi atrocities.

In theory the embargo affected all belligerents, so its lifting could allow Germany, as well as the Allies, to buy arms from American factories. In practice Britain and France control the seas, so the lifting of the embargo is being hailed as a great victory for the Allies.

Jews told to form ghetto in Warsaw

Today the Gestapo orders Warsaw’s Jews to move into an area of the city which will be designated as a ghetto. They have taken 24 hostages whom they will shoot if the Jews do not comply. The area will eventually be surrounded by barbwire and placed under guard.

With the conquest of Poland, some two million Jews have come under Nazi rule. The victorious German soldiers have been taught since their schoolboy days to hate the Jews as the age-old “enemies of the German people.”

It is no surprise, then, that 5,000 Jews have already been killed and countless numbers terrorized in random attacks. More than a million live in, or have fled eastwards into, the Soviet-occupied zone, but there is little hope for those trapped in the General Government area governed by Hans Frank.

Just three weeks after the invasion a senior SS official, Reinhart Heydrich, outlined plans to clear western Poland of Jews. They are to be moved east and “resettled” in labor camps and ghettoes.

Adolf Eichmann, a former emigration officer, has been put in charge of resettlement and the movement of Jews to Poland. He sent a transport of Czech Jews to Lublin last month; many fear that the Nazis intend to move all Jews under their control into the General Government area’s cramped conditions.

How Britain’s wives and children cope when the men are called up

Nearly a million British men have been called up to join the services, and the wives and families they have left behind are in many cases experiencing financial hardship. The average pay of a private soldier, naval rating or aircraftman is 2/- (10p/45¢) a day, of which married men allot half to their families. The wife of a private therefore receives 7/- a week stopped from her husband’s pay, and a government allowance of 17/-, plus 5/- for the first child and 3/- for the second. The money is paid weekly at the post office. Average wages on the eve of the war were £3/9/- (£3.45/$15.39) for men, £1/12/6 (£1.62½p/$7.25) for women. Many service wives with young children have to find part-time work or home work such as sewing to make ends meet. Meanwhile the cost of living is rising by over ten percent.

There is a wedding boom, many couples marrying before the man is called up. The number has increased by 100,000 over 1938, reaching 459,000. But despite the call-up there are still 1,270,000 unemployed. Family life for many revolves round visiting their evacuated children. For those who cannot afford to travel, cheap tickets at single fare are allowed once a month on Sundays. There are widespread complaints that the billeting allowances are inadequate. The 8/6 (42½p/$1.90) a week has been increased to 10/6 for boys over 15, but hosts say that they often have to feed boys of 11 and upwards out of their own pockets. The government has brought in compulsory contributions from parents of 6/- a week. In the absence of air raids, many evacuees are heading home.

[Doug64]

November 5, Sunday

Dutch tipped off on Nazi invasion plan

King Leopold of Belgium and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands have been alarmed by confidential messages warning them that Hitler plans to invade their countries in a matter of days. The messages came, via the Dutch military attaché in Berlin, Colonel Jacobus Sas, from a Colonel Hans Oster of German military intelligence. The two sovereigns are holding urgent talks at The Hague to decide what to do to save their countries from catastrophe.

[Potemkin]

November 5, Sunday

Dutch tipped off on Nazi invasion plan

King Leopold of Belgium and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands have been alarmed by confidential messages warning them that Hitler plans to invade their countries in a matter of days. The messages came, via the Dutch military attaché in Berlin, Colonel Jacobus Sas, from a Colonel Hans Oster of German military intelligence. The two sovereigns are holding urgent talks at The Hague to decide what to do to save their countries from catastrophe.

What could they do? Hitler was determined to colour in the map of Europe with his crayons….

[Doug64]

What could they do? Hitler was determined to colour in the map of Europe with his crayons….

With the military forces at their disposal? Bupkis.

[Doug64]

November 6, Monday

City of Flint is back in US hands

Captain Joseph H. Gainard tells today how his US cargo ship, City of Flint, was taken by the German battleship Deutschland. A party from the Deutschland came aboard on October 9th and declared the ship a prize of war. The Germans painted out all US insignia and headed for Murmansk in Russia, and then for Germany. But they were stopped by the Norwegian navy, and another German ship ordered them to Haugesund where the US ship is returned to her captain.

[Rich]

What could they do? Hitler was determined to colour in the map of Europe with his crayons….

Joined the war. I'm happy to give Denmark a pass, but I don't see any excuse for Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland not joining the war on September 3rd 1939 or soon after. Seriously if there's one day in the year we should remember its September 3rd when the world should give thanks to Britain and France and in particular give thanks to British and French men who gave up their freedom and allowed themselves to be conscripted in order to fight German National Socialism. It wasn't just conscription, Britain and France became National Socialist in order to fight German National Socialism.

Anyway this is why I've got little time for the whinings of the small nations. Betweeen the great wars, as individual countries Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland and Czechoslovakia were weak, but if the small northern European nations had acted collectively to defend the interests of the small nations, they could easily maintained their independence from both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. They could have avoided both annexation and vasselisation by any of the great powers.

[Doug64]

Anyway this is why I've got little time for the whinings of the small nations. Betweeen the great wars, as individual countries Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland and Czechoslovakia were weak, but if the small northern European nations had acted collectively to defend the interests of the small nations, they could easily maintained their independence from both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. They could have avoided both annexation and vasselisation by any of the great powers.

The problem with alliances without a single dominant nation is that they have a strong tendency to fracture when the going gets tough. That was a major reason why the Articles of Confederation were replaced by the US Constitution, turning thirteen nations in alliance into a single nation.

[Doug64]

November 8, Wednesday

Churchill predicts victory in sea war

Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, stirs the House of Commons today with a rousing speech about the Royal Navy. He openly admits that it has suffered greater loss of life than all the other forces, British and French, on land, sea, and air. But “we are gaining a definite mastery over the U-boat attack ... and in the end we shall break their hearts,” he says.

He pours ridicule on German claims to have sunk the aircraft carrier Ark Royal several times, and says, “We should be quite content to engage the entire German navy, using only the vessels which at one time or another they declared they have destroyed.”

Hitler escapes beercellar bomb blast

Hitler’s speech in the Burgerbraukeller on the anniversary of his 1923 putsch is shorter than usual and afterwards he hurries off to catch the Berlin train. Minutes later a powerful explosion wrecks the place, killing eight people and injuring sixty. Hitler, told of the bomb, cries, “Providence intends me to reach my goal!”

The bomb had been hidden in a pillar immediately behind the spot where Hitler had been speaking. Hours after the explosion no official statement is forthcoming; then Freemasons and Jews or disgruntled Nazi party members are blamed.

According to the much-delayed final version, Georg Elser, a cabinet maker with communist sympathies, was picked up on the Swiss border and found to possess plans of the beercellar. Interrogated by the Gestapo, he confesses.

Another version, however, has that Himmler pulled Elser out of a concentration camp and made him plant the bomb as a means of boosting the Fuhrer’s popularity.

Himmler then had a brainwave. He ordered his Gestapo agents, who had been duping the British with a yarn about a big anti-Hitler conspiracy, to kidnap two British intelligence officers on the Dutch border so that he can blame the British for the bomb plot (see story tomorrow). German radio reports “stupendous” demonstrations of support for Hitler.