Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour
Posted on 11/13/2010 5:26:40 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour
Over cocktails?
* If you want to see a cleaner version of the photo at #4 go to the onwar.com site via the link on the reply following this one and go to yesterday’s (11/12) display using the numbered link at the top of the site. I thought it was the same photo until I compared them side by side and saw that it must have been taken a few seconds before or after the one here. Most of the German officers are in slightly different positions.
It would have been a wise decision for Hitler to ally with the Soviet Union. If he had done so, Germany might still control Western Europe.
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/nov40/f13nov40.htm
RAF bombs Berlin
Wednesday, November 13, 1940 www.onwar.com
Over Germany... British bombers conduct a night raid on Berlin.
Over Italy... RAF aircraft bomb the Italian naval base at Taranto.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/13.htm
November 13th, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM:
The Minister of Home Security reports that 6,334 civilians have been killed and 8,965 injured in the October air raids.
Telegram from Churchill to AOC-in-C, MIDDLE EAST:
I am trying every day to speed up deliveries of Hurricanes etc to your command.
I was astonished to find that you have nearly 1,000 aircraft and pilots with 16,000 personnel in the Middle East. ...surely out of this establishment you ought to be able to produce a substantially larger number of modern aircraft operationally fit?
Submarine HMS Shakespeare laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)
VICHY FRANCE: Pierre Dupuy leaves for Vichy. Dupuy, a French-Canadian who had lived and worked in France since 1919 in the office of the Canadian High Commission in Paris, is being used as an intermediary between Britain and the Vichy government. He has had at least two meetings with Halifax, although the minutes of Cabinet meeting on the 12th suggest that Dupuy’s brief extended no further than to cultivate good relations with Vichy and report any promising openings.
GERMANY: Berlin: Hitler orders Göring to prepare the Luftwaffe for an invasion of Russia next May.
Molotov again meets with von Ribbentrop. He presses him on the purpose of the German troops present in Finland. Ribbentrop replies that the troops are merely in transit to northern Norway and that the whole matter is a “misunderstanding”. Hitler also evaded the question when he met later with Molotov instead launching into a speech on the dissolution of the British Empire and it’s subsequent carving up between the Axis powers (and the Soviet Union at this point). Molotov also presses Hitler on the recent German-Italian guarantees to Romania which work against Soviet interests. Hitler evades the question.
That evening Molotov gives a banquet in the Russian Embassy in Unter den Linden and entertains von Ribbentrop. The banquet is interrupted by an air-raid [We had heard of the conference beforehand, says Churchill, and though not invited to join in the discussion did not wish to be entirely left out of the proceedings.] carrying on their conversation in an air-raid shelter Ribbentrop talks of the need to divide up the British Empire now that England is so decisively beaten. “If England is so beaten, why are we sitting in this shelter?” retorts Molotov.
U-149 commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
PACIFIC OCEAN: The Dutch East Indies agrees to supply Japan with nearly two million tons of oil a year.
AUSTRALIA: Minesweeper HMAS Warrnambool laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)
U.S.A.:
Washington: Telegram from Roosevelt to Churchill:
I ... have sent instructions to the American Charge d’Affaires in Vichy to confirm or deny the report that Jean Bart and Richelieu are to be transferred to the Mediterranean.
If the report is confirmed, the Charge d’Affaires will convey to Petain an expression of the grave concern of this Government that the ships will be moved to places subject to a control inconsistent with the ultimate interests of the US.
This would seriously prejudice Franco-American relations.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania: Three powder plants blow up in less than an hour. At least 14 are dead and 23 seriously injured.
New York: The liner Queen Elizabeth, which has lain at dock since March, left port last night.
Walt Disney’s animated musical “Fantasia” opens at the Broadway Theater in New York City. This was the first film with stereophonic sound. As a result of the film, Mickey Mouse regains the position of the favourite Disney character, a position he has lost to Donald Duck over the last several years. (Jack McKillop)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-28 met an enemy submarine in the North Atlantic. Two detonations astern were heard, as the enemy sub apparently made an unsuccessful attack.
U-137 sank SS Cape St Andrew in Convoy OB-240. (Dave Shirlaw)
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/
Day 440 November 13, 1940
In Berlin, Hitler and von Ribbentrop continue lecturing Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov about the imminent conquest of Britain and how to divide up the British Empire. However, British intelligence knows of Molotov’s visit and, after a dinner at the Soviet Embassy, RAF bombing forces Molotov and von Ribbentrop into a shelter deep underground. Conversation again turns to England, which “is finished” according to Ribbentrop. Molotov replies “if that is so, why are we in this shelter and whose are these bombs which fall”?
Greek troops manage to clear Northern Greece of Italian forces, pushing them back to their starting point in Albania.
At 9.08 PM, 100 miles Northwest of Ireland, U-137 torpedoes British SS Cape St. Andrew which sinks while under tow by rescue tug HMS Salvonia (14 crew and 1 gunner were lost). 53 survivors are picked up by the tug and landed at Greenock. Also in the North Atlantic, 2 men are washed overboard from destroyer HMS Garland in heavy weather.
British submarine HMS Tigris sinks tiny French trawler Charles Edmonde 100 miles West of Bordeaux, France.
British destroyer HMS Decoy is damaged by Italian bombers in Alexandria Harbour (8 killed, 3 wounded). HMS Decoy will be repaired at Malta until February 1941.
even in “Mein Kampf” he told of his plans quite openly for Russia; even still, he had eyes on the vast amount of Ashkenazi jews Russia contained. In the first weeks of the invasion, Stalin was apoplectic in rage over being fooled by Hitler. In the end, evil always destroys itself. Thanks for the article
One way or another. :)
Ah, an M13/40. Otherwise known as “the mobile coffin” by axis troops in North Africa.
The one in the picture looks pretty burned up.
I know. Should have said STAYED allied with the Soviets. Barbarossa was a huge mistake. He might still have won, however, if had taken Moscow in the Fall, instead of diverting his armies South.
Getting Japan to agree to kick in the back door would have been helpful as well.
Not even substantial enough to make a decent target hulk today. Might be fun to put a high-speed camera in one to watch 120mm APDS penetrators pass all the way through it, though. Or you could line a bunch of them up and see how many it took to stop one.
Yup! Some real firewater.
Is that the model the Italians put sandbags in? To stop rifle bullets?
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