Posted on 09/23/2009 4:53:50 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm
Please add me to your ping list. Thanks!
The interesting part was that the opening of the dikes in Belgium and the Netherlands would have worked if they had fought a World War I-style invasion. Problem was, the Germans were developing the use of airborne forces using paratroopers and gliders, which made the flooding of land as a defensive barrier effectively uselsss.
The New York Times reporting the news.
The more I read your posts, the more I'm convinced that Bush avoided a larger war by taking Saddam out.
I note with interest that Romanian group execution of the Iron Guard traitors foreshadows the treatment given to the odious Ceaucescus 50 years later. Public exhibition of the bodies of the dead makes a strong statement.
Thus my username.
DELAVAN, Ill., Friday—We reached Carbondale, Ill., at about four o'clock yesterday afternoon and I did not expect much time to see the countryside. However, the National Youth administrator told me there was a small resident project he would like to show me, so I sallied forth with two very kind and enthusiastic young men as guides.
The fact that Illinois has risen to fifth place among oil-producing states has made a considerable change in the outlook of the people, but it does not seem to have changed greatly the fact that the farming population and mining population in this section are at a very low ebb. One of the counties near Carbondale has the greatest number of people on relief in any one county in the United States.
Most of the young men in the Youth Administration project are boys who never had an opportunity for acquiring any work skill or getting into any job which was more than a temporary day-laborer type of occupation. They are teaching some subsistence farming on this project which, from observation from the train window, I should say is very necessary. How to grow a garden, how to get as much of one's living as possible out of a small acreage, would be very valuable to miners whose work is seasonal. In any case, even when all the mines are open these boys are also given training in auto-mechanics, electrical wiring, woodworking and iron work.
They have the advantage of being near a State Teachers' college which is cooperating in every way. This college also has a large number of NYA students and has found them a valuable addition. The town itself has many monuments to WPA work—a paved and widened main street, a fine armory and several other lasting improvements. The Business Men's club seems to cooperate in all this work and has donated the land on which the new buildings are situated.
I drove through the college grounds and out to the Crab Orchard Lake project. This is a PWA project and has employed a good many persons. Flood control is evidently much needed and the possibility of creating power through a series of these projects might mean a good deal to the development of the area. There are, of course, some natural objections. People will lose their land when the lake is filled up and they do not like the countryside inundated.
It would be impossible for me to pass any judgment on their complaints, but I feel sure that careful consideration was given to them before the work was undertaken.
To our great joy Mrs. Helm drove over from Grayville, Ill., and joined us in Carbondale for a few hours. As we had received several envelopes of mail from Washington, we immediately put her to work folding and stamping letters, so she felt as though she had settled down to work a few weeks too early. We are now in Delavan, Ill., where I give a lecture tonight.
http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1939&_f=md055379
ping
“German Casualties in East Put at 150,000”
Polish propoganda? The over-reaching of the Times Correspondents? Or just the wishful thinking of the Times Editors?
The German Army suffered a total of 8,082 officers and men killed, 27,278 wounded, and 5,029 missing in its 36 days of operations in Poland.
The Germans took 694,000 prisoners of war, out of some 800,000 who had served in Poland’s defense. By their own count, they captured a total of 3,214 field pieces, 16,500 machine guns, 1,700 mortars, and enormous quantities of small arms and ammunition.
Romania is one of my least studied areas of this time; I’d like a referral to any really good materials about how events transpired there.
What I am led to believe:
Everybody had designs on Romania of one sort or another, and she was pretty much manipulated as a pawn. Romania was large and relatively agrarian, but possessed significant resources such as grain and oil, and had strategic location at the mouth of the Danube between Germany and the USSR. The Soviets coveted Bessarabia/Moldavia and the Germans coveted her oil, grain and later her peasant infantry. The British were even players for a while, trying to prop her up as an eastern bulwark against Germany.
It will be interesting to see how things play out for Romania in the coming months. The Brits will never be in serious contention because their “guarantee” to Romania was as worthless as that offered Poland. Once France fell, the offer was even less than worthless. Germany already gave the USSR a green light regarding Moldavia, and the Romanians had every justifiable fear of Stalin’s Red Army as did Poland.
That left Nazi Germany as the only acceptable “suitor” by default, and Romania became an axis co-belligerent. This despite the fact Germany appears to have had a hand in the Iron Guard coup, that Germany “gave” a slice of her land to the USSR, and despite Ribbentrop’s “Vienna Award” giving Transylvania to the hated Hungarians. Further, during the war with Russia, the Germans expected the Romanian peasant infantry to march deep into the Soviet Union and fight the Red Army, despite German industry’s unwillingness or inability to equip the Romanians with any modern weapons. The Germans then treated the Romanians like red-headed step-children for failing to stand up to the Red Army T-34 tanks with obsolete 37mm antitank guns and a few broken-down Czech T-38 tanks. They were weapons that every Russian, German and Romanian soldier knew were crap.
Such became the fate of Romania, and it appears to be a fascinating story about which a lot more could be learned.
I will defer to the ping list on that one. I know more about the subject now than I did before reading your post.
You are either getting really good at one-handed typing or you are making progress in your rehab. I hope the latter.
Not so much of the latter...yet. It was the former and it’s agonizing. I’m pretty much done for the day...
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1939/sep39/f23sep39.htm
Saturday, September 23, 1939
Germans claim Poland defeated
In Berlin... The German government issues a statement claiming that all organized fighting in Poland has ended. It states “The Polish Army of a million men has been defeated, captured, or routed. No single Polish active or reserve division escaped this fate. Only fractions of individual groups were able to avoid immediate destruction by fleeing into the swamps of eastern Poland. They succumbed there to Soviet troops. Of the entire Polish army only an insignificant remainder still is fighting at hopeless positions in Warsaw, in Modlin and on the Hela Peninsula.”
In Germany... Wireless sets are confiscated from all Jews.
On the Western Front... German forces are reported to be counterattacking with no success.
In Rome... Mussolini restates the Italian intention to remain neutral unless attacked, following a policy to “strengthen our army in preparation for any eventualities and support every possible peace effort while working in silence.” He also suggests that the “liquidation” of Poland presents an opportunity for a European peace settlement.
In Poland... In Warsaw, food supplies are running out although the determination to resist remains among the Polish garrison surrounded in the city.
In the North Atlantic... Two Finnish steamers carrying cellulose are sunk by German submarine forces.
In Panama... American states agree to a 300-mile (480 km) neutral zone off the coast of the the Americas.
In Tokyo... Admiral Nomura becomes foreign minister in General Abe’s recently appointed government. Between now and their fall in January 1940, some conciliatory moves are made toward the United States. These are not reciprocated and this strengthens the beliefs and standing of the more bellicose Japanese politicians.
In Britain... Sigmund Freud, the famed Austrian psychoanalyst, dies at 83 years of age.
I need to see about getting my tardy slip signed.
My apologies to the class - the bass have been biting the past few mornings...
These stories and more in tomorrow's issue of the Sunday New York Times.
Can you get a note from your, um, bait vendor or something?
Just to make sure you weren't working or engaging in some other unauthorized activity.
They sure as hell didn’t lose 600 planes.
What kind of bass? I do salt water Stripers, myself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largemouth_bass
Largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides)
Its exagerated by at least 33%. Here's a breakdown on the losses from The German Campaign In Poland (1939) by Robert M. Kennedy - Major, Infantry United States Army (italics are mine)
Results of the Campaign The German Army suffered a total of 8,082 officers and men killed, 27,278 wounded, and 5,029 missing in its 36 days of operations in Poland. Luftwaffe and Navy losses were much lighter. The figure on missing Army personnel can be considered as high, in view of the fact that the German Army destroyed the Polish Army and recovered most prisoners taken by organized military units.
Two hundred and seventeen tanks were destroyed during the period 1-30 September, including 89 Mark I vehicles, 83 Mark II's, 26 Mark III's, and 19 Mark IV's. Neutral sources also reported over 400 German aircraft of all types destroyed mostly by groundfire. Sustained operations over poor roads and rough terrain far ahead of maintenance facilities was extremely wearing on armored vehicles as well as trucks, requiring extensive repair work at the end of the campaign. German aircraft that participated in the campaign were in little better condition by the end of operations, having had to fly repeated sorties as the weather permitted, often from bases with only the most primitive landing and few if any maintenance facilities. The situation in the XIX Corps perhaps best exemplified the mate´riel situation by the end of operations when the entire corps was temporarily immobilized in East Prussia while its tanks, armored cars, and trucks were overhauled and repaired.
The Polish losses were staggering. The Germans claimed 694,000 prisoners of war, out of some 800,000 who had served in Poland's defense; the remainder were killed, captured by the Russians, had fled into Romania or Hungary, or had hidden in isolated areas of their own country. The Germans, by their own count, captured a total of 3,214 field pieces, 16,500 machine guns, 1,700 mortars, and enormous quantities of small arms and ammunition. The captured ordnance and other matériel was not considered suitable for issue by Wehrmacht standards, but could be put to use by Germany's various satellites.
That number for aircraft is for every flavor that was in theater and most likely includes accidents as well as combat losses.
Can this beat up old “C” student sit next to you smart guys?
Can this beat up old “C” student sit next to you smart guys?
Only if you don’t double post.
"It apparently was a toss up, however, whether the Grench or the Germans who will take the initiative."
I'll bet in a few months, those Grench will be trying to steal Christmas.
The mud might be hard on the trucks and tanks though
I found #7 to be pretty sad. Was their mayor executed?
Wiki — His fate remains unknown. According to the most probable version he was transferred to Moabit prison in Berlin and then to Dachau concentration camp where he died. However, several accounts assume that he was either transferred to a potash mine in Baelberge or that he was held hostage in Warsaw until the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. The most probable date of his death is October 17, 1943 (shot to death in the Dachau concentration camp), although other versions mention August 1944 (Warsaw), 1944 (Baelberge), 1943 (Spandau prison) or January 1940 (Dachau).
Interesting. I assumed that government officials in Poland would have all been executed rather swiftly.
Those "A" students have to sit up front, and answer hard questions every day.
Us "C" students can sit in the back, where we usually don't get called on. Indeed, sometimes we even come in late and teacher doesn't notice. ;-)
Oh, go ahead -- move up front if you want. But we'll keep a seat open for you back here, just in case... ;-) !!!
But I do anyway, as it gives me a chance to both think of, and remember* so many folks with gave everything for the cause of liberty. (while hell was in session)
*And send up a prayer for their souls.
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