Posted on 12/26/2012 6:47:37 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate
#1 - “White Christmas” - Bing Crosby
#2 – “When the Lights Go On Again All Over the World” - Vaughn Monroe
#3 - “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” - Kay Kyser, with Glee Club
#4 - “There Are Such Things” - Tommy Dorsey, with Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers
#5 - “Mister Five by Five” – Harry James, with Helen Forrest
#6 - “I Had the Craziest Dream” - Harry James, with Helen Forrest
#7 – “Juke Box Saturday Night” - Glenn Miller, with Ray Eberly and the Modernaires
#8 - “Serenade in Blue” - Glenn Miller, with Ray Eberly and the Modernaires
#9 – “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” Spike Jones, with Carl Grayson
#10 - “Dearly Beloved” - Dinah Shore
* There were two stories under this headline but I only saved the one from London-HJS.
* There were two stories under this headline but I only saved the one from London-HJS.
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1942/dec42/f26dec42.htm
German Army Group Don retreating
Saturday, December 26, 1942 www.onwar.com
On the Eastern Front... Manstein’s forces are in full retreat south the Don River, the Soviet advance nears Kotelnikovo.
In Free French North Africa... General Giraud is chose as French High Commissioner. Admrial Darlan’s assassin is executed.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm
December 26th, 1942
NORWAY: Clergy read from the pulpit a message attacking Nazi persecution of the Jews.
U.S.S.R.: German forces south of the Don, under Manstein, are in full retreat as the Soviet advance nears Kotelnikovo.
ALGERIA: Algiers: General Henri Giraud has been chosen as French High Commissioner for North Africa. The appointment was made by the French imperial council here, but the choice was approved by the Allied High Command.
Spokesman for General Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the Free French in London, commented favourably on Giraud’s appointment yesterday, although Giraud is a potential rival to de Gaulle with whom he has a chilly relationship.
Bonnier de la Chapelle, the assassin of Admiral Darlan is executed by firing squad.
FRENCH SOMALILAND: Free French troops enter the colony from British Somaliland and take the railway between Djibouti and Addis Ababa.
SOLOMON ISLANDS: Guadalcanal: The US XIV Corps, backed by artillery and air power, is facing fierce resistance on Mount Austen as it advances from Henderson Field. Major-General Alexander Patch, whose XIV Corps relieved the Marines on 9 December, says that possession of Mount Austen is vital to any future offensive. His troops, clearing enemy positions, say that malaria and hunger are rife among the Japanese, a sure sign that their supplies are running low with few Japanese ships able to outrun the US naval blockade.
CANADA: Corvette HMCS Sudbury arrived Liverpool, Nova Scotia for refit. (Dave Shirlaw)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: The British destroyers HMS HESPERUS and HMS VANESSA, escorting convoy HX-219, sink U-357 NW of Ireland, in position 57.10N, 15.40W, by depth charges.
Canadian-escorted convoy ONS-154 loses 14 ships to German U-boats in mid-Atlantic; gets 32 to Britain by Dec 30. (Dave Shirlaw)
"Abraham Stern, a Polish Jew who left to study at the Hebrew University in Palestine, founded the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (FFI), a guerrilla organization designed both to promote Jewish emigration to Palestine and secure Israel's independence.
Known to the British as the "Stern Gang," the FFI was widely regarded in Britain as one of the most active and extreme groups working for the establishment of a Jewish state."
“Admrial Darlan’s assassin is executed.”
Per Wiki, in Dec. 1945, a French court ruled that Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle assassinated Darlan in the effort to free France.
I guess that’s the French version of a posthumous pardon.
"Who ordered the admiral's death is a question that still stirs speculation, over sixty years later, and remains unsolved. His assassin, an idealistic young French aristocrat named Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle, was a member of a royalist group, but there was no convincing reason why the death of Admiral Darlan would help in any way to bring the comte de Paris to the throne as king of France. Bonnier de la Chapelle had also been a member of one of the resistance cells organized by Robert Murphy; this fact prompted the suspicion that having used Darlan ('They squeezed me like a lemon,' as Darlan had complained), the Americans, with or without British connivance (l'Albion perfide again), had arranged to get rid of him, but no proof exists. Bonnier de la Chapelle, believing that his execution would be faked and that he would eventually reemerge from hiding as a national hero, was given a hasty and perfunctory trial, found guilty, and, surely to his surprise, shot by a firing squad - his coffin had been prepared before the trial had begun. The answers to any questions on the subject of Darlan's murder went to the grave with him, as they were no doubt intended to. Darlan received a full state funeral, with Ike and his staff in the congregation at the cathedral in Algiers, as well as Harold Macmillan, recently arrived from London as minister of state and Winston Churchill's adviser to Ike. Macmillan, with brutal political realism, gave Darlan his ultimate epitaph: 'Once bought, he stayed bought.'"
Michael Korda, Ike: An American Hero
As the flashes of gunfire die away to the southwest, the Germans of 6th Army know it’s over....
If you were a German soldier who managed to survive to surrender at Stalingrad you still only had about a 5% chance of seeing Germany again.
On an earlier post, someone commented that Paulus should have accepted the early surrender offer, which on its face contained humane terms. I for one do not believe the Soviets would have honored the terms of such an offer. It was not consistent with how they treated German POWs at any other time during the war. In fact, I don’t believe they were capable of honoring the terms of the offer even if they had wanted to. About 85,000 Germans survived until late January when they surrendered, and their numbers overwhelmed the Soviet’s ability to deal with them. That’s why so many died fairly quickly. I doubt the Soviets could have provided decent treatment to three times that number originally encircled.
It worked both ways in that brutal war between dictators. To some extent, they hated each other and the POWs were going to suffer and die. To some extent, neither side cared enough to spare the resources necessary to take care of the massive numbers they seized. They were too busy killing the rest who were still fighting.
I agree with your comments. The savagery of the fighting on the Eastern Front was terrible. Of course, the Germans asked for it the way they raped Eastern Europe and Western Russia.
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