Posted on 03/22/2013 4:51:04 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1943/mar1943/f22mar43.htm
Allied attacks checked in Tunisia
Monday, March 22, 1943 www.onwar.com
In Tunisia... The bridgehead over Wadi Zigzaou has been reinforced in the early hours of the day but a counterattack by the German 15th Panzer Division effectively ends this attack. At the Tebaga Gap, the German 21st Panzer Division and the 164th Light Division prove capable of holding the New Zealand Corps.
On the Eastern Front... The Soviets capture Durovo, northeast of Smolensk.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm
March 22nd, 1943 (MONDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: London: What might be vital intelligence has today come from a top-secret interrogation centre in Kensington Park Gardens. Two German generals captured in North Africa, Cruwell and von Thoma, were placed in a bugged room and their conversation was monitored. During it they spoke of long-range rockets being developed to strike London, and expressed surprise that the capital is not already under attack. This ties in with scraps of information from other sources, and is likely to be treated very seriously by the intelligence world.
POLAND: Auschwitz: Crematorium IV, a modern extermination plant fitted with an underground gas chamber and electric lifts to custom-built incinerator, is opened.
U.S.S.R.: Khatyn: The SS unit which swept on the Russian village of Khatyn, near Minsk, was very unusual, even by Nazi standards; it had been formed from German criminals released from concentration camps. Commanded by SS Major-General Oskar Dirlewanger, the SS men systematically murdered all but one of the 150 villagers and burned the village to the ground. The atrocity is intended to deter villagers from giving food and shelter to the partisans, about 150,000 of whom are in action behind enemy lines.
Moscow: Once again the weather has taken a decisive hand in the war in Russia. The thaw has come early this year and both armies are bogged down in the morass of mud churned up by fighting vehicles of both sides.
Where, only a few days ago, tanks could roar at full speed across the hard-frozen steppe, they are now in danger of drowning in a sea of mud, and the runways of airstrips have turned into quagmires which refuse to release aircraft. While the thaw has brought difficulties to both sides, it has hurt the Germans most by bringing von Manstein’s successful counter-offensive to a halt.
After recapturing Kharkov he had planned to cut quickly across the Donets behind the Russian armies which were still pressing west. If he had been able to do so, he night well have been caught the Red Army in a trap and produced a disaster comparable to Stalingrad. But he lost too many men and too many machines to achieve the quick result, and now General Thaw has taken command.
ITALY: SICILY: 24 B-17s bomb port facilities at Palermo. This is the first Allied bomber mission against Sicily by aircraft based in Northwest Africa. (Jack McKillop)
NORTH AFRICA: General Montgomery transfers his main attack to the Tebaga Gap in Tunisia.
RAF Hurricanes smash a Panzer counter-attack near the German’s Mareth Line.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: German submarine U-524 is sunk south of Madeira, Portugal, in position 30.15N, 18.13W, by a Consolidated B-24 Liberator of the 1st Antisubmarine Squadron (Heavy) based at Port Lyautey, French Morocco. All hands on the U-Boat are lost. (Jack McKillop)
U-665 (Type VIIC) is sunk in the North Atlantic west of Ireland in position 48.04N 10.26W by depth charges dropped by an RAF Whitley from Squadron 10OTU/Q. All 46 of the crew of U-665 are lost. (Alex Gordon)
The text of Hitler’s speech gives fascinating insight into his convoluted and distrubed state of mind at this point in the war. It drips with irony; the war started by the bolsheviks and capitalists will leave Europe in ruins if Germany doesn’t win? Partly true, partly not. It’s difficult to sift through the sewage that spewed out of this man’s mind. How much of what he said was truth, and how much lies? How much of this did he really believe, how much was he just lying about? Even more troublesome, how much of this was he lying to himself as a rationalization for what he had done and was doing? And how much did he internalize these rationalizations?
And of course, there is the question all Germans would ask for a generation afterwards: “How could we have let this happen?”
I thought the article on Woody Guthrie was interesting.
Not the first time the NYT praised a Commie.
I liked the last line of the review that 400 pages of his crap was more than enough...or something like that.
Woody Guthrie was a communist who never deviated from orders from the Kremlin. He opposed entering the war against Germany...until June 22, 1941. Then he was all for it. The funny thing is that if he’d gotten his wish and had a Stalinist Soviet regime installed in Washington, in no more than five years he’d have been lined up against the wall and shot.
I smell a rat. More on the criptic reference to the Prince of Pless:
“Daisy’s brother George in 1900 married Jennie Churchill, the mother of Winston Churchill, as his first wife, and after their divorce married in 1914 Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the actress, as his second.” The ‘Daisy’ in question was apparently the British mother of the imprisoned prince. So he’s asking about his step-cousin. Quote from Wikipedia.
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