DAVIS QUITS AS FOOD CHIEF, BLAMING DIVIDED AUTHORITY; 2 GREEK AIRDROMES BOMBED (6/29/43)

Microfilm-New York Times archives, Monterey Public Library | 6/29/43 | Drew Middleton, Henry Shapiro, Hanson W. Baldwin, Ira Wolfert

[Homer_J_Simpson]

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[Homer_J_Simpson]

Free Republic University, Department of History presents World War II Plus 70 Years: Seminar and Discussion Forum
First session: September 1, 2009. Last date to add: September 2, 2015.
Reading assignment: New York Times articles delivered daily to students on the 70th anniversary of original publication date. (Previously posted articles can be found by searching on keyword “realtime” Or view Homer’s posting history .)
To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by freepmail. Those on the Realtime +/- 70 Years ping list are automatically enrolled. Course description, prerequisites and tuition information is available at the bottom of Homer’s profile. Also visit our general discussion thread.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Continued from yesterday.

Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Regular airmail from Camp Cable.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Subsidies At Issue – 2-3
War News Summarized – 3
Naples Also Raided (Middleton) – 4
U.S. Bombers Rock St. Nazaire Again – 4
Our Submarines Send Down 2 Warships, Big Transport – 5
Army Plans Taking War to Japan with ‘Violent, Destructive Impact’ – 6
100,000 Died in Leningrad Siege; People Fought Off 300,000 Nazis (Shapiro) * – 6
Invasion Training: Our Men Prepare for the Day on the Sea, In the Air and On Land (photos) – 7-8
Pantelleria-II (Baldwin) – 10
Japanese Radio Attacks Morale of Men on Guadalcanal with Tales of Home Folk (Wolfert) – 10
The Texts of the Day’s Communiques on Fighting in Various Zones – 11-13

* 100,000? 10 times that is probably closer to the truth.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1943/jun1943/f29jun43.htm

Japanese miss New Georgia invasion fleet
Tuesday, June 29, 1943 www.onwar.com

In the Solomon Islands... A squadron of American cruisers and destroyers shells the Japanese base at Shortland while other vessels lay mines in the area. A US convoy heading for New Georgia is sighted by the Japanese but it is mistakenly believed to be carrying supplies to Guadalcanal.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/thismonth/29.htm

June 29th, 1943 (TUESDAY)

UNITED KINGDOM:

VIII Bomber Command flies Mission Number 70:
108 B-17s are dispatched against the air depot at Villacoublay, France and another 40 against the airfield at Tricqueville, France; neither group hits the target due to heavy cloud cover and they return to base claiming 0-3-3 Luftwaffe aircraft; 14 B-17s are damaged.
Another 84 B-17s are dispatched against the aeroengine works at Le Mans, France; 76 hit the target between 1959 and 2003 hours local. Both of the two YB-40s dispatched as escorts are forced to abort.

The lack of success of the YB-40s in this and previous missions in June 43 convinces Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker, Commanding General Eighth Air Force, that if the escort bomber is to succeed it must be able to carry bombs and must be endowed with the same flight performance as the B-l7.(Jack McKillop)

London: Germany is reported to have recalled all U-boats in anticipation of the Allied invasion of Europe.

London: The award of the Albert Medal is gazetted in London to AB Eynon Hawkins (b.1920), RN, who organized a group of fellow survivors in the water pending their rescue, keeping them from their blazing merchantman and helping two men in trouble.

Corvette HMCS Copper Cliff (ex HMS Hever Castle) laid down Blyth.

Submarine HMS Stoic commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)

GERMANY: Due to technical problems U-270 had break off her patrol and return to base

U-1104 laid down

U-863 launched. (Dave Shirlaw)

NEW GUINEA: Maj-Gen Teru Okabe is replaced by Maj-Gen Chuichi Muroya as Infantry Detachment Commander of 51 Division IJN. Muroya is also put in charge of the Salamaua area by Nakano, with III/66 Battalion and 102 Regiment. Colonel Araki keeps control of the Mubo area with 66 Regiment at Mubo itself and III/102 Battalion still on flank guard duty at Nassau Bay. (Michael Alexander)

SOLOMON ISLANDS: US cruisers and destroyers bombard positions at the Japanese naval base at Shortland in the Northern Solomon Islands. The force consisted of four cruisers and four destroyers of Task Unit 36.2.1. Their targets were the Vila-Stanmore area and Vila Airfield on Kolombangara Island, the Japanese naval base in the Shortland Islands and the Buin-Shortland area on Bougainville Island.

Also that night, Task Unit 36.2.2, the light minelayers USS Breese (DM-18), USS Gamble (DM-15) and USS Preble (DM-20) lay mines off the Shortland Islands and Bougainville; USS Gamble also lays mines off New Georgia Island. (Jack McKillop)

U.S.A.: ALEUTIAN ISLANDS: Naval Auxiliary Air Facility (NAAF) Shemya, Alaska, on Shemya Island, is commissioned. The Navy facility consists of a seaplane ramp and barracks for 12 officers and 132 enlisted men. (Jack McKillop)

U.S.A.: The motion picture “Best Foot Forward” is released in the U.S. This musical, based on a Broadway play and directed by Edward Buzzell, stars Lucille Ball, Gloria De Haven, June Allyson and Harry James and his band. A cadet at a military school invites movie star Lucille Ball to a dance and her publicity hungry agent convinces her to go. The trouble begins when the cadet’s girlfriend also shows up. (Jack McKillop)

The USN and USAAF finally got their acts together and issued a joint instruction, Army-Navy Aeronautical Specification AN-1-9a, dated 29 June, with the effective date of 1 September 1943, specifying the addition of white horizontal triangles to the national star insignia. The whole insignia was to be outlined in red. (Jack McKillop)

Destroyer escorts USS Greenwood and Finch laid down

Destroyer escorts USS Eisele, Newell and Rhodes launched.

Destroyer USS Sigourney commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)

[BroJoeK]

---

June 29, 1943:

• June 25: "Armed Jewish resistance occurs at Lvov, Ukraine, and at Czestochowa, Poland.

• "A new crematorium opens at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

• June 29: "South of Warsaw, five Poles are shot for hiding four Jews.
  The latter also are shot.

• "At the Biala-Waka labor camp near Vilna, Lithuania, 67 inmates are shot as reprisal for the escape of six Jews to a nearby forest."

The Technology of Death

"Inaccessible to Western scholars until the USSR's collapse, File -19/9 of the Red Army's intelligence branch came to historian Gerald Fleming's attention in May 1993.
It contained information about Kurt Prüfer, Fritz Sander, and other German engineers employed by Topf und Söhne (Topf and Sons), whose products included crematorium furnaces in Nazi camps at Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen, Gross-Rosen, and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

"In late 1944 the Germans destroyed equipment and records at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but that death factory was too big to cover up.
When the Red Army liberated the camp two months later, the massive evidence contained, in Fleming's words, details about 'the construction of the technology of mass death, complete with the precise costs of crematoria and calculations of the number of corpses each could incinerate in a day.'
Thus, beyond documenting the Red Army's arrest of Prüfer and Sander, File -17/9 contained transcripts of the interrogations that followed.

"The construction of Auschwitz-Birkenau's four carefully planned gas chamber-crematorium units took considerable time, largely because of wartime building constraints.
Topf was only one of 11 civilian companies needed to produce them.
Utilizing prisoner labor, building began in the summer of 1942, but it was nearly a year before the last facility was operational.
Each included an undressing room, a gas chamber, and a room containing Topf's incineration ovens.
These lethal places were designed to dispatch thousands of Jews per day.
Even so, Prüfer told his Red Army interrogators that 'the [crematorium] bricks were damaged after six months because the strain on the furnaces was colossal.'

" 'From 1940 to 1944,' Prüfer stated, '20 crematoria for concentration camps were built under my direction.'
His work took him to Auschwitz five times, and he knew that 'innocent human beings were being liquidated' there.
So did one of Prüfer's superiors, Sander, a crematorium ventilation specialist whose work for Topf took him to Auschwitz three times.
Red Army interviews show that Sander submitted plans in late 1942 for a crematorium with even greater capacity.
Although never built, it would have used 'the conveyor-belt principle,' he explained.
'That is to say, the corpses must be brought to the incineration furnaces without interruption.'
His duty, Sander claimed on March 7, 1946, had been to use his 'specialist knowledge...to help Germany win the war, just as an aircraft-construction engineer builds airplanes in wartime, which are also connected with the destruction of human beings.'

"Less than three weeks later, Sander died in Red Army custody, the victim of a heart attack.
Sentenced to '25 years deprivation of liberty,' Prüfer died of a brain hemorrhage on October 24, 1952."

---

[PAR35]

I wonder if the Guardian (page 7) will mount a similar defense of Churchill when the socialists depose him later in the war.

[henkster]

I never bought into the German citizens claiming they “didn’t know” about the Holocaust. There was far too much infrastructure to keep it secret. Not only did the crematoria engineers and employees know, I believe the greatest source of common knowledge of the camps was from the railway workers. Every guy who ever made the “Auschwitz run” had to know what was going on. So all of the railway workers knew from what they heard. And since everything moved by rail, the number of people employed in the rail industry had to be quite large. Everyone had a family member or knew someone who worked for the Reichsbahn.

Yeah, they all knew. But it was too horrible to admit it to themselves.

[BroJoeK]

henkster: "Yeah, they all knew.
But it was too horrible to admit it to themselves."

I'd put it this way:
Some knew little or nothing.
Many more knew "something".
Very, very few knew everything.

[henkster]

I think they knew the Jews and other “undesirables” were being murdered. But as you say, only a very few knew all of the details.

[colorado tanker]

It still sickens me to read such matter of fact accounts by Germans of what they were doing or proposing.

Goebbels was one of those who knew everything. A few weeks ago he said they would go down as the greatest heroes or greatest criminals in history. He really should have known how that would turn out.