*The “Laski Tells Social Program” story was on a part of page 9 I didn’t save – HJS.
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/7/02.htm
August 2nd, 1945 (THURSDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Plymouth: Truman has lunch with King George VI on board the battleship HMS RENOWN on his way back to the US.
Minesweeper HMS Mystic commissioned.
Submarine HMS Springer commissioned.
GERMANY: The Potsdam Conference ends.
Germany will be disarmed, divided and deprived of the power to make war by the decisions announced here today by the “Big Three” Allied powers. The conference’s report was signed by President Truman, Marshal Stalin and Clement Attlee, who succeeded Winston Churchill as prime minister after the British general election results were announced during the conference.
A council of foreign ministers is to be established to continue three-power co-operation, though much in the deliberations and the atmosphere of the conference suggested that this will be difficult.
The Big Three propose that cartels, as well as war industries, in Germany are to be broken up. Going some way to accept the controversial proposal of the US treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau Jr, the powers propose that the German economy should “give primary emphasis to agriculture” and “domestic industries.”
There is a striking difference between the treatments proposed for Italy and Germany. Italy is to be offered a peace treaty. The Germans are to be convinced “that they cannot escape responsibility for what they have brought upon themselves”. Allied reparations will be paid from German assets and major war criminals will be speedily brought to trial. Germany will lose territory to Poland and Russia.
Franco’s Spain, “having been founded with the support of the Axis powers”, will not be allowed to be a member of the United Nations. The signatories sent a message thanking Mr. Churchill for his contribution not only to the earlier stages of the conference but also to the war itself.
JAPAN: On Shimushu Island in the Kurile Islands, 5 US Eleventh Air Force B-24s visually bomb Kataoka Naval Base and 1 radar-bombs Kokutan Zaki and returns to base (600 miles or 966 km) on 3 engines.
B-29s attack Nagasaki and virtually annihilate Toyama, claiming to have sunk 26 ships.
Okinawa: Bad weather due to a typhoon cancels all Far East Air Forces missions against Japan.
While on routine patrol, the crew of a US Navy PV-1 Ventura of Patrol Bombing Squadron One Hundred Fifty Two (VPB-152), based on Peleliu, spots a large oil slick with 30 survivors in the water. Further examination of the area reveals another group of 150 survivors. An immediate call for assistance is made, with PBY Catalinas and the high speed transport USS Bassett (APD-73) soon enroute to rescue the men. This is the remainder of the crew of the USS Indianapolis (CA-35), sunk by the Japanese submarine HIJMS I-58, which had sunk without sending an SOS on 30 July, with the majority of the ship’s crew dying of exposure and shark attacks. The searches continue until 8 August.
The 316 survivors of the crew of the USS INDIANAPOLIS have been telling harrowing tales of their sinking. She was torpedoed at midnight three days ago and sank so quickly that many of the crew of 1,196 were trapped below decks and the radio officer could not send an SOS.
The chances of any of the missing 880 men being alive in the shark-infested Philippine Sea are remote.
SOUTH-WEST PACIFIC: Two USN destroyers, USS Charrette (DD-581) and USS Conner (DD-582), make radar contact with a ship which they track through the night, finding in the morning that it was the Japanese hospital ship Tachibana Maru. A search party from USS Charrette boards the ship and finds able-bodied troops and arms and ammunition in boxes marked with red crosses; the troops are made prisoners of war. A prize crew of 80 marines and sailors is placed aboard the Japanese ship and it is taken to Naval Advance Base Morotai in the Netherlands East Indies arriving on 6 August.
Off the Malay Peninsula, the USN submarine USS Bugara (SS-331), on her third war patrol, encounters a Japanese schooner manned by a Chinese crew being attacked by Malay pirates; the pirates fire at the submarine and then attempt to escape. The sub crew takes off the Chinese crew, sinks the schooner with gunfire and then pursues the pirates and disposes of them.
MARIANAS ISLANDS: Lieutenant General Nathan F Twining relieves Lieutenant General Curtis Emerson LeMay as Commanding General, Twentieth Air Force; LeMay is reassigned to the US Army Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific (USASTAF) as Chief of Staff.
CANADA: Destroyer HMCS Hamilton (ex HMS and USS Kalk) sold for scrapping in Baltimore.
U.S.A.: The top pop songs are (1) “The More I See You” by Dick Haymes; (2) “Dream” by The Pied Pipers’ (3) “Sentimental Journey” by Les Brown and his Orchestra with vocal by Doris Day: and (4) “Oklahoma Hills” by Jack Guthrie.
“Privateers” knocked down railroad bridge in Korea.
12rh Army Group dissolved! (Is that painful?)
P-80 Shooting Star makes its debut (not our first jet though)
Guard kills German POW’s... why would they rush him? Wouldn’t they have been going home soon? Their war was pretty much over.
page-8- Britons all want to go on holiday on the same day apparently.
Commies back labour... of course they do.
Pierre Laval
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Laval
Laval began his career as a socialist, but over time drifted far to the right.
........
In a speech broadcast on the Normandy landings’ D-day, he appealed to the nation:
You are not in the war. You must not take part in the fighting. If you do not observe this rule, if you show proof of indiscipline, you will provoke reprisals the harshness of which the government would be powerless to moderate. You would suffer, both physically and materially, and you would add to your country’s misfortunes. You will refuse to heed the insidious appeals, which will be addressed to you. Those who ask you to stop work or invite you to revolt are the enemies of our country. You will refuse to aggravate the foreign war on our soil with the horror of civil war.... At this moment fraught with drama, when the war has been carried on to our territory, show by your worthy and disciplined attitude that you are thinking of France and only of her.”[41]
A few months later, he was arrested by the Germans and transported to Belfort.
..............................
Laval’s trial began at 1:30 pm on Thursday, 4 October 1945. He was charged with plotting against the security of the State and intelligence (collaboration) with the enemy. He had three defence lawyers (Jaques Baraduc, Albert Naud, and Yves-Frédéric Jaffré). None of his lawyers had ever met him before. He saw most of Jaffré, who sat with him, talked, listened and took down notes that he wanted to dictate. Baraduc, who quickly became convinced of Laval’s innocence, kept contact with the Chambruns and at first shared their conviction that Laval would be acquitted or at most receive a sentence of temporary exile. Naud, who had been a member of the Resistance, believed Laval to be guilty and urged him to plead that he had made grave errors but had acted under constraint. Laval would not listen to him; he was convinced that he was innocent and could prove it. “He acted”, said Naud, “as if his career, not his life, was at stake.”[48]
All three of his lawyers declined to be in court to hear the reading of the formal charges, saying “We fear that the haste which has been employed to open the hearings is inspired, not by judicial preoccupations, but motivated by political considerations.” In lieu of attending the hearing, they sent letters stating the shortcomings and asked to be discharged from the task of defending Laval.[49]
A video of the Tachibana Maru capture:
http://www.spoilsofwar.talkingrelics.com/
At 5:58 the US Flag is raised above the Japanese Flag. I would have assumed the Jap flag would have been removed but it is a statement with it above.
at 10:30 the boxes are opened. Another report says 30 tons of ammo and weapons.
*The “Laski Tells Social Program” story was on a part of page 9 I didn’t save – HJS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Laski
During the war, he supported Prime Minister Churchill’s coalition government and gave countless speeches to encourage the battle against Germany. He suffered a nervous breakdown brought about by overwork. During the war he repeatedly feuded with other Labour leaders, and with Churchill, on matters great and small. He steadily lost his influence.[23]
In 1945 general election campaign Churchill warned that Laski—as the Labour Party chairman—would be the power behind the throne in an Attlee government. While speaking for the Labour candidate in Nottinghamshire on 16 June 1945, Laski said “If Labour did not obtain what it needed by general consent, we shall have to use violence even if it means revolution”. He was replying to a question planted by Conservatives hoping to get exactly that response. The next day accounts of Laski’s speech appeared and the Conservatives attacked the Labour Party for its chairman’s advocacy of violence. Laski filed a libel suit against the Conservative Daily Express newspaper. The defence showed that over the years Laski had often bandied about loose threats of “revolution.” The jury found for the defendant within forty minutes of deliberations.[24]
Clement Attlee gave Laski no role in the new Labour government. Even before the libel trial Laski’s relationship with Attlee was a strained one. Laski had once called Attlee “uninteresting and uninspired” in the American press and even tried to remove him by asking for Attlee’s resignation in an open letter. He tried to delay the Potsdam Conference until after Attlee’s position was clarified. He tried to bypass Attlee by directly dealing with Winston Churchill.[9] Laski tried to preempt foreign policy decisions, laying down guidelines for the new Labour government. Attlee rebuked him:
“ You have no right whatever to speak on behalf of the Government. Foreign affairs are in the capable hands of Ernest Bevin. His task is quite sufficiently difficult without the irresponsible statements of the kind you are making ... I can assure you there is widespread resentment in the Party at your activities and a period of silence on your part would be welcome.[25] ”
Though he continued to work for the Labour party until his death, he never regained political influence. His pessimism deepened as he disagreed with the anti-Soviet policies of the Attlee government in the emerging Cold War, and he was profoundly disillusioned with the conservative direction of American policy.[14]
Laski contracted influenza and died in London on 24 March 1950, aged 56.[26]