Mark Scott Smith's Blog: Enemy in the Mirror, page 94

Operation Market Garden – Sept 1944

In September 1944 the Allies launched Operation Market Garden, an unsuccessful, airborne operation, fought in the Netherlands and Germany. The goal of the operation was to encircle the Ruhr valley, the center of German industry, with a pincer movement.

Including the Battle for Arnhem, Operation Market Garden, was the largest airborne battle in history. Allied forces were commanded by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery . German forces were under the command of Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model .

With thousands of aircraft and armored vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of troops, Operation Market Garden was the only major Allied defeat of the Northwest European campaign.

Perhaps due to the failure of Operation Market Garden, the Germans were able to take advantage of tactical errors and counterattack in December 1944 with the infamous Battle of the Bulge.

 

 

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Força Expedicionária Brasileira – 1944

Brazil was the only South American country to send troops to fight in WWII. Initially neutral, the government of Brazil created the Força Expedicionária Brasileira (Brazilian Expeditionary Force) of ~25,000 men in 1943 after 34 Brazilians ships were sunk near the country’s shore by U-Boats.

Early reluctance by the Brazilian government to joining the Allied war effort, fostered the popular saying: Mais fácil uma cobra fumar um cachimbo, do que a FEB embarcar para o combate = It’s more likely for a snake to smoke a pipe, than for the BEF to go the front and fight.

Beginning in 1944, the BEF infantry, naval and air force fought alongside the Allies in the Mediterranean Theatre.

Before entering battle, BEF troops, wearing a shoulder patch with a smoking cobra,  declared: A cobra ai fumar! The snake will smoke!

948 BEF troops were killed in action from 1944-45.

 

 

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Battle of Peleliu – Sep 1944

Designed to capture an airstrip on a tiny coral island, the Battle of Peleliu was fought from September to November 1944 by  the First Marine Division, and the U.S. Army’s 81st Infantry Division. Although American military planners anticipated a relatively short battle, the Japanese, with new island-defense tactics and well-crafted fortifications put up stiff resistance for two months.

2,336 Americans were killed and 8,450 wounded vs. 10,695 Japanese killed and 202 captured.

The battle of Pelieu was one of the toughest battles of the Pacific campaign.

This excellent book by Eugene Sledge provides a vivid and moving account of the battle:

We moved rapidly in the open, amid craters and coral rubble, through ever increasing enemy fire… I clenched my teeth, squeezed my carbine stock, recited over and over to myself, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me” …

The sun bore down unmercifully… Smoke and dust from the barrage limited my vision. The ground seemed to sway back and forth under the concussions. I felt as though I were floating along in the vortex of some unreal thunderstorm. Japanese bullets snapped and cracked and tracers went by me on both sides at waist height…

The farther we went, the worse it got. The noise and concussion pressed in on my ears like a vise… It seemed impossible that any of us would make it across… To be shelled by massed artillery and mortars is absolutely terrifying, but to be shelled in the open is terror compounded beyond the belief of anyone who hasn’t experienced it. The attack on Peleliu’s airfield was the worst combat experience I had during the entire war.

 

 

 

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Liberation of Paris – August 1944

ww2today.com

After a one month blitzkrieg by the Wehrmacht, Paris fell to Nazi Germany on June 14, 1940. An armistice with Germany subsequently established a French puppet government with its capital at Vichy. The Nazi occupation of Paris lasted four years until the city was liberated by the French 2nd Armored Division and the U.S. 4th Infantry Division.

In August 1944, German defense of occupied Paris was minimal and an order by Adolf Hitler to destroy the city was ignored by General Dietrich von Choltitz, the commander of the German occupying force.

 

On August 26, Free French General Charles de Gaulle led a joyous liberation march down the Champs d’Elysees.

 

 

 

 

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Warsaw Uprising 1944

The Warsaw Uprising by the Polish resistance Home Army in August 1944 occurred as the Russian Army approached the city and the Germans were retreating. Unfortunately, the Russian advance stopped short of the city, leaving the Poles (who assumed the Russians would join in the battle) to stand alone against vastly superior German forces for two months. The Germans defeated the Poles and demolished the city before the Russian advance continued.

Possible reasons for failure of the uprising included:

Soviet hostility to the Polish government in exile in the wake of the 1940 Katyn Massacre of Polish nationals carried out by the Russian NKVD
 Soviet refusal to allow Allied planes on missions to Warsaw to land on its airfields
The Teheran Conference agreement reached between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin that placed Poland within the Soviet sphere of influence

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Tojo Resigns – July 1944

Hideki Tojo , known as kamisori (the razor) for his sharp, decisive and impatient qualities, rose rapidly through the Imperial Japan’s military hierarchy. As War Minister in 1940, he promoted the righteous cause of casting off imperialist colonialization of East Asia and was strongly opposed to any negotiations with Western powers.

In October 1941 Tojo became premier of Imperial Japan and formed a new cabinet. Although he had great power, Tojo was not a dictator like Hitler or Mussolini. Senior statesmen, the army and navy general staffs, and the Emperor Hirohito, exercised considerable power over him.

In early 1944, although he acknowledged Japan was facing “the most critical situation in the history of the Empire,” Tojo remained opposed to any negotiation with the Allies.

In July 1944, with the fall of Saipan placing American bombers in range of the homeland, senior statesmen and ministers in his Cabinet forced him to step down as premier.

 

 

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Fort Lawton Riot August 1944

In August 1944, a riot broke out at Fort Lawton, Washington between Italian POWs and U.S. African-American soldiers. Dozens of men were injured before military police intervened. The next morning, an Italian POW was found hanged.

Interpretation of the riot and subsequent events, including an attempted coverup and inadequate initial criminal investigation by the Army, were highly controversial. Newspaper accounts, however, attributed the events to African-American soldiers’ resentment of lenient treatment of Italian POWs while racist practices by the Army continued.

After weeks of investigation by a legal team from the Pentagon, 43 African-American soldiers were charged with rioting. Three of them received the additional charge of murder. A Court Martial found 28 of the 43 defendants guilty of rioting and one guilty of manslaughter. An automatic appeal was rejected by the U.S. Army’s Board of Review.

At the end of the war, President Harry Truman granted clemency to the defendants and, by 1949, all were released from prison.

The 2005 book On American Soil by Jack Hamann  prompted a review by the U.S. Army Board for Correction of Military Records. The Board subsequently ruled that the prosecutor of the Fort Lawton defendants had committed “egregious error,” and all convictions should be reversed. In 2008, after efforts from Rep. Jim McDermott, President George W. Bush signed legislation allowing the Army to disburse back pay to the defendants or their survivors.

 

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Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips- 1944

This cartoon, released in April 1944, portrayed classical Western racist stereotypes of the Japanese – short, buck-toothed people wearing thick eyeglasses and talking jibberish.

At one point in the cartoon, Bugs hands out ice cream bars saying:

Here’s yours, bow legs
Here, one for you, monkey face
Here ya are, slant eyes

 

The racism of this cartoon was largely ignored until the release of  the laser disc  The Golden Age of Looney Toons, Volume 1, when Japanese-American protests forced its withdrawal from the series.

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Operation Valkyrie 1944

In July 1944,  a group of high-level German military leaders attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler and stage a coup d’état, code-named Operation Valkyrie.

Lieutenant Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, wounded veteran and chief of staff of the reserve army, left a briefcase bomb beneath a table during a meeting with Hitler at his Wolf Lair headquarters in East Prussia. Although the bomb killed one person and wounded three others, Hitler escaped with minor injuries.

With no official confirmation of Hitler’s demise, Operation Valkyrie stalled. Hundreds of people, including von Stauffenberg, were arrested, and ~200 were executed.

 

 

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Great Marianas Turkey Shoot – June 1944

The Battle of the Philippine Sea was the last large scale carrier battle the Imperial Japanese Navy was able to conduct. In the air, the sheer number of Japanese compared to U.S. losses inspired the American nickname for the battle – the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.

In addition to Japan’s lack of many experienced pilots, the lop-sided outcome of this battle has been attributed to improved American aircraft design, pilot training, tactics and technology (including the top-secret anti-aircraft proximity fuze automatic explosive device).

A proximity fuze detonates automatically when the distance to the target becomes smaller than a predetermined value. 

June 1944 – Battle of the Philippine Sea Casualties and losses

USA

1 battleship damaged

123 aircraft destroyed

109 dead

Japan

3 fleet carriers sunk

2 oilers sunk

550–645 aircraft destroyed

6 other ships damaged

~2,987 dead

               

                                                                                                               

 

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