Some interesting stuff on WWII.

[the ringo kid]

This will not be done with one post because of all the pages I have to go through and info credited to proper folks when available. Anyway, I had a 1960 printing of: Thge American Heritage Pictorial History of WWII, that was in very bad shape and recently fell apart. Anyway, none of the following words are mine starting with the attack on Poland. Im not sure who this German Army, army commander was but is from his own thoughts and a visit made by Adolf Hitler.

The first shell landed 50 yards ahead of my command vehicle, the 2nd about 50 yards behind it. I reckoned that the next one was bound to be a direct hit and ordered my driver to turn about and drive off. The unaccustomed noise had made him nervous, however, and he drove straight into a ditch at full speed. The front axle of the half track vehicle was bent so that the steering mechanism was put out of action. This marked the end of my drive. I made my way to the corps command post, procured a fresh vehicle and had a word with the over-eager artillerymen....

On the 4th of September the noose was tightened about the encircled enemy. The battle for the corridor was approaching its end..... The troops had fought brilliantly and were in good spirits. The casualties among our other ranks were small, but our losses of officers had been disproportionately heavy, for they had thrown themselves into battle with the greatest devotion to duty. General Adam, State Secretary von Weizsacker, and Col. Freiherr von Funk, had each lost a son.

On the 5th of September our corps had a surprise visit from Adolf Hitler. I met him near Plevno on the Tuchel-Schwetz road, got into his car, and drove with him along the line of our previous advance. We passed the destroyed Polish artillery, went through Schwetz, and then, following closely behind our encircling troops, drove to Graudenz where he stopped and gazed for sometime at the blown bridges over the Vistula. At the sight of the smashed artillery regiment, Hitler had asked me: 'Our dive bombers did that?" When I replied, ''No, our panzers!" he was plainly astonished...... We drove back through parts of the 23rd and 2nd (Motorized) Infantry Divisions. During the drive we discussed at the first coarse of events in corps area. Hitler asked about the casualties. I gave him the latest figures I had, some 150 dead and 700 wounded for Al the four divisions under my command during the Battle of the Corridor. He was amazed at the smallness of these figures, and contrasted them with the casualties of his own regiment, the List Regiment, during the first world war: on the first day of battle that one regiment alone had lost more than 2,000 dead and wounded. I was able to show him that the smallness of our casualties in this battle against a tough and courageous enemy was primarily due to the effectiveness of our tanks. Tanks are a life-saving weapon. The men's belief in the superiority of their armored equipment and the greatly strengthened by their successes in the Corridor. The enemy had suffered the total destruction of between two and three infantry divisions and one cavalry brigade. Thousands of prisoners and hundreds of guns had fallen into our hands.......

Our conversion turned on technical matters. Hitler wanted to know what had proved particularly satisfactory about ouyr tanks and what was still in need of improvement. I told him that tgev most important thing now was to hasten the delivery of Panzers lll and IV to the fighting troops and to increase the production of these tanks. For their further development their present speed was sufficient, but they needed to be more heavily armored, particularly in front, the range and power of penetration of their guns also needed to be increased, which would mean longer barrels and a shell with a heavier charge. This applied equally to out anti-tank guns.

With a word of recognition for the troops ' achievements Hitler left us as dusk was falling and returned to his headquarters.

It was noteworthy Thar the civilian population, which was reemerginf from its hiding places now that the fighting was over, cheered as Hitler drove past and brought him flowers. The town of Schwetz was decorated with our national colors. The impression made by his visit on the troops was a good one.....

Meanwhile the fourth army under General-Oberst von Kluge had caught up with us, and we were once again placed under its command...... Fourth Army now ordered that XIX Army Corps move forward, one division to go south, one to go east towards Bialystok. Such a move would have split the corps and would have made all attempts at command impossible. The appearence of the Russians rendered these orders obsolete before they could be carried out.

As a forerunner of the Russians, a young officer in an armored recon car, who informed us that a Russian Tank Brigade was on its way. Then we recieved information concerning the demarcation libbie which the Foreign Ministry had agreed; this surrendered Brest to the Russians, since the Bug was to be the boundary. We did not regard this as a very advantageous decision, and finally we were informed that we had only until 22nd of September in which to evacuate the territory east of the line of demarcation. This was so little time that we could not even move all oiur wounded to recover our damaged tanks. It seems unlikely that any soldier was present when the agreement about the demarcation line and the cease fire was drawn up.




Kind of an update....


The then 2nd Motorized Inf. Division, would later become the 12th Panzer Division. This division in Poland was commanded by: GenLt. Ludwig Cruewell, then by: GenLt. Josef Harpe, in 1940. A bit of history on them as an I.D. was created in Stettin in 1921 and made up of Prussians. In 1934-5, it was reorganized to include the, 5th, 25th and 92nd Inf. Rgmts. Reformed again in 36-37, as a Motorized I.D. The 2nd fought in Poland and in France-where it was part of Wietersheims XIV corps. Fall of 1940 was when they were reorganized as a Panzer Division. I'll skip the rest of their history since it was nothing to do with the above.

23rd I.D.

The general commanding in Poland not listed but I think was: Generalmajor, Horst von Mellenthin till 1943. Actions including Poland and France and must have taken heavy casualties because it was rebuilt in 42 then reorganized as the 26th Panzer Division.

 

[jlrhiner]

Wild guess? Guderian or Von Manteuffel.

Great post!

 

[fordson]

Agree: Guderian. He had 19th Corp which fell under Von Kluge's Fourth Army.
Really good post. Thanks ringo.

 

[the ringo kid]

Wild guess? Guderian or Von Manteuffel.

Great post!

I doubt Hasso von Manteuffel, but is possible this was Guderian.. His tanks were in Poland, and in my personal photos collection, shows many from his units in them, but he was elsewhere. If I had my German order of battle book with me, I could easily find out who this general was.

 

[the ringo kid]

Agree: Guderian. He had 19th Corp which fell under Von Kluge's Fourth Army.
Really good post. Thanks ringo.

Quite welcome and more to come before I leave.

 

[the ringo kid]

Contd.

Author of this exact piece is unkn.

The Winter the War Stood Still.

The French Army showed no desire to attack Hitler's Siegfried Line of defences, nor did the Germans act at all aggressive, and so the fall and winter of 1930-40 produced one of the strangest interludes of the war. An American senator dubbed it Teh phony war; to the Germans it was the Sitzkrieg. Opposing troops often worked and rested in plain sight of each other, like the French poilus at right ( photograph I can't post) outposts were reduced to tokens; German supplies moved up to the Rhine-side railroad undisturbed by the French big guns just across the river. But while Hitler was only pausing to repair the wear and tear of the Polish campaign, the French and British seemed to think that somehow they might still find a way out without actual fighting. Field Marshal (then general) Montgomery told how Chamberlain came to France in December and asked Montgomery hopefully if he did not agree that the Germans really had no intention of attacking. And back in England, the prevailing mood of unbelligerency was expressed in a less-than-immortal ditty of the day.

Comical song about the Siegfried Line:

We're Gonna Hang Out The Washing On The Siegfried Line
(because the Siegfried Line is still there) This song is on YouTube if anyone wants to hear it?

The below by, Edward R. Murrow.

September 10 1940.

....We are told today that the Germans believe Londoners, after awhile, will rise up and demand peace with Germany. It's more probable that they will rise up and murder a few German pilots who comedown by parachute. The life of a parachutist would not be worth much in the east end of London tonight.

The politicians who caller this a ''peoples war'' were right, probably more right than they knew at the time. I've seen some horrible sights in this city during these days and nights, but not once have I heard man, woman, or child suggest that Britain should throw in her hand.

These people are angry. How much can they stand, I dont know. The strain is very great. The prospect for the Winter, when some way must be found to keep the water out of the shelters and a little heat inside, is not pleasant. Nor will it be more pleasant in Germany, where winters are generally more severe than on this green island. After found days and nights of this air Blitzkrieg, I think the people here are rapidly becoming veterans, even as their army was hardened in the fire of Dunkerque.

Many people have already got over the panicky feeling that hit everyone in the nerve centers when they realized they were being bombed. The people I talked to in long queues in front of the big public shelters tonight were cheerful and somewhat resigned. They'd be waiting in line for an hour or more, waiting for the shelters to open at the first wail of sirens. They had no private shelters of their own, but they carried blankets to throw over the chairs in this public underground refuge. Their sleep tonight will be fitful as you could expect in such quarters without beds. Of course, they don't like the situation, but most of them feel that even this underground existence is preferable to what they'd get under German domination.

All the while strong efforts are being made to remind the British subjects who live underground that RAF bombers are flying in the other direction and that the Germans are having a rough time of it, too. For instance, tonight's British news broadcast led off with a long detailed statement about last nights RAF air raids against Germany---docks at Wilhelmshaven, Hamburg, Bremen and Kiel were bombed again, a power station in Brussels wrecked, and a gasworks on the outskirts of Lorraine set afire. Docks and shipping at Calais, Ostend, Flushing and Boulogne were also bombed.

 

[the ringo kid]

Edward R. Murrow contd.

October 10, 1940.

This is London, ten minutes before five in the morning. Tonight's raid has been widespread. London is again the main target. Bombs have been reported from more than fifty districts. Raiders have been over Wales in the west, the Midlands, Liverpool, the southwest, and northeast. So far as London is concerned, the outskirts appear to have suffered the heaviest pounding. The attack has decreased in intensity since the moon faded from the sky.

All the fires were quickly brought under control. That's a common phrase in the morning communiqués. I've seen how its done,; spent a night with the London fire brigade. For three hours after the nights attack got going, I shivered in a sandbag crows nest atop a tall building near the Thames. It was one of many fire-observation posts. There was an old gun barrel mounted above a round table marked off like a compass. A stick of incendiaries bounced off rooftops about three miles away. The observer took a site on a point where the first one fell, swung his gun sight along the line of bombs, and took another reading at the end of the line of fire. Then he picked up his telephone and shouted above the half gale that was blowing up there, ''Stick of incendiaries-between 190 and 220 --about three miles away.''

Five minutes later a German bomber came boring down the river. We could see his exhaust trail like a pale ribbon stretched across the sky. Half a mile down streamthere were two eruptions and then a third, close together. The first two looked like some giant had thrown a huge basket of flaming golden oranges in the air. The third was just a balloon of fire enclosed in black smoke above the housetops. The observer didn't bother with his gun sight and indicator for that one. Just reached for his night glasses, took one quick look, picked up his telephone, and said, ''Two high explosives and one oil bomb,'' and named the street where they had fallen.

There was a small fire going off to our left. Suddenly sparks showered up from it as though someone had punched the middle of a huge campfire with a huge tree trunk. Again the gun sight swung around, the bearing was read, and the report went down the telephone lines, ''There is something in high explosives on that fire at 59,"

There was peace and quiet inside for 20 minutes. Then a shower of incendiaries came down far in the distance. They didn't fall in a line. It looked like the flashes from an electric train on a wet night,only the engineer was drunk and driving his train in circles through the streets. One sight at the middle of the flashes and our observer reported laconically, ''Breadbasket at 90 --covers a couple of miles.'' Half an hour later a string of firebombs fell right beside the Thames. Their white glare was reflected in the black, lazy water near the banks and faded out in midstream where the moon cut a golden swath broken only by the arches of famous bridges.

We could see little men shovelling those firebombs into the river. One burned for a few minutes like a beacon right in the middle of a bridge. Finally those white flames all went out. No one bothers about the white light, its only when it turns yellow that a real fire has started.

I must have seen well over a hundred firebombs come down and only three small fires were started. The incendiaries aren't so bad if there is someone there to deal with them, but those oil bombs present more difficulties. As I watched those white fires flame up and die down, watched the yellow blazes grow dull and and disappear, I thought, what a puny effort is this to burn down a great city. Finally, we weren't below to a big ROM underground. It was quiet. Women spoke softly into telephones. There was a big map of London on the wall. Little colored pins were being moved from one point to another and every time a pin was moved it meant that fire pumps were on the way through the black streets of London to a fire. One district had asked for reinforcements from another, just as an army reinforces its front lines in the sector bearing the brunt of the attack. On another maps all of the observation posts, like the one I just left were marked.......

We picked a fire from the map and drove to it. And the map was right. It was a small fire in a warehouse near the river. Not much of a fire; only ten pumps working it, but still big enough to be seen from the air. The searchlights were bunched overhead and as we approached we could hear the drone of a German plane and see the burst of antiaircraft fire directly overhead. Two pieces of shrapnel slapped down in the water and then everything was drowned in the him of the pumps and the sound of hissing water. Those firemen in their oilskins and tin hats appeared oblivious to everything but the fire. We went to another blaze-----just a small two-story house down on the East End. A incendiary had gone through the ROF and the place was being gutted. A woman stood on a corner, clutching a rather dirty pillow. A policeman was trying to comfort her. And a fireman said, ''You'd be surprised what strange things people pick up when they are running out of a burning house.''

And back at headquarters I saw a man laboriously and carefully copying names in a big ledger--the list of firemen killed in action during the last month. There were about a hundred names.

 

[HOUSTON RICK]

"The French officers with their soldiers eagerly surrendered as quickly as they could, whole units at a time; meanwhile, the roads were clogged with the abandoned vehicles and material left behind by their retreating brethren. It was this mass of abandoned material and equipment clogging the roads that delayed our advance to Paris, not the evaporating French Army".

 

[yashua-p]

For Murrow, that is reporting the news. Thanks for these posts.

regards

yashua

 

[the ringo kid]

For Murrow, that is reporting the news. Thanks for these posts.

regards

yashua

Thanks, and I still need to finish Murrows report above. Still have about three columns to complete.

 

[the ringo kid]

Author unkn.

The surprise was total. Soldierrs were taking their Sunday ease outside their billets, sailors were sauntering along the decks of their moored vessels. When the first enemy aircraft swept out of the morning haze above Diamondhead, few people paid attention. Passengers on an incoming American airliner were pleased to be able to witness what they thought to be remarkably realistic prepatory exercises. Then the intruders levelled off. The torpedo planes, armed with special shallow-running devices, headed for the moored battleships, their prime targets. High-flying bombers blasted crowded Hickam Field. A group of unarmed U.S. planes coming in from the mainland found itself caught in the meelee.

Six great battleships--West Virginia, Tennessee, Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma and California-were sunk or seriously damaged. Our Air Corps was left with only sixteen serviceable bombers. American striking power in the PaCific was virtually paralyzed.

Tokyo newspapers proclaimed Thar the United States had been reduced to a third-claass power. The American people were stunned. The next day, President Roosevelt told a joint session of Congress that December 7th was ''A date which will live in infamy,'' and Senate voted unanimously for war.There was one dissent in the House--from Montana's Jeannette Rankin, a pacifist who said she wanted to show that a ''good democracy'' does not always vote unanimously for war. Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war, and Congress passed a joint resolution accepting the state of war, ''which has ben thrust upon the United States.''

The Japanese onslaught continued with simultaneous attacks against Hong Kong, Malaya, and the Philippines, where the American far east air corps was crippled in a catastrophe almost as has as that at Pearl Harbor, and one for which there was even less excuse, for there had been sufficient and accurate advance notice. General MacArthur had reason to expect an assault on at least Luzon. Nevertheless, Japanese planes succeeded in destroying eighteen of the thirty five Flying fortresses and twenty-five other planes at Clark Field, as well as fifty six fighters and twenty five other planes. They lost only seven aircraft in the process. Within three weeks, strong amphibious forces under Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma had landed on the northern and southers shores of Luzon and were driving on Manila. The United States Asiatic Fleet withdrew with large convoys of merchant shipping to safer and more southerly waters. By January 2nd, 1942, Manilla had fallen, and American and Philippine troops were retreating to the Bataan Peninsula.

While the United States reeled from these savage blows, the Japanese unleashed a multiple offensive on the Asian mainland. The Indochinese colonies of defeated France had already been occupied; now it was Britain's turn. Native populations under the empire were restive, if not actually hostile, and as the hitherto dominant Whits tuans faltered, the Asiatic peoples proved willingly subject to Japanese propaganda. The Royal Navy adhered to obsolete tactics. Hong Kong was entirely isolated and fell on Christmas Day. Singapore, vaunted island citadel of the Orient, had all its guns and fortifications facing seaward and lay open to the Malayan land side, from which the attack developed. Wearing sneakers, carrying small sacks of rice, venerating their Emporer, and believing implicitly in their commanders, some 200,000 Japanese soldiers rushed like lizards through the Malayan jungle. The British kept falling back, only to find their enemy had already installed behind them. ''Its like trying to build a wall out of quicksand,'' said one despairing officer. Within sixweeks the jJapanese had taken the peninsula. The British withdrew into Singapore, swarming with refugees, but Sir Arthur Percival, the commanding general, found himself outnumbered and outmaneuvered. With more than 70,000 men, he surrendered on February 15, 1942. It was the worst military disaster suffered by any European nation in the Orient.

 

[the ringo kid]

Already established in French Indochina with the helpless permission of Vichy's Governer General, the Japanese swarmed southward across Malaya toward the Dutch East Indies and far-off Australia, and westward over Thailand to Burma and the edge of India. In Burma the British were aided by a Chinese force under Chiang Kaishek's chief of staff, the redoubtable American general ''Vinegar Joe Stilwell. But his troops were soon cut off and had to make a difficult forced march out of Burma to northeast India. Stilwell confessed in his usual unabashed fashion: ''The Japs ran us out of Burma. We took a hell of a beating.!" The Burmese, like many other Asians, were pleased to see the Western overlords defeated. A Tokyo newspapers, commenting on the extent of collaboration in Mandalay, observed: ''We do not have to reward our friends with posts in the government. They had taken them before we arrived.''

To be continued.