Category Archives: World War Two

Kliment Voroshilov – Defender of Leningrad

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During the 900-day siege of Leningrad, the man initially charged with the city’s defence was one of Stalin’s old favourites, Kliment Voroshilov, born this day, 4 February, in 1881. Rupert Colley summarises his efforts.

During the Second World War, the city Leningrad (modern-day St Petersburg) was in the midst of a devastating 900-day blockade that lasted from September 1941 until January 1944. The German army had laid siege to the city, bombarded it and cut off all supplies in its attempt to ‘wipe it off the map’, as Hitler had ordered.

The men in charge of the defence of Leningrad were Andrey Zhdanov and 60-year-old Kliment Voroshilov, one of Stalin’s old favourites. During the Russian Civil War, Voroshilov, working closely with Stalin, had gained a reputation for his fierce defence of Tsaritsyn (renamed Stalingrad in 1925).

Utterly reliable 

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Stalingrad

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On 2 February 1943, in what is considered the turning point of the war, the final remnants of the German army surrendered at Stalingrad.

Considered important because of its supply of oil, the symbolic significance of Stalingrad (renamed as Stalin’s city in 1925) soon outweighed its strategic importance.

Rat warfare

The Germans started the bombardment of the city on 23 August 1942 and soon after marched in, full of optimism. The Germans, Italians and Romanians fought the Soviets street for street, house for house, sometimes room for room. This, as the Germans called it, was rat warfare, where a strategic stronghold changed sides so many times, people lost count, where the front lines were so close one could throw back a grenade before it exploded, where snipers took their toll on the enemy, and where a soldier’s life expectancy was three days – if lucky.

Gradually, from November 1942, the Germans, commanded by General Friedrich von Paulus (pictured), were encircled by the Soviets who squeezed the Germans tighter and tighter. Supplies, dropped in by the Luftwaffe, were only a fraction of what was needed. As temperatures dropped to the minus forties, starvation, frostbite, disease and suicide decimated the Germans. Piles of frozen corpses were used as sandbags. Reinforcements, although sent, never came close and Paulus’ troops were too weakened to breakout from the Soviet encirclement. A few German planes landed within the city and were able to get troops out amidst scenes of panic, with hundreds of men fighting for the few remaining places whilst being shot at by the Soviets.

Unshakeable confidence

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The British wartime submarine, sunk off the coast of Malta, found after almost 70 years

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It was the early hours of 8 May 1942, seven miles off the coast of Malta. A British submarine, the HMS Olympus, hit a mine and sunk. All but nine of its 98 crew and passengers were killed. It was a wartime tragedy of epic proportions for the Royal Navy but the exact location of the wreck has always remained a mystery – until now.

The British-controlled island of Malta had become a focal point in the North African campaign of World War Two. Blockaded and pounded constantly by the might of the German and, to a lesser extent, Italian air force, the 120 square-mile island was of vital strategic importance to the British.

Homeward bound

HMS Olympus, had just gone out to sea, attempting to leave the British Naval Base in Malta’s Grand Harbour. The 283-foot submarine was heading to Gibraltar, and from there to home. The thought of escaping the ravaged isle must have been an intoxicating prospect for its war-weary crew. In the previous six weeks, three subs had been sunk, all whilst in harbour, by Italian bombers or the Luftwaffe. Continue reading →

The Irish Deserters

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The brave Irish soldiers who fought Nazism – court martialled and persecuted by their own government 

Almost 5,000 Irish soldiers fought for the British Army during the Second World War and helped defeat Hitler in Europe and the Japanese in the Far East. But they returned to Ireland with their British medals to be court martialled, persecuted and shamed. For no matter what their brave deeds and honourable motives, these men had deserted the Irish Army and as deserters they were treated.

Take, for example, Private Joseph Mullally, a 28-year-old Irishman from the town of Moate, County Westmeath in central Ireland who fought for the Green Howards, a Yorkshire regiment of the British Army. He was killed in action on D Day, the 6 June 1944, the day that Allied forces landed on the Normandy beaches of northern France and began the slow and deadly mission to push the German army right back to Berlin. The bravery of those men can never be overestimated. Many fell on that first day and Mullally was one of them. But incredibly, a year later in August 1945, Mullally was posthumously court-martialled

The Campaign for Pardon

A campaign, launched to clear the names of these men, looks close to achieving its objective. The Irish Parliament has passed it to Máire Whelan, Ireland’s first female Attorney General, for a decision.

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Death of Hideki Tojo

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On 23 December 1948, former prime minister of Japan, Hideki Tojo, was executed for war crimes.

Born in Tokyo on 30 December 1884, Hideki Tojo, son of a general, was brought up in a military environment that held little regard for politicians or civilians. An admirer of Hitler, Tojo advocated closer ties between Japan and Germany and Italy, and in September 1940, the three Axis powers signed the Tripartite Pact.

Appointed Japan’s Minister for War in July 1940, Tojo was keen to accelerate the coming of war against the US, which he viewed as a weak nation, populated by degenerate and lazy civilians. Tojo was appointed Japan’s prime minister in October 1941 and within two months had ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor, thus turning the war into a global conflict.

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Hitler’s Ledger Book

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Hitler’s book of accounts up for auction

Hitler’s personal account book is to be sold at auction in Connecticut. This 175-page handwritten ledger covers his expenses for the period 1 April 1944 to 16 April 1945, 14 days before his suicide in his Berlin bunker.

The journal, which the auction house, Alexander Autographs, claims has never been seen before, contains hundreds of entries, written in Hitler’s hand, detailing a whole range of expenses and cash payouts. Neatly organized, each page includes the date, a description, and the amount spent. Each expense is categorised and include ‘Theatre and Music, Education Facilities, Health, Paintings & Art, Buildings, Emergency Contributions, Donations, and Miscellaneous’, the latter being the most commonly used.

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The Day of Infamy

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How Japan’s hollow victory spelt the end for Hitler

Seventy years ago today, 7 December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the US. In just two hours it destroyed a large part of the US fleet docked in Pearl Harbor and, in one stroke, forever destroyed US isolationism, united the country for war and made the conflict global.

The US may have been expecting war but the attack on Pearl Harbor took it totally by surprise. Yet 11 months before, a lone voice had predicted such a possibility. On the 27 January 1941, the US ambassador in Japan, Joseph Grew, cabled the White House warning that the Japanese might ‘attempt a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor using all their military facilities’.

As 1941 wore on, the likelihood of war became more apparent but the US ignored Grew’s prediction, believing that conflict, if it came, would either start in the US-controlled Philippines or the Dutch or British possessions in Southeast Asia.

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Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya – the execution of a teenage heroine

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On this day, 70 years ago, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was executed by the Nazis.

The Nazis had invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 and by late November had surrounded and laid siege to Leningrad and were bearing down on Moscow. The Soviet authorities were recruiting volunteers to break through the German lines and operate as partisan fighters in German-occupied areas. Their task, generally, was to cause as much disruption to the German advance. It was a dangerous assignment but one which 18-year-old Zoya readily volunteered for.

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was born 13 September 1923 in the district of Tambov, about 300 miles southeast of Moscow. She was well-cultured and devoured the works of Tolstoy, Dickens, Shakespeare, Goethe and Pushkin and loved the music of Tchaikovsky and Beethoven.

Partisan

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Hospital ship torpedoed by the Nazis – the Sinking of the Armenia

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Seventy years ago in 1941, the Soviet hospital ship, the Armenia, was torpedoed and sunk by the Nazis. It was one of the worse maritime disasters in history. All but eight of the 7,000 passengers perished on a ship designed for not more than a thousand. A comparatively modest 1,514 died on the Titanic (1912) and 1,198 on the Lusitania (1915) yet the sinking of the Armenia on 7 November 1941 is all but lost to history.

Sunk in the Black Sea, the exact location of the wreck is still a mystery and for years, the question remained – was a hospital ship, identified by the Red Cross, a legitimate target?

A stricken city

Designed for 980 passengers and crew, over seven times that number had surged onto the ship in the Crimean port of Yalta that fateful night of 7 November 1941. The reason was blind panic. The Nazi war machine, which had invaded the Soviet Union less than five months before, had overrun the Crimean peninsula and was bearing down on Yalta. People expected the city to fall within a matter of hours. The only possible means of escape for its stricken population was by sea – the roads outside the city having been sealed off by the Germans.

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The Experiences of Guernsey Evacuees in Northern England, 1940 – 1945

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Guernsey, the Channel Islands, 1940, a beautiful rural island only 12 miles by 7 miles in size. Inhabited by 40,000 people, whose income was derived from tourism, fishing, agriculture and horticulture.

Northern  England, 1940, consisting of factory towns, with the buildings coated in soot from domestic and industrial chimneys. Inhabited by people, whose income was mainly derived from industry and manufacturing.

Little did these two populations realise that their fates would become inextricably linked during World War Two, as Germany invaded France and the threat of Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands became inevitable.

In late June 1940, the first to leave the island were around 5,000 Guernsey children who were evacuated with their schools.  Accompanied by hundreds of their  teachers and ‘helpers’ – mothers with infants -  these children fled their island, leaving their own parents behind. Many possessed only the clothes they were wearing, others had just one small suitcase containing a change of clothes and a sandwich.  As many of the parents said goodbye to their children, they told them they would try to follow on the next available boat. However, on 28th June,  Germany bombed Guernsey’s harbour, so that ‘next boat’ never arrived.

As a result, only around 17,000 men, women and children – just under half the population – escaped Guernsey before it was occupied by German Forces on 30th June. Many parents had to remain on Guernsey, not knowing where their children would end up in Britain, or whether they would ever see them again. They would not meet again for five long years.

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