1942

In the Pacific, the Japanese were making rapid advances – Borneo was secured on 2nd of January, Siege of Bataan in the Phillipines began. Invasion of the Dutch East Indies (DEI) began on the 11th. Japanese moved in to Burma on the 15th. Landings on New Guinea and Solomon Islands on 23rd. Landings on Ambon Islands in DEI on the 30th. BRUTAL

In Europe - January – mass gassing of Jews begin at Auschwitz;

January 1st allies forge declaration of the UN.

Jan 13th German U-boats begin sinking ships off American coast in ‘operation drumbeat’.

Jan 20th Nazis co-ordinate “final solution” efforts at Wansee Conference.

Jan 21st Rommel counter-attacked in North Africa.

Europeans were kicked out of their Asian empires, as Japan began a war they knew they couldn’t win. Their major weapon was surprise against complacent and disorganised European outposts. The islands of the South Pacific were wide open. Japanese brutality, which till then had been focused only on what they viewed as inferior Asian nations, now unleashed on westerners. Nanking massacre type atrocities were carried out on people from London, Paris, and Amsterdam and Sydney. Mothers in Kent, Provence and New South Wales received word of their daughters being raped and bayoneted and their sons tortured and beheaded.

Americans were gearing up for war. Plans to produce 45,000 aircraft, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 anti-aircraft guns and 8 million tons of new shipping in the coming year, were announced in the President’s State of the union Address. Industrial output was increased by 15% a year during the war. GNP doubled from 1940 – 1945 and established the US as the economic dynamo of the world by the end of the war. JL & BS

Hollywood at War

An early American casualty - Carole Lombard (right) one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars, killed in a plane crash on a war bonds drive – 16 Jan 42. Republic Studios star and all-American hero John Wayne was exempted from military service – Republic “received government funding and free loan of military equipment, personnel and advisors to produce enormously profitable ‘war’ films”.

Herb Sorrell – early in 1942 – founded the conference of Studio Unions (CSU) made up of 5 member unions – cartoonist Guild; screen office employers guild; the film technicians; the machinists; motion picture painters.

James Cagney called in for a private meeting with Martin Dies (check this name) after conducting “a one man strike against Warner brothers” a “strictly non-political contract dispute” after this threat Cagney went on to produce and star in “the damnedest patriotic picture ever” the jingoistic blockbuster “Yankee Doodle Dandy”. DATE?

An alleged UFO crashes in the LA area in late February 1942 spawned formation of Army Air force’s Interplanetary Phenomenan Unit – scientific and technical branch.

invasion of Malaya by Japanese culminated in the Battle of Singapore, 7th of Feb to 15th of Feb.

Rangoon  captured on 8th of February, Sumatra ,DEI, invaded on the 14th. Singapore  surrendered on the 15th, landings on Bangka Island .

On the 19th the Australian mainland was bombed – Japanese bombed Darwin, to destroy the port and facilities.

FDR signed the Executive Order 9066 “authorised the intenrment of ‘any or all’ Japanese Americans. In the following months some 11,000 Japanese-Americans were expelled from their homes in California, Oregon and Washington…and put behind wire in the deserts of California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona.” JL & BS

LA Times – “A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched – so a Japanese American, born of Japanese parents, grows up to be a Japanese, not an American.”

Lt. Gen John Dewitt, head of Western Defense Command administered the purge.

In 1943 in front of Congress he testified, ;”A Jap’s a Jap…we will be worried about [them] until they are wiped off the face of the map.”

Studs Terkel  – one of the most shameful episodes in American history…”the lack of of protest…was obscene, and we accepted it.”

The Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies progressed at a rapid pace as they advanced from their Palau Islands colony and captured bases in Sarawak and the southern Philippines. They seized bases in eastern Borneo and in northern Celebes while troop convoys, screened by destroyers and cruisers with air support provided by swarms of fighters operating from captured bases, steamed southward through the Makassar Strait and into the Molucca Sea. To oppose these invading forces was a small force, consisting mostly of American

and Dutch warships, many of them of World War I vintage, under the command of Admiral Thomas C. Hart.

On January 23, 1942, a force of four American destroyers attacked a Japanese invasion convoy in Makassar Strait as it approached Balikpapan in Borneo. On February 13, the Allies fought unsuccessfully, in the Battle of Palembang, to prevent the Japanese from capturing the major oil port in eastern Sumatra. On the night of February 19-February 20, an Allied force attacked the Eastern Invasion Force off Bali in the Battle of Badung Strait. Also on February 19, the Japanese First Air Fleet, under Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, attacked and wrecked the port at Darwin in northern Australia which rendered it useless as a supply and naval base to support operations in the East Indies.

Shortly before the battle commenced, the odds were not good for the Allied forces. They were disunited (ships came from four separate navies) and demoralized by constant air attacks, and a general sentiment that the Japanese were unbeatable. In addition, the coordination between Allied navies and air forces was poor. Wikipedia

Battle of Java Sea 27th to 29th was a disastrous defeat for the Allies.

March 1st Japanese sank the USS Houston, landed on Java. March 2nd Jakarta went. Last British troops to leave Rangoon on the 7th. Allied force on Java surrendered on Java surrendered on the 8th. MacArthur left the Phillippines for Australia on the 11th.

“By mid 1942 Japanese had power of life and death over half a million British, commonwealth, European and American men, women and children, and a quarter of a billion Asians.”

Trading with The enemy

“March 25th 1942 – US Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold announced that William Stamps Farish II (his G’son? became GHW Bush’s money manager in the 1980 campaign). Had pleaded “no contest” to charges of criminal conspiracy with the Nazis. Farish was the principal manager of a worldwide cartel between Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon in the future) and the IG Farben concern. The merged enterprise had opened the Auswitch slave labour camp on June 14th 1940 to produce artificial rubber and gasoline from coal. Hitler’s government supplied political opponents and Jews as slaves who were worked to death and then murdered (sic).”

“Arnold disclosed that SO of NJ – Farish was president and ceo – had agreed to stop hiding the patents from the US - which it had provided to the Nazis.”

“A Senate Committee under Truman had called Arnold to testify at hearings on US corporations collaborating with the Nazis. Expressed outrage at Farish’s cynical continuing alliance with Hitler regime which had begun in 1933.

Farish did get to keep his millions of dollars in profit from the venture.

CHECK OUT Farish relationship to Queen and Royal Dutch shell Oil.

Shell’s chairman Sir Henri Deterding and Bank of England governor Montagu Norman – sponsored Hitler’s rise to power - ?

“Many patents and other Nazi – owned aspects of the partnership had been seized by the US Alien Property Custodian.

The US would not seize Prescott Bush’s Union Banking corp for another 7 months. Truman said “I think this approaches treason.”

From Wikipedia

Farish began breaking apart. JD Rockefeller denied any knowledge of what Farish was doing. Farish collapsed and died November 29th 1942. His son died in an accident 6 months later.

Farish had been a principal in a partnership between a Standard Oil/General Motors owned company, Ethyl Gasoline Corporation, and the German company I.G. Farben. This jointly owned venture, Ethyl GmbH, was involved with the creation of the Auschwitz labor camp on June 14, 1940, to produce artificial rubber from coal and they also built then operated Tetraethyl lead plants in Germany.[6]

On March 25, 1942, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold announced that Farish, along with other officers of Standard Oil and related companies, pled "no contest" in the criminal courts of Newark, New Jersey to criminally conspiring with the Nazi government in Germany. As part of a plea bargain, the charges were dropped in exchange for Standard Oil releasing its German patents and payment of fines totaling about $50,000.[7]

William Stamps Farish was fined $1,000 while similar fines were levied against Standard Oil -- $5,000 each for the parent company and for several subsidiaries. This did not interfere with the millions of dollars that Farish had profited as a large stockholder, chairman and president of Standard Oil. He was described by Senator Harry Truman in public as approaching 'treason' for profiting from the Nazi war machine and withholding patents from the US government.[8]

April – American citizens of Japanese descent forced into “relocation centres”. Except in Hawaii where the portion of the population was too high for this to be attempted.

40% of Hawaiians were of Japanese descent.

5th April – Japanese raid on port of Colombo, Ceylon

9th april – US and Filipino troops on Bataan in Philippines surrendered.

April 12th 1942 – the first bombs were dropped by Americans on Japan. - ??

18th april – Doolittle bombing raid on Tokyo

1st May – Mandalay in Northern Burma captured. Japanese complete conquest of Burma on the 20th.

3rd of May Battle of Coral Sea began

7th May – Corregidor in Phillippines surrendered.

May 8th Germans launch summer offensive in the Crimea.

May 30th RAF launches first 1,000 bomber raid on Cologne, Germany.

June 4th – 7th Japanese navy resoundingly defeated at the Battle of Midway.

The War in the Pacific has reached its turning point.. From now on the Japanese were pushed back by the Americans.

“after the battles of Midway, Guadalcanal and Kokoda and such horrors as the Bataan death march – [the Japanese] would be instantly redefined as beatable, but morbid, sadistic monsters…[though] one factor remained constant: the Japanese were seen in terms of race. The behaved the way they did because they were Japanese. There were no ‘good Japanese’ as there were ‘good Germans’, and the only good Japanese. Admiral Halsey observed, was one that had been dead six months.” JL & BS

heavy censorship – for 2 years no shots of dead Americans were shown on the newsreels.

SS leader Rheinhardt Heydrich dies of wounds sustained in partisan attack at Prague. On June 10th the Nazis annihilated Czech town of Lidice in retaliation for Heydrich’s assassination

June 5th German siege of Sevastopol begins, and ends on July 3rd when Sevastopol fell to the Germans.

June 21st German Afrika Korps recaptured Tobruk.

July 5th Nazi conquest of Crimea achieved.

July 9th German army begins push towards Stalingrad.

GB stopped Germans at El Alamein – find date

FDR considered Vichy to be the legitimate government of France. FDR and his advisors, particularly Hull, distrusted French resistance, especially De Gaulle. Churchill, on the other had, did trust De Gaulle.

The US wanted to occupy Algiers and tried to detach Vichy from the Axis by using Admiral Francois Darlan , who had modernised the French Navy in the 1930s, from February 1941, deputy premier in Petain’s government, expected to succeed Petain, but not actually a Nazi.

Corporate Opposition to the War

In mid June 1942 just after Battle of Midway had seen the US Navy best the forces of Japan for the first time, the Chicago Tribune ran a front-page story retelling how the triumph had been made possible by the Navy’s ‘magic’ code-breaking system. This was supposed to be a secret and had been put at serious risk by a story that could have cost millions of allied lives

Luckily Tojo’s high command did not believe the newspaper story. The Chicago Tribune – owned by Robert McCormick, a one-time colonel who had friends in Washington DC – an isolationist opposed to Roosevelt and the anti-fascist war effort. – Strongman & Parker

From July 1941 there was a free exchange of scientific information.

General Leslie Groves, chief of the Manhatten Project. US were hostile to UK requests for information. Doubts were even express about whether GB should even possess nuclear weapons after the war.

In the summer  the free exchange of information on nuclear weapons development came to an end – stopped by the US.

 ‘Top Policy Group’ handed the A-bomb project over to the US Army. It was renamed the Manhattan Project. George C Marshall was in charge of it but deferred to civilian experts. Congress was asked for money but kept in dark over why. Marshall was planning a possible invasion of mainland Japan, but regarded that use of the A-bomb should be decided by President. He was also squeamish about use of the bomb against civilians.

www.doug-long.com/marshall.htm.

Committee for Economic Development was elevated into a think tank for a new international order in 1942. The economic counterpoint for Council on Foreign Relations. Founders were the heads of steel, car, electrical industries who had benefited from the New Deal’s corporate statism. Its membership overlapped with National Planning Association “national socialist in idealogical orientation”.

“Victory through Air Power” - Appearing less than six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the United States' entry into World War II, the book was extremely popular, influential, and controversial. Seversky advocated the formation of an independent air force, the development of long-range bombers (meaning an intercontinental range of 3,000 miles or more) and a commitment to strategic use of air power (as opposed to its then-traditional use as cover or support for ground-based operations). His plans implicitly involved diversion of resources away from current war operations. Wikipedia

 “Victory through Air Power” was based on the book, whose advocacy of wartime aggressiveness particularly appealed to Walt Disney who made the film. Like the book it vigorously defended the tactics of General Billy Mitchell who had come under a courts martial for his “unorthodox military conduct…Winston Churchill personally requested a private screening for himself and FDR…Helped convince the president to go ahead with the air force’s long-range bombing program.”

The Corporations’ War

US business was failing to serve the national interests, unless you believe that national interests were identical to corporate interests.

Almost all major corporations in the US had investments in Nazi Germany, and most continued to do business with the Nazis after war was declared.

July 1942 - word came from Ford France about Ford's activities on behalf of the German War effort in Europe. The evidence was buried and little has ever surfaced. In March the RAF had bombed the Ford plant at Poissy, France. The Vichy government paid Ford 38m Francs as compensation for damage done - not reported in the USA.

There were rumours that Allies were avoiding US business interests in the carpet bombing of Germany – Bush-Harriman controlled the bombing plans from Britain? Speer, in Germany, was puzzled by the Allied failure to follow up bombing missions – it seemed to him that the Allies were allowing Germany breathing space, after each raid, to rebuild – which they did.

Early in 1942, AWPD-42 replaced AWPD-1. It was a plan for round the clock bombing of Germany. The RAF would continue with night time area bombing while the US air force would use “precision ” day time bombing. AWPD-42 focused on tactical targets or factories producing essential military equipment. While very much similar to AWPD-1, 42 placed the disruption of the electrical grid as 13th on the list. This conforms to the emphasis on tactical targets versus strategic targets. This reduction in priority of electrical generators was perhaps the largest single failure of the air campaign. Any strike against power plants would have left industrial centres idle for months.

AWPD-42 was hammered out by the committee of operations analysts (COA). COA was made up of industrialists, lawyers and economists.  FIND OUT WHO

The COA used various criteria in selecting targets. They looked for bottlenecks and weaknesses in the Nazi economy.

The German electrical industry was closely linked with GE and ITT through cartel agreements. Plants owned by GE and its AEG subsidiary, and ITT were only hit incidentally in area raids. The electrical plants targetted were Brown Boveri and Siemenssatadt, not connected to GE or ITT. A plant owned by GE at Koppelsdorf, for example, which manufactured radar, was never a target .

7th August the first US landings on Guadalcanal. Japanese land at Milne Bay on the 25th. September 7th Japanese forces defeated by Aussies at Milne Bay.  17th Sep Japanese advance on Port Moresby was halted. Arakon campaign began in Burma on the 21st.

This was echoed by Hollywood in John Huston’s “Across the Pacific” – Bogart on the eve of Pearl Harbor Bogart forces Jap spies trying to destroy the Panama Canal – Maltese Falcon “absurd flag-waving finale was added by Vincent Sherman after Huston, mobilised before completing the film, maliciously left Bogart in a tight corner which only Superman could reasonably hope to escape”; “All through the Night” – Vincent Sherman – Bogart. - 4 Sep 42

August 7th General Bernard Montgomery assumed command of British Eighth army in North Africa. September 13th German attack on Stalingrad begins.

October 23rd to November 3rd Afrika Koprs decisively defeated by British eighth army in North Africa. Battle of El Alamein began. Operation Torch began – US landings in North Africa.

Allied troops landed in North Africa on 8th November – Operation Torch.

-              faced a determined fight from the French Navy.

-              When Darlan set up his own Vichy regime in Algeria, interning French resistance, Jews, anti-semitism in the press, jamming the BBC – there was outrage in the French press and Allied newspapers. See Dept of State Bulletin Vol VII, p.935 for FDR’s hasty justification of this policy of supporting Darlan. DATE?

November 8th Allied invasion of North Africa begins in “Operation Torch”.

November 11th Axis forces occupy Vichy France.

November 19th Soviet forces encircle German sixth army at Stalingrad.

Then Hitler occupied the whole of France. In late November there was a huge build up of axis forces in Tunisia.

10th  December Japanese base at Gona, New Guinea was captured.

17th Decemebr Indian troops advanced into Arakan.

December 31st German and British ships engage in the Battle of the Barents Sea.

 south pacific 2

1942 NOTES

Hank Williams now a big star around Alabama.

Ava Long and Les Resiman

The Metronome All-Star Leaders.

In jazz – “Dixie Land” revival is underway. Early Be Bop is challenging for pre-eminence.