1943

Stalin started his program for atomic weapons; GB take Ripoli; Pacific War Allies take Guadalcanal in the solomons; August 7th to February 9th 1943; GB take Tunis; US and GB airborne invasion of Sicily; - amphibious and airborne operation; largest amphibious operation of the war in terms of men landed on the beaches and of frontage. Began July 9th 1943; US bomb Rome; Mussolini resigns;

USSR take Kursk, Kharkov and Kiev;

The UNRA was set up in 1943 to channel lend-lease relief through.

From January to April 1943 there was a virtual cessation of communication between US and UK scientific establishments working on development of nuclear weapons.

In the Pacific – Jap base at buna, NG was captured – 2nd January.

January 2nd to 3rd the German army retreated from Caucasus. On the 10th the Red Army begins siege of German-occupied Stalingrad.

In mid-January (14th to 23rd) 1943 a conference in Casablanca. The issue was the unconditional surrender demand. Churchill and FDR attended. Churchill raised Anglo-US collaboration with the President's personal aide, Harry Hopkins. Nothing happened and the US continued to ignore Churchill's requests.

January 23rd British forces took Tripoli.

27th, US air force opens daylight bombing campaign with attack on Wilhelmshaven, Germany.

February 2nd, the German 6th army at Stalingrad surrenders to the Russians; war in Europe reached its turning point. 8th Red Army takes Kursk.

February 13th / 14th 1945 Allied incendiary raid created firestorm in Dresden. Bomber Harris. 135,000 civilians dead.

“British diplomacy had prevented the 1932 disarmament convention from banning bombardment of civilians, Lloyd George observed “we insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers.” Nips, gooks and Krauts too, evidently.

February 14th to 25th battle of Kasserine Pass fought in North Africa between German and US.

16th Red army took Kharkov.

March 2nd Afrika Korps withdrew from Tunisia.

15th Germans recaptured Kharkov.

March 16th to 20th German submarines achieved their highest tonnage total of the war.

March 2nd to 3rd US  and Aussie pilots machine-gunned Japanese soldiers – survivors from a fleet of troop transports heading for New Guinea – bobbing at sea in life rafts. This was filmed and shown to American cinema audiences at home.

April 19th The SS began their “liquidation” of the Warsaw ghetto.

Pacific – Japanese evacuated Guadalcanal 7 – 9 Feb; Wingate’s Chindits first expedition into Burma on 8th Feb.  The first bombs were dropped on Japan April 12th ’42.

April 18th to 22nd American forces take Eniwetok.

In May 1943 the US gained a monopoly of Uranium and heavy water from Canada.

During May FDR and Churchill met in Washington for the Trident conference to determine future operations against Germany and Japan following victory in North Africa. This time FDR agreed to a resumption of exchange of information on nuclear research and development of nuclear weapons should be seen as a joint project. Again, nothing happened.

May 7th Allies captured Tunisia.

13th Remaining Axis troops in north africa surrendered to the Allies.

16th to 17th FAR targetted German industry in the Ruhr.

May 11th US landings on Attu- the first island that Japan defended to the death – the term Banzai charge” was coined – “a harbinger of struggles to come” US troops outnumbered Japanese more than 3-1. after two weeks 800 of original 3000 were pinned down on the night of 29th May commander ordered a charge. Less than 30 Japanese survived. 30 May – Japanese resistance on Attu ended.

12 May – Arakon campaign ended in stalemate – end of fighting in Afirca – axis forces surrender in Tunisia.

2nd U-Boat operations suspended in the North Atlantic due to steep losses.

June 11th Nazis ordered destruction of the Polish ghettos.

June 19th to 20th “Marianas Turkey Shoot” results in destruction of over 200 Japanese aircraft.

29 June – US landings in NG.

9 -10 July Allies invade Sicily

July & August 1943 - Battle of Kursk – the turning point of the war – Germans in retreat, German fought invasion of Italy all the way to North after Italians had given up.

July 5th Largest tank battle in history began at Kursk. 9th to 10th Allied forces landed in Sicily.

In London, July 1943, Dr Vannevar Bush, chairman of the National Defence Reasearch Committee and the US Sec of State for War, Henry L Stimson met. They ironed out difficulties and misunderstandings while Bush and Stimson were in London, FDR had decided to honour undertakings he made to Churchill.

July 22nd US forces took Palermo, Sicily. 25th to 26th Fascists overthrown in Italy. 27th to 24 July Allied raid on Hamburg – firestorm

25 July – Mussolini falls

July 27th / 28th Allied bombing raid created firestorm in Hamburg, Germany.

August 12th to 17th Axis forces withdrawn from Sicily.

15 august – US were unopposed landing on Kiska, Aleutians. This time the Japanese did not try the Banzai Charge. Instead the commander realised the odds against hem and withdrew his 5,000 striong force. It took the US a week to work out they were alone on the island.

August 17th USAF suffered steep losses in bombing run on ball bearing plants at Regensburg and Schweinfurt. 23rd Red army took Karkhov.

19th August The Quebec Agreement was signed.

Jackson Hole in Grand Tetans, Wyoming was made a national monument. This was after 20 years of lobbying by JD Rockefeller Jr.

Donovan recruited the Catholic Church in Rome to be the centre of Anglo-American operations in fascist Italy. This would prove to be one of America's most enduring intelligences in the cold war. MORE?

 “Air Force” by Howard Hunter – about the Pacific War. It was an example of the “Why we fight” genre.

“Action in the North Atlantic” Lloyd Bacon – Humphrey Bogart “tribute to the American merchant marine.” “blatantly propagandist”…”the merchant seaman’s union was communist-controlled at the time, and fellow-travelling John Howard Lawson conceived his script in terms of Soviet cinema.

Sinatra had a hit with “All or Nothing at All” – his first hit with the Harry James Orchestra, recorded in 1939 – Sinatra had already moved on, working with Tommy Dorsey’s Big Band at this point. DATES

http://www.1940.co.uk/history/article/fashion/fashion.htm

                        

                                                              The Height of Fashion

“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.”

Early in 1943, the Point Blank Directive had been approved. It called for around the clock bombing of Germany. The RAF at night, and theUSAF in the daytime using such precision bombing available at the time.

Disney was heavily subsidised during the war and wound up profiting substantially from it. He was hired to make training films. Even though in December (1941) his studio was taken over as a “primary defense station to guard the nearby Lockheed plant against a possible enemy air strike”. This lasted for 8 months until the threat was deemed to be over.

Sec of Treasury Henry Morgenthau “chided” Disney about cost overruns. Disney refered to Morgenthau as “that Jew”.

Boston Insurance Company and Nazi Links

http://larouchepub.com/other/2003/3042shock_awe_wwii.html

The COA team. Guido R Perera, a partner in Hutchins and Wheeler law firm, was a member. He was also a trustee of the Massachusetts Investors Trust (MIT).

He oversaw the development of plans and target systems for the bombing of strategic industrial targets in Germany and Japan  in various roles, when he worked on the legislative and administrative reorganisation of the Army Air Corps, then as deputy chairman of the Advisory Committee on Bombardment and as Vice Chairman of the COA.

The MIT was the first mutual fund in America. Founded by Paul Mellon in 1920s. One of its largest holdings was the Boston Insurance Company, linked to the Bank of Boston, currently owned by Fleet Financial (1997). “It appears that Boston Insurance was a product of the bank or the directors”. One of the Directors of Boston Insurance Co was Erwin Pallavicini – described in an OSS file as a US-blacklisted Nazi collaborator who also served on board of a German insurance firm in Argentina. The OSS docs lists another director, Benjamin Nazar Anchorena as a Nazi collaborator. A convoluted relationship linked First National Bank of Boston interests with Hitler’s financiers including Spanish and Mexican companies in business with German companies. The entire network involved around 230 companies and as late as 1997 the identity of the owners of Boston Insurance is classified.

The Bank of Boston was controlled by Mellon and Rockefeller families. The Mellons through Alcoa had concluded several cartel agreements with IG Farben. Could Perera have protected electricity supplies to maintain the Mellons’ aluminum production?

Arthur Roseborough a former Sullivan and Cromwell employee from the Paris office was assigned to Air Force Intelligence in London 1943 – on the COA and Wall Street – may have had interests.

Stimson was outspoken against needless bombing attacks in Germany but had little impact on policies of Curtis Le May. Stimson had opposed terror bombings and had strong doubts about use of atom bombs in Japan. Find internet reference.

August 1943 Churchill and FDR met in Quebec for a conference code named Quadrant. Future plans for the invasion of France and operations in the Pacific and SE Asia were laid out.

B2H2

During the year a group of Republican Senators, Joseph H Ball (Minesota), Harold H Burton (Ohio), and Democratic Senators Lister Hill (Alabama), and Carl A. Hatch (New Mexico), introduced a resolution called the Ball-Burton-Hill-Hatch or B2H2 Resolution. According to Dr. Walter H Judd, member of Congress from Minnesota 1943 to 02, interviewed by Jerry N Hess in April 13th 1970, “as I recall it merely declared it to be the sense of the Congress that the US should cooperate with other nations after WW2 to bring into being a world organisation through which the peace-loving nations could pool their strength against lawless or aggressive actions by any nation. No one country could now run the whole world.”

Three of the B2H2 group served on the Truman committee. Hill didn’t. “Well I think it was largely their association on that committee that they got to know each other very well.”

“Truman’s a friendly, informal, chatty sort of person, he’s not very sober or solemn or stiff – you get to be very chummy when you work with Harry Truman, in a good sound way. And I think it was their working together, seeing the awful costs in men and materials and money of a war like this, the absolute necessity to find some other way of resolving international difficulties than by having wars every generation.”

Hess: “In checking over the new York Times last week on the B2H2, I found an article which indicated that senator Ball’s co-authorship spread the belief that the resolution has as its specific objective a world government, and that the reason for this was that he was from Minnesota and then Governor (Harold) Stassen, who had spoken along those lines, and was also from Minnesota. Do you think there is any connection between Governor Stassen’s views and Joe Ball’s views?”

Judd: “Yes. I don’t think there is any question but that Gov Stassen had a very great influence on Joe Ball. Joe Ball was a newspaper reporter in Minnesota for the St Paul papers. He covered Stassen while he was Gov. When Senator Lundeen, Ernest Lundeen, was killed in a plane accident, Stassen appointed Ball to his seat. Everybody was surprised, greatly surprised, because Joe was regarded as a kind of run-of the-mill newspaper reporter. But Stassen had been close to him. They obviously had had a good many hours of private conversation and he recognised Joe Ball had great ability and insight and so he appointed him – I think that Harold’s world views did have a very great influence on the development of those same views by Joe Ball.”

Hess: “What do you recall of FDR and the administrations views regarding B2H2?”

Judd: ”Oh they supported it wholeheartedly. I think they were wise enough though, FDR was very shrewd, not to grab it as just a Democrat measure because if they did…some Republicans would say, ‘Well, we aren’t going to support it’”.

Black rebellion in Detroit – troops used.

In the Pacific '43 and '44 - island by island movement of US forces toward Japan, finding closer and closer bases for the thunderous bombardment of Japanese cities.

"Quietly, behind the headlines in battles and bombings, US diplomats and businessmen worked hard to make sure that when the war ended, US economic power would be second to none in the world. US business would penetrate areas that up to this time had been dominated by Britain.

The Open Door policy of equal access would be extended from asia to Europe, meaning the US intended to push England aside and move in." - Howard Zinn.

Stimson was outspoken against needless bombing attacks on Germany – had little impact on the policies of Curtis LeMay the US bomber commander. Stimson opposed terror bombing and held strong doubts about the use of atom bombs in Japan. See www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAstimson.htm

Life magazine only showed shots of US casualties from 1945. atrocities such as the Bataan death march were kept secret till long after the event.

Up until now pics of dead Americans had not been released to the US public. “In November 1943 Norman Hatch was one of a handful of combat cameramen on Tarawa who filmed dead US marines floating in the sea and lying on the beach. He remembers the debate that took place at the highest elvel about whether to show these images to the American public.”

The president agreed to release the footage to give the public a jolt. Sale of war bonds was oosted, but marine recruitment fell by 35%. JL & BS, p98

September 8th The new Italian government surrenders. 9th Allies land in Salerno and Taranto. 11th Germans occupy Italy.12th Nazi commandos rescue Mussolini. 23rd Fascist government re-established in Italy.

October 1st Allied took Naples. November 6th Red army captured Kiev. November 28th “Big three” of FDR, Stalin and Churchill meet at Teheran

FDR’s deterioration in health upon returning from Tehran in 1943.

13 October Italy declared war on Germany.

1st November – US marines landed on Bougainville

20th Nov US marines landed on Tarawa

23 November – Jap resistance on Tarawa ended

28 Novemebr – start of Big Three conference in Tehran.

15 December US landings on New Britain.

Mid December 1943 first of a contingent of some 40 British nuclear scientists left England for the US, Los Alamos.

December 24th to 26th Soviets began large offensive in Ulkraine. Check?