Wednesday, May 28, 2008
This Day in the History of Bleak Days
On this day in 1940, the Belgian Army, 800,000 strong just two weeks before, having been rolled back by determined German attacks, and abandoned by the British Expeditionary Force (who bugged out at Dunkirk), surrendered to German forces. The photo is of a Pkw 2 crossing one of the innumerable canals in that part of Europe.
Labels: WWII history; European theater; Western Front
Saturday, May 24, 2008
This Day in the History of an Early Tit for a Later Tat
On this day in 1941, north and east of Iceland, the famous German battleship,
Bismark, blew in half the famous British battlecruiser
Hood from a distance of 9 miles. There were only three survivors from the
Hood. The
doomed English Battleship, Prince of Wales, was also damaged and had to flee the area. Not a good day for the British Navy. The
Bismark's fuel tank, however, was damaged in the fight and she had to return to port, a voyage she never quite completed. The idea had been to loose the battleships
Bismark and
Tirpitz on the convoys in the North Atlantic and on their way to Murmansk. The Germans never got that done either.
Labels: Bismark, Hood, WWII history; European theater; Western Front
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
This Day in the History of Early German Successes
On this day in 1940, just 10 days into the attack, elements of Gerd von Rundsted's German Army Group A, the XIX Panzer Corps, under Heinz Guderian, reached Abbeville on the Somme River a few miles from the English Channel, having severed communication between the British Expeditionary Force (with surviving elements of French, Dutch and Belgian forces attached) on their right and the bulk of the French Army on their left; and right there Nazi Germany won the Battle of France, although fighting would continue until June 25th, 1940.
I've read Guderian's memoirs (
Panzer Leader) but the book doesn't begin to account for how the Germans beat most of the rest of Western Europe so quickly and seemingly effortlessly. I do know he often pushed his faster but outgunned tanks past where his orders allowed. Looks like they just outfought the Allies at concentrated points and then outquicked the retreating forces so they never could recover. Guderian survived the war and died in May, 1954, 14 years to the day after his breakthrough over the Meuse at Sedan
Labels: Battle of France, WWII history; European theater; Western Front
Monday, March 17, 2008
The Doorway to Deutschland
American troops, probably of the 9th Armored Division, and possibly including my late uncle Bill, exit the tunnel leading to the Ludendorff Railway Bridge over the Rhine at Remagen, Germany. Since the bridge only lasted ten days between capture and collapse, we can date this photo between March 7 and March 17, 1945.
The Germans blew up the bridge but the dynamite used was inferior or at least a different strength than the engineers expected and the bridge bucked up a few feet and then settled right back down on its supports. It was, however, seriously damaged in the explosion. The second attempt to blow it up was thwarted by Silesian conscripts who cut the fuses.
The tales of heavy fighting to take the bridge are largely exagerations. The bridge fell with hardly a fight and few casualties, although 28 Americans were killed when it collapsed.
Labels: WWII history; European theater; Western Front
