28-Dec-39: Soviet Division Destroyed; Red Army High Command Regroups; Fritz Thyssen Protests German Actions to Hitler; Polish Deportations More Frequent; HMS Barham Hit by Torpedoes; British Start Meat Rationing; Japanese Bomb Lanchow
Today is 28-Dec-1939, the 89th day of World War II; there are 2,074 days left in the conflict.
The Soviet Red Army’s 163rd Division of the Ninth Army is destroyed by the Finns near Suomussalmi after attempts to relieve it by the 44th Division were turned back (and the 44th itself was destroyed). Training, tactics, and even cross-country skiing abilities all play a role in the Finnish successes. After successive failures to crack the Mannerheim Line throughout the Winter War, the Soviet high command orders preparations for a better-coordinated assault on the Finns.
German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, who played a key role in fundraising efforts and bankrolling the early National Socialist German Worker’s Party, as well as urging President Paul on Hindenburg to appoint appoint Adolf Hitler to the Reichskanzler post, writes a remarkable protest letter to Hitler from exile in Switzerland. Thyssen had been Prussian State Councillor for life, a member of the Reichstag for Dusseldorf East, and head of the institute for research into the corporate state, Standische Wirtschaftsordnung.
A devout Catholic, he resigned his posts and fled the country after protesting Hitler’s ongoing persecutions of religious communities, as well as the Non-Aggression Pact of 23-Aug-39 between Germany and the Soviet Union.
Thyssen was particularly upset by Reichkristallnacht, 9-10-Nov-38. The pogrom was triggered by the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a German-born Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan. The assassination touched off a oordinated attack on Jews and their property; 91 were murdered, 25,000 to 30,000 were arrested, 267 synagogues were destroyed and thousands of homes and businesses were ransacked by Hitler Jugend, the Gestapo and the SS. His property was confiscated and his citizenship revoked by Hitler after Thyssen left the country.
Thyssen’s letter to Hitler states:
“My conscience is clear. I know that I have committed no crime. My sole mistake is to have believed in you, our leader, Adolf Hitler, and in the movement initiated by you — to have believed with the enthusiasm of a passionate lover of my native Germany.
“Since 1923 I have made the greatest sacrifices for the National Socialist cause, have fought with word and deed, without asking any reward for myself, merely inspired by the hope that our unfortunate German people would finally recover. The initial events after the National Socialists come to power seemed to justify this hope, at least as long as Herr von Papen was vice-chancellor.
“A sinister development followed these events. The persecution of the Christian religion, taking the form of cruel measures against the priests and insults to the Churches, led me to protest in the early days, for instance when the police president of Dusseldorf issued a protest to Marshal Goering, It was in vain.
“When, on November 9th, 1938, the Jews were despoiled and martyrized in the most cowardly and brutal manner, and their temples razed to the ground throughout Germany, I also protested. To reinforce this protest, I resigned my office as state councillor. This, too, as in vain.”
Thyssen will eventually be arrested by Vichy French authorities and sent to a concentration camp. He will be freed by the Allies in 1945, but will convicted by a German court for being a former National Socialist leader. The court will order Thyssen to hand over 15% of his property to victims of the regime; he will die in 1951.
The Germans policy of ousting Poles from critical areas and bringing in ethnic Germans to colonize the former Polish areas begins to hit its stride. The whole population of Kalisz, 70,000 people, are deported and replaced by ethnic Germans from the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.
On the high seas, the German Kriegsmarine’s unterseeboot U-30 torpedoes the British Battleship HMS Barham off the coast of northwest Scotland. The ship does not sink, but is laid up for repairs for three months.
The British government in London announces that the rationing of meat will go into effect immediately.
The Japanese Imperial Army conducts repeated bombing raids on the northwest Chinese military supply base at Lanchow.
19-Nov-39: Germans Erect Barrier Around Warsaw Jewish Quarter; Churchill Wants Mine Laying in Rhine River; Chinese Nationalists Order Winter Offensive Against Japanese
Today is 19-Nov-1939, the 50th day of World War II; there are 2,113 days left in the conflict.
German occupation authorities begin erecting a temporary barrier around the Jewish Quarter in Warsaw; it is a prelude to the later building of a permanent wall around the ghetto. Occupation authorities continue to crack down in the former Czechoslovakia; three more executions of student protesters, plus the arrests of over 50,000 people are reported.
In response to the sinking of five ships due to German Luftwaffe magnetic mining of British territorial waters and the North Sea, British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, still livid over the loss of life and shipping, urges the government to order the Royal Air Force to mine the Rhine River between Strasbourg and the Lauter River.
In Asia, the Chinese Nationalist government in Chungking, after the recent loss of the final viable port, Pakhoi, orders the army to conduct a winter offensive against the Japanese Imperial Army.