Happy Thanksgiving!

We celebrate Thanksgiving this year on November 28^th, and this blog is due to be published on the 29^th. We celebrate this year in peace in most of the world (although alas far from all of it.)

In World War II things were just a little different … let’s look at late November through those years:

Taking advantage of his new Alliance with Hitler under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and flushed with the seizure of his half of Poland and the annexation of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia—the war is starting really well for the Soviet Union—Stalin decides to grab a piece of Finland as well.

On November 30^th, 1939, Stalin invades Finland, beginning the Winter War. After a desperate fight Finland is forced to concede Karelia and other territories. The war, fought in bitter cold, will claim 400,000 casualties.

During the ‘blitz,’ the Luftwaffe’s bombing campaign against Britain, the port city of Liverpool suffered more air raids than any other British city except London. Large parts of the city were devastated.

On November 29^th, 1940, in a disaster that Churchill described as ‘the single worst incident of the war,’ a bomb penetrated an air raid shelter in Durning Road and killed 166 people.

On November 26^th, 1941, 33 ships of the Japanese 1^st Air Fleet, the Kido Butai, under the command of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, leaves Japan in route for Pearl Harbor.

On November 28^th, 1941, advancing armored units of the German 7^th Panzer Division, under the command of Generalmajor Hans von Funck, reach the outskirts of Moscow.

On December 1^st, 1941, the island of Malta in the Mediterranean suffers its 1000^th Luftwaffe bombing raid.

The first practical step toward creating an atomic bomb was a successful demonstration of a sustained nuclear chain reaction.

On November 30^th, 1942, a team of scientists under the direction of Enrico Fermi completed a reactor, Chicago Pile-1, CP-1, hidden beneath the bleachers of the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field.

On December 2^nd, 1942, a chain reaction was achieved. A message to President Theodore Roosevelt read: “The Italian navigator has landed in the new world.”

The leaders of the three major Allies, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, met periodically during the war to agree on major policies and strategies. By the end of 1943 the balance of the war had shifted in favor of the Allies and against the Axis, and it was now possible to glimpse an eventual victory.

On November 28^th, 1943, the ‘Big Three’ met in Tehran at the conference codenamed Eureka, to plan for an invasion of Normandy—Operation Overlord on D Day—to take place in the summer of 1944.

A year later the Allies have advanced from Normandy of the gates of Hitler’s Third Reich in the teeth of fierce German resistance. Germany’s western border is guarded by the fortresses of the Siegfried Line and the rugged, forested terrain. Battles between Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model’s Army Group B and Courtney Hodge’s US 1^st Army have been raging in the Hürtgen Forest since September 19^th. The Germans are heavily outnumbered but inflicting damaging blows.

On November 29^th and 30^th, 1944, two companies of the 1^st Infantry Division, the ‘Big Red One,’ capture the tiny village of Langerwehe-Merode, but the enemy counterattacks and 300 GIs are killed.

The war is over.

On November 20^th, 1945, the War Crimes Tribunal opens in Nuremberg. On the following days, evidence and testimony of numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity are presented against former Nazi leaders.

On November 29^th, 1945, a US documentary movie entitled ‘Nazi Concentration Camps’ is presented to the tribunal. You can follow this link to see what the tribunal saw. However, I recommend you do NOT watch it during your family celebrations.

Let us give thanks to the men and women who rid the world of such horrors.