The Nazi destruction of the Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Warsaw is complete. SS commander Jürgen Stroop reports: "The former Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no longer in existence... Total number of Jews dealt with 56,065." Survivors are sent to concentration camps.
For almost a month, resistance fighters in the Warsaw ghetto have fought against the SS "liquidators", killing or wounding over 100 Germans & their collaborators. It's the single largest Jewish revolt against the Nazis.
Warsaw's Jews hid in 1000s of "bunkers", concealed dugouts & secret chambers, forcing Nazis to burn down the ghetto block by block. SS commander Stroop celebrated today by personally blowing up the Warsaw Synagogue.
Warsaw ghetto fighters included less than 1000 experienced soldiers, equipped mainly with rifles, pistols, & homemade grenades. Resistance leader Marek Edelman: we fight against the Nazis "to pick the time and place of our deaths".
Warsaw ghetto is defended by women as well as men. Stroop describes female Jewish fighters: "Agile as acrobats, shooting with a pistol in each hand... dangerous in hand-to-hand contact."
"When a woman like this was caught, she appeared scared as a rabbit, thoroughly despairing, & suddenly, when a group of our men was nearby, she pulled out a grenade hidden in her skirt or in her pants & threw it at them with a string of curses on her lips."
SS commander Jürgen Stroop creates a detailed, illustrated report of Nazi's destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, mainly as a souvenir album for Himmler. Read here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stro…
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Allied troops have been surrounded by Germans at Kalamata, Greece. Their retreat cut off, they're ordered to surrender. New Zealand Sergeant Jack Hinton responds: "Fuck that, who'll come with me?"
Brigadier Leonard Parrington threatens Hinton with court-martial for using offensive language to a superior officer. Hinton, in return, threatens to shoot the Brigadier for his "defeatist" order to surrender.
Leading a squad of 12 men, Jack Hinton charges a German artillery piece & wipes out crew with grenades, before going on to storm two machine-gun nests with his bayonet. Hinton says: `"I didn't like the way things were going."
For the last day, the Japanese cabinet have been locked in fraught debate, interrupted by news of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria & of a second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Senior ministers are split on whether to surrender.
War Minister Korechika Anami tells cabinet that a captured US pilot has "admitted", under torture, that USA has 100 atom bombs ready to hit Japan. However, he still opposes surrender: "Would it not be wondrous for this whole nation to be destroyed like a beautiful flower?"
Deadlocked Japanese cabinet appeals to Emperor Hirohito in an Imperial Conference (Gozen Kaigi): to decide whether to offer unconditional surrender to Allies, or fight on to destruction.
US bomber plane Enola Gay has dropped "Little Boy", the American atomic bomb, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. It explodes with force equal to 15 kilotons of TNT.
The atom bomb detonates 1968 feet above Hiroshima. In less than one second, a 900 foot wide fireball blasts the centre of the city, vaporising hundreds of people without trace, & killing thousands more in seconds.
Hiroshima bomb sends out a blast wave of light & heat that travels at 2 miles per second, evaporating human bodies. Some of the dead leave shadows burned into the ground, their surroundings bleached white by atomic fire.
Cruiser USS Indianapolis has been torpedoed & sunk by Japanese submarine near Guam. She was returning from a top-secret mission to deliver the "Little Boy" atomic bomb to a US Pacific airbase on Tinian Island, where it will be flown to its target: the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Hull rent by two Japanese torpedoes, the top-heavy USS Indianapolis sinks in 12 minutes. ~300 crew go down with the ship, 890 are adrift, without US Navy's knowledge, with slim hope of rescue. It's the worst single disaster in the history of the US Navy.
USS Indianapolis's sinking has not been noticed by US Navy- who did not investigate when cruiser failed to arrive today at Leyte island. 3 radio stations ignored her final SOS call, leaving 900 survivors adrift at mercy of dehydration, sunstroke & shark attack.
US General Staff have approved plan for Operation Downfall: the invasion of Japan, beginning in November of this year. Over a million Allied casualties are expected.
Allied plan for the invasion of Japan begins with Operation Olympic, amphibious assault on the southern island of Kyūshū- with 14 Allied divisions, 42 aircraft carriers, & 400+ more warships. Kyūshū will act as staging post to invade rest of the Home Islands of Japan.
Based on the American experience during still-ongoing assault on Okinawa, US planners expect invasion of Kyūshū to face fanatical resistance: they predict ~267,000 US deaths, with over 10 million Japanese casualties.
US Army Private Kurt Vonnegut, recently released from a German prisoner of war camp after 6 months, writes home, describing his captivity in Dresden- when it was bombed by the Allies.
After being taken prisoner during last December's "Battle of the Bulge", Kurt Vonnegut was taken to a work camp in Dresden: "Under the Geneva Convention, Officers & NCOs are not obliged to work when taken prisoner. I am, as you know, a Private."
Vonnegut: "On February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the RAF. Their combined labors killed 250,000 people in 24 hours." Kurt & his fellow American PoWs were sheltered by being imprisoned in an underground meat processing plant, Schlachthof Fünf (Slaughterhouse Five).