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Phase 4, 1943 to 6th June 1944 |
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1943 to 6th June 1944.
This long 18 month period up to the D Day (European landings) saw the
Allies (Britain and their Empire, US and Russia) slowly gain the
initiative against the Axis forces (Germany, Italy, Vichy France and
Japan) in every theatre of war.
- At home in England. The landscape had totally changed, still no food or
perhaps just enough, still Germans bombing the cities particularly
London but a new breed of humans were now living in England the
American G I. (These were the American Military personnel who had
finally arrived in England to help in North African and then the
European theatre).American G I’s had money, looked well fed and walked
around as though they owned the place. You either loved them or hated
them depending on your age. The young loved them, the young boys
admired their confidence and continuous wise cracking (joking), the
slightly older girls liked their money, their supply of nylon stockings
and their time available for dancing, love and sex. Older people
disliked them for all the same reasons as Americans after all were of a
lower brash class!
- In Hitler’s Germany one of the most terrible atrocities the world had
ever seen was gathering momentum under the guidance of Heinrich Himmler
and personal implementation of Adolf Eichmann. This so called Final
Solution was the rounding up of all the Jews in Europe, murdering them
by first gassing them and then burning their corpses. Some 6 million
Jews disappeared in this manner but the total exterminated was more
than 12 million including gypsies and homosexuals. Himmler managed this
ethnic cleansing through his position as head of the Waffen SS, an
elite squad of military/police thugs who on the battle field took no
prisoners. All who surrendered were lined up and shot. The Nazi policy
of murdering Jews contributed to Hitler loosing the war as it was the
Jewish scientists who were working on such world beating products as
radar, rockets and nuclear bombs. Some escaped to England and America
but the majority were murdered.
- In the Atlantic the British Navy was slowly getting the upper hand over
the German U boats. In May ’43 German losses were so bad that Grand
Admiral Donitz the U Boat overall commander temporally withdrew all his
submarines from the Atlantic. (Military historians feel that if Donitz
had had enough U Boats at the beginning of the war he could have caused
England to surrender through starvation. Indeed in August ’42 he was
freely attacking US shipping along the east coast of America.)
- North Africa. Also in May ’43 the Germans surrendered to the Allies in
North Africa when they became surrounded by the English on their
eastern flank and the Americans on their west. The British and American
armies immediately turned their attention north to liberate Italy.
Mussolini had already fallen so Hitler diverts some crack German
divisions into Italy under Rommel to keep Italy in German hands even
though the Italian people are very much on the side of the British and
Americans.
- Russia. In July ’43 the Germans and Russian tanks come head to head at
Kursk in the largest tank battle in the war. Kursk is a town almost due
south of Moscow and half way between Moscow and the Odessa on the Black
Sea.
- Far East and Pacific. In January ’43 the Japanese were occupying
virtually all countries east of India right through to the Pacific
Ocean and including much of China but notably excluding British
Australia and New Zealand. Many Allied military and civilian personal
had been taken into Japanese concentration camps and treated with
contempt or worse. Certainly all prisoners were starved and forced to
work for the Japanese until they either died of malnutrition or disease
for which there were no medicines supplied. However the territory above
was as far as the Japanese got and they were now up against the
Americans, British, Australians, Indians (under British rule) and the
Chinese under American military command. All these allied forces worked
closely together and received much logistical support from the American
production colossus.
This vast area can conveniently be divided into two, the Pacific plus
South East Asia, which the Americans and the Australians were attacking
the now well established Japanese and further west the British colonial
territories of Burma and Malay which the English with support from
British India were responsible for removing the occupying Japanese. At
the end of 1943 all these territories were still dominated by Japanese.
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