July 24: Operation Gomorrah

On this date in History ... July 24, 1943:  

Operation Gomorrah is launched. 

Britain begins bombing Hamburg Germany by night and the US bombs it by day. 30,000 Germans were killed & 280,000 buildings were destroyed. 

The effect on Hitler was significant. He refused to visit the burned out cities as “the ruins of the city bespoke nothings but the end of the war for him.” 

Out of the 791 British aircraft, only 12 were lost due to a new radar jamming device named “Window”.  Strips of aluminum foil were dropped by bombers on their way to the bombing sites, confusing German radar who thought the strips were dozens and dozens of aircraft. This confusion diverted the German defense away from the actual bombing targets.

April 29: Liberation of Dachau

On this date in History ..... 1945:

The U.S. Seventh Army liberated Dachau, the first concentration camp established just five weeks after Hitler became Chancellor. 

The pile of shoes found by American
soldiers when they entered Dachau.
Photo source: www.theholocaustexplained.org 

American soldiers encountered 30 railroad cars of dead bodies in various stages of decomposition as they neared the camp. Once inside the camp, they found more dead bodies and 30,000 survivors. The story goes that the Americans were so enraged at what they found, that 30 SS guards were machine-gunned down. 

The civilian townspeople of Dachau were forced to come to the camp and see what was going on right next to them. They then had to bury over 9000 of the dead.  (See this blog for more on the story of bringing neighboring civilians to see these camps: www.scrapbookpages.com ).

Incomplete records indicated over 32,000 people died in the camps of Dachau.  (To put this in perspective, my hometown had a population of approx. 36,000 in 2012. Can you imagine going home one day and finding out the entire town had been killed?)   

While the liberation of this camp was going on, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were having a wedding ceremony. They committed suicide the next day.

And in case you missed the big headline:  Prince William and Kate Middleton decided to get married on Adolph and Eva's wedding date.  How did the royal wedding planners miss THAT piece of trivia?

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February 21: Pearl Harbor Spy Found Guilty

On this date in History .... 1942:

Bernard Julius Otto Kuehn, a member of the Nazi Party, was found guilty of spying, just 76 days after his efforts aided the enemy in the attack on Pearl Harbor. 

The FBI had been suspicious of him since 1939 because of his “question contacts” with Germans and Japanese.  He had two houses, lots of money, threw lavish parties for military officials while expressing deep interest in their work …. but no real job or source of income. His answer to inquiries about his wealth was that he had made good investments overseas. It was also curious that this German National was an “advanced student of Japanese language” and he was never able to give a definitive answer as to the reason he was in Hawaii. He had a 25-year old married son who was a secretary to a high official in the Nazi Bureau in Berlin.

The Kuehns ended up in Hawaii from a bizarre string of events that began with their then-17-year-old daughter, Susie Ruth, who had been a mistress of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.  When Goebbels tired of her, she turned out to be difficult to get rid of, due to her father’s close friendship and connections to the head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Himmler. But when the Japanese requested a German spy to work in Hawaii (because a German would be less noticeable in the American environment than a Japanese spy), Goebbels saw his chance to get rid of the whole family and recommended the Kuehns for the position.

While in Hawaii, the entire family participated in spy activities.  Susie Ruth became a modern version of Mata Hari and dated many young military officers but her biggest contribution was when she opened a hair salon.  She intentionally set her prices very low so the military wives would be sure to become regular customers and a good source of information as they gossiped about things they heard from their husbands.  Sometimes the salon was so busy that Mrs. Kuehn had to go down there to help her daughter record and document the information that would later be transferred to the Japanese consulate.

Even the ten-year-old son, Hans, would work the spy game, becoming the only bona-fide child spy in history.  Dressed in a little sailor suit while taking a walk with his dad, he quickly became a favorite of the sailors, who would take him aboard the ships. Coached by his dad on what to ask and with a keen mind to remember everything he saw, he came off of the ships with information his spy father could never obtain.  His father was always careful not to go on board with little Hans so any attention, good or bad, was never directed his way.  It was just a cute little boy who showed a passion for the big ships.

After December 7, the FBI and local law enforcement, who had been watching the Japanese consulate, found officials in the consulate burning piles of paper. Once decoded, they were found to contain a set of eight signals for U.S. fleet movements. For example, a light shining in the dormer window of Kuehn’s Oahu house from 9-10 p.m. meant that U.S. carriers had sailed; a linen sheet on a clothesline at his beach house between 10-11a.m. meant the battle force had left the harbor.  Evidence was found showing he had send “specific and highly accurate” details, in writing, to Japan.

He was sentenced to “death by musketry” which was commuted to 50 years of hard labor.  He was released just four years later and deported.

sources for this information includes the www.fbi.gov website.
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December 31: Henry Ford

On this date in History ..... 1927:

Henry Ford publishes the last issue of his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. 

 

Ford used the paper as a platform for his anti-Semitic views. Ford was “an unapologetic bigot”, hating labor unions, immigrants and everything Jewish, blaming Jewish bankers with everything that was wrong with the world, and convinced that the Jewish population would take over the world by way of commerce and exchange. He believed wars were started by Jews just so they could profit from them.

 

In 1927 a Jewish lawyer sued him for defamation. Ford faked an auto accident to avoid testifying and ended up settling out of court. He issued an insincere apology: “--"to my great regret," he wrote, "I have learned that Jews...resent this publication as promoting anti-Semitism.”  

 

Many of its articles and essays were collected and published in a book called "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem." It was a bestseller in Nazi Germany and remains in print today.  In January 1937, a Ford statement to the Detroit Jewish Chronicle disavowed "any connection whatsoever with the publication in Germany of a book known as theInternational Jew." 

 

Hitler even quoted the Dearborn Independent in Mein Kampf and Henry Ford was the only American that Hitler specifically named.

 

On Ford’s 75^th birthday, the German Consul gave Ford the award of the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner.

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