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whencyclopedia · 4 months

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D-Day was 80 years ago today!

D-Day was the first day of Operation Overlord, the Allied attack on German-occupied Western Europe, which began on the beaches of Normandy, France, on 6 June 1944. Primarily US, British, and Canadian troops, with naval and air support, attacked five beaches, landing some 135,000 men in a day widely considered to have changed history.

Where to Attack?

Operation Overlord, which sought to attack occupied Europe starting with an amphibious landing in northwest France, Belgium, or the Netherlands, had been in the planning since January 1943 when Allied leaders agreed to the build-up of British and US troops in Britain. The Allies were unsure where exactly to land, but the requirements were simple: as short a sea crossing as possible and within range of Allied fighter cover. A third requirement was to have a major port nearby, which could be captured and used to land further troops and equipment. The best fit seemed to be Normandy with its flat beaches and port of Cherbourg.

The Atlantic Wall

The leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), called his western line of defences the Atlantic Wall. It had gaps but presented an impressive string of fortifications along the coast from Spain to the Netherlands. Construction of gun batteries, bunker networks, and observation posts began as early as 1942.

Many of the German divisions were not crack troops but inexperienced soldiers, who were spending more time building defences than in vital military training. There was a woeful lack of materials for Hitler's dream of the Atlantic Wall, really something of a Swiss cheese, with some strong areas, but many holes. The German army was not provided with sufficient mines, explosives, concrete, or labourers to better protect the coastline. At least one-third of gun positions still had no casement protection. Many installations were not bomb-proof. Another serious weakness was naval and air support. The navy had a mere 4 destroyers available and 39 E-boats while the Luftwaffe's (German Air Force's) contribution was equally paltry with only 319 planes operating in the skies when the invasion took place (rising to 1,000) in the second week.

Neptune to Normandy

Preparation for Overlord occurred right through April and May of 1940 when the Royal Air Force (RAF) and United States Air Force (USAAF) relentlessly bombed communications and transportation systems in France as well as coastal defences, airfields, industrial targets, and military installations. In total, over 200,000 missions were conducted to weaken as much as possible the Nazi defences ready for the infantry troops about to be involved in the largest troop movement in history. The French Resistance also played their part in preparing the way by blowing up train lines and communication systems that would ensure the defenders could not effectively respond to the invasion.

The Allied fleet of 7,000 vessels of all kinds departed from English south-coast ports such as Falmouth, Plymouth, Poole, Portsmouth, Newhaven, and Harwich. In an operation code-named Neptune, the ships gathered off Portsmouth in a zone called 'Piccadilly Circus' after the busy London road junction, and then made their way to Normandy and the assault areas. At the same time, gliders and planes flew to the Cherbourg peninsula in the west and Ouistreham on the eastern edge of the planned landing. Paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st US Airborne Division attacked in the west to try and cut off Cherbourg. At the eastern extremity of the operation, paratroopers of the 6th British Airborne Division aimed to secure Pegasus Bridge over the Caen Canal. Other tasks of the paratrooper and glider units were to destroy bridges to impede the enemy, hold others necessary for the invasion to progress, destroy gun emplacements, secure the beach exits, and protect the invasion's flanks.

The Beaches

The amphibious attack was set for dawn on 5 June, daylight being a requirement for the necessary air and naval support. Bad weather led to a postponement of 24 hours. Shortly after midnight, the first waves of 23,000 British and American paratroopers landed in France. US paratroopers who dropped near Ste-Mère-Église ensured this was the first French town to be liberated. From 3.00 a.m., air and naval bombardment of the Normandy coast began, letting up just 15 minutes before the first infantry troops landed on the beaches at 6.30 a.m.

The beaches selected for the landings were divided into zones, each given a code name. US troops attacked two, the British army another two, and the Canadian force the fifth. These beaches and the troops assigned to them were (west to east):

Utah Beach - 4th US Infantry Division, 7th US Corps (1st US Army commanded by Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley)

Omaha Beach - 1st US Infantry Division, 5th US Corps (1st US Army)

Gold Beach - 50th British Infantry Division, 30th British Corps (2nd British Army commanded by Lieutenant-General Miles C. Dempsey)

Juno Beach - 3rd Canadian Infantry Division (2nd British Army)

Sword Beach - 3rd British Infantry Division, 1st British Corps (2nd British Army)

In addition, the 2nd US Rangers were to attack the well-defended Pointe du Hoc between Utah and Omaha (although it turned out the guns had never been installed there), while Royal Marine Commando units attacked targets on Gold, Juno, and Sword.

The RAF and USAAF continued to protect the invasion fleet and ensure any enemy ground-based counterattack faced air attack. As the Allies could put in the air 12,000 aircraft at this stage, the Luftwaffe's aerial fightback was pitifully inadequate. On D-Day alone, the Allied air forces flew 15,000 sorties compared to the Luftwaffe's 100. Not one single Allied aircraft was lost to enemy fire on D-Day.

Packing Normandy

By the end of D-Day, 135,000 men had been landed and relatively few casualties were sustained – some 5,000 men. There were some serious cock-ups, notably the hopeless dispersal of the paratroopers (only 4% of the US 101st Air Division were dropped at the intended target zone), but, if anything, this caused even more confusion amongst the German commanders on the ground as it seemed the Allies were attacking everywhere. The defenders, overcoming the initial handicap that many area commanders were at a strategy conference in Rennes, did eventually organise themselves into a counterattack, deploying their reserves and pulling in troops from other parts of France. This is when French resistance and aerial bombing became crucial, seriously hampering the German army's effort to reinforce the coastal areas of Normandy. The German field commanders wanted to withdraw, regroup and attack in force, but, on 11 June, Hitler ordered there be no retreat.

All of the original invasion beaches were linked as the Allies pushed inland. To aid thousands more troops following up the initial attack, two artificial floating harbours were built. Code-named Mulberries, these were located off Omaha and Gold beaches and were built from 200 prefabricated units. A storm hit on 20 June, destroying the Mulberry Harbour off Omaha, but the one at Gold was still serviceable, allowing some 11,000 tons of material to be landed every 24 hours. The other problem for the Allies was how to supply thousands of vehicles with the fuel they needed. The short-term solution, code-named Tombola, was to have tanker ships pump fuel to storage tanks on shore, using buoyed pipelines. The longer-term solution was code-named Pluto (Pipeline Under the Ocean), a pipeline under the Channel to Cherbourg through which fuel could be pumped. Cherbourg was taken on 27 June and was used to ship in more troops and supplies, although the defenders had sunk ships to block the harbour and these took some six weeks to fully clear.

Operation Neptune officially ended on 30 June. Around 850,000 men, 148,800 vehicles, and 570,000 tons of stores and equipment had been landed since D-Day. The next phase of Overlord was to push the occupiers out of Normandy. The defenders were not only having logistical problems but also command issues as Hitler replaced Rundstedt with Field Marshal Günther von Kluge (1882-1944) and formally warned Rommel not to be defeatist.

Aftermath: The Normandy Campaign

By early July, the Allies, having not got further south than around 20 miles (32 km) from the coast, were behind schedule. Poor weather was limiting the role of aircraft in the advance. The German forces were using the countryside well to slow the Allied advance – countless small fields enclosed with trees and hedgerows which limited visibility and made tanks vulnerable to ambush. Caen was staunchly defended and required Allied bombers to obliterate the city on 7 July. The German troops withdrew but still held one-half of the city. The Allies lost around 500 tanks trying to take Caen, vital to any push further south. The advance to Avranches was equally tortuous, and 40,000 men were lost in two weeks of heavy fighting. By the end of July, the Allies had taken Caen, Avranches, and the vital bridge at Pontaubault. From 1 August, Patton and the US Third Army were punching south at the western side of the offensive, and the Brittany ports of St. Malo, Brest, and Lorient were taken.

German forces counterattacked to try and retake Avranches, but Allied air power was decisive. Through August 1940, the Allies swept southwards to the Loire River from St. Nazaire to Orléans. On 15 August, a major landing took place on the southwest coast of France (French Riviera landings) and Marseille was captured on 28 August. In northern France, the Allies captured enough territory, ports, and airfields for a massive increase in material support. On 25 August, Paris was liberated. By mid-September, the Allied troops in the north and south of France had linked up and the campaign front expanded eastwards pushing on to the borders of Germany. There would be setbacks like Operation Market Garden of September and a brief fightback at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, but the direction of the war and ultimate Allied victory was now a question of not if but when.

#dday #dday80 #ww2 #wwii #wwii history

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mesetacadre · 28 days

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The Yugoslav volunteers in the International Brigades

Translated from this article, my own comments in [italicized brackets]

The total number of Yugoslavs in Spain differs according to researchers. The French historian, Hervé Lemesle, states that the total exceeds 1900, with the main contingent being Croatian, followed by Slovenes and Serbs. A majority were workers from many sectors and peasants. There were also doctors, engineers, teachers, journalists, and students. Most traveled from Yugoslavia, although there were groups of exileds or migrants from many European countries, as well as the US, Canada or Argentina.

The number of deaths (including MIA) in Spain is close to 800, a very high percentage (40%), although other studies estimate 32%. At any rate, it’s higher than the average losses for the International Brigades (27%). The most notorious victim was Blagoje Parović [Šmit, nom de guerre], part of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia’s Central Committee and political commissar of the XIII International Brigade, who died the first day in the Battle of Brunete. His remains were buried in the Fuencarral cemetery.

There were 16 Yugoslav women in the Health Services. The oldest was 43, while the youngest were only 22 years old. Most of the female volunteers arrived in Spain in 1937, from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia or countries such as Algeria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, and Uruguay. Some of those women had been active agents of the worker movement or even members of the CPY before leaving for Spain. Those who lacked medical training attended a preparation course beforehand. They worked in the hospitals of Murcia, Albacete, Benicasim, Denia, Madrigeras, Vic, and other cities. Avgust Lesnik writes: “There were 16 women: doctors Adela Bohunicki, Nada Dimitrijević-Nešković, and Dobrila Mezić-Šiljak, [as well as the nurses] Ana-Marija Basch (Baš), Olga Dragić-Belović (Milić Milica), Elizabeta-Liza Gavrić, Marija-Peči Glavaš, Marija Habulin, Lea Kraus, Tereza Kučera, Lujza Pihler (Demić Borka), Ottilia Reschitz-Zanoni, Ana Seles-Brozović, Kornelija Sende-Popović, Eugenia Simonetti, and Marija Šneeman”.

Borka Demic (right) in the Pasionaria Hospital of Murcia (colored by Tina Paterson)

If I were to be born again, I’d continue fighting for the ideals of my youth. Then, nothing was difficult and I don’t regret anything (Borka Demic)

The Yugoslav volunteers in the various units and arms

After the formation of the International Brigades, the Yugoslav volunteers were distributed throughout different units. For instance, the Edgar André battalion had 36, the Thälmann had 93, Garibaldi had 40, and Chapaiev had 78. The main body of Yugoslavs, however, were first integrated into the Balkan company of the Dombrowski battalion (120), and immediately after, into the Dimitrov battalion. By early 1938 a good portion of the Yugoslavs were integrated into two of the 129th Brigade’s battalions: Dimitrov (191) and Djaković (150). They were also a part of the 45th International Division (108)

There was Yugoslav presence in various arms and services: 4 in aviation; 12 in transport units, 1 in the navy, 33 in the International Brigades’ health service, and 26 in the guerrilla groups (one of the most experienced of which was Ljubomir Ilič). More important than this was their presence (131 members) in the artillery arm, of which there were 21 in the heavy artillery Slav Group, 22 in the 2nd heavy artillery Škoda Group’s Liebknecht Battery, 18 in the 3rd heavy artillery Group, 38 in the 4th anti-tank Group’s Stjepan Radić battery, 6 in the 35 Division’s Ana Pauker artillery Group, 5 in the 45 Division’s Rosa Luxembourg artillery Group, and 21 in the Gottwald battery. Furthermore, 65 Yugoslavs fought in the Spanish units of the Republican Army. (Avgust Lesnik)

They fought in almost every front in Spain, from the defense of Madrid to the very last battles of the retreat into France (Januray-February 1939) being an example of fearlessness and courage, because of which a good part of them received war medals from the Spanish Republican Government.

The Dimitrov battalion until December 1937

As has been explained in another article, the Dimitrov battalion was formed in January 1937 in the instructional base in Mahora. They entered battle the 12th of February in the Jarama battle, which finished the 27th of that same month. Then, until mid June, it stayed covering that from with the other battalions of the XV International Brigade.

After a two week rest in Ambite (Tajuña valley), the XV Brigade travelled to Madrid’s north to take part of the first great republican offensive in Brunete. Combat started during the night of the 5 to the 6th of July. The XV International Brigade was a part of, along the XIII and 16 BM, the XV Division under general Gal’s command [János Gálicz, a Soviet-Hungarian officer who also led the Lincoln Battalion]. The mission was to take the heights of Romanillos (XIII IB) and Mosquito (XV IB). It wasn’t possible because operations were slow and the brigades could not take the important francoist positions. The Dimitrov went as far as taking the Miraval Olive Grove, but in the 18th of July, when the first francoist counter-offensive commences, they lost it. Since that point, the republican positions began to retreat until the 22nd, when they were forced to cross back through the Guadarrama river. The XV IB was relieved the 26th of July and went back to where they began the offensive.

In late July, the Dimitrov returned to Ambite (Tajuña valley) and was able to reorganize: the battalion, that had arrived with 143 combatants, reached 563. In this way, in the 24th of August, it threw itself with renewed force against the Aragonian village of Quinto, which fell 26th. During the taking of the village and the Purburell hill, which defended them to the east, the Dimitrov battalion’s courage stood out. The same was true in the fierce week-long combat to subdue Belchite.

After this battle, the Dimitrov was detached from the XV Brigade and, during the few following months, was a part of, along with the Djuro Djakovic battalion, the 45th International Division’s Reserve Group. It was a period that they dedicated to military education and to the surveillance of the Huesca Front from the second line. In January 1938 they received the order to transfer to the Southern Front. Close to Almadén, in Chillón, the last International Brigade was formed, the 129th; composed of these two battalions plus the newly created Masaryk battalion.

The Djuro Djakovic Battalion

Composed primarily of Yugoslav volunteers, plus a few Czechoslovaks and Bulgarians, adopted their name in memory of that Croat revolutionary and member of the CPY, tortured and executed in 1929 by order of the king and dictator Alexander the First.

It was formed in April 1937 from the Balkan Company of the Dombrowski battalion. This Company had participated, with the Dombrowski, in the Defense of Madrid and in the battles of Boadilla, Jarama, and Guadalajara. Its excellent conduct pushed general Lukács [Béla Frankl, or Máté Zalka, nom de guerre Pál Lukács, a Hungarian veteran of the Russian Civil War, where he fought alongside the Bolsheviks, he died 2 months later in Huesca], leader of the XII IB, to convert the Company into the core from which the new Djure Djakovic battalion would arise. Its first combat happened in April 1937 in Santa Quiteria, in the Aragon Front, along the Rakosi battalion and the Karl Marx Division.

It returned to Carabaña (Madrid) to reorganize under the command of Bulgarian captain Jristov, and marched to Roquetes in June (close to Tortosa) to join the 150th IB (Dombrowski Brigade), formed in May from the Dombrowski, Rakosi, and André Marty battalions. This brigade plus the XII IB formed the 45th division, under the command of General Kléber [Manfred Stern, nom de guerre Emilio Kléber, a Ukranian Jew member of Soviet military intelligence], was sent to Madrid in early July to take part in the Brunete offensive as a reserve unit to the XVIII Army Corps.

The Djakovic battalion did not have any special role in Brunete, but it did in the following offensive towards Zaragoza (24th of August - 7th of September), as was expressed in Wladimir Stopczyk’s final report as Commissar of the XIII IB: “It has been told to me how, when they had been encircled and cut off there was no panic whatsoever, nor any case of disobeying an order. They conducted themselves with an equal parts spirit of sacrifice and discipline, as they continue to do so, as well as the soldiers of our Brigade’s other battalions. I have to specially remark the Djakovic battalion’s attitude who, despite the heavy losses suffered in the last scuttles, with intense fire from fascist artillery and aviation, maintained a dignified and heroic attitude”.

Both in this instance as in the October attack against Fuentes de Ebro, this battalion suffered many losses. Afterwards, the Dimitrov and Djakovic battalions were designated as the 45th Division’s Reserve Group. This division, from October 1937 to January 1938, remained in the Litera region as reinforcement of the first line at the Huesca front.

The 129th International Brigade

In February 1938, these two battalions, with the predominantly Czechoslovak Masaryk battalion, formed the 129th IB, in Chillón, close to Almadén. It was led by the Polish Wacław Komar [born Mendel Kossoj, known in Spain as Wacek Komar, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust and member of the Polish Communist Party until his retirement in 1967]. In addition to these battalions, the 129th IB had at its disposal an anti-tank battery made up of Yugoslavs, a mortar company and a cavalry squadron. In late March 1938. the 129th IB was transferred to the area around Morella, where it suffered heavy losses. The fascist troops led by general Aranda and the Italian Divisions advanced with numerous human and material resources, and the three battalions suffered severe losses. To this, the errors of the Republican command must be added, despite which the volunteers fought with high valor. Finally, in the 4th of April, the 129th evacuated the fort of Morella and retreated to rebuild its forces in Benassal, northeast of Castellón.

Yugoslav volunteers of the Djakovic battalion during the strategic retreat in Teruel

Once rebuilt and rearmed (the brigade once surpassed 2000 members), it initiated a series of defensive combats in the 17th of April in the province of Teruel in the context of the battle of the Levant. The scarcely-known feat began in Ejulve, in the province of Teruel’s north. For three months, these volunteers had the leading role in a strategic retreat of 225km [139.8 miles], through the mountains of Teruel, which brought them up to the Javalambre front, passing through Mora de Rubielos. In this last front, the 129th IB kept the defense and carried out a few attacks, highlighting the 18th of September attack to take the road from Teruel to Sagunto, the last swan song of a brigade that covered itself in glory during its short 7 month lifespan.

The Yugoslav volunteers at the end of the war in Spain

The international volunteers were disbanded in the 24th of September. In the center-south area it was done 2 weeks after, in early October. Those who remained in the Catalan region were concentrated in Campdevanol, north of Ripoll. A good part of the Yugoslavs, presents in the 129th IB and the artillery units, were concentrated in the Admiral’s headquarters in Valencia. In December, they were transported to Almusafes until they were able to travel to Barcelona by boat the 20th of January.

Days later, before Barcelona’s fall and the coming republican collapse, most of the Yugoslavs offered themselves as volunteers to help in the task of preventing the fascist advance, which they did from the 26th of January until February 6th. This is how Svetsilav Dorevic told it: “The end of our fight has come, the internationals’ last compromise was to help the Spanish fellows to contain the enemy at least a little bit, so the evacuation that had to be done could be done without panic and in order, so it did not fall prey to the enemy, as well as to prevent the capture of people at risk of death”.

After, came the concentration camps in Argeles sur Mer, Saint Cyprien, Collioure, Gurs, and others. Many managed to escape, others were transferred to the French work camps, others to the French resistance, as well as the resistance in other European countries. The metallurgical worker Koturović (“Cot”), of Belgrade, was a legendary hero of the French Resistance Movement, in which Ljubomir Ilič, Vlajko Begović, and Lazar Latinović also played a marked role.

Almost 350 were able to return to Yugoslavia, of which 250 joined the partisan fight beared by Tito [Another international volunteer] and the CPY. Around 150 perished in the national liberation war from 1942 to 1945. Many of those organized insurrections, led guerrilla detachments, or were unit chiefs. Because of their merits in the fight against the fascist invaders, the Popular Hero of Yugoslavia medal was awarded to more than 50 ex-combatants of the International Brigades, amongst which were Franc Rozman, Koča Popović, Kosta Nadj, Vladimir Popović, Peko Dapčević, Iván Rukavina, Danilo Lekić, Dušan Kveder, Veljko Kovačević, Srećko Manola, Vlado Cetković, Vojo Todorović, Otmar Kreačić, and Vicko Antić. All the rest were awarded with high medals.

#brigades #this was a challenging but enjoyable translation #I'm disappointed I was unable to find more info about some of the officials mentioned

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uss-edsall · 12 days

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Get an inquiry asking for assistance in research on a World War II soldier

“I can help you up to a certain degree, after that we’ll have to pass you along, but armed with the information needed for the next place to find his army records. What’s his name?”

(Very German Name here)

“Where is he from?”

“Berlin”

“Okay… Berlin, Connecticut? Berlin, New Hampshire?”

“Berlin, Germany”

“Huh. Okay. Did he die?”

“Yes”

“Okay, sorry to hear it. Where?

“Belgium late 1944”

Starting to worry about these very short answers “Sounds like maybe he was in the Battle of the Bulge. What was his rank?��

“It translates to Sergeant First Class”

Me, suspicious, both at the word ‘translates’ as SFC didn’t exist back then and was instead Technical Sergeant, but giving the benefit of the doubt, maybe they meant OR-7/E-7 “You mean Technical Sergeant, right? The Army changed Technical Sergeant to Sergeant First Class in 1948. What unit was he in?”

“Technical Sergeant, yes. He was in the 1st SS Panzer Division”

“We cannot help you.”

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theanticool · 2 months

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Trying to make this a more consistent thing so here is me talking about my 10 most anticipated fights of the week (7/19/2024-7/21/2024). No particular order.

Chantelle Cameron vs Elhem Mekhaled - Less about it being a competitive match up and more about liking both fighters. I feel a bit for Chantelle Cameron. Beat the P4P best boxer in the sport in her own backyard. Took a rematch for big money and basically got jobbed by the referee (and herself). For Mekhaled, she jumps up two weight classes after the loss to Baumgardner. She's won two since and is now fighting for the interim super lightweight championship. Mekhaled is a fun fighter and I can't imagine she doesn't turn this into a firefight.

Junto Nakatani vs Vincent Astrolabio - Junto Nakatani is now a P4P fighter in the sport. And rightfully so. Fantastic talent. Fun style and one of the more skilled finishers below the featherweight division. Vincent Astrolabio isn't a straight walkover, he fought Jason Moloney to a tight decision, but with some of the talent at the top end of bantamweight atm (and them all being in Japan) you'd hope Nakatani was getting those fights. I believe this is a mandatory though, so what can you do but hope for a good fight. If Nakatani really wants to fight Inoue, the fight he should be chasing is against Takuma Inoue.

Kosei Tanaka vs Jonathan Rodriguez - One of the big fights on the undercard of that Nakatani card. Kosei Tanaka was a hot shot super flyweight prospect that got turned away by grizzled vet and champion Kazuto Ioka. Tanaka has won 5 straight since the loss, capturing the WBO super flyweight title in the process. He is now set to face off with Jonathan Rodriguez, a Mexican boxer that failed to win a world title a while back. Tanaka is a fun fighter and Mexico vs Japan fights tend to be absolute head. Looking forward to it.

Tenshin Nasukawa vs Jonathan Rodriguez - A different Jonathan Rodriguez btw. P4P kickboxing great Tenshin Nasukawa continues on his quick ascent up the rankings in boxing. While Jonathan Rodriguez is coming off a loss to Antonio Vargas, he also had knocked out Khalid Yafai in his previous fight in the 1st round. He's not an easy fight for anyone to have in their 4th professional boxing match. Will be interesting to see how Tenshin manages.

Losene Keita vs Predrag Bogdanović - OKTAGON 59 - Losene Keita is possibly the most interesting prospect in Oktagon MMA atm. Fighting out of Belgium, he's got all the physical tools to be a real killer at featherweight. But he's competing up at lightweight for this big Oktagon LW tournament. He did not look great in his previous fight, getting badly hurt by Sardari in the process. So he'll be looking to reaffirm himself. I haven't seen a anything from Predrag Bogdanović outside of his loss to Will Brooks, but he's apparently a strong grappler. Should be interesting.

Doo Ho Choi vs Bill Algeo - UFC on ESPN 60 - This fight will be good for exactly 4 minutes. Either one of them, probably Choi, scores a KO in that time or Algeo will beat the hell out of Choi as he fades and stops him in the 2nd or 3rd. Choi just isn't a very durable fighter, despite his athletic gifts and I don't trust those gifts to still be there at this point. But it does have me invested. So it's on the list.

Amanda Lemos vs Virna Jandiroba - UFC on ESPN 60 - Of the fights on the list, this is the one I could see sucking. Lemos is a strong fighter but not a strong anti-wrestler. Jandiroba is a small grappler who's extremely skilled on the mat but can be scared off wrestling. Could end up being a tepid kickboxing match or a boring, one sided grappling match.

Petchpanomrung Kiatmoo9 vs Kento Haraguchi 3 - Glory 93 - 2023 was a rough year for Petchpanomrung. He went 2-2. He defended his Glory featherweight title twice but lost his two bouts up at lightweight. First he got stopped by Tyjani Beztati. Then he lost a 5 rounder in December to Chad Collins for the RISE title. So now he's defending that Glory featherweight title again. And against a guy he's 2-0 against - Kento Haraguchi. Kento has won 4 straight since losing to Petchpanomrung in 2022, including 3 stoppage wins.

Tyjani Beztati vs Endy Semeleer - Glory 93 - Endy Semeleer is no longer Glory welterweight champion. His reign cut short by a TKO stoppage where Chico Kwasi dropped him 3 times. Tyjani Beztati is also no longer Glory Lightweight champion. But because Glory decided they no longer wanted the division and cut it loose. So now Beztati is moving up to welterweight, possibly in anticipation of a yet to be announced upcoming Glory Welterweight Grand Prix. A very good fighter. Two former champions squaring off, with a possible shot at the welterweight title on the line.

I was really tempted to pick a random fight off the KSW card or Oktagon card but it felt inauthentic. Just did not have a 10th fight that felt super noteworthy. Maybe Jeong Yeong Lee vs Hyder Amil. So imagine an amazing fight that is happening this weekend and put it here. Maybe the start of the Olympics. Go watch some amateur wrestling or boxing or judo. I'm sure there's some great Muay Thai that I'm missing. IDK. Let me know.

#ufc #mma #boxing #kickboxing #glory #glory kickboxing

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footprintsinthesxnd · 8 months

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Young Love and Old Money

Summary: this series follows the story of Lewis Nixon and Josephine Wills and their trials, tribulation and love throughout WW2, including stories of their friends in between. Warnings: sexual images at the start, swearing, minor mentions of wounds, Julian and George being adorable.

Masterlist

Welcome to Hell - December 1944

His lips trailed feather-like kisses down her neck, trailing between the valley of her breast and down her stomach. Hot breath mingled between their lips as he kissed her passionately, his fingers digging into her hip bones.

“Lewis…please,” Josie's voice was hoarse and came out barely above a whisper but Lewis heard every word.

“Use your words my Darling. Tell me what you want,” Lewis growled, he could feel himself growing impatient and the urge to ravage his wife grew stronger by the minute. It had been months since they lay together and despite Lewis enjoying Josie’s company in the daytime, he couldn’t help the jealousy growing within him as he watched her laughing with Webster and Luz. As soon as he managed to drag her away from them and back to his own room, well the room he shared with Dick but Dick knew better than to come back to his room tonight.

“You’ve been teasing me all day Darlin’, how do you expect me to control myself,” he’d whined when he finally kissed his wife, tugging her lip between his teeth teasingly.

“Well Lewis, I’m sure you’ll find a way to reward yourself for such restraint,” Josie laughed, trailing her fingers across his shoulders, tugging at the lapel of his jacket.

“Oh, I’m sure I will.”

“Lew? Lew, come on. You’ve got to get up. Elements of the first and sixth Panzer Divisions have broken through in the Ardennes forest. We’re moving out in an hour. Come on Nix, get up!” Dick demanded, shoving Lewis causing him to nearly topple out of the bed.

“Jesus Christ Dick! What’s a man gotta do to get some sleep around here?”

“Not be in the 101st Airborne apparently,” Dick joked, throwing Lewis’ ODs at him. “Hurry up Lew.”

Lewis stomped out of his room, trailing after Dick at an increasingly slow pace, his jump boots scuffing at the tarmac as he dragged his way towards the jeep.

“This is bullshit. Why does everything seem to become the issue of the 101st? You’d think we were the only damn battalion in the whole ETO,” Lewis grumbled, glaring at Dick who sat with an amused smile on his lips.

“I don’t know what you’re so chirpy about. It’s not like we’re going on vacation.”

“No. I just find it humorous watching you complain.” Dick groaned slightly as Lewis thrust his elbow into his friend's stomach.

“You just keep laughing, Winters.”

“Nixon, may I have a word?” The matron's stern voice caused Josie to turn hastily, hurrying over in her direction.

“Yes Matron,” Josie resisted the urge to salute her, despite neither of them being in the army the Mateon ruled with an iron fist and reminded Josie of how Lewis had described Captain Sobel.

“I need to send some nurses to help at a field hospital in Bastogne, Belgium. Unfortunately, I can’t spare any nurses so I thought I could send some VADs instead. Would you be interested?”

Josie nodded and accepted the Matron's offer, not that the Matron showed any kind of enthusiasm towards the situation.

“Good, you’ll be leaving the hospital tomorrow morning. Be ready to leave at 0700 sharp.”

“George, do ya think you could keep it down? Some of us are trying to get some Goddamn sleep,” Bill's voice squawked from his foxhole causing George to laugh louder.

“For fuck sake!” Bill continued to grumble but George couldn’t contain his laughter, burying his head into Julian’s neck who was spluttering, trying to contain his own giggle.

The loud crouching of boots approaching from behind them caused the pair to pull away, Julian frantically trying to straighten his jacket where George had shimmied his hands inside to keep warm.

“Captain Nixon, Sir,” they both saluted the captain but Lewis just watched them with a bemused grin. The pair sorely saluted him, managing to get away with it as Josie’s close friends so this behaviour was unusual for them.

“Why do I get the feeling that you two are up to something?” Lewis asked, sliding down opposite them in the foxhole. “You look suspicious.”

“What? Us?”

“No!”

“We’re not..”

“I mean..”

“Guys, relax. I’m just messing with you. It’s okay I know about you anyway.” Lewis relaxed, leaning his head back against the cold, icy ground.

The pair opposite him looked confused, George’s chin chattered as he went to speak. “What do you know?”

Julian’s eyes were wide and he resembled Lewis’ dog when she thought she was in trouble for something. Although most of the time Lewis never punished her for anything, he had been besotted with that dog.

“You know? I know… about you two. Josie told me everything. It’s fine,” Lewis smiled at them reassuringly but his confession did nothing to lessen their nerves.

“You know everything? But you know it’s illegal right?” George asked, leaning forward as if Lewis couldn’t hear what they were trying to tell him. “We could be shot!”

Lewis had never seen George Luz so serious and it broke his heart to realise just how worried the pair were about him finding out the truth.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. Alright. I swear I won’t say a word. I’m happy for you both, I really am. You mean a lot to Josie, which means you also mean a lot to me too.” Lewis looked at the pair sincerely, reaching his hand forward to shake both their hands, cold fingers brushing against each other in a shaky handshake.

“She did what?” Julian’s face was panicked, he looked at George worriedly, resisting the urge to grab his hand.

“It’s alright. My lips are sealed,” Lewis assured them and felt as much relief as they did when the pair visibly relaxed against each other once more.

“Thank you, Captain Nixon,” Julian spoke up, his pink nose peeking out from beneath the scratchy, brown blanket he was wrapped in.

“Call me Lewis, you’re family after all.”

“I can’t believe she told him,” Julian sighed, tears bubbling in the corners of his eyes ready to overflow. “I trusted her.”

“Hey. Hey. Hey. Don’t cry, okay? We’ll be alright. Captain Nixon is a friend after all. I’m sure it will be okay,” George tried to comfort him, pulling Julian close into his chest and wrapping them both up in the blanket.

“But what if it’s not?” Julian whimpered, his face buried further into George’s neck.

“Well, I’m not going anywhere. Okay? You’re stuck with me.”

Lewis’ numb feet ached as his feet connected with the frozen ground, his legs swinging in long strides as he hurried towards the aid station. Ever since he’d received Josie’s letter informing him of her move to Bastogne he’d been desperate to see her, desperate to hold her, to kiss her.

He passed two wounded soldiers by the front door, one had his arm wrapped in some dirty, grey cloth while the other had an aid kit bandage wrapped around his head. Lewis' feet echoed on the cobbled, stone floor as he marched through the church, his eyes scanning the sea of bodies for any sign of his wife.

“Lewis?” A voice called from behind him. “Lewis, are you hurt? What are you doing here?”

Josie hurried towards him, flinging her arms around his neck. “Josie,” he whispered into her hair, his arms finding their home around her waist, pulling her body flush to his. “God, I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too. What are you doing here, Lew?” Josie asked, running her fingers through her husband's dishevelled brown locks as she looked up at him worriedly.

“I came to see you. As soon as I got your letter I had to know you were okay.” Lewis admitted, feeling a little pathetic but also no longer caring, as long as his wife was safe that’s all that mattered.

Shouts from behind them caused the couples to pull apart and Josie hurried towards Eugene who was bringing in another wounded soldier.

“Lewis, I have to go but if you’re still here later then we can talk some more.”

Lewis felt lost as his wife slipped from his arms and ran over to the medic who was already reeling off the man’s condition. Lewis felt out of place here, he was of no use in a hospital but watching as his wife hurriedly applied a bandage he knew that Josie was where she belonged

Tags: @georgieluz @iceman-kazansky @yeahcurrahhe-e @msmercury84 @blvestxr @dustyjumpwjngs @theflyingfin @jump-wings @kafka-ohdear @kmc1989 @mads-weasley @docroesmorphine @liptonsbabe @sweetxvanixlla @hesbuckcompton-baby @ronsparky @allthingsimagines @whollyjoly @bucky32557038ww2 @malarkgirlypop @hanniewinnix @inglourious-imagines @l13bg0tt

#young love and old money #Lewis Nixon x oc #band of brothers #band of brothers oc #Lewis Nixon

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er1chartmann · 6 months

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Adolf Eichmann

This is Adolf Eichmann, the empty man, timeline:

1906: He was born.

1914: The First World War began

1914: He and his family move to Linz, Austria.

1916: His mother died.

1918: The First World War ended

1925: He works in the sales division of the Upper Austrian Electrical Construction Company.

1927: He started working as a traveling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company in Upper Austria. He left his job in 1933

1932: He enters the Austrian National Socialist (Nazi) Party and the SS at the suggestion of an acquaintance, Ernst Kaltenbrunner.

1933: Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany

1933: The Austrian government suppresses the Austrian Nazi Party

1933: He leaves Austria for Germany, where he joins the “Austrian Legion” and engages in military training.

1934: He joins the Security Service Main Office (Sicherheitsdienst (SD) Hauptamt) with the rank of SS-Scharführer (Sergeant).

1935: He married Veronika (Vera) Liebl.

1936: His first son, Klaus Eichmann, was born.

1937: He is assigned to a section of the SD dealing with Zionist activities.

1937: He negotiates with Zionist functionaries and makes an inspection tour of Palestine in order to assess the possibility of large-scale voluntary Jewish emigration to Palestine.

1938: The Central Office for Jewish Emigration officially opens in Vienna.

1939: He becomes responsible for promoting the expulsion of Czech Jews from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

1939: The Second World War began.

1939: He creates a Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague.

1939: He leads the Reich-wide Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Berlin

1940: He becomes director of Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) section IV D 4 “Emigration and Evacuation”

1940: His second son, Horst Adolf Eichmann, was born.

1940: He organizes the deportation of nearly 7,000 Jews from Baden and Saarpfalz to areas of unoccupied France.

1941: He becomes director of RSHA section IV B 4 (Jewish Affairs, or Judenreferat).

1941: He is appointed SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel)

1941: He takes part in discussions in which Nazi leaders plan the annihilation of the European Jews.

1941-1942: Eichmann's Section IV B 4 coordinates the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews from the so-called Greater German Reich to ghettos and killing sites in the German-occupied Soviet Union.

1942: Reinhard Heydrich convenes the Wannsee Conference

1942: His third son, Dieter Helmut Eichmann, was born.

1942-1943: He and his aides organize the deportation of Jews from the so-called Greater German Reich, Slovakia, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, and Croatia to killing centers in German-occupied Poland, primarily Auschwitz-Birkenau.

1943-1944: He nd his aides organize the deportation of Jews from Greece, northern Italy, and Hungary, primarily to the killing center Auschwitz-Birkenau.

1944: He personally direct the deportation of Hungarian Jewry.

1945: Hitler commits suicide.

1945: The Second World War ended

1946: He escapes from US custody and flees to Argentina with the assistance of some Vatican officials.

1955: His fourth son, Ricardo Francisco Eichmann, was born.

1960: Agents of the Mossad abduct Eichmann from Argentina and bring him to Israel to stand trial.

1961: He is found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people.

1962: He died.

Sources:

Military Wiki: Adolf Eichmann

Wikipedia: Adolf Eichmann

Holocaust Encyclopedia: Adolf Eichmann

I DON'T SUPPORT NAZISM,FASCISM OR ZIONISM IN ANY WAY, THIS IS AN EDUCATIONAL POST

#reichblr #ww2 germany #ww2 history #studyblr #the ss #adolf eichmann #reinhard heydrich

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darkmaga-retard · 3 days

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Technocracy is a system pitted against all others, including capitalism, Marxism, and outright Fascism. However, it will use those other systems to achieve its goals of Scientific Dictatorship. The Trilateral Commission kickstarted modern Technocracy in 1973 and devised a policy of using mass immigration as a tool to break down Western society. Peter Sutherland did it in Europe. Anthony Blinken is doing it in the U.S.

No other continent suffers from an immigration crisis. Not China. Not Asia. Not South America. Not Africa. Not India or Russia. What Trilateral policy did in Europe is working on America, with similar results.

Wade though this thoughtful paper and consider the author’s conclusions:

“The oligarchs that wish to see Technocracy established can capitalize on the ramblings of the real far-right minority by framing all dissent against the emerging Technate as “extremism.”

Perhaps more crucially, by perpetuating the left-right paradigm, pitting the identitarian movement against the advocates of identity politics, populations can be mired in pointless debates. This irrelevant distraction, embodied by the vacuum of party politics, leaves the global public-private partnership free to push ahead with the rollout of Technocracy while the people engage in counter-productive arguments and continually fail to recognize their real enemy: the oligarchs. ⁃ Patrick Wood, TN Editor.

In the UK, the so-called far-right‘s stance on immigration is said to be driven by “the Great Replacement conspiracy theory.” According to the influential global think tank the Institute for Strategic Studies (ISD):

“The Great Replacement” theory was first coined by French writer Renaud Camus. Identitarian movements across Europe (including in Austria, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany) have used the theory to recruit others to their cause, claiming their countries and national “identities” are under threat due to increasing immigrant populations.

It is true, in part, that Camus made this argument. Some elements of his philosophy are racist and do offer apparent rationales for religious bigotry. It is also true that Camus has been influential in the rise of the identitarian movement, which is perceived as “right-wing.” Identitarianism broadly stands in opposition to identitiy politics, considered progressive or “left-wing.”

While the identitarian movement generally opposes multiculturalism and defends ethno-culturalism, identity politics largely holds that states foist structural inequality of opportunity upon people based on their personal characteristics—such as their ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation and disability, etc. Those who oppose multiculturalism perceive identity politics as a deliberate attempt to dilute or even eradicate their culture.

These sociopolitical and philosophical concepts have a massive “influence” on our polity, public discourse and society. The right vs left paradigm is thereby created and perpetuated through the constantly reported clash between the identitarian movement and identity politics.

Those who espouse the Great Replacement theory often cite the comments of Peter Sutherland (1946 – 2018) as evidence that there is a cohesive “plan” to replace European culture. Sutherland was “influential” in guiding the development of the EU and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). He was a banker, business man, lawyer and politician. Sutherland sat on the Bilderberg steering committee, he was chairman of Trilateral Commission European division and the European Round Table movement.

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flagwars · 2 months

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Regional Flag Wars: Round 1

Welcome to the Regional Flag Wars! It will focus on the flags of regions/administrative divisions, with one flag being allowed per country. This tournament has been a long time coming, as I’ve been holding many preliminary rounds to decide the best regional flags of various countries over the past year, including the tournaments the Japanese Prefecture Flag Wars and the Russian Federal Subject Flag Wars. This tournament is one of my largest, with 82 flags and six rounds. The first round will begin this week. I hope everyone is excited to vote for the greatest regional flag in the world!

Round 1:

1. Baja Verapaz Department, Guatemala vs. Tierra del Fuego Province, Argentina

2. Yucatán, Mexico vs. Alexandria Governate, Egypt

3. Nakuru County, Kenya vs. Panevėžys County, Lithuania vs. San José Department, Uruguay

4. South Ostrobothnia, Finland vs. Hirshabelle, Somalia

5. Northern Territory, Australia vs. Vysočina Region, Czechia vs. Bali, Indonesia

6. Azores, Portugal vs. Chuquisaca Department, Bolivia vs. Lower Austria, Austria

7. Brod-Posavina County, Croatia vs. Olancho Department, Honduras vs. Chuvashia, Russia

8. Brest Region, Belarus vs. Sicily, Italy vs. Batken Region, Kyrgyzstan

9. Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria vs. Amambay Department, Paraguay

10. Sarawak, Malaysia vs. Bukidnon, Philippines vs. Bratislava Region, Slovakia

11. Kosrae State, Micronesia vs. South Darfur, Sudan vs. Saare County, Estonia

12. Mpumalanga, South Africa vs. Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, Thailand

13. Gagauzia, Moldova vs. Chontales Department, Nicaragua

14. Adjara, Georgia vs. Grande Comore, Comoros vs. Wallonia, Belgium

15. Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates vs. Tuzla Canton, Bosnia and Herzegovina vs. Magallanes Region, Chile

16. Töv Province, Mongolia vs. Balochistan, Pakistan vs. Tocantins, Brazil

17. Amhara Region, Ethiopia vs. Covasna County, Romania vs. Canton of Bern, Switzerland

18. New Brunswick, Canada vs. Angaur, Palau

19. San Jose Province, Costa Rica vs. Macedonia, Greece vs. Occitania, France

20. Saga Prefecture, Japan vs. Ebon Atoll, Marshall Islands

21. Greenland, Denmark vs. La Libertad Department, El Salvador

22. Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine vs. Central Equatoria, South Sudan

23. Valencia, Spain vs. Coclé Province, Panama

24. Mon State, Myanmar vs. Malampa Province, Vanuatu

25. Lublin Voivodeship, Poland vs. Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas Province, Ecuador

26. Uva Province, Sri Lanka vs. Zulia, Venezuela vs. Agder, Norway

27. Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan vs. Friesland, Netherlands vs. Enga Province, Papua New Guinea

28. Leicestershire, United Kingdom vs. Choiseul Province, Solomon Islands

29. Bavaria, Germany vs. Kukës County, Albania vs. Kalmar County, Sweden

30. Department of Cuzco, Peru vs. Vojvodina, Serbia vs. Heves County, Hungary

31. Alaska, United States vs. Haut-Ogooué Province, Gabon vs. Grand Gedeh County, Liberia

32. Otago, New Zealand vs. Boyacá Department, Colombia vs. Connacht, Ireland

#flags #vexillology #regional flag wars #tournament #brackets

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strictlyfavorites · 1 year

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AUDIE MURPHY

Section 46, Grave 366-11

He wanted to join the Marines, but he was too short. The paratroopers wouldn't have him, either. Reluctantly, he settled on the infantry, and ultimately became one of the most decorated heroes of World War II. He was Audie Murphy, the baby-faced Texas farmboy who became an American legend. Murphy grew up on a sharecropper's farm in Hunt County, Texas. After his father deserted the family, he helped raise his 11 brothers and sisters, dropping out of school in the fifth grade to earn money picking cotton. He was 16 years old when his mother died, and he watched as his siblings were doled out to an orphanage or to relatives. Seeking an escape from this difficult life, Murphy enlisted in the Army in 1942 — falsifying his birth certificate so that he appeared to be 18, one year older than he actually was.

Following basic training, Murphy was assigned to the 15th Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division in North Africa. First entering combat in July 1943, during the invasion of Sicily, he proved himself to be a proficient marksman and a highly skilled soldier. He consistently demonstrated how well he understood the techniques of small-unit action. Murphy landed at Salerno, Italy to fight in the Voltuno River campaign, and then at Anzio to be part of the Allied force that fought its way to Rome. Throughout these campaigns, Murphy's skills earned him advancements in rank, because many of his superior officers were being transferred, wounded or killed. After the capture of Rome in June 1944, Murphy earned his first decoration for gallantry.

Shortly thereafter, his unit was withdrawn from Italy to train for Operation Anvil-Dragoon, the invasion of southern France that began on August 15, 1944. During seven weeks of fighting in that successful campaign, Murphy's division suffered 4,500 casualties, and he became one of the most decorated men in his company. But his biggest test was yet to come.

On January 26, 1945, near the village of Holtzwihr in eastern France, Lt. Murphy's forward positions came under fierce attack by the Germans. Against the onslaught of six Panzer tanks and 250 infantrymen, Murphy ordered his men to fall back to better their defenses. Alone, he mounted an abandoned, burning tank destroyer and, with a single machine gun, contested the enemy's advance. Wounded in the leg during the heavy fire, Murphy remained there for nearly an hour, repelling the attack of German soldiers on three sides and single-handedly killing 50 of them. His courageous performance stalled the German advance and allowed him to lead his men in the counterattack which ultimately drove the enemy from Holtzwihr. For this, Murphy was awarded the Medal of Honor, the United States' highest award for gallantry in action.

By the end of World War II, Murphy had become one of the nation's most-decorated soldiers, earning an unparalleled 28 medals (including three from France and one from Belgium). Murphy had been wounded three times during the war. In May 1945, when victory was declared in Europe, he had still not reached his 21st birthday.

Audie Murphy returned to a hero's welcome in the United States. His photograph appeared on the cover of Life magazine, and actor James Cagney persuaded him to embark on an acting career. Still shy and unassuming, Murphy arrived in Hollywood with only his good looks and — by his own account — "no talent." Nevertheless, he went on to make more than 40 films. His first part was just a small one in the 1948 film "Beyond Glory." The following year, he published his wartime memoir, "To Hell and Back," which received positive reviews. In 1955, he portrayed himself in the movie version of the book. Many film critics, however, believe that his best performance was "The Red Badge of Courage," director John Huston's 1951 Civil War epic based on the novel by Stephen Crane.

Murphy retired from acting after 21 years, and subsequently bred race horses and pursued various business ventures. But he struggled financially, due to gambling and unsuccessful investments, and he declared bankruptcy in 1968. Murphy suffered from what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder, experiencing headaches, depression and nightmares; he once said that he could sleep only with a loaded pistol under his pillow. In 1971, at the age of 46, Murphy died in the crash of a private plane near Roanoke, Virginia.

Audie Murphy is buried in Section 46, just across from the Memorial Amphitheater. A special flagstone walkway has been constructed to accommodate the large number of people who stop to pay their respects to this hero.

Medal of Honor citation:

"2d Lt. Murphy commanded Company B, which was attacked by 6 tanks and waves of infantry. 2d Lt. Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to prepared positions in a woods, while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. Behind him, to his right, 1 of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn. Its crew withdrew to the woods. 2d Lt. Murphy continued to direct artillery fire which killed large numbers of the advancing enemy infantry. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, 2d Lt. Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer, which was in danger of blowing up at any moment, and employed its .50 caliber machinegun against the enemy. He was alone and exposed to German fire from 3 sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused their infantry attack to waver. The enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back. For an hour the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminate 2d Lt. Murphy, but he continued to hold his position and wiped out a squad which was trying to creep up unnoticed on his right flank. Germans reached as close as 10 yards, only to be mowed down by his fire. He received a leg wound, but ignored it and continued the single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted. He then made his way to his company, refused medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack which forced the Germans to withdraw. His directing of artillery fire wiped out many of the enemy; he killed or wounded about 50. 2d Lt. Murphy's indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction, and enabled it to hold the woods which had been the enemy's objective."

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floridaboiler · 2 years

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Patton's Own, today marks the 71st anniversary of one of the most decisive and bloodiest battles of #WorldWarII . The #BattleofTheBulge began Dec. 16, 1944, and was a sneak attack by Hitler on exhausted #USArmy soldiers in the hills of Belgium's Ardennes forest. Lt. Gen. George Patton and his Third Army played an instrumental role in defeating the German counter offensive in the Ardennes, relieving Bastogne and elements of the 101st Airborne Division and the start of the Allied counter offensive against the Germans. The battle was Hitler's last major stand, really - one that could have changed the tide of the war in his favor. Instead, it solidified an Allied Victory. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the battle, "This is undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war, and will, I believe be regarded as an ever famous American victory.

"Read more on the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) blog at http://www.dodlive.mil/.../remembering-the-bulge-key.../ Third, Always First!

#Battle of the Bulge #WWII #World War II #December 16

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mariacallous · 7 months

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MONS, Belgium—It was the summer of 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale war in Ukraine was 6 months old. NATO officials feared more than ever that they would one day have to send hundreds of thousands of troops to fight and die against the Russians.

With war on NATO’s doorstep, the alliance faced an existential question: Was it up to the job of defending every square inch of its turf? Christopher Cavoli, the four-star U.S. Army general tapped as the alliance’s military chief that July, decided it wasn’t.

Cavoli ordered his top lieutenants to come up with a plan to transform Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE)—NATO’s military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, which had lost most of its power after the Cold War—into a proper war command center.

“His initial guidance and direction that started all of this was: I need to be able to command,” said Col. Bryan Frizzelle, the project manager for SHAPE’s strategic warfighting headquarters.

The effort to remake the alliance’s headquarters is just one element in the most ambitious military reforms that NATO has embarked on in years. NATO is growing the size of its response force by eightfold. The war room in Mons has been remade to call up troop reinforcements and map out long-range military strikes on Russian soil even before a war breaks out. For the first time, NATO forces are exercising those brand new war plans in Europe’s hinterlands this spring.

The plans could take years more to put in place. “We are talking decades—potentially plural,” said Becca Wasser, a senior fellow for the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank.

But the war in Ukraine is already 2 years old. Most NATO nations are struggling to boost defense spending and produce artillery shells. Russia’s military is reconstituting faster than anyone expected. And the United States is just nine months away from a presidential election in which the Republican front-runner, former U.S. President Donald Trump, is already openly questioning whether the United States would help enforce Article 5—the self-defense clause at the heart of NATO—if he is elected as U.S. president.

All of this means that the alliance may not have decades to get its act together. “That’s the open question,” Wasser said. “Does NATO actually have that time?”

The first thing you see at SHAPE is the bunker. Built in 1985, when NATO’s military headquarters had a Soviet nuclear target on its back, the massive concrete structure looms over the parking lot. It’s not built to withstand a modern Russian nuclear blast—you can’t dig deep enough to shelter from that—but it’s a symbol of what SHAPE used to be at the height of the Cold War: the central nervous system of NATO’s 3 million troops and 100 army divisions in Europe.

It’s also where a group of NATO planners from a half-dozen countries took the first steps toward rebuilding the sleepy military command. As the Kremlin was building up more than 100,000 troops to invade Ukraine in late 2021 and early 2022, NATO scrambled jets, rolled tanks, and hardened the eastern flank with more than 8,000 troops from 30 countries. NATO once again needed a central nervous system to command them.

Anyone who worked at SHAPE had an open invitation to join a planning session in the bunker on a Saturday afternoon in late fall of 2022. Few did. Of the nearly 3,000 people who work at SHAPE, just 30 people showed up. That ragtag group of volunteers who committed to work nights and weekends became the so-called “Tiger Team” that would remake—and is still remaking—NATO’s military headquarters for war.

The team members came from all over the headquarters and hailed from all across Europe, including Denmark, Lithuania, and the United Kingdom. Some got roped in on long email chains by their bosses. Some told their colleagues about it and convinced them to join. Frizzelle told a few of them himself. Kenneth Boesgaard, a Danish special operations officer, found out the agenda had very little to do with special operations, but he went anyway. The fear of missing out was too strong.

They didn’t waste any time. Led by a three-star French Army general, they went right after NATO’s sacred cows. The two-hour discussion became the foundation for a series of “hard truths.” SHAPE was no longer useful. It was built for peacetime, not to fend off a Russian attack. It was no longer “fit for purpose,” Frizzelle said.

The group had homework: to deliver an update to Cavoli in just eight weeks, cutting through four ranks in the chain of command. And they had only four full-time planners.

By December 2022, they had written a first draft of SHAPE’s new job description. It had about a half-dozen major bullet points. It included planning for war as well as resourcing and commanding it. SHAPE also still had to advise NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on military policy and take the 31-nation political commitments that come out of NATO summits—carefully worded and littered with diplomatic jargon—and turn them into military reality: sensors, shooters, troops, and brigades on the ground.

Then they had to get the rest of the headquarters to buy in. “[In] NATO, you’ve got to build consensus,” said Lt. Col. Alex Price, a British Army officer involved in the project. “I’ve learned that the hard way.” The Tiger Team didn’t need any convincing. But the biggest problem was getting the rest of SHAPE to understand what a “strategic warfighting headquarters” was supposed to do.

The job of the command is to say who goes where—whether it’s a bomber, a fighter jet, or a rocket artillery system—and what they’re going to hit. For years, it was the other way around. NATO’s three joint force commands, which are meant to divide up responsibility for security in Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean and report back to Mons, did most of SHAPE’s job for it. They ran the show in the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, and Afghanistan, where NATO’s military might was mostly delivered in airstrikes, not boots on the ground to stop Russian tanks.

By the time Putin invaded Ukraine, about 80 percent of SHAPE’s work was reporting to Stoltenberg, NATO’s civilian leader. “We were not in charge,” said French Army Lt. Gen. Hubert Cottereau, SHAPE’s vice chief of staff, who oversees the headquarters transformation effort.

That worked in the small wars of the 1990s. But computer simulations quickly made it clear that that approach wouldn’t work on a larger scale. In one digital exercise in September 2022, officials at Naples, Italy, the hub of NATO’s naval forces, and Brunssum, Netherlands, the nerve center for NATO ground troops, told SHAPE to step aside: Just give them the shooters, sensors, and troops, and they would plot out the targets.

Once the simulated bullets started flying in NATO’s digitized war with “Occasus”—a bloc of four fictional Russia-like countries—the lower-level commanders hit a wall. Who would prioritize the main effort? Who would give them the resources? And who would call up the reserves?

They needed SHAPE to do it.

Cavoli didn’t go easy on the Tiger Team. The group had missed a key bullet point: strategic targeting. If Putin ever ordered Russian troops onto NATO soil, Cavoli knew he would need to be able to strike back, hitting targets deep inside Russia to paralyze the Kremlin’s war industry and break their logistical chains.

Dating back to the end of the Cold War, most NATO countries wanted to make nice with Russia. Few were comfortable with identifying military targets in the Kremlin’s backyard, fearing that first Boris Yeltsin, and then Putin, would see it as warmongering. So they gave that power away.

“We discovered that SHAPE actually in peacetime had no targeting authorities because that was politically sensitive,” Frizzelle said. If a war had broken out, NATO military planners would have had to start planning out Russian targets from scratch.

Ukraine changed everything. In the summer of 2023, during the annual summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, the alliance unanimously granted SHAPE the ability to conduct targeting. Now, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, SHAPE is using that authority—in peacetime. NATO planners are deciding what would be valid targets on Russian soil, plotting them out for Naples, Brunssum, and NATO’s U.S.-based command in Norfolk, Virginia, and running the potential bull’s-eyes through all of the legal traps.

Cavoli needed to get NATO’s eyes on the target, too. Until last summer, SHAPE’s around-the-clock watch center had only a dozen seats. After a three-month construction project, the center now fits a workforce of 85 people, seven times as big as it was.

Left: SHAPE’s new headquarters appears under construction in Mons on March 21, 1967. Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images Right: NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg (second from right) walks with outgoing and incoming Supreme Allied Commander Europe generals toward a change-of-command ceremony at SHAPE in Mons on May 4, 2016. Thierry Monasse/AFP via Getty Images

It’s not just a watch center, though. Officials see it as a nerve center of all of NATO’s military operations. By putting all of the experts in one room, within a few minutes, a few chair swivels, and a couple of phone calls, the new multidomain operations team can quickly give Cavoli and his aides-de-camp everything they need to respond to a Russian attack.

“Let’s say there’s a report of a Russian rocket or part of a drone landing in Romania,” Frizzelle said. “The senior watch officer can turn around in her chair and say, ‘OK, we have this report. Give me the geographic subject matter expert.’” They can brief Cavoli within a few minutes of getting the alert.

They’re still getting all of the right people in place. In a crisis, there’s no time to be flipping through the phone book; SHAPE needs officers in the bunker who can immediately direct it to NATO’s land, air, and maritime commanders. The idea is to be able to connect from Mons to a shooter on the eastern flank if war breaks out—almost instantly.

“The key to effective deterrence is the demonstrated capability to inflict real pain on Russia,” said Ben Hodges, a former head of U.S. Army Europe who is now a NATO senior mentor for logistics. “If you want to prevent the Russians from making a terrible decision, then that means we have to be able to move as fast—or faster—than them.”

Two years into Russia’s invasion, NATO nations have now put 150,000 ground troops on the eastern flank. But NATO has no troops of its own. It has no tanks. It has no fighter jets. It’s the job of each country to get its troops, tanks, and planes ready to go when the alliance asks for them.

“The biggest catastrophe can be summed up in two words,” Cottereau said. “Too late.”

For decades, SHAPE had very little power over troops in NATO countries. But Russia’s invasion prompted those nations to give Cavoli more authority. He can adjust the level of air defense cover in Europe. He can move NATO’s two standing maritime task forces at sea. He can scale up the eight battlegroups on Russia’s border from battalions, with just over 1,000 troops, all the way up to brigades, which are at least three times that size. Some of them are already on the way.

Cavoli still can’t order troops to fire, but he can order more troops to move into place—or get ready to move. And he now has at his command 300,000 troops ready to exercise and respond to a crisis—almost eight times what he had before the war. It’s called the Allied Response Force.

Once it’s activated in July, the newly readied force will be trained twice a year: once for a pre-crisis simulation and again for an out-of-area operation that simulates a real war. The aim is to send a clear message to Russia: Keep out.

“Every ship that sails, every aircraft that flies, every tank that rolls sends a message,” said Gunnar Bruegner, the one-star German general who serves as assistant chief of staff to Cavoli for developing and training NATO’s forces. “We are ready.”

The new force is intended to be the tip of NATO’s spear, similar to the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, the Pentagon’s on-call force of paratroopers that deployed to Afghanistan for the 2021 evacuation effort and then served as the boots on the ground in Poland when Russia’s full-scale assault on Ukraine started.

The next stage is to keep a larger reserve of forces prepared for an Article 5-level war, distinct from the eastern flank battlegroups, that would be the size of somewhere between the 300,000-troop rapid response force and the 3.2 million-plus troops in NATO’s 31 militaries. Each unit will be assigned its own patch of dirt to defend and will exercise based on NATO’s war plans. Cavoli could order some of those troops to be ready immediately, more at a month’s notice, and even more in six months.

“That’s the kind of process we’re going through now,” said a NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity based on ground rules set by the alliance. “[We’re] going to allies and saying, ‘What have you got? What could you stick on the table in an Article 5 situation?’”

Although defense spending in Europe has grown by almost a third in the past decade and as many as 20 countries could hit the alliance’s 2 percent defense spending target this year, there’s an ongoing give-and-take. In NATO, members have the control button by providing the money and the troops. Just one ally saying “no” can cause a major headache. Greece refused to participate in airstrikes on the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. During NATO’s 2011 intervention to shut down Libya’s skies, Germany refused to provide its early warning aircraft.

The NATO official said European nations are going to have to invest more in weapons systems and training that they’ve been leaning on the Americans to provide, such as air and missile defense, long-range artillery and missiles, command and control, and land combat formations.

And the biggest question mark is Trump. Again the Republican front-runner in the 2024 election, the former president is publicly throwing cold water on NATO’s self-defense pledge. If European nations don’t pay up for defense, he said at a campaign rally this month, he would encourage Russia to attack them. (NATO officials fired back: While the alliance gives nations a defense spending target, it is not a dues-paying group. “This is not a country club,” Julianne Smith, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, told CNN.)

Trump’s rhetoric might not have been an existential issue for NATO in the days of voluntary operations such as Kosovo and Libya. But after Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, everything has changed.

“Article 5 is fundamentally different,” the NATO official said. “Everybody is on the hook.”

When he was Estonia’s defense chief, between 2016 and 2017, Margus Tsahkna and his aides counted more than 120,000 Russian troops massed on the other side of the country’s Baltic border. Putin could send those troops into battle within 24 to 48 hours. “All that was needed was the command from the Kremlin,” said Tsahkna, now Estonia’s top diplomat.

The invasion never came. Today, two years after Russian troops began to roll over the border into Ukraine, most of the soldiers arrayed against the borders of the three former Soviet nations on NATO’s eastern flank—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—are gone. Many of them have fought and died in Ukraine.

It may not be an all-out invasion of the Baltic states that’s coming. After all, more than 315,000 Russian troops have been killed or injured in Ukraine. It could be a hybrid attack, too—cyberattacks, the cutting of pipelines, or a limited invasion to undermine Western confidence in Article 5 that’s already been damaged by Trump. But either way, there’s a growing fear in the West that Russia is already picking itself up off the mat much faster than anyone expected.

The question is not just when a Russian attack might come but where.

“[Putin] will continue. He must continue the aggression. He needs to have a new conflict somewhere,” Tsahkna said. “Testing NATO, is it Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland? I don’t know. [But] it’s not even a question.”

Estonian officials believe that Putin is planning to put two to three times more firepower against the borders with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland than it did before the Ukraine war. And Putin is making up for Russia’s combat losses, expanding the size of the military to more than 1.3 million troops, only a bit smaller than the U.S. armed forces.

NATO planners said last October that they were following expert estimates that Russia could reconstitute in a three-to-five-year period after the shooting stops in Ukraine, with Russian land forces degraded but much of the rest of the military intact. But Russia’s military comeback has accelerated. Some European officials now believe Russia could attack NATO directly. This month, Denmark’s defense minister said Russia could test Article 5 within three to five years.

So NATO’s planning has accelerated, too.

This year’s ongoing Steadfast Defender exercise, which started in January and won’t end until May, will top out at 90,000 troops—only about a quarter of them American. Marines from three countries will ship out of Norfolk aboard the USS Gunston Hall and launch an amphibious assault to take back the beaches of Norway. Then NATO’s highest-readiness troops will assault across the Vistula River in Poland.

It’s the alliance’s biggest military demonstration in 36 years. “If you’re Russia, you might say: ‘I can attack this spot here now, and maybe I’ve got a temporary advantage,’” the NATO official said. “But the knowledge that we can and will bring basically two full American corps to Europe—and they will fight—that is a pretty big deterrent.”

Another key reason for doing large-scale exercises so soon after Cavoli’s team put the plans on paper is to see what works and what doesn’t. How do you move land forces across Europe? How do you supply them? And when the shooting starts, will they arrive in time?

“There might be a big attack coming on NATO,” Bruegner said. “It gives you the bloody truth about what you really are capable of doing.”

Back in Mons, dozens of military officers from NATO countries huddled in the SHAPE bunker in October 2023 to test their latest plans in a 10-day exercise dubbed “Steadfast Jupiter.” This time, they were fighting off a fictional invasion of Eastern Europe from Occasus, their Russia-like foe.

In the end, SHAPE received more than a passing grade. The allies didn’t steamroll their enemy but degraded Occasus enough to the point that the mock conflict could end at the bargaining table.

Every three to four months, Frizzelle’s team emerges from the bunker to present Cavoli with another set of recommendations to change the SHAPE headquarters, each time wrenching down on more problems. In the October exercise, Cavoli and his team realized their rules of engagement were too strict—better suited for Afghanistan than Article 5. So they tweaked them.

Their next assignment is to present their work to all 31 NATO allies—and Sweden—at the upcoming Washington summit in July. It’s a chance for the civilian brass to grill Cavoli. “How far are we? How good are we at being able to execute the plans?” said Royal Netherlands Navy Adm. Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee.

In the meantime, they’ve got more homework to do. SHAPE’s experts are still looking at how to optimize intelligence gathering, integrating artificial intelligence into the headquarters, and building out their own wargaming capability, with a team of experts who live, breathe, eat, and sleep Russian tactics as the “red team” on the other side.

The tweaking will continue as long as Cavoli is NATO’s military commander—at least for the next year and a half. But they’ll never be 100 percent sure that the war plans will work until the first shot is fired in an actual war.

“We’ve built an airplane—the new strategic warfighting headquarters,” Frizzelle said. “It’s informed by the blueprints of airplanes that have flown well in the past. But until we fly the airplane, we don’t know how it’s going to handle. We don’t know if we’ve forgotten a part.”

“Hopefully,” he added. “We haven’t.”

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whencyclopedia · 30 days

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Dunkirk Evacuation

The Dunkirk Evacuation of 26 May to 4 June 1940, known as Operation Dynamo, was the attempt to save the British Expeditionary Force in France from total defeat by an advancing German army. Nearly 1,000 naval and civilian craft of all kinds, aided by calm weather and RAF air support, managed to evacuate around 340,000 British, French, and Allied soldiers.

The evacuation led to soured Franco-Anglo relations as the French considered Dunkirk a betrayal, but the alternative was very likely the capture of the entire British Expeditionary Force on the Continent. France surrendered shortly after Dunkirk, but the withdrawal allowed Britain and its empire to harbour its resources and fight on alone in what would become an ever-expanding theatre of war.

Germany's Blitzkrieg

At the outbreak of the Second World War when Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, France was relying almost entirely on a single defensive line to protect itself against invasion. These defences were the Maginot Line, a series of mightily impressive concrete structures, bunkers, and underground tunnels which ran along France's eastern frontiers. Manned by 400,000 soldiers, the defence system was named after the French minister of war André Maginot. The French imagined a German attack was most likely to come in two places: the Metz and Lauter regions. As it turned out, Germany attacked France through the Ardennes and Sedan on the Belgian border, circumventing most of the Maginot Line and overrunning the inadequate French defences around the River Meuse, inadequate because the French had considered the terrain in this forested area unsuitable for tanks. Later in the campaign, the Maginot Line was breached near Colmar and Saarbrücken.

To bolster the defences of France, Britain had sent across the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) under the command of General John Vereker (better known by his later title Lord Gort, 1886-1946). Around 150,000 men, mostly infantry, had arrived in September 1939 to strengthen the Franco-Belgian border. The BEF included the British Advanced Air Striking Force of 12 RAF squadrons. The aircraft were mostly Hawker Hurricane fighters and a few light bombers, all given much to the regret of RAF commanders who would have preferred to have kept these planes for home defence. The superior Supermarine Spitfire fighters were kept safely in Britain until the very last stages of the battle in France. The BEF had no armoured divisions and so was very much a defensive force, rather than an offensive one. More infantry divisions arrived up to April 1940, so the BEF grew to almost 400,000 men, but 150,000 of these had little or no military training. As General Bernard Montgomery (1887-1976) noted, the BEF was "totally unfit to fight a first class war on the Continent" (Dear, 130). In this respect, both Britain and France were very much stuck in the defensive-thinking mode that had won them the First World War (1914-18). Their enemy was exactly the opposite and had planned meticulously for what it called Fall Gelb (Operation Yellow), the German offensive in the west.

Totally unprepared for a war of movement, the defensive-thinking French were overwhelmed in the middle weeks of May 1940 by the German Blitzkrieg ("lightning war") tactics of fast-moving tanks supported by specialist bombers and smartly followed by the infantry. German forces swept through the three neutral countries of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium. The 9th Army punched through the Ardennes and raced in a giant curve through northeast France to reach the coast around Boulogne. The BEF and the northern French armies (7th and 1st) were cut off from the rest of the French forces to the south. Germany had achieved what it called the 'Sickle Slice' (Sichelschnitt). By 24 May, the French and British troops were isolated and with their backs to the English Channel, occupying territory from Dunkirk to Lille. Although there were sporadic counterpunches by the defenders, Gort had already concluded that the French army had collapsed as an operational force. Gort considered an attack on the Germans to the south, which he was ordered to make, would have achieved very little except the annihilation of his army. The BEF must be saved, and so he withdrew to the north.

#History #Allied #BEF #Belgian #WHE #[#]

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meademalove · 10 months

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https://archive.md/aKqxQ

This is a Google translate, but you get the gist of it. Love them so much! 🥹❤️

'Beth gets the poop, I get a paw and the cuddles'

Puppy Myle Meadema causes division in the Vivianne Miedema house

Well, what to do if both you and your girlfriend really want to participate in the Olympic Games, but only one of the two can qualify? This tricky issue means that the lovers Vivianne Miedema, striker of the Orange Lionesses, and Beth Mead, attack leader of the English Lionesses, are diametrically opposed to each other these days.

With a wink of course, but still. For example, Miedema (27) made it clear on Monday morning that love with Mead (28) will immediately be on hold in north-west London for an hour and a half. What Miedema said to Mead when she closed the door of their London home behind her? “That I hope she will be very disappointed the next time we meet again.”

Puppy Myle

Recently the couple, affectionately renamed 'Meadema', was delighted with the arrival of puppy Myle. Both Miedema and Mead had a tough time after suffering a serious knee injury one year ago and one after the other.

The top strikers, Mead was the best player at the European Championship won by England in the summer of 2022, were out for ten months and missed the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. The goalgetters have now recovered from their cruciate ligament injuries. The English striker made her comeback on October 15, and Miedema's return followed a week later.

Mead continues in recovery

Mead is further along in her recovery than her Dutch friend. “Beth scored twice again last weekend. Then you could really see for the first time that she felt completely free again," says the attacker from Hoogeveen proudly. “That is why she deserves to be selected for the national team again.”

Waiting for a hit after comeback

Miedema herself is still waiting for her first goal since her comeback. She yearns for a starting place. It has to happen on December 13, in a League Cup match with Tottenham Hotspur. “Look: we are still in the same situation: neither of us can play two ninety minutes in a few days. But in the timeline she is further along than I am. We trained a lot together during the rehabilitation. Things didn't look good at first, but it's good to see things are improving. I am happy for her that she is back with the English team, but for the Dutch team that is less good news.”

Beth Mead can hardly keep her form. “Who knows, she might shoot us a few shots. But you can't really expect that from her in such a top competition. I especially hope that no pressure is put on her from the English side. They have plenty of choices up front, Fran Kirby from Chelsea is also back," says Miedema, who was training on the KNVB Campus on Monday evening in the pouring rain, but with a big smile. She is happy that she feels like a footballer again.

"Myle is Dutch on Friday and only barks when the Dutch team scores. She has no interest in England at all"

A laugh that is partly caused by puppy Myle, who, according to Miedema, has more than a slight preference for the winner on Friday evening. “Myle is Dutch on Friday and only barks when the Dutch team scores. She has no interest in England at all,” her owner firmly claims. With a victory at a packed Wembley, with more than 80,000 fans expected, the Lionesses will take a giant step towards 'Paris 2024'. In the event of a defeat by just one goal, a win over Belgium three days later in Tilburg will most likely suffice.

"Beth gets the poop, I get a paw and the cuddles"

Why Myle is for the Dutch team, leader in Group 1?

Miedema: “Because I am her favorite mom,” says the striker, who hopes for a substitute against Sarina Wiegman's team. “Look: I think everything Myle does is absolutely fine, but Beth is strict. She keeps saying, 'You can't pee here, you can't poop there.' So every time I see something lying around, I call Beth. She gets the poop, I get a paw and the cuddles.”

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