D-day

After Stalingrad, Russia began to push the Germans back into Ukraine. The Germans burned and destroyed evey thing in sight. Then while Russia was pushing Germany back the British and Americans began to land troops on D-day. The German defenses were very strong and hefty. The Allies lost many troops and here is how it happened.

The allies had been preparing for this day for a long time. So on the morning of June 6, 1944 thousands of allied troops landed on Normandy's beaches. Hundreds of our American men were killed as they stepped off the boats and were slaughtered by German soldiers with machine guns and artillery. Movies like Saving Private Ryan portray this bloody scene with an R rating (I have never seen the movie myself, but that is what I heard). Fierce fighting soon took place at places like St. Lo.

D-day was one of the bloodiest battles in they war.

If you have a question just leave a comment and I'll answer personaly.

Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor was a Japanese attack on one of our naval bases in Hawaii. No one on our side even knew the attack was coming. One eyewitness account said: "It was early Sunday morning and I heard the sound of engines I ran out and saw Airplanes with red dots and I thought must be a drill, but then the one of their planes dropped a bomb and I knew that this was real". The Japanese sank many ships, the sailors had little time to react and the Japanese struck quickly. Their plan was this, the first wave would fly in and knock out as many ships as they could.The second wave targeted the air fields and planes. The third wave targeted the dry docks and ship yards. The first wave did their job efficiently, the second the same, but the third didn't even hit. This mistake proved to be a very fatal mistake. Admiral Yamamato decided that they had done their job. The mistake was that with the dry docks still intact the could rebuild almost every thing they had lost. The americans had lost many ships but they fought on till the wars end.

They sunk many battleships, like the Oklahoma, Arizona, and Virginia. These are only three out of the seven battleships that were sunk. Three battleships were rebuilt in the dry docks.

The Resistance

With almost all of Europe captured, Hitler ordered that all newspapers, radio brodcasts and mant other public doucumants to be taken over. With the newspapers and broadcasts, they controlled what people heard. With this type of persecution, many underground groups were formed. To help these forbidden groups, England smuggled weapons, poison, radios, and typewriters (which all of these were outlawed highly) in to them.

Many weaons like the ones pictured above were smuggled in by airdrop using a single engine Lysander(below). These planes would drop tons of guns and radios to help those underground.

The resistance went on untill the end of the war.

Remember if you have any questions just leave a comment and I will answer it in my next blog.

Ifyou want to learn more abou the secret weapons click here.

The Holocaust

This part of the war is very sobering. This time in history is known to be the most scariest and bloodiest time in all of history. When the Germans conquered most of Europe, the Gestapo or the German secret police started rounding up Jews, Slavs, and many other races that Hitler believed were inferior. He only thought that the Aryan race were fit for life. In Hitler's eyes human life was cheap. However, we are told in Genesis 1:27 "So God made man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." This verse tells us that God created us equally in his image. Hitler himself said that god sent him to deliver and glorify the Aryan race.

When the Gestapo rounded Jews up, they were put in boxcars so tightly put together that no one could sit. The ride was a three day trip. When the Jews got off they were then separated in two groups. One had all the able bodied men, and the other had all the seniors, women, and children. The able bodied men were then sent to labor camps. The seniors, women, and children were then sent to a low building that looked like a bathhouse and lullabies were played on loud speakers to calm the people down. They were then put in large rooms with shower heads on the ceiling. The last thing those Jews heard was the sound of hissing gas. Hitler murdered over 5 million Jews and over 6 million other races including Slavs, Kurds, and Arabic's. When U.S. troops saw these camps, they were horrified! It was hard to understand and believe the carnage.

These camps were heavily guarded with electrical and barbed fences plus lookout towers. There was virtually no escape and almost all of the uprisings were put down.

Remember if you have any questions just leave a comment and I will answer it in my next blog.

And if you want to know more click here.

The siege of Lenningrad

The winter was hard for the 3 million citizens of Leningrad in 1941, the German armies had surrounded the city. Their next step was to invade the city, but the people of Leningrad had been preparing for the attack. They would go out a little ways to dig tank traps and trenches. Also surrounding the city there was barbed wire with machine gun nests weaved in at a regular intervals. But that was only the outer perimeter, inside the city there were houses that were actually pillboxes and on top of that the whole city was mined.

Then in September 1941 General Von Leebs Panzer's cut the railroad that connected Leningrad to Moscow now their only way of communicating was crossing Lake Lagoda. Now there was a problem with this route because the Luftwaffe patrolled this route regularly.

So trapped in their doomed city the people were forced to take extreme measures, people ate everything they could get their hands onto. They ate wallpaper, make-up and even leather belts. The only way to get food into the city was to travel across the ice on Lake Lagoda. Soon steady convoys came across the lake with trucks that were full of food. The truck drivers were considered as heroes. The Germans tried to break the convoy by bombing it, but nature just filled the craters right back up. The siege would continue until January of 1944.

If you have a question just leave a comment and I'll answer you personally.