On this day, representatives
of nine German-occupied countries meet in London to declare that all those
found guilty of war crimes would be punished after the war ended. Among the
signatories to the declaration were Polish Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski and French
Gen. Charles de Gaulle. The core of the declaration was the promise of
"the punishment, through the channels of organized justice, of those
guilty of, or responsible for, these crimes, whether they have ordered them,
perpetrated them, or participated in them."
Knowledge of German atrocities
occurring in Poland and Russia were reaching both the Allied governments and
the exiles from the countries in which the butchering of innocents was taking
place. News of Jews, political dissidents, and clergy being systematically
murdered, tortured, or transported to labor camps as the Nazi ideology advanced
along with Hitler's armed forces increased the resolve and solidarity among the
Allies to defeat the Axis.
Also on this day: President Franklin D.
Roosevelt establishes the U.S. War Production Board, with business
executive Donald M. Nelson as its chairman.
This was not the first time
Roosevelt called on Nelson. In 1940, the president asked Nelson, then executive
vice president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., to head up the National Defense
Advisory Commission. As Roosevelt established agency after agency to coordinate
the transition of industry from peacetime to wartime production, Nelson skipped
among jobs, becoming director of purchases for the Office of Production
Management and, in August 1941, director of the Supply Priorities and
Allocations Board. The War Production Board, created to establish order out of
the chaos of meeting extraordinary wartime demands and needs, replaced the
Supply Priorities and Allocations Board.
As chairman, Nelson oversaw
the largest war production in history, often clashing with civilian factories
over the most efficient means of converting to wartime use and butting heads
with the armed forces over priorities. Despite early success, Nelson made a
major judgement error in June 1944, on the eve of the Normandy invasion, when
he allowed certain plants that had reached the end of their government/military
production contracts to reconvert to civilian use. The military knew the war
was far from over and feared a sudden shortage of vital supplies. A political
battle ensued, and Nelson was eased out of his office and reassigned by the
president to be his personal representative to Chiang Kai-shek in China.
Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/allies-promise-prosecution-of-war-criminals [13.01.2015]
No comments:
Post a Comment