This Day in WWII History: May 6, 1942: All American forces in the Philippines surrender unconditionally

On this day in 1942, U.S. Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright surrenders all U.S. troops in the Philippines to the Japanese.

 

 

The island of Corregidor remained the last Allied stronghold in the Philippines after the Japanese victory at Bataan (from which General Wainwright had managed to flee, to Corregidor). Constant artillery shelling and aerial bombardment attacks ate away at the American and Filipino defenders. Although still managing to sink many Japanese barges as they approached the northern shores of the island, the Allied troops could hold the invader off no longer.

 

 

General Wainwright, only recently promoted to the rank of lieutenant general and commander of the U.S. armed forces in the Philippines, offered to surrender Corregidor to Japanese General Homma, but Homma wanted the complete, unconditional capitulation of all American forces throughout the Philippines. Wainwright had little choice given the odds against him and the poor physical condition of his troops (he had already lost 800 men). He surrendered at midnight. All 11,500 surviving Allied troops were evacuated to a prison stockade in Manila.

 

 
General Wainwright remained a POW until 1945. As a sort of consolation for the massive defeat he suffered, he was present on the USS Missouri for the formal Japanese surrender ceremony on September 2, 1945.

 

He would also be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Harry Truman. Wainwright died in 1953-exactly eight years to the day of the Japanese surrender ceremony.
 

 

 

 

Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/all-american-forces-in-the-philippines-surrender-unconditionally [06.05.2014]

This Day in WWII History: May 5, 1941: Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie returns to his capital

On this day in 1941, Emperor Haile Selassie re-enters Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, exactly five years to the day of when it was occupied by Italy.

 

 

Benito Mussolini had been eyeing Ethiopia (also known as Abyssinia) as an economic colony to be added to Italian Somaliland, in East Africa, since the 1920s. He hoped to resettle 10 million Italians in a unified East Africa. Despite Ethiopia's membership in the League of Nations, which provided it with recourse to other member nations in the event of invasion, Italy, also a League member, attacked on October 3, 1935.

 

 

Selassie formally protested before the League Council, but the League responded with only mild sanctions, fearing that a more extensive embargo, or the closure of the Suez Canal, denying Italy needed supplies and reinforcements, would lead to war-and Italy simply getting its oil from the United States, which was not a party to League agreements.

 

Britain and France, both fearing that a general war would be harmful to their collective security, proposed secret negotiations with Italy, wherein Italy would be offered territory in Ethiopia's northeast; in exchange, Mussolini would end his aggression. Ethiopia would only be told of this negotiation after the fact; should Selassie reject the terms, France and Britain were off the hook, having made a "good faith" effort at peace. They could then oppose further sanctions against Italy, even propose that the ones in place be removed, thereby sparing themselves a confrontation with Mussolini. But the plans for the secret negotiation were leaked to the press, and both Britain and France were humiliated publicly for selling out a weaker League partner.

 

Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ethiopian-emperor-haile-selassie-returns-to-his-capital [05.05.2014]

This Day in WWII History: Apr 25, 1945: Americans and Russians link up, cut Germany in two

 

On this day in 1945, eight Russian armies completely encircle Berlin, linking up with the U.S. First Army patrol, first on the western bank of the Elbe, then later at Torgau. Germany is, for all intents and purposes, Allied territory.

 

The Allies sounded the death knell of their common enemy by celebrating. In Moscow, news of the link-up between the two armies resulted in a 324-gun salute; in New York, crowds burst into song and dance in the middle of Times Square. Among the Soviet commanders who participated in this historic meeting of the two armies was the renowned Russian Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov, who warned a skeptical Stalin as early as June 1941 that Germany posed a serious threat to the Soviet Union.

 

Zhukov would become invaluable in battling German forces within Russia (Stalingrad and Moscow) and without. It was also Zhukov who would demand and receive unconditional surrender of Berlin from German General Krebs less than a week after encircling the German capital. At the end of the war, Zhukov was awarded a military medal of honor from Great Britain.

 

Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/americans-and-russians-link-up-cut-germany-in-two [25.04.2014]