MAY 4 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

MAY 4

 1938

Carl von Ossietzky was a German pacifist, and winner of Nobel Peace Prize of 1935. He was awarded the prize for his work in exposing the clandestine re-armament of Germany however he was unable to accept the award because he was under police custody. On May 4, 1938 he passed away in Nordend, a prison hospital in Berlin-Pankow, due to tuberculosis and after-effects of torture he suffered while imprisoned in  a Nazi German concentration camp. He was convicted by Germany of high treason and espionage in 1931 after publishing details of Germany's re-militarization of its air force, and training pilots in the Soviet Union, in violation of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.  In 1990, his daughter, Rosalinde von Ossietzky-Palm, called for a resumption of proceedings, but the verdict was upheld by the Federal Court of Justice in 1992. Here is an excerpt of the Court ruling,  "..According to the case law of the Reichsgericht (Imperial Court of Justice), the illegality of covertly conducted actions did not cancel out the principle of secrecy. According to the opinion of the Reichsgericht, every citizen owes his Fatherland a duty of allegiance regarding information, and endeavours towards the enforcement of existing laws may be implemented only through the utilization of responsible domestic state organs, and never by appealing to foreign governments.  – Ruling of the Bundesgerichtshof, 3 December 1992."

1940

The Polish destroyer ORP Grom was sunk in the fjord Rombaken by a German Heinkel He 111.   Grom was the lead ship of her class of destroyers serving in the Polish Navy during World War II. ORP translated to English means "Thunderbolt"  while her sister ship ORP Błyskawica meant "Lightning". During her operations in the Norwegian Campaign, Grom was ranked by the German soldiers as probably the most hated of all the Allied ships deployed to the area. The reason for this hatred was due to the fact that Grom was extremely vigilant regarding hostilities on shore, and was reputed to spend hours lurking around the coast in order harass German forces. (Editors note: Created in July 1990,  GROM is the name of Poland's elite counter-terrorism force, whose predecessor, during WW2, was called the Ciechociemni, whose motto was "Silent and Unseen".  GROM's counterparts are NATO's tier one, US Army's Delta Force, the US Navy's SEAL Team Six (DEVGRU) and the British Army's SAS.)

 1945

German surrendered at Lüneburg Heath: At Bernard Montgomery's headquarters in the Netherlands, Wehrmacht forces in northwestern Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark surrendered to the Allies, effective at 8:00 a.m. on May 5.


German forces in Bavaria surrendered: At 14:30 on May 4, 1945, General Hermann Foertsch surrendered all forces between the Bohemian mountains and the Upper Inn river to the American General Jacob L. Devers, commander of the American 6th Army Group.


Soviet troops liberated Oranienburg concentration camp.  The camp was an early German concentration camp, one of the first detention facilities established by the Nazis in the state of Prussia when they gained power in 1933. It held the political opponents of German Nazism from the Berlin region, mostly members of the Communist Party of Germany and social-democrats, as well as a number of homosexual men and scores of the so-called undesirables. It was eventually replaced by Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1936. At closure, the prison had held over 3,000 inmates, of whom 16 had died.