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.

MAY 3 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

MAY 3

1791

The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitution in Europe) was proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Constitution established a more democratic constitutional monarchy by introducing elements of political equality between townspeople and nobility. It placed the peasants under the protection of the government, thus mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom.  The liberum veto, which had previously put the Sejm at the mercy of any deputy,  was out rightly revoked. Among its features was the primacy of separation and balance of powers between the three branches of government and advocacy of a bicameral legislature. It also acknowledged the dominant religion as the Roman Catholic faith, and guaranteed tolerance and freedom to all religions. It was the first constitution of its kind in Europe, and the second-oldest constitution after the United States Constitution of 1787.   The Commonwealth's neighbours reacted with hostility to the adoption of Poland's new Constitution and was partitioned by the Russian Empire and Prussia in 1793, and a third partition in 1795 splitting up the remaining territories. Poland ceased to exist for 123 years.

1921

Upper Silesia: Fighting erupted between German troops and Poles led by Plebiscite Commissioner Wojciech Korfanty. Two months of inconclusive battles convinced the Allied Powers to set aside the results of the plebiscite. (Note:  Korfanty was a Polish activist, journalist and politician, who served as a member of the German parliaments, the Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag, and later, in the Polish Sejm. Briefly, he also was a paramilitary leader, known for organizing the Polish Silesian Uprisings in Upper Silesia, which after World War I was contested by Germany and Poland. Korfanty fought to protect Poles from discrimination and the policies of Germanisation in Upper Silesia before the war and sought to annex Silesia to Poland after Poland regained its independence.)

1945

The German ocean liner Cap Arcona was sunk by British warplanes..Cap Arcona was initially an accommodation vessel, but was put into use as a prison ship during WW2.  In May 1945 Arcona was carrying prisoners from Nazi concentrations camps, when the RAF sank her killing about 5,000 people aboard, with another 2,000 further casualties in the sinking of the accompanying ships Deutschland, and Thielbek. It was one of the biggest single-incident maritime losses of life in the Second World War. (In the months of March and April 1945, under Himmlers orders, by the end of April Neuengamme concentration camp was to be completely emptied of all remaining camp prisoners and Soviet POWs, and eventually relocated to a secret camp. (Scandinavians however were sent home to freedom.) As the British and Canadian forces were advancing, the SS concealed the prisoners on a 'prison flotilla" of decommissoned ships in the Bay of Lubeck, comprising the Cap Arcona, the Deutschland, and the freighter Thielbek.  RAF Pilot Allan Wyse of No. 193 Squadron recalled, "We used our cannon fire at the chaps in the water... we shot them up with 20 mm cannons in the water. Horrible thing, but we were told to do it and we did it. That's war." The prisoners on the ship represented 30 nationalities: American, Belarusian, Belgian, Canadian, Czechoslovakian, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourger, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swiss, Ukrainian, and perhaps others.

MAY 2 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

MAY 2

1921

Third Silesian Uprising broke out on this day in 1921. It was the last, largest and longest of the three uprisings.(Note:  After the end of WWI, The Treaty of Versailles(1919) had ordered a plebiscite to be held within two years in Upper Silesia to determine whether the territory should be a part of Germany or Poland. Though the Polish government had requested it to be held only in the areas east of the Oder river, which had a significant number of Polish speakers, the plebiscite took place in all of Upper Silesia, including the predominantly Polish-speaking areas in the east and the predominantly German-speaking areas west of the river. The Upper Silesian plebiscite was conducted on March 20, 1921. In the meantime, the German administration and police remained in place, while propaganda and strong arm tactics by both sides escalated to violence and rioting.

1942

The Polish submarine ORP Jastrząb, was a former S-class submarine, originally of the United States Navy, in Polish service between 1941 and 1942, when she was lost to friendly fire. Jastrząb has a place in the history of the Polish Navy as it was the only submarine ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean from the West to the East, as she came from the US to Europe. Unfortunately, during the trans-atlantic passage of convoy PQ-15 to Murmansk, Jastrząb was mistakenly targeted by the destroyer HMS St. Albans and the minesweeper HMS Seagull. Jastrząb was attacked with depth charges and forced to surface, when she was strafed with the loss of five crew (including British liaison officer) and six injured, including the commander. The ship was badly damaged and had to be scuttled, near 71°30′N 12°32′E

1945

The Allied Spring Offensive in Italy ended with the official surrender of German forces in Italy. It was the final Allied attack during the Italian Campaign into the Lombardy Plain by the 15th Allied Army Group (which began on April 6, 1945)  During the first week of April, the Allies launched diversionary attacks to draw the German reserves away from the main assaults to come, which was followed by heavy artillery bombardment of the Senio defenses and heavy fragmentation bombs, followed by medium and fighter bombers. On April 9, for almost four hours, the Allied forces fired heavy artillery barrages, each lasting 30 minutes, and interspersed with fighter bomber attacks.  In the ensuing weeks, the assaults were supported by the New Zealand operations, consisting of 28 Churchill Crocodiles and 127 Wasp flamethrower vehicles deployed along the front;  the 8th Indian Division, 2nd New Zealand Division and 3rd Carpathian Division (on the Polish Corps front at Route 9);  On April 14, the U.S.5th Army continued its bombardment but now with 2,000 heavy bombers and 2,000 artillery pieces, assisted by  troops of  U.S. IV Corps (1st Brazilian, 10th Mountain, and 1st Armored Divisions). Despite tough German defenses, U.S. IV Corps continued to advance northward and reached the river Po on April 22.  Five days later, the 1st Armored Division liberated Milan, and IV Corps commander Crittenberger entered the city April 30. The Brazilian division was positioned at the south of Milan, trapping the remaining German divisions, and took 13,500 prisoners.


GERMAN SURRENDER ON MAY 2, 1945 4:00 PM.  General Kesselring approved the surrender. At 2:00 pm Wehrmacht troops in Italy and western Austria laid down their arms. The surrender was the result of the success of Operation Sunrise, a series of secret negotiations conducted in March 1945 between representatives of Nazi Germany and the Western Allies for the surrender of German forces in northern Italy.  On March 12, the U.S. ambassador in the USSR, W. Averell Harriman, notified Soviet Minister Vyacheslav Molotov of the possibility of General Wolff's arrival in Lugano to conduct negotiations on the German Forces surrender in Italy. Molotov immediately replied that the Soviet government would not object to the negotiations provided that Soviet Military Command could participate. However, days later the Allies informed the Soviets that their representatives would not be invited to take part in negotiations.  On March 22,  in a letter to the American ambassador, Molotov wrote that "for two weeks, in Bern, behind the back of the Soviet Union, negotiations between representatives of the German Military Command on one side and representatives of American and British Command on the other side are conducted. The Soviet government considers this absolutely inadmissible."  (This led to subsequent exchange of letters between Stalin and Roosevelt.) The official German surrender in Italy was signed on 29 April  29, 1945 agreeing to a cessation of hostilities on May 2.)