Today, one of the worst atrocities of World War II is remembered, when hundreds of male residents of the town of Kalavryta and surrounding villages were gunned down on a hillside overlooking the town by the Nazis. Click here for more details.
By: Phil Kohn. Dedicated to the memory of his father, GM3 Walter Kohn, U.S. Navy Armed Guard, USNR, and all men and women who have answered the country’s call in time of need. Phil can be contacted at ww2remembered@yahoo.com.
In the Solomon Islands, the first American aircraft arrive at the Cape Torokina airfield on Bougainville on December 10, 1943; U.S. forces are gradually extending their perimeter. In the U.S., a long-running debate on draft regulations ends with President Roosevelt signing into law a revised bill that puts those who have been fathers since before the attack on Pearl Harbor at the bottom of the conscription list. In Italy, the British Eighth Army crosses the Moro River.
A U.S. Army Air Forces heavy air raid on the port city of Emden, Germany, on December 11 kills 1,000 and makes 12,000 homeless. Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, leader of the Wehrmacht’s High Command, orders V-1 rocket attacks on London beginning January 15, 1944. One problem: No V-1s have yet been produced. (The first to attack London is launched on June 13, 1944.)
German Field Marshal Irwin Rommel on December 12 is appointed head of Festung Europa (“Fortress Europe”). As such, he is responsible for strengthening the German “Atlantic Wall” against the expected Allied offensive from England to France. Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union sign a treaty of friendship in Moscow.
In retaliation for the killing of 78 German soldiers captured by Greek guerrillas in the area, troops of the 117th Jäger Division on December 13 carry out the Massacre of Kalavryta, a resort town in southern Greece. Burning villages and murdering civilians along the way, the Wehrmacht troops upon reaching Kalavryta lock all the women, girls and young boys in the town’s school. Then they order all males 12 and over into a field outside the village, where they are machine-gunned. Of about 470 men and teens, only 13 survive. Departing, the Germans set the town ablaze. In all, over 700 civilians are killed. At Kharkiv, Ukraine, three captured German SS officers and a Russian collaborator are accused of murdering thousands of Russians in specially equipped carbon-monoxide murder vans. The four are to stand trial for war crimes.
On the Eastern Front, Soviet forces under Col.-Gen. Ivan Konev capture Cherkasy, in central Ukraine, on December 14. Farther north, the Soviet Baltic Front, commanded by Gen. Andrey Yeryomenko, begins a new offensive south of Nevel, in northwestern Russia. Farther south, in the heaviest-ever bombardment of Greece, over 300 Allied planes drop bombs on Luftwaffe airfields near Athens, Kalamaki and Tatoi, as well as the harbor facilities at Piraeus.
On December 15, U.S. troops land near Cape Gloucester on New Britain Island, southwest of Rabaul. Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union all break off diplomatic relations with the current Yugoslav government-in-exile and instead recognize Tito’s communist Popular Liberation Committee as the Yugoslav government-to-be. The war’s first war-crimes trial opens at Kharkiv, Ukraine. All four of the defendants plead guilty: One testifies that more than 30,000 Soviets were exterminated at Kiev.
Yet another air raid over Berlin on December 16 brings the total of Allied explosives dropped on the city to 18,500 tons. Over 1,000 people die in the attack.
