Hamburg, Germany, after the bombing of 1943. The city was virtually destroyed. For more information, click on this link.
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.
The Germans on September 17, 1943, begin withdrawing from Salerno, Italy, as elements of the British Eighth Army join forces with British and U.S. troops in the Salerno beachhead. On the Eastern Front, Soviet forces capture Bryansk, Russia, and Berdyansk, Ukraine, both on the Sea of Azov.
The Germans on September 18 transfer 25,800 men from Sardinia to Italy via the French island of Corsica, abandoning strategic airfields to the British and the Americans. In Paris, the mass deportation of French Jews begins, with 1,150 shipped by railroad to the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany.
Now equipped with electronic monitoring devices, improved anti-aircraft guns and acoustic torpedoes, German U-boat packs on September 19 resume operations against Allied convoys in the North Atlantic. In London, the British Air Ministry says that Hamburg, Germany, the target of concentrated air raids over eight days and seven nights in July and August, now lies in absolute ruins and represents “probably the most complete blotting out of a city that ever happened.” In the raids, 42,600 people were killed, 37,000 were injured and over 215,000 houses and homes were destroyed, as well as 183 large factories and 4,118 smaller workplaces.
Allied forces approach Naples, Italy, on September 20. On Papua-New Guinea, the Battle of Kaiapit ends in an Allied victory, preventing the Japanese from threatening Lae or the expanding Allied airbase at Nadzab.
On the evening of September 21, Australian commandos, entering Singapore harbor by canoe, sink two Japanese troop transports. On the Eastern Front, the Soviet 43rd Army captures Demidov, in western Russia.
In northern Norway on September 22, six British X-class midget submarines attack and damage the German battleship Tirpitz at Kåfjorden, northern Norway. The damage puts the battleship out of action for six months. Wilhelm Kube, the Nazi governor of German-occupied Belorussia is assassinated in his office in Minsk by a time-bomb placed by his maid, a secret member of the Russian anti-Nazi Partisans. In retaliation, the SS executes over 1,000 male residents of Minsk. The Huon Peninsula Campaign — a series of battles fought in northeastern Papua-New Guinea — begins.
In Italy on September 23, the British Eighth Army’s 78th Division advances from Bari towards Foggia, 82 miles to the northwest, and the important airfield there. Liquidation of the Jewish ghetto of Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, begins with the removal of 5,000 people who are shipped to the Majdanek concentration camp, outside of Lublin in Occupied Poland.
