May 26

1903 Birth: Otto Abetz, German Ambassador to Vichy France from November 1940 until France's liberation in 1944. Abetz will regard anti-Semitism as a necessary means of undermining the grip of the army and Church in Vichy and will suggest the expulsion of all emigrants and stateless Jews to the Free Zone. In July 1949, he will be sentenced by a Paris military tribunal to twenty years hard labor, as a war criminal. He will be released in 1954, and will burn to death in an automobile 'accident' on the Cologne-Ruhr autobahn in 1958, when something will go wrong with the steering wheel of his car. It is suspected that his death is a revenge killing for his role in sending French Jews to the gas chambers.

1918 The Georgian Social Democratic Republic declares independence from Russia.

1927 Diplomatic relations between Great Britain and Russia are temporarily disrupted because of friction caused by Communist agitation in clear violation of treaty agreements.

1933 Church and Reich: Some 1,200 Protestant clergymen in the US sign a manifesto protesting Nazi treatment of Jews and others.

1936 Austria announces its intention not to attend the Geneva conference on German refugees.

1938 The House Committee on Un-American Activities begins its Un-American work of searching for 'subversives' in the United States.

1939 Joachim von Ribbentrop instructs Schulenburg to inform Molotov that Germany's hostility to the Comintern will be abandoned if Hitler can be assured that the Soviets have, in fact, renounced their aggressive struggle against Germany, as indicated by Stalin's recent speech.

1940 WW2: The British issue orders for Operation Dynamo, the evacuation from Dunkirk, France.

... The battle of Dunkirk poses one of the great "what-ifs" of World War II, which has attracted speculation from many military historians. If Hitler had not ordered the German panzer divisions to halt from 24 May to 26 May, but instead ordered an all-out attack on Dunkirk, the retreating Allies could have possibly been cut off from the sea and destroyed.

If the whole of the British Expeditionary Force had been captured or killed at Dunkirk, not only would have Britain been vulnerable to invasion but morale in Britain could have possibly sunk so low as to have toppled the government and replaced it with one more disposed to making an accommodation with Nazi Germany, similar to the Vichy regime in France.

Without the need to oppose the British in the Atlantic and North Africa or even with the assistance of a Quisling government in Britain, perhaps the troops and resources thus freed would have been enough to wholly defeat the Soviet Union in 1941 and lead to German conquest of the whole of Europe ...

1940 WW2: From the diary of General Franz Halder:

Brauchitsch is very nervy. I can sympathize with him, for these orders from the top make no sense. In one area they call for a head-on attack against a front retiring in orderly fashion, and elsewhere they freeze the troops to the spot where the enemy rear could be cut into at any time. Von Rundstedt, too, cannot stand it, and has gone up forward to Hoth and Kleist to look over the land for the next armored moves.

1941 WW2: The Polish destroyer Piorun valiantly exchanges fire with the German battleship Bismarck and signals its position to the British fleet.

1941 WW2: Himmler assigns a group of Waffen-SS to what he calls the Kommandostab Reichsfuehrer SS, which in effect becomes his own private army. (THP)

1942 WW2: Churchill and Molotov sign a twenty-year mutual aid treaty between Britain and the Soviet Union. (THP)

1942 WW2: In Libya, Rommel attacks the British Gazala Line, starting a drive from Libya that will soon take him to El-Alamein, 60 miles from Alexandria, Egypt.

... The Battle of Gazala has become known as Rommels finest moment in battle, but a close examination of it reveals that the outcome was more due to the incapacity of the Allied Desert Command (Auchinleck and Ritchie) to cope with such a mobile war. It has to be said at this point that the tactics used at Gazala by Rommel, as well as those used at Alam Halfa are extremely similar in that a feint or fake in the North was followed by the real attack in the South in an outflanking manouvre. The Allied commanders had been informed by ULTRA ... Rommel's intentions to attack and when, but not where and how ...

1942 Holocaust: From Emannuel Ringelblum's 'Notes from the Ghetto' (Ksuvim fun geto):

... It remains a proven fact that the people fed in the soup-kitchens will all die if they eat nothing but the soup supplied and the dry rationed bread. The question thus arises whether it would not serve the purpose better to reserve the available money for selected individuals, for those who are socially productive, for the intellectual elite, etc. But the situation is such that, first of all, the numbers even of such select individuals is quite considerable, and there would not be sufficient even for them. Secondly, the question arises why should one pronounce judgment on artisans, laborers and other useful persons, who were productive people back in their small towns. And only the ghetto and war have turned them into non-people, into scrap, into human dregs ..."

1943 WW2 Stalin to FDR:

…I agree that this summer - possibly as early as June - we should expect the Hitlerites to launch a major new offensive in the Soviet-German front. Hitler has already concentrated about 200 German divisions and up to 30 divisions of his allies for use against us. We are getting ready to repel the new German offensive and to launch counter-attacks, but we are short of aircraft and aircraft fuel.

Of course, it is at the moment impossible to foresee all the military and other steps that we may have to take. That will depend on the course of events on our front. A good deal will also depend on the speed and vigor with which Anglo-American military operations are launched in Europe. I have mentioned these important circumstances to explain why my reply to your suggestion for a meeting between us cannot be quite specific as yet. I agree that the time is ripe for such a meeting and that it should not be delayed. But I beg you to assess properly the importance of the circumstances I have referred to, because the summer months will be exceedingly trying for the Soviet armies.

As I do not know how events will develop on the Soviet-German front in June, I shall not be able to leave Moscow during that month. I therefore suggest holding the meeting in July or August. If you agree, I shall let you know two weeks before the date of the meeting just when it could be held in July or August. If, after being notified by me, you agree to the date suggested, I could arrive in time…

1944 WW2 FDR to Stalin:

I am sending you two scrolls for Stalingrad and Leningrad, which cities have won the wholehearted admiration of the American people. The heroism of the citizens of these two cities and the soldiers who so ably defended them has not only been an inspiration to the people of the United States, but has served to bind even more closely the friendship of our two nations.

Stalingrad and Leningrad have become synonyms for the fortitude and endurance which has enabled us to resist and will finally enable us to overcome the aggression of our enemies. I hope that in presenting these scrolls to the two cities you will see fit to convey to their citizens my own personal expressions of friendship and admiration and my hope that our peoples will continue to develop that close understanding which has marked our common effort.

1944 WW2 Stalin to FDR:

Your communication on a statement to the people of Germany has reached me. In view of the experience of the war against the Germans and the German character I do not think that your suggested statement would have a positive effect, seeing that it is to be synchronized with the beginning of the landing and not with the moment when the Anglo-American landing and the forthcoming offensive of the Soviet armies will have registered notable success. As to the nature of the statement, we can return to this when circumstances favor publication.

1945 WW2: Himmler is buried in an unmarked grave in a forest near Luneberg. Its exact location is unknown.

1945 WW2: US Army Intelligence officers interrogate Hitler's sister Paula at Berchtesgaden.

... The married life of my parents was a very happy one, in spite of their very unlike characters. My father, who was of great harshness in the education of his children and who only spoiled me as the pet of the family, was the absolute type of the old Austrian official, conservative and loyal to his emperor to the skin.

My mother, however, was a very soft and tender person, the compensatory element between the almost too harsh father and the very lively children who perhaps were somewhat difficult to train. If there were ever quarrel or difference of opinion between my parents it was always on account of the children.

It was especially my brother Adolf, who challenged my father to extreme harshness and who got his sound thrashing every day. He was a scrubby little rogue, and all attempts of his father to thrash him for his rudeness and to cause him to love the profession of an official of the estate were in vain. How often on the other hand did my mother caress him and try to obtain with her kindness, were the father could not succeed with harshness ...

1948 Death: Theodore Morell, Hitler's personal physician from 1936 until his suicide in 1945. Morell was well known in Germany for his unconventional, holistic and alternative treatments. Although Morell had medical training and was licensed as a general practitioner in Germany long before he met Hitler, following World War II there were investigations into his practice along with interrogation by the Allies and he came to be widely regarded as a quack.

Historians have speculated his treatment contributed to Hitler's ill health. Morell was subject to many accusations by members of Hitler's inner circle. Several people claimed he regularly injected Hitler with morphine without telling him and that Morell himself was a morphine addict. Some went so far as to claim Morell used Hitler as a "guinea pig" for several of the drugs he tried to develop and sell but these latter claims were made by people without medical backgrounds and may not be reliable.

1976 Death: Martin Heidegger, German philosopher and prominent academic member of the Nazi Party. Philosophically, Heidegger attempted to reorient Western philosophy away from metaphysical and epistemological and toward ontological questions, that is, questions concerning the meaning of being, or what it means 'to be.'

Heidegger's defense of his Nazi involvement runs in two tracks: first, he argued that there was no alternative, saying that he was trying to save the university (and science in general) from being politicized and thus had to compromise with the Nazi administration. Second, he saw an "awakening" ("Aufbruch") which might help to find a "new national and social approach". After 1934, he said, he should have been more critical of the Nazi government.