WWII On This Day: February 25

A child survivor of SS Athenia is carried ashore from the Norwegian rescue ship Knute Nelson at Galway on 6 September 1939. — Press Agency photographer · Imperial War Museums HU 51014 · IWM Non-Commercial Licence

February 25, 1940 · 07:52 The Opening Convoy War

The escort of HN 14 destroys U-63

U-63 has already torpedoed the Swedish merchant ship Santos from convoy HN 14 when the British submarine Narwhal sights the U-boat on the surface the following morning. Narwhal signals the convoy escort. Destroyers Escort, Imogen and Inglefield attack with depth charges, forcing U-63 to the surface and destroying her. Twenty-four of the twenty-five German crew survive and are taken prisoner. The action is the convoy system working as intended. A submarine has found the formation and sunk a merchant ship, but the concentration of escorts and lookouts around the convoy…

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The "Strike! Strike! Strike!" leaflet dated 24 February 1941 calling workers out in the February Strike the following day. Lou Jansen · Public domain Source

February 25, 1941 Occupation, Collaboration and Resistance in World War II

The February Strike protests the persecution of Dutch Jews

A strike began in Amsterdam on 25 February 1941 after escalating anti-Jewish violence and German raids on the Jewish quarter. On 22–23 February German police had seized 427 young Jewish men; 389 were deported to concentration camps. The arrests produced widespread anger in the city. Communist organisers called workers out, and tram, municipal and industrial employees stopped work. The strike spread beyond Amsterdam into nearby towns before German authorities broke it on the second day with violence, arrests, dismissals and heavy fines. The action did not halt anti-Jewish persecution, but…

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Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival and the British surrender party walking to the Ford Motor Factory in Singapore on 15 February 1942. — British official photographer / Imperial War Museums HU 2781 · UK Government public domain · Source

February 25, 1942 · 09:00 The Fall of the Southern Empires

The Combined Command Ends

Wavell’s authority as Supreme Commander of ABDACOM ceased at 09:00 on 25 February. The multinational command had lasted little more than six weeks, and Java was left under Dutch direction with British, American and Australian forces still present in the theatre. The timing matters. ABDACOM was dissolved before the decisive Java Sea battle, because the regional defence it had been created to coordinate had already been broken into separate problems. Singapore was gone, the outer islands were being taken, and the remaining combined surface force was being asked to stop…

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A Bf 109G passes beneath a USAAF B-17 during the attack on the Messerschmitt works at Regensburg-Prüfening on 25 February 1944. U.S. Army Air Forces photo 342-FH-3A20348-50137AC / National Archives, NAID 204899818 · Public domain in the United States Source

February 25, 1944 · 09:00 Big Week and Air Superiority

The final day closes Argument

On 25 February the Eighth attacked aviation targets including Regensburg, Augsburg and Fürth while the Fifteenth again came north from Italy against the same broad industrial system. The surviving photograph over Regensburg catches the defensive problem directly: German fighters and American bombers occupy the same target area under long-range escort. By the end of the six-day concentration the USAAF had flown several thousand heavy-bomber sorties. Aircraft plants, component works and assembly centres had suffered damage, but German fighter production did not collapse permanently; dispersal and emergency measures restored output. The…

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