WWII On This Day: May 1

Damage to Liverpool cinemas during the 3–4 May 1941 raids; published 5 May, within the week-long May Blitz. Daily Dispatch, 5 May 1941 · public domain (unknown author, UK) Source

May 1, 1941 · 22:15 The Blitz

The May Blitz on the Mersey

From 1 to 7 May Liverpool, Bootle and the Mersey docks endured a sustained sequence of raids aimed at one of Britain's most important Atlantic ports. Warehouses, docks, rail connections, housing and ships occupied the same narrow urban-industrial landscape. National Museums Liverpool records more than 1,450 people killed in Liverpool during the May Blitz; casualty totals for the wider Merseyside area are higher. The port suffered serious disruption and extensive damage but continued to handle the traffic on which Britain's Atlantic supply system depended. The raids show the late Blitz…

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Servicemen and civilians clear bomb damage on Kingsway, Valletta, 1 May 1942, after the peak month of the Axis air offensive. Lt J. E. Russell, Royal Navy official photographer / Imperial War Museums A 8701 · public domain (UK Government) Source

May 1, 1942 Malta: Air Siege and Convoy War

The island after the April offensive

April closed after 9,599 Luftwaffe sorties and about 6,500 tons of bombs dropped during the month. Airfields, dockyard facilities and towns around the harbour carried extensive damage, while the RAF had lost aircraft both in combat and on the ground. The bombing campaign had driven the island close to the condition German planners wanted: reduced fighter strength and sharply constrained offensive operations. The same pressure reached the civilian population through damaged housing, interrupted utilities and increasingly tight food stocks. Malta still functioned as an air and naval base, but keeping…

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Soviet civilians with luggage before departure from Artemivsk for forced labour in Germany, May 1942. Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-B19887 / Karl Knödler · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE Source

May 1, 1942 Nazi Forced Labour

Civilians in the occupied Soviet Union are deported to the Reich

In the spring of 1942 German labour offices began to deport civilians from the occupied Soviet Union on a large scale. People in Artemivsk and other towns were assembled, examined and sent west by rail, and a photograph from Kyiv Central Station shows Soviet women being deported to Germany around that year. Between 1942 and 1944 nearly three million Soviet citizens were deported as forced labourers. By August 1944 some 2.76 million workers from the Soviet Union were in the Reich, more than from any other country.

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Cologne showing extensive bomb and fire damage after Operation Millennium in May 1942. — Cologne after the raid of 30–31 May 1942 · U.S. Department of Defense. Department of the Army.

May 1, 1942 Operation Millennium

The thousand plan

Bomber Command's normal front-line strength was far below one thousand aircraft. Harris proposed assembling the number by using every available operational bomber, aircraft from conversion units and machines flown by instructors and pupils from Operational Training Units. The figure was both military and political. A thousand aircraft would demonstrate scale even before the damage was known.

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Children affected by the Bengal famine on a Calcutta street in a photograph published by The Statesman on 22 August 1943. — The Statesman, Calcutta, 22 August 1943 · public domain in India

May 1, 1942 The Bengal Famine

Coastal denial measures remove boats and rice stocks from vulnerable districts

British invasion planning treated the Bengal coast as a possible Japanese landing area after the fall of Burma. Authorities removed or restricted country boats capable of carrying substantial loads in designated coastal zones and also operated a rice-denial policy in areas judged vulnerable. The policy was intended to deny transport and supplies to an invading force. It also reduced civilian carrying capacity in a riverine economy where boats linked villages, markets and district towns. The Famine Inquiry Commission later examined these measures as part of the pre-famine food and transport…

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Burmese refugees fleeing along the Prome Road toward India, 31 January 1942. — James Jarche / British Ministry of Information, Imperial War Museums JAR 1240 · Public domain (UK Government)

May 1, 1942 The Fall of Burma

Japanese troops take Monywa on the Burma Corps' line of retreat

Japanese troops captured Monywa, at the entrance to the Chindwin valley, on 1 May 1942. The Burma Corps was withdrawing along the same river toward Kalewa and India, and a Japanese force at Monywa lay close to its line of retreat. The 1st Burma Division counter-attacked on 1 and 2 May and could not retake the town. The attack did allow the Corps to withdraw past it, and the army continued north along the river. The army's way on lay up the Chindwin to Shwegyin and Kalewa, with the monsoon…

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Exhausted Soviet prisoners arriving at Stalag X B Sandbostel in northern Germany, probably autumn 1941, some supporting companions unable to walk. — Unidentified German guard photographer / Bundesarchiv Bild 146-2005-0146 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

May 1, 1942 · 12:00 Soviet Prisoners of War in German Captivity

The Commissar Order is withdrawn

During spring 1942 the German military leadership withdrew the Commissar Order after field commanders warned that the practice of shooting political officers strengthened Soviet resistance. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum places the revocation in May. The rescission removed one explicit execution directive. It did not reverse the racial hierarchy of German captivity, the SS screening operations that had already killed prisoners or the lethal consequences of food shortages and forced labour.

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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

May 1, 1942 · 12:00 The Fall of the Southern Empires

Mandalay Falls

Japanese troops occupied Mandalay on 1 May as the Allied retreat through central Burma continued. The fall of the city removed the principal communications centre around which a renewed central position might have been organized. The armies were now separating according to the routes still open to them. British and Indian forces moved west toward India; Chinese forces faced the problem of returning toward China after Lashio had already been lost. Mandalay’s occupation was therefore less a dramatic last stand than confirmation that the central Burma system had ceased to…

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U.S. Army soldiers of Company E, 16th Infantry Regiment, wading from a landing craft at Omaha Beach around 07:40 on 6 June 1944. — Robert F. Sargent, U.S. Coast Guard / NARA 26-G-2343 · Public domain (U.S. Government)

May 1, 1944 · 12:00 Omaha Beach

The 352nd Division reinforces the coast

Elements of the 352nd Infantry Division moved into the coastal defence zone shared with the 716th Static Infantry Division. This put field-quality infantry into a sector the invasion plan had initially treated as more lightly held. Allied intelligence knew the division existed, but the timing, strength and coastal deployment were not fully absorbed into the assault picture. The resulting surprise was one factor in the unexpectedly strong defence at Omaha.

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Wrecked rolling stock in the severely damaged marshalling yard at Juvisy-sur-Orge after Allied air attacks in 1944. — Bridge B (Fg Off), Royal Air Force official photographer / Imperial War Museums, CL 4170 · Public domain · Source

May 1, 1944 · 12:00 The Transportation Plan

The Eighth makes its first major rail-centre effort

The Eighth Air Force dispatched 328 heavy bombers and sixteen fighter groups against six marshalling yards from Brussels to Metz. More than 1,000 tons fell on the target system while Ninth Air Force B-26s, Bostons and Thunderbolts attacked other rail centres across northern France and Belgium.

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Yevgeny Khaldei's photograph of Soviet soldiers raising a Soviet flag over the Reichstag in Berlin on 2 May 1945. — Yevgeny Khaldei / TASS · 2 May 1945 · CC BY 4.0 via the Russian Ministry of Defence · Source

May 1, 1945 · 01:00 The Battle of Berlin

Krebs asks for an armistice

At about 01:00 on 1 May General Hans Krebs crossed the lines to Chuikov's 8th Guards Army command post with news of Hitler's death and a proposal for an armistice. The bunker leadership wanted negotiations that might allow the successor government to continue functioning. The Soviet side would not exchange an armistice for anything short of capitulation. Krebs returned around midday without an agreement. The distinction was decisive. The surviving political leadership wanted time and political room; the Soviet command wanted the Berlin garrison to stop fighting. There was no…

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May 1, 1945 · 22:00 The Battle of Berlin

The breakouts begin

During the night of 1–2 May groups from the government district, Waffen-SS sectors and other isolated commands attempted to move west through the Tiergarten, across the Spree and toward Spandau. Some small groups penetrated parts of the Soviet cordon; many more were killed, captured or dispersed. The movement was not a single centrally controlled operation on the scale Weidling had earlier proposed. By then Weidling had concluded that another general breakout would only spend lives without changing the military situation. The remaining issue was how to stop the fighting across…

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