military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) (06/15/91)
From: military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) Saturday, 14 June, 1941 The carrier HMS Ark Royal launches 43 more Hurricane fighters, which fly on to Malta. The island remains the focus of ongoing Italian air attacks. President Roosevelt orders that the American assets of occupied and Axis nations, Japan excluded, are to be frozen. Croatia signs the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis. Hitler instructs his generals that, as the USSR is not a signatory to the Hague Convention, its rules do not apply to Soviet prisoners of war. Specifically, he orders that commissars are not to be considered prisoners of war, and are subject to summary execution. General Rommel, taking advantage of reconnaissance and clear-text British radio signals, alerts his troops of an impending attack. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Bill Thacker military@att.att.com Send submissions for "50 Years Ago" to military-request@att.att.com "Let us picture, if we can, Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill seated together over a pot of tea. Then let us suppose Hitler to say: 'Winston, let's make a swap. I'll trade you the entire German air force for the British Royal Navy.' A consideration of the eagerness with which Hitler would make the offer, and of the firmness with which Churchill would reject it, proves more clearly than all lengthy arguments that may be written which arm is of more fundamental importance." - C. Tyson Smith, in a letter to the New York Times