May 26th, 1944 (FRIDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: In post-war Britain there will be no more slumps, and general unemployment will be cured. So a government white paper said today. It explained that expansionist policies will mean plenty of jobs. There will be plans to spend more on public works in lean years and an economic "Brains Trust" to tell the government about world trade conditions. Subsidies will be used to maintain steady prices and prevent a rise in the cost of living.
Destroyer HMS Volage commissioned.
FRANCE: Allied aircraft bomb Lyons, Nice, St. Etienne and Marseilles, killing 5,407 civilians.
D-Day Countdown
The German Perspective
Friday, 26 May, 1944
Rommel holds a special luncheon for General Wolfgang Pickert, commanding the III Flak Corps. Pickert, had once commanded the 9th Flak division in the East, and had been there with his unit when it had been nearly annihilated at Stalingrad at the end of 1942. Pickert, a member of the Luftwaffe, had been one of the lucky ones that had been flown out of the surrounded Sixth Army that winter.
Pickert, his headquarters now just south of the city of Amiens, now commands some 24 batteries of antiaicraft regiments, a sizeable weapon against the hoards of enemy aircraft that would dominate the skies over an invasion site. At the beginning of the month, Rommel had requested from the Luftwaffe that the corps be relocated to Normandy. Göring had turned him down, and Pickert had agreed with the decision, although a few units eventually did make it to the Normandy area. Most of the regiments though, remained scattered north of the Seine, thus with little effective power against the Allied air force anywhere.
Rommel receives him warmly, and they have a nice discussion over lunch. A little later, they are joined by -General der Fallshirmjaeger- Kurt Student, commanding all the airborne troops. Having dissolved the -XI Fliergerkorps,- he had in its place formed the - Fallshirmjaegerkorps- and had established his new headquarters near Nancy in March. His parachute school at Dreux* was busy with new recruits, eager to learn how to jump out of an airplane.
Also joining them is General von Funck, who is commanding (now Rommel's) XLVII Panzer Corps.
Rommel excuses himself for a phone call from State Secretary Theodor Ganzenmueller, in the Ministry of Transportation. He complains to Rommel about the meddling into the affairs of transportation by Gauleiter Kaufmann on Rommel's behalf. Ganzenmueller tells Rommel to kindly keep Kaufmann (and anyone else Rommel is contemplating) out of the affairs of of transportation. Yes, the Ministry is aware of the acute transportation problem in France right now due to the bombings, but trying to get things done using Kaufmann is NOT the proper way to do things.
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Admiral Ruge drives to Paris to the headquarters of Security Area West, and then of the Naval Group West. He finds out that the radar installations had been hit pretty hard by the enemy, but that of the eleven major radar installations that had been damaged by the bombs, only one was not back in service again.
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Hitler has a conference with a number of his generals.
Mostly, he tells them about how the problems Germany had been plagued with because of the Jews, and how they were in a life or death struggle with the Bolsheviks.
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* A small town some 40 miles west of Paris.
Pete Margaritis
GERMANY: A group of senior officers and generals who had been participants in an ideological training course were addressed by Himmler in the Platterhof, a big hotel next to the Berghof. The Reichsfuhrer wanted to strengthen their commitment to National Socialism and to stiffen their spines before they returned to the front. At this late date in the war, people at this level knew what had happened, and was still happening, to the Jews of Europe. Himmler reminded them that they, as well as leaders of the regime, would be held responsible if Germany lost the war.They were all in the same boat with respect to the elimination of Jews from Europe. Hitler addressed the officers that afternoon. He, too, wanted to cement their solidarity with National Socialism. He spoke of the Jews as a foreign body which he had eliminated. His key point: "In removing the Jews I eliminated in Germany the possibility of creating some sort of revolutionary core or nucleus." (Jay Stone)(97)
U-1106 launched.
ITALY: The USAAF's
Fifteenth Air Force in Italy dispatches just over 700 bombers to attack targets
in Italy; B-17 Flying Fortresses hit marshalling yards at Ferrara
and Mantua and an air depot at Piacenza; B-24s hit Vicenza marshalling yard and
air depots at Piacenza and Reggio Emilia; fighters fly 170+ sorties in escort;
48 P-38s strafe Aviano and Villaorba airfields. PACIFIC
OCEAN:
The destroyers of Task Group 57.8 bombard Japanese installations on Mili Atoll
in the southeastern Marshall Islands. The destroyer escort USS England (DE-635) sinks Japanese
submarine HIJMS RO-108 110 miles (177 km) northeast of Manus Island, Admiralty
Islands . This is the fifth submarine involved in Operation "NA" sunk
by USS England in seven days. U.S.A.: Coast Guard-manned Army vessel FS-177
was commissioned. She was assigned to and operated in the Southwest Pacific
area. She was decommissioned 19 August 1945. ATLANTIC OCEAN: Two
RAF 333 Sqn
Mosquitoes attacked
U-958 killing 1 and wounding 2
men. [Maschinenobergefreiter Herbert Frank].