1943.05.15 “The Italians have no monopoly on scramming”
by Edwin Aloysius (Ed) Finch (1895-1958)
11 x 14 in., charcoal on board
Finch, the editorial artist for the Louisville Currier-Journal and Louisville Times, was active from 1943-1958. This is an early work, delightfully composed.
The start of 1943 did not go well for the Axis powers. The Battle of Stalingrad ended with an anticlimactic surrender on January 31, 1943, when a Nazi Field Marshall defied Hitler’s expectation that Field Marshalls would drive themselves into the ground or commit suicide rather than surrender.
The Italian and German forces surrendered Africa on May 13, 1943 yielding over 275,000 prisoners of war. The last Axis force to surrender in North Africa was the 1st Italian Army of general Messe.
In between, the Axis was taking a beating through the other theaters of the war.
February 11-16, 1943. Meanwhile, at Stalingrad, there were two separate sets of German forces in trouble. Although Field Marshall Paulus was surrounded, Marshall Kleist had an opening to the north, and his forces were making their way back when Paulus surrendered. There was, however, a threat to Kleist’s line of retreat. Two Soviet armies were moving southward to the area between Kamensk, which fell to the Russians on February 11 and Kharkov, on the 16th. Combined with other victories by the Soviets earlier that same month, the Germans had to retreat from all the territory they had taken in their great summer offensive in 1942. The Caucasus returned to Soviet hands.
March 2-4, 1943. The retaking of Guadalcanal and Papua ended the Japanese drive south, and communications with Australia and New Zealand were now secure. Japan’s final effort to reinforce the Lae–Salamaua position in New Guinea was a disaster: in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, the Japanese lost four destroyers and eight transports, and only 1,000 of the 7,000 troops reached their destination.
May 11, 1943. In the North Pacific, the United States had decided to expel the Japanese from the Aleutians. Having landed forces on Adak in August 1942, they began air attacks against Kiska and Attu from Adak the next month and from Amchitka also in the following January, while a naval blockade prevented the Japanese from reinforcing their garrisons. Finally, U.S. troops, bypassing Kiska, invaded Attu on May 11, 1943—to kill most of the island’s 2,300 defenders in three weeks of fighting. The Japanese then evacuated Kiska.
