eBay Users’ Stamp Club meeting 17-19 November "World War II."

[sheryll*net]

*** eBay Users’ Stamp Club ***

Please join us on this thread for our monthly meeting on “World War II.”. The meeting is officially open any time Friday November 20 to midnight on Sunday November 22.

" World War II"

This time last year we did World War 1, so now that we have been through the centennial of WWI, we can show items (stamps, covers, postcards, letters, medals, military items, photos and ephemera) from World War II.

---------------

Anne will show us items from the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.

I will be showing items from my US APO collection, including family correspondence.

The balcony will offer a selection of hard tack, C rations, K rations, M units and B units, tastefully presented.

The workshop area will be set up with blank postal stationery, V-Mail, paper and pencils so that you can write and send your own letter home.

See you there!

 Sheryll and Anne
eUSC 2014-15 Co-Presidents sheryll*net (Sheryll in OR) and abt1950 (Anne in NJ)

[sheryll*net]

WWII.

I plan to put up some important dates as the meeting progresses. Here are some for 1939.

September

 1 – Germany invades Poland

3 – Britain declares war on Germany.

Australia, India and New Zealand also declare war on Germany.

5 – USA declares neutrality.

17 – The Soviet Union invades Poland from the east.

17 – Japan attacks China

October

10 British prime minister declined Hitler’s offer of Peace.

November

4 U.S. Neutrality Act passed

December

2 British conscription is increased to cover men from 19 to 41

7  Italy declares its neutrality

14 USSR expelled from League of Nations

18 First Canadian troops arrive in Europe

[sheryll*net]

Here's a letter from a lady holidaying in Europe in 1939. She is in Switzerland, writing on August 30:

"... Should be in London right now, intended spending last week in Paris and then flying to London the first of this week, but now I guess there'll be no "Pretties From Paris" for me, and I did so want a Parisian bonnet...

...Of course the present situation makes the whole country tense. Consensus of opinion here is that Germany is in such as deplorable economic situation that they cannot stand a war, but rather that a revolution is more likely to take place. However the entrance of Russia changes the picture somewhat. Everyone here seems to think a war sooner or later is inevitable. We as Americans don't realize how fortunate we are to be removed from sources of war, and the persistent horror of it, as I see it even in peace-loving Switzerland. We are not nearly thankful enough for all our privileges and blessings.

Here is hoping I see you before too long. Am not making any definite plans just now. 

Love, Alvina

[sheryll*net]

1940

March

18: Hitler and Mussolini meet at the Brenner pass on the Austrian border. Mussolini  agrees with Hitler that Italy will enter the war "at an opportune moment".

28: Britain and France make a formal agreement that neither country will seek a separate peace with Germany.

May

10: Germany invades Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom upon the resignation of Neville Chamberlain.

June

25: France officially surrenders to Germany.

28: General De Gaulle recognized by British as leader of Free French.

July

1 French government moves to Vichy.

August

2: General Charles de Gaulle sentenced to death in absentia by a French military court.

September

1: Germany's Jews are ordered to wear yellow stars for identification.

27: The Tripartite is signed in Berlin by Germany, Italy, and Japan, promising mutual aid. An informal name, "Axis", emerges.

October

16: Draft registration begins in the United States.

29: The first number drawings for US Selective Service Act draftees.

30: President Roosevelt, in the middle of an election campaign, promises not to send "our boys" to war.

31: The Warsaw District government moves all Jews living in Warsaw to the ghettos.

November

20-25: Hungary, Romania and Slovak Republic sign Tripartite Pact, Soviet Union gives terms to join Tripartite pact.

[sheryll*net]

1941

February

15: Deportation of Austrian Jews to ghettos in Poland begins.

March

1: Hitler gives orders for the expansion of Auschwitz prison camp, to be run by Commandant Rudolf Hoess.
: Bulgaria officially signs the Tripartite Pact.

11: United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs the Lend Lease Act (now passed by the full Congress) allowing Britain, China, and other Allied nations to purchase military equipment and to defer payment until after the war.

27: Japanese spy Takeo Yoshikawa arrives in Honolulu, Hawaii and begins to study the United States fleet at Pearl Harbor.

April

11: Though still a "neutral" nation, the United States begins sea patrols in the North Atlantic.

June

10,100 people from Estonia, 15,000 from Latvia and 34,000 from Lithuania are deported to Siberia by the Soviet Union.

July

8: Britain and the USSR sign a mutual defence agreement, promising not to sign any form of separate peace agreement with Germany.

September

11: Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the United States Navy to shoot on sight if any ship or convoy is threatened.

October

18 General Hideki Tojo becomes the 40th Prime Minister of Japan.

November

26: A Japanese attack fleet of 33 warships and auxiliary craft, including six aircraft carriers, sails from northern Japan for the Hawaiian Islands.

December

7: (December 8, Asian time zones) Japan launches an attack on Pearl Harbor, declares war on the United States and the United Kingdom and invades Thailand and British Malaya and launches aerial attacks against Guam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Shanghai, Singapore and Wake Island. Canada declares war on Japan. Australia declares war on Japan.

8: The United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and New Zealand declare war on Japan.

11: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States. The United States reciprocates and declares war on Germany and Italy.

[airbornestamps]

Well, just as Japan was sending its spy to Hawaii (27 MAR 1941), the J. Cowan (Dolls) Ltds. sent this letter from Oxford England to NY.  Noting that it was "written in German language" it was opened and examined by English postal authorities....

[airbornestamps]

Also, March 27, 1941: Yugoslavia throws a wrench into Adolf Hitler's plans when military officers, demanding a neutral Yugoslavia, overthrow the government that capitulated to the Axis, and place a teenaged King Peter II on the throne.

[malolo]

Swiss National Pro Patria - Red Cross.

Bellinzona-Locarno railway cancel, June 27, 1940 to Germany with German censor mark.

[malolo]

Block of four from same set Pro Patria Goldau-Rapperswil railway October 10, 1940 to Olten, Switzerland.

[malolo]

Ramsei-Summiswald-Huttwil railway June 3, 1944 to Red Cross Geneva. Probably inquiring about missing person/s.

[jaywild]

Roger...

That “5 JUIN 1944” was my mother’s 28th birthday, which she spent in the US Army as a WAC.

[oggilby]

Here's my Pop. Dad served as a medic in Patton's army, 80 Division (Blue Ridge) . As a medic, he provided help to those imprisoned in Buchenwald, after it's liberation.

[jaywild]

Here’s a Feldpostkarte from G. Bettinger, a member of a Wehrmacht construction battalion, sent from Uniejow Poland on 3 Okt 1939 and postmarked on the 5th. This was during the Nazi invasion of Poland, which had not yet surrendered.  The text is rather chilling—the writer speaks of helping bury a “comrade” (irony, anyone?) from the Luftwaffe.  

A friend who has access to Wehrmacht records traced this soldier, who since he was not in the front lines survived the war only to die in Croatia, perhaps in a prisoner of war camp, in 1946.

[jaywild]

Here’s a cover to the Regimental Paymaster, Army Pay Office in Leicester UK, sent 5 Oct 1940.

 From the WAR OFFICE, Ibex House, Minories E.C. 3 London (ultramarine mark).

[jaywild]

WORLD WAR II

Here’s a STRAITS SETTLEMENTS cover, postmarked 5 Oct 1940 in MALACCA, with a poignant “Malaya Patriotic Fund” cinderella on the reverse featuring a British soldier and the words He will thank you....

Whatever funds were collected were of little use when the Japanese overran the whole of Malaya and all British possessions in the area in 1941-42.