World War II Day by Day

Berlin, Germany • August 16, 1944

On this date in 1944, two-and-one-half months after the Allies had landed on the Normandy coast of German-occupied North­western France (Opera­tion Over­lord) and one day after thou­sands of service­men from the U.S. Seventh and French First armies had landed by air and sea on the French Rivi­era in the south­east corner of France (Opera­tion Dra­goon), Adolf Hitler reversed him­self and ordered his troops out of Normandy to a new defense line in North­eastern France on the Somme and Marne rivers. The Franco-Amer­i­can landings on the French Rivi­era (known in France as the Côte d’Azur, or “Azure Coast”), aug­mented by elite British and Cana­dian units, opened a second French front in the pre­sence of British Prime Minis­ter Win­ston Chur­chill aboard a British destroyer. The new front, following on the heels of the gale-induced lost of one of two arti­ficial Mul­berry harbors off the Normandy inva­sion coast and the damage to the great port of Cher­bourg on the near­by Coten­tin Pen­in­sula by German demo­li­tion, pro­vided the Western Allies with addi­tional and sorely needed port facil­i­ties at Mar­seille and Toulon, the former home of the French Marine Nationale.

At his forward headquarters Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair) in Rasten­burg, East Prussia, Hitler stared at his maps table as gloomy news of a second French front in the West began to sink in. To his east the Soviet Army was advancing remorse­lessly in Belo­russia (Bela­rus) and Western Poland toward the Nazi’s capital, Berlin. After their Normandy break­out, Allied infan­try and tanks were sprinting east­ward toward Paris, the French capital. Anglo-Amer­i­can bombers were pul­verizing German cities, indus­trial centers, oil instal­la­tions, and mili­tary tar­gets day and night in their Com­bined Bomber Offen­sive. And now this new, even larger inva­sion force that was sweeping into the south of France. A gloomy Fuehrer looked up from his maps, muttering to senior Wehr­macht officers: “This has been the worst day of my life.” (On Novem­ber 20, 1944, with the Red Army just 9 miles away, Hitler quit Wolf’s Lair for good.)

Over the next two months the Allied advance north­ward from the Medi­ter­ranean coast through the French Rhône Valley pushed the Germans toward their own border. The advance came to a halt at the foot­hills of the Vosges Moun­tains in Eastern France due to lack of fuel. There Lt. Gen. Alexander Patch’s U.S. Seventh Army linked up with Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army moving east from Nor­mandy, to become part of Gen. Dwight D. Eisen­hower’s Euro­pean Theater com­mand. In their Vosges Moun­tain for­tress, the toughest ter­rain on the West­ern Front, retreating Wehr­macht soldiers were ordered by Hitler to stand and fight.

The Vosges Mountains campaign is notable for the rescue of “The Lost Bat­talion,” the 1st Bat­talion, 141st Regi­ment, which was sur­rounded by German forces on Octo­ber 24, 1944. In five days of battle, from Octo­ber 26 to Octo­ber 30, the legend­ary 442nd Regi­mental Com­bat Team, a unit com­posed of mostly second-genera­tion Japa­nese Amer­i­cans (Nisei), managed to break through German infan­try and artill­ery defenses, charging up steep, slippery slopes, firing from the hip, lobbing hand grenades into dug­outs, many of them shouting the Japa­nese war cry “Banzai.” Enemy sur­vi­vors fled in dis­array. Roughly 230 of the “lost” soldiers were rescued while their rescuers suffered over 800 casu­al­ties. (The 442nd is con­sidered to be the most-deco­rated infan­try regi­ment in the history of the U.S. Army. Its record-setting dec­o­ra­tion count earned it the nickname “Purple Heart Battalion.”)

The Allied victory in the monthlong Vosges slug­fest freed Patton to focus on driving east to the Rhine River and striking into the German heart­land. Hitler, how­ever, had one last ace up his sleeve, which he played in the Ardennes Forest of Bel­gium and Luxem­bourg, site of the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944/early 1945. It was Germany’s last-ditch effort to stop the Allied advance into Germany proper, and it failed.

Japanese American Contributions to Winning the War in Europe

Left: Riflemen of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team hike up a muddy French road, late 1944. The newly formed Nisei 442nd Com­bat Team left the States on May 1, 1944, and landed at Anzio, Italy, on May 28. In August the unit took part in Opera­tion Dra­goon, the inva­sion of South­ern France, and traveled 500 miles up the Rhône Valley, by walking and by rail, until Octo­ber 13, when it reached the Vosges Moun­tains. On Octo­ber 23 the unit, whose motto was “Go For Broke,” was ordered to rescue the “lost bat­talion” of 141st “Alamo Regi­ment” of the 36th (Texas) Division. It cost the 442nd 800 casualties to rescue 230 men.

Right: A 442nd squad leader looks for German move­ments in a French valley 200 yards away, Novem­ber 1944. The 442nd was the most deco­rated unit for its size and length of ser­vice in the his­tory of Amer­i­can war­fare. Its mem­bers—in total, about 14,000 men—received 18,143 awards, including 9,486 Purple Hearts for a com­pos­ite Purple Heart rate of a staggering 68 per­cent. The unit was awarded an unpre­ce­dented eight Presi­dential Unit Cita­tions. Twenty-one of its mem­bers were awarded Medals of Honor, including future U.S. sena­tor Daniel Inouye (1924–2012) of Hawaii. The men of the 442nd Regi­mental Com­bat Team accounted for just over 40 per­cent of the Japa­nese Amer­i­cans who served in the U.S. mili­tary in World War II. Many who served had family mem­bers back home incar­cer­ated in U.S. govern­ment intern­ment camps for the dura­tion of the war. In 2012 France made all sur­viving mem­bers of the 442nd che­va­liers (knights) of the French Légion d’Hon­neur, the highest French order of merit for mili­tary and civil dis­tinc­tion, for their actions con­trib­u­ting to the lib­er­a­tion of France and their heroic rescue of the Lost Battalion.

Left: When President Harry S. Truman wel­comed the return home of the 442nd Regi­men­tal Com­bat Team (Nisei recruits raised on Hawaii and the main­land) and its “big brother” com­po­nent, the 100th Infan­try Bat­talion (Nisei soldiers from Hawaii who had enlisted or been drafted before the the war began), he said: “You not only fought the enemy, but you fought pre­ju­dice and you’ve won.” On Octo­ber 5, 2010, Presi­dent Barack Obama signed a bill granting the Con­gres­sional Gold Medal col­lec­tively to the 442nd Regi­men­tal Com­bat Team and the 100th Infan­try Bat­talion in recog­ni­tion of their dedi­cated ser­vice during World War II. The award was also extended to the 6,000 Japa­nese Amer­i­cans who served in the Military Intelligence Service during the war.

Right: The Go For Broke Monument in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, Cali­for­nia com­memo­rates the 33,000 Japa­nese Amer­i­cans who served in the U.S. mili­tary during World War II—the famed 100th In­fan­try Bat­talion and 442nd Regi­mental Com­bat Team, as well as lesser-known Nisei units: the Mili­tary Intel­ligence Service, the 522nd Field Artil­lery Bat­talion, the 232nd Com­bat Engi­neer Com­pany, and the 1399th Engin­eering Con­struc­tion Bat­talion. “Go For Broke!” (craps game lingo) was the unit motto of the 100th Bat­talion and was adopted by the 442nd RCT. It has since been adopted as a motto for all of the Japanese American units formed during World War II.

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the Rescue of “The Lost Battalion”