Notices by WW2 Tweets (realtimewwii@mastodon.muage.org)

Triumphant Hitler claims 2,500,000 Russians have been taken prisoner ("Although these are not human beings but beasts"). Read his full speech: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/adolf-hitler-broadcast-to-the-german-people-on-the-winter-help-scheme-october-1941

Messerschmitt 163A "Komet"- only the rocket-powered plane in world- was towed the into air by another plane to save fuel before its maiden flight.

German officer Helmuth von Moltke confides doubts about invasion of the USSR in his diary: "If we don't succeed this month we'll never succeed."

Anti-Nazi forces in Yugoslavia divided between Communist partisans & Serbian Nationalist Chetniks, for now working in fragile alliance. They're parading captured German soldiers through streets of Užice, their new capital:

Soviet Union hurling every available body against invaders; Germans report that some surrendering Red Army units contain young children:

USSR's Communist authorities quietly drop their campaign of religious persecution: in face of Nazi invasion, Russia needs any friends it can get.

"Ghosts of Brest-Litovsk" are starving & in hiding, stalking German sentries through the fortress's corridors with bayonets.

Deep inside Brest-Litovsk fortress, a surviving Soviet soldier inscribes a defiant message, 3 weeks after Red Army surrendered the stronghold: "I'm dying, but I won't give up! Farewell Motherland. 20.VII.41"

New York Times map shows the Soviet Union's "vast storehouse of natural resources- both a tempting prize to the German invader & a bulwark of the Russian defense."

Churchill also addresses Hitler: “We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst and we will do our best.” https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/do-your-worst-well-do-our-best.html

First British citizen has been executed under new Treachery Act: ship's engineer George Johnson Armstrong has been hanged for offering to spy for Nazis. http://www.britishexecutions.co.uk/execution-content.php?key=615

Also hounding Italians is a force of 1000 Ethiopian guerillas led by a British Major Orde Wingate, who wears a purse made from the scrotum of a dead Italian soldier.

Otto Frisch, Austrian physicist & refugee from Nazis: "This project could make a weapon of unparalleled violence; probably some Germans are already making one."

High-altitude reconnaissance Spitfire has spotted German "pocket battleship" Bismarck in the North Sea- Royal Navy now scrambling all available warships to find & sink her.

Bismarck is one of the largest battleships ever: she took 4 years to build, & is the pride of Hitler's Kriegsmarine.

With the Balkans conquered by Fascist Axis, New York Times ponders Germany's next move: a strike across the Mediterranean at the Suez Canal? Or an invasion of Turkey?

The King of Greece, George II had ordered that his palace's wine cellars be opened & bottles given to Allied soldiers, before Germans can loot them. Each enlisted man gets one bottle, & each officer two.

German panzer & mountain divisions now assaulting Thermopylae, where Anzac troops are making a last stand to protect the Allied retreat. Australian General Vasey: "Here we bloody well are & here we bloody well stay.”

New stamp issued to mark Hitler’s birthday; as with all German stamps, postal service pays to license the Führer’s likeness, paying Hitler millions of Reichsmarks.

If Thermopylae falls, road to Athens lies open to German invaders- Anzacs fight to defend the same mountain pass as the Spartans, 2400+ years ago: