WW2 Tweets @RealTimeWWII@mastodon.muage.org

Goebbel's diary: "We sent neutral journalists & Polish intellectuals to the spot where they [the Polish bodies] were found. Their reports now reaching us from ahead are gruesome... We shall be able to live on it for a couple of weeks.”

German minister Goebbels is delighted by discovery of mass graves of Poles murdered by Poles in Katyn Forest; gloats at creating "anti-Bolshevik propaganda on a grand style."

Nazis occupiers of France announce evacuation of all children & non-working civilians in Atlantic ports of Le Havre, Dieppe, Cherbourg, St Malo & Brest, fleeing increasingly heavy Allied bombing.

Furious Sikorski visits 10 Downing Street. Churchill: "He told me he had proofs that the Soviets had murdered the 15,000 Polish officers... had a wealth of evidence. I said, 'If they are dead nothing you can do will bring them back.'"

Stalin told General Sikorski, leader of Polish free govt. in London, that the USSR had "lost track" of his officers amidst the chaos of Soviet occupation of Poland followed by German invasion.

News of mass graves of murdered Polish officers, found near Smolensk, has been published by the Germans. Anti-Nazi Polish government-in-exile, based in London, is demanding explanations from the Soviet government.

8 days after crash of his plane Lady Be Good in the Libyan desert, US Army Lt. Robert Toner writes final entry in his journal: "No help yet, very cold nite". He & his 8 fellow aircrew have perished deep in the Saharan sands.

Nazis denouncing the killings of Poles by Soviet secret police, NKVD, as "typical Bolshevik brutality"- Germans claim they have found 10,000 corpses, with identification as Polish officers.

Nazi Germany announces grisly discover in the territory of the USSR: the bodies of thousands of Polish officers & intellectuals, apparently murdered by Soviets & dumped in mass graves around Katyn forest.

As well as borrowing historically high levels of debt, British government are urging population to buy war bonds; essentially lending savings money to Treasury for the duration of war.

On UK Budget Day, Chancellor of the Exchequer announces war is now costing Britain £15 million a day, up from £5 million three years ago. British government will increase taxes & borrowing to cover unprecedented annual deficit of £2,848,614,000.

Göring, head of Luftwaffe, is widely mocked in Germany. 3 years ago he announced: “No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Göring. You can call me Meyer [a common German name].” Berliners call air-raid sirens “Meyer’s trumpets”.

As Allied bombing campaign on German homeland mounts, Reichsmarschall Göring has decreed all adult Germans must now work as air raid wardens, fire-watching & enforcing blackout at night.

British troops have captured the town of Sfax, a Tunisian port facing Sicily. Watch Allied forces greeted by Tunisians & French as they arrive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsFrc3XA7vI

Lady Be Good, an American B-24 "Liberator" plane, has been lost over the Sahara Desert returning from a bombing mission. 8 of the 9 crew survived the crash, but have been stranded with only a single canteen of water, given up for dead by US military.

Axis forces in North Africa now trapped on the narrow Tunis peninsula, with Allied armies closing in, and bombers cutting off sea rescue.

Silk has run out in Britain- all precious, imported supplies are reserved to make parachutes. Women now paint their legs with gravy browning, to fake wearing stockings:

Germans Otto & Elise Hampel have been executed by the German government, guillotined for "high treason". Their crime was distributing 200 postcards denouncing the Nazi regime as killers of workers & urging non-cooperation.

British & American armies have met in North Africa below Djebel Chemsi (1 on map), while breakthrough on the defensive Mareth Line has left nothing but open plains before Allied forces in southern Tunisia; Axis now have their backs to the sea.

British & American soldiers now meet in the Tunisian desert, completing encirclement of Axis in North Africa- British have fought west from Egypt, Americans east from Morocco: