World War II As It Happened
A MaritimeQuest Daily Event Special Presentation
Thursday August 15, 1940
Day 350

August 15, 1940: Front page of the Manchester Evening News, Manchester, England.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
Note the report at top left: "Greek Cruiser Sunk By Unknown Submarine"
(This caused quite an incident considering Italy and Greece were not at war. The Italians and Germans naturally blamed the British. The cruiser Helle was sunk by Lieutenant (Tenente di vascello) Giuseppe Aicardi and his submarine Delfino. Both quite Italian.)


August 15, 1940: Front page of The Daily Mail, Hull, England.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
(It is worth noting that Aug. 15, 1940 the Luftwaffe launched the largest offensive to date, Operation Adler. (Operation Eagle) This involved over 1,780 sorties being flown against R.A.F. targets. The operation was designed to cripple the Royal Air Force by destroying facilities and aircraft. However, the Germans got the worst of it, losing 94 aircraft (56 shot down, 8 missing, 18 crash-landed and 9 badly damaged.
 
Note the report in column 5: "Never Doubt British Air Claims"
(This unsourced report made me laugh. Someone was really trying to convince the people that the government was "always" telling the truth. The report starts with "No one need doubt the accuracy of the figures issued by the Air Ministry showing the remarkable victories scored daily." In other words, just believe what we are saying without asking any questions. This is what every government official wishes the people would do. I draw attention to this not to mock the Air Ministry or to claim that they deliberately lied, although after doing some research on the numbers of claims they made over the next few weeks one must wonder. No, it was not that, it was because of what I saw on my television.

John Kirby, the spokesman for the Pentagon and former Rear-Admiral, held a press conference on Aug. 13, 2021 about the disaster in Afghanistan. (Remember in July Biden ordered all U.S. troops out of the country after 20 years of war.) Kirby was trying to convince the press and therefore the nation, that there was no real emergency in Afghanistan. Even though we were sending 3,000 battle ready troops TO Afghanistan to extricate the personnel from the U.S. embassy in Kabul. (Sound familiar, ever heard of Saigon?) Kirby was asked by a reporter if the troops were going on a combat deployment. Kirby, not as adept a liar as Jen (Commie-)Psaki, Biden's spokesperson, said;

"I thought I answered it pretty well yesterday."

Meaning I don't want to answer that question. The reporter pressed him again;

"John, these soldiers and Marines, they are fully kitted out, putting on night vision goggles, landing in Kabul, taking positions at the airport, they're going to a combat zone, are they not there?"

Kirby's answer; "...they will have the right of self-defense. They will be armed. And as I said yesterday, and I don't think I could have made it any more clear..."

NEVER DOUBT what he says, if he says it's not a combat situation, it's not.

What really made my ears perk up was his use of the term "the Advantage is with the Afghan army." He apparently likes to use this term as a reporter mentioned that he had used this term "many times this week." It's almost as if he thinks if he says it over and over it will become true. [Think of the Big Lie Theory.] One must ask, what does he mean by this term? He said "...they have greater numbers, they have an air force, they have modern weaponry. Its indigenous forces that can make the difference on the ground." He said this while you could look at a map and see that in two months the Taliban had conquered over 80% of the country. But...NEVER DOUBT what he says. Perhaps he should have said that soon the Taliban would have an air force, modern equipment, supplies, weapons and ammunition.supplied by the U.S. taxpayer after they take them from the "army with the advantage."

[Kirby also said; "Kabul is not, right now, in an imminent threat environment." That was on on Aug. 13, 2021 at 18:04. On Aug. 15, 2021 by 13:00, the Taliban had taken Kabul and the Afghan President had fled the country. I guess when Kirby said "right now" he meant at that very second, he was not talking about the situation less than 48 hours later. One wonders how could this man be so uninformed?]

Since Biden's announcement the Taliban has taken over most of the country. This after Biden told the world on July 8, 2021 that; "The likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely." NEVER DOUBT what Biden says. Even though everyone in the world knew that the Taliban would take over the whole country, why didn't Biden know? Maybe our intelligence services didn't know either, maybe the Pentagon didn't know? Could there be a reason the Pentagon and the Intelligence services didn't know what was going to happen, well maybe there is.

[As a side note, just now, Aug. 14, 2021 at 15:35, while I was writing this, I see a report that the number of troops being SENT TO Afghanistan is being increased to 5,000. And that the Taliban has taken over four more provincial capitals just since yesterday. Kirby told the world two days ago, "Kabul is not, right now, in an imminent threat environment." NEVER DOUBT what Kirby says.]

The question must be asked, why doesn't the Pentagon, the intelligence services and Biden know what everyone else knows? Afghanistan will fall to the Taliban shortly. Let's start with the Pentagon and its leadership, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Just a little background on him. To look at him in uniform, he is an impressive figure, a chest full of campaign ribbons and four stars on his shoulders, yet his leadership skills seem to be less than sterling. In 2015, he was in charge of CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command) and was tasked with training Syrian fighters to fight against Isis. He was given $500,000,000 (that is five-hundred million dollars) to train 5,000 fighters. When he was in front of the Senate committee and was asked how man fighters had been trained with this money, his answer was "We're talking four or five." Not four or five thousand, 4 or 5. You would think with numbers this small he could calculate an exact figure, but apparently not.

He was nominated, by a White president, confirmed, by a majority White Senate and became the first Black SECDEF, the one man in charge of the entire United States Military. Since then, his focus has been... finding White supremacists in the military. That's right, in fact one of his first actions as SECDEF was to sign a "stand down" to address extremism. Not Islamic extremism, not communist extremism, no, just White American extremism. His focus should be on making America safe from our enemies, but he thinks the real enemy is White soldiers. To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Austin has not produced any report outlining the number of White supremacists he found in the lurking in the armed forces to date. Perhaps that is why the Pentagon does not know what is going to happen in Afghanistan.

But what about the intelligence services, it's their primary job to know... well guess what, they apparently don't know either. Maybe one reason is because of the personnel they have been hiring. The CIA recently released a recruiting video proudly proclaiming they are hiring, have hired and are looking for more people with these qualifications. Cisgender millennials who have been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and people who are intersectional. The video goes on and the person makes the following disturbing statement. "I did not sneak into [the] CIA. My employment was not and is not the result of a fluke or slip through the cracks. I earned my way in, and I earned my way up the ranks of this organization."

If that statement is true, it means that this is what the CIA wants working for them, a woman with serious mental issues. There was not one mention of actual qualifications like, cryptographic skills, intelligence gathering skills, foreign language skills, intelligence analysis skills or even being able to dress-up in a trench coat and sun glasses and sneak around in the dark. Let's not forget that back in January these same intelligence services told the American people that White supremacists were planning to attack the Capitol in March to overthrow the government. They never provide one shred of evidence, the media never asked them, "where are they staging the attack from?" After all, you would need a few thousand of people to gather, somewhere, to attack the Capitol, which was ringed by U.S. troops. They got it wrong, there was no attack, there never was going to be an attack. Perhaps the cisgender millennial with the anxiety disorder was the one who came to the conclusion that there would be an attack. Maybe that is why the intelligence services don't know what is happening in Afghanistan.

Today, Aug. 15, 2021, the United States Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, a singularly unimpressive figure, became even smaller as a man and demonstrated exactly why people have no trust in government. While we watch helicopter after helicopter evacuate people from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on our television screens, Mr. Blinken, doing his best Baghdad Bob or Josef Goebbels impersonation had the hubris to say "This is not Saigon." when asked if this was reminiscent of the U.S. leaving Vietnam. He is technically correct, it's Kabul, not Saigon, which is a completely different city in another country.

Just remember what Biden told us in his press conference on July 8;

"The Taliban is not the south - the North Vietnamese army. They're not - they're not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There's going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the - of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable." 

You see Uncle Joe was right, the helicopters are not landing on the roof, they are landing on the grounds to evacuate the people. So, as anyone with two eyes can see, this is a totally different situation with absolutely no comparison to Saigon at all. NEVER DOUBT WHAT WE SAY.

Biden said on Aug. 16th that: "We planned for every contingency" and "But I always promised the American people that I will be straight with you."

If we don't doubt what he said, that means that HE PLANNED to give the Taliban an air force, HE PLANNED to give the Taliban billions of dollars of U.S. weapons, HE PLANNED to abandon American citizens, HE PLANNED to abandon the Afghans who helped the U.S.A. so the Taliban could murder them. HE PLANNED all this chaos, that is what he said. Of course, nobody believes that HE PLANNED anything, that is why we are seeing what we are seeing. That is why hundreds or even thousands of Afghans will be murdered, that's why Americans are now in harm's way and at the mercy of the Taliban. We can all see he did not plan anything, he was just lying again. I am sure that everyone noticed he did not take any questions after his address. Presumably because he can read, but can't think on his feet. If they had let him take questions, it would have been a full-scale train wreck.

I would say this parade of fools makes the country a laughing stock, but in reality, the parade of fools are the American people who voted for people who put these fools in those positions. Now I must ask, does anyone reading this believe we should "never doubt" what a government is saying?


August 15, 1940: Front page of the Derby Evening Telegraph, Derby, England.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


August 15, 1940: Front page of the Press and Journal, Aberdeen, Scotland.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


August 15, 1940: Front page of The Examiner, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


August 15, 1940: Front page of The Sydney Sun, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
(I wonder if anyone doubted this headline.)


August 15, 1940: Front page of The Telegraph, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


August 15, 1940: Front page of The Lethbridge Herald, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
Note the photo at center: "Flaming Finish For Five German Planes"
(Four days after this photo was discredited by the Air Ministry, the press were still running it as true. Should we NEVER DOUBT the press?)
[See "British Discredit Photo of 5 Falling Nazi Planes"in The Sunday Star of Aug. 11, 1940.]
 
Also note the report at center: "88 German Planes Shot Down In Furious Assault On Suburbs Of London"
(With the "Never Doubt" clause in mind, here are the best figures I have. There were 56 German aircraft shot down, 8 others missing, 18 had forced landings due to combat damage and 3 were lost for non-combat reasons. The report also stated that 19 British fighters were lost, the real number was 31 with another 5 being total losses due to combat damage.)


August 15, 1940: Front page of The Winnipeg Tribune, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


August 15, 1940: Front page of Haarlem's Dagblad, Haarlem, Netherlands.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


August 15, 1940: Front page of the Biddeford Daily Journal, Biddeford, Maine.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
Note the report in columns 1-2: "Hollywood Denies Communistic Ties"


August 15, 1940: Front page of The Evening Star, Washington, D.C.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


August 15, 1940: Front page of The Evening Gazette, Xenia, Ohio.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


August 15, 1940: Front page of The Port Arthur News, Port Arthur, Texas.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
Note the photo and report at top: "And Now The Aerobile, Combination Auto And Plane"
(This was not the first such contraption, the first flying car, called the Arrowbile, took to flight on Mar. 21, 1937. In July 2021 the latest version of the plane/car was rolled out to the pubic in the form of the AirCar. Over 42,000 people died in car crashes in the U.S.A. last year. People can't control a car on the ground, what makes anyone think that having them in the air will be any better?)


August 15, 1940: Front page of The Kingsport Times, Kingsport, Tennessee.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


August 15, 1940: Front page of The Bakersfield Californian, Bakersfield, California.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)


August 15, 1940: Front page of the Hamburger Neueste Zeitung, Altona, Hamburg, Germany.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
 
1. U-Boot versenkte Hilfskreuzer im Atlantik.
(U-Boat sinks auxiliary cruiser in the Atlantic.)
[The German report on the sinking of HMS Transylvania.]
2. Gestern 28 Britenflugzeuge vernichtet.
(28 British aircraft destroyed yesterday.)


August 15, 1940: Front page of the Völkischer Beobachter, the official newspaper of the NSDAP.
(Click on the image for a readable version.)
1. In 6 Tagen 371 britische Flugzeuge vernichtet.
(In 6 days 371 British aircraft destroyed.)
2. Rüstungswerke, Großtanklager, Flugplätz, und Werften durch Bomben zerstört.
(Armaments factories, large tank farms, airfields and shipyards destroyed by bombs.)



   
Page published August 15, 2021