Last Japanese unit in Saipan surrenders

November 29, 2015-December 5, 2015
Location: Government Documents

Congress considers the meaning of its obligations to the United Nations, and how it impacts control over the country's armed forces.

Meanwhile in the Nuremberg Trials, former Nazi ringleader Rudolf Hess, who had feigned amnesia, now announces that his memory loss had been a ruse. Hess had assisted in editing Hitler's Mein Kampf, and insured that the Nazi antisemitic laws of 1935 were passed. Though despised by Hitler (due to his bizarre solo flight across the Channel in an attempt to negotiate an unauthorized peace agreement with England in 1941), Hess remains loyal to Hitler. He now puts himself back in court and will serve life imprisonment when he is sentenced a year later.

As war ships are decommissioned, military divisions are as well. The 101st Airborne is deactivated. Its storied history (highlighted in many dramatizations in literature and cinema) includes the courageous night jump behind enemy German lines five hours before the D-day coastal landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944. Along with the 82d Airborne, and a complement of support elements, together they numbered more than 13,000 men in 925 C-47's transported across the English Channel (not including the glider infantry). The account of the military operations in Normandy are put together in a preliminary study in 1947: Utah Beach to Cherbourg, with a foreword by now Chief of Staff Dwight D. Eisenhower. The study states, "In general the division did not have a good drop... About 1,500 troops were either killed or captured..." The division will be de- and reactivated many times, but will see action in all the major conflicts in the post-war era. In the map below of D-Day for the 101st, each dot represents one plane load of paratroopers.

Newsmap. Monday, 10 December, 1945: week of 27 November to 4 December.

Front: Text describes photographs: U.S. destroyer Shaw -- Third Fleet Unit -- Nazis march in Vienna -- 35th Infantry Division troops in Polch, Poland -- Joachim von Ribbentrop -- Signatures on the United Nations Security Charter -- Nipponese who helped capture the headquarters of Chinese 29th Army at Tungchow -- Pfc. Cecil Cunningham, of St. Louis, MO in Tokyo -- Navy Secretary Frank Knox draws the second number in the Third Selective Service drawing -- Five Michigan men leave a separation center at Fort Sheridan, Ill. after discharge. Verso: Map shows eastern portion of the United States with population statistics by state and per person income payments in 1940 and 1944.

• View this map in print in the Map Collection reading room, ground floor of UHM Hamilton Library, the week of 29 November 2015
• View this map online through the University of North Texas Digital Library (http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc841/)

Notes: Newsmaps were color posters issued by the U.S. Army and the Government Printing Office (GPO) on Mondays during the World War II. They combine maps, images, and news from the previous week’s war effort.