Www.WorldHistory.Biz
Login *:
Password *:
     Register

 

14-03-2015, 07:41

Le Duan

Le Duan (1907-86). Democi-atic Republic of Nbetnani. Vietnamese communist leadei’ most closely identified with the war f'oi-reunification. He served as seci'et-arv of' the party committee foi-South Vietnam during the war against France and remained in the South until 1957. Duan contended that the North had an obligation to help the South achieve "liberation'’. The Third Party Congress elected him first secretary in 1960 at the same time that it ratified plans for an armed struggle. In 1973 he pi-edicted that the US, having withdrawn, would not return, and approved plans to resume open warfare. WST.



Le Due Tho (b. l910). Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Deputy secretary to Le Duan in the party committee for the South in 195154, the fifth-ranked member of the Lao Dong (Vietnam) Communist Party Political Bureau, Le Due Tho began secret negotiations with Henry Kissinger in February 1970 to end the Vietnam War. These negotiations paralleled the Paris talks and resulted in the Paris Agreements of January 1973. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Kissinger, Tho declined on the grounds that the Agreements produced no lasting peace.



Lee, Rear Adm Willis Augustus, Jr (“Ching”) (1888-1945). US. Commanding battleship group (Washington, South Dakota) during Naval Battles off Guadalcanal, November 14-15 1942, engaged Vice Adm Kondo’s bombardment group. Lee’s destroyers were put out of action and South Dakota crippled, but Washington, skilfully handled, sank Japanese battleship Kirishima. Co-director with Mit-scher of Truk and Carolines attacks, 1944; later 2-i-c Third Fleet (Halsey). Died while researching anti-kamikaze measures.



Leeb, Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von (1876-1956). Ger. An austere Bavarian aristocrat, von Leeb served as a staff officer on both the Western and Eastern Fronts in World War 1. He stayed in the German army after 1918, becoming an acknowledged authority on defensive warfare. A Catholic, Leeb had little love for the Nazis, yet he commanded


Le Duan

Ritter von Leeb: an austere aristocrat



Army Group 2 at Kassel from 1934 until 1938, when he was removed during the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis. He was recalled by Hitler in 1939 to command Army Group C, entrusted with defending the Reich against France. Leeb’s units played a subordinate role in the invasion of France in May 1940 but later, in June, they encircled four French armies in the Epinal-Belfort area. Promoted to Field Marshal in July 1940, he commanded Army Group North in Russia in 1941, his task being to cut off and eliminate the Soviet forces in the Baltic states, then advance on Leningrad. He was not at his best directing large armoured formations and his panzer commanders criticized him for being too cautious. Even so, he was on the verge of capturing Leningrad when, in September 1941, Hitler ordered him to starve the city into surrender rather than storm it. His relations with Hitler worsened the following January with the Fiihrer's refusal to allow him to withdraw and shorten his line in the face of a Soviet offensive. Leeb was relieved of command on January 17 1942 and saw no further active service. PJS.



Leefe Robinson, Capt William



(1895-1918). Br. An rfc pilot, Leefe Robinson won the Victoria Cross for destroying the German airship SL 11 at Cuffley, Hertfordshire, on September 3 1916. Himself brought down in France in 1917, he remained a now until shortly before his death from influenza on December 31 1918.



Leese, Gen Sir Oliver (1894



1978). Br. Commander XXX Corps in Eighth Army from El Alamein in August 1942 to the Sangro river in November 1943; responsible at El Alamein for the initial “break-in” in the northern sector on October 23-24 1942, and for the “break-out” at the end of the battle on November 1—2. He led Eighth Army’s advance along the coast road from Benghazi to Tripoli and launched the main frontal assaults on the Mareth Line and Wadi Akarit. He captured the western beachhead in Eighth Army’s landing in Sicily.



He took over from Montgomery on the Sangro in December 1943, and moved Eighth Army secretly across the Apennines for Alexander’s “Diadem” offensive, in which he attacked in the Cassino sector, taking the monastery, breaching the Gustav and Hitler Lines, and pursuing von Vietinghoffs Tenth Army to the Gothic Line.



Dissatisfied with Alexander’s plan to assault the centre of the Gothic Line because he had too few mountain-trained troops, he persuaded him to switch Eighth Army back to the Adriatic coast where he assumed that he would find better tank country. This was a superb feat of staff work, but it lost three weeks of summer weather.



He achieved surprise when he opened his offensive on August 25 1944, successfully breaching the Gothic Line, but his subsequent advance was fiercely contested by von Vietinghoff. The weather had broken by the time he had managed to fight his way out of the hills into the plain of the Romagna. He handed over Eighth Army on October 1 1944 on leaving to command Allied Land Forces Southeast Asia in the reconquest of Burma. Clashes of personality led to his dismissal by Mountbat-ten in May 1945. WGFJ.



Legentilhomme, Gen Paul (1884



1975). Fr. Commander Free French forces during the Syrian campaign of 1941.



Leigh light. Airborne searchlight used in kap" Coastal Command to illuminate asv contacts. First operational use, June 1942.



 

html-Link
BB-Link