The Battle of Bougainville: A Second Pearl Harbor (December 1943)

German press reports about the war in Europe were influenced by the requirements of propaganda, but generally had a reasonable relationship to reality.  The Pacific was a different matter.  There the Germans had to depend on Japanese accounts — and those were often wildly exaggerated.

The December 1943 article I’m posting today claims enormous, and almost entirely false, American losses in the Battle for Bougainville.  Since the military news in Europe was grim from the German perspective, it was surely encouraging to believe that, at least in the Pacific, the Axis was enjoying one victory after another.