On the night of February 18, 1942, fresh snow was falling over Winnipeg. By midnight, it had stopped. The clouds had disappeared, and the clear moonlight was so bright that as late revelers plugged in their cars, slammed garage doors and raced for warm beds, they could easily read their thermometers: 14 below zero.
At six o'clock on a cold winter's morning in Winnipeg, there isn't much more than a faint streak of light in the east to indicate the coming dawn. On the morning of Thursday, February 19, most Winnipeggers slept peacefully. At that moment. troops in Nazi uniforms were forming up quietly along suburban roads on the western outskirts of St. James, not more than six miles due west of Portage and Main.
The first indication that anything was wrong had come at 5.30, when a taxi carrying a disc jockey on his way to work was halted by a platoon of Nazi stormtroopers who stepped into the road. Three stormtroopers got in and ordered the cabbie to drive to the radio station. They captured it in fifteen minutes. Studios and transmitters of all radio stations in the city were taken quickly and without opposition. At this same time, strong forces in light tanks occupied road and rail junctions.
As the day wore slowly on. Winnipeggers were given ample evidence of what the Nazi victory meant. R. F. McWilliams, Manitoba’s lieutenant-governor, and John Bracken, the premier, were the first to be arrested. John Queen, mayor of Winnipeg and a key figure in the city’s labor movement, was arrested in his office. The government leaders were locked up in jail at Lower Fort Garry, twenty miles north of Winnipeg.
That evening, the Winnipeg Tribune, renamed Das Winnipeger Lügenblatt, appeared with its front page in German script. It contained a martial decree signed by Erich von Neurenberg over the Swastika, listing what citizens could do, could not do. and would do, with the penalties for disobedience spelled out in unmistakable language. No question marks remained: every Manitoban was given a clear picture of what defeat by Hitler's stormtroopers meant in terms of personal liberty.
Because a surprise impact was important, no advance warning was given other than a proclamation by the mayor that If Day would be held to demonstrate the effect of a Nazi victory. Stunned citizens. overwhelmed by the realism of the invasion, wept on the streets at the sight of Nazis burning books and looting homes.
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