366 Days
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November
News Headlines
1
U.S. ARMY LAUNCHES BOUGAINVILLE CAMPAIGN IN SOUTHWEST PACIFIC
Cape Torokina, Bougainville, Northern Solomon Islands • November 1, 1943 Guadalcanal, the largest island in the southern Solomon Islands, was the site where the string of Japanese conquests, starting in Janunary 1942, finally ran its course. The bloody fight for Guadalcanal (August 7, 1942 to February 9, 1943) was a recognized turning point in the Pacific War. That […]
2
KOKODA TRAIL SWEEP IS LEAD-UP TO CAPTURING BUNA-GONA
Port Moresby, New Guinea • November 2, 1942 After failing in the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 4–8, 1942) to take the Australian administrative capital of Port Moresby on the island of New Guinea (see map), 4,400 Japanese troops landed on the island’s northeastern shore on the night of July 21/22, 1942, and established beachheads at […]
3
JAPANESE BALLOON BOMBS OVER U.S. WEST COAST
Seattle, Washington · November 3, 1944 On this date in 1944 Japan began an explosive balloon campaign against the U.S. and Canada. The date was chosen to commemorate the birthday of former Emperor Meiji (1852–1912). Over the next 5 months the Special Balloon Regiment of the Japanese Army launched some 6,000 to 9,300 (sources vary) hydrogen-filled […]
4
POLISH GHETTO MODEL FOR HOLLAND
Warsaw, Occupied Poland · November 4, 1939 On this date in 1939 in Nazi-occupied Poland, newly appointed Governor-General Hans Frank established the Warsaw ghetto and began forcing the city’s Jews into a single area. Ten days later Frank and his deputy Arthur Seyss-Inquart ordered Jews in Poland to wear a white bracelet bearing a hexagonal […]
5
HIROHITO AGREES TO WAR WITH U.S.
Tokyo, Japan · November 5, 1941 Early in September 1941 Japanese officials gave their diplomats until October to reverse the policy of the Western powers—principally the U.S., Great Britain, and the Netherlands—of restricting Japan’s access to vital Southeast Asian resources, among them oil, rubber, tin, timber, and rice. The restrictions had been imposed the previous […]
6
GERMAN SECRET WEAPON RECOVERED
London, England · November 6, 1940 On this date in 1940 a German Heinkel 111 was shot down and sank in the shallows off Southern England. A waterlogged X‑Geraet (“X‑device”) was recovered. The X‑Geraet played a role in the Battle of the Beams, a period early in the war when German bombers were equipped with […]
7
U.S. EXTENDS LEND-LEASE TO SOVIET UNION
Washington, D.C. • November 7, 1941 On March 11, 1941, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Lend-Lease Act, which was a government-back program under which the still-neutral United States would begin supplying Great Britain and members of the British Commonwealth (Australia and New Zealand, for instance), Free French Forces led by Gen. […]
8
ALLIES ESTABLISH PRESENCE IN VICHY NORTH AFRICA
Gibraltar Mediterranean Forward Operating Base • November 8, 1942 Within 4 weeks of the massive German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), with Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht (German armed forces) easily and quickly advancing on the Soviet capital, Moscow, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin on July 19, 1941, and again in September pressed Great Britain and […]
9
GERMANS POUR INTO TUNISIA AFTER TORCH LANDINGS
Tunis, Tunisia • November 9, 1942 On this date in 1942, one day after the largest amphibious invasion force in history to that time landed Allied troops on the French Algerian and Moroccan coasts, German troops, tanks, and aircraft started pouring into neighboring Tunisia from nearby bases in Italy. Operation Torch, under the command of […]
10
ITALIANS, GERMANS HUDDLE AFTER TORCH LANDINGS
Munich, Germany · November 10, 1942 On this date in 1942, just 2 days after Allied landings in Vichy-held Morocco and Algeria (Operation Torch), Italian dictator Benito Mussolini sent his son-in-law, foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano, to Munich in his stead to speak with Adolf Hitler. Mussolini had wanted to meet the Fuehrer in Salzburg, in the […]
11
BRITISH NAVY ENJOYS CAPITAL VICTORY AT TARANTO
Alexandria, Egypt • November 11, 1940 Italian Army operations in North Africa, based in Libya, required a supply line from the Italian mainland. The British Army’s North African Campaign, based in Egypt, suffered from supply difficulties in the Mediterranean Theater due to the proximity of Italy’s Regia Marina naval base at Taranto on the Italian […]
12
JAPANESE WAR CRIMINALS SENTENCED
Tokyo, Japan • November 12, 1948 On this date in 1948 some 28 verdicts for Class A war criminals were read out at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), better known as the Tokyo Trials or the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. Convened in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, on April 29, 1946, to try Japan’s highest-ranking […]
13
FIVE SULLIVAN BROTHERS LOST WITH CRUISER
Off Savo Island, Solomon Islands, South Pacific • November 13, 1942 Commissioned on February 14, 1942, the light antiaircraft cruiser USS Juneau (CL‑52), named after the capital city of Alaska, first saw service in the Caribbean, where it performed blockade patrol in early May off Martinique and Guadeloupe Islands to prevent the escape of Vichy French […]
14
HISTORIC COVENTRY CATHEDRAL SUCCUMBS TO FIRESTORM
Coventry, England • November 14, 1940 On this date in 1940 the first firestorm of the war was inflicted on Coventry, England, a city of almost 240,000 people, during the German Blitz against that country. German “pathfinder” bombers flying along radio-direction beams targeted the medieval cathedral city and industrial-munitions center in the English Midlands. For […]
15
GERMANS PREPARE ARDENNES OFFENSIVE
Cologne, Germany · November 15, 1944 As the Allied offensive ground on west of the Rhine River, dozens of German tank and infantry divisions gathered in assembly areas northwest of the city of Cologne and in the thick forest cover of the Eifel Mountains on this date in 1944. Conceived by Adolf Hitler, the plan, […]
16
U.S. B-17s DESTROY HEAVY WATER PLANT
Telemark, Occupied Norway · November 16, 1943 In the spring of 1940 Norway fell under the Nazi jackboot in a campaign that lasted 62 days and cost 5,000 lives on both sides. Three and a half years later, on this date in 1943, a massive daylight bombing raid by 143 U.S. Army Air Forces B‑17s caused extensive damage […]
17
ITALIANS PUBLISH ANTI-SEMITIC MANIFESTO
Rome, Italy · November 17, 1938 On July 14, 1938, Italy’s Manifesto of Racial Scientists (Manifesto Degli Scienziati Razzisti) laid out a scientific explanation for the politics of biological racism. Signed by 42 eminent Italians, the manifesto, published in Il Giornale d’Italia, a newspaper strongly supporting Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime, declared that Italians belonged to […]
18
RAF INITIATES AIR “BATTLE OF BERLIN”
London, England • November 18, 1943 On this date in 1943 the Royal Air Force Bomber Command under Arthur “Bomber” Harris launched the airborne Battle of Berlin, which lasted through March 1944. Harris believed the aerial assault on Berlin—if it came anywhere close to Hamburg’s terrifying destruction the previous July (Operation Gomorrah)—could be the blow […]
19
SOVIETS BEGIN ENCIRCLING GERMAN SIXTH ARMY AT STALINGRAD
Stalingrad, Soviet Union · November 19, 1942 On this date in 1942 the Soviets kicked off Operation Uranus, Phase I of the Red Army’s encirclement of Gen. Friedrich Paulus’ Sixth Army (the single-largest German troop formation), as well as the German Fourth Panzer Army and the Third and Fourth Romanian armies at Stalingrad (today’s Volgograd). […]
20
LANDING VEHICLE TRACKED (LVT) MAKES COMBAT DEBUT
Tarawa, Gilbert Islands • November 20, 1943 On this date in 1943 the Alligator LVT-1, or Landing Vehicle Tracked‑1, made its first combat debut. Actually, the LVT‑1 saw use in landings on Guadalcanal and the adjacent islands of Tulagi, Tanambogo, and Gavutu over a year earlier, in August 1942, but only as a logistical support […]
21
WAR CRIMES TRIAL BEGINS FOR HITLER’S HENCHMEN
Nuremberg, Germany · November 21, 1945 On this date in 1945 in occupied Germany the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg Trials) of Nazi leaders got down to business in the Bavarian city where Adolf Hitler had staged his 1930s showy Nazi Party rallies. The legal basis for the trials was established by the London Charter, issued […]
22
FOREIGNERS CREATE NANKING SAFETY ZONE IN CHINA
Nanking, China · November 22, 1937 On this date in 1937 in Nanking (today’s Nanjing), China’s capital at the time, 15 foreign businessmen, missionaries, and journalists under the leadership of German national and Nazi Party member John Rabe organized the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. The mission of the committee was to shelter Chinese […]
23
ROMANIA JOINS AXIS MILITARY PACT
Bucharest, Romania · November 23, 1940 In September 1940 Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the German Armed Forces High Command, announced that Wehrmacht troops were being sent to Romania “in case a war with Soviet Russia is forced upon us.” Early the next month German troops entered the country ostensibly to train and rebuild […]
24
ALLIES HOLD STRATEGY MEETINGS IN CAIRO, TEHRAN
Cairo, Egypt · November 24, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Egypt, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek continued their series of talks during their Cairo Conference (November 23–27, 1943). Churchill and his party had hoped to establish a way to deal with Soviet leader […]
25
V-2 ROCKET KILLS/INJURES HUNDREDS
London, England • November 25, 1944 On this date in 1944 a German ballistic missile slammed into a crowded Woolworths store in London, England, killing 160 civilians and seriously injuring 108 more. The 42‑ft./12.8‑meter-tall, 12‑ton V‑2 (Vergeltungswaffe 2, “Retribution [or Vengeance] Weapon 2”) rocket with its 1‑ton payload of high explosives was truly a weapon of mass destruction. […]
26
HUGE FLEET LEAVES JAPAN FOR PEARL HARBOR
Kurile Islands, Northern Japan · November 26, 1941 For several months the airmen of Japan’s First Naval Air Fleet had trained for an attack on the main base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Squadrons of naval planes flew low over the city of Kagoshima on the […]
27
FRENCH SCUTTLE MEDITERRANEAN FLEET
Toulon Harbor, French Mediterranean • November 27, 1942 Between November 10 and 12, 1942, Germany and Italy engaged in a joint operation (German, Unternehmen Anton, or Case Anton) to occupy Marshal Philippe Pétain’s Vichy France, the French Riviera, and the French Mediterranean island of Corsica. These 3 areas comprised the so-called “Free Zone,” which was an […]
28
FREE FRENCH FIGHTER PILOTS TO FLY WITH SOVIETS
Moscow, Soviet Union • November 28, 1942 On this date in 1942, while the Battle of Stalingrad was still being fought, 12 Free French fighter pilots and their ground crews, flying from newly liberated Syria in the Eastern Mediterranean, landed at their Ivanovo training center, 125 miles/201 km northeast of the Soviet capital, Moscow. Earlier in the year, […]
29
U-BOATS TO BRING ENGLAND TO HEEL
Berlin, Germany · November 29, 1939 On this date in 1939, nearly 3 months after the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) overran neighboring Poland, launching World War War II in Europe, German dictator Adolf Hitler issued Fuehrer Directive Number 9, the first of 2 directives on measures his country would have to take to render the […]
30
NAZI ATROCITY IN RUMBULA FOREST
Riga, Occupied Latvia · November 30, 1941 On November 25 and 29, 1941, Einsatzgruppe 3 (Special Task Group 3), one of many SS (short for Schutzstaffel) mobile death squads operating behind German front lines, murdered 5,000 “Reich Jews,” that is, German- and Austrian-born Jews. These men, women, and children had arrived in the Baltic ghetto […]
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