366 Days
Note: To open a news article, you may have to place the tip of your cursor at the top of or slightly above the news headline until the underline appears, then click your mouse.
November
News Headlines
1
RUDOLF HOESS HEADS UP AUSCHWITZ CONCENTRATION CAMP
Auschwitz (Oświęcim), German-Occupied Poland • November 1, 1940 On this date in 1940 SS Hauptsturmfuehrer (Captain) Rudolf Hoess (also Höß or Hoeß; pronounced “hearse”) (1901–1947) reported for duty as commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp in the newly annexed province of Upper Silesia in former Poland. During Hoess’s tenure at Auschwitz, the 20,000‑acre/8,094‑hectare complex of 3 separate camps […]
2
FIRST U.S. ARMY STUMBLES AT BATTLE OF SCHMIDT
Schmidt, Huertgen Forest, Germany • November 2, 1944 On September 19, 1944, elements of Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges’ First U.S. Army entered the 10‑mile/16‑km-wide, 20‑mile/32‑km-long Huertgen Forest (German, Hürtgenwald) southeast of the ancient city Aachen, the first major and westernmost city in Nazi Germany to have fallen to the Anglo-American-Canadian armies. Before the outbreak of World […]
3
JAPANESE BALLOON BOMBS STRIKE 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 BLUEPRINT 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 SANCTIONS WAR WITH U.S.
Tokyo, Japan • November 5, 1941 On September 6, 1941, Japanese officials, in a decision endorsed by Shōwa Emperor Hirohito, gave their diplomats until mid-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, bauxite, timber, […]
6
BRITISH RETRIEVE GERMAN SECRET WEAPON FROM WRECK
London, England • November 6, 1940 On this date in 1940 a 2-engine German Heinkel He 111 bomber 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 […]
7
ROOSEVELT TOLD WEST COAST JAPANESE POSE NO SECURITY RISK
Washington, D.C. • November 7, 1941 Relations between the U.S. and Japan grew chilly in mid-1941 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt froze Japanese assets in the U.S. and embargoed oil and gasoline exports to Japan in retaliation for that country’s occupation of Indochinese airfields in what is today Vietnam. The year before Roosevelt had banned […]
8
GERMANS SINK FIRST U.S. SHIP IN WORLD WAR II
Melbourne, Australia • November 8, 1940 The war between the Allies and the German Kriegsmarine (Navy) is well known. Indeed, the Battle of the Atlantic (1939–1945) was the longest-fought battle of World War II. It primarily involved Allied and neutral merchantmen, typically under armed escort, carrying food, oil products, iron ore, steel, weapons, and other wartime […]
9
U.N. RELIEF AND REHABILITATION ADMINISTRATION CREATED
Washington, D.C. • November 9, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Washington, D.C., U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added his signature to an agreement by representatives of 44 nations to establish the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. UNRRA (pronounced un-ruh) was the first U.N. organization to be created, established 1½ years before the United Nations […]
10
GERMANS, ITALIANS HUDDLE AFTER ALLIED TORCH LANDINGS
Munich, Germany • November 10, 1942 On this date in 1942, just 2 days after Allied landings in Vichy French-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 […]
11
JAPAN’S PATH TO WAR WITH U.S. PASSES THROUGH ITALY’S TARANTO
Tokyo, Japan • November 11, 1940 Seventh child to a Japanese schoolmaster and his second wife and named “Isoroku” to memorialize his father’s age (56), the future commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Combined Fleet (Rengō Kantai) for much of World War II would seem to have been born under what Westerners call “a lucky star.” […]
12
RAF ENDS GERMAN BATTLESHIP TIRPITZ’S CAREER
Tromsø Fjord, Occupied Norway • November 12, 1944 On this date in Norway’s Tromsø Fjord the British Royal Air Force dropped 3 “Tallboy” 13,000‑lb/5,897‑kg bombs to capsize the German battleship Tirpitz, the Kriegsmarine’s ill-starred wannabe surface raider. Ever since September 22, 1943, when a pair of Royal Navy midget submarines engineered a hair-raising daylight attack on this […]
13
RED BALL EXPRESS TO CEASE CONVOY OPERATIONS
Utah Beach, Liberated France • November 13, 1944 On this date in 1944 Utah Beach ceased operations as an offloading site for men and supplies intended for Allied armies chasing eastward-fleeing Germans across France. Utah Beach was 1 of 5 Normandy invasion beaches where Allied men at arms and military equipment came ashore to liberate German-occupied […]
14
NAZIS BACK VLASOV’S RUSSIAN LIBERATION ARMY AND COMMITTEE
Prague, Occupied Czechoslovakia • November 14, 1944 On this date in German-occupied Czechoslovakia Lt. Gen. Andrei (Andrey) Andreievich Vlasov read aloud the Prague Manifesto to members of the newly created Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia. Among its 14 principles, the Prague Manifesto guaranteed freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly, as well […]
15
GERMANS PREPARE SURPRISE OFFENSIVE IN ARDENNES FOREST
Cologne, Germany • November 15, 1944 As the Allied offensive wore on west of the Rhine River, dozens of German tank and infantry divisions gathered on this date in 1944 in assembly areas northwest of the city of Cologne and in the thick forest cover of the Eiffel mountains. Conceived by Adolf Hitler, the multi-stage […]
16
U.S. ARMY BOGS DOWN IN HUERTGEN FOREST
Huertgen, Germany • November 16, 1944 On September 19, 1944, elements of Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges’ First U.S. Army entered the 10‑mile/16‑kilometer-wide, 20‑mile/16‑kilometer-long Huertgen Forest (Hürtgenwald) southeast of Aachen. The ancient capital of Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne and a northern node on Germany’s “dragons’ teeth” defensive Westwall (known to the Allies as the 390‑mile/628‑kilometer-long Siegfried […]
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 […]
Select another month for more news headlines.
History buffs, there is good news! The Daily Chronicles of World War II is now available as an ebook for $4.99 on Amazon.com. Containing a year’s worth of dated entries from this website, the ebook brings the story of this tumultuous era to life in a compelling, authoritative, and succinct manner. Featuring inventive navigation aids, the ebook enables readers to instantly move forward or backward by month and date to different dated entries. Simple and elegant! Click 
