366 Days
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October
News Headlines
1
“PEACE FOR OUR TIME” CHAMBERLAIN ASSURES ANXIOUS WORLD
London, England • October 1, 1938 The storm clouds of war in Europe seemed to have parted on this date in 1938 in London, one day after British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had returned from his diplomatic triumph in Munich. Three visits to Germany had been required to part the clouds: the first to Berchtesgaden […]
2
ROOSEVELT CREATES EAST COAST SECURITY ZONE
Washington, D.C. • October 2, 1939 On January 31, 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt held a closed-door meeting with the Senate Military Affairs Committee at the White House. Reportedly FDR made the comment that “the frontier of the United States is the Rhine,” meaning France’s eastern border with Nazi Germany. When the statement was leaked […]
3
ITALY INVADES ETHIOPIA
Rome, Italy • October 3, 1935 On this date in 1935 Benito Mussolini’s Italy invaded the Northeast African Kingdom of Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) without a declaration of war, and for doing so the League of Nations (forerunner to today’s United Nations) instructed its member states to impose limited economic sanctions on Italy. (Neither the U.S. […]
4
ITALY HINTS AT ATTACK ON GREECE
Brenner Pass, Italy · October 4, 1940 On this date in 1940, at a border crossing between Germany and Italy, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler met for the seventh time. (The two would meet seventeen times.) The Brenner Pass meeting of the two dictators followed on the heels of their June 18, 1940, meeting in Munich, […]
5
NEW ELECTRIC TORPEDO SINKS JAPANESE SHIP
Washington, D.C • October 5, 1943 On this date in 1943 the Japanese news agency Domei acknowledged that the 7,903‑ton Konron Maru was sunk by an American submarine off the west coast of the Japanese home island of Honshū, with the loss of 544 lives. The troopship was sunk by the USS Wahoo using the new, […]
6
ALBERT SPEER URGES WAR ECONOMY ON GERMANY
Posen, Occupied Poland · October 6, 1943 Despite Adolf Hitler’s Germany being engaged in a European and, after December 11, 1941, a global war, the Nazi leader (Fuehrer) had not directed his country’s full industrial might toward total war as had the leaders of his enemy states—the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. Hitler, […]
7
JAPAN PROTESTS U.S. EMBARGO
Washington, D.C. · October 7, 1940 In the 1930s Japan’s statesmen and military leaders in China were acutely aware that their economy and armed forces were dependent on imports from the United States and its colonial friends who had holdings in the Asia Pacific region: the Americans in the Philippines, the British in Malaya (now […]
8
MUSSOLINI REBUKES JAPANESE FOR FOOT-DRAGGING
Rome, Italy • October 8, 1941 Two months before Great Britain joined the United States in declaring war on Japan, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini used this date in 1941 to blast the Japanese for not carrying their weight in the Tripartite (Axis) Pact, a political, economic, and military agreement that Italy, Germany, and Japan had […]
9
PACIFIST BECOMES JAPAN PRIME MINISTER
Tokyo, Japan · October 9, 1945 On this date in 1945 in Tokyo, Baron Kijūrō Shidehara became Prime Minister of Japan at the head of a constitutional government committed to pursuing a peaceful future. Before the war Shidehara had been a prominent Japanese diplomat and a leading proponent of pacifism in Japan. On the same […]
10
AILING HITLER SACKS PERSONAL PHYSICIAN
Wolf’s Lair, Fuehrer HQ, East Prussia · October 10, 1944 Shortly after the July 1944 attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life, an adjutant of the Chief of the General Staff of the Army remarked that the 55-year-old Hitler had the “posture of an old man.” On September 24, 1944, Dr. Theodor Morell, the Fuehrer’s loyal, long-serving physician, […]
11
U.S. SUB WAHOO MISSING ON PATROL
Honolulu, Hawaii · October 11, 1943 On this date in 1943 the USS Wahoo, a Gato-class (early World War II) submarine under Commander Dudley “Mush” Morton, was sunk in the La Pérouse (Soya) Strait, the channel that separates the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō and the Russian Sakhalin Peninsula. Armed with ten torpedo tubes, the Wahoo […]
12
FIRST B-29 BOMBER SETTLES IN ON SAIPAN
Northern Mariana Islands · October 12, 1944 The Pacific Theater was the largest theater of World War II. Because of its watery expanse, Army aviation engineers and Seabees had to build more than 100 airfields on islands that dotted the Pacific, from New Guinea in the south, up through Guam, the Marianas, Iwo Jima, to Okinawa. […]
13
JAPAN INVITES U.S. TO JOIN AXIS
Tokyo, Japan · October 13, 1940 On this date in 1940 Japan’s foreign minister Yōsuke Matsuoka, who had grown up in Oregon and California (1893–1902), invited the United States and other nonaligned nations to join the Tripartite Pact, which Axis powers Germany, Italy, and Japan had initialed in Berlin the previous month (September 27). The Pact […]
14
GERMANY EXITS LEAGUE OF NATIONS
Berlin, Germany • October 14, 1933 On this date in 1933 German Chancellor Adolf Hitler announced that his country was pulling out of the League of Nations, predecessor to today’s United Nations. Germany had been a League member since 1926. Hitler, who had been in office less that nine months, had recently asked the League […]
15
GERMANS CREATE NUCLEUS OF BRANDENBURGER COMMANDOS
Berlin, Germany • October 15, 1939 On this date in 1939 Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, head of the German Abwehr (military intelligence), directed Capt. Theodor von Hippel to raise a commando unit that would become known by year’s end as the Brandenburgers. The name derived from the unit’s training site, Brandenburg on the Havel, roughly 54 miles […]
16
JAPAN’S LEADER KONOE RESIGNS, TŌJŌ REPLACEMENT?
Tokyo, Japan • October 16, 1941 On this date in 1941 three-time Prime Minister of Japan Prince Fumimaro Konoe resigned from office. Konoe (also rendered Konoye) had lost the support of cabinet and Army minister Gen. Hideki Tōjō, who called for a firmer line with the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt over the U.S. […]
17
U-BOAT TORPEDOES U.S. WARSHIP
Washington, D.C. • October 17, 1941 Starting on September 1, 1941, two years into the Battle of the Atlantic, U.S. warships began escorting convoys of Britain-bound merchantmen from the North American coast. Convoys departed from Newfoundland off the coast of Canada and ended in the mid-Atlantic at Iceland, a Danish possession whose defense the U.S. […]
18
LUFTWAFFE WANTS GIANT TRANSPORTER
Berlin, Germany · October 18, 1940 On this date in 1940 German aircraft maker Messerschmitt was given just 14 days to submit a proposal for a large-capacity troop- and cargo-carrying glider. A prototype heavy-lift glider flew February 25, 1941, pulled by several four-engine Junkers Ju 90s. The prototype glider’s maiden flight encouraged Messerschmitt to enlarge the cockpit to […]
19
MOSCOW BOLSTERS DEFENSES AGAINST GERMAN SIEGE
Moscow, Soviet Union · October 19, 1941 On this date in 1941, the day the official “state of siege” was declared in the Soviet capital of Moscow, Red Army forces from the Soviet Far East and Siberia began arriving on the Russian Front. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was convinced that evacuating most of his troops […]
20
MACARTHUR: “I HAVE RETURNED!”
Leyte, Philippines · October 20, 1944 In October 1944 Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita commanded 225,000 Japanese soldiers in the Philippines. On this date in 1944, on a 25‑mile stretch of Leyte Island in the Philippines, an Allied fleet of more than 730 transport and escort vessels, supported by aircraft carriers and 100 warships, put 160,000 U.S. troops […]
21
NAZIS KILL 3,000 SERBIAN CIVILIANS IN REPRISAL
Kragujevac, Serbia, Yugoslavia · October 21, 1941 From Europe, to Africa, and to the Far East, regular Axis troops and specialized killing squads (Einsatzgruppen) murdered millions of unarmed civilians. These mass murders often targeted ethnic or political groups. Sometimes they were committed in retaliation for acts of resistance, whether or not the victims were actually […]
22
YUGOSLAVS RECLAIM BELGRADE FROM NAZIS
Belgrade, Yugoslavia · October 22, 1944 On April 6, 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded from all sides by the Axis powers, primarily by Germany but also by Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria. The invasion lasted little more than ten days, ending with the unconditional surrender of the Yugoslav Army on April 17 and the flight of King […]
23
HITLER-FRANCO MILITARY PACT POSSIBLE?
Hendaye, France · October 23, 1940 In late November 1939, shortly after the start of World War II, the nominally neutral but fascist Spanish government of Generalissimo Francisco Franco ratified a pact with Germany in which Spain promised “more than favorable” neutrality. On this date, October 23, 1940, in Hendaye, a town on the Franco-Spanish […]
24
HITLER, PÉTAIN PLEDGE COOPERATION
Montoire, German-Occupied France · October 24, 1940 After failing the day before to convince Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to bring his country into the war on the Axis side, Adolf Hitler met with 84‑year-old Marshal Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval, head of state (chef de l’État Français) and deputy leader of Vichy France, respectively, on […]
25
BATTLE OF SURIGAO STRAIT CLEAR U.S. VICTORY
Surigao Strait, Philippines • October 25, 1944 In the lightless hours on this date, October 25, 1945, two elderly Japanese battleships—Fuso and Yamashiro—escorted by heavy cruiser Mogami and four destroyers, steamed into what would become one of the most lop-sided battles in naval history. The warships made up half the Imperial Japanese Navy’s southern strike […]
26
LAWYER HANS FRANK TO HEAD OCCUPIED POLAND
Berlin, Germany · October 26, 1939 On this date in 1939 in Poland, 56 days after Germany invaded that country, Dr. Hans Frank, Germany’s chief jurist and one of the most vicious products of Nazism, was appointed Governor-General of the General Government—that half of Nazi-occupied Poland not directly incorporated into the Reich. It included much […]
27
MUSSOLINI’S FASCISTS SPARK RIOTS
Milan, Italy · October 27, 1922 On this date in 1922 in Italy, riots instigated by Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista) erupted in several Italian towns. The Fascists called on the government to resign. The next day four columns of Mussolini’s paramilitary Blackshirts (Camicie nere, or squadristi) began a march from the […]
28
ITALY INVADES GREECE, HITLER STUNNED
Rome, Italy · October 28, 1940 In October 1940 Romanian strongman Gen. Ion Antonescu gave Adolf Hitler permission to occupy his country. Hitler’s Axis partner Benito Mussolini was caught off guard by the news, and the Italian public reacted negatively. For years the Italian dictator and his countrymen had considered Romania to lie within their […]
29
U.S. MINES INDOCHINA WATERS
Honolulu, Hawaii · October 29, 1943 In World War II’s Pacific Theater, sea mines—explosive underwater devices that damaged, sank, or deterred Japanese warships, submarines, and maritime commerce—were weapons that had difficulty gaining the same respect as guns, bombs, and torpedoes enjoyed in the U.S. arsenal. Over time, however, a small number of mining advocates in […]
30
AUSCHWITZ GAS CHAMBERS SHUT DOWN
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Occupied Poland • October 30, 1944 On this date in 1944 in Poland, the last murders by poison gas took place at the Nazis’ largest and arguably most infamous death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau (Polish, Oświęcim), one of eight camps used for mass murder during World War II. (Six were in what is today Poland, one in […]
31
ROOSEVELT NAMES WEDEMEYER TO REPLACE STILWELL
Chungking, China • October 31, 1944 The war against the Japanese in China was desultory at best, and service in that theater was viewed as a graveyard by U.S. military and diplomatic officials. On this date, October 31, 1944, Maj. Gen. Albert Wedemeyer arrived to replace dismissed Gen. Joseph (“Vinegar Joe”) Stilwell as commander of the China […]
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