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
MUSSOLINI 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 Axis Pact dictators followed on the heels of their June 18, 1940, meeting […]
5
HITLER’S STURMABTEILUNG FORMALLY DEBUTS
Munich, Germany • October 5, 1921 On this date in 1921 the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartie, NSDAP or Nazi Party) headed by Adolf Hitler formally established the Sturmabteilung (lit. “Storm Detachment”). The organization is better known by its initials SA and colloquially as “brownshirts” (Braunhemden) for the color of their shirt […]
6
ALBERT SPEER IMPOSES WAR ECONOMY ON GERMANY
Posen, Western 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. […]
7
U.S. IMPOSES EMBARGO, JAPAN PROTESTS
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
JAPAN SECRETLY LAUNCHES WORLD’S LARGEST AIRCRAFT CARRIER
Yokosuka Naval Arsenal, Japan • October 8, 1944 Shinano was the largest aircraft carrier ever built until the early 1960s. Her keel was laid down on May 2, 1940, at the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal south of Tokyo. She was launched 4½ years later on this date, October 8, 1944. The carrier was to have been the third […]
9
PACIFIST INSTALLED AS 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 FIRES 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, noted […]
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 Japanese-held southern half of Sakhalin Island (today’s Sakhalin Oblast in […]
12
FIRST B-29 BOMBER ARRIVES 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 Ocean, from New Guinea in the south, up through Guam, the Marianas, Iwo Jima, to Okinawa. […]
13
JAPAN INVITES U.S. TO JOIN AXIS PACT
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 Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan had initialed in Berlin the previous month […]
14
SCAPA FLOW SINKING DEALS ROYAL NAVY SEVERE BLOW
Scapa Flow, Northern Coast of Scotland, Orkney Islands • October 14, 1939 Illuminated only by the northern lights (aurora borealis) early on this date in 1939, barely six weeks into World War II in Europe, a German Type VIIB diesel-electric submarine under the command of Kapitaenleutnant (Captain Lieutenant) Guenther Prien infiltrated the defenses of Scapa Flow, the […]
15
92nd INFANTRY (BUFFALO) DIVISION ACTIVATED
Fort McClellan, Alabama • October 15, 1942 On this date in 1942 the 92nd Infantry Division was reactivated at Fort McClellan, Alabama. The famed African American infantry division, nicknamed “Buffalo Soldiers Division,” had served in World War I in France from July 1918 until it returned to the United States to be deactivated in February […]
16
SOVIET ARMY SETS STAGE FOR 1945 ASSAULT ON BERLIN
East Prussia, Germany • October 16, 1944 In the summer of 1944 Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany was knocked off balance by one-two punches delivered almost simultaneously by the Western Allies’ invasion of Northwestern France, codenamed Operation Overlord (June–August 1944), and the Soviet Union’s offensive, Operation Bagration (June–August 1944), which began with the reconquest of Belorussia […]
17
NAZI-BACKED ARROW CROSS SEIZE POWER IN HUNGARY
Budapest, Occupied Hungary • October 17, 1944 On this date in 1944 Adm. Miklós (Nicholas) Horthy, regent of the Kingdom of Hungary since 1920, left his native country as a prisoner of Nazi Germany. Horthy had angered Adolf Hitler after the latter had received confidential reports that the 76‑year-old Hungarian head of state was secretly […]
18
LUFTWAFFE REQUIRES NEW GIANT TRANSPORTER
Berlin, Germany • October 18, 1940 On this date in 1940 German aircraft maker Messerschmitt was given just 14 days to submit to the Luftwaffe 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 […]
19
SOVIET REINFORCEMENTS BOLSTER MOSCOW’S DEFENSES
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 Island, the Philippines • October 20, 1944 On the same day (Japanese time) the forces of Imperial Japan struck Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in a surprise assault on U.S. military installations, they struck the American territory of the Philippines. On May 6, 1942, Japan swept the last American garrison from the archipelago by capturing Corregidor Island, […]
21
SKORZENY TO HEAD ARDENNES SABOTAGE UNIT
Wolf’s Lair HQ, East Prussia, Germany • October 21, 1944 On this date in 1944 Adolf Hitler summoned SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer (Lt. Gen.) Otto Skorzeny to Fuehrer headquarters deep in the East Prussian wilderniss near Rastenberg (present-day Kętrzyn, Poland). The scar-faced 6-ft, 4-in Skorzeny had made a name for himself participating in a derring-do operation that succeeded in rescuing […]
22
YUGOSLAVS RECLAIM BELGRADE FROM NAZIS
Belgrade, Yugoslavia • October 22, 1944 By late March 1941 Yugoslavia, a multiethnic nation of 15.5 million people in Central and Southeast Europe, was surrounded on all sides by Axis-aligned nations with the exception of Greece to its south. Romania and Hungary had joined Yugoslavia’s neighbor to the west, Italy, in the Tripartite Pact in late […]
23
SECOND BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN: ROMMEL FAILS TO DELIVER VICTORY
El Alamein, Northwestern Egypt • October 23, 1942 In 1942 El Alamein was a mean little railway station roughly 275 miles (440 km) east of the Libyan-Egyptian border. The First Battle of El Alamein was fought there between July 1 and 27, 1942, by a mixed German-Italian army under newly minted Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in command of Panzer […]
24
HITLER, PÉTAIN MEET, PLEDGE COOPERATION
Montoire, 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 Maréchal (Marshal) Philippe Pétain, respected French military leader (“Victor of Verdun”) and now head of state (chef de l’État Français), and […]
25
JAPANESE LAUNCH BURMA-THAILAND RAILWAY, AKA DEATH RAILWAY
Kaeng Khoi Tha, Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand • October 25, 1943 The Burma-Thailand Railway was inaugurated on this date in 1943 near the Konkoita forced labor camp about 11 miles (18 km) south of the Burmese border. The opening of the new rail line was declared a holiday by Japanese authorities. The festivities celebrated the meeting of the northern […]
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 of […]
27
MUSSOLINI’S FASCISTS INTIMIDATE GOVERNMENT, KING
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 national government to resign. The next day four columns of Mussolini’s paramilitary insurgents, Blackshirts (Camicie nere) or squadristi as they were […]
28
ITALIAN ATTACK ON GREECE STUNS HITLER
Rome, Italy • October 28, 1940 In early October 1940 Romanian strongman Gen. Ion Antonescu gave Adolf Hitler permission for the German Wehrmacht (armed forces) 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 […]
29
U.S. SEA MINING TARGETS JAPANESE SHIPS
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
NAZI AMERICANS PARADE IN FORCE IN NEW YORK CITY
New York City, New York • October 30, 1939 On this date in the Manhattan borough of New York City hundreds of American Nazis paraded in front of the headquarters of the German American Bund (Amerikadeutscher Bund; bund means “alliance” in English). Among German speakers, Bund members, and fascist supporters the organization was simply “Bund.” […]
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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