1940 - Political Events
Political Events
Britain calls up 2 million men aged 19 to 27 January 1, but the fall of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, and Romania to the Germans leaves Britain dependent on U.S. aid to resist Adolf Hitler's attempt at world domination.
Isolationist U.S. Senator William E. Borah (R. Idaho) dies at Washington, D.C., January 19 at age 74, but other legislators keep up the political pressure against any U.S. involvement in the European war (see 1939). Former Marine Corps commander Smedley Darlington Butler dies of a stomach ailment at Philadelphia June 21 at age 58, having agitated against U.S. intervention. Polls show that 85 percent of Americans want to keep out of the conflict (see America First, 1941).
France's Premier Daladier resigns March 20, finance minister Paul Reynaud, 51, forms a new cabinet and tries to rally French defenses with help from secret agents sent by Britain's Special Operations Executive, established last year by Winston Churchill. Headed by Col. Maurice Buckmaster, the unit's F section (F for France) has recruited bankers, chefs, playwrights, taxicab drivers, and other Britons of French extraction, interviewing prospects in a London hotel room, telling them that they had a 50-50 chance of survival, giving those who agreed to serve despite the odds a commando course in the Scottish Highlands to train them in the use of explosives and firearms, giving them a survival course in Hampshire, and following that with a parachute course outside Manchester. Assisting Buckmaster is Bucharest-born Sorbonne graduate Vera (Maria) Atkins (originally Rosenberg), 33, who came to London with her parents in 1933 and has adopted her mother's maiden name.
German troops seize Oslo March 7 and occupy Denmark and Norway in April, a few weeks after peace is concluded between Finland and the USSR. The 31,000-ton German battleships D.K.M. Scharnhorst and D.K.M. Gneisenau have covered the Norwegian landing, and they engage the Royal Navy battlecruiser H.M.S. Renown April 9. Journalist and League of Nations president Carl Joachim Hambro, 55, acts on his own initiative April 9 to put the royal family, government officials, and all members of the Storting (parliament) aboard a special train out of Oslo early in the morning and moves them to Hamar just hours after the Norwegian foreign minister has told the German ambassador that Norway would fight the invasion. Col. Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, 55, commands the German operation, which has been proposed by Admiral Erich Raeder, now 63, but artillery and torpedo fire from the Norwegian fortress of Oscarsborg sink the German cruiser Blücher in the narrows of the Oslo Fjord; about 1,000 crewmen, troops, and Nazi staff are killed, many of them in flames from a burning oil leak. Danes stage street demonstrations and a general strike to oppose the Germans with passive resistance; the Germans set up a puppet government at Oslo under Norwegian Nazi Vidkun Quisling, 52, who has met with Hitler through ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, but native resistance elements work to frustrate the Quisling regime, which is backed by some 300,000 German troops.
A Croatian government formed in Yugoslavia April 10 supports a fascist Independent State of Croatia headed by dictator Ante Pavelic, but the Ustashe (as the fascist collaborators are called) will encounter opposition from hundreds of thousands of guerrilla resistance fighters (Partisans).
Dublin-born Royal Navy captain Rupert P. (Philip) Lonsdale, 34, takes his submarine Seal into the Kattegat strait between Denmark and Sweden May 4, places 50 mines in German shipping lanes, lies submerged, but sinks to a depth of 100 feet after a German mine explodes, flooding much of his ship, and becomes mired in the mud. Lonsdale manages to free the craft 23 hours later as his oxygen supplies and battery power dwindle, German aircraft bomb the Seal and riddle her with machine-gun fire, her steering gear is inoperative, and Lonsdale surrenders May 5 (his 35th birthday), saving the lives of his 59 crewmen. The only British captain to surrender a warship on the high seas during the war, Lonsdale will be tried in a court martial at Portsmouth in April 1946 and acquitted with honor.
France mobilizes 60 divisions behind the Maginot Line, but the Blitzkrieg (lightning war) that begins May 10 ends the "phony war" (or Sitzkrieg) and rains destruction on the Lowlands from the air as German mechanized divisions under the command of generals Heinz (Wilhelm) Guderian, 51, and Erwin (Johannes Eugin) Rommel, 48, sweep without warning into Belgium and Holland, following a plan proposed originally by Berlin-born general (Fritz) Erich von Manstein, 52, based on his experience last year in Poland and on ideas by British journalist-military writer Basil Henry Lidell Hart, 45. Gen. Guderian is a tank expert who led panzer forces into Poland last year and has helped promote Manstein's plan. British forces and mechanized French units rush to Belgium's aid, but the Germans have come through the heavily wooded, semi-mountainous, and supposedly impassable Ardennes region north of the Maginot Line, cross the Meuse at Sedan May 12, and demand the surrender of Rotterdam; the positive response does not arrive until Lüftwaffe pilots have started on their bombing run, and the downtown part of the city is nearly obliterated May 14 by raids that kill 30,000 in 2 hours. Wilhelmina and her court escape to London; the Dutch armies surrender May 14.
France and her allies have more trained men, more guns, more and better tanks, and more bombers and fighter planes than Germany, but the German offensive through the Ardennes takes French Army commander Gen. Maurice (-Gustave) Gamelin, 67, by surprise; he is dismissed May 19, and the Germans race into Belgium and northern France toward the Channel ports, bypassing the Maginot Line that was to slow their advance and cutting off British and Belgian forces from Gen. Maxime Weygand, now 72, who has taken command of the collapsing French Army.
Winston Churchill succeeds the ailing Neville Chamberlain as Britain's prime minister after Chamberlain's resignation May 7 following bitter attacks in the House of Commons. "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat," Churchill tells the Commons May 13, but he makes clear the British objective: "You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, by land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us . . . You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be: for without victory, there is no survival." Chamberlain had hoped to be succeeded by his foreign minister Edward F. L. Wood, 1st earl of Halifax, who agreed with Chamberlain's policy of appeasement in 1938, accompanied Chamberlain on a visit to Benito Mussolini at Rome in January of last year, was favored by George VI, and advises Churchill to seek an accommodation with Hitler through Mussolini. British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley is taken into custody in May and locked up in Brixton Prison after saying, "I know I can save this country and that no one else can" (see religion, 1936). The former Lady Cynthia Curzon has long since divorced Mosley, and when he married Diana Mitford at Berlin 4 years ago his only guests were Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. Prime Minister Churchill rejects Halifax's advice to seek peace but keeps him as foreign minister until December, when the earl is named ambassador to Washington.
Women's Auxiliary Air Force crews of 16 replace 10-man crews to handle Britain's heavy barrage balloons. Other WAAF members train as photographers, radio operators, and bomb plotters.
Amiens and Arras fall to the Germans May 21 as tanks commanded by Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, 64, easily flank the Maginot Line that was built at a cost of 7 billion francs. Boulogne surrenders to German panzer divisions May 25, Calais May 27; Belgium capitulates May 28, but Hitler fails to send in ground troops that could have wiped out more than 340,000 British and French forces trapped on the beach at Dunkirk, accepting Hermann Goering's self-serving assurance that the Lüftwaffe can dispose of those forces; evacuation from Dunkirk begins May 29 under the supervision of Gen. Harold (Rupert Leofric George) Alexander, 48.
"We shall not flag or fail," Prime Minister Churchill tells the Commons June 4: "We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." But the prospects for victory against the Axis grow dimmer day by day. The prime minister sends his businessman friend William S. Stephenson to New York with a mission to oversee espionage activities in the Western Hemisphere and use his political connections to bring America into the war on Britain's side. Now 44, Stephenson will hire young Canadian women to help him operate British Security Co-Ordination offices in Rockefeller Center as he masterminds assassinations of Nazi spies, deciphering of German ciphers, and disruption of German nuclear experiments (see OSS, 1942).
The evacuation of Dunkirk is completed by June 4 after 5 days of frenzied efforts to take some 200,000 British troops and 140,000 French from the beaches before they can be captured by the advancing Germans. Ships and small boats of all sorts have ferried the men across the Channel to England, but 30,000 men have been killed or taken prisoner. Gen. Alexander commands the I Corps that represents the rear guard and is the last man to leave; the Channel has been miraculously calm for 9 days but is hit by a storm that would have made the evacuation far less successful had the bad weather come earlier.
The German battleships D.K.W. Scharnhorst and D.K.W. Gneissenhau sink the 23,000-ton Royal Navy aircraft carrier H.M.S. Glorious and her two escorting destroyers in the North Atlantic June 8. The 23-year-old Glorious had been rushing back from Malta; 1,530 men from the three vessels are lost, 39 survive (see 1941).
Italy declares war on France and Britain June 10. "The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of her neighbor," says President Roosevelt.
German troops enter Paris June 14; President Roosevelt rejects a French appeal for U.S. aid June 15 as French forces withdraw from the Maginot Line and the fortress at Verdun falls to enemy forces. Premier Reynaud resigns June 16; Marshal Pétain, now 83, succeeds as head of state and asks for an armistice a day later. A 550,000-man German army has defeated a disorganized French army of 5.5 million men whose commanders have relied on the illusory protection of the Maginot Line. Among the French officers captured is infantry division commander Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, 51, who is imprisoned but will escape to North Africa in October 1943.
Evacuation of British troops and refugees from France continues. The 16,000-ton Cunard liner Lancastria has been converted into a troopship and is five miles off St. Nazaire June 17 when she is hit by bombs from German aircraft. She sinks slowly, and about 2,500 of those on board survive, but at least 3,300 perish (by some estimates the death toll is more than twice that number, and the news of her loss is not reported in Britain until July 26).
France signs an armistice with Hitler June 22 at Compiègne in the same rail car used for the armistice signed in 1918; France signs an armistice with Mussolini June 24 as the French capital moves to the spa city of Vichy, where resort hotels become government buildings with offices for bureaucrats who mostly do the Germans' bidding.
Soviet troops in Finland under the command of Marshal Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko, 44, sustain horrific losses at the hands of Finnish troops under the command of Col. H. J. Siilasvuo in the 27-day Battle of Suomossalmi that ends January 6 (see 1939). The Finns have trapped the Soviet 163rd Division and ambushed the 44th Division marching to relieve it, about 27,500 of the Soviet troops are killed or freeze to death, 1,600 are taken prisoner; the Finns capture 80 tanks, 70 guns, and 400 trucks, while losing 900 killed, 1,770 wounded. But the Russians pierce Finland's Mannerheim Line February 16 and the Finns sign a peace treaty March 13, giving up 16,173 square miles of territory to Moscow.
The Norwegian government moves to London June 7; C. J. Hambro continues on to Washington, where he will represent Norway through the war.
Soviet troops move into the Baltic republics beginning June 17 following an ultimatum that charged the three countries with hostile activities (see 1939). Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are incorporated into the USSR with German concurrence July 21.
Soviet troops invade Romania June 27 after Carol II refuses demands that he cede Bessarabia and Bukovina to the USSR Berlin rejects Carol's appeals for aid. Soviet authorities in Romania arrest Ion Antonescu in July for opposing territorial concessions but release him. Now 50, he is appointed premier September 5 and forces the abdication of Carol II, who flees the country September 6 after a 10-year reign. Carol's son Michael, now 19, will reign until the end of 1947. Soviet troops have arrived at the Bessarabian capital of Kishinev June 28 and set up a Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic August 2.
Libya's (Cyrenaica's) Italian governor Count Italo Balbo dies June 28 at age 44 when his plane is shot down over Tobruk.
A Royal Navy force under the command of Admiral Sir James Somerville, 58, arrives at Mers-el-Kebir near Oran, Algeria, July 3. Sent by Prime Minister Churchill to keep the ships from falling into German hands, Somerville's Operation Catapult force includes the carrier H.M.S. Ark Royal, the battle cruiser H.M.S. Hood, the battleships Valiant and Resolution, and 11 destroyers; he delivers an ultimatum to his French counterpart Admial Marcel-Bruno Gensoul, but when Gensoul refuses to surrender he balks at firing on the French and steps down. Royal Navy commander Andrew B. (Browne) Cunningham, 57, succeeds to command and orders an attack; his guns inflict heavy damage on the battleship Provence, sink the battleship Bretagne, and damage the battlecruiser Dunquerque; the French lose 1,147 men (many from the destroyer Mogador, which loses her stern), a French battleship escapes to a British port, as do three destroyers, six submarines, and dozens of smaller vessels. Adolf Hitler calls the British action "murderous," France's Vichy government breaks off relations with Britain 2 days later, but Churchill's determination to survive impresses President Roosevelt and other U.S. leaders. Gen. Charles (André Joseph Marie) de Gaulle, 49, has escaped to Britain and forms a Free French government in exile.
Italian troops cross from Ethiopia into British Somaliland August 4, challenging the Camel Corps with tanks, artillery, machine guns, and aircraft. The Italians prevail August 19. They advance toward Egypt from Libya (Cyrenaica) September 12, but British troops counterattack in the Western Desert beginning December 9 as the British Eighth Army opens a North African offensive with an attack on Sidi Barrani, which has been in Italian hands since mid-September. Gen. Archibald (Percival) Wavell, 57, Gen. Richard Nugent O'Connor, and Gen. Henry Maitland "Jumbo" Wilson, 59, command British forces; the Italians fall back across the Libyan border December 15, and Mussolini's forces in Italian Somaliland are driven out of El Wak a day later, but totalitarian forces threaten to extend their power across Europe and Asia from the Atlantic to the Pacific as Germany and Italy strengthen their control and the Japanese continue to expand across China, menacing Indochina.
A U-boat torpedoes the British passenger ship Arandora Star 75 miles west of Ireland in July as she carries German and Italian prisoners of war and interned aliens from Liverpool to Newfoundland; 800 people are lost, but Nova Scotia-born Canadian naval officer Harry DeWolf, 37, orchestrates the rescue of about 860 survivors. Subsequent feats will win DeWolf promotion to commander, then admiral, as he becomes Canada's most highly decorated naval officer of the war.
The Royal Air Force begins night bombing of German military targets July 9 as Hitler's Lüftwaffe intensifies air attacks on Britain and tries to shut down shipping in the English Channel. "We shall defend every village, every town, and every city," says Prime Minister Churchill in a radio broadcast July 14. "The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily devour an entire hostile army, and we would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved." Ninety German Heinkel F-111 bombers are shot down over Britain between July 15 and 21. Hitler gives orders August 1 that the Lüftwaffe is to attack British military targets in force, 180 German planes are shot down August 15 as the Battle of Britain nears its peak, Messerschmidt ME 109s escort the twin-engine bombers across the Channel but carry enough fuel to give them only 20 minutes' flying time over England, and if a German bomber loses an engine it must dump its payload and try to return to base.
Berlin proclaims a naval blockade of Britain August 17.
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few," says Churchill August 20 in a speech to the Commons praising the Royal Air Force (RAF) whose Fighter Command, headed by Hugh (Caswall Tremenheere) Dowding, 58, has lost most of its Spitfire pilots in its valiant efforts to stymie the Lüftwaffe. An all-night German air raid on London 3 days later begins the Blitz.
Weather conditions halt Lüftwaffe attacks on Britain from August 19 to 24, but a German bomber then accidentally jettisons its bombs over London, killing nine civilians. Hitler reprimands the crew, Prime Minister Churchill retaliates by ordering an attack on Berlin, 80 British bombers raid factories on the outskirts of the German capital, and although they inflict minimal damage they kill some civilians and the bombing embarrasses Air Marshal Hermann Goering, who has boasted that no enemy planes would ever reach the Fatherland. The RAF conducts further raids September 3 and 4.
Washington hands over 50 U.S. destroyers to London September 3 in exchange for rights to build air and naval bases on British territory in Newfoundland and in the Caribbean, but U-boats sink 160,000 tons of British shipping in September. The fall of France has given Germany new bases from which to launch U-boats, and Hitler's U-boat commander Karl Doenitz, 49, has been building up his submarine fleet (it had only 25 boats at the start of the war but they will soon number in the hundreds as he determines to defeat the British by cutting off their supply lines and starving them). Prime Minister Churchill has been appealing to President Roosevelt for help, FDR has delayed out of fear that isolationist forces would use the destroyer deal to defeat his reelection bid, but Churchill's show of determination to resist Hitler has persuaded Congress to approve the arrangement, and spymaster William S. Stephenson has had a hand in negotiating the deal.
The Lüftwaffe hits London's docks September 7, two attacks kill some 2,000 Londoners, and RAF Spitfires attack Stuka dive bombers (Sturzkampflugzeng), whose wind-whistles terrify the populace but whose slow speed make them vulnerable to fighter attack. German bombs damage the north side of Buckingham Palace September 10, and while George VI has sent his daughters to safety in the country, he and his wife remain in the palace except for visits to bombed out Londoners, thus winning the respect and affection of all Britons. Hitler launches his biggest air attack on Britain September 15 as he prepares an invasion fleet, but his twin-engined Heinkel HE 111s, Dornier Do 17s, and Ju 88s carry only modest-sized bomb loads and are lightly armored by British or U.S. standards; the RAF shoots down 67 German planes, and the British set huge fires in the Channel to discourage any invasion attempt. While Londoners rush to the Underground when air-raid sirens blow, hundreds die each night from aerial bombs. Britain's relatively ineffectual air attacks on German targets have so enraged Hitler that he has ordered the bombing of civilians rather than eliminating airfields and factories. His engineers have been unable to convert barges for use as effective landing craft for tanks, however, so he decides September 17 to cancel his invasion plans, and he vows September 25 to burn British cities to the ground. By the end of September his large-scale night raids have hit London 71 times while targeting also Liverpool, Birmingham, Plymouth, Bristol, Glasgow, Southampton, Hull, Portsmouth, Manchester, Belfast, Sheffield, Newcastle, Nottingham, and Cardiff; the Battle of Britain escalates, continuing until October 30, by which time a mere 700 RAF pilots have fought off attacks from some 2,800 Lüftwaffe pilots. The Hurricane fighter introduced 3 years ago has eight .303 caliber machine guns in its wings, and the RAF will use it to shoot down more than 1,500 Lüftwaffe planes before year's end—nearly as many as all of its other fighter planes combined, although the Spitfire introduced 2 years ago gives a good account of itself. Both the Hurricane and Spitfire are powered by Rolls-Royce Merlin engines (see 1941).
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Stuka dive bombers of the German Luftwaffe rained destruction on European cities as World War II began.The Children's Overseas Reception Board established June 7 as an interdepartmental British government committee arranges to have children evacuated for the duration to Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (see 1939). In addition to British children it includes some from the European war zone now living in Britain plus orphans from the Continent, but 77 out of 90 children are lost the night of September 17 when a torpedo from a German U-boat sinks the S.S. City of Benares 600 miles from land in the North Atlantic en route from Liverpool to Montreal (the destroyer H.M.S. Hurricane picks up survivors but the total death toll is 250). U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull calls the sinking "a most dastardly act," the British government-sponsored Children's Overseas Resettlement Scheme has sent 1,530 children to Canada (plus 577 to Australia, 353 to South Africa, and 202 to New Zealand), the American Committee in London has sent 838 to the United States, but the City of Benares tragedy ends the Resettlement Scheme and CORB gives preference to ships bound for South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand via routes that can be better protected.
London sends emissaries to the United States in September with an order to commission construction of 60 small freighters; U.S. shipyards are all working full blast on warships for the navy, but industrialist Henry J. Kaiser persuades President Roosevelt that he can mass-produce the freighters quickly using mass-production methods pioneered by Henry Ford. Roosevelt overrides objections by the Maritime Commission and East Coast shipbuilders that ships welded together rather than riveted pose hazards in heavy seas, but it can take as long as 4 years to complete a ship using conventional methods, and losses to U-boats on the North Atlantic have heightened demand for bottoms that can deliver food, military equipment, and other goods to the beleaguered British. Kaiser works to build massive new shipbuilding facilities; late in the year he acquires 80 acres of swampland south of San Francisco, uses earthmoving equipment to turn it into a shipyard, hires hundreds of welders, machinists, pipefitters, electricians, and other workers (see transportaton [Liberty ships], 1941).
The Axis created September 27 by the Pact of Berlin joins Germany, Italy, and Japan in a 10-year military and economic alliance. Japanese foreign minister Yosuke Matsuoka, now 60, has been foreign minister since July and negotiates the tripartite agreement with Germany and Italy. Hitler and Mussolini meet a week later in the Brenner Pass, and German forces seize Romania's Ploesti oil fields October 7.
The P-51 Mustang fighter plane designed by North American Aviation president James H. "Dutch" Kindelberger and J. (John) Leland Atwood, 35, has its maiden flight October 26 (see 1934). Kindelberger visited Heinkel and Messerschmidt factories in Germany 2 years ago and learned how to set up an efficient production line. A British purchasing commission headed by Sir Henry Self has come to New York early in the year to see if any U.S. aircraft could be useful to the RAF, and although the Bell P-39 Airacobra and Curtiss P-40 Warhawk do not meet the production standards of the latest British and German fighters, Self has ordered dozens of them. He has also given North American Aviation an order May 23 for 320 NA-73 Harvard trainers, and since Curtiss Aircraft is behind on orders he has asked Kindelberger to manufacture the Curtiss Hawk (P-40D) under license. Having worked with Atwood since last year on a fighter-plane project, Kindelberger has countered that his company could build a real fighter in the same time that it would take to put the P-40D in production. Designed and produced in 127 days, the P-51 (initially the NX19998) is powered by a water-cooled Allison V-1710 engine and is 25 miles-per-hour faster than the Spitfire that is helping to win the Battle of Britain; the prototype makes a forced landing November 20 when a test pilot forgets to change fuel tanks, runs out of gas, and winds up on its back in a farmer's field, but the British Purchasing Commission sends a letter to North American Aviation December 9 stating that NA-73 aircraft have been given the official designation Mustang (see 1941).
The MiG-1 fighter plane introduced by Moscow's Aircraft Factory No. 1 is named for Soviet mathematician and aircraft designer Mikhail I. Gurevich, 48. Soviet pilots will fly a refined MiG-3 beginning next year.
Mussolini demands strategic points in Greece October 28. The Greeks respond with one word—Ochi! (No!)—and mount a stubborn armed resistance that will stymie the Italians for a year. Britain responds to a Greek appeal for aid by postponing a Middle East offensive and sending troops in early November to occupy Suda Bay, Crete.
Bombs from a German Focke Wulf set fire to the 42,348-ton Canadian Pacific steamship Empress of Britain northwest of the Irish coast October 26. Converted to use as a troopship and bound for Glasgow, she has been carrying troops from South Africa. The flames spread out of control, her master gives the order to abandon ship, and although the Polish destroyer Burza and British destroyer H.M.S. Echo rescue most of the troops, and two naval tugs take her in tow, a U-boat finds the crippled liner October 28 and fires a torpedo that sends her to the bottom with the loss of 45 lives, the largest passenger ship to be lost in the war.
German U-boats have sunk 1.5 million tons of Allied merchant ships by December 1, sending them to the bottom at a rate much too fast for British shipyards to replace them.
The German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer sinks the 14,164-ton British cruiser H.M.S. Jervis Bay in the North Atlantic November 4, but the 18-year-old converted Aberdeen & Commonwealth passenger liner has put up enough of a fight with her seven antique six-inch guns to enable 32 ships in her 37-ship convoy from Halifax, N.S., to escape, and although all of her shots fall short, and although her captain and nearly all her officers are killed in the 24-minute battle, 65 members of her 255-man crew are rescued by the Swedish freighter Stureholm, that has turned back in the night to search for survivors. A Royal Navy attack directed by Commander Andrew B. Cunningham on Taranto a week later cripples the Italian fleet: 21 fabric-covered Swordfish biplanes from the Royal Navy carrier H.M.S. Illustrious carry torpedoes and hit the Conti di Cavour, Littorio, and Duilio, and their loss ends Mussolini's dream of making the eastern Mediterranean "Mare Nostrum" (see Cape Matapan, 1941).
Former Spanish Republic president Manuel Azaña y Díaz dies in exile at Montauban, France, November 4 at age 60; former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain at Heckfield, near Reading, November 9 at age 71; Northern Ireland's prime minister James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon, at Glencraig in County Down November 24 at age 69, having held office since 1921.
The Lüftwaffe pulverizes Coventry in England's industrial Midlands November 10. November air raids kill more than 4,550 Britons, but the anticipated German invasion of Britain does not materialize. German incendiary bombs set London ablaze on the night of December 29, firefighters run out of water, and much of the central city is destroyed. Londoners survive air raids in underground shelters, force their way into Underground (subway) stations, oblige authorities to keep the stations open all night, and carry on (see 1941).
Hungary joins the Axis November 20, Romania November 23. Rioting spreads across Romania beginning November 27 after Ion Antonescu's Iron Guard executes 64 officials of the crown.
The George Cross established by Britain's George VI is "for acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger." Generally given to civilians, sometimes posthumously, it will also be awarded to military personnel for acts that do not normally merit military decorations.
The Battle of Sidi Barrani on the northern coast of Egypt begins the night of December 8 and continues to December 12, pitting the forces of Gen. Sir Archibald Wavell against Italian forces under the command of Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, who has about 50,000 men to Wavell's 31,000. Wavell's Western Desert Force penetrates through a wide gap in the Italian chain of fortified camps, the Matilda tanks of his 4th Indian Division begin storming the northernmost camps, and by December 12 the Italians are in full retreat back into Libya, with 38,000 men having been taken prisoner along with four generals. The British have lost 624 men, the Italians about 2,000, and the British have destroyed or captured 237 guns along with 73 medium tanks and tankettes.
Japan's former prime minister Fumimaro Konoye becomes premier again in mid-July with a mandate to reorganize the government along totalitarian lines (he resigned in January of last year). Britain withdraws garrisons August 9 from Shanghai and northern China, and Japanese forces begin occupying French Indochina September 26 after receiving permission from the Vichy government to use several Indochinese ports and three airfields.
Japanese forces in China set up a puppet government at Nanjing (Nanking) headed by Wang Jing-Wei (Wang Ching-wei) (see 1938). Japanese Army pilots in China begin flying the Mitsubishi A6M (Zero) single-seat fighter plane first tested last year (1940 is known in Japan as the "zero year," because it is thought to be the 2,600th anniversary of the accession of the legendary first emperor). Powered initially by a 14-cylinder Nakajima Sakae radial air-cooled engine that develops 1,020 horsepower, it has a top speed of 350 miles per hour at an altitude of nearly 20,000 feet, is armed with two 7.7-millimeter machine guns plus two 20-millimeter cannons in its wings, has an ejectable 94-gallon external fuel tank that augments its 156-gallon internal tank to extend its range, and can outmaneuver any enemy plane in the sky.
A Japanese plane drops fleas infected with bubonic plague bacteria at Chuhsien in Chechiang province in eastern China October 24, killing 21 people (see Unit 731, 1936). Another 99 die after a plane drops the fleas 5 days later at Ningbo in the same province, but although planes make a large drop of the fleas at Chinhua November 28 there are no reports of deaths (see 1941).
Bordeaux-born Admiral Jean Decoux, 56, becomes governor general of French Indochina July 20, receives demands from the Japanese in early August for permission to move troops through Tonkin (later Vietnam) in order to build air bases and block Allied supply routes to China, cables Vichy for help, but when no help is forthcoming signs a treaty September 20 opening Haiphong harbor to the Japanese and giving them the right to station troops in the region. Decoux works to improve relations between French colonists and the Vietnamese, establishing a grand federal council containing twice as many Vietnamese as Frenchmen and installing Vietnamese in civil-service positions with equal pay to that of French civil servants (see 1945). Vietnamese nationalist Phan Boi Chau dies at Hue September 29 at age 73.
The British stop passage of war matériel through Burma to China in mid-July at the request of Japan, but they resume construction of the Burma Road October 18 in defiance of the Japanese blockade, employing more than 10,000 Chinese laborers (see 1942).
Thailand's military dictator Luang Phibunsongkhram takes advantage of France's defeat to send troops into western Laos and northwestern Cambodia in November (see 1939). Tokyo supports Thai claims to the lands that once belonged to Siam (see 1941).
India's Muslim League votes to establish a separate state (see 1947).
The first peacetime military draft in U.S. history begins October 29 following passage of a Selective Service Act that will remain in effect until January 1973. The U.S. Navy is the world's largest, but the army is smaller than those of at least 15 other countries, including Greece, Portugal, and Peru, and totally unprepared for combat. President Roosevelt promotes Washington, D.C.-born U.S. Army colonel Benjamin O. (Oliver) Davis, 63, to the rank of brigadier general; having become the first black colonel 10 years ago, Davis becomes the first black general.
Canada's governor-general Lord Tweedsmuir (author John Buchan) dies at Montreal February 21 at age 64 and is succeeded April 8 by the 66-year-old earl of Athlone, a brother of the queen mother, Mary.
Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky escapes a raid on his Mexican villa in May when Soviet agents armed with machine guns invade the premises, but NKVD agent Ramon Mercader, 26 (alias Frank Jackson, alias Jacques Mornard), posing as a friend, stabs the 61-year-old Trotsky with an ice pick August 21, killing him. Mercader will serve 20 years in prison.
Mexican voters elect former minister of national defense Manuel Avila Camacho, 43, to the presidency in a government-controlled election that is won, as usual, by the Partido de la Revolución Mexicana (PRM). After pacifying the Roman Catholic Church by making a public announcement of his own faith, Avila Camacho will expand the country's school system, build hospitals, sponsor social-security legislation, support limited land reform, and settle long-standing disputes with the United States over oil properties that were expropriated by his leftist predecessor Lázaro Cárdenas in 1934.
The Alien Registration Act (Smith Act) passed by Congress June 28 requires that aliens be fingerprinted; the new measure makes it unlawful to advocate overthrow of the U.S. government or belong to any group advocating such overthrow.
Paraguay's president Gen. José Estigarribia dies in a plane crash September 7 before he can implement a new constitution giving him great authoritarian powers; he is succeeded by Gen. Higinio Morinigo, who begins an immediate persecution of Liberals under a repressive rule that will continue until his overthrow in 1948.
The Popular Democratic Party that will control Puerto Rico until 1977 comes to power with the election of party founder Luis Muñoz Marín, now 42, who is returned to his former senate seat (see Tugwell, 1941).
The Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden nominates New York lawyer Wendell L. Willkie to oppose President Roosevelt in his bid for a third term. Supported by speakers who include playwright Clare Boothe Luce, Willkie wins on the sixth ballot. Now 48, he has attacked the Tennessee Valley Authority as head of the Commonwealth & Southern utilities holding company, but his internationalist views make him a more attractive candidate than isolationists Robert A. Taft of Ohio, Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, or New York's district attorney Thomas E. Dewey. Few people know that Willkie was a registered Democrat until last year and considered himself a liberal, having spoken out in support of the League of Nations and fought the Ku Klux Klan. Republicans play up his Indiana roots (he delivers his acceptance speech August 17 at his native Elwood), distribute buttons that say, "No Third Term," but disclaim responsibility for buttons that say, "No Triple for a Cripple"; Democrats call Willkie "the barefoot boy from Wall Street," but he has alienated many in the GOP by supporting the Lend-Lease deal and the Selective Service Act. Pro-New Deal Democrats have tried to block a bill pushed through Congress by Republicans and Southern Democrats restricting political contributions by state employees to political candidates (see Hatch Act, 1939), President Roosevelt has signed it with reluctance, but although Republicans have spent nearly $15 million by November and Democrats less than $6 million, the new law has little or no effect on the election results (see 1943).
U.S. ambassador to Britain Joseph P. Kennedy flies home from London to express defeatist and anti-Semitic sentiments that doom any political ambitions he may have. Democracy is finished in Europe, he says, and may have no future in America. He announces support of FDR's bid for a third term but will resign his post in February of next year.
President Roosevelt wins a precedent-shattering third term in November with 54 percent of the popular vote, helped in the South by Georgia reformer Ellis G. (Gibbs) Arnall, 33, and in rural areas by his running mate Henry A. Wallace, formerly secretary of agriculture. Willkie wins 44 percent of the popular vote but only 82 electoral votes to FDR's 449, and he does not carry New York, whose state Democratic committee chairman James A. Farley has opposed letting FDR have a third term and quits public life.
Former president Herbert C. Hoover warns against U.S. entry into the European war, saying, "I am certain that the next war will absolutely transform us. I see more power to the government. Less power to the people. That's what I fear. Because once this starts, it is irreversible . . . You can't extend the mastery of the government over the daily life of a people without making government the master of those people's souls and thoughts, the way the Fascists and Bolsheviks have done."
President Roosevelt delivers a "fireside chat" on radio December 29, saying, "The Nazi masters of Germany have made it clear that they intend not only to dominate all life and thought in their own country, but also to enslave the whole of Europe, and then to use the resources of Europe to dominate the rest of the world . . . We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself."
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