1943 | Political Events
Political Events
The tide of war turns against the Axis in North Africa, the North Atlantic, the Pacific, Italy, and on the Russian front. Heavy bombing of industrial centers in Germany and occupied France begins on a continuous basis in January.
German-American Bund leader Fritz Kuhn, 32, leaves a New York courtroom January 4 at the start of hearings on possible subversive activities by his group. A former Nazi propagandist testifies January 11 that German blood has been considered stronger than any citizenship. FBI agents seize former Bund members and former Nazi Party members throughout the city on suspicion of espionage and possible sabotage. Denaturalization proceedings proceed in February against 20 former Bund members. Among those seized is a Stork Club waiter who wagered his tips on German victories in the European war. Kuhn and 10 other Bund leaders lose their U.S. citizenship March 18; Kuhn is ordered released on parole from prison June 18 after serving a term for theft and interned as an enemy alien.
Anti-fascist editor Carlo Tresca, 68, leaves his New York offices at 2 West 15th Street January 12 and is shot down in the street, apparently on orders from Benito Mussolini, who has for decades been the object of attacks in Tresca's fortnightly paper Il Martello (The Hammer). Some local Italian organizations blame the killing on communists, but police trace the getaway car to Mafioso gunman Carmine Galente, 35, and arrest him January 13; he will be convicted of assassinating Tresca.
Free French forces January 7 capture Oum-el-Arameb, the main Axis base in southern Libya (see 1942); outnumbering Germany's Afrika Korps two to one and having 800 tanks to Field Marshal Rommel's 90, Gen. Montgomery's British 8th Army takes Tripoli January 23. President Roosevelt leaves for Casablanca January 13 on the first presidential flight out of the country; having flown by Pan Am Clipper to the Gambia via Miami, Trinidad, and Brazil, he arrives at his destination by land-based plane after a 3-day journey. The Casablanca Conference attended by President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, Gen. Giraud, and Gen. de Gaulle ends January 27 with the appointment of Gen. Eisenhower as Supreme Commander of unified forces in North Africa, but U-boats off the West African coast have attacked a special convey carrying oil from Trinidad, sinking seven of nine tankers, and Berlin rushes reinforcements to Tunisia. Rommel attacks February 14, the Germans take Kasserine Pass February 22, and Gen. Eisenhower's forces suffer a humiliating defeat, sustaining 5,000 casualties and losing hundreds of tanks and trucks. Eisenhower orders tougher training, dismisses his intelligence officer, and puts Gen. George S. Patton, now 57, in charge of the Second Corps along with Missouri-born Brig. Gen. Omar (Nelson) Bradley, 50. U.S. troops retake the pass February 26. Axis forces in Tunisia fall back and are soon in retreat with the British in hot pursuit. Allied naval forces control the Mediterranean and prevent supplies from reaching the Afrika Korps, the code breakers at Bletchley Park keep Allied ground forces apprised of German plans as they continue to decipher Enigma code messages, Rommel evacuates his troops from Tunis April 14, British forces enter the city May 7, Bizerte falls to the Americans the same day, the Germans surrender May 13, Italian rule of Libya ends that day after 32 years of occupation (see 1951), and Axis resistance ends in North Africa.
The 99th Pursuit Squadron completes its training at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama under the command of Washington, D.C.-born Lieut. Col. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., 30, and sees action for the first time June 2, flying out of Tunisia for a dive-bombing attack on the German-held island of Pantelleria. The "Tuskegee Airmen" are the first all-black flying group in the army. Davis is recalled in September to head the larger all-black 232nd Fighter Group.
An independent Lebanon is established with Sheik Bechara el-Khoury, 53, as president at Beirut (see 1941). The new nation's constitution provides that a Maronite Christian is to be president, with Sunni, Shiite, and other Muslim religious sects as well as Maronites to hold seats in the legislature. Most of the powers exercised by the French will be transferred to the new government beginning January 1 of next year (see 1946; League of Arab States, 1945).
Stalingrad's last German invaders surrender to Soviet forces February 2 after 5 terrible months of savage fighting in which both sides have sustained horrific losses and 22 German divisions have been reduced to 80,000 men (see 1942). Marshal Zhukov has commanded the Red Army. It has lost 750,000 men, the Germans 400,000, the Romanians nearly 200,000, the Italians 130,000, the Hungarians 120,000; Axis survivors have been sustained in many cases only by cannibalism, and the city's population has dwindled after 5 months of barbaric battle from 500,000 to 1,515. Field Marshal Paulus is taken prisoner along with the others.
Soviet troops relieve Leningrad's 17-month siege in February, but the Germans will blockade the narrow corridor to the city more than 1,200 times in the next year and starvation will continue.
German authorities arrest Milwaukee-born German Resistance fighter Mildred Harnack-Fish (née Fish), 39, February 16 and confine her to Berlin's Plotzensee Prison, where her husband, Arvid Harnack, was hanged with a foot-long rope in December last year. She joined her Rockefeller economist husband in his native Germany 14 years ago and for the past 10 years has been working in a leftist group of 130 women and men to arrange the escape of dissidents and Jews, disseminate clandestine newsletters, and spy for the U.S. and Soviet embassies at Berlin. A military court sentenced her in December to 6 years' hard labor, but Adolf Hitler has ordered a retrial and she is beheaded December 24 by the Brandenburg guillotine.
The Gestapo arrests Munich medical student Hans Scholl, 25, and his sister Sophie, 22, February 18 for having published "The White Rose," a leaflet that called for "sabotage of the war effort and armaments and for the overthrow of the National Socialist way of life of our people . . . propagated defeatist ideas, and . . . most vulgarly defamed der Führer, thereby giving aid to the enemy of the Reich and weakening the armed security of the nation." Scholl served as a medic on the Eastern Front and has a younger brother still there; he and his sister were once members of the Hitler Youth but have been disgusted by the violence of the Nazi movement and its insistence on intellectual conformity; both are guillotined February 22 along with their friend Christoph Probst, 24, after being found guilty by a "People's Court." Three other medical students and a professor are executed later in the spring, more than 30 imprisoned.
The Germans lose 500,000 men in 3 months of heavy winter fighting as the Russians retake Kharkov and other key cities, but they mount a spring offensive and recapture Kharkov March 15.
Former French president Alexandre Millerand dies at Versailles April 7 at age 84.
Gen. Frank M. Andrews, U.S. Army Air Corps, is killed in an airplane accident near Iceland May 3 at age 59, just 3 months after being named to succeed Gen. Eisenhower as commander of all U.S. forces in Europe. Camp Springs, Md., 10 miles southeast of Washington, D.C., will be renamed Andrews Air Force Base in 1945.
Adolf Hitler dismisses his naval commander-in-chief Erich Raeder, now 66, in January (Raeder has opposed the invasion of the Soviet Union) and replaces him with U-boat commander Karl Doenitz, now 52, but convoys now protect merchant shipping on the North Atlantic, President Roosevelt orders Admiral King to transfer 60 very long-range B-24 Liberator bombers from the Pacific to the Atlantic in March, and from bases in Newfoundland and other strategic points they help to end the U-boat menace (see B-24, 1941). The Germans sink 139 Allied merchant ships from January to late May, but the vast majority of ships make the voyage safely, the average life-span of a U-boat falls from more than a year to less than 3 months, 43 U-boats are destroyed in May alone, being assigned to submarine duty is considered a death sentence, and Doenitz orders all but a handful of his U-boats to leave the North Atlantic May 24; by mid-year the U-boats are no longer a threat, permitting a steady flow of men and matériel from North America to reach Britain, North Africa, and Murmansk. By the end of the war more than 25,000 German submarine crewmen will have died and 5,000 taken prisoner—a 75 percent casualty rate greater than that of any other branch of the German military.
The Kremlin quietly dissolves the Comintern in May in consideration of the wartime alliance between the communists and Western allies (see 1935).
French civil servant Jean Moulin, 43, is elected the first chairman of a National Council of the Résistance in May, but the Gestapo arrests him outside Lyons in June, he is tortured in various prisons, and he dies at Metz July 8 on a train taking him to Germany.
The Battle of Kursk that begins July 5 involves 6,000 German and Russian tanks and 4,000 planes. It ends after a week of heavy fighting in a victory for the Soviet 5th Army, but while the Germans have lost 70,000 men, 2,000 tanks, 1,392 planes, and 5,000 vehicles, the Russian losses are at least comparable.
British paratroopers and U.S. airborne troops invade Sicily July 9 and 10 under the command of Gen. Patton. More than 500 U.S. bombers raid Rome July 19 (the planes include Martin B-26 Marauders). U.S. tanks roll into Palermo July 23 as Italian resistance collapses. Benito Mussolini and his cabinet resign under pressure July 25 after a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council at which Il Duce's minister of state Emilio De Bono, now 77, has voted against him. Marshal Pietro Badoglio, 72, takes over and Mussolini is confined to prison.
Hamburg comes under attack 1 hour after midnight July 25 as 728 RAF aircraft shower thousands of tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiaries on Germany's second-largest city (1.5 million inhabitants). RAF commander Arthur Travers Harris, now 51, has ordered the attack, whose weapons hit a densely-populated area north of the Elbe (he is soon called "Bomber" Harris; see Iraq, 1921). Two-ton bombs tear doors and windows from their frames, lightweight incendiaries then ignite attic floors, fire bombs weighing as much as 30 pounds fall into the lower floors, and the resulting inferno (the Hamburg Fire Department calls it a Feuersturm [firestorm]) spreads at a speed of 90 miles per hour until it covers some eight square miles. By 1:20 the flames reach a mile into the air, pulling out oxygen, lifting gables and roofs from buildings, tearing trees from the ground, melting the glass in tramcar windows, setting some of the city's canals ablaze, boiling stocks of sugar in bakery cellars, continuing for 3 hours, and killing untold numbers of people. U.S. B-17s and a 787-plane RAF night attack follow up the first raid (see Berlin, Dresden, Tokyo, 1945).
U.S. B-24 Liberator bombers led by Texas-born Col. John R. "Killer" Kane, 36, take off from Libya August 1 on a 2,700-mile round-trip mission to attack Romanian oil refineries and railroad tracks at Ploesti in an effort to cut off German gasoline supplies, but resistance from Junkers 88s, Messerschmitt 109s, ack-ack batteries, machine-gun nests, and flames from the burning refinery take a heavy toll. One-third of the U.S. planes are destroyed, nearly 500 men are killed or wounded, eight planes land in neutral Turkey and will be held there until the war ends, others land safely in Cyprus, Malta, and Sicily or crash-land back in Libya, and although 159 of the 189 B-24s that left Libya reach their target the raid has little effect on production at Ploesti.
Smolensk falls to the German 4th Army August 5 after nearly 3 weeks of heavy fighting have left 298,000 Germans killed, wounded, or missing. Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, 59, has two panzer divisions under his command, Marshal Timoshenko 12 to 14 divisions in his 16th and 20th armies; the number of Russian casualties is unknown, but the Germans take 309,000 of Timoshenko's men prisoner. They also capture 3,205 Soviet tanks and 3,120 guns, but their victory will prove short-lived.
Gen. George S. Patton Jr. visits in early August with wounded soldiers in Sicily, sees a man with no apparent physical injury, questions him, is told, "I just couldn't take it anymore," slaps the man in the face, accuses him of cowardice, and orders him returned to the front. Another such incident occurs a week later. Patton's behavior makes him subject to a court martial for flagrant violation of army rules, but Gen. Eisenhower values his friend's military prowess and merely rebukes him.
President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill meet at Quebec from August 11 to August 24 for discussions between military strategists aimed at coordinating the forthcoming invasions of Italy and western France, but the first Quebec Conference (code named "Quadrant") fails to resolve differences (see Octagon Conference, 1944).
Allied armies in Sicily under the command of Gen. Alexander take Messina August 17, cross the Straits of Messina, and invade Southern Italy as representatives of the new Badoglio regime sign an armistice with Allied officers at Algiers. Missouri-born army officer Maxwell D. (Davenport) Taylor, 41, has gone through enemy lines prior to the invasion to confer with Italian leaders at Rome.
French Army lieutenant André Devigny, 27, and a fellow Résistance fighter shoot and kill an Italian counter-espionage agent at Nice April 14, the Gestapo arrests Devigny 3 days later, he is taken before Gestapo leader Klaus Barbie August 20 and told that he will be executed, but he escapes from Fort Monluc August 24, makes his way to Switzerland with Résistance help, and joins a French commando unit in North Africa.
Soviet forces retake Kharkov August 23 with help from increased Soviet industrial output and with U.S. war matériel that includes steel, industrial machinery, planes, and motor vehicles supplied via Archangel, Vladivostok, and the Persian Gulf.
Bulgaria's Boris I is summoned to Adolf Hitler's eastern field headquarters and is then assassinated (or dies of a heart attack) at Sofia August 28 at age 49 after a 25-year reign (see 1934). German troops have not occupied Bulgaria, and although the king is German, and his troops have fought alongside the Germans on the eastern front, he and his parliament have resisted German demands that Bulgaria's 50,000 Jews be deported to Nazi concentration camps. Boris's 6-year-old son is proclaimed king and will reign as Simeon II until the monarchy is abolished in 1946 (his uncle and other regents who rule in his name will be executed in 1945 after Soviet forces drive out the Germans).
Former first lord of the admiralty Reginald McKenna dies at his native London September 6 at age 80, having initiated the battleship construction program that has given his country the edge over Germany in capital-ship strength.
The Allied high command announces September 8 that Italy has surrendered unconditionally, but German forces in Italy resist the Allied advance. A German paratrooper rescues Mussolini from prison (see 1945). Italian resistance to the Germans begins in September. As U.S. and British forces put pressure on Axis troops in the South, women in Lombardy and the Piedmont form the Women's Defense Groups for Aid to the Fighters for Liberty (Gruppi di Difesa della Donna e per l'Assistenza ai Combattenti per la Libertà) (see 1944).
The U.S. 5th Army lands at Salerno September 9, coming ashore in Landing Ships-Tanks (LSTs) designed by Nebraska-born lumberman-turned-shipbuilder Andrew Jackson Higgins, 56, of Higgins Industries at New Orleans. The assault vessels enable the Allies to land forces without having to batter coastal forts into submission, sweep harbors of mines, or takeover enemy-held ports. Commanded by Madison Barracks, N.Y.-born Gen. Mark (Wayne) Clark, 47, the Americans sustain heavy losses but they take Naples October 1 as German forces seize Rome and other major Italian cities.
Soviet forces retake Smolensk September 25. Adolf Hitler has sent Heinz Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group south to the Dneiper River, where it joins with von Kleist's 1st Panzer Group in an attack on Kiev, which has about 676,000 defenders in the 50 divisions commanded by Col.-Gen. Mikhail Kirponos. The Germans have only about 300,000 men, but they are equipped with tanks and half-tracks, and their highly mobile forces capture the city September 26, losing about 100,000 but taking more than 600,000 prisoners plus 900 tanks and 3,179 guns. Kirponos has been killed leading an attempt to break out of the German trap, but Gen. Ivan Stepanovich Konev stops a large German force sent to reinforce the troops laying siege to Stalingrad, Soviet forces retake Kiev November 6, and the diversion of forces by Hitler makes it impossible for the Germans to reach Moscow before the onset of winter.
Soviet foreign minister V. M. Molotov meets with his British and U.S. counterparts Anthony Eden and Cordell Hull at the Moscow Conference from October 19 to 30; they establish a European advisory commission on terms of German surrender, separation of Austria from Germany, and destruction of Italy's Fascist regime.
Adolf Hitler agrees late in the year to mass production of the Messerschmidt Me 262 turbojet but insists that it be used primarily as a fighter-bomber (see 1942; 1944).
Royal Navy Admiral Bruce Austin Fraser, 55, engages the 31,000-ton German battleship Scharnhorst December 26 and sinks her off Norway's North Cape with a loss of 1,938 men (36 survive). The admiral has been using his flagship Duke of York chiefly to protect convoys to the Soviet Union, Norwegian fjord watchers have risked their lives to keep the Admiralty apprised of German naval activity by radio, and Fraser uses radar to fight the Scharnhorst in a battle that goes on mostly at night.
Australian-New Zealand-Canadian (Anzac) and U.S. forces take the southeastern tip of New Guinea from the Japanese January 22, assuring the safety of Australia from Japanese invasion.
Colorado-born U.S. Navy commander Arleigh A. (Albert) Burke, 41, leads a squadron of destroyers in the Solomon Islands beginning in January and by February of next year will have directed more than 20 engagements against the Japanese.
Allied forces complete their conquest of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands February 8 after 6 months of heavy fighting in which Virginia-born Marine Corps general Alexander A. (Archer) Vandegrift, 55, has distinguished himself (see 1942); Gen. John M. (Miller) Arthur, 50, has led the U.S. Army invasion force, Wisconsin-born Air Force general Nathan F. (Farragut) Twining, 48, has directed air assaults against Japanese positions, and the establishment of an airfield on the island severs Japanese communications to the south.
The Battle of the Bismarck Sea in early March ends with U.S. Liberator and Flying Fortress bombers sinking an estimated 21 Japanese transports bound for New Guinea with 15,000 troops.
U.S. intelligence intercepts and decodes Japanese messages about an inspection trip by Admiral Yamamoto out of Rabaul, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox issues orders that Yamamoto is to be assassinated, Oregon-born P-38 fighter pilot Rex T. Barber, 26, shoots down the Mitsubishi bomber carrying the admiral over Bougainville April 18, and Japan loses the man who opposed the Axis alliance yet triumphed at Pearl Harbor. His ashes are returned to Tokyo for a state funeral, and the nation mourns.
The submarine U.S.S. Trigger spots the Japanese aircraft carrier Hitaka on her first trial run June 10 in Tokyo Bay, zigzagging at high speed with an escort of two destroyers. The Trigger's New York-born commander Capt. Edward L. (Latimer) Beach, 25, has been lying submerged for 30 days; four of his six torpedoes find their mark, he dives deep to escape the destroyers' depth charges, and it takes the Japanese months to repair the Hitaka (see exploration, 1960).
Field Marshal Sir Archibald P. Wavell replaces Lord Linlithgow to become British viceroy of India as unrest there continues (see 1942). Independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose arrives by Japanese submarine at Tokyo in May, having by some accounts been transferred from a German U-boat off Madagascar and come 400 miles in a rubber dinghy (see 1939). Japanese intelligence agents have helped to found an Indian National Army (INA) to fight the British, and they fly Bose to Singapore, where he proclaims a Free India provisional government October 21 and takes command of the INA, recruiting Indian prisoners of war and civilians from various parts of Southeast Asia. Now 46, he was secretly married while in Europe to his Viennese secretary, and she has borne his daughter. Bose's 40,000-man force frees Andaman and Nicobar islands from British control (see 1944).
Boeing B-29 bombers go into action for the U.S. Air Force in July; capable of carrying a 10,000-pound payload for 4,000 miles, a Superfortress is larger and more powerful than anything else in the air. Allied forces take the Japanese air base at Munda in the Solomons August 5 and destroy more than 300 Japanese planes 2 weeks later in attacks on the Wewak airfield in New Guinea.
Japanese authorities in the Philippines install Supreme Court justice José Paciano Laurel, 52, as president, having chosen him because he has criticized U.S. rule in the islands. Guerrillas shoot him twice during the year but Laurel recovers from his wounds and will retain office until 1945.
U.S. troops that landed at Sitka in the Aleutians in May retake Kiska August 15.
Allied forces land on Bougainville in the Solomons November 1 following Allied bombing of Rabaul in New Britain that began October 12.
U.S. troops take Tarawa and Makin in the Gilbert Islands in late November. Allied forces commanded by German-born U.S. 6th Army chief Gen. Walter Krueger, 64, land on Cape Gloucester, New Britain, December 26.
The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) is established November 9 by an agreement signed at Washington. The United Nations has had its beginnings in a brief congressional resolution introduced April 5 by freshman congressman J. William Fulbright, 38 (D. Ark.) (see education [Fulbright awards], 1946). Isolationists who include Sen. Hiram (Warren) Johnson (R. Calif.), now 77, oppose the idea (see 1944).
The Teheran Conference from November 28 to December 1 ends with an Allied agreement to open a second front in France (see 1944). President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and Premier Stalin have met in the Iranian capital, pledge themselves to recognize Iran's independence, provide her with whatever economic aid they can, and set up an advisory commission to study European problems (see Potsdam, 1944).
France's Pas de Calais area comes under attack December 24 from 3,000 Allied planes that include 1,300 from the U.S. 8th Air Force.
Former Argentinian president Agustín Pedro Justo dies at Buenos Aires January 10 at age 66, having urged a declaration of war on the Axis powers in opposition to the neutrality policy of President Ramón Castillo, who has been in office since 1940; his minister of war Gen. Pedro P. Ramírez leads a coup d'etat that ousts Castillo June 4, and a new government takes power under Gen. Arturo Rawson, who becomes president and makes Col. Juan Domingo Perón, 48, his labor minister; the coup marks the end for a while of the right-wing governments that have ruled since 1930 (see Perón, 1946).