TIMEBASE1940-44

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1940 During the months following the fall of Poland and prior to the invasion of France, a period called the "phony war," Goering maintains a clandestine communications link with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. This was an unusual, if not unheard-of, situation between key officials of two countries officially at war. (Duffy)

1940 January The Cliveden Group, led by Lady Astor, actively pressures the British government to declare war on the USSR for invading Finland. They believe the Communists, not Hitler, are Britain's real enemies.

1940 January The killing of mental patients by means of carbon monoxide gas is tried out in the jail at Brandenburg. By September 1941, more than 70,000 German mental patients will have been "euthanized" in hospitals at Grafeneck, Brandenburg, Bernburg, Hartheim, Sonnenstein, and Hadamar, using carbon monoxide provided by the I.G. Farben corporation. (Science)

1940 January 1 Generalissimo Franco officially denounces the Jews and Freemasons, quoting directly from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. (Segel/Levy)

1940 January 4 Goering is given overall control of German war industry.

1940 January 5 Professor Lenz sends a memorandum to Pancke, chief of the RuSHA, entitled: "Remarks on resettlement from the point of view of safeguarding the race." (Science)

1940 January 6 Cardinal Hlond submits a new and detailed report to Pius XII on the deportations and arrests of Polish priests, the closing of churches and the brutal treatment meted out to the Polish population. (Lewy)

1940 January 6 The German Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs issues an edict, based on the Fuehrer's amnesty of September 9, 1939, restoring the salaries of a large number of priests who had their state subsidy cut off because of minor infractions of the law. (Lewy)

1940 January 9 Hildebrandt, chief of the SS and Police in Danzig and West Prussia (and, from 1943 onwards, head of the RuSHA), reports to Himmler on the shootings of German and Polish mental patients which he has carried out: "The other two units of storm troopers at my disposal were employed as follows during October, November and December... For the elimination of about 4,400 incurable patients from Polish mental hospitals... For the elimination of about 2,000 incurable patients from the Konradstein mental hospital..." (Science)

1940 January 10 A German plane carrying plans for the invasion of France is forced down at Mechelen, Belgium. The Belgian authorities pass on details of the German invasion to the British and French. Hitler's agents suspect the British and French have learned of the plans for the invasion, scheduled for January 17, and Hitler postpones the invasion. He will use this alleged violation of neutrality by Belgium to justify the invasion of that country in May.

1940 January 15 The Belgian government refuses to let England and France move troops into Belgium before a possible German attack. This is a strange response if the captured German invasion plans called for an attack through Belgium as the British claim.

1940 January 16 Hitler cancels the German attack in the west until spring, ordering new attack plans to be drawn up.

1940 January 20 Dr. Ritter writes in a progress report to the DFG: "Through our work we have been able to establish that more than ninety per cent of so-called native Gypsies are of mixed blood... The Gypsy question can only be considered solved when the main body of asocial and good-for-nothing Gypsy individuals of mixed blood is collected together in large labour camps and kept working there, and when the further breeding of this population of mixed blood is stopped once and for all." (Science)

1940 January 23 Vatican Radio broadcasts excerpts from Cardinal Hlond's January 6 report to the Pope. (See January 6)

1940 January 29 Ambassador Bergen reports to Berlin that the Papal Secretary of State has ordered the immediate cessation of all broadcasts about atrocities in Poland.

1940 January 31 By the end of January, the Germans have driven 78,000 Jews out of their homes in Poland. (Atlas)

1940 February Fritz Thyssen is stripped of his German nationality and all of his large industrial holdings are confiscated.

1940 February 5 The British and French Supreme War Council decides to intervene in Norway and to send help to Finland. The pretext of helping Finland is primarily intended to prevent Swedish iron ore from reaching Germany.

1940 February 6 German Jews lose their eligibility for clothing coupons. (Persecution)

1940 February 11 The Germans and Soviets sign a further trade and economic agreement.

1940 February 12 The first deportations of German Jews take place. (Goebbels)

1940 February 14 Britain announces all that all British merchant ships in the North Sea will be armed.

1940 February 15 Germany announces that all armed British merchant ships will be treated as warships.

1940 February 16 The captain of the British destroyer Cossack under the direct orders of Churchill violates Norwegian neutrality and boards the German supply ship Altamark. After a short fight in which several German sailors are killed, Captain Philip Vian found 299 British sailors and merchant seaman in the ships's hold. They were prisoners of war being transported from the South Atlantic to Germany.

(Note: Norway protested the British attack, but their complaints were rebuffed. This incident along with reports of troop movements indicating a planned British invasion, sealed Norway's fate, as well as that of Denmark.) (Duffy)

1940 February 17 General Manstein outlines a new plan to Hitler for a rapid armored attack through the Ardennes Forest.

1940 February 19 Hitler receives a telegram informing him that the British have indeed captured Germany's invasion plans from the downed plane and learned of his offensive in the west. This information is said to have originated with the Duke of Windsor. (See January 10)

1940 February 21 Work begins on the German concentration camp at Auschwitz. (WWIIDBD)

1940 February 27 389 Jews are deported from Amsterdam to Buchenwald concentration camp. (Atlas)

1940 February At the end of February, the Soviets move their best troops into the battle in Finland, and the Finns began to give way to the sheer force of numbers.

1940 March The Soviet massacre 15,000 young Polish officers at Katyn in the Arctic. The killings will continue until April. Stalin blames the killings on the Germans.

1940 March The Russian invaders breach the Finns' defensive Mannerheim Line, and Finland is forced to relinquish strategic ports, a naval base, and airports.

1940 March 1-6 American Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles visits Hitler in Berlin.

1940 March 1 Hitler issues the final directive for the German invasion of Norway and Denmark.

1940 March 8 U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes has dinner with Archduke Otto von Habsburg (Hapsburg) and his brother Felix in Washington. Habsburg tells him that "Hitler had disclosed to a very confidential group, which included two Austrians, one of whom, is in the confidence of Otto, that his ultimate objective is the United States, after he has conquered Europe." Ickes writes in his diary the next day: "I am convinced that this is absolutely what Hitler would attempt to do." (Ickes)

1940 March 11 During a visit to Rome, Ribbentrop tells Pius XII that Hitler wants "to maintain their existing truce and, if possible, to expand it. In this respect Germany has made very considerable concessions. The Fuehrer has quashed no less than 7,000 indictments of Catholic clergymen." (Lewy)

1940 March 12 Russia and Finland sign a treaty of peace.

1940 March 18 Hitler meets with Mussolini at the Brenner Pass. Mussolini tells Hitler that he is ready to join Germany and its allies against Britain and France.

1940 March 20 Edouard Daladier is forced to resign as Premier of France; primarily for failing to aid Finland.

1940 March 21 Paul Reynaud forms a new French government.

1940 March 28 The British and French Supreme War Council decides to mine Norway's coastal waters and to invade Norway if the Germans interfere. The operation is scheduled to begin on April 5, but is later postponed to April 8.

1940 March 31 One of Professor Fischer's assistants travels to the ghetto in Lodz to take photographs to be used for comparison with pictures in a book on Jewry in antiquity, which Fischer is planning. (Science)

1940 April 1 Hitler approves plans for the invasion of Norway.

1940 April 2 Hitler orders the invasion of Norway for April 9.

1940 April 3 Churchill resigns as Minister for the Coordination of Defense and is appointed to chair the Ministerial Defense Committee, significantly increasing his responsibilities, even though he had not been success in his previous post. One of his first acts is to obtain consent for the mining of the Norwegian Leads. (WWIIDBD)

1940 April 5 Britain and France notify Norway that they reserve the right to deprive Germany of Norway's resources.

1940 April 7 German ships leave port for the invasion of Norway.

1940 April 7 The British Home Fleet leaves port for Norway.

1940 April 8 Britain informs Norway that it intends to intercept German ships in Norwegian waters. London fails to reveal to Oslo that it has ordered the Royal Navy to mine Norwegian territorial waters. (Duffy)

1940 April 9 Germany invades Denmark and Norway. The German invasion beats the Franco-British invasion by only twelve hours. Norwegian shore batteries and warhips sink three German cruisers (including the 10,000 ton Blucher), 10 destroyers and 11 troop transports. A battleship and three more cruisers are damaged so badly they have to be pulled out of service.

1940 April 9 A German parachute battalion, the first to be used in war, captures the airfield at Oslo, while transport planes drop more troops and guns.

1940 April 9 Copenhagen, Denmark, is taken by two German divisions in less than 12 hours, and the Germans begin a policy of cooperation and negotiation with the Danish government.

1940 April 9 The Danish-German Agreement is signed, resulting in Denmark's Jews being left unmolested for a time.

1940 April 9 A minor naval engagement between German and British warships takes place off Narvik.

1940 April 10 A major naval battle takes place off Narvik.

1940 April 10 The Norwegian government and Royal family leave Oslo. Vidkun Quisling and his National Union Party seize power.

1940 April 13 Another major naval battle takes place off Narvik.

1940 April 14 The British several make small landings in Norway.

1940 April 15 Quisling is forced out by the Germans and replaced temporarily by Ingolf Christensen as the head of a German controlled puppet government.

1940 April 29 King Hakkon of Norway and his government are evacuated from Molde by the British, taking with them the national gold reserves.

1940 May 1 The Lodz ghetto, containing 160,000 Jews, is sealed off from the outside world.

1940 May 4 U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes writes in his secret diary, " Chamberlain appears to be facing a political test in Great Britain. Practically from the beginning of his premiership I have regarded him as the evil genius not only of Britain but of Western civilization. His diplomatic policy has been blundering and inept. Hitler always outsmarted him until Germany was strengthened to that point where it could go to war with confidence of a victorious result." (Ickes)

1940 May 6 Horia Sima, a young Romanian Legionary (Iron Guard) leader leaves Berlin with a group of comrades and secretly enters Romania.

1940 May 7-8 A major debate on the conduct of the war and especially the Norwegian campaign takes place in the British House of Commons. After the votes are tallied, Chamberlain's government has a majority of 281 to 200, but this is said to be insufficient to allow the government to continue claiming to be representative.

1940 May 8 Neville Chamberlain resigns as prime minister and chooses Winston Churchill to replace him. This is the first time in British history that a British prime minister has been allowed to choose his own successor. Chamberlain stays on in Churchill's cabinet. (Horace Wilson, a shadowly figure who served as Chamberlain's chief advisor, returns to obscurity.)

1940 May 9 Hitler slips out of Berlin and travels to an improvised headquarters called Felsennest near Münstereifel on the Western front. (Architect)

1940 May 10 Germany invades France and the Low Countries of Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. Counting the ten divisions of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), the Belgian army, and the French army, the Germans are outnumbered and outgunned. Both the Dutch and Belgians fight back after receiving the brunt of the opening offensives. The Dutch mine bridges, block roads, and flood wide areas. Luxembourg, with no defensive forces, is occupied with only scattered civilian resistance. The German code word for the general attack is "Danzig." (Architect)

1940 May 10 Churchill officially takes office as Prime Minister.

1940 May 11 Great Britain begins bombing the civilian population in Germany. (Sturdza)

1940 May 13 Churchill speaks in Parliament telling Britons that he has nothing to offer but "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" in the relentless fight against Nazi Germany. In this and many subsequent addresses, Churchill helps rally his country against what he describes as a mortal threat to world civilization.

1940 May 13 The Germans establish a bridgehead at Sedan, long considered the gateway to France.

1940 May 13 The Dutch government and Queen Wilhelmina flee to England.

1940 May 14 Rotterdam is heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe.

1940 May 15 Holland surrenders to the Germans at 11AM.

1940 May 15 British Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding convinces the War Cabinet not to send any more RAF fighter aircraft to France. The decision is also made to send a strategic bombing raid against the Ruhr.

1940 May 15 Churchill begins sending a long series of telegrams to President Roosevelt asking for American aid. In his first message, which he signs as "Former Naval Person," Churchill presents a long list of requests for destroyers, aircraft and other arms.

1940 May 16 Hitler's German blitzkrieg is unleashed on northern France. German mechanized forces outflanked the Maginot Line, surprising the Allies by attacking through the rugged Ardennes Forest rather than the Belgian plain as expected.

1940 May 16 Goering's special train is parked at a railroad siding near the French border. He will direct the air war against France from this location. (Duffy)

1940 May 16 The first deportations of German Gypsies begins. Chosen for the first roundup are some 2,800 men, women, and children living in and around cities in western and northwestern Germany. Their ultimate destination is Poland. No more deportations of Gypsies will occur until late 1941. (Apparatus)

1940 May 17 Brussels is occupied by the Germans.

1940 May 17 General Halder writes in his diary, "The Führer is terribly nervous. He is frightened by his own success, is unwilling to take any risks and is trying to hold us back." (Payne)

1940 May 17-18 Hitler names Arthur Seyss-Inquart as chief executive of the Netherlands. His first order is to arrest all German refugees who had come to the Netherlands since 1933. After 10 days in a concentration camp, most are transported to Poland. (Architect)

1940 May 18 Tyler Kent, a clerk in the U.S. Embassy in London with access to correspondence between Churchill and Roosevelt, is arrested and has his diplomatic immunity waived by the U.S. ambassador. Allegedly, he had passed along this information to members of the Right Club, a pro-Fascist organization, which forwarded it to Germany through Italian diplomats.

1940 May 19 Horia Sima is arrested in Romania.

1940 May 20 German units capture the French cities of Amiens and Abbeville. Advance forces reach the coast at Noyelles, threatening to cut off the British and French forces to the north and east.

1940 May 21 The first German troops reach the Atlantic coast at the port of Abbeville. France is now count in two, with a large portion of its army and the BEF, which is actually almost the entire British army, cut off and surrounded.

1940 May 21 Admiral Raeder mentions to Hitler for the first time that it may be necessary to invade Britain. Hitler shows so little interest that the subject is not addressed at their next meeting on June 4. (Duffy)

1940 May 22 Churchill meets with the French in Paris to discuss an Allied offensive. In Britain, Parliament passes an Emergency Powers Act giving the government broad powers over British citizens and their property.

1940 May 23 Sir Oswald Mosley, the former leader of the British Union of Fascists, is arrested. Also arrested is Captain Ramsay, a member of Parliament, who has connections with the Right Club. (See May 18)

1940 May 23 British generals begin considering an evacuation by sea from the channel ports.

1940 May 23 Goering telephones Hitler and tells him it would be a political mistake to allow the German generals to destroy the Allied army at Dunkirk. Many of the generals were suspected of being unfriendly to the Nazi Party, Goering said, while the Luftwaffe was a true National Socialist fighting force. Goering then promised Hitler the Luftwaffe would wipe out the enemy troops at Dunkirk and have its "finest hour." (Duffy)

1940 May 24 British destroyers evacuate 5,000 men from the port of Boulogne.

1940 May 24 French leaders begin to admit that the war is lost.

1940 May 24 By morning, three panzer divisions and two motorized infantry divisions are within 15 miles of Dunkirk. Hitler orders the halt of Rundstedt's armored forces. Whether Hitler actually ordered the halt or merely approved Rundstedt's request is still a matter of controversy.

(Note: Earlier that same day Hitler had visited Rundstedt's headquarters and expressed his desire to come to term with the British. Rundstedt told him he wanted to temporarily stop the advance to regroup and prepare for what he saw as the more important task, the turn south and the conquest of the rest of France. On returning to his mountaintop headquarters, Hitler issued a stream of orders halting the advance of every unit now moving toward Dunkirk.) (Duffy)

(Note: After the war, Rundstedt blamed Hitler alone for the halt, telling an interrogator, "At that moment (with panzers less than 20 miles from Dunkirk) a sudden telephone call came from Colonel von Grieffenberg at OKH (Army High Command), saying that Kleist's forces were to halt on the line of the (Aa) canal. It was the Fuehrer's direct order -- and contrary to General Halder's view. I questioned it in a message of protest, but received a curt telegram in relpy, saying, "The armored divisions are to remain at medium artillery range from Dunkirk" (a distance of eight or nine miles). Permission is only granted for reconnaissance and protective movements." (Hart)

1940 May 24 General von Kleist disobeys orders and crosses the Aa Canal. His forces enter the town of Hazelbrouck, cuts the British and French lines of retreat from Belgium to Dunkirk, and barely misses capturing the commander of the BEF, General Lord Gort. Kleist was told in emphatic terms to return to the opposite side of the canal, which he did. (Duffy)

1940 May 25 King Leopold of the Belgians surrenders.

1940 May 26 The British issue orders for Operation Dynamo, the evacuation from Dunkirk.

1940 May 27 The British and French begin evacuating Dunkirk. The French, after learning of the scope of the operation, feel they are being abandoned.

1940 May 28 The evacuation at Dunkirk picks up momentum.

1940 May 28 Belgium surrenders to the Germans. King Leopold orders his troops to cease all resistance and lay down their arms in unconditional surrender.

1940 May 28 British and French troops succeed in seizing Narvik, Norway, after a month-long battle.

1940 May 29 Arthur Seyss-Inquart takes office as Reich Commissioner for Holland.

1940 May 29 The French begin allowing their troops to be evacuated from Dunkirk, even sending several ships of their own to assist.

1940 May 30 German panzer forces begin to withdraw from the line at Dunkirk and move to take up positions further to the south. During the next three days, 185,000 men (more than half of the total number evacuated from Dunkirk) will escape.

1940 May 31 President Roosevelt introduces a "billion-dollar defense program" to boost U.S. military strength.

1940 May Karl Maria Weisthor (Wiligut) moves to Goslar, which has figured so prominently in his vision of Germany's ancient past. He and his housekeeper reside at the Wederhof until 1943 when they move to a small SS guesthouse on the Worthersee in Carinthia. They spent the rest of the war in Austria. (Mund; Roots)

(Note: Ernst Junger had lived in Goslar from 1933 to 1936)

1940 June A paper by Professor Lorenz, "Disturbances of species-specific behaviour caused by domestication," appears. He writes: "There is a certain similarity between the measures which need to be taken when we draw a broad biological analogy between bodies and malignant tumours, on the one hand, and a nation and individuals within it who have become asocial because of their defective constitution, on the other hand... Any attempt at reconstruction using elements which have lost their proper nature and characteristics is doomed to failure. Fortunately, the elimination of such elements is easier for the public health physician and less dangerous for the supra-individual organism, than such an operation by a surgeon would be for the individual organism." (Science)

1940 June 4 At 0340 (3:40AM), the last evacuation ship departs from Dunkirk, leaving 40,000 French stragglers to be captured by the Germans. Official figures state that 338,226 troops were evacuated, of which 112,000 were French. There were also Czechs, Poles and Belgians among those evacuated.

(Note: Churchill turned Dunkirk, which was in reality an unmitigated defeat for the British and French forces, into a propaganda victory to prevent the British people from learning the true extent of the disaster. More than 64,000 vehicles, tanks, and trucks, along with 500,000 tons of arms, ammunition and supplies were left behind. The Allies got away with virtually nothing but the shirts on their backs.) (Duffy)

1940 June 4 The Allies begin evacuating their troops in Norway.

1940 June 5 The Germans launch another offensive southward from the Somme in France.

1940 June 5 General de Gaulle is appointed French Undersecretary of War.

1940 June 5 General Erhard Milch, Goering's deputy, inspects the beach at Dunkirk and rushes back to report to Goering, telling him that, "I recommend that this very day all our air units -- both the Second and Third Air Forces -- should be moved up the Channel coast, and that Britain should be invaded immediately. If we leave the British in peace for four weeks it will be too late." (Irving II)

1940 June 6 The Germans break the French line along the Somme between Amiens and the coast.

1940 June 7 French fighter planes bomb Berlin.

1940 June 7 The King of Norway leaves Tromso aboard the British cruiser Devonshire and is taken to England.

1940 June 9 The German conquest of Norway is completed and the Allies withdraw their remaining troops.

1940 June 9 The King of Norway and his government order all Norwegian forces to cease fighting at midnight.

1940 June 10 Mussolini declares war on Britain and France.

1940 June 10 Italian troops invade southern France. President Roosevelt describes Mussolini's invasion as a "stab in the back."

1940 June 10 French Prime Minister Reynaud appeals to President Roosevelt to intervene in the war in Europe.

1940 June 11 Cardinal Eugene Tisserant,a high official of the Vatican library, writes to Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris, that "our superiors do not want to understand the real nature of this conflict." Tisserant says he has pleaded with Pope Pius XII, without success, to issue an encyclical, but "I fear that history will reproach the Holy See with having practiced a policy of selfish convenience and not much else." (BA Koblenz; Lewy)

1940 June 11 Paris is declared an "open city." What remains of the French army retreats south of the Seine.

1940 June 11 Churchill returns to France and meets Reynaud at Briare. The British are determined not to allow the Germans to capture the French fleet and are prepared to use force against their ally.

1940 June 12 The Soviets issue an ultimatum to Lithuania demanding territory and the establishment of a new government.

1940 June 13 Roosevelt subverts the U.S. Neutrality Laws by having shipments of artillery and arms "sold" to a steel company and then "resold" to the British government. The first shipment leaves the U.S. on the S.S. Eastern Prince.

1940 June 13 In Romania, Horia Sima is liberated and granted an audience with King Carol.

1940 June 13 French Prime Minister Reynaud once again appeals to Roosevelt to intervene, again without success.

1940 June 14 Paris is declared an "open city." General von Bock, commander of Army Group B, flies into the city and is standing at the Arc de Triomphe " just in time to take the salute of the first combat troops. It is a parade, not a battle. The German army quickly occupies Paris. (Toland)

1940 June 14 The Vatican's semiofficial newspaper L'Osservatore Romano announces it will no longer publish military reports. From this time on it will adhere to a strictly neutral line. (Lewy)

1940 June 14 Auschwitz is set up as a punishment camp for Polish political prisoners. 300 Jewish forced laborers are brought in to prepare the old barracks. (Atlas)

1940 June 15 The Soviets occupy Lithuanian cities of Vilna and Kaunas.

1940 June 15 Himmler names Oscar Dirlewanger as Obersturmfuhrer in the Waffen-SS, authorizing him to collect poachers from German prisons to serve as manhunters on Germany's eastern border. (Architect)

1940 June 16 A new government, controlled by the Soviets, is installed in Lithuania. Latvia and Estonia are also occupied.

1940 June 16 The French ask Britain to be released from its obligation not to make a separate peace. A British offer to establish a state of union between the two countries is rejected by the French. Paul Reynaud is forced to resign as Prime Minister and Marshal Philippe Petain is chosen to replace him. The French government requests an armistice and the Battle of France is over.

1940 June 17 The Petain Cabinet takes office and publicly announces it has asked Germany for an armistice.

1940 June 17 Churchill broadcasts a message declaring that the Battle of France is over and the Battle of Britain is about to begin, saying, "if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say: This was their finest hour."

1940 June 17 French representatives in the U.S. allow the British to take up arms orders they have placed under the "Cash and Carry" rules.

1940 June 17 General Warlimont, Jodl's assistant at OKW, records that Hitler had not yet expressed interest in invading Britain. "Therefore even at this time, no preparatory work has been carried out at OKW. (Fleming II)

1940 June 18 General de Gaulle flees to London and attempts to rally the Free French resistance. De Gaulle issues a radio appeal for the French nation to resist and to continue the struggle.

1940 June 18 The RAF bombs Bremen and Hamburg.

1940 June 20 A new government, controlled by the Soviets, is installed in Estonia.

1940 June 20 The French delegation leaves for Compiegne to begin armistice negotiations with the Germans.

1940 June 20 Admiral Raeder again brings up the invasion of Britain. Again Hitler fails to respond. (Duffy)

1940 June 20 A new government, controlled by the Soviets, is installed in Latvia.

1940 June 22 France signs an armistice with Nazi Germany near Compiegne. As a touch of bitter irony, the Germans arrange for the signing to take place on the same spot and aboard the same railway car used by the French for the armistice of November 11, 1918.

1940 June 23 Hitler makes a brief tour of occupied Paris.

1940 June 23 Pierre Laval is appointed Deputy Premier by Petain. General Weygand cashiers General de Gaulle.

1940 June 24 An armistice is concluded between France and Italy.

1940 June 24 Reinhard Heydrich writes to Ribbentrop, reminding him that in January 1939 Goering had entrusted him (Heydrich) with authority over Jewish emigration. Since there were now 3.5 million Jews under German control, emigration could no longer provide a solution: "a territorial final solution is therefore necessary." (Architect)

1940 June 25 The Franco-German armistice takes effect. Two-thirds of France now comes under Nazi control.

1940 June 25 Increased income taxes are introduced in the U.S. to pay for Roosevelt's armament expenditures and bring in an additional 2.2 million people who never before had been required to pay income taxes.

1940 June 25 A new Romanian government is set up in Bucharest and several Legionaries are given appointments to minor positions.

1940 June 25 General Hans Jeschonnek, chief of the German air staff, is asked by the OKW to help prepare invasion plans for Britain. He refuses, telling them, "There won't be any invasion, and I have no time to waste on planning one." (Irving III)

1940 June 26 The Soviets issue an ultimatum to Romania to evacuate Bessarabia within four days. King Carol complies. The Soviets, coveting Romania's substantial oil resources,seize Bessarabia and part of Bucovina.

1940 Raczkiewicz moves the Polish government-in-exile from France to London after the defeat of France.

1940 June 28 General Charles de Gaulle is recognized by Britain as the "Leader of All Free Frenchmen."

1940 June 30 The Germans begin occupying the British Channel Islands.

1940 Summer The Kreisau Circle, an anti-Nazi group led by Count Helmuth von Moltke, is founded to discuss the political, economic and spiritual foundations of Germany that would arise after the downfall of Hitler. Jesuits Augustinus Rösch and Alfred Delp are both active members. (Lewy)

1940 Summer Fritz Thyssen is arrested by the Germans in France and is later sent to a concentration camp. He will not be liberated until 1945. Meanwhile, his book, I Paid Hitler, is published in America.

1940 July Hitler, hoping that Britain would now accept German control of the Continent, again seeks peace. Again, Britain shuns his overtures. (Grolier)

1940 July Professor Lenz expresses his views on "euthanasia" in writing: "Detailed discussion of so-called euthanasia... can easily lead to confusion about whether or not we are really dealing with a matter which affects the safeguarding of our hereditary endowment. I should like to prevent any such discussion. For, in fact, this matter is a purely humanitarian problem."

(Note: Between 1939 and 1941, Professor Lenz had proposed the following formulation for Article 2.1 of the proposed law on euthanasia "The life of a patient, who otherwise would need lifelong care, may be ended by medical measures of which he remains unaware.") (Science)

1940 July German-Jewish mental patients are murdered in the Brandenburg extermination institute. (Days)

1940 July 1 Roosevelt signs another Navy bill providing $550 million dollars to build ships and other projects.

1940 July 1 Hitler tells Italian Ambassador Dino Alfieri that he "could not concieve of anyone in England still seriously believing in victory." Hitler was still waiting for word that the British were willing to settle. (Shirer I)

1940 July 2 The German High Command issues an order entitled "The War Against England." Goering gives instructions for an air blockade and attacks on British shipping.

1940 July 3 A British task force under Admiral Somerville makes an attack on a large part of the French fleet at Oran, Algeria, to ensure that it will not fall into Axis hands. Unlike other French fleets, it had refused to submit to seizure by the British after the fall of France. More than 1,000 French sailors are killed and the battleship Befragne is sunk. Many French saw this as a perfidious act that killed more French sailors in a single day than the Germans had killed since the war began. (Duffy)

(Note: This combined with the fact that the Germans had discovered records from the Allied Supreme War Command in Paris indicating that the British air staff intended to use its newly developed long-range bombers to destroy the Ruhr industrial complex, home to 60% of German industry, convinced Hitler that Britain intended to stay in the war, no matter what.) (Duffy)

1940 July 3 Horia Sima agrees to participate in a new Romanian Government.

1940 July 4 A new Romanian Cabinet is formed with Gigurtu as prime minister and Manoilescu as foreign minister.

1940 July 5 Marshal Petain's Vichy government breaks off relations with Britain because of the attacks against the French navy at Oran and the seizure of many of its ships at Plymouth and Portsmouth.

1940 July 5 Romania adheres to the Axis system. It's policies are clearly pro-German and antisemitic.

1940 July 6 The first successful escape from Auschwitz is followed by a punitive 20-hour roll-call. (Atlas)

1940 July 7 Horia Sima resigns for the Romanian Cabinet after realizing, he says, just how cowardly King Carol is in dealing with the Soviets. (Sturdza)

1940 July 8 Hitler accepts Hans Frank's proposal that the Government General formally become part of the German Reich. (Architect)

1940 July 8 General de Gaulle criticizes the numerous British attacks on French ships during the past week.

1940 July 10 The German Ambassador in Lisbon informs Berlin that the Duke of Windsor believes that the bombing of England would help bring about a negotiated peace with Germany.

1940 July 10 The Battle of Britain, the first great air battle in history, begins. Several actions take over the channel and 70 German planes raid dock targets in South Wales. (WWIIDBD)

1940 July 10 The French National Assembly, dazed by defeat and maneuvered by Vice-Premier Pierre Laval, meets in the resort town of Vichy and votes 569 to 80 to grant Premier Henri Philippe Petain full emergency and constitution-making power. (Vichy France attempts to consummate a "National Revolution" of a corporate nature -- eliminating divisive political party and class strife, encouraging family growth and cohesion, and favoring church and patriotic organizations. Under pressure from the Germans, antisemitic measures are gradually enacted and reluctantly enforced.)

1940 July 11 French President Lebrun resigns and MarshalPetain becomes head of state after an overwhelming vote of confidence in the Vichy Parliament.

1940 July 11-24 The Luftwaffe makes a seres of attacks against shipping in the English Channel. The Germans lose a total of 93 aircraft, the British 48.

1940 July 13 Hitler issues Directive 15 on the air war with Britain. The offensive is to begin at full strength on August 5, with the intention of driving the RAF from the skies.

1940 July 14 Facilities using forced (slave) labor in the production of synthetic rubber and gasoline begin operation at Auschwitz. (Chaitkin)

1940 July 15 Plebiscites conducted in Soviet occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are announced, showing what is described as a unanimous desire for union with the USSR. Stalin soon annexes the three nations into the USSR as constituent republics.

1940 July 16 Hitler issues Directive #16 concerning the invasion of Great Britain. "I have decided to begin to prepare for, and if necessary to carry out, an invasion of England," Hitler says, stressing the importance of air superiority in this regard.

1940 July 19 Hitler creates twelve new German field marshals.

1940 July 19 In a speech in the Reichstag Hitler issues what he describes as "a final appeal to common sense," urging that Britain make peace.

1940 July 19 General Brooke replaces General Ironside as the Commander in Chief, of British Home Forces.

1940 July 19 Roosevelt signs the "Two-Ocean Navy Expansion Act," ordering construction of 1.3 million tons of new warships and 15,000 naval planes.

1940 July 21 Hitler tells the Military High Command that Germany must prepare to attack the Soviet Union.

1940 July 22 Lord Halifax, British Foreign Secretary, replies to Hitler's call for peace. Saying, "We shall not stop fighting till freedom for ourselves and others is secure."

1940 July 23 A Czechoslovakian provisional government is formed in London. Edouard Benes is recognized by the British as president.

1940 July 24 The Sacred Congregation of the Holy See in Rome rules that Catholic nurses in state-run hospitals may assist in sterilization operations if a sufficiently important reason is present. (Lewy)

1940 1940 July 25 The U.S. prohibits the export of oil and metal products in several categories except under license.This action is seen by many as anti-Japanese, because of Japan's need for foreign oil. From this time on, Japanese oil stocks begin to decline.

1940 July 29 German Jews are forbidden to have telephones in their homes. (Persecution)

1940 July-August Dr. Jaspersen of Bethel attempts to persuade the heads of departments of psychiatry in German universities to make a collective protest against euthanasia. These professors make no move. Professor Ewald remains an isolated protester. (Science)

1940 August The Luftwaffe begins mounting almost daily attacks on British ports, airfields, and industrial centers in southern England. Strict orders from Hitler forbid attacking civilian targets, especially London. (Duffy)

(Note: The Germans have a total force of 900 fighters, mostly Messerschmitt BF-109s, and 1,300 bombers. The RAF has much smaller forces, about 650 Hurricanes and Spitfires, but newly developed radar enables it to concentrate its defenses.) (Grolier)

1940 August Gross-Rosen concentration camp is established by the SS in Silesia.

1940 August Mussolini's troops overruns British Somaliland, defended only by a small British garrison. Mussolini has made no secret of his desire to construct a huge Mediterranean empire at the expense of Britain. His plan is to move one army northward from Italian East Africa and send a second army eastward into Egypt from Libya. He hopes to catch the British in an African vise and eliminate them from the Mediterranean.

1940 August 1 Hitler issues Directive #17 for the invasion of Britain.

1940 August 1 The Duke of Windsor and his wife depart Lisbon for the Bahamas aboard the steamship Excalibur. Windsor becomes Governor of the Bahamas.

1940 August 3 Horia Sima and other Legionaries have an audience with King Carol and tell him that only a Legionary government can save Romania from destruction by the Soviet Union.

1940 August 3 Hitler tells the new German ambassador to Paris, Otto Abetz, that he wants to resolve the Jewish problem for all of Europe and that he wants to force the conquered countries (and persuade Germany's allies) to send their Jewish citizens away, not to Madagascar, but to the United States. (Architect)

1940 August 5 The first operational plan for the German invasion of the Soviet Union is presented to General Halder, Chief of Staff of the Military High Command.

1940 August 8 The Luftwaffe attacks on England begin in earnest.

1940 August 11 Cardinal Bertram issues an official protest from the German bishops concerning the Euthanasia Decree to the Reich Chancellery. Such destruction of the innocent, he wrote, not only violated the Christian moral law, but offended against the moral sense of the German people and threatened to jeopardize the reputation of Germany in the world. (Lewy)

1940 August 12 The Luftwaffe launches a large-scale bombing attack on six British radar facilities. Radar had become important to the British because it enabled them to spot incoming bombers at great distances and alert the fighter squadrons to meet them. In this first surprise raid, five radar facilities were damaged and one destroyed. (Duffy)

1940 August 13 Goebbels issues orders to the Gauleiters to organize memorial ceremonies for fallen soldiers in order to overcome the influence and activities of the churches in this sphere. Until now, Goebbels said, certain restraints had had to be observed. Now, after the victorious conclusion of the war with France, the offensive could again be taken.

1940 August 13 Almost 1,500 German planes sweep across the English Channel and attack Britain. (Duffy)

1940 August 14 Bad weather reduces the number of German fighters attacking Britain to 500. (Duffy)

1940 August 15 By the end of the day, a total of 190 German planes had been lost in the last three days. The British have lost 115 in the same period. (Gilbert II)

1940 August 16 RAF Fighter Command has now fallen 209 pilots below "minimum acceptable strength." Life expectancy of a British fighter pilot is less than 87 flying hours. Exhaustion takes such a heavy toll on the survivors that many of them routinely fall asleep as they taxi their aircraft to a stop. It is not uncommon for ground crews to remove a sleeping pilot from his plane when he returns from combat. (Collier)

1940 August 17 The RAF bombs German armament plants at Leuna. A number of German civilians are again killed in the attack.

1940 August 18 Hitler tells Vidkun Quisling, "I now find myself forced against my will to fight this war against Britain. I find myself in the same position as Martin Luther, who had just as little desire to fight Rome but was left with no alternative." (Irving III; Duffy)

1940 August 20 Churchill pays tribute to the RAF, saying,"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

1940 August 20 Sugehara, the Japanese Consul at Kovno in eastern Russia, begins issuing transit visas to a few Polish and Lithuanian Jews, enabling them to cross the Trans-Siberian railway to Japan. He continues to issue visas to Jews until August 31. (Atlas)

1940 August 21 Leon Trotsky is assassinated by an agent of Stalin's secret police at his fortified villa near Mexico City. (Facts about the assassination are kept secret in the Soviet Union until January 1989)

1940 August 23-24 12 German bombers, unable to locate their targets during an unusual night attack, scatter their bombs aimlessly on South London despite strict orders from Hitler forbidding attacks on civilian targets, especially the city of London. Nine civilians are killed. In retaliation British bombers will attack Berlin several times during the following weeks. (WWIIDBD; Duffy)

1940 August 24-29 British bombing raids on the civilian population of Berlin cause negligible damage and slight loss of life in the German capital, but the loss of face greatly angers and embarrasses Hitler. (Duffy;Grolier)

1940 August 24 The Luftwaffe begins attacking further inland, seeking to destroy RAF bases and production centers.

1940 August 28 The Luftwaffe launches the first of a series of four air raids on Liverpool. About 160 aircraft are sent each night.

1940 August 30 The Arbitration of Vienna transfers half of Romanian Transylvania to Hungary, and part of the province of Dobruja to Bulgaria. Hitler had been concerned that these territorial disputes among the Balkan nations might give the Soviets an opportunity for further intervention.

1940 September President Roosevelt announces that the U.S. is not going to war and disbands the War Resources Board shortly before the election of 1940.

1940 September The first peacetime draft law in U.S. history calls for the registration of 17 million men.

1940 September German Army Bishop Rarkowski issues a pastoral letter to the armed forces saying, "The German people, who for one year now have been fighting against their detractors, have an untroubled conscience and know which nations before God and history are burdened with the responsibility for this gigantic struggle that is raging now. They also know who has wickedly provoked this war. They know that they themselves are fighting a just war, born of the necessity of national self-defense, out of the impossibility of solving peacefully a heavy and burdensome question of justice involving the very existence of the state and of correcting by other means a burning injustice inflicted upon us."

(Note: The average German soldier had no way of knowing whether Holland and Belgium had actually violated their neutrality, as alleged by the Nazi propagandists, and thus provoked the German attacks in May. Most took the word of their government and their priests.) (Lewy)

1940 September Between September 1940 and July 1941, the property of more than 100 monasteries is confiscated by the Germans and the monks and nuns expelled from their houses. (Neuhäusler; Lewy)

1940 September 1 Horia Sima broadcasts a demand for the abdication of Romania's King Carol.

1940 September 2 An agreement between the U.S. and Britain is ratified. The U.S. exchanges 50 old destroyers, veterans of WWI, for British bases in the West Indies and Bermuda. The first ship is taken over by a British crew on September 9.

1940 September 3 The operational orders for Operation Sealion, the invasion of Britain, are issued. S-Day is scheduled for September 21.

1940 September 3 The Legionary Revolution breaks out at 9AM in Romania. Fighting in Bucharest, Brasov and Constanta results in the death of nine Legionaries. Most public buildings are quickly occupied and the Palace is surrounded. General Coroama, Commander of the Bucharest Army Corps, refuses to order his troops to fire on the Legionaries. (Sturdza)

1940 September 4 Hitler warns that if the British continue to bomb Berlin, he will have no choice but to level their cities. (Payne; Duffy)

1940 September 5 RAF Fighter Command has lost 450 planes to date and is close to defeat. At this point, Hitler and Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering, infuriated by the British bombing raids (August 24-29) on Berlin, decide to concentrate their air attacks on London.

1940 September 5-6 King Carol of Romania abdicates in favor of his son, Prince Michael and leaves the country after passing part of his royal powers to Ion Antonescu. Hitler is said to have forced the king's abdication.

1940 September 5-6 In Berlin, Prince Michael Sturdza meets with Admiral Canaris and Ribbentrop.

1940 September 7 In the afternoon, 300 German bombers escorted by 600 fighters attack the London docks. This change in tactics surprises the RAF and the bombing is very effective. That night, 250 German bombers use the still blazing fires to guide in their attacks, and again, the damage is quite severe.

(Note: Once the initial surprise is over, and with its defense task somewhat simplified, the RAF soon begins to inflict heavy losses on the German bomber formations. For 57 nights London is attacked by an average force of 160 bombers. The RAF, employing the fast and maneuverable Spitfire fighter, and aided by radar, destroys 1,733 German aircraft, while losing 915 fighters.)

1940 September 9 About 200 well escorted German bombers make another raid on London. Intercepted by the RAF, many drop their bombs before reaching the target.

1940 September 13 Mussolini moves an army of Italians and North African troops across the Libyan border, establishing themselves about 60 miles inside Egypt.

1940 September 13 Himmler meets in Berlin with Viktor Brack, section chief in Hitler's Chancellery responsible for running the "euthanasia" program. After the war, Brack told American interrogators that the physical destruction of the Jews was already an "open secret" in high party circles, as early as 1940, although he had "in no case heard anything officially." (Architect)

1940 September 13 Italian troops from Ethiopia penetrate about 20 miles inside Kenya.

1940 September 14 A formal understanding between the Romanian Legionary Movement and General Ion Antonescu is sanctioned by King Michael and a National Legionary State is proclaimed. Ion Antonescu becomes President; Horia Sima, Vice President and Commandant of the Legionary Movement and Prince Michael Sturdza, Minister of Foreign Affairs.

1940 September 15 The climax of the Battle of Britain begins.

1940 September 17 General Paulus, Deputy Chief of the Army General Staff, presents a plan for a massive attack on the Soviet Union.

1940 September 25 Terboven, the Reich Commissioner of Norway, formally deposes the King and appoints Quisling to lead the new Norwegian government.

1940 September 27/28 Germany, Italy and Japan sign a 10-year military and economic alliance, the Tripartite Pact, known as the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis. Hitler regards Japan as a buffer against the U.S.and distraction for the USSR. Japan takes advantage of the situation and quickly occupies northern French Indochina (Vietnam).

1940 October By early October the Luftwaffe has switched entirely to night raids on London. By the end of the month, Hitler cancels his plan for the invasion of England and the Battle of Britain has been won.

1940 October Norwegian Jews are forbidden to continue in all academic or other professions by the Nazi authorities. Fortunately, there were none of the killings, beatings, forced labor and expulsions which had become daily events in occupied Poland. (Atlas)

1940 October A wall is built around the area of Warsaw designated by the Germans for a Jewish ghetto. Jews are forced not only to build the wall, but also to pay for it. The Warsaw ghetto becomes the largest ghetto established by the Germans in Poland. The section of the city chosen for the ghetto was already home to 280,000 Jews. (Atlas)

1940 October 4 A new law gives Vichy France the power to intern Jews even outside the Unoccupied Zone. (Atlas)

1940 October 6 Antonescu assumes command of the Iron Guard, strengthening his position in Romania.

1940 October 7 German troops enter Romania, supposedly to help reorganize its army. Hitler's main aim is to protect its oil fields. (Goebbels)

1940 October 7 The Germans order all Jews in occupied France to register immediately with its authorities.

1940 October 12 Operation Sea Lion, the planned German invasion of Britain, is abandoned by Hitler.

1940 October 22 The German government deports more than 15,000 German Jews from the Rhineland to several internment camps in France, at the foot of the Pyrenees. Conditions in the camps, result in the deaths of nearly 2,000 deportees. (Atlas)

1940 October 23 Hitler meets with Franco at Hendaye.

1940 October 24 Hitler meets General Petain at Montoire.

1940 October 27 290 Jews, old people, cripples and the mentally ill from the Old Peoples Home in Kalisz, Poland, are put in a truck, taken just outside of town to the woods at Winiary, and gassed inside the truck with exhaust fumes. All 290 are buried in the woods. (Atlas)

1940 October 28 Mussolini unexpectedly and without warning attacks Greece, sending 200,000 troops through Albania.

1940 October 28 A second escape from Auschwitz results in a rollcall from 12 noon to 9PM in bitter weather, during which 200 prisoners die. (Atlas)

1940 October 28 Himmler inspects Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Silesia. (Architect)

1940 November 6 Roosevelt is reelected President of the U.S.

1940 November 6 Cardinal Faulhaber submits a letter of protest to Minister of Justice Gürtner. Faulhaber wrote that despite all attempts at secrecy, everyone now knew that large numbers of patients were being killed in the course of a compulsory euthanasia program. The killing of these innocent people, Faulhaber ended his letter, raised a moral issue which could not be ignored. (Lewy)

1940 November 9 Neville Chamberlain dies after a sudden illness.

1940 November 9 According to Goebbel's diary, Hitler's annual speech on the Day of National Solidarity (Blutzeuge) is "directed exclusively on the domestic population and finds little support." (Goebbels)

1940 November 11 The British Mediterranean Fleet attacks the Italian naval base at Taranto. British aircraft inflict heavy losses during the night on the Italian fleet.

1940 November 12 Molotov arrives more meetings in Berlin and begins making demands.

1940 November 12 Joseph Goebbels writes in his diary: "Long talks on vegetarianism and the coming religion with Hitler. The fuehrer is totally consistent in this question and has all the arguments at his disposal." (Goebbels)

1940 November 14 Romania's Legionary (Iron Guard) government asks Germany for two tank units, which are immediately sent by Hitler along with instructors to train their Romanian crews. Mussolini protests and suggests that Romania also should ask for Italian troops. Romanian declines.

1940 November 14 A German air raid damages much of Coventry, England.

1940 November 15 The Warsaw Ghetto officially comes into existence.

1940 November 16 The Warsaw ghetto is sealed. It's ten-foots walls and guarded gates enclose nearly half a million Jews. (Apparatus)

1940 November 16 The Greeks, with little mechanized equipment and an obsolete air force, turn back the Italian invaders and penetrate into Albania. Mussolini, expecting a speedy and overwhelming victory, is embarrassed by the failure of the poorly planned invasion.

1940 November 19 King Leopold of the Belgians visits with Hitler.

1940 November 20 Antonescu and Sturdza arrive in Berlin.

1940 November 20 Hungarian Prime Minister Count Teleki and Foreign Minister Csaky in Vienna agree to bring Hungary into the Tripartite Pact.

1940 November 23 Antonescu not Sturdza signs the Tripartite Pact that brings Romania into the Axis Alliance. Hitler, at the same time, begins efforts to bring Bulgaria and Yugoslavia into the Axis orbit.

1940 November 24 Prime Minister Tuka of the German puppet state of Slovakia joins the Tripartite Pact powers in a meeting in Berlin. Antonescu departs Berlin.

1940 November 30 Romanian Foreign Minister Sturdza leaves Berlin.

1940 December General Petain replaces Vichy France's independent-minded Vice-Premier, Pierre Laval, with Admiral Jean Darlan.

1940 December Emanuel Ringelblum begins compiling a secret archive of Jewish life in the Warsaw ghetto.

1940 December 9 The British launch a surprise attack on the Italians in the western desert and begin a push to drive them from Egypt.

1940 December 10 The British capture Sidi Barrani. 20,000 prisoners have been taken so far in the Egyptian offensive.

1940 December 13 Hitler issues Directive #20 ordering additional planning and preparation for Operation Marita, the invasion of Greece.

1940 December 13 A small British force already in Libya cuts the road to Bardia, an important Italian position.

1940 December 15 Prince Michael Sturdza is forced to resign as Romanian Foreign Minister after a conflict with Antonescu.

1940 December 15 The British invade Italian Libya in force.

1940 December 17 President Roosevelt gives a press conference announcing a "Lend-Lease" Bill, proposing massive aid for Great Britain in its war against Germany. Many, including the Germans, view this as a clear violation of American neutrality.

1940 December 17 British troops occupy Fort Capuzzo, Sollum and three other Italian positions on the Egypt-Libyan border. Italian survivors retreat to Bardia fortress.

1940 December 18 Hitler issues Directive #21 for the invasion of the Soviet Union, code-named Operation Barbarossa. Hitler orders that everything must be concluded no later than May 15, 1941.

1940 December 20 New antisemitic laws are introduced in Bulgaria. Other measures against Freemasons and secret societies are also instituted. The Jewish population of Bulgaria at this time is about 50,000.

1940 December 22 New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia announces that in the preceding six months 238 arrests have been made in N.Y. for inflammatory and antisemitic street speeches as well as other disturbances.

1940 December 23 Lord Halifax becomes British ambassador to the U.S. Anthony Eden takes over as Foreign Secretary, and David Margesson, Secretary of War (Army Minister).

1940 December 27 The German raider Komet shells a phosphate plant on the island of Naru in the central Pacific while flying a Japanese flag.

1940 December 29 President Roosevelt, in one of his famous "fireside" chats, tells the American people that he wishes the United States to become the "arsenal of democracy" and to give full aid to Britain regardless of threatss from other countries. (WWIIDBD)

1940 Charlie Chaplin, in his first talking film, "The Great Dictator," plays both the "Little Tramp" and a figure modelled after Hitler.

1941 January More than 2000 Jews die of starvation in the Warsaw ghetto.Between January and June 1941, 13,000 Jews will die of starvation in the Warsaw ghetto and another 5,000 in the ghetto at Lodz. (Atlas)

1941 January Industrialist Fritz Thyssen claims that Hitler is the illegitimate grandson of Baron Rothschild of Vienna. Hans-Jurgen Koehler collaborates this story in a top secret OSS report written in 1943. Even though unlikely, possible choices are: Salomon Mayer Rothschild (1774-1885, 62 in 1836) and Amschel Salomon Rothschild (1803-1874, 33 in 1836. Amschel Salomon lived in Frankfurt until 1850) (Langer)

1941 January Himmler meets with twelve high-ranking SS generals at Wewelsburg castle. Himmler claims that the purpose of the coming war with Russia is to reduce the indigenous population by thirty million, presumably to provide living space for German settlers. (Architect)

1941 January Ezra Pound, an admirer of Mussolini, begins recording talks for broadcast over Rome Radio. He makes more than 300 broadcasts for the Fascists.

1941 January Hitler advises Antonescu to "liquidate" the Romanian Legionary Movement and German forces are soon ordered to help crush the Legionaries.

1941 January 1 Another 439 old and sick Jewsfrom the Old Peoples Home in Kalisz, Poland, are gassed wiith exhaust fumes in the nearby woods. (Atlas)

1941 January 6 President Roosevelt calls for the "Four Freedoms" in his State of the Union address to Congress, again referring to America as the "arsenal" of democracy.

1941 January 7 Himmler writes to Seyss-Inquart, inviting him to Wewelsburg castle to discuss "Many important and ultimate matters." (Architect)

1941 January 10 The "Lend-Lease" Bill is introduced to the U.S. Congress, where it encounters considerable opposition. Former ambassador Joseph Kennedy and Charles Lindbergh are vocal opponents.

1941 January 15 Hitler meets with Antonescu at Salzburg and and informs him of his intention to invade Russia with Romanian collaboration. Antonescu tells Hitler that first he must liquidate the Legionary Movement, but neglects to ask for more than just a promise of additional aid, armaments, and war materiels. (Sturdza)

1941 January 19 The British invade Eritrea in East Africa.

1941 January 21 Antonescu stages a coup against his own government. A number of Legionaries are killed, but they continue to hold out in some places.

1941 January 22 The German Charge d'Affaires in Romania Dr. Neubacher, gives Horia Sima a solemn promise from both Hitler and Antonescu of complete impunity for Legionaries, and suggests participation in a new government, if resistance ends before noon on January 23. (Sturdza)

1941 January 22 In Bulgaria, A "Law for the Defense of the Nation" gives Jews one month to leave all public posts, and forces almost all Jewish doctors, dentists and lawyers to give up their practices. A special tax was imposed on all Jewish homes, shops and other property, amounting to 25% of its value. (Atlas)

1941 January 22 Tobruk falls to British forces.

1941 January 23 In Bucharest, Legionary resistance ends before 8AM, and in the provinces, prior to 11AM. Nevertheless, Antonescu's forces stage a massacre of peaceful crowds in Bucharest. At least 360 are killed including many women and children. No Legionaries are killed, they have already peacefully withdrawn on Sima's orders, as agreed. Trials and executions of other Legionaries are commonplace until June. (Sturdza)

1941 January 22-23 Antisemitic violence in Bucharest leaves 120 Jews dead in the streets. Men, women and children are hunted down by armed gangs. Some survivors flee to Palestine (See March 9). (Atlas)

1941 January 27 Joseph C. Grew, American Ambassador to Tokyo, informs the U.S. State Department that "The Peruvian minister has informed a member of my staff that he had heard from many sources, including a Japanese source, that, in the event of trouble breaking out between the United States and Japan, the Japanese intended to make a surprise attack against Pearl Harbor..." (Theobold)

1941 January 30 Hitler, in a speech at the Berlin Sportpalast, reminds his audience of his prophecy concerning the fate of the Jews exactly two years earlier. He added that the coming months and years would show that here too he had seen things correctly... the end of the Jewish role in Europe. (Architect)

1941 February From February to March, 72,000 Jews are expelled from the towns throughout the Warsaw region and herded into the ghetto. Almost 400,000 Jews are now crowded into the Warsaw ghetto under the most appalling conditions. (Atlas)

1941 February Goering orders the expulsion of Jews from the city of Auschwitz to create housing for construction workers for the I.G. Farben factory. (Silence)

1941 February 2 According to Hitler's army adjutant, Gerhard Engel, Hitler tells a small group of intimates that he had been thinking of sending a couple million Jews to Madagascar but the war had prevented this; he was now thinking of something else, which "was not exactly friendlier." (Architect)

1941 February 6 Benghazi falls to British forces.

1941 February 8 Bulgaria joins the Axis Powers.

1941 February 10 Great Britain breaks off diplomatic relations with Romania.

1941 February 12 General Erwin Rommel arrives in Tripoli to take command of the German Afrika Korps.

1941 February 12 General Zhukov is appointed Chief of the Soviet General Staff and Deputy Commissar for Defense.

1941 February 14 The first units of what will be the Afrika Corps land in Tripoli. Field Marshal Kesselring is in Rome as the German representative.

1941 February 15 More than 5,000 Jews are deported from Vienna to forced labor camps on the Bug River and ghettos in eastern Poland. (Atlas)

1941 February 20 British and German patrols make contact for the first time in the desert, near El Agheila.

1941 February 21 Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, the former ambassador to the U.S., is dismissed from the Central Committee.

1941 February 22 More than 400 Jews are seized in Amsterdam and deported. Some die in Buchenwald, the rest in the stone quarries of Mauthausen. (Atlas)

1941 February 22 An order is issued stating that any Pole selling food to a Jew outside the Warsaw ghetto will automatically be sentenced to three months hard labor, and the ghetto ration is reduced to three ounces of bread a day. (Atlas)

1941 February 24 The first brief action between the British and Germans takes place near El Agheila.

1941 February 28 Senator Burton Wheeler in a speech in the Senate says Jews are attempting to involve America in the war against Germany.

1941 March Thousands of able-bodied Jews are rounded up in Upper Silesia and sent to work in German mining, metallurgical plants, textile mills, and factories in the region. (Atlas)

1941 March 1 Bulgaria signs the Tripartite Pact. German troops begin crossing Romanian territory to help the Italian army, which is in full route in the Balkans.

1941 March 1 Heinrich Himmler visits Auschwitz for the first time. Accompanied by Gauleiter Fritz Bracht and local senior police chiefs, Himmler orders the expansion on the camp so that it can accomodate 30,000 inmates, instead of the few thousand -- mainly poles -- who are imprisoned there at that time. (Silence)

1941 March 2 German troops enter Bulgaria.

1941 March 2 Himmler visits a resettlement facility for ethnic Germans in Breslau. "Racial experts" categorized the potential settlers as anything from "very valuable" to "reject." Rejects were sent back to their own countries or to concentration camps. (Architect)

1941 March 7 German Jews are forced into compulsory labor.

1941 March 9 A few survivors of the violence in Bucharest reach Palestine aboard the Darien. (See January 23). (Atlas)

1941 March 11 Prsident Roosevelt signs he U.S. Lend-Lease Bill and it becomes becomes law. A time limit is placed on the operation of the act -- until June 1943. A motion originally passed in the House forbidding U.S. warships to give protection to convoys of foreign ships is defeated. Also to be allowed are transfers of ships to other countries solely on Presidential authority without reference to Congress.

1941 March 12 President Roosevelt presents an appropriations bill for Lend-Lease to Congress for $7,000,000,000. It will pass into law on March 27. (WWIIDBD)

1941 March 13 Hitler issues a directive for the invasion of the Soviet Union, which gives administrative control of captured territory to the SS. (WWIIDBD)

1941 March 15 Many historians believe that plans for the systematic murder of the Jews was first decided on, or about, this date -- in preparation for the invasion of Russia. (Bauer)

(Others believe it was a response to the passage of Roosevelt's Lend-Lease Bill and the Nazis perception that this was a violation of America's neutality, inspired by an international Jewish conspiracy.) (See March 26)

1941 March 16 The British invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

1941 March 17 A Military putsch takes place in Belgrade.

1941 March 17 Hans Frank meets with Hitler in his private rooms in the Reich Chancellery. Hitler tells him that the Government General will be the first territory to be made free of Jews. (Architect)

1941 March 20 The German deadline for all Jews to be inside the Polish ghettos expires.

1941 March 21 Eichmann, in a meeting at the Propaganda Ministry, refers to Reinhard Heydrich as being in charge of the "final evacuation of the Jews" to the Government General. (Architect)

(Note: There was only one way to have a "final evacuation of the Jews" and simultaneously to make the Government General free of Jews.) (See March 17)

1941 March 22 Marshal Petain signs a new law authorizing the construction of a Trans-Sahara railway. The work is done by all who had been interned: former Spanish Republican soldiers, Poles, Czechs, Greeks and Jews (See May 1941). (Atlas)

1941 March 23 Himmler presents Hitler with a memorandum entitled: "Some thoughts about the treatment of foreign peoples in the eastern territories." Himmler writes: "I hope to see the very concept of Jewry completely obliterated." (Science)

1941 March 24 Rommel launches another offensive in Libya and quickly captures El Agheila.

1941 March 25 Archbishop Groeber, in a pastoral letter abounding in antisemitic statements, blames the Jews for the death of Christ and adds that "the self-imposed curse of the Jews 'His blood be upon us and upon our children,' has come terribly true up until the present time, until today." (Lewy)

1941 March 25 Yugoslav Prime Minister Dragisha Cvetkovich signs Yugoslavia's agreement to the Tripartite Pact, linking that nation to the Axis. The Yugoslav's agree to permit free passage through their country of German troops heading to Greece. (Duffy)

1941 March 26 A military coup d'etat against the pro-German policies of Prince-Regent Paul takes place in Yugoslavia. General Dusan Simovic becomes prime minister under King Peter II.

1941 March 26 Reinhard Heydrich and Wehrmacht Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner have produced a draft plan outlining a partnership between the Wehrmacht and the SS, setting up the operational procedure for what are called Einsatzgruppen (special task forces). The Einsatzgruppen are to take their orders from the SS, but otherwise, they are subject to military command. The army is to control their movements and furnish them with quarters, rations, gasoline and communications assistance. These small mobile groups are charged with ridding freshly acquired eastern territories of their "undesirable" civilian elements, and will be required to operate virtually on the front lines. (Apparatus)

1941 March 26 A scientific meeting takes place to mark the inauguration of the Institute for the Investigation of the Jewish Question in Frankfurt am Main. Professor Fischer and Professor Günther are guests of honor. Dr. Gross, head of the Race-policy Bureau of the Nazi Party says: "The definitive solution must comprise the removal of the Jews from Europe," and he demands sterilization of quarter-Jews: "The reproduction of the quarter-Jews left behind in European countries must be reduced to a minimum." Professor von Verschuer reports the meeting for his journal, "Der Erbarzt" (The Heredity-Physician). (Science)

1941 March 27 Cvetkovich's government is overthrown by the Yugoslav military. Mussolini's ambitions for Croatia and other Yugoslavian territories and British intrigues in Belgrade lead to a coup by General Dusan Simovic, resulting in the overthrow of the pro-Nazi regime of Prince Paul and the beginning of hostilities with Germany. Prince Paul is replaced by his heir, 17-year-old King Peter. (Sturdza; Duffy)

1941 March 27 Roosevelts $7,000,000,000 appropriations bill for Lend-Lease is approved by Congress.

1941 March 28 The British defeat the Italian fleet off Cape Matapan in the eastern Mediterranean.

1941 March 28 Brack, who has been placed in charge of the "euthanasia" program, writes from the Reich Chancellery to the Reichsfuehrer-SS, Himmler, that the problem of sterilizing large numbers of individuals by mens of X-rays has been solved in principle. (Science)

1941 March 30 Hitler orders his generals to employ what he refers to as "merciless harshness." This speech provides part of the impetus for the Commissar Order -- the execution of alleged Soviet commissars without trial. (Architect)

1941 April British troops are movedinto Iraq to put down a Nazi-inspired coup and secure its valuable oil fields.

1941 April 1 The British withdraw from Mersa Brega, abandoning one of the last defensible positions available.

1941 April 2 Alfred Rosenberg meets with Hitler. Afterwards he writes in his diary: "What I do not write down today, I will nonetheless never forget." (Architect)

1941 April 5 The Cologne Zeitung (newspaper) reports that, "Although the Lodz ghetto was intended as a mere trial, a mere prelude to the solution of the Jewish question, it has turned out to be the best and most perfect temporary solution of the Jewish problem." (Lewy)

1941 April 6 Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece. Hitler had become concerned about British troops and aircraft being moved into the area to aid Greece, and said that he could not allow Yugoslavia and Bulgaria to revert to neutralist positions.

1941 April 11 Subotica and Novi Sad, west of the Banat region in Yugoslavia, are occupied by Hungarian forces. Soon afterward, in Subotica, the Germans execute 250 members of a Jewish youth movement who had carried out the first acts of sabotage against German occupation forces. In Novi Sad, Hungarian troops and local Germans murder 250 Jews and 250 Serbs at random. (Atlas)

1941 April 11 Rommel's siege of Tobruk begins.

1941 April 13 Russia and Japan sign a five-year non-aggression pact.

1941 April 14 The German authorities order that any Jew leaving the Lodz ghetto is to be shot on sight. (Atlas)

1941 April 14 Belgrade is occupied by the Germans. Within a few hours, Jewish shops are looted, and within a few weeks all Jewish communal activity is forbidden. (Atlas)

1941 April 15 By mid-April, Rommel has reconquered all of Libya except Tobruk. His exploits earned him the nickname "the Desert Fox."

1941 April 16 German troops enter Sarajevo and demolish the main Jewish synagogue. A few Jews escape over the mountains into Italian occupied territory, but the majority of Bosnian Jews are soon deported to concentration camps controlled by the Fascist Croatian "Ustachi." Nearly all will die. (Atlas)

1941 April 16 At Suresnes, outside Paris, the first executions of Jews in the resistance takes place. During 1941, a total of 133 Jews are shot for resistance in France, according to Gestapo records. (Atlas)

1941 April 17 Yugoslavia surrenders to the Germans. Croatia soon becomes an independent state, ruled by the pro-Nazi "Ustachi." Persecution of Croatian Jews begins immediately.

1941 April 19 British and Greek troops are outflanked in Greece and retreat towards Athens.

1941 April 23 Adolf Wagner, Gauleiter and Minister of Education and Religious Affairs in Bavaria, issues an order prohibiting the opening of the school day with a prayer and suggests the gradual removal of all crucifixes (See August 28, 1941). (Lewy)

1941 April 27 German forces occupy Athens.

1941 April 29 A violent, Pro-Fascist revolt in Iraq is put down by British troops.

1941 April 30 The new state of Croatia introduces its first racial laws, removing all Jews from public office and ordering all Jews to wear a yellow badge. (Atlas)

1941 May The "Blitz," the German bombing attacks on British cities, comes to an end when most of the Luftwaffe planes are withdrawn to prepare for the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

1941 May In Paris, thousands of foreign-born Jews are seized and interned. At the same time, thousands of Polish and German-born Jews, who had fought against the Germans in the French Foreign Legion during 1940, are deported to the slave labor camps in the Sahara Dessert (see March 22). (Atlas)

1941 May The first Croatian concentration camp is set up at Danica. It is quickly followed by four more camps at Jadovno, Gradiska, Loborgrad, and Dakovo. (Atlas)

1941 May At Pretzsch, in Saxony, special mobile killing squads, the Einsatzgruppen, are set up by the SS. Each of the squads has been assigned a particular area of the Soviet Union. Einsatzgruppe A, commanded by Walter Stahlecker, is to be responsible for the murder of Jews in the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Einsatzgruppe B, under Arthur Nebe, is assigned the area between the Baltic states and the Ukraine. Einsatzgruppe C, commanded by Otto Rasch, is to operate in the Ukraine south of Nebe's group, and Einsatzgruppe D, commanded by Otto Ohlendorf, is assigned the remainder the Ukraine and Crimea. Heydrich told those at Pretzsch that all "Communists, Jews, Gypsies, saboteurs, and agents must basically be regarded as persons who by their very existence, endanger the security of the troops and are thereby to be executed without further ado." (Secrets)

(The SS was convinced that by mass executions on the spot they could "solve" the "Jewish question" in Russia, by murdering all the Jews they could catch. No family was to be spared. Norwere any resources to be wasted by setting up ghettos, nor in the deportations of Jews to distant camps or murder sites. The killings were to be done in the towns and villages at the moment of military victory.) (Atlas)

1941 May 1 British forces complete the evacuation of Greece.

1941 May 5 Rudolf Hess has a four-hour talk with Hitler. (Wolf Hess, Children)

1941 May 10 Rudolf Hess, allegedly acting upon his own initiative, flies a Messerschmitt to Scotland in an idealistic attempt to convince the British to make peace with Germany. Hess later claims it is the indiscriminate bombing of helpless women and children, both in Germany and in England, that motivated his flight.

1941 May 11 In the Warsaw ghetto, 2,000 Jews a month are now dying from hunger and disease.Emanuel Ringelblum writes that "Death lies in every street. The children are no longer afraid of death. In one courtyard, the children played a game of tickling the corpse." (Apparatus)

1941 May 11 Hitler learns of Hess' flight to England. The story is soon given out that mystics, astrologers and nature healers had manipulated a disturbed Hess.

1941 May 12 Churchill takes the Duke of Hamilton, who had arrived at his home the previous evening, to 10 Downing Street. That evening the Duke and Ivone Kirkpatrick fly to Scotland, where hey meet with Hess for several hours shortly after midnight. (Missing Years)

1941 May 13 News of Rudolf Hess' flight to England makes front-page headlines in newspapers around the world.

1941 May 14 Martin Bormann is appointed head of the Nazi Party Chancellery in Hess' place. (Goebbels)

1941 May 15 Goebbels issues "an order against occultism, clairvoyancy, etc." in response to Hess' flight to England. "This obscure rubbish will now be eliminated once and for all. The miracle men, Hess' darlings, will now be put under lock and key, " he writes in his diary. (Goebbels)

1941 May 15 Petain announces a policy of total French collaboration with Germany

1941 May 16 Goebbels writes in his diary, "Things are due to roll in the East on May 22, dependent on the weather." (Goebbels)

1941 1941 May 17 Rudolf Hess is imprisoned in the Tower of London.

1941 May 20 Hermann Goering bans emigration of Jews from all German-occupied territories including France and makes one of the first official references to the "Final Solution" (Endlosung).

1941 May 20 The Germans launch an airborne invasion of Crete. Of the first 3,500 German paratroopers dropped on the island, most are killed, but a second wave of 3,000 quickly captures key defenses and overwhelms the remaining British troops.

1941 May 20 Rudolf Hess is transported from the Tower of London to Camp Z (Mytchett Place in Aldershot), which has been specially setup for his arrival with heavy security and bugging devices. (Missing Years)

1941 May 24 The German pocket battleship Bismarck, the pride of Hitler's navy, sinks the British battle cruiser Hood off Greenland.

1941 May 26 Himmler assigns a group of Waffen-SS to what he calls the Kommandostab Reichsführer SS, which in effect becomes his own private army. (Architect)

1941 May 27 Bismarck is intercepted, crippled, and sunk by a British task force while returning to Germany.

1941 May 30 Rudolf Hess' British captors assign Estonian-born psychiatrist Dr. Henry Victor Dicks to pose as Hess' physician. Dicks, a Jew who wrote that he despised Hess on sight, reports directly to British intelligence. (Missing Years)

1941 May 31 The surviving British troops on Crete are evacuated.

1941 Edward R. Stettinius Jr. becomes director of priorities of the Office of Production Management. Nine months later Stettinius will be named administrator of the gigantic Lend-Lease Program.

1941 June Petain's Vichy government introduces a series of "Jewish statutes." Leon Berard, Vichy ambassador at the Holy See, reports to Petain that the Vatican does not consider such laws in conflict with Catholic teaching, and merely counseled that no provisions on marriage be added to the statutes. (Poliakov)

1941 June Early in June, Goering sent word to Britain that Hitler planned to invade Russia within weeks. ( Duffy)

1941 June 1 Crete falls to the Germans. Hitler now has a strategic Mediterranean basefor the dispatch of reinforcements and supplies to his desert troops in North Africa, which are poised for an assault against Egypt and the Suez Canal.

1941 June 2 A law is passed authorizing the "administrative internment" of all Jews in France, whether French-born or foreign-born.

1941 June 2 Hitler and Mussolini again meet at theBrenner Pass.

1941 June 3 Statistics from a Gallup Poll show that 83% of the American people are against entering the war.

1941 June 6 Hitler issues the infamous Commissar Decree, ordering the execution of all captured Soviet political commissars.

1941 June 7 Martin Bormann informs the Gauleiters that the influence of the churches will have to be curtailed as much as possible, for National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable. (Lewy)

1941 June 8 British and Free French forces enter Vichy-held Syria from Iraq, imposing an armistice that gives Britain control over Syria and Lebanon. (The Vichy Government had been allowing Germans forces to use Syria as a base.)

1941 June 9 At Churchill's suggestion, Lord John Simon meets with Rudolf Hess and pretends to negotiate Hess' peace proposal. In reality, Simon is only pumping Hess for information and has no authority to negotiate. Simon is accompanied by Ivone Kirkpatrick. (Missing Years)

1941 June 11 Hitler issues Directive # 32. It begins with a flat statement: "After destruction of the Soviet Armed Forces, Germany and Italy will be military masters of the European Continent, with the temporary exception of the Iberian Peninsula. No serious threat to Europe by land will then remain." (Architect)

1941 June 11 Antonescu meets with Hitler in Munich and agrees to full ooperation of their two armies against Russia. Hitler's promises of massive armaments to Romania will not materialize until almost the end of the war.

1941 June 12 German Jews are ordered to designate themselves only as without faith (glaubenlos). (Persecution)

1941 June 13 The Soviets, who had taken over Bessarabiain June 1940 and immediately closed all Jewish institutions, arrests many of the region's leading Jewish citizens and exiles them to Siberia, where many die. (Atlas)

1941 June 14 Axis funds in the United States are frozen.

1941 June 17 Heydrich meets with the newly appointed commanders of the Einsatzgruppen and Sonderkommandos in Berlin to give them special oral instructions for their operations during the invasion. (Architect)

1941 June 18 A treaty of German-Turkish Friendship is signed.

1941 June 22 Operation Barbarossa - Germany invades Russia. Germany, Romania and Finland are now at war with Soviet Russia. Behind the lines, SS Einsatzgruppen systematically kill thousands of Jews in every city, town and village of western Russia, mopping-up all civilian resistance with remorseless cruelty.

(Italy and Hungary provide token forces for the invasion of Russia.Later, Danish, Norwegian, Belgian, Dutch, French and Spanish volunteers will join in the fight against Communism. After the war, most would be sentenced to prison or executed by their own countries. The only exception was Spain, where former Nazis were allowed safe haven.)

1941 June 22 U.S. Senator Harry Truman announces that, "If we see that Germany is going to win, we will help Soviet Russia, but if it is the other way around, we will have to help Germany. Let's leave them alone so that they will weaken each other as much as possible." (Marschalko)

(After Roosevelt's death in 1945, many Germans believed the U.S. would soon join them in the fight against Communism)

1941 June 24 German forces occupy Kaunas, Lithuania

1941 June 24 Ambassador Bergen reports to Berlin that the Vatican has welcomed the new turn of events and that a Vatican spokesman shortly after the invasion had told him that the alignment of atheistic Russia on the side of the Western democracies had robbed the latter of all justification to speak of a crusade for Christianity. (Lewy)

1941 June 24-5 The first mass executions by the Germans are carried out in the Lithuanian city of Garsden. (Architect)

1941 June 28 Encouraged by the Germans, Lithuanian police and a group of released convicts beat hundreds of Jews to death with iron bars during a bloodbath in the streets of Kaunas, Lithuania. (Apparatus).

1941 June 29 A report from Einsatzgruppe A states that by this date 2,300 Jews have been "rendered harmless" in Kaunas, Lithuania.

1941 Summer Himmler orders the enlargement of Auschwitz and the additional of a killing center.

1941 July Nazi killing squads arrive in Bessarabia. Romanian troops and militias murder thousands of Jews in the area of their advance. Following the initial killings, internment camps are set up throughout the province. At the camp in Edineti, 70 to 100 people die every day in July and August, mostly of starvation. In all, more than 148,000 Bessarabian Jews perish in the ghettos and camps of Transnistria. (Atlas)

1941 July The German advance in Russia is so rapid that less than 300,000 of Russia's 2.7 million Jews are able to escape to safety beyond the Volga River. (Atlas)

1941 July U.S. troops occupy Iceland to provide protection for American ships sailing to England. Roosevelt says it is to prevent the island's occupation by Germany.

1941 July 1 Goebbels writes in his diary: "Haushofer and his son have been forced out of public life. They are both responsible for peddling mystic rubbish and have the Hess affair (Hess' flight to England) on their consciences. (Goebbels)

1941 July 3 Latvian auxiliary police organized by Einsatzkommandos 1a and 2 plunder Jewish homes, and two other Latvian groups carried out pogroms, killing 400 Jews and destroying synagogues. (Architect)

1941 July 7 Einsatzkommandos begin the systematic slaughter of Lithuanian Jews. One of the tasks of these killing squads was the recruitment of local antisemites, whether Lithuanians, Ukrainians, or Latvians, who could help them to round up, terrorize and destroy each Jewish community, however small. (Atlas)

1941 July 8 Stalin announces a "scorched earth" policy.

1941 July 12 The Soviet-British Mutual Assistance Pact is signed.

1941 July 12 Moscow is bombed for the first time.

1941 July 14 The Suez Canal is bombed by German Ju 88 bombers from Crete. Harbor installations and several ships are damaged.

1941 July 16 In an important meeting, Hitler, Goering Bormann and Rosenberg decide on plans for the exploitation of the conquered areas of Russia. Rosenberg is put in charge of a new ministry with the task of organizing the new territories for Germany's economic benefit and eliminating the Jews and Communists from these areas. (WWIIDBD)

1941 July 16-18 Prince Kenoye reforms his Japanese cabinet, eliminating Matsuoka who has been urging that the neutrality agreement with the Soviets should be abandoned; so that Japan can join with the Germans in the attack on the USSR. Kenoye believes that without Matsuoka and his known liking for Hitler, there is a better chance of reaching an agreement with the U.S. over the pressing lack of oil reserves.

1941 July 17 Alfred Rosenberg is officially appointed Minister of the Occupied Territories.

1941 July 17 At Kishinev in the Ukraine, Einsatzgruppen D begins the first "five-figure" massacre of Jews . More than 12,250 are killed between July 17 and 31. (Atlas)

1941 July 18 The first acknowledged reports concerning the mass killings of Jews in the East begin reaching England.

1941 July 18 A group of 30 White Russians who refused to shovel earth over 45 Jews who had been tied together and thrown into a large pit are executed by the SS. All 75 are left dead in the pit. (Gilbert II)

1941 July 19 The Japanese present an ultimatum to Vichy France demanding bases in southern Indochina.

1941 July 20 Bishop Galen of Munster, known as a courageous critic of the Nazis, expresses his hope for a German victory in Russia. The Nazis use patriotic statements in his pastoral letters to enlist volunteers for SS units recruited in Holland and other occupied countries.

1941 July 21 Majdanek (Maidanek) concentration camp is established.

1941 July 24 Vichy France concedes to Japanese demands for bases in southern Indochina.

1941 July 26 Japanese assets in the U.S. are frozen.

1941 July 28 Hitler remains at Wolf's Lair until March 20, 1943.

1941 July 28 U.S. assets in Japan are frozen.

1941 July 28 Japanese assets in the Dutch East Indies are frozen and oil deals cancelled. Now, almost 75% of Japan's foreign trade is at a virtual standstill and 90% of its oil supply has been cut off.

1941 July 28 The Japanese occupy French bases in Indochina. It is clear that the main use for these bases might be as jumping off places for an invasion of Malaya, the East Indies or even the Philippines.

1941 July 29 Army Bishop Rarkowski issues a pastoral letter to the German armed forces describing Germany as "the saviour and champion of Europe." We know he added, that this war against Russia is waged by us as "a European Crusade," a task similar to that fulfilled in earlier times by the Teutonic knights. (Lewy)

1941 July 29 Japan freezes Dutch assets.

1941 July 29 The Germans execute 122 "Communists and Jews" for resistance in Serbia. (Atlas)

1941 July 30 Harry Hopkinsa arrives in Moscow for meetings with the Communist leadership.

1941 July 30 Hitler orders Bormann to stop all seizures of monasteries or other Church property without first obtaining his personal permission. Bormann passes the order along to the Gauleiters the following day.

1941 July 31 Goering instructs Heydrich "to make all necessary preparation... for bringing about a "complete" solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe." (Hilberg)

(Note: This is Goering's second known reference.)

1941 August The Germans drive the 3,000 Jews of the Banat region in Yugoslavia from their homes and take them to the Tasmajdan camp near Belgrade, where they are shot in the camp itself, and on the banks of the Danube, in daily executions. (Atlas)

1941 August 1 In the five weeks since the German invasion, the number of Jews killed exceeds the total number killed in the previous eight years of Nazi rule.

1941 August 1 Reinhardt Heydrich informs Heinrich Himmler that "It may be safely assumed that in the future there will be no more Jews in the annexed eastern territories." (Apparatus)

1941 August 1 Britain severs relations with Finland, which the Germans are using as a base for their invasion.

1941 August 3 Catholic Bishop Franz vonGalen publicly denounces the Nazi euthanasia program as both "murder under German law and in the eyes of God,"and demands the prosecution for murder of those perpetrating the killings. Galen tells in detail how the innocent sick are being killed while their families are misled by false death notices. Even invalids, cripples and wounded soldiers, he says, could no longer feel safe for their lives. News of Galens words, especially about the killing of wounded soldiers spread like wildfire. Copies of his sermon are distributed in all corners of Germany and among the soldiers at the front. (Lewy)

1941 August 4 Hitler visits the headquarters of von Bock's Army Group Center to assess the situation on the eastern front personally. Against the advice of his generals, Hitler decides to postpone the assault on Moscow and concentrate the German forces for a massive offensive in the Ukraine. Almost daily, von Bock received orders transferring unit after unit south for the drive on Kiev. (Duffy)

1941 August 6 The Japanese present proposals involving concessions in China and Indochina to the U.S., asking in return for an end to the freeze on Japanese assets. These proposals are quickly rejected by Roosevelt, and the Japanese ask for a meeting between the President and Prime Minister Kenoye to settle their differences. (See September 3)

1941 August 8-19 Several hundred Jewish men and women are executed by the Waffen-SS and Ukrainian militia at Byelaya Tserkov (Bialacerkiew) in the Ukraine. The children of those murdered are locked in a building on the edge of the village. (see August 19, 22) (Days)

1941 August 9-12 Roosevelt and Churchill hold a conference on a warship off the coast of Newfoundland. The two leaders agree to present plans for a new world order based on an end to tyranny and territorial aggrandizement, the disarmament of aggressors, and the fullest cooperation of all nations for the social and economic welfare of all. The Atlantic Charter is designed as a counterthrust to a possible new Hitler peace offensive as well as a statement of postwar aims. Although the United States has not yet entered World War II, the statement becomes an unofficial manifesto of American and British aims in war and peace. In conclusion, both agree to send strong warnings to Japan in regard to any possible attacks against British or Dutch possessions in the Far East.

1941 August 14 The Germans occupy Smolensk.

1941 August 14 The Atlantic Charter is issued. The following month the USSR and 14 other anti-Axis countries endorse its provisions. (See also January 1, 1942)

1941 August 17 The U.S. presents a formal warning to the Japanese indicating that America will almost certainly enter the war if Japan attacks British or Dutch possessions in the East Indies or Malaya.

1941 August 19 The older Jewish children left in Byelaya Tserkov are loaded into three trucks, taken to the nearby rifle-range, and executed. 90 of the younger children are held back in wretched conditions. (Days)

1941 August 20 In Berlin, Reinhard Heydrich receives a report from Einsatzgruppen RSHA IV-A-1 (Operational Report USSR no. 58) detailing the extermination of 4,500 Jews in Pinsk in retaliation for the death of a local militiaman. (Apparatus)

1941 August 20 The entire Banat region of Yugoslavia is declared Judenrein, "purged of Jews." (Atlas)

1941 August 21 Antonescu promotes himself to Marshal.

1941 August 22 The remaining 90 Jewish children held in the village of Byelaya Tserkov, most of them infants under the age of five, are executed after the action is officially condoned by the Wehrmacht. (Days)

1941 August 22 Major Ivan Kononov, commander of the 436th Regiment, and his entire regiment of Cossacks defects to the Germans after launching a successful counterattack against them. Kononov's was the first of many Cossack units to change sides during the war. By the fall of 1942 more than 200 Cossack battalions and regiments fought alongside the German army. (Huxley-Blythe)

1941 August 23 Hitler orders a halt to Aktion T-4, the euthanasia program, in Germany. More than 70,000 Germans have been gassed since the passage of the Euthanasia Decree of September 1, 1939. Bishop Galen's sermon of August 3 was probably the single most important reason Hitler is forced to abandon the euthanasia program, although it will quietly continue to operate under the code-name: 14f13. Thousands of political prisoners, habitual criminals, Jews and others too sick to work are certified insane and put to death in concentration camps gas chambers. (Lewy)

1941 August 23 Hanns Kerrl complains to the head of the Reich Chancellery that because of the continuing confiscations of Church property, which are taking place without his being consulted or eveninformed beforehand, his continuation as Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs is becoming "increasingly unbearable."

(Note: Bormann, when questioned about the continuing seizures, excuses them by saying they had been decided before Hitler's order of July 30.) (Lewy)

1941 August 24 In a broadcast to the British people, Churchill, referring to the mass murders committed by the Germans, states: "We are in the presence of a crime without a name."

1941 August 25 Both Britain and the USSR invade and occupy Iran. Its ruler, Reza Shah Pahlavi, is pro-German.

1941 August 26 The Soviets bomb Teheran, Iran.

1941 August 27 The Iranian government resigns.

1941 August 27 More than 14,000 Jewish refugees, who had fled to Hungary and Ruthenia in 1938 and 1939 from Germany, Austria, Poland and Slovakia, before being subsequently deported to Kamenets Podolsk in the Ukraine, are killed by heavily armed SS units with Ukrainian militia support. They are marched into a series of bomb craters and mowed down by machine-gun fire. Many are buried alive.(Atlas)

1941 August 27 Pierre Laval and a prominent pro-German newspaper editor are shot and wounded by a young member of the resistance. The Vichy government begins rounding up its opponents.

1941 August 28 The Bavarian order forbidding prayers in school and the gradual removal of all crucifixes is revoked. A number of public protests and a strong stand by Bishop Faulhaber prompts the revocation. (See April 23, 1941). (Lewy)

1941 August 29 Fighting in Iran comes to an end.

1941 August 29 General Milan Nedic is appointed to lead the puppet Serbian government backed by Germany.

1941 August 31 British and Soviet troops link up at Kazvin, Iran.

1941 September Niederhagen, the concentration camp for Wewelsburg castle, becomes independent.

1941 September Hitler tells Papen that he is upset about the continuing confiscations of Church property, and blames the hotheads of the Party for "this nonsense." (Papen)

1941 September 1 A new decree is issued ordering that all Jews are forbidden to leave their place of domicile without special permission; Jews six years of age or older can now appear in public only when marked with a Jewish star (Star of David). This decree covers so-called Mosaic Jews as well as baptized Jews. Only those who had converted to Christianity prior to September 15, 1935, the date of the Nuremberg laws, and "non-Aryans" married to an "Aryan" partner are exempted.

(Note: The marking of Jews had first been applied to Jews in Poland, but is now extended to the entire Reich.)

1941 September 1 Lord Beaverbrook, a leading Conservative member of Churchill's government, writes to Rudolf Hess requesting a meeting. Beaverbrook on this same day is appointed to head a Cabinet mission to Moscow to discuss aid for the Soviets. (Missing Years)

1941 September 1 Germans troops come within artillery range of Leningrad (St. Petersburg).

1941 September 3 Estonia is conquered by the Germans. Following the occupation of Tallin, the remaining 1,000 Jews are murdered by SS killing squads. (Atlas)

1941 September 3 The U.S. State Department tells the Japanese that the meeting they have requested between Roosevelt and Prince Konoye cannot take place. Supposedly the Americans are concerned that Konoye, Japan's prime minister, might not be able to convince the Japanese military keep to any agreement that might be made.

1941 September 3 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 300 Jews are gassed at Auschwitz in an experiment using Zyklon B (hydrocyanic acid), a commercial pesticide.

1941 September 6 A Japanese Imperial conference decides, in view of declining oil reserves, that war preparations should be completed by mid-October. Konoye is given six weeks to reach a settlement with the United States and is to insist on a set of minimum demands: immediate cessation of economic sanctions, a free hand for Japan in China, and rights for Japan in Indochina.

1941 September 6 Heydrich issues orders for all Jews over the age of six to wear a Star of David identity badge.

1941 September 8 Leningrad (St. Petersburg) is surrounded by a large German force.

1941 September 9 Lord Beaverbrook meets with Rudolf Hess.

1941 September 11 Charles Lindbergh, speaking in Des Moines, Iowa, tells an audience of 7,500 that Jews are seeking to force America into the war and warns them of the consequences.

1941 September 12 General Keital tells his commanders "The struggle against Bolshevism demands ruthless and energetic measures above all against the Jews."

1941 September 12 In the Ukrainian village of Zwiahel (Novograd Volynsky), SS 2nd Lieutenant Max Täubner and members of his work platoon begin conducting a series of unauthorized massacres of Jews. Täubner will later be tried and convicted by the SS and Police Supreme Court on May 24, 1943. (Days)

1941 September 16 Reza Shah Pahlavi, the pro-German ruler of Iran, is forced to abdicate in favor of his son by the British. Shah Pahlavi is sent out of the country.

1941 September 16 U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes has lunch with Bernard Baruch and asks him why Edward Stettinius, who he says has been a failure at every job he has held so far, has been moved up by the President to the important position of Administrator of the Lend Lease Act. Baruch tells him that he believes it is a ploy to ptotect Harry Hopkins. Baruch says he believes that Hopkins is now, in effect, Assistant President, but that his standing on the (Capitol) Hill is such that he needs someone to front for him. "So Stettinius has been given that title, but he can be depended upon to do whatever Harry (Hopkins) tells him to do. (Ickes)

1941 September 17 Cardinal Bertram instructs the German bishops on methods of handling the "problem" of the "non-Aryan" Catholics. He suggests using St. Paul's admonishment to the Romans and Galatians: "among those believing in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, for all are one in Jesus Christ." (Roman 10:12, Galatians 3:28) (Lewy)

1941 September 19 Heinrich Jöst, a German sergeant, smuggles a camera into the Warsaw ghetto, and against all regulations, photographs the suffering and misery of the Jews trapped inside. (Apparatus)

1941 September 19 Germans forces occupy Kiev in the Ukraine.

1941 September 24 After a conference with Himmler and Reinhardt Heydrich, Hitler names Heydrich as the new Reich Protector of Bohemia-Moravia. (Architect)

1941 September 25 In Berlin, Reinhard Heydrich receives a report from Einsatzgruppen RSHA IV-A-1 (Operational Report USSR no. 94) stating that 75,000 liquidations have been conducted in Lithuania in response to a rise in Jewish propaganda. (Apparatus)

1941 September 25 Hitler speaks of extending Europe to the Ural Mountains and creating a human barrier against Asia. (Monologue im Fuehrerhauptquartier; Architect)

1941 September 26 The Jews of Swieciany in Lithuania are rounded up, taken to a former army camp in the nearby Polygon woods, and massacred. On the evening before, several hundred young men and women had managed to break through the Lithuanian police cordon and escape eastward to towns not yet reached by the killing squads. (Atlas)

1941 September 27 Himmler comes through with a long-delayed promotion of Heydrich to Obergruppenfuehrer (Lieutenant General) and general of the police. (Architect)

1941 September 28 A curt notice, its text printed in Russian, Ukrainian and German, appears on buildings, tree trunks and fences in Kiev. It orders all Jews to report the following day to the old Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of town, not far from the railway station. The notice suggests that the Jews are going to be resettled. (Apparatus)

1941 September 29 More than 30,000 Jews are machinegunned at Babi Yar, a ravine on the outskirts of Kiev, by an SS killing squad aided by Ukrainian militiamen. (Atlas)

1941 September 30 Himmler sets out on a tour of the conquered areas of southern Russia. He takes with him Dr. Albert Widmann, head of the chemical section of the RSHA Criminal Technical Institue and one of the prime inventors of the new gas truck that recycled its own exhaust. Since it was easier to modify existing trucks in the field to serve as mobile gas chambers than to produce new trucks in Germany and then transport them to the East, Widmann went along as a technical consultant. (Architect)

1941 September 30 Guderian's and Hoth's panzers rejoin Army Group Center, and the advance on Moscow is resumed. The Germans now face a rejuvenated enemy that has profited from the respite Hitler has given them to construct strong defenses and move large numbers of troops to defend the capital. (Duffy)

1941 October The decision is made to build centers for mass murder by gas in the eastern territories. (Bauer)

1941 October Alfred Rosenberg, Reichsführer of the Easter Territories, requests T-4's assistance in liquidating the Jews in the Polish Ghettos.

1941 October 1 All Jewish immigration from Germany is banned.

1941 October 1 In the Archdiocese of Posen in Poland, 74 Catholic priests have been shot or have died in the concentration camps, and 451 are being held in prisons or camps. Of the 441 churches in this diocese only 30 are still open for Poles. (DA Trier; Lewy)

1941 October 1 Another Croat concentration camp is established at Jasenovac. (Atlas)

1941 October 2 While Himmler is in the Ukraine, Heydrich informs Hitler of the scheduled deportations of all German Jews to specific locations in the Ostland. (Architect)

1941 October 2 Himmler arrives in Kiev, which he believes is an ancient German city known as Kiroffo. (Architect)

1941 October 3 Hitler tells the German people that the enemy in the East is broken and will never rise again. (Silence)

1941 October 3 Himmler tours Kiev. It is not known whether Himmler included Babi Yar on his tour. (Architect)

1941 October 10 Thousands of Slovak Jews are sent to labor camps at Sered, Vyhne, and Novaky, while the remaining Jews living in what had once been Czechoslovakia are ordered out of their homes and sent to specially designated ghetto areas in 14 selected towns. (Atlas)

1941 October 10 Reinhard Heydrich, in Prague, tells a conference of his subordinates that Hitler wants all the Jews removed from German space by the end of the year, if possible. All pending questions, he said, had to be resolved, and transportation should not be used as a reason for delay. (Architect)

1941 October 10 Heydrich also includes the Gypsies as being subject to "evacuation" (deportation to death camps) during the Prague conference. (Science)

1941 October 14 Beginning of the general deportation of German Jews to the concentration camps. (Persecution)

1941 October 15 The German authorities in Poland decree that any Jews found outside the ghettos will be executed automatically.

1941 October 15 Mass deportations of German Jews to the east begins. Priests are told that Christian "non-Aryans" will be evacuated only when earlier conflicts with the Gestapo have occurred. For the time being, "non-Aryans" in mixed marriages will not be affected by these measures. (Lewy)

1941 October 16 Edouard Daladier, Paul Reynaud and Leon Blum, all former prime ministers of France, are arrested by order of General Petain to face charges that they were responsible for the French defeat of 1940.

1941 October 16 Odessa is taken by Romanian troops after some of the bloodiest fighting on the Eastern Front.

1941 October 16 The first deportation trains leave Germany for the ghettos in the east. (Atlas)

1941 October 16 Many foreign diplomats, Soviet government officials and their staffs begin leaving Moscow by car and train for Kuibyshev.

1941 October 16 Japanese Prime Minister Konoye is replaced by War Minister Tojo, who takes the offices of prime minister, war minister and home affairs minister. Tojo's cabinet decides to wait only until the end of November for a diplomatic breakthrough.

1941 October 18 Heydrich and Himmler speak by phone, agreeing not to allow any Jews to leave German territory by going overseas. (Architect)

1941 October 19 Stalin announces that he will remain in Moscow, even though most of the Soviet government has already fled, promising to defend the city with every effort.

1941 October 20 The German commander in Nantes, France, is shot by members of the resistance. Fifty hostages are shot in reprisal.

1941 October 22 A notice is posted in Kiev informing the citizens that 100 hostages will be shot for every act of sabotage. (See November 2) (Apparatus)

1941 October 23 All Jewish emigration Nazi-occupied territory is officially halted.

1941 October 23 Catholic Provost Bernhard Lichtenberg, who right through the stepped-up antisemitic agitation, continued to say a daily prayer for the Jews, is finally arrested. During questioning by Himmler's henchmen, the Provost asserts that the deportation of the Jews is irreconcilable with Christian moral law, and asks to be allowed to accompany the deportees as their spiritual adviser. He is sentenced to two years imprisonment for abuse of the pulpit (see November 5, 1943) (Lewy)

1941 October 25 Himmler and Heydrich meet with Hitler at his headquarters. In the course of the meeting, Hitler reminds them of his prewar prophecy that, unless war was avoided, the Jews would disappear from Europe. "This criminal race," Hitler tells them, "has the two million dead of the (First) World War on their conscience, and now hundreds of thousands more. Let no one say to me: we cannot send them into the mire. Who concerns themselves about our men? It is good if preceding us is terror that we are exterminating the Jews. The attempt to found a Jewish state will fail." (Monologue im Fuehrerhauptquartier; Architect)

1941 October 25 Despite the overwhelming odds against them, Jews at Tatarsk and Starodub, between Kiev and Moscow, rise up in revolt. German regular army units are brought in to crush their resistance. (Atlas)

1941 October 25 Dr. Wetzel, a "race-expert" in the Ministry of the Occupied Eastern Territories, writes in a draft of a letter to Himmler: "I should like to inform you that Oberdienstleiter Brack of the Führer's Chancellery has said that he is prepared to collaborate in the provision of the necessary accommodation and appliances for gassing people... In the present situation, there are no obiections to doing away with those Jews who are unfit for work with the aid of Brack's resources... " (Science)

1941 October 25 German mass executions of prisoners in France prompt Roosevelt and Churchill to make an unusual joint public condemnation of German atrocities, and within three months, nine European governments-in-exile in London establish the Inter-Allied Conference on the Punishment of War Crimes. (Beast)

October 27 Bishop Berning reports to Cardinal Bertram that the Gestapo has refused their request for permission to allow Jewish Catholics to wear the Star of David while in Church. (Lewy)

1941 October 27 The Bishop of Limberg informs Bishop Wienken, the episcopate's troubleshooter in Berlin, that the transport of Jews from Frankfurt earlier in the month had included Catholic "non-Aryans" to whom no preferred treatment had been granted. Their fate was especially sad, he said, because they were regarded by the other Jews as apostates (turncoats).

1941 October 27 Harold H. Tittmann, assistant to Roosevelt's special emissary to the Vatican, attempts to get the Pope to issue a public protest against the German's mass shooting of hostages. He is told that this could not be done since it would jeopardize the situation of the German Catholics. (U.S.D.P)

1941 October 29 The first of the Soviet reserve divisions from Siberia go into the line west of Moscow.

1941 October 30 The German offensive toward Moscow is halted until winter permanently hardens the ground, restoring mobility to the German tank forces.

1941 October 30 Bishop Wienken informs Bishop Hilfrich of Limburg that negotiations concerning the deportations of Catholic "non-Aryans" have been started at the highest levels. (Lewy)

1941 October-November The extermination camp of Chelmno (Kulmhof) is set up in Wathegau (Poland). (Days)

1941 November Georg Hauserstein, Jr., a long-time ONT member and former head of the presytery at Hertesburg, founds a schismatic order at Petena called the Vitalis New Templars. (Roots)

1941 November Heydrich reports to the Foreign Ministry that a thirty-point program for a so-called neo-pagan "National Reich Church," circulated as a leaflet in Germany and attributed by Allied propaganda to Rosenberg, was actually written in 1937 by an eccentric from Stettin (G). Heydrich attributes its reappearance to Catholic elements out to discredit the regime. (Lewy)

(Note: William Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, accepted this leaflet as a genuine work by Rosenberg.)

1941 November By this time, more than 15,000 Jews have been deported from throughout Serbia to the concentration camp at Zemun west of Belgrade. (Atlas)

1941 November As an experiment, 1200 prisoners at Buchenwald are taken to the "euthanasia" institute at Bernberg, and gassed. (Atlas)

1941 November 1 Vichy France opens a punishment and isolation camp at Hadjerat-M'Guil in Algeria. It contains 170 prisoners nine of whom are tortured and murdered in conditions of the worst brutality. Two of the murdered were Jews, one of whom had earlier been released from a concentration camp in Germany in 1939 and fled to France. (Atlas)

1941 November 1-15 The Jews of Bukovina, like those of Bessarabia, are uprooted from their homes in more than 100 communities, then marched away and interned. Within a year, more than 120,000 of them had died. (Atlas)

1941 November 2 Major General Friedrich Eberhardt, military commander of Kiev, issues an order declaring that 300 hostages will be shot for the next act of sabotage. By the end of the month, the number has been raised to 400. (Apparatus)

1941 November 15 Himmler and Rosenberg hold a four-hour meeting to discuss Jewish policy and several other areas of their disagreement. (Architect)

1941 November 17 Alfred Rosenberg is appointed to head a new Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. His jurisdiction includes the Baltic States and White Russia, where his task will be to exploit the area for Germany's economic benefit and rid of them of "undesirable elements" such as Communists and Jews.

1941 November 17 Himmler telephones Heydrich and tells him about the results of his meeting with Rosenberg, the situation in the Government General, and the "elimination of the Jews." (NA; Architect)

1941 November 18 The British offensive in North Africa begins in Libya. It is code-named Operation Crusader.

1941 November 18 Rosenberg tells German journalists at a confidential briefing that the "Final Solution" has begun; a "biological extermination of all Jews in Europe." No Jew could remain on the continent to the Ural Mountains; they would either be forced beyond the Urals or exterminated. The press was not to write about the extermination in detail, but the reporters could use stock phrases such as the "definite solution" or the "total solution of the Jewish question." (NA RG 242, T-77/R 1175/433; Architect)

1941 November 21 Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes personally hand-delivers to President Roosevelt a confidential letter given to him by someone named Bruce Johnston. Johnson takes the position that: "while under the constitution the power to declare war lies with Congress, the power to wage a defensive war is with the Executive. He pointed out that in several declarations of war by the Congress the recitation was "Whereas, a state of war exists," thus proving that wars do not wait to be started until there is an actual declaration. The President remarked that it was good letter and sound but that "it was simply a question of timing.' " (Ickes)

1941 November 21 German forces take Rostov am Don.

1941 November 23 In the Moscow sector, Germans forces continue to advance. Some are within 35 miles of Moscow.

1941 November 24 Theresienstadt, the largest of the new concentration camps in what had been Czechoslovakia, is established. (Atlas)

1941 November 25 The Bishops of Cologne and Paderborn recommend that "non-Aryan" or "half-Aryan" priests and nuns volunteer to accompany the German deportees in order to hold services and provide religious instruction for the children. (Lewy)

1941 November 25 Regulations are issued by the German government concerning confiscation of the property of Jews who are deported. (Eyes)

1941 November 26 U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull formally reiterates the U.S. position, saying that Japan must withdraw from China and Indochina, recognize the regime of Chiang Kai-Shek in China, renounce all territorial expansion, and accept the Open Door policy of equal commercial access to Asia.

(Note: U.S. cryptographers had already broken Japan's major diplomatic code and U.S. authorities knew full well that rejection of Japan's minimum demands would probably lead to war.)

1941 November 26 A powerful Japanese carrier task force leaves the Kuril Islands and makes for Pearl Harbor.

1941 November 27 U.S. military authorities issue a war warning to their overseas commanders.

1941 November 27 Hitler meets in succession with high officials from Spain, Hungary, Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria, Finland and Romania. (Architect)

1941 November 28 Hitler meets with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, telling him that Germany has declared an uncompromising war on the Jews. Britain and Russia were both power bases of Jewry, Hitler said, and he would carry on the fight until the last traces of Jewish hegemony were eliminated. The German army would in the future break through the Caucasus into the Middle East and help to liberate the Arab world. Germany's only other objective in the region would be the annihilation of the Jews. (Fleming; Architect)

1941 November 29 German authorities deport 714 Jews from Nuremberg to labor camps.

1941 November 29 Reinhard Heydrich sends out invitations to the Wansee conference on the Jewish question. It is originally scheduled for December 9, but is postponed due to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (Architect)

1941 November-December The RSHA puts gassing-vans at the disposal of the Security Police and the SD Einsatzgruppen. (Days)

1941 December SS Major Christian Wirth, former Chief of the Criminal Police in the city of Stuttgart, working on behalf of the gauleiter of Warthegau, who had recently obtained Himmler's permission to kill 100,000 Jews in his jurisdiction, sets up operation in the village of Chelmno (Kulmhof), forty miles northwest of the Lodz ghetto. On the old castle grounds in the village, Wirth installs several vans of the type the Einsatzgruppen had experimented with in Russia. They are rigged to direct carbon-monoxide fumes from the engine's exhaust into a large sealed cabin in the rear. The larger vans accommodate up to 150 people who are gassed on the way to burial grounds. (Apparatus)

(Note: Wirth had conducted the first gassing experiments on the incurably insane in 1939 at the "euthanasia" institution at Brandenburg an der Havel in Prussia.)

1941 December Stalin calls on the Orthodox Patriarch of Russia to bless the Red Army.

1941 December German soldiers returning from the Eastern Front begin telling "horrible stories" about the fate of deported German Jews who had been shot by mobile killing detachments near Riga and at Minsk. (Herman; Lösener; Lewy)

1941 December 1 A Japanese imperial conference puts the Japanese war machine into motion.

December 2 The Japanese task force receives a coded message issuing the order to attack Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

December 5 The Soviets stage a counter-offensive at Moscow.

December 5 Weizsäcker reports to the Foreign Ministry that he has informed Papal Nuncio Orsenigo that the Vatican has so far conducted itself "very cleverly" concerning the "rumors" of mass shootings and deportations of the Jews. The Nuncio "pointed out that he had not really touched this topic and that he had no desire to touch it." (Hilberg; Lewy)

December 5 The first Jews are transported to Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp. (Days)

1941 December 6 General Georgy Zhukov launches a huge Soviet counteroffensive, pushing back the freezing Germans from Moscow. Constant pressure during the winter forces the Germans back to 40 miles from Moscow.

1941 December 7 The Japanese launch a surprise air-attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. More than 350 Japanese bombers, torpedo planes, and fighters strike in two successive waves. Altogether, 18 U.S. ships are sunk or disabled. U.S. naval power in the Pacific is crippled, except for the Americans aircraft carriers which are on missions elsewhere.

(Note: The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps lose 2,117 men, the Army 218, and 68 civilians are killed. More than 1,200 are wounded, and about 200 aircraft are destroyed, most on the ground. The Japanese loseonly 29 planes.)

1941 December 7 Almost simultaneously with the Pearl Harbor attack, Japanese naval and air forces attack Wake Island, Guam, British Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, Thailand, and the Philippines.

1941 December 7 Hitler issues the infamous Nacht und Nebel decree.

1941 December 7 Great Britain declares war on Romania.

1941 December 8 President Roosevelt tells a joint session of Congress that December 7th is "a date which will live in infamy." The U.S. Congress votes to declare war on Japan.

1941 December 8 Hitler issues Directive #39. It begins with these words: "The severe weather which has come surprisingly early in the East, and the consequent difficulties in bringing up supplies, compel us to adandon immediately all major offensive operations and go over to the defensive." (Directives)

1941 December 8 SS Major Christian Wirth supervises the murder of 700 Jews in his specially designed gassing vans at Chelmno (Kulmhof) for the first time. The first "death camp" is soon established at Chelmno using these mobile gassing vans. The victims' bodies are dumped into open pits some two miles away in a wooded forest. (total victims: 360,000; survivors: 3) (See Wirth, December 1941)

1941 December 10 The small U.S. garrison on Guam surrenders.

1941 December 10 Himmler orders that commissions, made up of physicians who were formerly concerned with "euthanasia" are to be set up to "comb out" prisoners in concentration camps who are unfit for work, are ill, or are "psychopaths." Tens of thousands of prisoners, picked out in this way by Professor Heyde, Professor Nitsche and other physicians, are killed by gas in the extermination centers at Sonnenstein and Hartheim. (Science)

1941 December 10 The British battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse are sunk by Japanese planes off the coast of Malaya.

1941 December 11 Germany and Italy declare war on the U.S.

1941 December 11 In a speech to the Reichstag, Hitler attacks Roosevelt as a "warmonger" who is backed by the Jews and millionaires responsible for starting the war. He seizes this opportunity to vent the storehouse of anger that has built up in him over the previous three years against Roosevelt, who had ceaselessly attacked Hitler as a "gangster." (Shirer I; Duffy)

1941 December 11 A small U.S. Marine detachment holds off the first Japanese landing attempt on Wake Island.

1941 December 12 All branches of American banks in France are ordered closed by the Nazis, except Morgan et Cie and Chase of New York.

1941 December 12 Romania's Antonescu, pressured by Germany and Italy, declares war on the U.S.

1941 December 12 Finland refuses to declare war on the U.S.

1941 December 14 Rosenberg raises the Jewish question with Hitler, who tells him that the Jews had brought this war on Germany, and caused the destruction, and that they had only themselves to blame if they had to suffer the consequences. (Architect)

1941 December 16 Hans Frank tells his cabinet in Kracow: "the Jews must be done away with, one way or another... we must annihilate the Jews whereever we find them..."

1941 December 19 Hitler dismisses General Walteer von Brauchitsch and assumes supreme command of the German armed forces.

1941 December 19 General Claire L. Chennault and his "Flying Tigers," a group of "volunteer" pilots, set up headquarters 150 miles from Rangoon, Burma. From December 19, 1941, to July 4, 1942, they destroy 297 Japanese planes and kill 500 of the enemy.

1941 December 22 Roosevelt and Churchill meet in Washington for the Arcadia Conference, the first Anglo-American conference after U.S. entry into the war. It is agreed to give first priority to the European theater of war; to forge a constricting ring around Germany using air attacks and blockade; to stage an eventual invasion of the European continent; and to land their forces in North Africa. The two powers also decide to form a Combined Chiefs of Staff, paving the way for one of the closest military collaborations in history.

1941 December 22 Plans are discussed for the Allied invasion of French North Africa. American planners are opposed to this operation because in their opinion it detracts from the primary objective of establishing a Second Front as soon as possible.

1941 December 22 In the Philippines, the Japanese, controlling both air and sea, begin landing troops in force on Luzon, the main island.

1941 December 23 The Japanese capture Wake Island. The fall of Wake severs the U.S. communications line between Hawaii and the Philippines.

1941 December 25 The Japanese capture the British crown colony of Hong Kong.

1941 December 26 German Jews are no longer allowed to use public telephones. (Persecution)

1941 December 27 Wave after wavesof Japanese aircraft strike Manila. The attacks continue throughout the following day.

1941 December 30 U.S. forces are pulled back from Tarlac to their last prepared line before the Bataan Peninsula.

1941 December President Roosevelt asks the U.S. Senate to authorize sending a U.S. expeditionary corps to Europe.

1941 Winter Dr. Ritter takes part in a conference which considers a plan to drown 30,000 German Gypsies by sending them out into the Mediterranean Sea on ships and then bombing the ships. (Science)

1941 Ho Chi Minh organizes the Viet Minh to combat the Japanese in Indochina (Vietnam).

1942 Leadership of the Zionist movement relocates to the United States. A conference in New York City demands the founding of a Jewish state in all of Palestine and unlimited Jewish immigration.

1942 January 1 Twenty-six nations sign the United Nations Declaration in Washington, D.C. The Atlantic Charter and its eight principles: (1) the renunciation of territorial aggression; (2) territorial changes only with consent of the peoples concerned; (3) restoration of sovereign rights and self-government; (4) access to raw materials for all nations; (5) world economic cooperation; (6) freedom from fear and want; (7) freedom of the seas; and (8) disarmament of aggressors are also endorsed by the signatories at the Arcadia Conference. (See August 9, 1941)

1942 January 2 Japanese forces take Manila and the naval base of Cavite in the Philippines.

1942 January 7 The Arcadia Conference comes to an end. During the proceedings each of the 26 signatory nations has agreed to use all of their military and economic resources to defeat the Axis, pledging not to make a separate peace or armistice with the enemy.

1942 January 10 German Jews are ordered to turn in all of their wool and fur clothing. (Persecution)

1942 January 14 Dr. Mennecke, a physician involved in the euthanasia program, writes in a letter: "The day before yesterday, a large contingent from our euthanasia program has moved under the leadership of Brack to the Eastern battle-zone... It consists of doctors, office personnel, and male and female nurses, from Hadamar and Sonnenstein, in all a group of 20-30 persons." (Science)

1942 January 16 Donald Nelson is appointed head of the new U.S. War Production Board.

1942 January 17 Field Marshal von Reichenau dies of a stroke while returning to Germany from the Eastern Front.

1942 January 18 The Russian counteroffensive in the Moscow sector reaches a point 70 miles from Smolensk.

1942 January 19 Field Marshal von Bock is appointed to replace von Reichenau.

1942 January 20 The Wansee Conference on the "Final Solution" of the Jewish question is held at Interpol headquarters in Wansee, a quiet Berlin suburb. Reinhard Heydrich presents a plan for the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Problem."

(These plans provide for the transportation of all of Europe's Jews to extermination camps. Adolf Eichmann will be in charge of the department of the SS responsible for the execution of the plan.)

1942 January 21 Rommel attacks the British in Libya.

1942 January 23 Hungarian Fascists at Sovi Sad in occupied Yugoslavia drive 550 Jews and 292 Serbs to the river and onto the ice. After firing on the ice to break it up, they shoot all those who manage to stay afloat. A total of 2,550 Serbs and 700 Jews are killed by the Hungarians at Novi Sad. (Atlas)

1942 January 26 The Board of Inquiry investigating the Pearl Harbor attack finds Admiral Husband E. Kimmel (Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Fleet) and General Short (Commander-in-Chief Hawaiian Department) guilty of dereliction of duty. Both have already been dismissed.

1942 January 26 Himmler notifies Richard Glücks, inspector of the concentration camps, that the camps are now to take on great economic tasks; he should expect to receive a hundred thousand male Jews and fifty thousand female Jews in the next four weeks to use as laborers. (Architect)

1942 January 27 Rosenberg, with Bormann's concurrence, issues an order forbidding any further discussion of religious questions in the Party's work of ideological indoctrination. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Lewy)

1942 January 28 Hiram J. Perez de Cruet enlists in the U.S. Army.

1942 January 30 Hitler, at the Berlin Sports Palace, reaffirms his prewar prophecy concerning the Jews; once again telling an audience that "the result of this war will be the complete annihilation of the Jews."

1942 January 31 The Japanese clear the British from Malaysia.

1942 American and Filipino forces retreat from Manila to the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines.

1942 February Himmler tells his masseur, Dr. Felix Kersten, that Hitler has ordered the immediate execution of all Jews in their possession. (Kersten Memoirs)

1942 February The 38,000 Jews of Libya once again come under Italian control. Jewish shops are plundered and 2,600 Jews are deported to a forced labor camp at Giado, building military roads. Many die from starvation and typhus. (Atlas)

1942 February 2 Hitler tells Himmler and other evening guests: "Today, we must conduct the same struggle that Pasteur and Koch had to fight. The cause of countless ills is a bacillus: the Jew... We will become healthy if we eliminate the Jew." (Architect)

1942 February 4 A meeting takes place at the Ministry of the Occupied Eastern Territories where the "scrapping by labor" of the Eastern peoples is openly discussed. Professors Fischer and B. K. Schultz are among those present. (Science)

1942 February 11 Archbishop Jäger of Paderborn issues a pastoral letter for Lent, which characterizes Russia as a country whose people, "because of their hostility to God and their hatred of Christ, had degenerated into animals." (Lewy)

1942 February 15 The Japanese capture Singapore, the key to British and Dutch defenses in the Far East.

1942 February 17 German Jews are no longer allowed to subscribe to newspapers and magazines. (Persecution)

1942 February 19 Josef Perau, a German military chaplain in Russia, writes of witnessing several hundred corpses being brought to a mass grave near his station everyday, "the total number being already 19,000." (Lewy)

1942 February 19 General Gamelin, Leon Blum and Paul Reynaud are put on trial at Riom by the Vichy government, charged with being responsible for the French defeat of 1940. The trial is never concluded. Blum defends himself so brilliantly that the trial is suspended. He remains a prisoner until 1945.

1942 February The U.S. position in the Philippines is so serious that President Roosevelt orders General MacArthur to escape and proceed to Australia to take supreme command of the Allied forces in the southwestern Pacific. "I shall return," MacArthur promises.

1942 February 28 More than 13,000 Jews have now been deported to Chelmno and gassed since December 8, 1941. Adolf Eichmann himself witnessed the process. (Atlas)

1942 March A conference of "experts" decides to close the loop-hole in the Nuremberg laws that has allowed existing mixed marriages between "Aryans" and Jews. These so-called experts order the compulsory dissolution of racially mixed marriages, to be followed by the deportation of the Jewish partner. If the "Aryan" partner failed to apply for a divorce within a certain period of time, the public prosecutor was to file a petition for divorce, which the courts would be obliged to grant. (Lewy)

1942 March The Lumenclub and the Order of the New Templars (ONT) in Austria are said to have been suppressed by the Gestapo in accordance with a party edict of December 1938. (Daim, Roots)

1942 March The Dutch East Indies surrender to the Japanese.

1942 March 2 5,000 Jews are taken from the ghetto in Minsk to a newly dug pit on the outskirts of town and machine-gunned. No ammunition is wasted on the hundreds of Jewish children seized that day: they are thrown into the pit alive to die of suffocation. (Atlas)

1942 March 6 Adolf Eichmann chairs a conference dealing with the "problem" of half-Jews who are not of the Jewish faith and who are not married to a Jewish partner. (Hilberg)

1942 March 7 The Japanese enter Rangoon in Burma.

1942 March 14 A number of Jews, who had been sent to work on a farm near Ilja in western Russia, escape into the woods and join a partisan group. (Atlas)

1942 March 15 Archbishop Konrad Groeber issues a pastoral letter for People's Memorial Day praising the "victorious German soldiers who are fighting a crusade against Bolshevism, protecting Europe from the Red tide."

1942 March 17 Beginning of "Aktion Reinhard" (Operation Reinhard). Jews from Lublin are transported to Belzec. (Days)

1942 March 17 Two Jewish leaders at Ilja, who had refused to hand over partisan sympathizers to the SS, escape into the forest to join the partisans. As a reprisal, the Germans shoot all old and sick Jews they find in the streets, and force 900 more into a building, lock it, and set it on fire. All 900 perish. (Atlas)

1942 March 17 A second death camp goes into operation just south of the village of Belzec in Galicia. 6,786 Jews are murdered during the first set of deportations. (total victims: 600,000; survivors: 2)

(Two other death camps, Sobibor and Treblinka are now under construction. These are not slave labor camps; their single purpose is to kill every Jew within a few hours of arrival.) (Atlas)

1942 March 18 Martin Bormann issues an order declaring a letter allegedly written by Werner Mölders, the recently killed number one ace of the Luftwaffe, as a forgery. A reward of 100,000 marks is offered for information leading to the apprehension of the real author.

(The Nazis were upset because in this letter, Mölders had reported with pride that Catholics, on account of their dedication, were now finally being accepted as full-fledged Germans and were enjoying the respect of those who earlier had taunted them as meek and other worldly.) (Lewy)

1942 March 23 Rosenberg, minister of the Occupied Eastern Territories, writes about the possible employment of staff for his projected Reich Center for Research on the East: "...I have thought of Geheimrat Eugen Fischer, a person who represents biological research and is a leading member of the KWG." (Science)

1942 March 24 320 German Jews are deported from Würzburg to the death camp at Belzec. Not a single one survives.

(Throughout March, Jews are deported to Belzec from Eastern Galicia and the Lublin area, where within two weeks almost all of the city's large Jewish community is transported.) (Atlas)

1942 March 24 The first Slovak Jews are deported to Auschwitz.

1942 March 25 U.S. Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold announces that William Stamps Farish has pled "no contest" to charges of criminal conspiracy with the Nazis. Arnold discloses that Standard Oil of New Jersey (later Exxon) of which Farish is president and CEO has agreed to stop hiding patents from the U.S. for synthetic rubber, which the company has in its possession, and which are already in use by the Nazis at Auschwitz.

1942 March 26 The first deportations of Jews to Auschwitz begins. The first group is from Bratislava in Slovakia. Once at Auschwitz, all are sent to the barracks. No gassing take place until May 4, 1942. (Atlas)

1942 March 26 All Jewish dwellings in Germany must now be marked by a Star of David. (Persecution)

1942 March 27 Jews from France are deported to Auschwitz. All are foreign-born Jews who had been rounded up seven months earlier, and interned. (Atlas)

1942 March 31 The Gestapo raids the ghetto in Minsk, capturing several Jewish leaders who have attempted to organize a resistance group. (Atlas)

1942 April / May The death camp at Sobibor goes into operation. (total victims: 250,000; survivors: 64)

(Some sources say the camp opened in April. Others such as Apparatus say it opened during the first week of May)

1942 Spring The "White Rose" resistance group begins distributing leaflets composed by a group of students and a professor of philosophy at the University of Munich. Their leaflets tell of the murders of 300,000 Jews in Poland and ask why the German people remain so apathetic in the face of these "revolting crimes." (Scholl; Lewy)

1942 Spring In Slovakia, 52,000 Jews are deported and transported to the East.

1942 Spring Locally stationed Security Police and SD units take over the job of murdering Jews in the USSR. (Days)

1942 April 1,750 Jews are taken from Tripoli in North Africa to forced labor sites at Homs, Benghazi, and Derna. Hundreds die from starvation and heat exhaustion. Others are killed in Allied air raids. (Atlas)

1942 April Hitler orders Dr. Heinz Fisher to conduct "Hollow Earth" experiments on the Baltic Island of Rugen.

1942 April Pierre Laval is reinstated to the Vichy government under German pressure. Laval tends more to expediency than Petain, dealing with and yielding to Nazi demands and seeking a comfortable place for France in Hitler's "new order."

1942 April 3 129 German Jews from Augsburg are deported to Izbica and Belzec. The once 1000-strong Jewish community ceases to exist. (Atlas)

1942 April 5 Hitler issues a directive for the summer offensive.

1942 Allen W. Dulles joins Col. William (Wild Bill) Donovan's Office of Strategic Services (OSS, 1942-45).

1942 April 9 American and Filipino armies having retreated from Manila to the Bataan Peninsula surrender to the Japanese after holding out for three months.

1942 April 10 1,700 Jews from Leczyca and 1,240 from Grabow are transported for execution to Chelmno (Kulmhof). (Atlas)

1942 April The Bataan death march begins. Harsh treatment and starvation cause the deaths of nearly 10,000.

1942 April 16 Berlin is informed by the local SS that "the Crimea is purged of Jews." (Atlas)

1942 April 16 2,000 Jews from Gostynin are deported to Chelmno (Kulmhof) for execution. (Atlas)

1942 April 17 2,000 Jews from Gabin and 250 from Sanniki are deported to Chelmno (Kulmhof). (Atlas)

1942 April 18 909 Jews are deported from Ceske Budejovice in Bohemia to Izbica and Belzec. (Atlas)

1942 April 18 U.S. Col. James H. Doolittle leads a B-25 strike on Tokyo. Afterward, all of the planes are ditched over China and the crews bail out. Seventeen of the 79 airmen are lost or killed by the Japanese. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese are killed in retaliation for helping the Americans.

1942 April 22 3,000 Jews from Wloclawk are transported for execution at Chelmo (Kulmhof). (Atlas)

1942 April 24 650 Jews are deported from Nuremberg to Izbica and Belzec. (Atlas)

1942 April 24 German Jews are no longer allowed to use public transportation. (Persecution)

1942 April 25 105 Jews from Bamberg are deported to Izbica and Belzec. (Atlas)

1942 April 26 Hitler demands and receives powers of Supreme Law Lord of Germany.

1942 April 27 In his "Comments on the General Plan for the East", a plan formulated by the SS, Dr. Wetzel mentions the anthropological investigation, supported by the DFG, and conducted by Professor Abel (a department head at the KWI of Anthropology). It involved Soviet citizens in German prisoner-of-war camps: "...he [Abel] gave a stern warning that the Russians should not be underrated... In these circumstances, Abel saw only two possible solutions: either the extermination of the Russian people or a Germanization of its Nordic elements." (Science)

1942 April 28 Several hundred Jews are shot at Przemysl, about 150 miles east of Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1942 May The Allies receive the first authoritative and exact report of the German annihilation of Jews in Poland. More than 700,000 have already been murdered. This information has been smuggled out of Poland by the underground Jewish Socialist Party. (Bauer)

(Only one death camp, Belzec, was mentioned in the report, but it warned that the mass killings were still in progress.) (Atlas)

1942 MayDuring a visit to Sweden, Pastor Dietrich Bonhöffer (Bonhoeffer) takes with him peace proposals from a group of German conspirators led by General Hans Oster, Chief of Staff of the Abwehr, and General Ludwig Beck, but they were rejected by the British Foreign Office.

1942 May 3-9 The Battle of the Coral Sea begins. This battle is the first naval engagement in history in which surface ships do not exchange a shot. The carrier forces are evenly matched, but the American fliers force the Japanese to make a hasty retreat. More than 25 Japanese ships are sunk or disabled. Damage to its heavy carriers hampers Japan's operations for the next several months. The Coral Sea is the first defeat for the Japanese in the South Pacific, and halts the extension of Japan's power southward.

1942 May 4 The killing center at Auschwitz goes into operation, first at Auschwitz itself, then at the nearby camp of Birkenau, where four gas chambers and crematoria are built during late 1942 and early 1943. (total victims: 1.5 - 2 million, survivors: 2,000+) (Atlas)

(Jews from each deportation were selected to live as slave laborers, some at Birkenau itself, others at nearby factories, including a synthetic oil and rubber plant later built at Monowitz. At Birkenau many Jews, particularly women, were selected by SS doctors for bizarre and painful medical experiments. During the War, Birkenau was known as Auschwitz II and Monowitz as Auschwitz III or "Buna.") (Atlas)

1942 May 4 1,200 Jews chosen from recent transports from Germany, Slovakia and France are gassed at Auschwitz.

1942 May 6 After the fall of Bataan, U.S. forces on Corregidor are cut-off. With no way to receive supplies, Lt. Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright surrenders with more than 10,000 troops, medical personnel, and civilians.

1942 May 9 Wearing of the yellow star of David is made compulsory for Jews living in Holland. (Atlas)

1942 May 9 German Jews are forbidden to enter beauty parlors and barber shops. (Persecution)

1942 May 10 3,000 Jews are killed at Dunajevtsi in the Ukraine.

1942 May 15 German Jews are forbidden by law from keeping pets. (Persecution)

1942 May 18 A public display of anti-Nazi posters in Berlin by a student group led by Herbert Baum leads to their capture (See May 27). (Atlas)

1942 May 19 The Germans attack Kharkov.

1942 May 21 4,300 local Jews from Chelm are deported and gassed at Sobibor. (Atlas)

1942 May 26 In Libya, Rommel attacks the British Gazala Line, starting a drive from Libya that will soon take him to El-Alamein, 60 miles from Alexandria, Egypt.

1942 May 27 Reinhard Heydrich, one of Hitler's favorites and now Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, is seriously wounded in Prague by Czech nationals trained as British agents in England. Hitler quickly declares a state of siege in the protectorate, offers a reward of one million marks for the capture of the assassins, and vows to slaughter 10,000 Czechs. (Apparatus)

1942 May 27 At Dubno in the Ukraine, 5,000 Jews, judged to be nonproductive for the German war effort, are taken outside the town and killed. (Atlas)

1942 May 27 All 152 members of the student group which had distributed anti-Nazi posters in Berlin, are shot.

1942 May 28 After nine days of bloody fighting, the Germans are victorious at Kharkov.

1942 May 29 All Jews in France, even the French-born, are prohibited access to all public places, squares, restaurants, cafes, libraries, public baths, gardens and sports grounds. (Atlas)

1942 May 30-31 The first 1,000-bomber raid by the RAF is made on Cologne. Much of the city is destroyed, and 45,000 civilians are made homeless.

1942 June By this time, almost all 15,000 Serbian Jews deported to the concentration camp at Zemun have been gassed in mobile gas units, disguised as Red Cross vans (see November 1941 and August 29, 1942). (Atlas)

1942 June Within days of the attack on Heydrich, more than 13,000 people are arrested, 232 are executed for expressing their approval, and 462 more are executed for possessing weapons or disobeying the police. (Apparatus)

1942 June As Heydrich passes his last hours, his colleges in the SS are shaping his final legacy. Code-named Operation Reinhard in his honor, it calls for nothing less than the systematic murder by gas poisoning of the two million Jews concentrated in the ghettos of the Government General and the incorporated territories of Poland. (Apparatus)

1942 June 3 An American patrol plane sights a Japanese force of 200 ships approaching Midway Island. B-17s from Midway unsuccessfully attack Admiral Kondo's group of heavy support ships.

1942 June 4 Reinhard Heydrich, after suffering for more than a week with a broken rib, a pierced diaphragm, and a grenade splinter jutting into his spleen, dies of blood poisoning in Prague's Bulovka Hospital. Thus died the man who had designed the "Final Solution" and created the Einsatzgruppen.

(Rumors persist in Germany that Heydrich was "allowed" to die on Hitler's orders. He seemed to be recovering until Hitler's doctor arrived from Berlin; after which his condition suddenly worsened.)

1942 June 4-7 The Battle of Midway. A naval force commanded by Adm. Chester W. Nimitz defeats the Japanese force under Adm. Yamamoto Isoroku off Midway. Four Japanese aircraft carriers are sunk with the loss of one U.S. carrier (Yorktown). This battle proves to be the turning point of the war in the Pacific.

1942 June 9 At an elaborate state funeral held for Heydrich in Berlin, Himmler calls Heydrich an "ideal always to be emulated,but perhaps never again to be achieved." (Apparatus)

1942 June 9 German Jews are required to turn in all of their "excess" clothing. (Persecution)

1942 June 9 A gassing van used earlier at Zemun for the murder of Serbian Jews is sent to Riga, for the continuing killing of not only Riga's Jews, but also tens of thousands of Jews deported to Riga from Germany six months earlier. (Atlas)

1942 June 10 Hours after Heydrich's funeral, SS security police surround Lidice, a village near Prague suspected of harboring the assassins. The entire male population is executed on the spot. Some are said to have burned alive in a barn. The women are sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. Many of the children are sent to Germany and brought up under different names. The entire village is torched, razed to the ground, and plowed over with grain to remove any trace of habitation. (The official German report stated that 170 men were shot. Executed separately were eleven miners returning from work, and 15 relatives of the Czech agents.) (Apparatus; WWIIDBD)

1942 June 11 German Jews are not allowed to receive cigarette ration cards. (Persecution)

1942 June 14 Shortly after the first 1000-bomber Allied raids on Cologne and Essen, Goebbels publishes an editorial in Das Reich declaring that Germany would repay England "blow for blow" for the attacks on German cities. He went on to blame the "Jewish press" of London and New York for instigating Britain's "blood-thirsty malice" against Germany. These Jews, Goebbels continued, "will pay for it (the bombings) with the extermination of their race in all Europe and perhaps even beyond." (Beast)

1942 June 15 The SS in Riga sends for another gassing van.

1942 June 18 At dawn, SS troops open fire on the Orthodox church in Prague, where Heydrich's assassins have taken refuge with several confederates. After a two-hour siege, all are killed or have taken their own lives. Their hiding place had been betrayed by Karel Curda, a young Czech who had trained with them in Britain.

1942 June 19 German Jews are ordered to turn in all their electrical and optical appliances, as well as typewriters and bicycles. (Persecution)

1942 June 20 All Jewish schools in Greater Germany are closed. (Persecution)

1942 June 20 Tobruk is captured and the Germans breakthrough into Egypt.

1942 June 26 Rudolf Hess is transported 200 miles from Camp Z to P.O.W. Reception Station, Maindiff Court in South Wales, before the war an admission clinic for the County Mental Hospital at nearby Abergavenny. Hess abruptly quits complaining of being poisoned and drugged; begins sleeping proper hours, eats without complaint, and excercises frequently. Hess' disposition becomes sunny and cheerful, and a car is provided for chauffer-driven rides in the countryside literally whenever he pleases. (Missing Years)

1942 Summer The Vatican points out to the head of the Slovak government, Dr. Josef Tiso, a Catholic priest, that the 52,000 Jews deported from Slovakia in the spring had been sent away not for labor service but for annihilation. The deportations ground to a halt because Eichmann's emissary had instructions to avoid "political complications." Thereafter, the Slovakian Jews lived in relative security until September 1944. (Poliakov; Hilberg)

1942 Summer The U.S. Army Air Force joins in operations against Germany. B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators concentrate on high altitude daylight bombing, while the RAF strikes at night.

1942 Summer Himmler assigns Paul Blobel, a former commander of one of his mobile killer groups (Einsatzgruppen) to find the most efficient means of destroying the evidence of Nazi atrocities. Working at Chelmno (Kulmhof) under the code name Sonderaktion 1005 (Special Command 1005), Blobel and a small staff began exhuming victims of the mobile gassing vans. They finally decided upon cremations over huge fireplaces. Any remaining bones were ground up in a special bone-crushing machine. The ashes and bone fragments were buried in the same pits from which the bodies had been disinterred. (Apparatus)

1942 July Roosevelt overrides his American planners, ordering that Operation Torch, the invasion of French North Africa, is to take place, if possible, by October 30. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower is appointed to command the joint Allied operation.

1942 July 1-27 The First Battle of El Alamein takes place in Egypt.

1942 July 2 The BBC features a broadcast by Polish-Jewish spokesman Szmul Zygielbojm, who states bluntly that the Nazis' strategy in Poland consists of the "planned extermination of a whole nation by means of shot, shell, starvation, and poison gas. (Beast)

1942 July 4 The Germans secure Sevastopol, completing their conquest of the Crimea.

1942 July 4 In a secret conversation recorded by Bormann, Hitler declares, "Once the war is over we will put a swift end to the Concordat." The financial subsidies will be eliminated at once and all old accounts settled. Until then all provocative steps have to be avoided.

1942 July 12 General Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov, one of Stalin's favorite generals, who had been awarded the Order of the Red Banner for his successful defense of Moscow against von Bock's Army Group Center, is captured by the Germans. Vlasov soon begins to raise an army from among the Russian POWs to fight alongside the Germans against Stalin. Formed in spite of Hitler's opposition, it is named the Russian Army of Liberation. (Duffy)

1942 July 14 Thousands of Jews are rounded up and arrested in Amsterdam.

1942 July 15 The first train leaves Holland for Auschwitz. 1,135 Dutch Jews are on board.

1942 July 16 Hitler arrives at Vinnitsa.

1942 July 17 The Germans deprive all Jews in Holland of their Dutch citizenship. (Atlas)

1942 July 17 Himmler visits Auschwitz-Birkenau and gives Rudolf Höss (Hoess), the camp commandant, approval for an ambitious expansion plan. Crews begin building a complex of four state-of-the-art killing centers. Each is a brick crematorium containing under one roof all the necessary facilities for the complete process, from undressing through gassing to cremation in specially designed furnaces. (Apparatus)

1942 July 17 A transport of Dutch Jews arrives at Auschwitz, and Himmler witnesses the execution of 449 persons in Bunker 2, his first such experience. That evening, Himmler attends a dinner party at Gauleiter Fritz Bracht's luxurious villa in a forest near Kattowitz. The villa had been loaned to Bracht by Giesche, one of Germany's leading mining firms, whose chief executive officer and general manager was Eduard Schulte. The villa had originally been built for the use of Giesche's American directors. (As a result of a complex financing scheme in the 1920's Giesche's Polish operations were under American management by The Silesian-American Corporation) (See Harriman, Bush and others). (Silence)

1942 July 17 Blind and handicapped German Jews are no longer allowed to display special armbands for the disabled. (Persecution)

1942 July 18 Himmler inspects Auschwitz and the surrounding area with several officials from I.G. Farben. (Silence)

1942 July 22 The Germans begin their most ambitious project to date: the deporting of more than half a million Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. The death camp prepared for them is Treblinka, little more than 40 miles away.

(In just one month, 66,701 Jews are transported to Treblinka and gassed on arrival.) (Atlas)

1942 July 23 The death camp at Treblinka goes into operation. (total victims: 800,000; survivors: under 40)

(Note: A few days later, SS Major Christian Wirth is named inspector of the death camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.) (See December 8, 1941)

1942 July 28 The Jewish Fighting Organization (JFO) is set up in the Warsaw ghetto.

1942 July 29 Eduard Schulte, general manager of the Giesche mining operation near Auschwitz, departs Breslau by train for Switzerland, where he plans to disclose the German plan for the "final solution of the Jewish question," which he apparently had learned of not long after Himmler's visit to Auschwitz on July 17. He soon gave his information to several Jewish organizations, and through them, anonymously, to the rest of the world. Schulte's warning seems to have been the first report to reach the West of an overall Nazi plan, authorized at the highest levels, to eliminate the Jewish people entirely. (Silence)

1942 July 30 Harold H. Tittmann, the assistant to Myron C. Taylor, Roosevelt's personal representative at the Holy See points out to the Vatican that its silence is "endangering its moral prestige and is undermining faith both in the Church and in the Holy Father himself." (U.S.D.P. 1942; Lewy)

1942 July 31 By the end of the month, 6,000 Dutch Jews have been transported to Auschwitz, where the majority are soon gassed. (Atlas)

1942 August Sister Teresia Benedicta (Edith Stein) is removed from a Dutch monastery, where she had sought refuge. She is later gassed at Auschwitz. (Lewy)

1942 August Eduard Schulte, in return for additional loans, irrevocably transfers ownership of Giesche's Silesian-American shares to Erzag, a Swiss firm controlled by his Swiss financial backers (La Roche). Schulte became an officer of the Swiss new corporation and even obtained German permission to export zinc, an essential war commodity, to Switzerland allegedly to finance the Swiss purchase of the American shares and bonds (Harriman) of Silesian-American. The revenue from the zinc sales stayed in Swiss banks. Almost a year after Germany declared war on the U.S., the U.S. Justice Department took over the Giesche shares of Silesian-American Corporation as enemy-owned property. (Silence)

1942 August German forces move into the Caucasus. Meanwhile, the Sixth Army, led by Gen. Paulus, marches toward Stalingrad, which Hitler hopes to use as a post for defending the occupation of the Caucasus.

1942 August Colonel Kurt Gerstein, who later claims to have joined the SS to investigate the stories of extermination for himself, tries to tell the Papal Nuncio in Berlin about a gassing he had recently witnessed near Lublin. Monsignor Orsenigo refuses to see him so he tells his story to Dr. Winter, the legal advisor of Bishop Preysing of Berlin and a number of others. He also requests that the report be forwarded to the Holy See.

1942 August 4 The first deportations of Jews from Belgium begin. During the next two years, a total of 26 trainloads will make their way to Auschwitz. Of 25,631 deported, only 1,244 will survive the war. (Atlas)

1942 August 7 U.S. Marines land at Guadalcanal in the Solomons.

1942 August 8 Marines on Guadalcanal overrun the airstrip, which is soon renamed Henderson Field.

1942 August 9 The Germans capture the Caucusus oilfields.

1942 August 13 The Swiss police begin turning back Jewish refugees who manage to cross into Switzerland. (Atlas)

1942 August 17 Almost a thousand people, mainly Polish-born Jews, are deported from Paris to Auschwitz. Twenty-seven are French-born children under the age of four, most of whom are deported without their parents, are all gassed within hours of their arrival. (Atlas)

1942 August 21 Himmler again visits with Odilo Globocnik in Lublin. (Architect)

1942 August 21 Photos of Jews being beaten and killed on a transport bound for Treblinka are taken by a young Austrian soldier, Hubert Pfoch, at Siedlce in Poland, while on his way to the Russian Front. (Apparatus)

1942 August 23 German troops reach the Volga above Stalingrad. The Luftwaffe begins heavy bombing of the city with high explosives and incendiaries, causing 40,000 casualties within a few hours.

1942 August 23 A swastika banner is said to have been planted atop Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains by a special SS detachment. The flag they planted was allegedly blessed according to the secret, mystical rites of the SS inner circle. Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in the Caucasus Mountains, as well as all of Europe, was also known as the "sacred hill of the Aryans," a seat of ancient civilizations, and the magic peak of a sect called by some the "Friends of Lucifer." (Pauwels)

(Mt. Elbrus is an extinct volcano formed during the Tertiary Period, it has two cones rising to 18,510 ft. and 18,481 ft. in altitude.The name Caucasia, which was first recorded by the ancient Greeks, has a disputed derivation.Caucasia, which gave its name to the white race of humankind, has long served as a center of human settlement distinguished by ethnic complexity. About 40 languages are still spoken in the region, many of them in the so-called Caucasian group of languages.) (Grolier)

1942 August 26 At Treblinka, a young deportee from Kielce, having been forbidden by one of the Ukrainian guards to say farewell to his mother, attacks the guard with a knife. The whole train of deportees is machine-gunned. (Atlas)

1942 August 28 Abetz, Papal Nuncio to Vichy France, requests Laval to mitigate the severity of measures taken against the Jews during the mass deportations that had recently begun in France. (PA Bonn; Lewy)

1942 August 29 Berlin is officially informed that the Jewish problem is Serbia is "totally solved." Of Serbia's 23,000 Jews, 20,000 have been murdered. (Atlas)

1942 August 30 Rommel is repulsed at Alam Halfa, Egypt.

1942 September Harold Tittmann and several other diplomatic representatives at the Vatican, with Secretary of State Hull's authorization, formally request that the Pope condemn the "incredible horrors" perpetrated by the Nazis. (Lewy)

1942 September The death camp at Majdanek goes into operation. (victims: 500,000; survivors: fewer than 600)

1942 September 1 German troops reach the outskirts of Stalingrad.

1942 September 2 At Lachwa in Poland, 820 Jews lead by Dov Lopatin revolt against their "liquidation." 700 are killed, 120 escape. Many join a Soviet partisan unit. (Atlas)

1942 September 10 533 Jews are deported from Nuremberg to the camp at Theresienstadt. Only 27 survive the war. (Atlas)

1942 September 11 Meir Berliner, a young Jew from Argentina trapped in Warsaw by the war, uses his penknife to stab an SS officer to death at Treblinka. (Atlas)

1942 September 15 Polish-born Jews are deported from Lille, France, to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1942 September 16 The German army enters Stalingrad. Fighting soon becomes street-to-street, block-to-block, house-to-house combat.

1942 September 16 Forty Bulgarian-born Jews are among those deported to Auschwitz from Paris. No Jews in Bulgaria had yet been deported to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1942 September 16 Heinrich Himmler in a speech at Hegewald says that the blood that coursed through the veins of Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, and Stalin... was German. (Architect)

1942 September 18 The first executions of Jews takes place at the Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace. (Atlas)

1942 September 18 A decree orders that German Jews are no longer entitled to buy meat, eggs, and milk products. (Persecution)

1942 September 23 The SS launches the "Gehsperre" action designed to make the Lodz ghetto a "working ghetto." All children under 10, all men and women over 60, and the sick or disabled are deported to the death camp at Chelmno. Within two weeks more than 16,000 are gassed. (Atlas)

1942 September 24 Colonel-General Franz Halder, Chief of the general staff of the army (OKH), is fired by Hitler. (Duffy)

1942 September 25 In Paris, 700 Romanian-born Jews are seized by the SS and deported to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1942 September 25 An instruction to Swiss police states: "Under current practice, refugees on the grounds of race alone are not political refugees." (Atlas)

1942 September 26 Myron C. Taylor, Roosevelt's personal representative at the Holy See, forwards to Papal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione a memorandum of the Jewish Agency for Palestine that reports mass executions of Jews in Poland and occupied Russia, and told of deportations to death camps from Germany, Belgium, Holland, France, Slovakia, etc. Taylor asks if the Vatican can confirm these reports and if so, "whether the Holy Father has any suggestions as to any practical manner in which the forces of civilized public opinion could be utilized in order to prevent a continuation of these barbarities." (U.S.D.P. 1942; Lewy)

1942 Autumn Sobibor becomes the first Operation Reinhard camp to begin exhuming its corpses and burning them. (Apparatus)

1942 October The Germans capture the southern and central parts of Stalingrad and thrust into the industrial sectors of the north. Hand-to-hand fighting takes place in cellars, sewers, and factories. The Soviet casualty rate reaches its peak in mid-October, and the defenders of Stalingrad appear trapped.

1942 October 4 Beginning of deportation of all Jews from concentration camps in Germany to Auschwitz. (Persecution)

1942 October 6 Tittmann reports to the State Department that the Pope's silence is due in part to the desire of the Holy See to assure that Papal pronouncements stand the test of time and that that the Pope has hesitated to condemn German atrocities because he does not want to incur later the reproach of the German people that the Catholic Church had contributed to their defeat. (U.S.D.P. 1942; , Lewy)

1942 October 10 The Holy See replies to Taylor's note (September 26) that up to the present it had not been possible to verify the accuracy of the severe measures reportedly taken against the Jews. (U.S.D.P. 1942; Lewy)

1942 October 15 Ernst Woermann, director of the political department of the Foreign Ministry, records that Papal Nuncio Orsenigo in Berlin had made several inquiries about mass shootings and the fate of the deported Jews with "some embarrassment and without emphasis." (PA Bonn; Lewy)

1942 October Himmler, when received by Count Ciano on a visit to Rome, praises the "discretion" of theVatican. (Lewy)

1942 October 20 The U.S. government orders the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York which were being conducted by Prescott Bush. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian took over the Union Banking Corporation and its stock shares, all of which were owned by E. Roland "Bunny" Harriman, Bush, three Nazi executives and two other Bush associates.

1942 October 23 Field Marshal Montgomery begins his attack on El Alamein. After a 5-hour, thousand-gun artillery barrage. Two British columns move forward cutting a deep salient into the German lines.

1942 October 25 Rommel returns to North Africa from sick leave in Germany and immediately counterattacks.

1942 October 25 In Oslo, Norway, 209 Jewish men and boys over the age of 16 are deported to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1942 October 28 The U.S. government orders the seizure of two Nazi front organizations run by Prescott Bush and Averell Harriman: The Holland-American Trading Company and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation.

1942 October 30 Hitler departs Vinnitsa.

1942 November Vichy France loses almost all autonomy after German troops enter unoccupied France.

1942 November 1 Professor Fischer retires. His successor as Director of the KWI of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics is Professor von Verschuer. (Science)

1942 November 2 One of the most carefully organized and intensive Jewish roundups takes place in the Bialystok region. 110,000 Jews, who had been strictly confined to their villages, are now seized and eventually transported to Treblinka and Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1942 November 3 After standing firm for more than a week, Rommel's German and Italian forces begin a withdrawal from El Alamein and begin heading back for Libya.

1942 November 5 Rommel retreats from Fuka.

1942 November 6 Approximately10,000 Jews from Chelm are sent to Sobibor. (Atlas)

1942 November 6 Himmler gives his support to a plan to establish a collection of Jewish skulls and skeletons at the Reich Anatomical Institute in Strasbourg, not far from Natzweiler concentration camp. (Atlas) (see June 21, 1943)

1942 November 7 British forces enter Mersa Matruh, but most of Rommel's divisions have already slipped away.

1942 November 8 - 9 "Operation Torch" - U.S. and British forces land in strength in French Morocco and Algeria. Timed to coincide with Montgomery's offensive, the operation places them in a position to attack Rommel's Afrika Korps from the west.

1942 November 9 Hiram J. Perez de Cruet and Betty Jo Box (Bach) are married in Winnfield, LA.

1942 November 9 Allen Dulles arrives in Bern, Switzerland, on the last train from Vichy France, only hours before the Germans occupy southern France and cut the rail link. Ostensibly taking up a post as assistant to the American minister in Bern, Dulles's real job is to organize the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Mission in Switzerland. He soon begins setting up a professional intelligence outpost on Germany's southern border. Dulles had already met Eduard Schulte 15 years earlier at Sullivan and Cromwell, Dulles law firm, which sometimes represented Giesche's partner Anaconda Copper. (Silence)

1942 November 9 Hitler attends Blutzeuge (Day of National Memory) ceremonies in Munich.

1942 November 10 Hitler, Laval and Ciano meet in Munich to discuss the situation in North Africa.

1942 November 11 Archbishop Bertram, in the name of the episcopate, sends a letter of protest against the planned compulsory divorce legislation to the Ministers of Justice, Interior and Ecclesiastical Affairs. According to Catholic doctrine, these marriages were indissoluble. (Lewy)

1942 November 11 The Germans occupy Vichy France.

1942 November 16 The deportation of German Gypsies to Auschwitz begins.

1942 November 17 Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long-managed by Prescott Bush and his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, are seized under the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act. The government announces it is seizing only the Nazi interests, leaving the Nazis' U.S. partners, Bush and his father-in-Law, to carry on the business.

1942 November 17 The Allies warn the Germans that the killing of Jews will be severely punished.

1942 November 19 The Soviet counteroffensive at Stalingrad begins. A large Soviet offensive is launched along the Don and Volga Rivers against Romanian Armies north and south of Stalingrad. Soviet tanks penetrate the front and destroy five Romanian divisions. Hungarian and Italian armies are also crushed.

1942 November 19 Hitler refuses a withdrawal plan by General Kurt Zeitzler, who had replaced Halder as Army Chief of Staff, that would have allowed General Paulus to pull out of Stalingrad and strike the Soviet forces from the rear, crippling their offensive. (Duffy)

1942 November 23 Goering volunteers the Luftwaffe to fly supplies into Stalingrad.

1942 November 25 531 Jewish women and children are seized in Norway and deported from Oslo to Auschwitz. (Atlas) (see October 25, 1942. Of the 740 Jews deported from Norway, only 12 will survive the war. As many as 930 Norwegian Jews escape into Sweden.)

1942 November 26 An article in an SS periodical, the Schwarze Korps, states that in the Napola, SS preparatory schools "pupils learn how to kill and how to die." When inaugurating a new Napola, Himmler reduced the doctrine to its lowest common measure: "Believe, obey, fight; that is all." ( Later, if proven worthy, students were admitted to the Burgs (Ordenburgs) for further SS training and education.) (Pauwels)

1942 November 29 William S. Farish, president and CEO of Standard Oil of New Jersey dies of an apparent heart attack.

1942 November 30 The New York Times runs one of the first articles on the unfolding story of the Holocaust. That article, under the headline: "1,000,000 Jews Slain by the Nazis, Report Says" is only six paragraphs long and buried on page 7. An exhibition of the clipping in June 1996 at the New York Public Library included a caption noting that The Times was criticized for having "grossly underplayed" coverage of theHolocaust, and deemed such criticism as valid. (NY Times, June 26, 1996)

1942 November 30 Romanian leader Marshal Antonescu makes his first secret contacts with the Western Powers.

1942 December Belzec shuts down its gas chambers for good and begins exhuming the estimated 600,000 bodies buried there. (Apparatus)

1942 December The researh ward run by the Heidelberg psychiatrist Professor C. Schneider in Wiesloch comes into full operation. In this ward, idiots and epileptics are physiologically and psychologically investigated. After their euthanasia elsewhere, their brains are anatomically and histologically studied. (Science)

1942 December 4 The Germans deport 817 Dutch Jews to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1942 December 4 The Congress Weekly, a publication of the American Jewish Congress, begins publishing reports from Dr. Gerhart Reigner, a representative of the World Jewish Congress in Switzerland, stating that the Nazi leadership has a plan to resolve the Jewish question in Europe by means of poison gas. In 1983, the source of this information was discovered to be a German businessman named Eduard Schulte who is said to had "close connections with the highest German authorities." Schulte was in fact closely associated with the Silesian-American Corporation which was the holding company for his own company, Giesche, which had operations both in Germany and Poland. The Silesian-American corporation was 49% owned by German Giesche, 51% was held by Anaconda Copper and Harriman and Company. (Before America entered the war, Schulte had tried to arrange a Swiss purchase of all the shares and bonds of the Silesian-American Corporation, but the transaction was blocked by the U.S. Treasury department as "of potential benefit" to Germany) (Silence)

1942 December 8 The Germans deport 927 Dutch Jews to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1942 December 8 Professor Hallervorden, Department Head at the KWI of Brain Research, writes in a progress report on his research for the DFG: "In addition, during the course of this summer, I have been able to dissect 500 brains from feeble-minded individuals, and to prepare them for examination." (Science)

1942 December The Western Allies begin vigorously denouncing the cold-blooded extermination of the Jews. (Lewy)

1942 December 12 The Germans deport 757 Dutch Jews to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1942 December 12 Hiram J. Perez de Cruet departs the U.S. for North Africa.

1942 December 16 A German decree orders that all German Gypsies are to be deported to Auschwitz. About 20,000 will be killed at Auschwitz, and many thousands more die at other camps. No more than one-fifth of the prewar population in German-held territories will survive the war (Atlas)

1942 December 16 Himmler issues an order that all persons of mixed Gypsy blood be sent to Auschwitz. (Science)

1942 December 17 The Allies pledge punishment for Nazi extermination of the Jews.

1942 December 20 A pastoral letter by the new Archbishop of Cologne, Dr. Joseph Frings, is read in his archdiocese. Itinsists that all men have the right to life, property and marriage, and that these rights can not be denied be denied even to those "who are not of our blood or do not speak our language. (Lewy)

1942 December 22 Tittmann reports to the State Department that Papal Secretary of State Maglione has informed him that the Holy See, in line with its policy of neutrality, could not protest particular atrocities and had to limit itself to condemning immoral actions in general. He assured Tittmann that everything possible was being done behind the scenes to help the Jews. (U.S.D.P. 1942; Lewy)

1942 December 24 Pope Pius XII makes another of his many calls for the more humane conduct of hostilities during a lengthy Christmas message over Vatican Radio. Humanity, he said, owed the resolution of a better world to "the hundreds of thousands who, without personal guilt, sometimes for no other reason than their nationality or descent, were doomed to death or exposed to a progressive deterioration of their condition." (DA Eichstätt; Lewy)

1942 December 26 Hiram J. Perez de Cruet arrives in North Africa.

1942 December 31 During 1942 a number of Catholic officers serving in Russia and Poland reported to the episcopate about the murder of the Jews. One such officer, Dr. Alfons Hildebrand, took special leave from his unit near Minsk to report the massacres he had witnessed to Cardinal Faulhaber. Dr. Joseph Müller, an officer in Canaris' Military Intelligence Service and a confidant of Cardinal Faulhaber, also kept the episcopate well informed about the systemic atrocities committed in Poland. Another source of information was Dr. Hans Globke, a Catholic and high official in the Ministry of the Interior entrusted with handling racial matters. (Dehler; Lewy)

1942 Gregor Schwartz-Bostunitsch is appointed an honorary SS "professor."

1942 German forces occupy Vichy France and the French fleet is scuttled in Toulon harbor.

1942 Manhattan Project scientists under Italian-born American physicist Enrico Fermi produce the first controlled chain reaction in an atomic pile at the University of Chicago.

1942 The U.S. government confines 110,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps.

1943 January The Russians begin the bombardment of Stalingrad with 7,000 pieces of artillery and a devastating air assault.

1943 January More than 10,000 Jews from Holland, Belgium, Berlin, and Theresienstadt are deported to Auschwitz. The last Dutch transport in January contains 869 invalids and children; all are gassed on arrival (Atlas)

1943 January 2 Marshal Antonescu meets with Hitler and reconciles their differences concerning the Romanian failures and the disaster at Stalingrad.

1943 January 3 A Jewish resistance group in Czestochowa kills 25 Germans. The SS shots 250 old people and children in reprisal. (Atlas)

1943 January 14-26 Roosevelt and Churchill meet for the Conference at Casablanca, on the Moroccan coast. Stalin, claiming that he was promised a European second front by the spring of 1942, refuses to attend. The Allies demand the "unconditional surrender" of Germany.

1943 January 18 The German siege of Leningrad is broken by the Russians.

1943 January 18 Professor C. Schneider places his first requests for the killing of patients at his research ward in Wiesloch before the Reich Commission for the Registration of Severe Disorders in Childhood. (Science)

1943 January 18 The Jewish underground in Warsaw resists a new wave of deportations. In four days, 6,000 Jews are deported and 1,000 killed in the streets. So fierceis the Jewish resistance and street fighting that deportations are suspended until April 19. (Atlas)

1943 January 19 Mihai Antonrscu, Romanian Foreign Minister, asks Mussolini to take the lead of a Latin League and to start negotiations with the Allies.

1943 January 30 The first daylight bombing on Berlin by a group British Mosquito bombers is timed to disrupt the celebration of Hitler's tenth anniversary in power.

1943 January 30 Hitler promotes General Paulus to Field Marshal.

1943 January 30 The Russians locate Paulus' Headquarters in southern Stalingrad and begin to surround it.

1943 January 31 Field Marshal von Paulus surrenders himself and the southern pocket of Germans in Stalingrad. General Strecker's group continues to hold out.

(Note: Paulus is the first German Field Marshal in history to surrender to the enemy.)

1943 February Goebbels makes an impassioned speech preaching what he calls "total war."

1943 February Han Bernd Gisevius, German vice-consul in Zurich and a senior Abwehr (military intelligence) agent, makes contact with Allen Dulles through Gero von Gaevernitz, a naturalized American citizen who has become Dulles right-hand man and chief advisor on German politics. Gisevius cautions Dulles that the American legation's codes are not secure, thereby earning Dulles's gratitude. Gisevius and his Abwehr associate Eduard Waetjen continue to supply Dulles with information until the end of the war. (Silence)

1943 February 1-15 Emissaries of Mihai Antonescu in Bern, Switzerland, make contact with the West through Papal Nuncio Bernardini and in Bucharest through the Turkish Ambassador.

1943 February 2 The last German forces in Stalingrad surrender and the Battle of Stalingrad comes to an end. Of approximately 280,000 Germans originally surrounded in the city, 90,000 are taken prisoner. About 40,000 wounded have been evacuated. The Soviets later claim to have removed 147,000 German corpses from the city for reburial. (Fewer than 5,000 of prisoners-of-war live to return to Germany, the last in 1955.)

1943 February 11 1,000 Jews from France, including several hundred children and old people are transported to Auschwitz. All the children are gassed on arrival and only 10 of the others will survive the war. (Atlas)

1943 February 14 The Battle of Kasserine. Rommel makes a sudden strike at the American lines in Tunisia, driving 59 miles through U.S. positions at Kasserine Pass.

1943 February 17 Hitler flies to Manstein's headquarters at Zaporozhye on the Eastern Front. He stays there until February 19 when he agrees to Manstein's plan for a counterattack.

1943 February 19 Leaders of the "White Rose" resistance group are arrested and tortured in Berlin.

1943 February 22 Rommel's drive at Kasserine loses momentum and he pulls back.

1943 February 24 Rommel is appointed commander of Army Group Afrika, and the Germans pull back to the Eastern Dorsale, leaving numerous booby traps behind.

1943 February 27 During the courseof deporting the last German Jews, the Gestapo in Berlin seizes 6,000 Christian "non-Aryan" men married to "Aryan" women. Then something unexpected and unparalleled happens: their "Aryan" wives follow their husbands to the place of temporary detention and stand for several hours screaming and howling for their men. With the secrecy of the whole machinery of destruction threatened, the Gestapo yields and the "non-Aryan" husbands are released. (Andreas-Friedrich; Lewy)

1943 February 27 The SS puts into operation the "Factory Action," deporting more than 10,000 Jewish factory workers in Germany to the east. Only a few survive. (Atlas)

1943 President Roosevelt appoints Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., as under secretary of state and charges him with the task of reorganizing the U.S. State Department.

1943 March Himmler speaks of a future SS state: "At the Peace Conference, the world will be apprised of the resurrection of the old province of Burgundy, formerly the land of the arts and sciences, which France has reduced to the role of a mere appendage preserved in spirits of wine. The sovereign State of Burgundy with its own army, its own laws and currency and postal system, will be the model SS State. It will be comprised of French Switzerland, Picardy, Champagne, the Franche-Comte, the Hainaut and Luxembourg. The official language, naturally, will be German. The National-Socialist Party will have no jurisdiction over it. It will be governed by the SS alone, and the world will be astonished by and full of admiration for this State in which the ideals of the SS will be embodied." (Pauwels)

1943 March After a visit by Himmler, Treblinka adopts cremation to dispose of the victims bodies. Some 700,000 bodies are unearthed by mechanical excavators and cremated, while simultaneously, bodies from the gas chambers are disposed of in the same manner. Teams of Jewish prisoners transferred the corpses on stretchers to huge steel grids, called "roasters" by the Germans, that could hold as many as 3,000 stacked-up bodies. These 100-foot-wide grids were constructed of a half-dozen railroad rails, resting on three rows of 28-inch-high concrete posts. Brushwood was placed underneath the grid to serve as kindling. (Apparatus)

1943 March During March, five trains leave Holland for Sobibor, one train leaves Paris for Auschwitz, and two trains leave Paris for Majdanek. (Atlas)

1943 March 3-4 Japanese troop transports and their naval escorts carrying reinforcements to Lae and Salamaua are attacked by U.S. B-24Liberators and B-17 Flying Fortresses. All of the transports and four destroyers are sunk, killing more than 3,500 Japanese soldiers and sailors. Only 5 aircraft are lost.

1943 March 9 Himmler specifies, in a decree, that only physicians trained in anthropology should carry out selection for killing, and supervise the killings themselves, in extermination camps. (Science)

1943 March 9 Rommel leaves North Africa and will never return. On his way home he meets with Mussolini in Rome and Hitler in East Prussia, but is unable to convince either of them to withdraw from Africa.

1943 March 10 The SS demands the deportation of all 49,000 Bugarian Jews to Poland. The Bulgarian people, the King, the Parliament, the intellectuals and even the farmers, who were said to be ready to lie down on the railway tracks to prevent the deportations. (Atlas)

1943 March 13 The first crematorium goes into operation at Birkenau (Auschwitz II). Prominent guests come from Berlin to witness the "special inaugural" program: the gassing and cremation of Jews from Kracow. The additional crematoriums are completed during the following three months. The four killing centers contain a total of six gas chambers and fourteen ovens for cremating up to 8,000 corpses a day. (Apparatus)

1943 March 13 Two explosive packets disguised as brandy bottles are put aboard Hitler's private plane in an unsuccessful, yet undiscovered, assassination attempt by officers in the anti-Hitler resistence. (Children)

1943 March 15 More than 2,800 Jews are deported during the first deportations from Salonica. They are told they will be "resettled" in Poland. (Atlas)

1943 March 17 Hofmann, head of the RuSHA, submits a proposal to Himmler for the "final solution" of the question of part-Jews prepared by his subordinate Professor B. K. Schultz: "It is proposed that: quarter-Jews should not be included in the same category as persons of German blood without exception, but that they should first undergo a racial classification. Every quarter-Jew in whom Jewish racial characteristics are clearly prominent, as judged from external appearances, should be treated in the same way as half-Jews (i.e. as Jews)". (Science)

1943 March 17 The Bulgarian Parliament votes unanimously against the deportation of Bulgarian Jews, and none are deported to gas chambers from Bulgaria itself. The country's Jewish population actually increased during the war, from 48,565 in 1934 to 49,172 in 1945. (Atlas)

1943 March 18 General Patton's II U.S. Corps takes Gafsa and pushes toward El Guettar.

1943 March 20 Hitler leaves Wolf's Lair on doctor's orders and recuperates at Obersalzberg.

1943 March 20 Montgomery attacks the defensive Mareth Line.

1943 March 23 The Germans halt Patton's American advance near El Guettar.

1943 March 23 Dr. Ritter reports to the DFG: "Registration of Gypsies and part-Gypsies has been completed roughly as planned in the Old Reich (prewar Germany) and in the Ostmark (prewar Austria) despite all the difficulties engendered by the war... The number of cases clarified from the race-biological point of view is 21,498 at the present time." (Science)

1943 March 23 SS-statistician Dr. Korherr sends the report, which Himmler had requested, on the final solution of the Jewish question to his secretary. The report states that, up to 1 January 1943, 2.4 million Jews had been "evacuated to the East", that is to say, "had received special treatment" (i.e. deportation to extermination camps). (Science)

1943 March 25 The last of 4,000 Jews from the Marseilles area are transported to Sobibor. All but 15 are gassed and only 5 survive the war. (Atlas)

1943 March 28 Professor Fischer begins an article in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung with the sentence: "It is a rare and special good fortune for a theoretical science to flourish at a time when the prevailing ideology welcomes it, and its findings can immediately serve the policy of the state." (Science)

1943 March 29 A German decree orders that all Dutch Gypsies are to be deported to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1943 April Mass killings in Galicia continue, as do deportations to Auschwitz and Treblinka; nine transports from Salonica, four from Holland, and one each from Belgium and France. (Atlas)

1943 April 3 The German defenders continue to hold off attacksby Patton's troops around El Guettar.

1943 April 4 Eisenhower's U.S. First Army joins Montgomery's Eighth Army near Gafsa.

1943 April 5 Pastor Dietrich Bonhöffer (Bonhoeffer) is arrested by the Gestapo, charged with subverting the German armed forces and imprisoned. (See May 1942)

1943 April 5 Montgomery attacks the Wadi Akarit Line.

1943 April 7 The annihilation of the Warsaw ghetto begins and will continue until June 16.

1943 April 7 Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp discontinues its activities. Attempts are made to eliminate all traces of mass murder. (Days)

1943 April 7 In Tunisia, Count Claus von Stauffenberg's automobile drives into a minefield, seriously wounding him. Stauffenberg loses his left eye, his right hand, part of his arm, and several fingers on his left hand.

1943 April 7-11 Hitler and Mussolini meet at Salzburg and decide to continue holding on in North Africa.

1943 April 12 The Germans announce the discovery of a group of mass graves in the Katyn Forest containing the bodies of 4,100 Polish officers, murdered by the Soviets.

1943 April 14 The slave labor camp at Siedlce near Sobibor is "liquidated." (Atlas)

1943 April 16 The Polish government in exile in London asks for a Red Cross investigation of the mass murders in the Katyn Forest.

1943 April 18 The Soviets make an announcement on the murders in the Katyn Forest, claiming that the Germans have concocted the entire story.

1943 April 18 Admiral Yamamato is killed when his airplane is intercepted and shot down by American P-38 fighters over Bougainville.

1943 April 19 The remaining population of the Warsaw ghetto rises up against the Germans when the ghetto is attacked by a heavily armed force of more than 2,000 German soldiers,Lithuanian militia members, Polish policemen and fire fighters. The Jews, numbering about 60,000, armed only with a few pistols, rifles, machineguns, and homemade weapons, put up a heroic fight, and force the Germans out of the ghetto altogether.

1943 April 19 Within a few hours the Germans return, and begin systematically burning down the Warsaw ghetto, street by street, while at the same time killing or driving out with smoke and hand grenades the Jews who continue to fight from the bunkers and sewers. (Atlas)

1943 April 19 U.S. and British delegates at the Bermuda Conference fail to produce plans for savingvictims of the Nazis.

1943 April 20 Himmler promises to crush Jewish resistence in the Warsaw ghetto as a birthday present to Hitler.

1943 April 23 The SS begins an all-out operation to eliminate the remaining Jews still hiding in the Warsaw ghetto. Resistance continues for three more weeks. (See May 8 and May 16)

1943 April 23 Anglo-U.S. Headquarters is set up in London to plan the invasion of Europe.

1943 May The Catholic bishops of Holland forbid the collaboration of Catholic policemen in the hunting down of Jews in their country, even at the cost of losing their own jobs. (Lewy)

1943 May 7 Both Tunis and Bizerte fall to the Allies.

1943 May 8 The Germans reach the Jewish underground headquarters in the Warsaw ghetto. Mordecai Anielewicz, the underground leader, and 100 of his fighters die in the battle. (Atlas)

1943 May 13 The vaunted Afrika Korps surrenders. German resistance in Tunisia collapses and the war in Africa comes to an end. 250,000 Axis soldiers are captured in the last few days, half of them German.

1943 May 16 The German commander of Warsaw, Gen. Juergen Stroop, reports to his superiors that "the former Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no longer in existence." According to Stroop's figures, 56,000 Jews have been burned alive, shot as they emerged from burning buildings, or deported to Treblinka.

(As may as 15,000 Jews escaped to the "Aryan" part of Warsaw. Some were captured, but most, sheltered by the Poles, survived the war.) (Atlas)

1943 May 18 The village of Szarajowka in eastern Poland is encircled by the Germans. Young men are shot on the spot. The women and children are herded into buildings and stables, which are then set on fire. Only a few escape. (Apparatus)

1943 May 24 German Admiral Doenitz orders his U-boats to leave the Atlantic.

1943 May 24 SS 2nd Lieutenant Max Täubner, commanding officer of a supplies workshop platoon and an officer in Kommandostab RF-SS, is tried for conducting unauthorized massacres of Jews in Russia. Täubner is sentenced to a total of ten years imprisonment, expelled from the SS, and declared unfit for service. (see June 1, 1943 and January 16, 1945) (Days)

1943 May 30 SS Dr. Josef Mengele reports for duty at Auschwitz. Mengele has been persuaded to ask for this position by Professor Otmar von Verschuer, one of Europe's most eminent geneticists and a pioneer in hereditary biology at the Frankfurt University Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Purity. Verschuer's institute agreed to fund Mengele's experiments if Mengele in return would send his results and specimens to the institute "for further study." (Mengele)

(Mengele was a former assistant to Professor von Verschuer and a visiting scientist in Verschuer's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology in Berlin-Dahlem. Mengele's first act at Auschwitz was to send those Gypsies who are suspected of suffering from typhoid to the gas chambers.) (Science)

1943 June Hitler arranges a secret conference with the Russians at Kirovograd, 200 miles behind the German lines. RIbbentrop, representing Hitler, offers to end the war on condition that Germany would retain the Ukraine and all territory west of the Dneiper River. Molotov, representing Stalin, replies that they will never settle for anything short of their old, prewar frontier. (Payne)

1943 June The Germans deliberately leak information about the Kirovograd Conference to the Allies. Stalin immediately breaks off the negotiations and calls Molotov back to Moscow. Neither the Russians nor the Germans will officially admit that this meeting ever took place. (Payne)

1943 June The new crematoriums at Auschwitz have a total capacity of 4,756 persons a day. (Science)

1943 June Professor C. Schneider's research ward at Wiesloch is closed due to problems caused by the war. (Science)

1943 June Deportations of Jews from Holland and France continue throughout the month. (Atlas)

1943 June The last 600 workers who had remained at Belzec to complete the digging up and burning of corpses are transferred to Sobibor and shot. (Apparatus)

1943 June 1 The cases against four men in SS 2nd Lieutenant Max Täubner's workshop platoon who were party to his unauthorized execution of Jews in Russia are dismissed on the grounds that they were following the orders of and under the responsibilityof Täubner and "therefore their own culpability might be described as slight." (Days)

1943 June 2 Pope Pius XII tells the Sacred College of Cardinals that he has given special attention to the plight of those who were still being harassed because of their nationality and descent, and who, without personal guilt, were subjected to measures that spelled destruction. Much had been done for the unfortunates, the Pope said, that could not yet be described. Every public statement had had to be carefully weighed "in the interest of those suffering so that their situation would not inadvertently be made still more difficult and unbearable." Unfortunately, he added, the Church's pleas for compassion and the observance of the elementary norms of humanity had encountered doors "which no key was able to open." (AB Munich; Lewy)

1943 June 5 The Germans deport 1,266 Jewish children under the age of 16 from Holland to Sobibor. All are gassed on arrival. (Atlas)

1943 June 7 Professor Clauberg, a gynaecologist from Königsberg, writes to Himmler that the method which he has been developing in Auschwitz for large-scale sterilization of women is "as good as ready". "I can now see the answer to the question you put to me almost a year ago about how long it would take to sterilize 1000 women in this way. An appropriately trained doctor could most probably sterilize several hundred, although perhaps not 1000, in a day." (Science)

1943 June 21 On Himmler's orders, doctors at Auschwitz select 73 Jewish men and 30 Jewish women who are then sent to the camp at Natzweiler in Alsace. There they are measured, weighed and gassed. Their corpses are then transported to the Anatomical Institute at Strasbourg where they are stripped of flesh for the institute's collection of Jewish skulls and skeletons. (see November 6, 1942, October 15,1944) (Atlas)

1943 June 21 U.S. Marines land at New Georgia in the Solomons.

1943 June 26 Bishop Preysing sends word to the other bishops by messenger that the divorce decree has again been postponed. He asks the other bishops to each write letters to all government ministries inquiring in strong language about the whereabouts of the deportees, demanding pastoral care for the "non-Aryan" Christians and threatening a public protest. "Beyond this," he says, "one should speak clearly about the outrages inflicted upon the Jews in general." (DA Limburg; Lewy)

1943 Summer Round-the-clock bombing of German cities by the Allies steadily mounts until all Germany is subjected to massive air raids. As the effectiveness of the U.S. fighter escorts increases, the Luftwaffe becomes less and less able to counter the air attacks.

1943 July 1 Mihai Antonescu, in Rome, again asks Mussolini to begin immediate negotiation with the Allies.

1943 July 5-15 Operation Citadel - The Battle of Kursk beomes the largest tank battle of all time. Hitler intends to break up the Kursk salient with an overwhelming mass of armor, allowing his forces to sweep up behind Moscow, capturing it from the rear. The Russians learn of the plan in advance and quickly set up a trap.

1943 July 9/10 The British and Americans launch Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. The British 8th Army lands at Cape Passero and then advances up the eastern coast. The U.S. Seventh Army, led by General George S. Patton wins a beachhead at Gela. General Omar Bradley's II Corps and General Lucian K. Truscott's task force cut through the center of the island and sweep up the western coast.

1943 July 12 At Kursk, the Soviets, favored by a seemingly endless supply of troops and tanks, move in fresh tank divisions and the advantage swingsto the Russians. Manstein, having lost 70,000 men, half his tanks, and 1,000 aircraft, is forced to withdraw.

1943 July 17 Hitler tells his top generals at the Wolf's Lair that "barbaric measures" are needed to save Italy. Only by terrifying the Italian population into blind obedience, he says, can they stiffen Italian resistance.

1943 July 19 Hitler and Mussolini meet at Feltre, a small hill town north of Venice.

1943 July 22 The U.S. Seventh Army takes Palermo, Sicily.

1943 July 24-25 The Allies begin a devastating series of combined air raids on largely civilan targets in Hamburg. The British alone deploy 780 planes and drop 2,300 tons of bombs on the first night.

1943 July 25 Mussolini is kidnapped and arrested by King Victor Emmanuel. Mussolini is abandoned by most Italians and only the Black Shirts remain loyal.

1943 July 25 Pietro Badoglio becomes Italian Prime Minister and soon begins negotiating an armistice with the Allies.

1943 July 27/28 The RAF drops thousands of pounds of incendiary bombs of Hamburg, creating a "firestorm" for the first time. A firestorm occurs when the fires in a given area become so intense that they devour all oxygen nearby, creating hurricane force winds a they suck more oxygen in, feeding the fires and moving them along at great speed. (Three-quarters of Hamburg is burned to the ground. 50,000 German civilians are killed and 800,000 left homeless.)

1943 July 29-30 Allied bombers again hit Hamburg by day and night.

1943 August More than 2,000 Jews are deported from Holland to Auschwitz. Slave labor camps in the General Government are "liquidated," and their inmates murdered. (Atlas)

1943 August At Sobibor, members of the corpse-burning squad dig a tunnel, but come out in the minefield. All 150 members of the squad are executed. (Atlas)

1943 August 1 More than 175 American B-24 Liberators) bomb the Ploesti oilfields in Romania, a 2,400-mile round trip from Libya. This low-level attack severely damages the major oil center of Hitler's Europe, but the U.S. Ninth Air Force loses 54 planes during the raid. A year later, Ploesti will again be targeted and knocked out in a savage three-day assault. 2,277 American airmen and 270 planes are lost.

1943 August 2 During a Jewish uprising at Treblinka, many of the camp's 850 workers manage to break out and enjoy a brief taste of freedom before German reinforcements are brought in. Only about 100 escape the dragnet. Fewer still survive the war. (Apparatus)

1943 August 2-3 Hundreds of Allied bombers once again bomb Hamburg.

1943 August 4 The Soviets recapture Orel.

1943 August 4 The Allies bomb Peenemunde, the German rocket laboratory and test site in the Baltic. (Silence)

1943 August 5 The British Eighth Army, reinforced by Canadians, takes Catania, Sicily.

1943 August 7 The last trainload of Jews from Salonica leaves for Auschwitz, where more than 43,000 of Salonica's 56,000 Jew have already been murdered. (Atlas)

1943 August 13-24 An Allied conference (Quadrant) is held in Quebec. Roosevelt and Churchill approve the decision to establish a second front in France, as well as specific plans for an Allied landing at Normandy on May 1, 1944. Churchill accepts that the Supreme Commander of the invasion should be American.

1943 August 16 A Jewish revolt at Bialystok is crushed by the Germans with tanks and artillery (to August 23). (Atlas)

1943 August 17 The Americans capture Messina ending the Sicilian campaign.

1943 August 18 The DFG (the German Association for Scientific Research) approves Professor von Verschuer's application for a grant for the study of "specific proteins." (See March 20, 1944) (Science)

1943 August 19 Treblinka receives its last trainload of deportees, a transport from the Bialystok ghetto. (Apparatus)

1943 August 19 A joint pastoral letter from the German bishops reminds the faithful that the killing of innocents is wrong even if done by the authorities and allegedly for the common good, as in the case of "men of foreign races and descent." The bishops call for love of "those innocent humans who are not of our people and blood," and of "the resettled." (Neither the word "Jew" nor "non-Aryan" is used.)

1943 August 20 Approximately 3,000 Jews at Glebokie resist being taken out to the woods, and are massacred in a single day. A few escape and start a small partisan group. (Atlas)

1943 August 23 The Russians capture Kharkov.

1943 August 23 The Allies launch the heaviest Allied air raid to date against Berlin. Large parts of the Friedrichstrasse and Wilhelmstrasse are destroyed, including several ministries, hotels, despartment stores and other landmarks. (Silence).

1943 August 25 The Allies again bomb the German rocket laboratory on Peenemunde, setting back production by two months. Eduard Schulte passed along damage reports to Allen Dulles in Switzerland. (Silence)

1943 August 25 U.S. forces overrun New Georgia in the Solomons.

1943 August 28 Danish resistance to the German occupation undermines continued German cooperation and the Danish-German Agreement is abolished. Martial Law is declared. The SS hopes to use this opportunity to deport all 7,200 of Denmark's Jews. (Atlas)

1943 September Danish sea captains and fishermen, on the eve of the Jewish deportations, ferry 5,919 Jews, 1,301 part-Jews, and 686 Christians married to Jews to safety in Sweden (See October 1). (Atlas)

1943 September 2 At Treblinka, a group of 13 Jewish slave laborers kill their SS guard with a crowbar while working outside the camp. Their leader, 18-year-old Seweryn Klajnman, puts on the guard's uniform, and then "marches off" his fellow prisoners. All escape their pursuers and evade capture. (Atlas)

1943 September 3 Operation Avalanche - The British 8th Army invades Italy at the toe of the "boot."

1943 September 3 In Algiers, the Badoglio regime of Italy secretly signs an armistice with the Anglo-American forces. Italian capitulation is not announced until September 8th.

1943 September 8 Italy officially surrenders to the Allied Powers.

1943 September 9 The American Fifth Army lands at Salerno, south of Naples. General Mark Clark's assault force of the 36th and 45th Infantry divisions and a ranger force, reinforced by the 82nd Airborne and the 3rd Infantry divisions. Clark loses the element of surprise and his advance is stopped at the beachhead.

1943 September 9 A circular letter concerning receipt of fees for racial "expert reports" states: "In the financial year 1942, 2,340.50 RM were received by the Kaiser Wilhelm Institue of Anthropology." (Assuming an average fee of 50 RM, approximately 50 "expert reports" were drawn up, each of them determining whether the Jew concerned was to live or to die. (Science)

1943 September 12 Mussolini is rescued by SS commandos under Otto Skorzeny at Gran Sasso, Italy, and becomes head of a puppet government in northern Italy.

1943 September 15 After six days of savage, armored attacks, General Clark's forces break out of Salerno.

1943 September 16 General Clark's forces join up with the British 8th Army advancing northward from southern Italy.

1943 September 16 More than 37,000 Italian Jews come under Nazi rule. Some escape to Switzerland. Several thousand find refuge in Catholic homes. (Atlas)

1943 September 22 The Soviet army recaptures Poltava.

1943 September 23 Hitler meets with Ion Antonescu and asks him not to receive an anti-Mussolini Italian envoy, and to dismiss Mihai Antonescu. Marshal Antonescu refuses to comply.

1943 September 23 The Vilna ghetto is liquidated by the Germans.

1943 September 23 Ernst von Weizsäcker, the new German Ambassador at the Vatican, reports to Berlin that Secretary of State Maglione regards the fate of Europe as dependent upon "the victorious resistance of Germany at the Russian front." If the German armies collapse there, the only possible bulwark against Bolshevism will fall and European civilization will be lost. (Lewy)

1943 September 25 The Soviets recapture Smolensk.

1943 September 30 A work unit of 325 Jews and Soviet prisoners, who were being forced, in chains, to dig up burn victims of the massacre at Babi Yar, near Kiev, revolt when they too are about to be killed. Only 14 survive the revolt. (Atlas)

1943 October 1 The Germans begin rounding up Danish Jews and are able to find 500 in the entire country. All were sent to Theresienstadt; 423 survived the war.

1943 October 1 The Allies capture Naples.

1943 October 4 Himmler summons his SS generals to Posen and informs them of the systematic murder of the Jews; in effect making accomplices of them all. "This is a page of glory in our history that has never been written," he tells them, "and is never to be written."

1943 October 6 Himmler tells a group of Gauleiters and Reichsleiters that " The Jews must disappear from the face of the earth," and that even the children must die so that they can never grow-up to seek revenge.

1943 October 10 The provincial administrator of the Regensburg area reports that the joint pastoral letter from the bishops on August 19 castigating the killing of innocents has not had any lasting effect. He writes: "The population pays scant attention to such involved pronouncements burdened with stipulations." (Lewy)

1943 October 11 The last train of deportees to be gassed at Sobibor arrives at the camp. (Apparatus)

1943 October 13 Italy declares war on Germany.

1943 October 14 A Jewish uprising, planned by Alexander Pechersky, a Soviet officer and also a Jew, together with other prisoners, breaks out at Sobibor. Eleven or twelve SS men, and about a dozen Ukrainian guards, are killed. Of the 600 Jews in the camp, 200 are shot or blown up in the minefields while escaping. 400 escape, of whom about 100 are later captured and killed. Others join Soviet partisan groups and are killed fighting; others die of typhus, and some are killed by hostile Poles. Only 30 are known to have survived the war, including Perchersky. (Atlas)

1943 October 14 Ernst Junger, in Paris, writes in his diary: "In the evening a visit from Bogo (Frederick Hielscher)." (As a precaution Junger referred to all important personages by a pseudonym. "Bogo" was Frederick Hielscher; "Kniebolo", Hitler.) "At a time when strong personalities are so scarce, although he is one of the people I have thought a lot about, I do not seem able to form an opinion about him. I thought once that he would make his mark in the history of our time as one of those people who are little known but are exceptionally intelligent. I think now he will play a more important role. Most of the young intellectuals of the generation which has grown up since the last war have come under his influence, and often have been through his school... He confirmed a suspicion I have had for a long time, that he has founded a Church. He has now gone beyond dogma, and is mainly concerned with liturgy. He has shown me a series of songs and festivities to celebrate the "pagan year", involving a whole system of gods, and colors and animals, food, and stones and plants. I noticed that the "consecration of light" would take place on February 2nd."

Junger added: "I have noticed in Bogo a fundamental change that is characteristic of all our elite: he is throwing himself into metaphysics with all the enthusiasm of a mind brought up on rationalist lines. The same thing had struck me in the case of Spengler, and seems to be a propitious sign. It could be said, roughly, that while the nineteenth century was the century of reason, the twentieth is the century of cults, Kniebolo (Hitler) lives on them which accounts for the total incapacity of liberal-minded people to see even where he stands." (Strahlungen, Part Two of Junger's WWII Diary, 1949; Pauwels)

1943 October 15-16 The Nazis begin rounding up the Jews of Rome. (Prior to the arrests, the Jewish community was told by the Nazis that unless it could raise 50 kilograms of gold (equivalent to $56,000 U.S.) within 36 hours, 300 hostages would be taken. When it turned out the Jews could raise only 35 kilograms, the Chief Rabbi, Israel Zolli, asked for and received a loan from the Vatican treasury to cover the balance. The Pope approved the transaction.) (Hilberg)

1943 October 16 General Stahel, the German military commander of Rome, receives a letter signed by Bishop Hudal, head of the German Church in Rome. It says in part: "I would be very grateful if you would give an order to stop these arrests (of the Jews) in Rome and its vicinity right away; I fear that otherwise the Pope will have to make an open stand which will serve the anti-German propaganda as a weapon against us." (Hilberg; Lewy)

1943 October 18 More than 1,000 Roman Jews, more than two-thirds of them women and children, are shipped off to the killing center at Auschwitz. Only 14 men and one woman returned alive after the war. (7,000 of the 8,000 Roman Jews escaped capture by going into hiding. About 4,000 of them, with the knowledge and approval of the Pope, found refuge in the numerous monasteries and houses of religious orders in Rome. A few dozen were sheltered in the Vatican itself.) (Lewy)

(Within a month 8,360 Italian Jews had been deported to Auschwitz, where 7,749 are murdered.)(Atlas)

1943 October 19 Lublin SS-und Poliseifuehrer Odilo Globocnik announces the end of Aktion Reinhard and dissolution of the camps. Most SS personnel involved in Aktion Reinhard are transferred to the Adriatic coastal operation zone to fight the partisans and select and deport the Jews of that area. (Days)

1943 October 20 The United Nations (UN) War Crimes Commission is set up.

1943 October 25 Jesuit priest Alfred Delp, a member of the German resistance, tells a conference of priests at Munich that the silence of the Church on what is being done to the Poles and Jews and on the horrors committed in the concentration camps will threaten the acceptance of the Church by the new Germany that will arise after the downfall of the Nazi regime. (DA Passau; Lewy)

1943 October 28 Ambassador Weizsäcker reports: "Although under pressure from all sides, the Pope has not let himself be drawn into any demonstrative censure of the deportation of Jews from Rome. Although he must expect that his attitude will be criticized by our enemies and exploited by the Protestant and Anglo-Saxon countries in their propaganda against Catholicism, he has done everything he could in this delicate matter not to strain relations with the German government and German circles in Rome. As there is no reason to expect other German actions against the Jews of Rome, we can consider that a question so disturbing to German-Vatican relations has been liquidated." (PA Bonn; Poliakov; Lewy)

1943 November Hitler ceases issuing numbered war directives.

1943 November The trouble at Treblinka and Sobibor has so alarmed Himmler that in early November he orders the elimination of another potential source of insurrections. Some 42,000 Jews being kept alive as slave laborers at other kinds of camps in eastern Poland are shot. Thus Operation Reinhard comes to an end. During a nineteen month period, approximately 1.7 million people have died in the three "Reinhard" camps (Belsen, Treblinka, Sobibor), most of them in 1942. The ghettos have been practically eliminated, and scarcely any Jews remain in the Government General. The "new, and improved" gas chambers at Auschwitz will now be used to eliminate Jews from the rest of occupied Europe. (Apparatus)

1943 November Dr. Gertrud Luckner, an official of Caritas (the large Catholic philanthropic organization) in Freiburg, is arrested while trying to smuggle a sum of money to the few remaining Jews in Berlin. She had been helping Jews escape across the border into Switzerland for several years, and will spend the rest of the war in a concentration camp. (Lewy)

1943 November 3 At Majdanek, 18,000 prisoners are murdered in a single day of slaughter, called the "harvest festival" by the SS. (Atlas)

1943 November 6 The Russians retake Kiev.

1943 November 9 The 20th anniversary of the Munich Putsch. Hitler gives a speech at the Lowenbraukeller in Munich, which is recorded for a later radio broadcast. (During the speech Hitler announced that the German people had inflicted such suffering and destruction on the peoples of Europe that they could expect no mercy in case of defeat. If Germany was defeated, he, Adolf Hitler, would not shed a single tear, even if all the cities of Germany were laid waste, and every German man, woman and child put to the sword. The German people would only have themselves to blame. The censors deleted this outburst, but a Turkish press official was there, who later passed it on to British intelligence.) (Architect)

1943 November 11 At Theresienstadt, 300 prisoners die during an all-day roll call.

1943 November 15-6 Some 2,000 Jews arrive at Auschwitz from Holland. (Atlas)

1943 November 17 Cardinal Bertram writes to the Minister of the Interior and the RHSA that the bishops have received information that the "non-Aryans" evacuated from Germany are living in camps under inhuman conditions and that a large number had already succumbed. (DA Limburg; Lewy)

1943 November 18 After a lull in the bombings to Berlin, the Allies once again begin to inflict heavy damage. Nightly bombings become regular events. (Silence)

1943 November 20 A force of 5,000 U.S. Marines lands on Tarawa in the Gilberts. Fighting is ferocious and casualties high.

1943 November 22 More than 100 Jewish mental home patients are deported from Berlin to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1943 November 26 Tarawa is taken by the Marines. Only 17 Japanese and 129 Korean workers survive out of the original garrison of 5,000.

1943 November 28 - December 1 Churchill and Roosevelt meet with Stalin for the first time at the Tehran Conference in Iran. During the deliberations, a date for the invasion of France, code-named Operation Overlord, is confirmed. Stalin agrees to launch a simultaneous attack on Germany's eastern front and is assured that a second invasion of France (from the Mediterranean), known as Operation Anvil, will also take place. Stalin reaffirms that the Soviets will join in the fight against Japan after Germany is defeated, but asserts that the USSR wants Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and a year-round Pacific port on the mainland of Asia. The restoration of Iran is also discussed.

(Roosevelt also agrees to most of Stalin's territorial demands in Europe and asks that the arrangements be kept secret until after the next presidential elections in the United States. In Ankara, Anthony Eden tells the Turkish foreign minister that the Soviets will be given a free hand in the Balkans after the war.)

1943 December The Fifth Army advance in Italy is stopped at the Gustav Line based on Mt. Cassino. Despite heavy bombardment by air and artillery, the Germans doggedly hold their defenses.

1943 December 1 An Italian law is passed providing for the internment of all Jews in concentration camps and for the confiscation of their property. Occasional searches for Jews take place during the following months.

1943 December 1 The Tehran Conference comes to an end. Churchill and Roosevelt knowingly agree to hand over 120 million Europeans to Stalin and the Communistts.

1943 December 2 Eduard Schulte, the man who first warned the world about the systematic killing of the Jews, flees to Switzerland after being warned by Eduard Waetjen, an associate of Gisevius, that the Gestapo has ordered his arrest. (Silence)

1943 December 3 The Luftwaffe bombs Allied merchant ships in the harbor at Bari, Italy. It is the worst Allied naval disaster of the war except for Pearl Harbor, and seriously delays Allied efforts to overrun Italy. During the attack, almost 100 tons of American poison gas accidentially escapes from the American merchant ship John Harvey, subjecting the entire population of Bari to the poison. The deaths of hundreds of Italian civilians becomes one of the best kept secrets of WWII. (Secrets)

1943 December 3 Units from X Corps reach the top of Monte Camino, and II Corps captures Monte Maggiore.

1943 December 5 Monte Camino is the site of heavy action as both sides fight for possession of the summit.

1943 December 5 Catholic Provost Bernhard Lichtenberg dies while in transport to Dachau concentration camp. He had been seized by the Gestapo immediately after his release from prison in October. (Lewy)

1943 December 6 The British 56th Division captures Monte Camino.

1943 December 7 The U.S. II and VI Corps attack Monte Sammucro and San Pietro, but German resistance is fierce.

1943 December 10 Eighth Army crosses the Moro River in strength.

1943 December 12 The U.S. 36th Infantry Division attacks Monte Lungo.

1943 December 15 The Allied II Corps renews the drive toward San Pietro and Monte Lungo.

1943 December 15-18 5,000 Jews are transported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, almost all are gassed on arrival. (Atlas)

1943 December 17 The Germans begin withdrawing troops from San Pietro. Monte Sammucro is now in Allied hands.

1943 December 22 The 2nd Canadian Brigade fights a house to house battle against the German 1st Paratroop Division in Ortona, Italy.

1943 December 23 The 1st Canadian Division seizes most of Ortona.

1943 December 24 Washington and London announce that General Dwight D. Eisenhower will be the Supreme Allied Commander for the invasion of Europe, with British Air Marshal Tedder as his deputy.

1943 December 24 Secret negotiations begin in Stockholm between Marshal Antonescu's Romanian emissaries and the Soviet Embassy.

1943 December 25 Bishop Frings, in his Christmas sermon, again emphasizes that it is wrong to kill innocents just because they belong to another race, but again he fails to mention the word "Jew" or "non-Aryan." (Lewy)

1943 December 26 The German battlecruiser Scharnhorst is sunk in a gun duel with the British battleship Duke of York in the Arctic off Norway. Only 36 of her 2,000 man crew survive.

1943 December 28 Canadian troops complete the capture of Ortona.

1943 Robert Oppenheimer establishes the Los Alamos laboratory to build the U.S. atomic bomb.

1943 Ezra Pound is indicted and charged with treason for his support of Mussolini and the Fascist system of government.

1943 American war correspondent Ernie Pyle publishes "Here Is Your War," a collection of his front-line dispatches that are popular with both soldiers and civilians alike,

1944 Konrad Morgen, a 34-year-old SS magistrate, brings 800 cases of corruption and murder in the concentration camps to trial. 200 will result in sentences and the commandants of camps at Buchenwald and Majdanek, among others, are executed.

1944 Early in 1944, Gregor Schwartz-Bostunitsch and his private library of 40,000 anti-Jewish and conspiracy theory books, the heart of a proposed "institute for conspiracy study" are evacuated from Berlin to Schloss Gneisenau at Erdmannsdorf (Riesengebirge) in Silesia for safekeeping. Later in the year, Bostunitsch is promoted to SS-Standartenfuehrer (colonel) upon the personal recommendation of Heinrich Himmler. (Roots)

1944 January In Switzerland, Han Bernd Gisevius and his Abwehr associate Eduard Waetjen begin supplying Dulles with information about the German resistence's plans for a coup against Hitler. (Silence)

1944 January 3 The Red Army reaches the former Polish border.

1944 January 22 The American VI Corps lands 50,000 troops at Anzio between the German Gustav Line to the south and Rome 33 miles to the north, but fails to break the stalemate. The assault troops consist of U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, U.S. Rangers, paratroops, and a British division.

1944 January 26 Himmler makes an address to more than 260 high-ranking army and navy officers in Posen. Himmler tells them that Hitler, himself, had given him the mission to exterminate the Jews. "I can assure you," Himmler told them, "the Jewish question has been solved. Six million have been killed." According to an eyewitness, all, but five officers, applauded enthusiastically. (Toland )

1944 January 27 The Soviet Army relieves Leningrad after the German siege which has lasted 890 days. Since September 1941 the people of Leningrad had withstood German artillery and air bombardment. More than 200,000 of them had been killed in the siege; half a million more die from cold, starvation, fatigue and exhaustion.

1944 January 29 Cardinal Bertram writes to the Government that he has received reports that the ordinances enacted for the Jews are now to be applied to the Mischlinge (half-Jews and quarter-Jews). These Christians, he writes, have already been declared unworthy of military service, could not attend institutions of higher learning, etc. Now one hears that they are to be conscripted into special formations for labor service. "All these measures," he continues, aim clearly at segregation which in the end threatens extermination." The Mishlinge were German and Christians, he says, and always rejected by the Jews. "The German Catholics indeed numerous Christians in Germany," Bertram warns, "would be deeply hurt if these fellow Christians now would have to meet a fate similar to that of the Jews." (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Lewy)

1944 January 31 U.S. amphibious landings begin in the Marshall Islands.

1944 January 31 Dr. Ritter mentions "23,822 conclusively 'clarified' Gypsy cases" in a report to the DFG (the German Association for Scientific Research). (Science)

1944 February Hitler abolishes the Abwehr (army intelligence). Its head, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, had apparently been a double agent for a number of years.

1944 February 1 The Times of Londons discloses that the last will and testament of Austrian-born Sir Henry Strakosch had converted "interest free" loans to Winston Churchill and Lord Simon into gifts. Simon had received 10,000 pounds, and Churchill twice as much. Strakosch was a multimillionaire who made his fortune in gold mining in South Africa. (Missing Years)

1944 February 1 The first of 40,000 Americans land on Kwajaleinl. Within a week the atoll is taken, and more than 8,000 Japanese troops are killed.

1944 February 3 Another trainload of Jews leaves Paris for Auschwitz. It is the 67th such deportation in almost two years. Of 1,214 deported only 26 survive the war. (Atlas)

1944 February 17 An air armada from U.S. carriers attack on the Japanese naval base of Truk in the Caroline Islands. About 250 enemy planes and 200,000 tons of Japanese merchant shipping are destroyed, and Truk itself is rendered useless.

1944 February 29 U.S. forces land on the Admiralty Islands.

1944 March With the rapid advance of Soviet forces westward, the Germans begin a systematic evacuation of all concentration and slave labor camps.

1944 March 7 In Warsaw, the historian Emanuel Ringelblum, who had struggled to collect and preserve as much material as possible about the Warsaw ghetto, and who had managed to hide in "Aryan" Warsaw after the revolt, is discovered by the Gestapo, and together with his family, is tortured and killed. (Atlas)

1944 March 8 The Japanese mount an offensive in Burma.

1944 March 9 Professor Hallervorden writes to Professor Nitsche, the organizer of euthanasia at that time: "I have received 697 brains in all, including those which I took out myself in Brandenburg." (Science)

1944 March 11 300 Jewish women and children from Dalmatia, who have been interned at Gospic, are deported to the Croat concentration camp at Jasenovac. None survive. The men have already been deported to the Sajmiste death camp near Belgrade. (Atlas)

1944 March 12 Bishop Frings again emphasizes that it is wrong to kill innocents just because they belong to another race, but once again he fails to mention the word "Jew" or "non-Aryan." (Lewy)

1944 March 15 German authorities in Greece begin a systematic search for 10,000 Jews Greek Jews. 5,000 are soon caught and deported to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1944 March 16 On the 700th anniversary of the burning of the Cathars at Montsegur, Hitler makes a speech during which he declares that "mankind undergoes a spiritual renewal every 700 years."

1944 March 19 Hitler sends German troops into Hungary and forces the establishment of a more compliant government. Suddenly more than 750,000 Jews, who previously had seemed relatively safe from Nazi terror and deportation, come under Nazi domination. (Atlas)

1944 March 20 Professor von Verschuer sends a progress report to the DFG. He writes: "My assistant, Dr. Mengele, has joined this part of the research as a collaborator. He is employed as an SS-Captain and camp doctor in the concentration camp of Auschwitz. With the approval of the Reichsfuehrer-SS (Himmler), anthropological studies have been carried out on the very diverse racial groups in this camp, and blood samples have been sent to my laboratory for processing." (Science)

1944 March 20 The death camp at Majdanek is evacuated. The sick are sent to Auschwitz for immediate gassing. Able-bodied men are sent to Gross Rosen, and women are sent to Ravensbrück and Natzweiler. (Atlas)

1944 March 22 At the Koldyczewo slave labor camp, 10 SS guards are killed, and hundreds of prisoners escape. (Atlas)

1944 March 29 Russian troops enter Romania.

1944 March 30 Hitler dismisses Manstein and Kleist from their commands of Army Groups North and South Ukraine. Model takes over from Manstein and Schoerner replaces Kleist.

1944 March 31 The RAF loses 96 of 795 planes taking part in a raid on Nuremberg. They are said to be the worst losses suffered by the RAF during the entire war.

1944 Spring Himmler orders SS magistarte Konrad Morgen to cease all further investigations into the concentration camps and their personnel, unless specifically ordered to do so by Himmler himself.

1944 April A direct rail spur is built to Birkenau (Auschwitz II). It runs almost to the gates of two of the four gas chambers. (Atlas)

1944 April 4 An American reconnaissance plane flies over Auschwitz, photographing the I.G. Farben synthetic rubber (Buna) plant at Monowitz. Both the plant and the nearby main camp are clearly visible, but the gas chambers at Birkenau are not recognized for what they really are. (Apparatus)

1944 April 15 Tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews are forced to leave their homes, and move into specially designated ghetto areas. (Atlas)

1944 April 15 Giovanni Gentile, the self-proclaimed philosopher of Italian Fascism and the major figure in the rise of Hegelian thought in Italy, dies.

1944 April 15 A group of prisoners, assigned the task of destroying evidence of mass murder at Ponary, try to escape. 25 are killed outright, 15 got away. Five days later, the remaining 40 members of the unit are killed. (Atlas)

1944 April 17 Dr. Max Josef Metzger, a Catholic priest, longtime pacifist, and founder of the Una Sancta movement is executed for having "seditious" contacts with the Bishop of Upsala in Sweden. (Lewy)

1944 May The German army estimates 5.16 million Russian prisoners of war have been captured since 1941. Fewer than 1.8 million are still alive.

1944 May 7 Rudolf Hess voluntarily agrees to be injected with Evipan, a proprietary brand of the so-called "truth drug," Pentothal (sodium Thiopental). Hess convinces the doctors, including Dr. Dicks, that he is suffering from profound amnesia. (Missing Years)

1944 May 12 President Roosevelt writes to King Peter of Yugoslavia politely ordering him to dismiss General Draza Mihailovich, the legendary hero of the Yugoslavian resistance, as Minister of National Defense, and to replace him with Josip Broz (Tito), the Communist leader.

1944 May 15 The deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz begins. By the end of June, a total of 381,000 Jews have been deported to Auschwitz, including more than 289,000 from Ruthenia and northern Transylvania. (Atlas)

1944 May 15 869 Jews are deported from Paris to Proyanovska slave labor camp near Kovno. There, 160 are shot, and the rest are evacuated six weeks later. Only 15 survive the war. (Atlas)

1944 May 18 The Allies overrun Cassino and link up with the Anzio forces a week later. The Fifth Army then advances 75 miles toward Rome.

1944 May 19 Eight civilians are shot at Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace. Numerous Jewish and non-Jewish women active in the French resistance, and many Russian and Polish prisoners were shot in this camp. (Atlas)

1944 May 21 The Gestapo imprisons all 260 Jews of the city of Canea, Crete, and 5 families from Rethymnon.(Atlas)

1944 June Chelmno (Kulmhof) resumes operations and by August, an additional 7,000 Jewish victims have been killed. (Days)

1944 June Professor H. F. K. Günther declares his readiness to speak on "The encroachment of Jewry on the cultural life of the nation" at an "Anti-Jewish Congress" to convene in Cracow. Alfred Rosenberg is scheduled to speak on "Biological humanism." (This congress never took place due to the war situation.) (Science)

1944 June 3 496 more Jews from Holland are transported to Auschwitz.

1944 June 4 The Allies enter Rome.

1944 June 5 King Victor Emmanuel is forced to relinquish power in Italy to his son, Prince Humbert.

1944 June 6 D-DAY - the Allies land at Normandy on the French coast. From the air and from a fleet of about 4,000 ships, the Allies storm ashore in what is called "Operation Overlord," the largest amphibious operation in history. (11,000 Allied aircraft operated over the invasion area while more than 150,000 troops soon disembark.)

1944 June 6 The imprisoned Jews of Crete, 400 Greek hostages, and 300 Italian prisoners-of-war are put on a ship at Heraklion and sent 120 miles across the Aegean Sea, where the ship is deliberately sunk. All prisoners on board are drowned. Only seven Jews from Crete survive the war, in hiding. (Atlas)

1944 June 6 All 1,800 Jews on the island of Corfu, in the Ionian Sea, are seized by the Gestapo. (Atlas)

1944 June 8 Hiram J. Perez de Cruet has his photo taken at Foto Luxardo in Rome.

1944 June 10 The Germans kill more than 600 French villagers at Oradour-sur-Glane. Women and children are burned alive in the church, and the men are machine-gunned, as a reprisal against the killing of an SS army commander by a resistance sniper in another village. Seven of the victims are Jews who had been hiding among the friendly villagers. (Atlas)

1944 June 10 Professor Eugen Fischer accepts the chairmanship of a workshop at the "Anti-Jewish Congress" to be convened in Cracow: "Dear Reichsminister! That you intend to create a scientific front line for the defense of European culture against the influence of Jewry, and to call togetherfor that purpose scientists from all the nations fighting Jewry, seems to me a very good idea and absolutely necessary, if I may allow myself to express such opinions... I am delighted to accept your invitation to attend this congress..." (See June 1944) (Science)

1944 June 13 Just 7 days after D-Day, Hitler orders the release of the first V-1 rockets, or "buzz bombs," from bases along the French coast in the Pas de Calais sector. These robot bombs reach speeds of 400 mph on a predetermined course aimed a London. RAF pilots quickly learned to shoot them down. (V-1's kill nearly 6,000 Londoners, injuring 40,000, and destroying more than 75,000 homes.)

1944 June 13 Men from the slave labor camps at Auschwitz are transferred to Mauthausen. (Atlas)

1944 June 14 All 1,800 Jews of the island of Corfu are deported for "resettlement" in Poland. (Atlas)

1944 June 15 U.S. forces land on Saipan in the Marianas.

1944 June 17 Field Marshal Rommel in a meeting with Hitler near Margival, France, ties to convince Hitler that the war is lost. Rommel tells him that the Allies will soon break through in Normandy, and nothing could stop them from advancing into Germany. Hitler tells Rommel, "It is not your privilege to worry about the future of the war!" (Payne; Duffy)

1944 June 19 U.S. forces under Admiral Nimitz defeat a Japanese fleet in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the biggest carrier engagement of the war. U.S. planes destroy more than 350 Japanese aircraft in what came to be known as "the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot."

1944 June 27 American infantry captures Cherbourg, giving the Allies a major port for the flow of men and supplies.

1944 June 29 1,600 of the 1,800 Jews of Corfu are gassed shortly after their arrival at Auschwitz. The rest are forced into slave labor. (Atlas)

1944 June 29 20,000 Jewish women are evacuated from the slave labor camps at Auschwitz to Stutthof. That spring, the Germans had started building 60 new slave labor camps in the area, to replace those already overrun by the Soviets. (Atlas)

1944 June 30 1,153 Jews are deported from Paris to Auschwitz.

1944 Summer Dr. Mengele begins having his Jewish slave-assistant, Dr. Nyiszli, send large quantities of scientific material to Professor von Vershuer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology in Berlin. This material includes eyes from murdered Gypsies, internal organs from murdered children, the skeletons of two murdered Jews, and sera from twins infected with typhoid by Dr. Mengele. (Science)

1944 July Soviet troops approach Shauliai, Kovno, Vilna and Lublin. Many Jewish partisans are active behind the lines. (Atlas)

1944 July 1-22 The Bretton Woods Conference, officially called the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, meets at Bretton Woods, N.H. It is attended by delegates from 44 states and nations. This conference provides the foundations for the postwar international monetary system and establishes both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

1944 July 2 The SS takes the last 3,000 Jews of Vilna, laborers in a factory, and murders them at Ponary. Thousands are killed in Shauliai and Kovno. Thousands more are evacuated to labor camps near Stutthof and Dachau. (Atlas)

1944 July 4 More than 2,800 Jews from the Papa region of Hungary are deported to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1944 July 8 The Hungariangovernment orders an immediate halt to the deportation of Hungarian Jews. The Germans give way, and 300,000 Jews, most of them in Budapest awaiting deportation, are saved. 437,000 Hungarian Jews had already been deported. (Atlas)

1944 July 9 Hitler rejects Rommel's urgent request to withdraw his troops in Normandy, in order to regroup.

1944 July 9 Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest. His nominal role is as an attache for the Swedish legation, but he is in Budapest primarily at the instigation of the War Refugee Board, a new U.S. government agency established to help Jewish victims. He quickly begins issuing safe conduct passes. (Apparatus)

1944 July 9 German Army Group North is cut off in the Baltic.

1944 July 9 Hitler returns to the Wolf's Lair from Obersalzberg.

1944 July 11 Colonel Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg brings a bomb to Berchtesgaden, and although he is with Hitler and Goering for more than half an hour, he does not release the bomb because Himmler is not present. (Children)

1944 July 15 Stauffenberg takes a bomb to a meeting in Rastenburg. Himmler and Goering are not present and Hitler leaves before the bomb can be planted. (Children)

1944 July 18 The U.S. First Army fights its way into the village of St.-Lo, France.

1944 July 18 British and Canadian troops cross the Orne River at Caen and drive toward the south.

1944 July 20 Colonel Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg attempts to assassinate Hitler at the Wolf's Lair, his East Prussian headquarters. The bomb explodes only a few feet from Hitler, but only slightly wounds him. This stroke of luck only strengthens Hitler's conviction that fate wants him to continue his struggle to the very end.

1944 July 21 Hundreds of suspected plotters in the assassination attempt, and their families, are arrested throughout Europe. Within two months the Gestapo arrested more than 7,000 suspects, and "people's courts" sentence 4,980 to death. (Children)

1944 July 21 General Franz Halder is arrested by the Gestapo. He will be held in several different concentration camps until released by the Allies in 1945. (Duffy)

1944 July Following the plot against Hitler, Goebbels is named "General Plenipotentiary for the Mobilization of Total War." (Goebbels)

1944 July 22 As Russian troops approach Lublin and the nearby death camp at Majdanek, the Germans march 1,200 Jews westward toward Kielce, where 180 are murdered. The survivors are sent by train to Auschwitz, where 200 more are gassed on arrival. (Atlas)

1944 July 23 Soviet forces enter Majdanek. The SS now begins accelerating evacuations from Auschwitz, yet deportation trains from France and Belgium, as well as Radom, continue to be sent to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1944 July 23 1,700 Jews from the island of Rhodes and 120 from the island of Kos are sent to Auschwitz and its gas chambers, as more and more "death marches" away from the camp are ordered. (Atlas)

1944 July 25 The U.S. First Army breaks through the German lines between Caen and Saint Lo, and out of the Normandy beachhead.

1944 July 29 The Germans begin a "death march" evacuation of 3,250 slave laborers from Warsaw. (Atlas)

1944 July 31 General Patton's Third Army storms through the gap in the German lines and captures Avranches.

1944 July 31 1,300 Jews are deported from Drancy to Auschwitz. Among them are more than 300 Jewish orphans seized in Paris between July 20 and 24. (Atlas)

1944 August SS officer Adolf Eichmann informs Himmler that six million Jews have already been killed: 4 million in the camps, 2 million in mobile gassing operations.

1944 August 1 In Pisa, Italy, Germans murder Catholic philanthropis Pardo-Roques and six Jews he has been sheltering. (Atlas)

1944 August 1 The Polish uprising in Warsaw, generally known as the Warsaw Uprising, is begun by the underground anti-German resistance movement, as elements of the Soviet army approach the city. The Germans kill tens of thousands of Poles while, the Soviet army remains inactive at the city gates until October 2, when the rebellion collapses.

(The Warsaw Uprising was led by anti-Communist, General Tadeusz Komorowski, and supported by the Polish government-in-exile in London.)

1944 August 3 Of the total of 20,943 Gypsies registered as prisoners in Auschwitz, the last 2,897 are sent to the gas chambers. 3,461 had been transferred to other camps, while all the others died in Auschwitz from starvation, infectious disease, or by gassing. (Science)

1944 August 4 A daring attack by American tank forces cuts off the Germans on the Brittany Peninsula.

1944 August 4 The Germans evacuate 3,000 Jewish slave laborers by train from Warsaw to Dachau. More than 1,000 die during the five-day trip. (Atlas)

1944 August 5-6 Hitler and Ion Antonescu hold their last meeting.

1944 August 6-30 70,000 Jews from Lodz, the last of the "working" ghettos, are sent to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1944 August 9 The XV Corps, on the left flank of the Third Army, pushes east to capture Le Mans, then north toward Argentan.

1944 August 12 Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., eldest son of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, is killed when his PB4Y1 bomber, the Zootsuit Black, literally a flying bomb, loaded with 21,170 pounds of dynamite, explodes over the English Channel during a secret mission against German V-2 sites.

1944 August 15 The American Seventh Army invades the South of France in "Operation Anvil." American infantry divisions from Italy make the attack aided by American paratroops as well as British and French units. Knifing through weak German defenses, the Seventh Army races up the Rhone Valley toward Germany. German troops in all of western France are now threatened with isolation by the Allied pincer.

1944 August 17 The American XV Corps and the Canadian 1st Army trap the German 7th Army in a pocket between Argentan and Falaise.

1944 August 17 Hitler replaces Field Marshal von Kluge, and Field Marshal Walter Model takes command of the Western Front.

1944 August 18 Field Marshal Kluge commits suicide after writing an apologetic letter to Hitler.

1944 August 19 General Eisenhower changes his mind and decides not to bypass Paris after receiving word of an uprising in the city. He orders in the Second Free French Armored Division, supported by U.S. troops.

1944 August 20 American B-17 bombers make a raid near Auschwitz during the first of four attacks on I.G. Farben's plant at Monowitz, only a few miles east of the gas chambers. (Apparatus)

1944 August 20 A great Russian offensive begins in Moldavia.

1944 August 20 Paris is surrounded by the Allies.

1944 August 21 Allied representatives meet at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington to discuss plans for postwar security. American, British, Soviet, and Chinese representatives lay the basis for future discussions leading to the foundation of the United Nations. Meetings will continue until October. Edward Stettinius, Jr., leads the American delegation.

1944 August 22 The defeat of Falaise-Argentan breaks the back of the Nazi defenses in France. The Allies capture more than 100,000 prisoners.

1944 August 23 Ion Antonescu and his Foreign Ministers are summoned by King Michael. They are kidnapped in the palace and delivered to a Communist agent named Bodnaras. King Michael makes a radio broadcast announcing that an armistice has been signed with the Russian command and orders the Romanian Army to cease all resistance. No armistice had been signed. Sixteen Romanian divisions were deceived into surrendering and were quickly transported to camps in Russia and Siberia.

1944 August 24 Horia Sima now in Germany begins the formation of the Romanian National Army composed of all Romanian volunteers then in Germany and those who could escape and join them.

1944 August 25 Paris falls to the Allies. Destruction is minimal, due primarily to the efforts of the German commandant, General Dietrich von Choltitz, who disobeys Hitler's orders to "fight to the last man" and "raze the city."

1944 August 25 Romania declares war on Germany.

1944 August 26 The great Rothschild Mansion in Paris is discovered to contain almost all of its original art and furnishings--untouched after five years of occupation as Luftwaffe headquarters in Paris and numerous visits by Hermann Goering. (Cowles)

1944 August 26 During a Slovak revolt, a Jewish battalion, as well as hundreds of individual Jews, take part in the capture of three major towns. (Atlas)

1944 August 28 Hundreds of Jews die when the Germans evacuate slave labor camps in Estonia by sea. (Atlas)

1944 August 29 The Soviets and the Polish Communists jointly announce they have discovered that the Germans have killed 1.5 million people in the concentration camp at Majdanek (Maidanek). This is the first in a series of such announcements.

1944 August 30 A new Romanian regime declares war on Germany.

1944 August 30 General de Gaulle's Provisional Government in Paris.

1944 August 31 Russian troops enter Bucharest and soon occupy all of Romania. Since no armistice has been signed, the Russians behave as if on enemy territory -- raping, plundering, looting and murdering.

1944 August 31 Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace is liberated. At least 25,000 prisoners, Jews and non-Jews had died there of starvation, ill-treatment, murder or execution. (Atlas)

1944 Autumn General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Supreme Commander of the Polish troops fighting on the Western Front tells his soldiers that "Poland entered the war four years earlier because of the urging of Great Britain." At Churchill's insistence, General Sosnkowski is relieved of his command. (Sturdza)

1944 September The deportation of Jews from Slovakia begins once again (sSee Spring and Summer 1942). (Hilberg)

1944 September 2 Professor C. Schneider writes in a letter about the reverses which his research proiect has suffered: "The people in Eichberg... maintain that they knew nothing of our experiments being continued, even though one of our collaborators had been going there from time to time... so, I have to reckon with the fact that only half the idiots whom we have investigated here will be available to us for a full examination." (Science)

1944 September 3 The British capture Brussels.

1944 September 3-4 3,000 more Jews are deported from Westerbork in Holland on two separate trains. Anne Frank, who has since become world-famous because of her diaries written in Amsterdam during the German occupation, is aboard one of these trains. Her parents had brought her to Holland as a refugee from Germany before the war. She later dies in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. (Atlas)

1944 September 8 Bulgaria declares war on Germany.

1944 September 8 The V-2, a far heavier and more deadlier supersonic rocket, is put into action by the Germans. From its bases in the Low Countries, the V-2 with speeds of 5,600 km/h (3,500 mph) buried its 1-ton warhead into the ground before violently exploding. More than 1,000 V-2s will fall on England, and about 500 hit London, causing 10,000 casualties. Many are also directed at Antwerp.

1944 September 11 British troops enter Holland.

1944 September 11 The American Seventh Army joins up with the U.S. Third Army near Dijon.

1944 September The Germans leave Istanbul. Sebottendorff, who has been working for German Intelligence, is given funds to support himself for a year. (Rittlinger; Roots)

1944 September 13 American B-24s attacking the I.G. Farben plant at Monowitz accidentally drop several bombs inside the main camp at Auschwitz, destroying a barracks, killing 15 SS men and injuring 28. A cluster of bombs is also mistakenly dropped farther west at Birkenau, damaging the railroad but missing the crematoria. (Apparatus)

1944 September 13 An armistice is signed in Moscow between Romania and the Soviets, three weeks after ithad been falsely announced by the King. It is essentially an unconditional capitulation and puts Romania entirely in the hands of the Soviets.

1944 September 15 U.S. troops enter Germany.

1944 September 16 Hitler decides on a counteroffensive in the West. The Eastern Front is far too vast, Hitler says, and the Russians much too superior in number for such an operation to succeed. Chances are much better in the West.

1944 September 17 Operation Market-Garden, an Allied airborne operation to seize river crossings in Holland, begins.

1944 September 19 Finland signs an armistice with the Allies.

1944 September 19 As Soviet forces approach Klooga, in Estonia, the Germans kill almost all of the 3,000 surviving slave laborers, including 1,500 Jews from Vilna, 800 Soviet prisoners-of-war, and 700 Estonian political prisoners. Only 85 inmates survive. (Atlas)

1944 September 20 The U.S. 82nd and 101st divisions of the First Allied Airborne Army cross the Rhine River in the Nijmegen-Arnhem area.

1944 September 25 The U.S. 82nd and 101st divisions are driven back across the Rhine.

1944 September 28-29 4,000 Jews from Theresienstadt are sent to Auschwitz on two separate trains. Almost all are gassed, including all the old people and children. (Atlas)

1944 October Almost 9,000 Jews are sent from Slovakia to Auschwitz during October in reprisal for the Slovak revolt.

1944 October 1-30 More than 18,000 Jews from Theresienstadt are sent to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1944 October 2 The Warsaw Uprising collapses. Virtually the entire remaining population of Warsaw is deported by the Germans to forced labor or concentration camps and the city is systematically razed. The Soviet army then resumes its offensive,

1944 October 7 A Jewish revolt breaks out at Auschwitz. Recently arrived Jews from Poland, Hungary and Greece, who are being forced to drag bodies from the gas chambers to the crematoria, having secretly obtain explosives from four Jewish girls working in a nearby munitions factory, blow up one of the four crematoria. All are killed, except for one man, who later starves to death at Ebensee. (Atlas)

1944 October 11 The veteran 1st U.S. Infantry Division of the First Army enters the outskirts of Aachen. Hitler's has ordered Aachen's defenders to resist to the last man.

1944 October 14 Field Marshal Rommel is forced to commit suicide.

1944 October 15 As Allied forces approach Strasbourg, Himmler orders the Anatomical Institute to destroy its collection of Jewish skulls and skeletons, but many related documents survive the war. (See June 21, 1943)

1944 October 19 Alfred Naujocks deserts to the Americans and at Nuremberg the following year gives a number of sworn affidavits. In one he gives his account of the "faked incident" at Gleiwitz on the evening of August 31, 1939, which Hitler had used to justify his attack on Poland. (Shirer I) (See November 20, 1945)

1944 October 20 U.S. troops enter Aachen after a savage pounding by American artillery. Little is left standing and the city lies in ruins, but the German defenders continue to fight fiercely, often to the last man.

1944 October 20 The U.S. makes landings on Leyte in the Philippines.

1944 October 21 The last, steadfast German defenders are driven out of hiding in Aachen. The U.S. First Army captures the first major German city to fall to the Allies.

1944 October 23 The Japanese fleet fails to destroy transports landing American soldiers on the island of Leyte during the Battle of Leyte Gulf (to October 26).

1944 October 23 Rosenberg writes to Martin Bormann proposing to draft the entire German clergy for forced labor because of severe manpower shortages. (Lewy)

1944 October 26 Himmler issues orders to destroy the crematoriums at Auschwitz-Birkenau in an attempt to eliminate the evidence of Nazi mass murder.

1944 October 27 Bormann writes to Rosenberg informing him that Hitler has rejected the idea of using clergymen for forced labor. (Lewy)

1944 October Rundstedt, who has been restored as Commander-in-Chief in the West, is given overall responsibility for the planned counteroffensive in the West. The armies involved are the Fifth Panzer Army, commanded by Hasso von Manteuffel, Sixth Panzer Army, under Waffen-SS General Sepp Dietrich, and General Erich Brandenberger's Seventh Army, consisting mostly of SS formations. The attack through the Ardennes is scheduled for November 25th.

1944 October 30 The last transport of Jews from Theresienstadt arrive at Auschwitz; on that day and the next, 1,689 of them are sent to the gas chambers. (Apparatus)

1944 November After protest from his generals, Hitler postpones the Ardennes Counteroffensive from November 25 to December 10.

1944 November Roosevelt names Edward R. Stettinius Jr. as Secretary of State, replacing Cordell Hull.

1944 November 2 Himmler's order of October 26 arrives at Auschwitz: "I forbid any further annihilation of Jews." Upon his further orders, all but one of the crematoriums are dismantled, the burning pits covered up and planted over with grass, and the gas pipes and other equipment shipped to concentration camps in Germany. The single remaining crematorium is for the disposal of those who die of natural causes and the gassing of about 200 surviving members of the Sonderkommando. The final solution is formally over. Yet tens of thousands of Jews will continue to die of brutality and neglect. (Apparatus)

1944 November 2-8 Tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews are driven out of Bupapest by the SS as Soviet forces approach the city. Whipped and shot by the SS, they are forced westward toward Vienna. Some 4,000 are saved by the intervention of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, but more than 10,000 die during six days of terror. (Atlas)

1944 November 20 Hitler leaves the Wolf's Lair and travels to his headquarters near Bad Nauheim.

1944 November Hitler's generals again convince him to postpone the Ardennes counteroffensive. This time from December 10 to December 16.

1944 November 24 Himmler issues orders to close the remaining crematorium at Auschwitz, and gives instruction to destroy any remaining evidence. (Apparatus)

1944 November 28 The last gassings take place at Auschwitz. More than 8,000 have been gassed since the first of November. (Atlas)

1944 December More than 3,500 Jews, who had been evacuated from Auschwitz to Lieberose, are again evacuated, and forced to march in snow and ice to Sachsenhausen north of Oranienburg, outside Berlin. Several hundred, too sick to leave the infirmary, are shot and the building set on fire. Each morning, those who are too weak to walk are shot, and by the time the group reaches its destination, only 900 are still alive. (Atlas)

1944 December 10 Horia Sima and seven other Romanian delegates sign a formal constitution in Vienna for a new Romanian National Government-in-exile. Five of the eight are Legionaries.

1944 December 15 U.S. forces land on Mindoro in the Philippines.

1944 December 16 Hitler launches the Ardennes Counteroffensive, now known to Americans as "The Battle of the Bulge."

1944 December 17 By afternoon, one of Gen. Sepp Dietrich's SS Panzer groups, commanded by SS Col. Joachim Peiper, has penetrated almost to Malmedy, Belgium. Peiper becomes notorious for ordering the machine-gunning of a number of captured G.I.s from the U.S. 7th Armored Division in a field near Malmedy.

1944 December 20 By this date, SS Col. Peiper has allegedly murdered approximately 350 prisoners of war and at least 100 unarmed Belgian civilians at twelve different locations along his route. (Secrets)

1944 December 24 The German offensive in the Ardennes is brought to a halt at the end of the day.

1944 December 24 Now with the defeat of Nazi Germany almost certain, Pope Pius XII in his Christmas message acknowledges "that a democratic form of government is considered by many today to be a natural postulate of reason itself." (Moody; Lewy)

1944 December 25 Leading elements of Manteuffel's army is still four miles short of the Meuse River at Dinant. It is to be the highwater mark of the German advance.

1944 December 25 The Allies begin a strong counteroffensive in the Ardennes. The U.S. 4th Armored Division, part of Patton's Third Army, from around Mortelange is designated to relieve Bastogne.

1944 December 26 Units of the 4th Armored Division breaks through to relieve Bastogne and then continues its rapid push toward the north.

1944 December 26 Budapest is almost completely encircled by General Tolbukhin's Third Ukraine Front.

1944 December 27 The British XXX Corps drives the 2nd Panzer Division out of Celles.

1944 December 29 Russian emissaries attempting to negotiate with the German garrison in Budapest are killed after a misunderstanding of some kind takes place.

1944 December 29 In Greece, Prime Minister Papandreou announces he will resign as soon as a new regent is chosen.

1944 December 30 The VIII Corps from Patton's Third Army begins a new attack northward in the direction of Houffalize.

1944 December 31 Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens is sworn in as regent and Papendreou resigns.

1944 December 31 In Poland, the Communist dominated Committee of National Liberation based in Lublin assumes the title of Provisional Government. The government-in-exile in London protests to no avail.

1944 December 31 Hungary declares war on Germany.

1944 December 31 The British XXX Corps captures Rochefort at the western end of the Ardennes salient.

1944 Pierre Laval is arrested by the retreating Germansin France, but will escape to Spain in 1945.

1944 British forces occupy Athens and intervene in the communist inspired civil war.

1944 The word "genocide" is coined by Polish-American scholar Raphael Lemkin.

Copyright © 1997 R.H. Perez de Cruet
All Rights reserved.

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