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 i