1941
The first episode of Any Questions? - rechristened, The Brains Trust from December 1941 - broadcast on The Forces Network. The first episode of Workers' Playtime broadcast on The Home Service. Aircraft of the Royal Air Force bombed the Focke-Wulf aircraft production plant near Bremen.
The Andrews Sisters recorded 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy'.
Martin Bormann promulgated a Nazi decree banning gothic typefaces in all printing and proclaiming roman type as the new standard. The order sought to make Nazi communications more understandable in occupied France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway, where roman type was used. Derrick O'Connor born in Dublin. Alice Jones born in Edinburgh. George Formby's 'Guarding The Home Of The Home Guards'/'I Wish I Was Back On The Farm' released.
In Operation Compass, Australian troops of Thirteen Corps (the re-designated Western Desert Force) captured Italian-held Bardia and forty five thousand Italian prisoners were taken.
John Steiner born in Chester.
Graham Arthur Chapman born in Leicester. Leadbelly & The Golden Gate Quartet's recording of 'The Midnight Special' released.
David John Bernard Sampson born in Uttoxeter. Caron Gardner born in London.
Operation Excess, a series of supply convoys to Malta, Alexandria and Greece began. The aircraft carrier Illustrious was severely damaged by Stukas as it escorted one convoy to Malta.
One hundred and eleven people were killed when a German bomb hit the booking hall of Bank & Momument Tube Station. The blast travelled down the stairs and escalators to the platforms. Malcolm Hope Terris born in Sunderland.
John William Baldry born in East Haddon, Northamptonshire.
The first use of 'V for Victory' by Victor de Laveleye on the BBC's Belgian service, Radio Belgique. The government announced new price controls to thwart food profiteering. Price freezes were announced for more than twenty items including coffee, rice, biscuits and jelly. Dorothy Faye Dunaway born in Bascom, Florida.
Don Glen Vliet born in Glendale. Geoffrey Beevers born in Chicester.
German bombers pounded Valletta in Malta. HMS Illustrious was badly damaged during the bombardment. Claire Gordon born Cambridge.
David Eli Ruffin born in Whynot, Mississippi. Christopher Hamilton Bidmead born in Bolton.
The Fourth and Fifth Indian Division with units of the Sudan Defence Force under the command of General William Platt launched an attack on the Italians in Eritrea, Somaliland and Ethiopia, taking Kassala. The exiled Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, re-entered his country behind the advancing British and Commonwealth troops. Home Secretary Herbert Morrison used Defence Regulation 2D to ban the Communist newspaper the Daily Worker, on the grounds that it was attempting to hinder the British war effort. Anthony Anholt born in Singapore.
Raoul Walsh's High Sierra - starring Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart - premiered. Richard Pierce Havens born in New York.
Neil Leslie Diamond born in New York. Tall, Dark & Handsome - starring Cesar Romero - premiered.
Patricia Garwood born in Paignton.
Sean Arnold born in Wickwar, Gloucestershire.
Alfred Hitchcock's Mr & Mrs Smith - starring Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery - and Buck Privates - starring Abbott and Costello and The Andrews Sisters - premiered.
Georgy Zhukov was appointed chief of the Red Army's General Staff.
Lieutenant-General Erwin Rommel was appointed head of German Army troops in Africa. The unit would later be officially designated as the Afrika Korps.
After several days of desperate fighting, a flying column of Thirteen Corps called Combe Force cut off the retreating Italian Tenth Army during the Battle of Beda Fomm. The Italians were unable to break through the small blocking force and the British accepted the surrender of roughly a hundred and thirty thousand Italians in and to the south of Benghazi.
The US House of Representatives passed the Lend-Lease bill.
Churchill gave an international radio address that concluded with a direct appeal to the United States: 'Put your confidence in us. Give us your faith and your blessing and under Providence all will be well. We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job.' George Formby's 'I'm The Husband Of The Wife Of Mister Wu'/'Our Sergeant Major' released.
Michael David Apted born in Aylesbury.
Under cover of a courier's passport Ian Fleming of the Naval Intelligence Division travelled to Gibraltar. On his arrival, he liaised closely with Alan Hillgarth, the British naval attaché in Madrid. Hillgarth provided much of the background to the plan for the guerrilla campaign and sabotage that would follow German presence on the Iberian peninsula. The trip spawned Operation Goldeneye, an Allied plan during 1941 and 1942 to maintain an intelligence framework in Spain in the event of an Axis takeover of the territory and to undertake sabotage operations.
Anthony Eden met with Archibald Wavell and Alan Cunningham in Cairo to discuss the prospect of British involvement in Greece.
German and British troops confronted each other for the first time in North Africa at El Agheila in Western Libya. John Ford's Tobacco Road premiered.
Raoul Walsh's The Strawberry Blonde - starring James Cagney, Olivia De Havilland and Rita Hayworth and William A Seiter's Nice Girl? - starring Deanna Durbin, Robert Benchley and Anne Gillis - premiered.
Plutonium was chemically identified by Glenn Seaborg and his team of chemists at University of California, Berkeley.
British and South African forces captured Mogadishu, the capital of Italian Somaliland. At dawn hundreds of British commandos landed on the Italian-held island of Kastellorizo off the coast of Turkey in Operation Abstention. The Regia Aeronautica began bombing the British positions immediately, while four warships were sent to shell the positions and land reinforcements. The Italian light cruiser Armando Diaz was torpedoed and sunk off the Kerkennah Islands by the British submarine HMS Upright. The February strike began in the Netherlands protesting the anti-Jewish measures of the Nazi occupiers. Preston Struges's The Lady Eve - starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda - premiered.
The first episode of Harry Alan Towers' Quiet, Please! starring Rupert Hazell and Elsie Day broadcast on The Forces Programme. The Academy Awards were held in Los Angeles, with Rebecca winning Best Picture. So Ends Our Night - starring Fredric March, Margaret Sullavan and Glenn Ford - premiered.
Madeleine Rose Merrington born in Lahore.
Himmler gave orders for the expansion of Auschwitz concentration camp, to be run by Commandant Rudolf Höss. Bulgaria officially joined the Tripartite Pact. D Ross Lederman's Shadow On The Stairs premiered.
Gaye Brown born in Twickenham.
British commandos carried out an attack on the oil facilities at Narvik in Norway, Operation Claymore. British military force in Libya was thinned down as some men were sent to assist the Greeks in their emerging battle with approaching German troops. Prince Regent Paul of Yugoslavia agreed to join the Axis pact.
Another night of heavy bombing in London, notable because Buckingham Palace was hit. The Café de Paris nightclub was also heavily damaged and did not re-open until after the war.
Franklin Roosevelt signed the Lend Lease Act allowing Britain, China and other Allied nations to purchase military equipment and to defer payment until after the war. German bombing in Manchester severely damaged the Old Trafford stadium.
Georgina Anne Ward born in Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire. George Formby's 'Thanks, Mister Roosevelt'/'Bless 'Em All (Number Two)' released.
The first episode of The Forces Programme's Once Upon A Time broadcast. Michael Edward Love born in Los Angeles.
The Italian Spring Offensive ended in complete failure for the Italians. A fire broke out on the docked German ocean liner SS Bremen, causing such extensive damage that the ship would be scrapped. Initially thought to be the work of raiders, the arsonist was later said to have been a cabin boy avenging a punishment.
Paul Lorin Kantner born in San Francisco.
Wilson Pickett born in Prattsville, Alabama.
Elizabeth Bell born in Leeds.
The possible date that Noël Coward wrote 'London Pride'. According to his own account, he was sitting on a seat on a platform in Paddington Station, watching Londoners going about their business quite unfazed by the broken glass scattered around from the station's roof damaged by the previous night's bombing: in a moment of patriotic pride, he recalled that an old English folk song had been appropriated by the Germans for their national anthem and it occurred to him that he could reclaim the melody. Michael Jeremy Thomas Clyde born in Dorney, Buckinghamshire.
Rommel's forces attacked and reoccupied El Agheila in his first offensive. The British retreated and within three weeks were driven back to Egypt.
Big Joe Williams recorded 'Crawlin' King Snake' for Bluebird Records. The Yugoslav coup d'état occurred. Dušan Simović and other Serb nationalist officers in the Royal Yugoslav Air Force overthrew Yugoslavia's pro-Axis government and intended to back out of the Tripartite Pact. When Hitler learned of this malarkey, he was God damn pissed off and ordered an invasion of Yugoslavia.
Hitler held a conference with his generals in which he said that the upcoming war with Russia would be a race war in which Communist commissars and Jews would be 'exterminated' by SS Einsatzgruppen following behind the advancing armies. Hitler expected the Soviet Union to be defeated in a matter of weeks and declared, 'We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.' The British liner Umona was torpedoed and sunk off Freetown, Sierra Leone by the German submarine U-124.
In Iraq, pro-German Rashid Ali and other members of The Golden Square staged a military coup d'état and overthrew the regime of the pro-British Regent 'Abd al-Ilah who had fled to Jordan after learning of a plot to assassinate him. The Royal Air Force dropped the first four thousand-pound 'blockbuster' bombs of the war, by Vickers Wellington bombers in a raid over Emden.
During one of his radio broadcasts, the previously anonymous pro-Nazi commentator Lord Haw-Haw confirmed his identity as William Joyce.
Sam Wood's The Devil & Miss Jones - starring Jean Arthur and Robert Cummings - premiered. William Piddington born in Ardwick.
Stuart Legge's documentary Churchill's Island premiered.
The Italian Army was driven out from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The German-led Battle of Greece began at dawn when the XL Panzer Corps crossed the Greek border. The German invasion of Yugoslavia began at 7am with a Luftwaffe assault, the opening stage of Operation Retribution.
On Budget Dya, Chancellor Kingsley Wood presented a plan modelled after Keynesian economics that used taxation and 'forced savings' to attack an estimated five hundred million knicker 'inflation gap.' Wood increased taxes and projected a deficit of two billion, almost identical to the previous year's deficit. Newspaper editorials generally found the wartime sacrifices asked for in the budget to be reasonable and the stock exchange also took the news of the budget well. The Belfast Blitz began. General Richard O'Connor was captured by a German reconnaissance patrol in North Africa. Keith Buckley born in Huddersfield. Gordon Fitzgerald Kaye also born in Huddersfield.
Hannah Campbell Grant Gordon born in Edinburgh.
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was split up by Germany, Italy and Hungary. The Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska) was established under Ante Pavelić and his Ustaša. The Germans encircled the port of Tobruk, opening a seven month siege; some of Rommel's forces moved East to take Fort Capuzzo and Sollum, on the border with Egypt.
Shirley Rosemary Stelfox born in Dukinfield, Cheshire. Sam Wood's The Devil & Miss Jones - starring Jean Arthur, Robert Cummings and Charles Coburn - premiered.
Yugoslavia, surrendered. The Germans defeated Commonwealth forces at the Battle of Vevi. Robert Frederick Chelsea Moore born in Barking. The Great Lie - staring Bette Davis - premiered.
Japan and the Soviet Union signed a five-year Treaty of Neutrality, pledging to remain neutral in the event of one country being attacked by a third party. The pact also saw the Soviet Union recognise du jure Manchukuo for the first time. Christopher Peter John Small born in Eingwood, Hampshire.
In Western Ethiopia, Italian colonial forces and Belgian Congolese troops clashed at Bortai Brook near Gambela.
The popular crooner Al Bowlly had given a performance at the Rex Cinema in High Wycombe. He was offered an overnight stay in town, but Bowlly took the last train home to his flat in Duke's Court, London. He was killed by a Luftwaffe parachute mine which detonated outside his flat. The entire First Division of the Italian Sixty Second Regiment was captured in a failed attack on Tobruk.
Athens was placed under martial law after Greek Prime Minister Alexandros Koryzis committed suicide.
The amphibious landing of British Commandos known as The Bardia Raid began. A German air-raid on London killed thirteen firefighters.
Charles Patrick Ryan O'Neal born in Los Angeles. Ernst Lubitsch's That Uncertain Feeling - staring Merle Oberon, Melvyn Douglas and Burgess Meredith - premiered.
General Georgios Tsolakoglou disobeyed orders from Greek high command and signed surrender papers to Sepp Dietrich in Larissa so the Greek army would not have to surrender to the Italians. The Royal Navy bombarded Tripoli, damaging the Italian torpedo boat Partenope and six freighters. The writer Rex Stout made a speech in New York in which he attacked the isolationist activism of Charles Lindbergh, saying, 'A desperate war is being fought and the winners of the war will win the oceans. No matter what we do, we shall be either one of the winners, or one of the losers; no shivering neutral will get a bite of anything but crow when the shooting stops. It would therefore seem to be plain imbecility not to go with Britain and win.'
British military and civilians began to evacuate from Greece.
Edward Stewart Mainwaring born in Exmouth. The Greek government was evacuated to Crete.
The (second) Battle of Thermopylae began. It ended in a German victory, although the Allies fought a successful delaying action. As, indeed, Leonidas of Sparta and his men had two thousand years earlier. George Stevens's Penny Serenade - starring Irene Dunn and Cary Grant - premired.
Lew Landers's The Singing Hill - starring Gene Autry, Virgina Dale, Mary Lee and Gerald Oliver Smith - premiered.
Athens was occupied by German troops. Hurricane fighter planes were delivered as important reinforcements for besieged Malta. General Friedrich Paulus was dispatched to North Africa to exert some control from High Command over Erwin Rommel, who had been disregarding most orders from Berlin. Heinrich Himmler inspected Mauthausen concentration camp.
The Greece campaign ended with the evacuation of around fifty thousand British and Commonwealth troops. Allied resistance ceased on the Greek mainland when eight thousand British, New Zealand, Australian, Greek and Yugoslavian troops surrendered at Kalamata. Alexander Korda's That Hamilton Woman - starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier - premiered.
Orson Welles's Citizen Kane premiered in New York. The government created the Ministry of War Transport and made Frederick Leathers its first head.
The Black Cat - starring Basil Rathbone and Bela Lugosi - premiered. Paul Valentine Birkby born in Chessington, Surrey.
Frank Capra's Meet John Doe - starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck - premiered. George Formby's 'You'll Be Far Better Off In A Home'/'I Did What I Could With My Gas Mask' released.
The film actress Mary Lawson and her husband, Francis Beaumont, were killed in Liverpool when the house they were staying in was hit by a Luftwaffe bomb. When the air-raid sirens sounded family and friends, including Lawson's sister Dorothy, took safety in an Anderson shelter, while Lawson and Beaumont remained in their room. The building was destroyed, killing the couple (Lawson dying afterwards in Smithdown Road Hospital), whilst those in the shelter survived. Lawson's death was announced in newspapers around the globe, but was overshadowed by the greater destruction of the war.
Five years from the day he was forced to flee, with British backing Emperor Haile Selassie entered Addis Ababa, his capital, in triumph.
The German weather ship München was captured near Iceland. Papers were found on board that improved the British understanding of the Enigma coding machines.
The German commerce raider Pinguin was sunk by the British heavy cruiser HMS Cornwall in the Indian Ocean off the Seychelles.
The German submarine U-110 was captured by the Royal Navy in the North Atlantic with its Enigma cryptography machine and codebooks. The Luftwaffe attempted to hit the Rolls-Royce engine factory in the East Midlands, but their bombs only managed to kill a few farm animals.
Rudolf Hess parachuted into Scotland claiming to be on a peace mission. One or two people even believed him. The House of Commons was damaged by the Luftwaffe in what would turn out to be the last major bombing raid on London, but also one of the most devastating. Other targets included Hull, Liverpool, Belfast and the shipbuilding area of the River Clyde in Glasgow. This was, effectively, the end of The Blitz, as Germany shifted its focus toward Soviet Union and the East.
Eric Victor Burdon born in Walker, Newcastle Upon Tyne. Juliet Linda Harmer born in St Albans.
The RAF bombed several German cities, including Hamburg, Emden and Berlin. The Nazi Party issued a press release on the subject of Rudolf Hess, claiming that he was 'suffering from mental illness' and that the Führer had ordered the immediate arrest of those who helped Hess. Hitler also abolished the post of Deputy Führer and transferred its duties to the new title of Chief of the Nazi Party Chancellory, appointing Martin Bormann to the job. MPs met for the first time in their new temporary home, the House of Lords.
John Francis Train born in Stockton-On-Tees. Joseph Roger Brown born in Swarby, Lincolnshire.
John Henry George Forgeham born in Kidderminster.
Larry Dann born in London.
Miriam Margolyes born in Oxford.
The Battle of Crete began with an airborne invasion by the Germans.
The Central Committee War Section met in Moscow. Joseph Stalin dismissed intelligence indicating a German attack on the Soviet Union was imminent, believing it was misinformation from the British trying to draw the Soviet Union into the war. When the head of Soviet intelligence argued with Stalin he was arrested and shot.
The battle cruiser HMS Hood was sunk by a powerful salvo from German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic. Robert Allen Zimmerman born in Duluth, Minnesota.
In the North Atlantic, Royal Navy Fairey Swordfish aircraft from the carrier HMS Ark Royal fatally crippled the Bismarck in a torpedo attack. It was scuttled the following day.
The Allies began to evacuate Crete.
Robert Kemp's adaptation of Operation Dynamo broadcast on The Home Service.
In The Navy - starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Dick Powell, Claire Dodd and The Andrews Sisters - premiered.
An armistice was signed in the Anglo-Iraqi War. June Rose Ritchie born in Blackppol.
German victory - albeit, somewhat Pyrrhic - in the Battle of Crete. Clothes rationing began in the United Kingdom.
Charles Robert Watts born in Kingsbury, North London. Hitler and Mussolini met at the Brenner Pass once again. During the five-hour conference Hitler ranted about Rudolf Hess and other recent events, but kept Mussolini in the dark about the forthcoming invasion of the Soviet Union. However, major Italian troop movements in the Balkans around this time suggest that the Italian government was likely aware of Hitler's intentions. Mussolini reportedly told Count Ciano after the meeting, 'I wouldn't be at all sorry if Germany in her war with Russia got her feathers plucked.'
Operation Josephine B ended in Allied success when a sabotage team blew up an electrical transformer station in Pessac.
Andrew Stone's The Hard-Boiled Canary (aka There's Magic In Music) - starring Allan Jones, Susanna Foster, Lynne Overman and Grace Bradley - premiered.
British and Australian forces crossed the Litani River, beating back Vichy French opposition. During this battle, Moshe Dayan, the future Israeli politician leading an Australian unit, lost his eye.
The RAF bombed the Ruhr and Rhineland for the first of twenty consecutive nights.
Representatives of fourteen Allied countries and governments-in-exile made a pact in London to fight until victory was won and not make separate peace treaties with any Axis countries. The German cruiser Lützow was torpedo bombed in the Trondheimsfjord by Bristol Beauforts of RAF Coastal Command and put out of action until 1942. Roy Harper born in Rusholme. Reginald Maurice Ball born in Andover.
Tom, Dick & Harry - starring Ginger Rogers, George Murphy, Alan Marshal, Phil Silvers and Burgess Meredith - premiered.
Operation Battleaxe attempted - and failed - to relieve the Siege of Tobruk. British forces were heavily defeated at Halfaya Pass nicknamed 'Hell-fire pass.' Leadbelly & The Golden Gate Quartet's recording of 'Pick A Bale Of Cotton' released. Harry Edward Nilsson III born in New York. Nicolette Vaughan Pendrell born in Cheltenham.
Berlin Diary by the American journalist William L Shirer was published. The Big Store - starring The Marx Brothers - premiered. Stephen Arthur Frears born in Leicester.
The Battle of Damascus ended in Allied victory. Churchill decided to dismiss Archibald Wavell as Commander-in-Chief, Middle East and replace him with Claude Auchinleck. Wavell took Auchinleck's old post of Commander-in-Chief, India.
The beginning of Operation Barbarossa and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Churchill gave a speech announcing the German invasion of the Soviet Union and explaining Britain's new alliance with Russia. 'No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years,' Churchill said. 'I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding ... Any man or state who fights on against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state who marches with Hitler is our foe. It follows, therefore, that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people.'
The Soviet Union bombed Helsinki. Finland declared war with the Soviet Union. Roy Anthony Mould born in Stepney.
Mervyn LeRoy's Blossoms In The Dust - starring Greer Garson - premiered.
German forces captured Minsk in Belarus and Rovno in Ukraine. The German ship Lauenburg was intercepted by British warships North of Iceland. A boarding party from the destroyer HMS Tartar seized a large amount of material that would be useful in cracking German codes.
The Germans and Finns launched Operations Silver Fox and Platinum Fox, aimed at capturing the key Soviet port of Murmansk.
German troops occupied Latvia's capital, Riga, on the way to Leningrad.
Noël Coward's comedy Blithe Spirit had its London premiere at The Piccadilly Theatre. Its eventual run of nineteen hundred and ninety seven consecutive performances set a record for non-musical plays in the West End unsurpassed for more than twenty years. The Ponary Massacre began, with the shooting of Soviet POWs captured during Operation Barbarossa and with the deportation of hundreds of Jews from Vilnius to Soviet dug fuel tank pits near the Ponariai suburb, where they ere shot or buried alive. Howard Hawks's Sergeant York - starring Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan and Joan Leslie - premiered.
Stalin announced a 'scorched Earth policy.'
Caught In The Draft starring Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour was released.
The first episode of Dick Turpin broadcast on The Home Service.
The First Battle of Smolensk began on the Eastern Front.
The US First Marine Brigade arrived in Iceland and relieved the British garrison there. President Roosevelt sent Congress a message explaining that the United States could not allow Germany to occupy Iceland because it would 'constitute a threat to Greenland,' to shipping in the North Atlantic and to the steady flow of munitions to Britain which Congress had already freely approved as a matter of broad policy. Churchill sent a letter to Stalin saying that there was 'genuine admiration' in Britain for the 'bravery and tenacity of the soldiers and the people' of the Soviet Union. Churchill also pledged, 'We shall do everything to help you that time, geography and our growing resources allow.' Stalin was unimpressed by the vagueness of the letter and responded by asking for a formal agreement. On the fourth anniversary of the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chiang Kai-shek sent a message to 'friendly nations' asking for 'close co-operation with one another' to fight the Axis because 'the war in the Far East is no longer to be viewed as merely a conflict between two nations, for the European and Asiatic Wars have now become closely interrelated. Scarcely a single country remains unaffected because this predatory group of powers excludes no country from the scope of its design to dominate the world by force.' William Edgar Oddie born in Rochdale.
Britain and the USSR signed a mutual defence agreement, promising not to sign any form of separate peace agreement with Germany. Polly James born in Blackburn.
Jacqueline Joyce Lane born in Manchester.
Richard Anthony Crispian Francis Prew Hope-Weston born in Eynsham.
The Battle of Beirut was fought, resulting in Allied victory. William Keighley's The Bride Came COD - starring James Cagney and Bette Davis - premiered.
The journalist William Connor, under his pen name Cassandra, broadcast a postscript to The News railing against PG Wodehouse, currently a prisoner of war in Germany who had been tricked by the Nazis into making a series of humorous broadcasts - How To Be An Internee Without Previous Training - for the American market. Connor's broadcast was made at the direct instruction of Duff Cooper, the Minister of Information, who overruled strong protests made by the BBC against the broadcast. The BBC management, who considered Wodehouse's actions no worse than 'ill advised', pointed out to Cooper that there was no evidence as to whether Wodehouse had acted voluntarily or under duress.
Joseph Stalin's eldest son Yakov Dzhugashvili was captured in battle by the Germans at at Smolensk. He would later die in 1943 at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Virginia Woolf's final novel Between The Acts was published posthumously.
A message from Churchill was read on radio by Colonel V Britton (actually the BBC news editor Douglas Ritchie) calling upon the people of Nazi-occupied Europe to mobilise under the V for Victory campaign. Citizens of occupied Europe within the broadcast's range were urged to chalk letter V's in public places and tap out the Morse Code version of the letter – three dots and a dash – to make known their confidence in Allied victory. Lawrence Huntington's This Man Is Dangerous - starring James Mason, Gordon McLeod and Mary Clare - premiered.
Heinrich Himmler visited Soviet POWs near Minsk and Lublin and decided to build the Majdanek concentration camp to house them.
Gary Myers born in Wiluna, Western Australia.
The Nazi occupation regime in the Baltic states - the Reichskommissariat Ostland - was established.
The first episode of Girl In Pursuit broadcast on The Home Service. Douglas MacArthur was appointed to command US forces in the Far East.
German forces completed the encirclement of the Red Army at Smolensk and took one hundred thousand prisoners. British Commandos carried out Operation Chess, an overnight raid on Ambleteuse, France.
German forces captured Kingisepp near Leningrad. Finland broke off diplomatic relations with Great Britain. Patrick Jeremy Tull born in Sussex.
David Hattersley Warner born in Manchester.
Under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, ordered the SS's Reinhard Heydrich to 'submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question.' Conservative MP - and notorious anti-semite and fascist scumbag - Archibald Henry Maule Ramsay sued the owners of the New York Times for libel. In court Ramsay argued that if there had been any evidence of him passing secrets to the Germans he would have been tried under the Official Secrets Act alongside Anna Wolkoff and Tyler Kent in 1940. The newspaper owners were found guilty of libel but the case became a disaster for Ramsay when he was awarded damages of but a farthing - the lowest denomination in the currency of Great Britain. As well as the extremely damaging publicity he endured, Ramsay was forced to pay the costs of the case.
Adolf Hitler met with Fedor von Bock, Heinz Guderian and Hermann Hoth. All three generals agreed that a drive on Moscow should be top priority and could commence as early as 20 August, but Hitler favoured other objectives such as the elimination of enemy pockets. John M Stahl's Our Wife - starring Melvyn Douglas, Ruth Hussey and Ellen Drew - premiered. Martin Jarvis born in Cheltenham.
The first episode of CS Lewis's Right & Wrong broadcast on The Home Service.
Here Comes Mr Jordan - starring Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes and Claude Rains - and Hold That Ghost - featuring Abbott and Costello - premiered.
The Siege of Odessa began. German forces began a general offensive on the Luga River.
The Judy Garland biography Sing, Baby, Sing broadcast on The Home Service's Stairway To A Star strand. British fighter ace Douglas Bader was forced to bail out of his damaged Spitfire Mk VA over Northern France and was captured. Some accounts have his plane being involved in a mid-air collision with a Bf 109, but it was also possible that he was shot down or was a victim of friendly fire.
Victor Fleming's adaptation of Doctor Jekyll & Mister Hyde - starring Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman - premiered.
Susan Jameson born in Barnet Green.
Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill jointly issued the Atlantic Charter, stating the Allied goals for the post-war world. David Van Cortlandt Crosby born in Los Angeles.
Nazi spy Josef Jakobs became the last person to be executed at the Tower of London when he faced a firing squad following his conviction for an offence under the Treachery Act.
The Nazis arrested over three hundred 'Swing Kids' - Swingjugend in - Hamburg. Most were sent home and some had their long hair cut as punishment for their decedent Western ways, but the suspected leaders were imprisoned in concentration camps or sent to the front lines. Radio Belgrade played an obscure two-year old German song called 'Lili Marleen' sung by Lale Andersen. The song was an instant hit with listeners and became one of the most popular songs of the war among both Axis and Allied troops fighting in North Africa. Lydia - starring Merle Oberon and Joseph Cotton - premiered.
Dave Anthony Brock born in Isleworth.
Sun Valley - starring Sonja Heine, Milton Berle and Glenn Miller - premiered.
Joseph Stalin decreed that every Soviet soldier should receive one hundred grammes of vodka per day.
The First Battle of Kiev began.
The Tragical History Of King Lear - starring John Gielgud - broadcast on The Home Service.
The Allies launched Operation Gauntlet, a raid on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. Frank McDonald's Under Fiesta Stars - starring Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette and Carol Hughes - premiered.
The Germans captured Dnipropetrovsk. XLVII Panzer Corps captured Chernobyl. Jane Josephine Meirowsky born in Hertfordshire.
South of Iceland, the German U-boat U-570 was damaged and captured by the Royal Navy on her first patrol. The submarine would be put back into service as HMS Graph. Alfred Santell's Aloha Of The South Seas - starring Dorothy Lamour, Jon Hall, Dona Drake and Esther Dale - premiered.
William Wyler's The Little Foxes - starring Bette Davis - premiered.
British Commandos executed Operation Acid Drop, an overnight raid on Pas-de-Calais. Michael Curtiz's Dive Bomber - starring Errol Flynn- premiered.
The siege of Leningrad began. It would last for approximately nine hundred days. The Battle of Loznica was fought in Serbia between the German occupiers and the Chetniks. The Chetniks captured Loznica and established a command post in the town.
Kay Patrick born in London.
Zyklon B was first used, experimentally, at Auschwitz concentration camp, gassing six hundred Soviet prisoners of war and two hundred and fifty Polish prisoners.
Zoltán Farkas' Végre! - starring Tivadar Bilicsi, Gerö Mály, Béla Mihályffi and Lili Muráti - premiered.
Michael James Latimer born in Calcutta.
German forces surrounded Kiev.
Otis Ray Redding born in Dawson, Georgia.
The collaborationist Norwegian government of Vidkun Quisling banned the Boy Scouts. Boys were now required to join the youth leagues of the Nasjonal Samling.
Georgy Zhukov arrived in Leningrad to replace Kliment Voroshilov as the commanding officer of the city's garrison.
Gabrielle Carmen Stuttard born in Aylesbury.
Hitler re-activated the rocket programme at Peenemünde Army Research Centre. The Orson Welles Show premiered on CBS Radio.
The Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran concluded. Great Britain and the Soviet Union set up a joint occupation of the country. Erich von Manstein took command of the German Eleventh Army following the death of Eugen Ritter von Schobert. Listening to foreign radio in the German Reich became punishable by death. The British government ordered potatoes to be sold at one penny so people would eat more of them.
Green Arrow made his first appearance in More Fun Comics issue seventy three. Sunspots cause a major geomagnetic storm knocking out radio equipment and telegraph lines. Ellen Naomi Cohen born in Baltimore. George Formby's 'The Left Hand Side Of Egypt'/'Who Are You A-Shoving Of?' released.
Douglas Marjoribanks Fisher born in London.
The first episode of Let Us Be Gay! broadcast.
Linda Louise Eastman born in Scarsdale, New York.
You'll Never Get Rich - starring Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth - premiered.
Hold Back The Dawn - starring Charles Boyer, Olivia De Havilland and Paulette Goddard - and A Yank In The RAF - starring Tyrone Power and Betty Grable - premiered. Martine Beswick born in Jamaica.
Reinhard Heydrich was appointed Deputy Reich Protector of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. British Commandos executed Operation Chopper, an overnight raid on Saint-Aubin-d'Arquenay.
The first British convoy of supplies for the Soviet Union departed Iceland for Arkhangelsk.
Daphne Anne Angela Pleasence born in Sheffield.
Operation Typhoon - German forces began an all-out offensive against Moscow. Honky Tonk starring Clark Gable and Lana Turner and Irving Rapper's One Foot In Heaven premiered.
Mahatma Gandhi urged his followers to begin a passive resistance against British rule in India. John Huston's first movie as director, The Maltese Falcon - starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet - premiered in New York.
The German submarine U-111 was sunk off Tenerife by depth charges from the trawler HMS Lady Shirley.
Patricia Stephanie Cole born in Solihull.
The first Ronald Searle cartoon to feature the naughty schoolgirls of St Trinian's was published in the magazine Lilliput. William Albert Murray born in Forest Gate, Essex.
Michael Powell's Forty Ninth Parallel - starring Leslie Howard, Laurence Olivier and Raymond Massey - premiered.
Two months before the United States entered World War II, President Roosevelt approved a crash program to develop an atomic bomb. In May 1942, National Defense Research Committee Chairman James Conant, who had been one of Robert Oppenheimer's lecturers at Harvard, invited Oppenheimer to take over work on fast neutron calculations, a task Oppenheimer threw himself into. He was given the title Coordinator of Rapid Rupture, which specifically referred to the propagation of a fast neutron chain reaction in an atomic bomb. One of his first acts was to host a summer school for bomb-theory in Berkeley. The mix of European physicists and his own students - a group including Robert Serber, Emil Konopinski, Felix Bloch, Hans Bethe and Edward Teller - kept themselves busy by calculating what needed to be done and in what order, to make such a bomb.
Georgy Zhukov was called from Leningrad to Moscow to take command of the capital's defence. Never Give A Sucker An Even Break - starring WC Fields -and Monty Banks's Great Guns - starring Laurel and Hardy - premiered.
President Roosevelt wrote to Winston Churchill requesting 'a gentleman's agreement' to share information on atomic research. Churchill would write back in December accepting the request.
The UK premiere of Citizen Kane. The Bloody Sunday massacre took place in the Stanisławów Ghetto.
Paul Frederic Simon born in Newark, New Jersey. Neil Stanley Aspinall born in Prestatyn.
Simon Anthony Fox Ward born in Beckenham.
William Dieterle's The Devil & Daniel Webster - starring Edward Arnold, Walter Huston and Jane Darwell and Gordon Douglas's Niagra Falls - starring Marjorie Woodworth, Tom Brown and Zasu Pitts - premiered. The American destroyer USS Kearny, dispatched to defend Allied convoy SC 48 from a German wolfpack, was hit by a torpedo from U-568.
Lieutenant Colonel Karl Hotz, the German commander in Nantes, was killed by The Resistance; fifty hostages were shot in reprisal. The incident would become a model for future occupation policies. Anna Katarina Willys born in Berkshire.
The British gunboat HMS Gnat was torpedoed and damaged off Bardia by U-79. The Gnat was towed and beached at Alexandria and was used as an anti-aircraft platform for the rest of the war. The Kragujevac massacre occurred in Yugoslavia. Wonder Woman made her first appearance in All Star Comics issue eight. Steven Lee Cropper born in Dora, Missouri.
Disney's Dumbo and Leigh Jason's Three Girls About Town - starring Joan Blondell, Binnie Barnes and Janet Blair - premiered. Colin Milburn born in Burnopfield, County Durham. Anna Palk born in Looe, Cornwall.
The German drive on Moscow was almost completely halted due to bad weather. President Roosevelt released a formal statement condemning reprisal executions carried out by the Nazis in occupied Europe. 'The practice of executing scores of innocent hostages in reprisal for isolated attacks on Germans in countries temporarily under the Nazi heel revolts a world already inured to suffering brutality.'
F Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished novel The Last Tycoon was posthumously published.
Hank Brian Marvin born in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Rosemary Claxton born in Bradofrd. John William Francis Hallam born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. John Ford's How Green Was My Valley - starring Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara and Roddy McDowell - premiered.
The Germans took Volokolamsk Northwest of Moscow, but expended many resources in the process and had to halt for resupply. Winston Churchill gave his famous 'Never Give In' speech at Harrow School.
The Siege of Sevastopol began. The Royal Air Force bombed the German naval supply base at Ålesund, Norway.
While escorting Allied convoy HX 156 in the North Atlantic, the destroyer USS Reuben James was torpedoed by Erich Topp's U-552 near Iceland, killing more than one hundred American sailors. It was the first loss of an American 'neutral warship.' The Chocolate Soldier - starring Nelson Eddy and Vladimír Slavínský's Nebe A Dudy premiered.
Howard Bretherton's Outlaws Of The Desert starring William Boyd, Andy Clyde, Brad King and Jean Phillips - premiered.
Bruce Cripps born in Bognor Regis. The Finnish conquest of East Karelia was completed when the Soviets withdrew from Kondopoga.
Viscount Halifax was pelted with eggs and tomatoes by isolationist women demonstrators in Detroit as he was leaving City Hall. Halifax was afterwards quoted as saying, 'How fortunate you Americans are, in Britain we get only one egg a week and we are glad of those.' The quote was actually fabricated by someone in the British Press Service, but it was widely disseminated in the media and created a burst of sympathy and goodwill towards Britain.
Isoroku Yamamoto issued Top Secret Order Number One to the Japanese Combined Fleet, detailing the plan for the attack on Pearl Harbour. Arthur Ira Garfunkel born in New York.
Our Gracie broadcast on The Forces Programme. The Soviet hospital ship Armenia was sunk by German bombers while evacuatNerys Hughesing civilians and wounded soldiers from Crimea. As many as seven thousand people were killed in the sinking, making it one of the worst maritime disasters in history. Victor Schertzinger's Birth Of The Blues premiered.
Nerys Hughes born in Rhyl.
The first episode of Vera Lynn's Sincerely Yours - 'a sentimental presentation' according to an almost apologetic Radio Times - broadcast on The Forces Network.
The British launched Operation Flipper, a commando raid on the headquarters of Erwin Rommel. The German Fiftieth Infantry Division under the command of Erich von Manstein launched a major assault against Sevastopol. David Scott born in Greenock.
The Ark Royal was torpedoed and severely damaged off Gibraltar by the German submarine U-81.
Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion - starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine and H Bruce Humberstone's I Wake Up Screaming - starring Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Carole Landis and Laird Cregar - premiered.
Graham Haberfield born in Chesterfield.
The Eighth Army began Operation Crusader, once again trying to lift the Siege of Tobruk. David Edward Leslie Hemmings born in Guildford.
Juliet Maryon Mills born in London.
In North Africa, Rommel started a counteroffensive, retaking Sidi Rezegh which the Allies had captured a few days earlier. The German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis was shelled and sunk off Ascension Island by the heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire.
Gerd von Rundstedt disregarded a direct order from Hitler and withdrew from Rostov-on-Don due to Soviet counter-attacks in the rear. Donald Dunn born in Memphis.
After his dash into Egypt, Rommel retreated to Bardia for refuelling; it was during this withdrawal that Tobruk was temporarily relieved by the Eighth Army.
Operation Uzice ended in the retreat of the Yugoslav Partisans and Chetniks and the breakup of the short-lived Republic of Užice. 'Chattanooga Choo Choo' by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra hit number one on the Billboard singles charts.
Two-Faced Woman - starring Greta Garbo (in her final movie) and Melvyn Douglas - premiered.
Karl Jäger wrote The Jäger Report, the most precise surviving document of the activities of an Einsatzkommando unit.
Howard Hawks's Ball Of Fire - starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck - premiered. John Colin McCormack born in Penarth, Glamorgan.
Erwin Rommel's assault toward the garrisons at Bardia, Sallum and Halfaya Pass was repulsed by the Allies. The Japanese carrier fleet tasked with the Pearl Harbour attack began approaching the Hawaiian Islands with increased speed.
The UK declared war on Finland.
President Roosevelt wrote a personal appeal to Emperor Hirohito to avoid war between the United States and Japan.
Japanese forces attacked the US navy base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii bringing the, so far reluctant, Americans into the war. The Japanese also invaded Thailand and British Malaya and launched aerial attacks against Guam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Shanghai, Singapore, Midway and Wake Island. Japan declared war on the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. Winston Churchill was dining at Chequers with the American diplomats John Gilbert Winant and W Averell Harriman when the news of the Pearl Harbour attack arrived. Churchill later wrote of that night, 'Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.'
President Roosevelt made 'The Infamy Speech' to a Joint session of Congress. Lifelong pacifist Jeannette Rankin was the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war. The House of Commons convened on short notice in light of recent events. Churchill made a speech concluding, 'We have at least four-fifths of the population of the globe upon our side. We are responsible for their safety and for their future. In the past we have had a light which flickered, in the present we have a light which flames and in the future there will be a light which shines over all the land and sea.'
British Commandos conducted Operation Kitbag, a raid on the Norwegian town of Florø. Mervyn LeRoy's Johnny Eager - starring Robert Taylor and Lana Turner - premiered.
Cruiser HMS Repulse and battleship HMS Prince of Wales were sunk in a Japanese air attack in the South China Sea. Kenneth Victor Campbell born in Ilford. Fionnghuala Manon Flanagan born in Dublin. George Formby's 'The Barmaid At The Rose And Crown'/'I'd Do It With A Smile' released.
Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
The Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney Junior was released.
Ann Geissler born in Wellington, New Zealand.
Commonwealth troops pushed Rommel's forces back at the Gazala line.
The Battle of Borneo began.
German submarine U-131 was heavily damaged by British ships and aircraft and scuttled west of Madeira.
Joseph Goebbels announced a winter clothing collection drive for troops on the Eastern Front. Rather than admitting to a supply shortage he presented it as an expression of solidarity between the soldiers and the homeland.
The first of the twelve-episode play-cycle The Man Born To Be King, based on the life of Christ, premiered on the Home Service.
A second Japanese landing attempt on Wake Island was successful and the American garrison surrendered after hours of fighting. General MacArthur declared Manila 'an Open City.'
In the Philippines, American forces retreated into the Bataan Peninsula. The Japanese bombed Rangoon. John Anthony Woods born in Salisbury. Michael Billington born in Blackburn.
Hong Kong surrendered to Japan. Allied forces retook Benghazi.
Peter Pan broadcast on The Home Service with Patricia Hayes in the title role. Winston Churchill addressed a joint meeting of US Congress. He predicted that at least eighteen months would be required to turn the tide of the war and warned that 'many disappointments and unpleasant surprises await us.'Hellzapoppin' - starring The Three Stooges - premiered
British Combined Operations executed Operation Archery, a raid against German positions on the island of Vågsøy, Norway.
JM Barrie's Mary Rose broadcast.
The Red Army took back the Crimean city of Kerch. Alan David born in Merthyr Tydfil.
'Almost a ghost story', The Voice Of Michael Vane broadcast.
The first episode of Georgie Wood's Backyard Follies broadcast on The Home Service. Alexander Chapman Ferguson born in Glasgow. Busby Berkeley's Babes On Broadway - staring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney - premiered. Sarah Miles born in Ingatestone, Essex.
The first episode of Any Questions? - rechristened, The Brains Trust from December 1941 - broadcast on The Forces Network. The first episode of Workers' Playtime broadcast on The Home Service. Aircraft of the Royal Air Force bombed the Focke-Wulf aircraft production plant near Bremen.
The Andrews Sisters recorded 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy'.
Martin Bormann promulgated a Nazi decree banning gothic typefaces in all printing and proclaiming roman type as the new standard. The order sought to make Nazi communications more understandable in occupied France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway, where roman type was used. Derrick O'Connor born in Dublin. Alice Jones born in Edinburgh. George Formby's 'Guarding The Home Of The Home Guards'/'I Wish I Was Back On The Farm' released.
In Operation Compass, Australian troops of Thirteen Corps (the re-designated Western Desert Force) captured Italian-held Bardia and forty five thousand Italian prisoners were taken.
John Steiner born in Chester.
Graham Arthur Chapman born in Leicester. Leadbelly & The Golden Gate Quartet's recording of 'The Midnight Special' released.David John Bernard Sampson born in Uttoxeter. Caron Gardner born in London.
Operation Excess, a series of supply convoys to Malta, Alexandria and Greece began. The aircraft carrier Illustrious was severely damaged by Stukas as it escorted one convoy to Malta.
One hundred and eleven people were killed when a German bomb hit the booking hall of Bank & Momument Tube Station. The blast travelled down the stairs and escalators to the platforms. Malcolm Hope Terris born in Sunderland.
John William Baldry born in East Haddon, Northamptonshire.
The first use of 'V for Victory' by Victor de Laveleye on the BBC's Belgian service, Radio Belgique. The government announced new price controls to thwart food profiteering. Price freezes were announced for more than twenty items including coffee, rice, biscuits and jelly. Dorothy Faye Dunaway born in Bascom, Florida.
Don Glen Vliet born in Glendale. Geoffrey Beevers born in Chicester.
German bombers pounded Valletta in Malta. HMS Illustrious was badly damaged during the bombardment. Claire Gordon born Cambridge.
David Eli Ruffin born in Whynot, Mississippi. Christopher Hamilton Bidmead born in Bolton.
The Fourth and Fifth Indian Division with units of the Sudan Defence Force under the command of General William Platt launched an attack on the Italians in Eritrea, Somaliland and Ethiopia, taking Kassala. The exiled Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, re-entered his country behind the advancing British and Commonwealth troops. Home Secretary Herbert Morrison used Defence Regulation 2D to ban the Communist newspaper the Daily Worker, on the grounds that it was attempting to hinder the British war effort. Anthony Anholt born in Singapore.
Raoul Walsh's High Sierra - starring Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart - premiered. Richard Pierce Havens born in New York.
Neil Leslie Diamond born in New York. Tall, Dark & Handsome - starring Cesar Romero - premiered.
Patricia Garwood born in Paignton.
Sean Arnold born in Wickwar, Gloucestershire.
Alfred Hitchcock's Mr & Mrs Smith - starring Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery - and Buck Privates - starring Abbott and Costello and The Andrews Sisters - premiered.
Georgy Zhukov was appointed chief of the Red Army's General Staff.
Lieutenant-General Erwin Rommel was appointed head of German Army troops in Africa. The unit would later be officially designated as the Afrika Korps.
After several days of desperate fighting, a flying column of Thirteen Corps called Combe Force cut off the retreating Italian Tenth Army during the Battle of Beda Fomm. The Italians were unable to break through the small blocking force and the British accepted the surrender of roughly a hundred and thirty thousand Italians in and to the south of Benghazi.
The US House of Representatives passed the Lend-Lease bill.
Michael David Apted born in Aylesbury.
Under cover of a courier's passport Ian Fleming of the Naval Intelligence Division travelled to Gibraltar. On his arrival, he liaised closely with Alan Hillgarth, the British naval attaché in Madrid. Hillgarth provided much of the background to the plan for the guerrilla campaign and sabotage that would follow German presence on the Iberian peninsula. The trip spawned Operation Goldeneye, an Allied plan during 1941 and 1942 to maintain an intelligence framework in Spain in the event of an Axis takeover of the territory and to undertake sabotage operations.
Anthony Eden met with Archibald Wavell and Alan Cunningham in Cairo to discuss the prospect of British involvement in Greece.
German and British troops confronted each other for the first time in North Africa at El Agheila in Western Libya. John Ford's Tobacco Road premiered.
Raoul Walsh's The Strawberry Blonde - starring James Cagney, Olivia De Havilland and Rita Hayworth and William A Seiter's Nice Girl? - starring Deanna Durbin, Robert Benchley and Anne Gillis - premiered.
Plutonium was chemically identified by Glenn Seaborg and his team of chemists at University of California, Berkeley.
British and South African forces captured Mogadishu, the capital of Italian Somaliland. At dawn hundreds of British commandos landed on the Italian-held island of Kastellorizo off the coast of Turkey in Operation Abstention. The Regia Aeronautica began bombing the British positions immediately, while four warships were sent to shell the positions and land reinforcements. The Italian light cruiser Armando Diaz was torpedoed and sunk off the Kerkennah Islands by the British submarine HMS Upright. The February strike began in the Netherlands protesting the anti-Jewish measures of the Nazi occupiers. Preston Struges's The Lady Eve - starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda - premiered.
The first episode of Harry Alan Towers' Quiet, Please! starring Rupert Hazell and Elsie Day broadcast on The Forces Programme. The Academy Awards were held in Los Angeles, with Rebecca winning Best Picture. So Ends Our Night - starring Fredric March, Margaret Sullavan and Glenn Ford - premiered.
Madeleine Rose Merrington born in Lahore.
Himmler gave orders for the expansion of Auschwitz concentration camp, to be run by Commandant Rudolf Höss. Bulgaria officially joined the Tripartite Pact. D Ross Lederman's Shadow On The Stairs premiered.
Gaye Brown born in Twickenham.
British commandos carried out an attack on the oil facilities at Narvik in Norway, Operation Claymore. British military force in Libya was thinned down as some men were sent to assist the Greeks in their emerging battle with approaching German troops. Prince Regent Paul of Yugoslavia agreed to join the Axis pact.
Another night of heavy bombing in London, notable because Buckingham Palace was hit. The Café de Paris nightclub was also heavily damaged and did not re-open until after the war.
Franklin Roosevelt signed the Lend Lease Act allowing Britain, China and other Allied nations to purchase military equipment and to defer payment until after the war. German bombing in Manchester severely damaged the Old Trafford stadium.
Georgina Anne Ward born in Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire. George Formby's 'Thanks, Mister Roosevelt'/'Bless 'Em All (Number Two)' released.
The first episode of The Forces Programme's Once Upon A Time broadcast. Michael Edward Love born in Los Angeles.
The Italian Spring Offensive ended in complete failure for the Italians. A fire broke out on the docked German ocean liner SS Bremen, causing such extensive damage that the ship would be scrapped. Initially thought to be the work of raiders, the arsonist was later said to have been a cabin boy avenging a punishment.
Paul Lorin Kantner born in San Francisco.
Wilson Pickett born in Prattsville, Alabama.
Elizabeth Bell born in Leeds.
The possible date that Noël Coward wrote 'London Pride'. According to his own account, he was sitting on a seat on a platform in Paddington Station, watching Londoners going about their business quite unfazed by the broken glass scattered around from the station's roof damaged by the previous night's bombing: in a moment of patriotic pride, he recalled that an old English folk song had been appropriated by the Germans for their national anthem and it occurred to him that he could reclaim the melody. Michael Jeremy Thomas Clyde born in Dorney, Buckinghamshire.
Rommel's forces attacked and reoccupied El Agheila in his first offensive. The British retreated and within three weeks were driven back to Egypt.
Big Joe Williams recorded 'Crawlin' King Snake' for Bluebird Records. The Yugoslav coup d'état occurred. Dušan Simović and other Serb nationalist officers in the Royal Yugoslav Air Force overthrew Yugoslavia's pro-Axis government and intended to back out of the Tripartite Pact. When Hitler learned of this malarkey, he was God damn pissed off and ordered an invasion of Yugoslavia.
Hitler held a conference with his generals in which he said that the upcoming war with Russia would be a race war in which Communist commissars and Jews would be 'exterminated' by SS Einsatzgruppen following behind the advancing armies. Hitler expected the Soviet Union to be defeated in a matter of weeks and declared, 'We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.' The British liner Umona was torpedoed and sunk off Freetown, Sierra Leone by the German submarine U-124.
In Iraq, pro-German Rashid Ali and other members of The Golden Square staged a military coup d'état and overthrew the regime of the pro-British Regent 'Abd al-Ilah who had fled to Jordan after learning of a plot to assassinate him. The Royal Air Force dropped the first four thousand-pound 'blockbuster' bombs of the war, by Vickers Wellington bombers in a raid over Emden.
During one of his radio broadcasts, the previously anonymous pro-Nazi commentator Lord Haw-Haw confirmed his identity as William Joyce.
Sam Wood's The Devil & Miss Jones - starring Jean Arthur and Robert Cummings - premiered. William Piddington born in Ardwick.
Stuart Legge's documentary Churchill's Island premiered.
On Budget Dya, Chancellor Kingsley Wood presented a plan modelled after Keynesian economics that used taxation and 'forced savings' to attack an estimated five hundred million knicker 'inflation gap.' Wood increased taxes and projected a deficit of two billion, almost identical to the previous year's deficit. Newspaper editorials generally found the wartime sacrifices asked for in the budget to be reasonable and the stock exchange also took the news of the budget well. The Belfast Blitz began. General Richard O'Connor was captured by a German reconnaissance patrol in North Africa. Keith Buckley born in Huddersfield. Gordon Fitzgerald Kaye also born in Huddersfield.
Hannah Campbell Grant Gordon born in Edinburgh.
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was split up by Germany, Italy and Hungary. The Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska) was established under Ante Pavelić and his Ustaša. The Germans encircled the port of Tobruk, opening a seven month siege; some of Rommel's forces moved East to take Fort Capuzzo and Sollum, on the border with Egypt.
Shirley Rosemary Stelfox born in Dukinfield, Cheshire. Sam Wood's The Devil & Miss Jones - starring Jean Arthur, Robert Cummings and Charles Coburn - premiered.
Yugoslavia, surrendered. The Germans defeated Commonwealth forces at the Battle of Vevi. Robert Frederick Chelsea Moore born in Barking. The Great Lie - staring Bette Davis - premiered.
Japan and the Soviet Union signed a five-year Treaty of Neutrality, pledging to remain neutral in the event of one country being attacked by a third party. The pact also saw the Soviet Union recognise du jure Manchukuo for the first time. Christopher Peter John Small born in Eingwood, Hampshire.
In Western Ethiopia, Italian colonial forces and Belgian Congolese troops clashed at Bortai Brook near Gambela.
The popular crooner Al Bowlly had given a performance at the Rex Cinema in High Wycombe. He was offered an overnight stay in town, but Bowlly took the last train home to his flat in Duke's Court, London. He was killed by a Luftwaffe parachute mine which detonated outside his flat. The entire First Division of the Italian Sixty Second Regiment was captured in a failed attack on Tobruk.
Athens was placed under martial law after Greek Prime Minister Alexandros Koryzis committed suicide.
The amphibious landing of British Commandos known as The Bardia Raid began. A German air-raid on London killed thirteen firefighters.
Charles Patrick Ryan O'Neal born in Los Angeles. Ernst Lubitsch's That Uncertain Feeling - staring Merle Oberon, Melvyn Douglas and Burgess Meredith - premiered.
General Georgios Tsolakoglou disobeyed orders from Greek high command and signed surrender papers to Sepp Dietrich in Larissa so the Greek army would not have to surrender to the Italians. The Royal Navy bombarded Tripoli, damaging the Italian torpedo boat Partenope and six freighters. The writer Rex Stout made a speech in New York in which he attacked the isolationist activism of Charles Lindbergh, saying, 'A desperate war is being fought and the winners of the war will win the oceans. No matter what we do, we shall be either one of the winners, or one of the losers; no shivering neutral will get a bite of anything but crow when the shooting stops. It would therefore seem to be plain imbecility not to go with Britain and win.'
Edward Stewart Mainwaring born in Exmouth. The Greek government was evacuated to Crete.
The (second) Battle of Thermopylae began. It ended in a German victory, although the Allies fought a successful delaying action. As, indeed, Leonidas of Sparta and his men had two thousand years earlier. George Stevens's Penny Serenade - starring Irene Dunn and Cary Grant - premired.
Lew Landers's The Singing Hill - starring Gene Autry, Virgina Dale, Mary Lee and Gerald Oliver Smith - premiered.
Athens was occupied by German troops. Hurricane fighter planes were delivered as important reinforcements for besieged Malta. General Friedrich Paulus was dispatched to North Africa to exert some control from High Command over Erwin Rommel, who had been disregarding most orders from Berlin. Heinrich Himmler inspected Mauthausen concentration camp.
The Greece campaign ended with the evacuation of around fifty thousand British and Commonwealth troops. Allied resistance ceased on the Greek mainland when eight thousand British, New Zealand, Australian, Greek and Yugoslavian troops surrendered at Kalamata. Alexander Korda's That Hamilton Woman - starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier - premiered.
Orson Welles's Citizen Kane premiered in New York. The government created the Ministry of War Transport and made Frederick Leathers its first head.
The Black Cat - starring Basil Rathbone and Bela Lugosi - premiered. Paul Valentine Birkby born in Chessington, Surrey.
Frank Capra's Meet John Doe - starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck - premiered. George Formby's 'You'll Be Far Better Off In A Home'/'I Did What I Could With My Gas Mask' released.
The film actress Mary Lawson and her husband, Francis Beaumont, were killed in Liverpool when the house they were staying in was hit by a Luftwaffe bomb. When the air-raid sirens sounded family and friends, including Lawson's sister Dorothy, took safety in an Anderson shelter, while Lawson and Beaumont remained in their room. The building was destroyed, killing the couple (Lawson dying afterwards in Smithdown Road Hospital), whilst those in the shelter survived. Lawson's death was announced in newspapers around the globe, but was overshadowed by the greater destruction of the war.
Five years from the day he was forced to flee, with British backing Emperor Haile Selassie entered Addis Ababa, his capital, in triumph.
The German weather ship München was captured near Iceland. Papers were found on board that improved the British understanding of the Enigma coding machines.
The German commerce raider Pinguin was sunk by the British heavy cruiser HMS Cornwall in the Indian Ocean off the Seychelles.
The German submarine U-110 was captured by the Royal Navy in the North Atlantic with its Enigma cryptography machine and codebooks. The Luftwaffe attempted to hit the Rolls-Royce engine factory in the East Midlands, but their bombs only managed to kill a few farm animals.
Rudolf Hess parachuted into Scotland claiming to be on a peace mission. One or two people even believed him. The House of Commons was damaged by the Luftwaffe in what would turn out to be the last major bombing raid on London, but also one of the most devastating. Other targets included Hull, Liverpool, Belfast and the shipbuilding area of the River Clyde in Glasgow. This was, effectively, the end of The Blitz, as Germany shifted its focus toward Soviet Union and the East.
Eric Victor Burdon born in Walker, Newcastle Upon Tyne. Juliet Linda Harmer born in St Albans.
The RAF bombed several German cities, including Hamburg, Emden and Berlin. The Nazi Party issued a press release on the subject of Rudolf Hess, claiming that he was 'suffering from mental illness' and that the Führer had ordered the immediate arrest of those who helped Hess. Hitler also abolished the post of Deputy Führer and transferred its duties to the new title of Chief of the Nazi Party Chancellory, appointing Martin Bormann to the job. MPs met for the first time in their new temporary home, the House of Lords.
John Francis Train born in Stockton-On-Tees. Joseph Roger Brown born in Swarby, Lincolnshire.
John Henry George Forgeham born in Kidderminster.
Larry Dann born in London.
The Battle of Crete began with an airborne invasion by the Germans.
The Central Committee War Section met in Moscow. Joseph Stalin dismissed intelligence indicating a German attack on the Soviet Union was imminent, believing it was misinformation from the British trying to draw the Soviet Union into the war. When the head of Soviet intelligence argued with Stalin he was arrested and shot.
The battle cruiser HMS Hood was sunk by a powerful salvo from German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic. Robert Allen Zimmerman born in Duluth, Minnesota.
In the North Atlantic, Royal Navy Fairey Swordfish aircraft from the carrier HMS Ark Royal fatally crippled the Bismarck in a torpedo attack. It was scuttled the following day.
The Allies began to evacuate Crete.
Robert Kemp's adaptation of Operation Dynamo broadcast on The Home Service.
In The Navy - starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Dick Powell, Claire Dodd and The Andrews Sisters - premiered.
An armistice was signed in the Anglo-Iraqi War. June Rose Ritchie born in Blackppol.
German victory - albeit, somewhat Pyrrhic - in the Battle of Crete. Clothes rationing began in the United Kingdom.
Charles Robert Watts born in Kingsbury, North London. Hitler and Mussolini met at the Brenner Pass once again. During the five-hour conference Hitler ranted about Rudolf Hess and other recent events, but kept Mussolini in the dark about the forthcoming invasion of the Soviet Union. However, major Italian troop movements in the Balkans around this time suggest that the Italian government was likely aware of Hitler's intentions. Mussolini reportedly told Count Ciano after the meeting, 'I wouldn't be at all sorry if Germany in her war with Russia got her feathers plucked.'
Operation Josephine B ended in Allied success when a sabotage team blew up an electrical transformer station in Pessac.
Andrew Stone's The Hard-Boiled Canary (aka There's Magic In Music) - starring Allan Jones, Susanna Foster, Lynne Overman and Grace Bradley - premiered.
British and Australian forces crossed the Litani River, beating back Vichy French opposition. During this battle, Moshe Dayan, the future Israeli politician leading an Australian unit, lost his eye.
The RAF bombed the Ruhr and Rhineland for the first of twenty consecutive nights.
Representatives of fourteen Allied countries and governments-in-exile made a pact in London to fight until victory was won and not make separate peace treaties with any Axis countries. The German cruiser Lützow was torpedo bombed in the Trondheimsfjord by Bristol Beauforts of RAF Coastal Command and put out of action until 1942. Roy Harper born in Rusholme. Reginald Maurice Ball born in Andover.
Tom, Dick & Harry - starring Ginger Rogers, George Murphy, Alan Marshal, Phil Silvers and Burgess Meredith - premiered.
Operation Battleaxe attempted - and failed - to relieve the Siege of Tobruk. British forces were heavily defeated at Halfaya Pass nicknamed 'Hell-fire pass.' Leadbelly & The Golden Gate Quartet's recording of 'Pick A Bale Of Cotton' released. Harry Edward Nilsson III born in New York. Nicolette Vaughan Pendrell born in Cheltenham.
Berlin Diary by the American journalist William L Shirer was published. The Big Store - starring The Marx Brothers - premiered. Stephen Arthur Frears born in Leicester.
The Battle of Damascus ended in Allied victory. Churchill decided to dismiss Archibald Wavell as Commander-in-Chief, Middle East and replace him with Claude Auchinleck. Wavell took Auchinleck's old post of Commander-in-Chief, India.
The beginning of Operation Barbarossa and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Churchill gave a speech announcing the German invasion of the Soviet Union and explaining Britain's new alliance with Russia. 'No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years,' Churchill said. 'I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding ... Any man or state who fights on against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state who marches with Hitler is our foe. It follows, therefore, that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people.'The Soviet Union bombed Helsinki. Finland declared war with the Soviet Union. Roy Anthony Mould born in Stepney.
Mervyn LeRoy's Blossoms In The Dust - starring Greer Garson - premiered.
German forces captured Minsk in Belarus and Rovno in Ukraine. The German ship Lauenburg was intercepted by British warships North of Iceland. A boarding party from the destroyer HMS Tartar seized a large amount of material that would be useful in cracking German codes.
The Germans and Finns launched Operations Silver Fox and Platinum Fox, aimed at capturing the key Soviet port of Murmansk.
German troops occupied Latvia's capital, Riga, on the way to Leningrad.
Noël Coward's comedy Blithe Spirit had its London premiere at The Piccadilly Theatre. Its eventual run of nineteen hundred and ninety seven consecutive performances set a record for non-musical plays in the West End unsurpassed for more than twenty years. The Ponary Massacre began, with the shooting of Soviet POWs captured during Operation Barbarossa and with the deportation of hundreds of Jews from Vilnius to Soviet dug fuel tank pits near the Ponariai suburb, where they ere shot or buried alive. Howard Hawks's Sergeant York - starring Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan and Joan Leslie - premiered.
Stalin announced a 'scorched Earth policy.'
Caught In The Draft starring Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour was released.
The first episode of Dick Turpin broadcast on The Home Service.
The First Battle of Smolensk began on the Eastern Front.
Britain and the USSR signed a mutual defence agreement, promising not to sign any form of separate peace agreement with Germany. Polly James born in Blackburn.
Jacqueline Joyce Lane born in Manchester.
Richard Anthony Crispian Francis Prew Hope-Weston born in Eynsham.
The Battle of Beirut was fought, resulting in Allied victory. William Keighley's The Bride Came COD - starring James Cagney and Bette Davis - premiered.
The journalist William Connor, under his pen name Cassandra, broadcast a postscript to The News railing against PG Wodehouse, currently a prisoner of war in Germany who had been tricked by the Nazis into making a series of humorous broadcasts - How To Be An Internee Without Previous Training - for the American market. Connor's broadcast was made at the direct instruction of Duff Cooper, the Minister of Information, who overruled strong protests made by the BBC against the broadcast. The BBC management, who considered Wodehouse's actions no worse than 'ill advised', pointed out to Cooper that there was no evidence as to whether Wodehouse had acted voluntarily or under duress.
Joseph Stalin's eldest son Yakov Dzhugashvili was captured in battle by the Germans at at Smolensk. He would later die in 1943 at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Virginia Woolf's final novel Between The Acts was published posthumously.
A message from Churchill was read on radio by Colonel V Britton (actually the BBC news editor Douglas Ritchie) calling upon the people of Nazi-occupied Europe to mobilise under the V for Victory campaign. Citizens of occupied Europe within the broadcast's range were urged to chalk letter V's in public places and tap out the Morse Code version of the letter – three dots and a dash – to make known their confidence in Allied victory. Lawrence Huntington's This Man Is Dangerous - starring James Mason, Gordon McLeod and Mary Clare - premiered.
Heinrich Himmler visited Soviet POWs near Minsk and Lublin and decided to build the Majdanek concentration camp to house them.
Gary Myers born in Wiluna, Western Australia.
The Nazi occupation regime in the Baltic states - the Reichskommissariat Ostland - was established.
The first episode of Girl In Pursuit broadcast on The Home Service. Douglas MacArthur was appointed to command US forces in the Far East.
German forces completed the encirclement of the Red Army at Smolensk and took one hundred thousand prisoners. British Commandos carried out Operation Chess, an overnight raid on Ambleteuse, France.
German forces captured Kingisepp near Leningrad. Finland broke off diplomatic relations with Great Britain. Patrick Jeremy Tull born in Sussex.
David Hattersley Warner born in Manchester.
Adolf Hitler met with Fedor von Bock, Heinz Guderian and Hermann Hoth. All three generals agreed that a drive on Moscow should be top priority and could commence as early as 20 August, but Hitler favoured other objectives such as the elimination of enemy pockets. John M Stahl's Our Wife - starring Melvyn Douglas, Ruth Hussey and Ellen Drew - premiered. Martin Jarvis born in Cheltenham.
The first episode of CS Lewis's Right & Wrong broadcast on The Home Service.
Here Comes Mr Jordan - starring Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes and Claude Rains - and Hold That Ghost - featuring Abbott and Costello - premiered.
The Siege of Odessa began. German forces began a general offensive on the Luga River.
The Judy Garland biography Sing, Baby, Sing broadcast on The Home Service's Stairway To A Star strand. British fighter ace Douglas Bader was forced to bail out of his damaged Spitfire Mk VA over Northern France and was captured. Some accounts have his plane being involved in a mid-air collision with a Bf 109, but it was also possible that he was shot down or was a victim of friendly fire.
Victor Fleming's adaptation of Doctor Jekyll & Mister Hyde - starring Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman - premiered.
Susan Jameson born in Barnet Green.
Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill jointly issued the Atlantic Charter, stating the Allied goals for the post-war world. David Van Cortlandt Crosby born in Los Angeles.
Nazi spy Josef Jakobs became the last person to be executed at the Tower of London when he faced a firing squad following his conviction for an offence under the Treachery Act.
Dave Anthony Brock born in Isleworth.
Sun Valley - starring Sonja Heine, Milton Berle and Glenn Miller - premiered.
Joseph Stalin decreed that every Soviet soldier should receive one hundred grammes of vodka per day.
The First Battle of Kiev began.
The Tragical History Of King Lear - starring John Gielgud - broadcast on The Home Service.
The Allies launched Operation Gauntlet, a raid on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. Frank McDonald's Under Fiesta Stars - starring Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette and Carol Hughes - premiered.
The Germans captured Dnipropetrovsk. XLVII Panzer Corps captured Chernobyl. Jane Josephine Meirowsky born in Hertfordshire.
South of Iceland, the German U-boat U-570 was damaged and captured by the Royal Navy on her first patrol. The submarine would be put back into service as HMS Graph. Alfred Santell's Aloha Of The South Seas - starring Dorothy Lamour, Jon Hall, Dona Drake and Esther Dale - premiered.
William Wyler's The Little Foxes - starring Bette Davis - premiered.
British Commandos executed Operation Acid Drop, an overnight raid on Pas-de-Calais. Michael Curtiz's Dive Bomber - starring Errol Flynn- premiered.
The siege of Leningrad began. It would last for approximately nine hundred days. The Battle of Loznica was fought in Serbia between the German occupiers and the Chetniks. The Chetniks captured Loznica and established a command post in the town.
Kay Patrick born in London.
Zyklon B was first used, experimentally, at Auschwitz concentration camp, gassing six hundred Soviet prisoners of war and two hundred and fifty Polish prisoners.
Zoltán Farkas' Végre! - starring Tivadar Bilicsi, Gerö Mály, Béla Mihályffi and Lili Muráti - premiered.
Michael James Latimer born in Calcutta.
German forces surrounded Kiev.
Otis Ray Redding born in Dawson, Georgia.
The collaborationist Norwegian government of Vidkun Quisling banned the Boy Scouts. Boys were now required to join the youth leagues of the Nasjonal Samling.
Gabrielle Carmen Stuttard born in Aylesbury.
Hitler re-activated the rocket programme at Peenemünde Army Research Centre. The Orson Welles Show premiered on CBS Radio.
The Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran concluded. Great Britain and the Soviet Union set up a joint occupation of the country. Erich von Manstein took command of the German Eleventh Army following the death of Eugen Ritter von Schobert. Listening to foreign radio in the German Reich became punishable by death. The British government ordered potatoes to be sold at one penny so people would eat more of them.
Green Arrow made his first appearance in More Fun Comics issue seventy three. Sunspots cause a major geomagnetic storm knocking out radio equipment and telegraph lines. Ellen Naomi Cohen born in Baltimore. George Formby's 'The Left Hand Side Of Egypt'/'Who Are You A-Shoving Of?' released.
Douglas Marjoribanks Fisher born in London.
The first episode of Let Us Be Gay! broadcast.
Linda Louise Eastman born in Scarsdale, New York.
You'll Never Get Rich - starring Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth - premiered.
Hold Back The Dawn - starring Charles Boyer, Olivia De Havilland and Paulette Goddard - and A Yank In The RAF - starring Tyrone Power and Betty Grable - premiered. Martine Beswick born in Jamaica.
Reinhard Heydrich was appointed Deputy Reich Protector of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. British Commandos executed Operation Chopper, an overnight raid on Saint-Aubin-d'Arquenay.
The first British convoy of supplies for the Soviet Union departed Iceland for Arkhangelsk.
Daphne Anne Angela Pleasence born in Sheffield.
Operation Typhoon - German forces began an all-out offensive against Moscow. Honky Tonk starring Clark Gable and Lana Turner and Irving Rapper's One Foot In Heaven premiered.
Mahatma Gandhi urged his followers to begin a passive resistance against British rule in India. John Huston's first movie as director, The Maltese Falcon - starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet - premiered in New York.
The German submarine U-111 was sunk off Tenerife by depth charges from the trawler HMS Lady Shirley.
Patricia Stephanie Cole born in Solihull.
The first Ronald Searle cartoon to feature the naughty schoolgirls of St Trinian's was published in the magazine Lilliput. William Albert Murray born in Forest Gate, Essex.
Michael Powell's Forty Ninth Parallel - starring Leslie Howard, Laurence Olivier and Raymond Massey - premiered.
Two months before the United States entered World War II, President Roosevelt approved a crash program to develop an atomic bomb. In May 1942, National Defense Research Committee Chairman James Conant, who had been one of Robert Oppenheimer's lecturers at Harvard, invited Oppenheimer to take over work on fast neutron calculations, a task Oppenheimer threw himself into. He was given the title Coordinator of Rapid Rupture, which specifically referred to the propagation of a fast neutron chain reaction in an atomic bomb. One of his first acts was to host a summer school for bomb-theory in Berkeley. The mix of European physicists and his own students - a group including Robert Serber, Emil Konopinski, Felix Bloch, Hans Bethe and Edward Teller - kept themselves busy by calculating what needed to be done and in what order, to make such a bomb.
Georgy Zhukov was called from Leningrad to Moscow to take command of the capital's defence. Never Give A Sucker An Even Break - starring WC Fields -and Monty Banks's Great Guns - starring Laurel and Hardy - premiered.
President Roosevelt wrote to Winston Churchill requesting 'a gentleman's agreement' to share information on atomic research. Churchill would write back in December accepting the request.
The UK premiere of Citizen Kane. The Bloody Sunday massacre took place in the Stanisławów Ghetto.
Paul Frederic Simon born in Newark, New Jersey. Neil Stanley Aspinall born in Prestatyn.
Simon Anthony Fox Ward born in Beckenham.
William Dieterle's The Devil & Daniel Webster - starring Edward Arnold, Walter Huston and Jane Darwell and Gordon Douglas's Niagra Falls - starring Marjorie Woodworth, Tom Brown and Zasu Pitts - premiered. The American destroyer USS Kearny, dispatched to defend Allied convoy SC 48 from a German wolfpack, was hit by a torpedo from U-568.
The British gunboat HMS Gnat was torpedoed and damaged off Bardia by U-79. The Gnat was towed and beached at Alexandria and was used as an anti-aircraft platform for the rest of the war. The Kragujevac massacre occurred in Yugoslavia. Wonder Woman made her first appearance in All Star Comics issue eight. Steven Lee Cropper born in Dora, Missouri.
Disney's Dumbo and Leigh Jason's Three Girls About Town - starring Joan Blondell, Binnie Barnes and Janet Blair - premiered. Colin Milburn born in Burnopfield, County Durham. Anna Palk born in Looe, Cornwall.
The German drive on Moscow was almost completely halted due to bad weather. President Roosevelt released a formal statement condemning reprisal executions carried out by the Nazis in occupied Europe. 'The practice of executing scores of innocent hostages in reprisal for isolated attacks on Germans in countries temporarily under the Nazi heel revolts a world already inured to suffering brutality.'
F Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished novel The Last Tycoon was posthumously published.
Hank Brian Marvin born in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Rosemary Claxton born in Bradofrd. John William Francis Hallam born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. John Ford's How Green Was My Valley - starring Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara and Roddy McDowell - premiered.
The Germans took Volokolamsk Northwest of Moscow, but expended many resources in the process and had to halt for resupply. Winston Churchill gave his famous 'Never Give In' speech at Harrow School.
The Siege of Sevastopol began. The Royal Air Force bombed the German naval supply base at Ålesund, Norway.
While escorting Allied convoy HX 156 in the North Atlantic, the destroyer USS Reuben James was torpedoed by Erich Topp's U-552 near Iceland, killing more than one hundred American sailors. It was the first loss of an American 'neutral warship.' The Chocolate Soldier - starring Nelson Eddy and Vladimír Slavínský's Nebe A Dudy premiered.
Howard Bretherton's Outlaws Of The Desert starring William Boyd, Andy Clyde, Brad King and Jean Phillips - premiered.
Bruce Cripps born in Bognor Regis. The Finnish conquest of East Karelia was completed when the Soviets withdrew from Kondopoga.
Viscount Halifax was pelted with eggs and tomatoes by isolationist women demonstrators in Detroit as he was leaving City Hall. Halifax was afterwards quoted as saying, 'How fortunate you Americans are, in Britain we get only one egg a week and we are glad of those.' The quote was actually fabricated by someone in the British Press Service, but it was widely disseminated in the media and created a burst of sympathy and goodwill towards Britain.
Isoroku Yamamoto issued Top Secret Order Number One to the Japanese Combined Fleet, detailing the plan for the attack on Pearl Harbour. Arthur Ira Garfunkel born in New York.
Our Gracie broadcast on The Forces Programme. The Soviet hospital ship Armenia was sunk by German bombers while evacuatNerys Hughesing civilians and wounded soldiers from Crimea. As many as seven thousand people were killed in the sinking, making it one of the worst maritime disasters in history. Victor Schertzinger's Birth Of The Blues premiered.
Nerys Hughes born in Rhyl.
The first episode of Vera Lynn's Sincerely Yours - 'a sentimental presentation' according to an almost apologetic Radio Times - broadcast on The Forces Network.
The British launched Operation Flipper, a commando raid on the headquarters of Erwin Rommel. The German Fiftieth Infantry Division under the command of Erich von Manstein launched a major assault against Sevastopol. David Scott born in Greenock.
The Ark Royal was torpedoed and severely damaged off Gibraltar by the German submarine U-81.
Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion - starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine and H Bruce Humberstone's I Wake Up Screaming - starring Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Carole Landis and Laird Cregar - premiered.
Graham Haberfield born in Chesterfield.
The Eighth Army began Operation Crusader, once again trying to lift the Siege of Tobruk. David Edward Leslie Hemmings born in Guildford.
Juliet Maryon Mills born in London.
In North Africa, Rommel started a counteroffensive, retaking Sidi Rezegh which the Allies had captured a few days earlier. The German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis was shelled and sunk off Ascension Island by the heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire.
Gerd von Rundstedt disregarded a direct order from Hitler and withdrew from Rostov-on-Don due to Soviet counter-attacks in the rear. Donald Dunn born in Memphis.
After his dash into Egypt, Rommel retreated to Bardia for refuelling; it was during this withdrawal that Tobruk was temporarily relieved by the Eighth Army.
Operation Uzice ended in the retreat of the Yugoslav Partisans and Chetniks and the breakup of the short-lived Republic of Užice. 'Chattanooga Choo Choo' by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra hit number one on the Billboard singles charts.
Two-Faced Woman - starring Greta Garbo (in her final movie) and Melvyn Douglas - premiered.
Karl Jäger wrote The Jäger Report, the most precise surviving document of the activities of an Einsatzkommando unit.
Howard Hawks's Ball Of Fire - starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck - premiered. John Colin McCormack born in Penarth, Glamorgan.
Erwin Rommel's assault toward the garrisons at Bardia, Sallum and Halfaya Pass was repulsed by the Allies. The Japanese carrier fleet tasked with the Pearl Harbour attack began approaching the Hawaiian Islands with increased speed.
The UK declared war on Finland.
President Roosevelt wrote a personal appeal to Emperor Hirohito to avoid war between the United States and Japan.
Japanese forces attacked the US navy base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii bringing the, so far reluctant, Americans into the war. The Japanese also invaded Thailand and British Malaya and launched aerial attacks against Guam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Shanghai, Singapore, Midway and Wake Island. Japan declared war on the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. Winston Churchill was dining at Chequers with the American diplomats John Gilbert Winant and W Averell Harriman when the news of the Pearl Harbour attack arrived. Churchill later wrote of that night, 'Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.'
President Roosevelt made 'The Infamy Speech' to a Joint session of Congress. Lifelong pacifist Jeannette Rankin was the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war. The House of Commons convened on short notice in light of recent events. Churchill made a speech concluding, 'We have at least four-fifths of the population of the globe upon our side. We are responsible for their safety and for their future. In the past we have had a light which flickered, in the present we have a light which flames and in the future there will be a light which shines over all the land and sea.'
British Commandos conducted Operation Kitbag, a raid on the Norwegian town of Florø. Mervyn LeRoy's Johnny Eager - starring Robert Taylor and Lana Turner - premiered.
Cruiser HMS Repulse and battleship HMS Prince of Wales were sunk in a Japanese air attack in the South China Sea. Kenneth Victor Campbell born in Ilford. Fionnghuala Manon Flanagan born in Dublin. George Formby's 'The Barmaid At The Rose And Crown'/'I'd Do It With A Smile' released.
Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
The Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney Junior was released.
Ann Geissler born in Wellington, New Zealand.
Commonwealth troops pushed Rommel's forces back at the Gazala line.
The Battle of Borneo began.
German submarine U-131 was heavily damaged by British ships and aircraft and scuttled west of Madeira.
Joseph Goebbels announced a winter clothing collection drive for troops on the Eastern Front. Rather than admitting to a supply shortage he presented it as an expression of solidarity between the soldiers and the homeland.
A second Japanese landing attempt on Wake Island was successful and the American garrison surrendered after hours of fighting. General MacArthur declared Manila 'an Open City.'
In the Philippines, American forces retreated into the Bataan Peninsula. The Japanese bombed Rangoon. John Anthony Woods born in Salisbury. Michael Billington born in Blackburn.
Hong Kong surrendered to Japan. Allied forces retook Benghazi.
Peter Pan broadcast on The Home Service with Patricia Hayes in the title role. Winston Churchill addressed a joint meeting of US Congress. He predicted that at least eighteen months would be required to turn the tide of the war and warned that 'many disappointments and unpleasant surprises await us.'Hellzapoppin' - starring The Three Stooges - premiered
British Combined Operations executed Operation Archery, a raid against German positions on the island of Vågsøy, Norway.
JM Barrie's Mary Rose broadcast.
The Red Army took back the Crimean city of Kerch. Alan David born in Merthyr Tydfil.
'Almost a ghost story', The Voice Of Michael Vane broadcast.
The first episode of Georgie Wood's Backyard Follies broadcast on The Home Service. Alexander Chapman Ferguson born in Glasgow. Busby Berkeley's Babes On Broadway - staring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney - premiered. Sarah Miles born in Ingatestone, Essex.
