WWII History

1940 The British Battleship Valiant, the Aircraft Carrier Illustrious and two Cruisers leave Gibraltar bound for Alexandria to reinforce Admiral Cunningham’s Mediterranean fleet. In an effort to avert war between her allies Romania and Hungary and to secure his southern flank prior to attacking the Soviet Union, Germany and Italy under the second Vienna Award […]

1940 Germany apologizes to Eire for Wexford bombing. Intense dogfights over London and Home Counties. Britain refuses German proposal to use 64 Red Cross ships to rescue airmen from the English Channel. Vichy France agree to Japanese demands that they be allowed to station forces in northern Indochina. First mass jump by US paratroopers, at

1940 Vichy French radio announces that laws protecting Jews in France have been dropped. Alter the ‘voluntary dissolution of all political parties’, President Konoye of Japan announces structure to ‘unite the total energies of the state and people.’ Luftwaffe makes first night bombing raid over Britain. RAF bombs Berlin, killing ten, the first Germans killed

1939 Hitler cancels the order for the invasion of Poland on this day. He sets a new date of the 1st September. 1940 First Canadian fighter pilot in RCAF squadron is killed in combat in the Battle of Britain. Eire government protests to Berlin over bombs dropped in County Wexford, killing three girls. London raided

1940 USS Constitution named symbolic flagship of US Fleet at Boston. Medical journalLancet publishes first study by Howard Florey and Ernest Chain about penicillin. The Luftwaffe begins a new phase in its offensive by sending over a higher proportion of fighters to bombers, in an effort to keep losses down. The unofficial start of the Blitz on London

1939 Joseph Stalin and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop sign a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany, freeing Hitler to invade Poland and Stalin to invade Finland. 1940 RAF cuts pilot training period from 1 month to 2 weeks. 1942 Hitlers orders that Leningrad should finally be captured after a siege which

1940 Churchill dispatches a heavily armed convoy with 150 tanks to reinforce the middle east. The first cross-Channel artillery duel—Germans bombard Dover and British reply. 1942 Brazil declares war on Germany and Italy after 16 ships lost to German U-boats, opening airbases to cover Allied shipping and opening the South Atlantic air route; Brazil will

1940 Commons allows nationalist forces of Poland, Norway, Belgium, Holland, France and Czechoslovakia to train in Britain under their own flags. Leon Trotsky is assassinated by a Stalinist agent while in exile in Mexico City. 1941 French resistance member Pierre “Fabien” Georges commits the first violent act of resistance against the Germans in Paris when

1940 Churchill reviews the progress of air war in Commons and says ‘Never in the field of human conflict, was so much owed by so many, to so few’. The Luftwaffe withdraws the Ju-87 Stuka dive bomber from strategic operations against England after losing 20 per cent of their Stuka force to the RAF. Mao

1940 Whole of Britain declared a defense area. Bad weather and a reorganization of fighter strength by the Luftwaffe causes a lull in operations. Mussolini orders Marshal Graziani to invade Egypt. Italian troops enter the Port of Berbera, the capital of British Somaliland, where they are welcomed by strafing RAF Blenheims. British transport 5,300-5,700 combat