1940
Soviet bombers raid cities in Finland.
1941
Recruiting of Norwegians for the ‘Nordland’ Regiment of the 5th SS Motorized Division ‘Wiking’ begins.
1942
Hitler orders Admiral Otto Ciliax, who commands the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the cruiser Prinz Eugen at Brest, to prepare to return to Germany. The new German battleship Tirpitz, sister ship of the Bismarck is ordered to Norway.
British capture Sollum.
Japan formally declares war on the Dutch East Indies.
Field Marshal von Leeb, C-in-C of Army Group North, requests permission to withdraw his forces south of Lake Ilmen behind the river Lovat, as the 2nd Corps at Demyansk is in serious danger of being cut off. Hitler refuses von Leebs request who resigns in protest. His place as C-in-C of Army Group North is taken up by Field Marshal von Kuechler.
Off Nova Scotia, German U-boat U-123 sinks British freighter Cyclops, the first loss in Germany’s “Operation Paukenschlag.”
Col. Charles Lindbergh is refused a military command due to his vocal pre-war isolationist work.
US forms National War Labor Board to deal with union wage demands.
In US, Victory Book Campaign begins to collect reading material for servicemen.
1943
The Red Army begins an offensive to restore the land communications with the encircled city of Leningrad. The Germans abandon a 300 miles salient in Caucasus. And withdraw towards the Kuban Bridgehead. The Red Army gains several more streets in the bloody battle for Stalingrad.
Gen. Leclerc drives the last Germans troops out of the Fezzan in Southern Libya with his Free French forces from Chad.
1944
Churchill and de Gaulle meet for talks at Marrakesh.
1945
The German ‘Nordwind’ offensive is stopped 13 miles from Strasbourg. British and U.S.forces link up in the Laroche area.
Koniev’s 1st Ukrainian Front launches a major winter offensive from its bridgehead across the Vistula at Baranov in southern Poland.