WWII History

1939 The German pocket Battleships, Graf Spee and Deutschland, which had sailed from Germany in August, are given orders to attack allied shipping in the Atlantic. Sir John Simon’s first war budget, income tax up to 7s 6d in the £. Polish government-in-exile set up in Paris. Warsaw, besieged for more than two weeks, surrenders […]

1938 Chancellor Adolf Hitler announces in a speech; “The Sudetenland is the last territorial claim I have to make in Europe.” 1939 Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa – AK) is formed in Warsaw. The British first use naval air warning radar, in Luftwaffe attack on carrier HMS Ark Royal. 1940 During the London Blitz, the underground

1938 President Franklin Roosevelt urges negotiations between Hitler and Czech President Benes over the Sudetenland. 1939 Heavy artillery duels flare on Western Front. Churchill claims the U-boat menace has been overcome, but U-48 sinks the steamer Royal Sceptre and casts its crew adrift 300 miles from land. The Luftwaffe bomb Warsaw with 420 planes. Casualties

1939 U-boats sink three UK-bound neutral merchant ships. Food rationing introduced in Germany on small scale. Warsaw, Poland surrenders to Germany; Polish government-in-exile established in Paris. German Special Task Force troops execute 800 Polish intellectuals and leaders in Bydgoszcz. 1940 18th successive night raid on London. Southampton and Brighton also attacked. Plans to evacuate mothers

1939 German Jews are forbidden to own wireless (radio) sets. 1940 The design for the jeep is submitted to the US Army by Bantam, originally called the Pilot. New rations announced in Vichy France as 350g of bread, 300g of sugar, 50g of cheese, 360g of meat per day and 100g of fat per week.

1939 Germany and Russia agree on partition of Poland. 217,000 Polish troops who are fighting against the Red Army surrender at Lvov. The NKVD begins rounding up thousands of Polish officers and deporting them to Russia where they will be executed a year later in the forest of Katyn near Smolensk. A Polish regiment repels

1939 60,000 Poles, all that remains of the Polish Southern Army surrender at Zamosz and Tomaszov. Romanian premier Armand Calinescu assassinated by Fascist Iron Guard for supporting Poles. Heydrich issues instructions to SS Einsatzgruppen (special action squads) in Poland regarding treatment of Jews, stating they are to be gathered into ghettos near railroads for the

1939 Prime Minister Chamberlain claims that at least 6 U-boats have been sunk in first fortnight of the war. German troops in eastern Poland withdraw to the line agreed upon in the German-Soviet treaty. The Red Army moves in behind them to occupy the formerly Russian territory. Polish troops at Grodno manage to kill 800

1939 First British casualty list published. The conclusion of the battle of the Vistula bend, with the Wehrmacht taking 170,000 prisoners. Germans suppress a Czech rebellion. Lavrenti Beria, chief of the Soviet NKVD, sets up a Directorate for Prisoners of War and establishes camps for the 240,000 Polish POWs in Soviet custody; about 37,000 will

1939 German and Soviet troops link at Brest-Litovsk, Poland. Polish cryptographers flee to Paris with vital information on German Enigma codes. 1941 Russians conscript all men aged 16 – 50. Units of Army Group South capture Poltava in the Ukraine. The Russians evacuate Kiev, but the ‘fight to the death’ continues in the area for