Washington, D.C. · February 19, 1942 On this date in 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. It authorized the War Department to designate “military areas” in the U.S. and exclude from them anyone whom the department felt to be a danger to the security of the nation. Although the order was carefully…
Casablanca, Morocco, North Africa · January 14, 1943 This date in 1943 saw the start of the 10‑day Casablanca Conference at a seaside resort in Morocco between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and their Combined Chiefs of Staff. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had been invited to the summit but reportedly…
Washington, D. C. · January 6, 1941 On this date in 1941 in Washington, D.C, President Franklin D. Roosevelt used his State of the Union Address to the U.S. Congress to outline his desire for a world based not on a “new order of tyranny”—an allusion to the “new European order” championed by Adolf Hitler’s…
Manila, Philippines · January 2, 1942 Japan intended to occupy the Philippine Islands as part of its plan for a “Greater East Asia War.” The nation’s Southern Expeditionary Army Group was tasked with seizing the islands, British Malaya (today’s Malaysia), and the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) simultaneously with the Japanese Navy’s assault on the…
Washington, D.C. · January 1, 1942 On August 14, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter on a warship off the Canadian coast. The two leaders hoped that, following the defeat of Adolf Hitler’s Germany, countries around the world would renounce the use of force in international…
Ottawa, Canada · December 30, 1941 On December 28, 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill left Washington’s Union Station for Canada. Six days earlier Churchill and his military and civilian advisers had arrived in the nation’s capital to meet with their American and Canadian counterparts. The visit by the two heads of state between Christmas…
Washington, D.C. · December 27, 1938 In 1938 America’s armed forces had less than 3,000 pilots. To speed the production of pilots outside the armed services, President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) on this date in 1938. The program was intended, the president said, to provide a boost to general aviation…
Washington, D.C. · December 24, 1941 On this grim date, Christmas Eve 1941, a tiny piece of Vichy France—the Atlantic islets of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, whose granite outcroppings lay just 12 miles off the Newfoundland coast adjacent to Canada—fell to the forces of Free France. It was the first French territory to be liberated in…
Washington, D.C. · December 20, 1940 On this date in 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed William Knudsen to head a four-member board (Office of Production Management, or OPM) to plan for national defense and coordinate aid to Great Britain following Germany’s total blockade of that island nation in mid-August (Battle of the Atlantic). A…
Berlin, Germany · December 13, 1941 On this day in 1941, two days after Germany and the U.S. had declared war on each other, U‑boat Adm. Karl Doenitz initiated the Kriegsmarine’s wolf pack campaign against ill-prepared merchant shipping along the Canadian and U.S. eastern seaboards. (Wolf packs consisted of a group of U‑boats systematically attacking Allied…