Henderson Field, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands · November 12, 1942 On this date in 1942 in the South Pacific, U.S. and Japanese fleets began the four-day Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, often at point-blank range and under the cover of darkness. Variously referred to as the Third and Fourth Battles of Savo Island, the Battle of the…
Tokyo, Japan · November 5, 1941 Early in September 1941 Japanese officials gave their diplomats until October to reverse the policy of the Western powers—principally the U.S., Great Britain, and the Netherlands—of restricting Japan’s access to vital Southeast Asian resources, among them oil, rubber, tin, timber, and rice. The restrictions had been imposed the previous…
Chungking, China · October 31, 1944 The war against the Japanese in China was desultory at best, and service in that theater was viewed as a graveyard by U.S. military and diplomatic officials. On this date in 1944 Maj. Gen. Albert Wedemeyer arrived to replace dismissed Gen. Joseph Stilwell as commander of the China Theater…
Belgrade, Yugoslavia · October 22, 1944 On April 6, 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded from all sides by the Axis powers, primarily by Germany but also by Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria. The invasion lasted little more than ten days, ending with the unconditional surrender of the Yugoslav Army on April 17 and the flight of King Peter II…
Kragujevac, Serbia, Yugoslavia · October 21, 1941 From Europe, to Africa, to the Far East, regular Axis troops, as well as specialized killing squads (Einsatzgruppen), murdered millions of unarmed civilians. These mass murders often targeted ethnic or political groups. Sometimes they were committed in retaliation for acts of resistance, whether or not the victims were…
Washington, D.C. · October 17, 1941 Starting on September 1, 1941, two years into the Battle of the Atlantic, U.S. warships began escorting convoys of Britain-bound merchantmen from the North American coast. Convoys departed from Newfoundland off the coast of Canada and ended in the mid-Atlantic at Iceland. Four days after initiating the escort service,…
Tokyo, Japan · October 16, 1941 On this date in 1941 Prince Fumimaro Konoe resigned as prime minister of Japan. Konoe had lost the support of cabinet and Army minister Gen. Hideki Tōjō, who called for a firmer line with the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt over the U.S. ban on the export of…
Washington, D.C. · October 2, 1939 On January 31, 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt held a closed-door meeting with the Senate Military Affairs Committee at the White House. Reportedly FDR made the comment that “the frontier of the United States is the Rhine,” meaning France’s eastern border with Nazi Germany. When the statement was leaked…
Vichy, France · September 22, 1940 As early as June 1940, after French resistance to the German conquest of France crumbled, Japan made overtures to French authorities for permission to station troops in French Indochina (now Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) and for their warships to take up naval stations off northern Indochinese ports. On this…
Washington, D.C. · September 11, 1941 Starting on September 1, 1941, two years into the Battle of the Atlantic, U.S. warships began escorting convoys of British-bound merchantmen from the North American coast. Convoys departed from Newfoundland, Canada, and ended in the mid-Atlantic at Iceland. Four days after initiating the escort service, the U.S. destroyer Greer…
