Events, Verisoph

1940 Destroyers-for-bases deal with Britain ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In September 1940 Roosevelt, by executive action, gave Britain fifty old World War I destroyers in exchange for ninety-nine-year leases on naval and air bases from Newfoundland to Trinidad. He also proclaimed a limited National Emergency. ●●

1940 Selective Service Act of 1940 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In September 1940 Congress passed the Selective Service Act to build up the armed forces by compulsion, providing one year of training for 900,000 men. The men were not to be used outside the Western Hemisphere. ●●

1940 Japan sets up a puppet government at Nanking ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In March 1940 Japan installed a puppet Chinese government at Nanking. Its lack of real power convinced no one, as the interior of China remained loyal to Chiang Kai-shek's government at Chungking. ●●

1940 City bombing begins by accident over London ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The bombing of cities began when lost German planes dumped their loads on London on August 24, 1940, contrary to orders. The RAF retaliated on Berlin the next night, and Goering announced deliberate city bombardment soon after. ●●

1940 National Defense Research Committee created ai_extracted 1 cit. no story As France fell in 1940, Vannevar Bush persuaded Roosevelt to create the National Defense Research Committee, which he chaired, linking science to the U.S. war effort. ●●

1940 Sengier ships Congo uranium ore to New York ai_extracted 1 cit. no story After the fall of France, Edgar Sengier of Union Miniere shipped 1,250 tons of high-grade Katanga uranium ore to New York, where it sat unwanted for over two years. ●●

1940 Amery's "In the name of God, go!" and Chamberlain's fall ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In the bitter Commons debate of 8 May 1940 Amery flung Cromwell's words at the government benches. The split vote led to Chamberlain's replacement by Churchill and Amery's return to office. ●●

1940 Halifax sent to Washington after Lothian's death ai_extracted 1 cit. no story When Lothian died in December 1940 the Washington embassy was judged so important that Halifax was moved there from the Foreign Office while keeping his War Cabinet seat. ●●

1940 Walter Lippmann indicts modern education, 1940 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto quotes Walter Lippmann, who in a December 1940 address to the science association argued that modern education had stripped away the Western cultural tradition and was destroying Western civilization. ●●

1940 NKVD deports tens of thousands of Balts to Siberia ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Other examples include the NKVD’s forced deportation of some 35,000 to 50,000 “suspect” Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians to Siberian exile in 1940 and 1941, which has remained a rigidly enforced secret inside the USSR ever since. ●●

1940 Rentschler becomes National City Bank chairman ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gordon Rentschler became chairman of National City Bank after James Perkins died in July 1940. Rentschler coordinated war bond distribution and aligned the bank with FDR's war financing strategy. ●●

1940 FDR reelected to a third term ai_extracted 2 cit. no story Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidency for the third time on November 5, 1940, though with lower popular and electoral percentages than his prior election. This gave him continued power to lead America into its wartime mobilization. ●●

1940 France signs armistice with Nazi Germany ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On June 22, 1940, French Premier Marshal Petain submitted to the Nazi blitzkrieg and signed an armistice, leaving Britain to fight alone. ●●

1940 J. P. Morgan becomes a public corporation ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In February 1940, J. P. Morgan and Company announced its transformation from a private partnership to a publicly traded corporation. ●●

1940 Auer delivers first ton of uranium oxide to War Office ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Auer, the thorium specialists, purveyors of gas mantles and radioactive toothpaste, delivered the first ton of pure uranium oxide processed from Joachimsthal ores to the War Office in January 1940. ●●

1940 Soviet physicists report spontaneous fission of uranium ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Two associates of Soviet physicist Igor Kurchatov reported to the Physical Review in June 1940 that they had observed rare spontaneous fissioning in uranium. ●●

1940 Auer orders sixty tons of uranium oxide from Belgium ai_extracted 2 cit. no story In June 1940, about the time Simon was hammering out his kitchen strainer, Auer ordered sixty tons of refined uranium oxide from the Union Miniére in occupied Belgium.1357 Paul Harteck in Hamburg tried that month to measure neutron multiplication in an ingenious arrangement of uranium oxide and dry ice—frozen carbon dioxide, a source of carbon free from any impurity other than oxygen—but was unable to convince Heisenberg to lend him enough uranium to guarantee unambiguous results. ●●

1940 Tizard Mission brings British secrets to America ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Churchill had sent over Henry Tizard in the late summer of 1940 with a delegation of experts and a black-enameled metal steamer trunk, the original black box, full of military secrets. ●●

1940 Dunning and Urey appraise gaseous diffusion ai_extracted 1 cit. no story If a chain reaction became possible with normal uranium, a smaller and probably cheaper power plant could be made with enriched uranium.”1484 Dunning and Urey produced a joint appraisal of the gaseous-diffusion process in November 1940. ●●

1940 Szilard joins Columbia under NDRC contract ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Szilard had finally gone on the Columbia payroll on November 1, 1940, when the $40,000 National Defense Research Committee contract came through for physical-constant measurements. ●●

1940 Rich Congo pitchblende shipped to the United States ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Nichols told him about a recent and fortuitous discovery: some 1,250 tons of extraordinarily rich pitchblende—it was 65 percent uranium oxide—that the Union Minière had shipped to the United States in 1940 from its Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo to remove it beyond German reach. ●●

1940 Germany seizes 1,200 tons of Belgian uranium ore ai_extracted 1 cit. no story the German Army in Belgium confiscated and removed to Germany about 1200 tons of uranium ore. ●●

1940 Katyn massacre of Polish prisoners of war ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Zuboff highlights Stalin's systematic execution of 15,000 Polish nationalists captured as prisoners of war from the 1939 invasion. ●●

1940 Todt appointed to head Ministry for Ammunition ai_extracted 1 cit. no story And it was Todt who was duly appointed by Hitler on 17 March 1940 to head a new Ministry for Ammunition. ●●

1940 Todt Ministry creates gun and artillery committee ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Finally, in Novem- ber 1940 the Todt Ministry established a national committee to oversee the production of guns and artillery, headed Para enough by ‘Cannon Mueller’ from Krupp. ●●

1940 Germany signs arms-for-oil deal with Romania ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In March 1940, the German Foreign Office began the process of rolling back Anglo-French domi- nance in the Ploesti oilfield, by concluding an unprecedented arms-for- oil deal.** Romania guaranteed Germany an increased supply of oil at preferential pr ●●

1940 Britain launches strategic bombing offensive on Germany ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Autumn 1940: Britain begins building heavy bomber fleet to destroy German industry and war economy. ●●

1940 Anglo-American aircraft production scheme drafted ai_extracted 1 cit. no story July 23, 1940: Secret meeting produces scheme for 72,000 aircraft per year production expansion. ●●

1940 Roosevelt proposes 50,000 aircraft per year ai_extracted 1 cit. no story President Roosevelt proposes world's largest military-industrial complex with 50,000 aircraft yearly capacity. ●●

25 June 1941 to 19 September 1944 Continuation War wikidata 0 cit. no story 1941-1944 Finnish war against USSR ●●●●

1941 United States supplies Britain through Lend-Lease ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Instead of the commercial financing used in World War I, the US provided Britain 27 billion dollars in Lend-Lease supplies, received 6 billion back, and wrote off the account for about 800 million in the postwar settlement. ●●

1941 Germany invades the Soviet Union ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Despite purges, low living standards, and inefficiency, Soviet industrial power had grown enough that the world was amazed at the USSR's ability to withstand the German assault that began on June 22, 1941. ●●

1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Facing economic strangulation and expecting that seizing the Dutch Indies would draw an American war, the Japanese militarists decided to strike first, producing the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. ●●

1941 Coup d'etat in Yugoslavia overthrows the regency ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On the night of March 26-27, 1941, a military coup overthrew the Yugoslav regency days after it had signed the Tripartite Pact, replacing Prince Paul with young King Peter. The new government signed a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union. ●●

1941 Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Hours after Yugoslavia signed a treaty with the Soviet Union, the Luftwaffe bombarded Belgrade and thirty-three German divisions invaded Yugoslavia and Greece in early April 1941. Both countries were overrun within three weeks. ●●

1941 Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In January 1941 Roosevelt stated America's foreign-policy aims in his 'Four Freedoms' speech: freedom of speech and worship, and freedom from want and fear. It framed the goals America hoped to advance while staying out of the war. ●●

1941 Lend-Lease Act becomes law ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Introduced as H.R. 1776 on January 10, 1941, the Lend-Lease bill became law two months later. It let the President transfer defense articles to any nation whose defense he deemed vital to the United States. ●●

1941 Atlantic Charter issued ai_extracted 1 cit. no story After four days of conferences aboard the Prince of Wales, August 9-12, 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter as their first formal statement of war aims. It renounced territorial aggrandizement and endorsed self-determination and free trade. ●●

1941 Selective service extended by one vote ai_extracted 1 cit. no story An act extending the term of selective-service training by eighteen months passed Congress on August 12, 1941, by a single vote, 203-202. Republicans were solidly opposed, with only 21 voting for it. ●●

1941 Hitler declares war on the United States ai_extracted 2 cit. no story Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor. Quigley calls this Hitler's greatest mistake, since it spared the Roosevelt Administration from having to justify attacking Germany after being struck by Japan. ●●

1941 German torpedo destroys the Reuben James ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In the undeclared naval war in the Atlantic, the destroyer Reuben James was blown apart with great loss of life in late October 1941. Such incidents multiplied as American escorts covered British convoys. ●●

1941 Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The German armies launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union at dawn on June 22, 1941, at the peak of their power. Within days huge pincer envelopments captured hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops. ●●

1941 German envelopment east of Kiev ai_extracted 1 cit. no story After Hitler shifted emphasis south, German Army Group South completed a vast envelopment east of Kiev between August 24 and September 21, 1941, capturing 665,000 prisoners. Hitler called it the greatest battle in history; his chief of staff called it the greatest strategic blunder of the campaign. ●●

1941 Hitler orders the attack on Moscow ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On September 6, 1941, in Directive No. 35, Hitler abruptly accepted his generals' advice and ordered an attack on Moscow. By then it was arguably too late for a successful assault on the Soviet capital. ●●

1941 Hitler assumes personal command of the army ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On December 19, 1941, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch was relieved as commander in chief and Hitler took the post himself. He ordered that the army was not to withdraw a single step. ●●

1941 Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Foreign Minister Matsuoka signed a Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact in Moscow on April 13, 1941. It later allowed the Soviet Union to shift Far Eastern forces westward to help defend Moscow. ●●

1941 Japan moves troops into southern Indochina ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On July 21, 1941, Japan's threats won from Vichy France the right to move troops into southern Indochina. This posed a threat to British Malaya and triggered a sharp American response. ●●

1941 United States freezes Japanese assets ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On July 26, 1941, the United States froze all Japanese financial assets, virtually ending trade between the two countries. The British Commonwealth and the Netherlands Indies followed with similar restrictions, cutting off oil and other vital goods. ●●

1941 Japan orders the attack on Pearl Harbor ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On November 10, 1941, operations orders went out to the Japanese Navy to destroy the American fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7th. Orders had already been issued to conquer Thailand, Malaya, the Philippines, and other objectives. ●●

1941 Soviet-Polish agreement of July 1941 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story After the German attack on Russia, the Soviet Union reestablished relations with the Polish government-in-exile and signed an agreement on July 30, 1941, cancelling the 1939 partition treaties and granting amnesty to imprisoned Poles. It allowed General Anders to raise a new Polish army. ●●

1941 Blackett and Operational Research ai_extracted 1 cit. no story P. M. S. Blackett pioneered Operational Research for the British war effort. In 1941 he argued that scientists could bring numerical thinking to military operations. ●●

1941 OSRD established ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In May 1941 the Office of Scientific Research and Development was created with Bush as chairman and Conant as his deputy, expanding the wartime mobilization of science. ●●

1941 All-out atomic effort decided before Pearl Harbor ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The decision to make an all-out effort to unlock atomic energy was taken on 6 December 1941, the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor. ●●

1941 Khrushchev's secret speech: Stalin ignored 1941 invasion warnings ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Quigley quotes Khrushchev's 1956 secret speech charging that Stalin disregarded repeated warnings of the German attack. It states that by April 3, 1941, Churchill had personally warned Stalin through Ambassador Cripps that Germany was regrouping to attack the USSR. ●●

1941 Gatto hears the Pearl Harbor announcement on the radio ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto recalls hearing FDR announce the Pearl Harbor attack on the radio eight days before his sixth birthday, a memory that dates to December 1941. ●●

1941 Scale of Soviet labor camps before 1941 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The book quotes Quigley that estimates of people held in Soviet slave-labor camps before 1941 ranged from two million to twenty million. It presents Soviet terror as a Network-tolerated horror. ●●

1941 Millions of Soviet POWs starved in German camps ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The evidence indicates that between 3 and 4 million captured Soviet soldiers were intentionally starved to death in German POW camps between 1941 and 1944. ●●

1941 Franz Six leads the Vorkommando Moskau into the USSR ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In 1941 Six led the Vorkommando Moskau, an advance squad of the Nazi invasion, whose job it was to seize Communist party and NKVD archives in order to compile lists of hunted Soviet officials and to liquidate those who were caught. ●●

1941 British and Soviet troops occupy Iran ai_extracted 1 cit. no story To prevent Nazi operations in Iran and secure their supply lines, British and Soviet troops enter Iran on August 25, 1941. ●●

1941 Reza Shah abdicates the throne ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Reza Shah abdicates on September 16, 1941, unable to resist Allied pressure and internal political collapse, abandoning his dictatorship. ●●

1941 Bush delivers third NAS report to Roosevelt ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Bush personally delivered the third National Academy of Sciences report to the President on November 27, 1941. ●●

1941 Zhukov counterattacks German army outside Moscow ai_extracted 2 cit. no story December 6, 1941, the day of the bomb program expansion, marked another tidal event: Soviet forces under General Georgi Zhukov counterattacked across a two-hundred-mile front against the German Army congealed in snow and –35°F cold only thirty miles outside Moscow. ●●

1941 Imperial Army authorizes Japanese atomic bomb research ai_extracted 1 cit. no story the official order came through: the Imperial Army Air Force authorized research toward the development of an atomic bomb. ●●

1941 Stalin discusses postwar borders with Eden in Moscow ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On the occasion of Eden's visit to Moscow in December 1941, Stalin discussed postwar territorial arrangements and made clear his preference for practical arithmetic over declarations of principle, seeking recognition of the 1941 Soviet borders. ●●

1941 Greek Communists found ELAS and EAM ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Founded during the course of 1941-42 on the initiative of the Greek Communist Party, ELAS and its political wing EAM cut across the entire left side of the political spectrum, numbering many priests and even a few bishops amongst its follow- ers ●●

1941 Luftwaffe secures aircraft deal with Vichy France ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On February 12, 1941, the Luftwaffe finally obtains agreement from France to produce 3,000 aircraft and 13,500 aero-engines under license. ●●

1941 Italy threatens to halt Mediterranean naval operations ai_extracted 1 cit. no story By February 1941, the Italian navy threatens to halt its Mediterranean operations unless Germany supplies at least 250,000 tons of fuel. ●●

1941 German army plans 40,000 tanks for post-Soviet war ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In May 1941, German army internal planning document calls for production of almost 40,000 tanks and 130,000 half-tracks over three years for post-Soviet operations. ●●

1941 Nazis begin gas van experiments for mass killing ai_extracted 2 cit. no story By end of 1941, learning process from hand executions leads to first experiments with gas vans, eventually abandoned as too slow compared to shooting methods. ●●

1941 US Congress passes the Lend-Lease Act ai_extracted 1 cit. no story March 11, 1941: Congress appropriates $8.3 billion for British war supplies including 11,800 aircraft. ●●

1941 Hitler predicts inevitable global war with America ai_extracted 1 cit. no story January 9, 1941: Hitler addresses commanders at Berchtesgaden about inevitable global war with America. ●●

1941 Hitler declares Jewish destruction the war's consequence ai_extracted 1 cit. no story December 12, 1941: Hitler tells Nazi leadership that Jewish destruction must follow world war. ●●

1941 Einsatzgruppe A destroys Baltic Jewish communities ai_extracted 1 cit. no story June 25-26, 1941: Horrific pogrom at Kaunas begins systematic destruction of 270,000 Jews by spring 1942. ●●

1941 Leningrad encircled by German and Finnish forces ai_extracted 1 cit. no story October 1941: 2.5 million trapped as city enters famine with 4,000 daily deaths by December. ●●

1941 Wehrmacht starves Soviet POWs to death ai_extracted 1 cit. no story December 1941: Of 3.35 million captured Red Army soldiers, only 1.1 million alive; 600,000 starved by February 1942. ●●

1941 Einsatzgruppe A executes German Jews at Kaunas ai_extracted 1 cit. no story November 25-29, 1941: Mass execution of German Jews deported from Berlin, Breslau, Munich, Frankfurt. ●●

1941 Zuse completes the Z3 programmable computer ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Zuse's Z3 becomes the first fully working, programmable, automatic digital computer, using electromechanical relays. ●●

1941 Mauchly visits Atanasoff in Iowa ai_extracted 1 cit. no story John Mauchly travels to Iowa State to see Atanasoff's partly built computer, a visit that later spawns a bitter patent dispute. ●●

25 August 1942 to 7 September 1942 Battle of Milne Bay wikidata 0 cit. no story 1942 battle ●●

1942 Battle for Vlasenica wikidata 0 cit. no story 1942 operation of the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia to the assault of Vlasenica ●●

1942 Germany conquers core of Western Civilization by 1942 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In Quigley's framework, Nazi Germany as a semi-peripheral power had overrun much of the European core of Western Civilization by 1942 before being defeated by the United States and the Soviet Union. ●●

1942 Fritz Todt killed in air crash ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Fritz Todt, the engineer set to run Germany's economic mobilization, died in an airplane crash on February 12, 1942. Albert Speer succeeded him but had to share authority with several rival offices. ●●

1942 Thousand-bomber raid on Cologne ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Using new intersecting radio-beam navigation, Britain launched a thousand-bomber raid on Cologne in May 1942. Bomb damage, however great, had no decisive effect on Germany's ability to wage war. ●●

1942 Battle of Midway ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The first turning point in the war between the United States and Japan came at Midway on June 4, 1942. American carriers, alerted to the Japanese plan, sprang a counter-ambush that destroyed four Japanese carriers. ●●

1942 Montgomery attacks at El Alamein ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On October 23, 1942, with Rommel absent in Germany, Montgomery attacked the Axis forces at El Alamein at their strongest point along the coast road. After twelve days he broke through, and the German position in Egypt collapsed. ●●

1942 Operation Torch: American invasion of North Africa ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The American invasion of French North Africa on November 8, 1942 (Operation Torch) came as a compromise among the differing strategic ideas of Moscow, London, and Washington. It landed at three points in Morocco and Algeria. ●●

1942 Hitler orders the capture of Stalingrad ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On July 18, 1942, after seven weeks of advance toward the Caucasus, Hitler suddenly ordered the capture of Stalingrad. Because the armored forces were committed elsewhere, the assault could not begin until September 12th. ●●

1942 Anglo-Soviet Treaty of alliance ai_extracted 1 cit. no story To avoid committing to disputed territorial claims, Eden persuaded Stalin to accept a twenty-year Anglo-Soviet treaty of alliance on May 26, 1942. It had no territorial provisions and pledged non-interference in other states' affairs. ●●

1942 Dieppe raid ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On August 19, 1942, a force of 5,000 men, mostly Canadians, landed at Dieppe and suffered 3,350 casualties in a few hours. The disaster underscored the difficulty of a cross-Channel assault. ●●

1942 Anglo-Soviet-Iranian alliance ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On January 29, 1942, Britain, the Soviet Union, and Iran signed an alliance in which the two powers promised to protect Iran's sovereignty while gaining military control of the trans-Iranian supply route. Over that route 5.5 million tons of supplies later reached the Soviet Union. ●●

1942 Invasion of Guadalcanal ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The eastern drive up the Pacific 'ladder' began on August 7, 1942, when naval and marine forces from Wellington invaded Guadalcanal in the Solomons. Six months of horrible jungle combat followed. ●●

1942 First sustained nuclear chain reaction ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On 2 December 1942 at the University of Chicago, Fermi's team withdrew the cadmium rods and achieved the first sustained nuclear chain reaction. ●●

1942 Smuts's Life article urging Commonwealth reorganization (28 Dec 1942) ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Quigley cites Smuts's article in Life for 28 December 1942 and a 1943 London speech proposing regional blocs to bind the Dominions closer to Britain. He treats it as a Milner Group trial balloon. ●●

1942 The Group founds the reconstruction journal Agenda ai_extracted 1 cit. no story As the war went on the Milner Group turned to postwar planning, founding a quarterly on reconstruction edited from Chatham House. ●●

1942 E. H. Carr's Conditions of Peace ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The book says that in his 1942 book Conditions of Peace, the Network-linked historian E. H. Carr argued a flawed economic system had caused World War II and urged the West to adopt socialism. It presents Carr as a practitioner of Realpolitik. ●●

1942 Vlasov Army formed under Andrei Vlasov ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In 1942 this effort became known as the Vlasov Army after Andrei Vlasov, a former general in the Red Army whom the Germans had chosen to be the crusade’s leader. ●●

1942 White drafts the postwar stabilization fund plan ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In spring 1942, Treasury official Harry Dexter White developed plans for a postwar stabilization fund and international monetary cooperation mechanisms. These concepts would later become core elements of the Bretton Woods system. ●●

1942 Revenue Act of 1942 shifts to current-year tax collection ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The Revenue Act of 1942 introduced current-year income tax collection, requiring taxes to be paid in the year earned rather than the following year. This accelerated federal revenue collection for war production spending. ●●

1942 Allied landing in North Africa ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Roosevelt supported the landing in North Africa in November 1942 and, after the conquest of the northern shore of the Mediterranean, a landing in Italy in the spring of 1943, which knocked Italy out of the war. ●●

1942 Molotov sent to London for postwar talks ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Stalin tried to bring matters to a head by sending Molotov to London in May 1942, where Soviet postwar territorial demands would be negotiated with the British government. ●●