Events, Verisoph

1 October 1937 Marihuana Tax Act enacted under Anslinger's campaign 0 cit. The Marihuana Tax Act effectively criminalized cannabis nationwide by imposing prohibitive taxes and licensing requirements on its sale, the product of a campaign led by Federal Bureau of Narcotics commissioner Harry Anslinger. Anslinger testified before Congress with claims about marijuana-driven violence and insanity that later scholarship has found were unsupported by contemporary medical evidence, and critics have argued the law's enforcement fell disproportionately on Black and Latino communities. politics / society ●●

c. 1937 The Squatters Squeezed off the Settler Farms 0 cit. As settler farming intensified, laws such as the Resident Native Labourers Ordinances of 1925 and 1937 steadily cut the squatters' rights to cultivate and graze, reclassifying them as mere farm labourers. In the 1940s many Kikuyu squatter families were evicted from the Rift Valley and sent back to overcrowded reserves that could not hold them. This wave of eviction and landlessness produced many of the recruits and much of the fury that the Mau Mau movement would soon channel. economy / politics / society ●●●

1937 The 1937 Ordinance Squeezes the Squatters 1 cit. The Resident Labourers Ordinance of 1937, enforced from 1940, let district councils in the Highlands slash the land and livestock squatters were allowed and raise their labour days sharply. Squatter cattle were culled, cultivation plots cut, and families who had built up herds and farms saw them destroyed. This deliberate squeezing of squatter life in the 1930s and 1940s turned a settled tenantry into an angry, dispossessed mass and fed the land grievance behind Mau Mau. economy / politics / society ●●●

c. 1937 Lecturing for the Workers' Educational Association 0 cit. Kenyatta earned part of his living lecturing on Africa for the Workers' Educational Association and, during the war, to British troops. Speaking to ordinary British audiences honed him as a public advocate for Africa. It was steady work that also spread his argument well beyond radical circles. politics / society ●

1937 Founds the International African Service Bureau 0 cit. Padmore was the driving force behind the International African Service Bureau, formed in London in 1937. It linked activists including Jomo Kenyatta, Ras Makonnen, and I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson into a working organization. Historians such as Carol Polsgrove credit the bureau with making London the operational heart of anti-colonial Africa. politics / society ●●●

1937 Publishes Africa and World Peace 0 cit. Padmore published Africa and World Peace, tying the fate of the colonized continent to the coming global conflict. He argued that empire and the scramble for African resources were sources of war, not stability. The book widened his audience beyond activist circles. diplomacy / economy / politics ●

30 September 1938 Munich Agreement 0 cit. Britain and France cede the Sudetenland to Germany without consulting Czechoslovakia; Chamberlain promises "peace for our time". politics ●●●●

3 September 1938 Founding of the Fourth International 0 cit. Followers of Leon Trotsky, meeting secretly near Paris, found the Fourth International as a revolutionary socialist rival to Stalin's Comintern. diplomacy / politics ●●

7 June 1938 Founding of Pemex 0 cit. After President Cardenas expropriates foreign oil companies, Mexico creates the state firm Petroleos Mexicanos. The nationalization becomes a model cited by oil-producing countries worldwide. economy / politics ●●●

1938 Nazi seizure of the Austrian Rothschild bank 0 cit. After Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the Nazi regime seized the Vienna Rothschild bank and family assets. Louis Nathaniel von Rothschild was arrested and released only after a large ransom in property. economy / politics / war ●●●●

c. March 1938 Nazi Germany seizes control of Interpol 0 cit. After Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, the Vienna-based International Criminal Police Commission came under Nazi control along with the rest of the Austrian state apparatus. By 1940 the organization's presidency and headquarters had passed to senior SS and Reich Security Main Office officials, including Reinhard Heydrich and later Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and historians have documented that its files and networks were used to help track down political dissidents and Jews during the war. politics / war ●●●

December 1938 Himmler's decree against the 'Gypsy plague' 0 cit. In December 1938 Heinrich Himmler issued a decree on combating what it called the Gypsy plague, ordering that the Roma be registered and handled on racial grounds. It pulled earlier local persecution into a single national, racial framework. The decree marked a step from harassment toward the systematic policy that led to genocide. politics / society ●●●

18 March 1938 Mexico nationalizes its oil and creates Pemex 0 cit. President Lázaro Cárdenas expropriates the foreign oil companies after a labor dispute and hands their assets to the new state firm Pemex. It was the first major nationalization of oil and became a model for producer states that followed. economy / politics ●●●

18 March 1938 Mexico nationalizes oil and creates Pemex 0 cit. President Lazaro Cardenas expropriated the assets of foreign oil companies and placed the industry under a new state firm, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex). Oil became a national asset run by the government rather than by private investors. The move became a model for developing states that wanted to own their own natural resources. economy / politics ●●●

1938 Facing Mount Kenya Published 0 cit. Kenyatta published Facing Mount Kenya, an anthropological account of Kikuyu life drawn from his LSE work and issued under the name Jomo Kenyatta. The book defended Kikuyu land tenure, initiation customs, and social structure as a rational way of life and made a nationalist argument for African self-determination. It became a landmark text of African intellectual assertion and is read as both scholarship and political manifesto. culture / politics ●●●

c. 1938 The Radical Anti-Colonial of the London Years 0 cit. By the end of his British years Kenyatta was a known radical, writing pamphlets against colonial rule, associating with communists and Pan-Africanists, and campaigning against land theft and the colour bar. This period is documented fact and stands in tension with the cautious, order-preserving leader he later became. Historians who debate his legacy point to the gap between the militant of London and the conservative president of independent Kenya. politics ●●

1938 Facing Mount Kenya defends the custom as social order 0 cit. In Facing Mount Kenya Kenyatta argued that irua, including the female rite, was woven into the whole Kikuyu order of marriage, age-sets, law, and belonging, so that banning it by missionary fiat would unravel the society. His purpose was to defend cultural sovereignty against what he called missionary imperialism, not to praise the physical cutting for its own sake. Read today, the argument is a claim about the right of a people to define its own institutions, which does not settle the separate question of the bodily harm the female rite caused. culture / politics ●●●

c. 1938 Cultural sovereignty versus missionary imperialism 0 cit. The Kikuyu defenders framed the fight not as a defense of cutting but as a stand for the right of a people to govern its own customs against outsiders who held power over their schools, jobs, and churches. In their telling the missionaries were agents of a foreign order trying to remake Kikuyu society from above. This framing let the movement claim the high ground of self-determination while leaving the underlying harm of the practice unaddressed. culture / politics ●●

1938 Facing Mount Kenya is published under the name Jomo Kenyatta 0 cit. In 1938 his LSE work appeared as Facing Mount Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikuyu, with an introduction by Malinowski. The cover carried the name Jomo Kenyatta, the persona he had built in London, and a photograph of the author in a skin cloak holding a spear. It was one of the first full ethnographies of an African people written by one of its own. culture / politics / science ●●●

1938 The book's argument: land, culture, and self-rule 0 cit. The book presented Kikuyu society as a coherent, self-governing order with its own religion, land system, and law, wrecked by European settlement rather than uplifted by it. Its heart was the claim that land was held communally and stolen by the settlers. Under the anthropology sat a plain political case for Kikuyu land rights and eventual self-rule. culture / economy / politics ●●●

c. 1938 British intelligence watches C.L.R. James 0 cit. The Trinidadian writer and revolutionary C.L.R. James was tracked by British intelligence during his years in London and later expelled from the United States during the McCarthy era. His pan-African and Marxist writings marked him as a subversive in official eyes. The security services filed his contacts and movements across two continents. politics / society ●

c. 1938 A Storyteller and a Showman 0 cit. Contemporaries described Kenyatta as a magnetic, theatrical figure, given to elaborate dress and long, vivid stories about Africa. In his London years he lectured British audiences and the Workers' Educational Association and told African tales that drew crowds, and as president he cultivated a commanding image with his beaded cap, fur cloak, and flywhisk. The persona was a deliberate act of self-fashioning that helped build his mythic authority as Mzee, the grand old man of the nation. politics / society ●●

1938 Kenyatta writes Facing Mount Kenya from the seminar 0 cit. Jomo Kenyatta, later the first leader of independent Kenya, studied social anthropology under Malinowski at the LSE and produced the ethnography Facing Mount Kenya, published in 1938 with an introduction by Malinowski. The book described Kikuyu society from the inside and defended it against colonial contempt. It shows how the School's anthropology could serve an African nationalist cause. politics / science ●●●

1938 Launches the journal International African Opinion 0 cit. The International African Service Bureau launched its journal, International African Opinion, in 1938. It carried anti-colonial argument and news across the diaspora and into the colonies. Padmore's prolific journalism gave the movement a steady public voice. culture / politics / society ●●

c. October 1938 The J stamp for Jewish passports 0 cit. Swiss authorities negotiated an arrangement with Nazi Germany under which the passports of German Jews were marked with a red letter J. The stamp let Swiss border guards identify and turn back Jewish refugees while keeping the frontier open to other Germans. The Swiss request for a way to single out Jewish travellers is documented; historians describe it as an act of state antisemitism in refugee policy. politics / society ●●●

July 1938 The Kamba resist forced destocking 0 cit. In 1938 the colonial government ordered the Kamba to sell off large numbers of cattle, claiming their herds were destroying the land. The Ukamba Members Association, led by Muindi Mbingu, organised protests and a march of around two thousand people who camped in Nairobi to demand a hearing. The campaign forced the government to back down, a rare early victory against colonial rule. economy / politics ●●

July 1938 Muindi Mbingu and the Ukamba destocking protest 6 cit. Samuel Muindi Mbingu led the Ukamba Members Association against a colonial policy that forced Kamba herders to sell off cattle the government judged to be surplus. In July 1938 he led about three thousand livestock owners on a march to Nairobi, where they camped in protest. The government arrested him in October and deported him to Lamu, but the pressure worked and compulsory destocking was dropped by the end of the year. He became a lasting figure of Kamba resistance. economy / politics ●●

23 August 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 0 cit. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact with a secret protocol dividing eastern Europe between them. politics ●●●●

22 May 1939 Pact of Steel 0 cit. Full military and political alliance between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, committing each to join the other's wars. It bound Italy to Germany on the eve of the Second World War. diplomacy / politics / war ●●●

28 September 1939 German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty 0 cit. Treaty dividing conquered Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union after their September invasions, with secret protocols adjusting spheres of influence and pledging suppression of Polish resistance. It supplemented the earlier Nazi-Soviet pact. diplomacy / politics / war ●●

8 September 1939 Creation of the Executive Office of the President 0 cit. Following the Brownlow Committee's warning that the president needs help, Roosevelt's Executive Order 8248 creates the Executive Office of the President and moves the Budget Bureau into it. The modern institutional presidency, with its large White House staff, dates from this reorganization. politics ●●●

1 April 1939 Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War 0 cit. Francisco Franco declares victory over the Spanish Republic after three years of civil war fought with German and Italian support. His authoritarian regime rules Spain until his death in 1975. politics / war ●●●●

17 September 1939 Soviet Invasion of Poland 0 cit. Following the secret protocol, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland weeks after Germany attacked from the west. The Soviets annexed the territory, including western Ukrainian and Belarusian lands. politics / war ●●●

May 1939 The 1939 White Paper 0 cit. Britain's 1939 White Paper sharply limited Jewish immigration and land purchase in Palestine. It angered the Zionist movement, especially as Jews sought refuge from Europe. politics ●●●

1 September 1939 to 1941 Nazi T4 program begins murdering disabled people 1 cit. Under the T4 "euthanasia" program, Nazi doctors murdered more than 70,000 disabled and mentally ill people they judged unworthy of life. The killing methods pioneered here were later used in the death camps. politics / science ●●●

1939 to 1945 Pius XII and the Church during the Second World War 0 cit. Pope Pius XII led the Church through the war and the Holocaust, avoiding open condemnation of Nazi genocide while the Vatican sheltered some refugees. His silence remains one of the most debated questions in modern Church history. politics / religion / war ●●●

21 March 1939 Transfer of Czechoslovak gold through the BIS 1 cit. After Germany occupied Czechoslovakia, the BIS acted on instructions to move gold held for the Czech National Bank into an account controlled by Germany's Reichsbank. The episode became the most documented controversy about the bank's wartime conduct. economy / politics / war ●●●●

20 January 1939 Schacht dismissed from the Reichsbank 0 cit. Hitler dismissed Schacht as Reichsbank President after he and the bank's directors warned that runaway military spending would bring inflation. His removal cleared the last check on financing the coming war. economy / politics ●●●

1939 Sanger launches the Negro Project 0 cit. In 1939 Sanger's organization began the Negro Project to expand birth control access in the segregated South, working with Black ministers and doctors. Her private writings about the effort are frequently quoted in later debates, sometimes accurately and sometimes out of context. politics / society ●●

1939 The Highlands Order in Council Seals the Preserve 0 cit. The Kenya (Highlands) Order in Council, made in 1938 and in force from 1939, at last gave the White Highlands the force of statute. It fixed the boundary of the reserved area and set up a Highlands Board controlling who could hold land there, formally barring Africans and Indians alike. The color bar on the best farmland was now written into imperial law, and it stood until the eve of independence. economy / politics ●●●

c. 1939 Reception and the book's later political life 0 cit. The book sold modestly at first and was read mainly by scholars, but it won respect as serious ethnography. In later years it became a foundational nationalist text, cited as evidence of a dignified African civilisation and of the land the settlers had taken. Its author's name, Jomo Kenyatta, became the name of a nation's leader. culture / politics ●●

c. 1939 Mbiyu Koinange and the independent schools 0 cit. Mbiyu Koinange, a son of Senior Chief Koinange, studied in the United States and Britain and came home to build African-run education outside the mission system. Around 1939 he helped found the Kenya Teachers College at Githunguri, a center of the independent schools movement. During the emergency he worked abroad as a spokesman for the Kenya African Union and the detained leaders. After independence he became a close and powerful figure in Kenyatta's government. He died in 1981. culture / politics ●●

1 March 1940 Franco's Spain represses Freemasonry 0 cit. Franco's regime passed the Law for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism in 1940, making membership a crime. Many Spanish Freemasons were imprisoned, exiled, or executed. politics / religion ●●

16 September 1940 First peacetime draft under the Selective Service Act 0 cit. Congress passed the first peacetime conscription law in US history as war spread in Europe and Asia. It built the mass army the country used in the Second World War. politics / war ●●

2 September 1940 The destroyers-for-bases deal ties Britain to American support 0 cit. The United States gave Britain fifty aging destroyers in exchange for 99-year leases on bases in British Atlantic and Caribbean territories. The deal traded imperial real estate for American aid as Britain stood nearly alone against Germany. politics / war ●

1 January 1940 to 1945 The BIS keeps operating under wartime pressure 1 cit. With American Thomas McKittrick as president, the BIS stayed open throughout World War II while much of its board and business were tied to Axis powers. Critics later charged that it handled looted gold and served German interests, while defenders said it preserved a neutral channel among central banks. economy / politics / war ●●●●

c. 1940 Kwame Nkrumah is initiated into Prince Hall Freemasonry unproven 0 cit. Kwame Nkrumah, later the first president of Ghana, was initiated into Prince Hall Freemasonry while a student in the United States between 1935 and 1945. The precise date is not well pinned down in available sources, so it is marked approximate, but the initiation itself is recorded in histories of Freemasonry in Ghana and Prince Hall Masonic scholarship, distinguishing it from the unverified claims made about other African leaders below. politics / society ●●

1940 Banning of the Kikuyu Central Association 0 cit. In 1940 the colonial government proscribed the Kikuyu Central Association and several allied bodies, arresting leaders and using wartime emergency powers against African political organising. The ban showed how readily the state moved from surveillance to suppression. Driven underground, the grievances the association voiced fed into later, harder resistance. politics ●●

August 1940 Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseille 0 cit. The Emergency Rescue Committee sends journalist Varian Fry to Vichy France, where he helps thousands of artists, writers and intellectuals escape the Nazis, among them Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall and Max Ernst. Fry worked with forged papers and secret mountain routes into Spain. The committee later merged with the International Relief Association. culture / politics / war ●●●

1940 Roosevelt's order builds a classification machine 0 cit. President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8381, the first presidential order to set rules for classifying government information. It gave the marking system a legal footing rooted in the president's own authority rather than an act of Congress. From here the American secrecy regime would grow through a chain of executive orders, each rewriting the last. politics / war ●●

1940 The Kikuyu Central Association Is Banned at the Outbreak of War 3 cit. In 1940, as the Second World War began, the colonial government banned the Kikuyu Central Association along with the Ukamba Members Association and the Taita Hills Association, citing security fears, and detained several of its leaders. With Kenyatta away in Britain and its main African political vehicle outlawed, organized Kikuyu politics was pushed underground for the duration of the war. The ban left the government chiefs and the mission-aligned elite as the recognized African voices, strengthening the loyalist establishment just as grievances over land and labour were sharpening. politics / society / war ●●

1940 The KCA is banned and goes underground 0 cit. The colonial government banned the Kikuyu Central Association in 1940, during the Second World War, treating it as a security risk. Driven underground, the association kept its members bound through secret oaths, which now held a network the state could not see. This underground oathing tradition carried the movement through the 1940s. When mass politics revived after the war, the oath was ready to hand. politics / society ●●

1940 Fabian Imperialism and the Colonial Bureau 0 cit. The Fabians who founded the LSE were, in the early twentieth century, socialist imperialists: their 1900 manifesto Fabianism and the Empire rejected abrupt decolonization in favour of a reformed, efficient empire. In 1940 the Fabian Society set up the Fabian Colonial Bureau, led substantially by Rita Hinden, which strongly shaped the Attlee government's colonial policy and the gradualist, managed path to independence that favoured moderate, constitutional successors over radicals. Historians cite this Fabian tradition of permeation and managed decolonization as a documented mechanism by which the metropole helped shape a compatible post-colonial elite. politics / society ●●

January 1940 Mao Zedong publishes On New Democracy 0 cit. Mao set out a model of revolution led by a communist party but rooted in the peasantry and aimed first at foreign domination and landlordism. His stress on rural guerrilla struggle in a poor, mostly agrarian country spoke to conditions across the colonized world more directly than Soviet industrial doctrine. Historians credit the Maoist model with shaping liberation movements from Asia to Africa. politics / war ●●

14 August 1941 Atlantic Charter 0 cit. Joint declaration by Roosevelt and Churchill setting out principles for the postwar world, including self-determination and freer trade. It became a founding reference for the United Nations. diplomacy / politics / war ●●●

14 August 1941 The Atlantic Charter sets Anglo-American war aims 0 cit. Churchill and Roosevelt met at sea and issued a joint statement of principles for the postwar world, including self-determination and free trade. Its call for self-determination pointed toward the eventual dismantling of empires, including Britain's. politics / war ●●

25 June 1941 Executive Order 8802 bans discrimination in defense industry 0 cit. President Franklin Roosevelt signed an order banning racial discrimination in the defense industry and federal government, issued under pressure from a threatened March on Washington led by labor leader A. Philip Randolph. It created the Fair Employment Practices Committee to enforce the policy. It was the first federal action against employment discrimination since Reconstruction. economy / politics ●●

2 January 1941 XX Committee runs the Double-Cross System 0 cit. MI5 stood up the Twenty (XX) Committee to coordinate the Double-Cross System, under which nearly every German agent sent to Britain was identified, captured, and turned into a double agent feeding false information back to German intelligence. The system fed deception operations through the war, including the D-Day deception plan Fortitude. It is regarded as one of MI5's major wartime successes. politics / war ●●●

14 August 1941 The Atlantic Charter sketches a postwar world 0 cit. Meeting aboard warships off Newfoundland, Roosevelt and Churchill set out shared aims for the world after the war, including the right of peoples to choose their own government. The term United Nations was first used soon after for the wartime alliance against the Axis. The charter's language of self-determination would echo through the decolonization decades, even as its authors still ruled vast empires. diplomacy / politics ●●

1941 to 1945 The Holocaust destroys the Ashkenazi heartland 1 cit. Nazi Germany's murder of six million Jews fell hardest on the Ashkenazi heartland of Eastern Europe. Mobile killing units and death camps in occupied Poland wiped out the great communities of Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus, in some countries killing about nine in ten Jews. This is a shared chapter in the wider story of the Holocaust, but its epicenter was the Yiddish-speaking world. politics / society / war ●●●

c. 1941 Olenguruone and the Spread of the Oath 8 cit. Squatters moved to the crowded Olenguruone settlement from 1941 refused the government's farming rules and bound themselves together with a mass oath of unity, an early form of the Mau Mau oath. Their long resistance ended in eviction and prosecution around 1950, but the practice of oathing whole communities spread from there into central Kenya. Many historians trace the militant, land-centred core of Mau Mau back to the squatters of Olenguruone. politics / society ●●●

c. 1941 The Squatters Resist at Olenguruone 0 cit. From 1941 the government resettled Kikuyu squatters evicted from settler farms at Olenguruone in the Rift Valley, but only as tenants bound to strict destocking and soil conservation rules, not as owners of the land they cleared. The settlers there refused to accept tenant status or the cultivation and stock limits, insisting the land was theirs, and their long standoff with the administration ran through the 1940s. Historians such as Tabitha Kanogo and Frank Furedi treat Olenguruone as the crucible where squatter grievance hardened into open, organized defiance of the colonial state. economy / politics / society ●●●

1941 Britain conquers Italian Somaliland in the war 0 cit. During the East African campaign of the Second World War, British and Commonwealth forces drove the Italians out and took over both Italian Somaliland and the Ogaden under military administration. For a time Britain governed most Somali lands together, and some British officials floated uniting them. Cold War and colonial rivalries killed the idea, and Italy returned to administer the south under a UN trusteeship. politics / war ●

5 May 1941 Liberation and the restoration of Haile Selassie 0 cit. British, Commonwealth, and Ethiopian patriot forces drove the Italians out during the East African campaign of the Second World War. Haile Selassie re-entered Addis Ababa five years to the day after he had fled, restored to his throne. The Italian occupation had lasted only about five years and was never fully secured against the patriot resistance in the countryside. politics / war ●●

1941 Freedom House and the Freedom in the World survey 0 cit. Freedom House, founded in New York in 1941, is a US-based organization that rates political rights and civil liberties worldwide in its annual Freedom in the World report. Most of its budget comes from the US government. Its rankings are widely cited, and its role has drawn the same debate as NED over US-funded advocacy. politics / society ●●

24 February 1942 Voice of America begins broadcasting 0 cit. The Voice of America made its first broadcast in February 1942 to counter Axis propaganda with U.S. news in foreign languages. It became the main external broadcasting arm of the United States. politics / war ●●●

1 June 1942 Skinner v. Oklahoma limits eugenic sterilization 0 cit. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law to sterilize repeat criminals, calling reproduction a basic human right. The ruling began to turn American law against forced sterilization, though it did not overturn Buck v. Bell. politics / science ●●

1942 American Birth Control League renamed Planned Parenthood 0 cit. The organization Sanger founded was renamed the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942, dropping the phrase birth control for a broader family planning identity. It grew into the largest reproductive health provider in the United States. politics / society ●●●

2 August 1942 Sleepy Lagoon Case 0 cit. After a young man named José Díaz was found dead near a reservoir called Sleepy Lagoon outside Los Angeles, police arrested dozens of Mexican American youths and put 17 of them on trial together for murder in a proceeding that denied them individual counsel and allowed prejudicial testimony about their clothing and background. Twelve were convicted in January 1943, feeding press coverage that stereotyped Mexican American youth as criminal 'zoot suiters.' A Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee formed to fight the convictions, and a California appellate court overturned them in October 1944, citing lack of evidence and judicial bias. politics / society ●●

1 June 1942 Skinner v. Oklahoma Limits Sterilization as Punishment 0 cit. The Supreme Court struck down Oklahoma's Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act, ruling that sterilizing repeat criminals while exempting white-collar offenders violated equal protection. The Court called procreation "one of the basic civil rights of man," but the decision was narrow, addressing punitive sterilization of criminals rather than the broader eugenic sterilization of institutionalized and disabled people upheld in Buck v. Bell, which the Court did not revisit. politics / society ●●

8 August 1942 The Quit India Movement 0 cit. Congress launched a mass campaign demanding an immediate end to British rule during the Second World War. The British responded by jailing Gandhi and most Congress leaders and suppressing protests. Though crushed in the short term, it showed British rule could no longer be sustained by consent. politics / society ●●

c. 1942 The International Rescue Committee takes its modern form 0 cit. The International Relief Association and the Emergency Rescue Committee merge into a single organization that becomes the International Rescue Committee. It set out to resettle refugees fleeing fascism, and after the war turned to those fleeing communism. The IRC grew into one of the largest refugee aid agencies in the world. politics / society ●●

16 December 1942 The Auschwitz decree 1 cit. On 16 December 1942 Himmler ordered that Roma from across the German-controlled Reich be deported to Auschwitz. The order set in motion the mass transport of Roma families to the death camp. It is a central document of the Porajmos, the Roma word for the genocide, meaning the devouring. politics / society / war ●●●

March 1942 The Japanese occupation of the Indies legendary 0 cit. Japan overruns the Dutch East Indies in weeks, ending three centuries of Dutch power and interning tens of thousands of Dutch and Eurasian civilians. The occupation is brutal, but it also shatters the myth of European invincibility and lets nationalist leaders build support for independence. politics / war ●●●

c. 1942 The War Strengthens the Chiefs and the Loyalist Administration 6 cit. The wartime state leaned hard on the African population, pressing men into the army and carrier corps, requisitioning cattle and grain, fixing crop prices, and demanding communal labour, and it worked through the government chiefs and headmen to do it. Delivering recruits, taxes, and produce made the chiefs more powerful and more resented, and the war rewarded the cooperative administrative class with authority and patronage. Historians note that this deepening of chiefly power widened the gap between the loyalist establishment and the ordinary people who bore the war's burdens. economy / politics / war ●●

1942 Nkrumah earns master's degrees at the University of Pennsylvania 0 cit. Nkrumah continued his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a master's in education in 1942 and a master's in philosophy the following year. He helped organize African students in the United States and moved in Pan-African and anti-colonial circles. His decade in America deepened his political ideas. politics / society ●

13 August 1942 Switzerland closes its borders to Jewish refugees 0 cit. Swiss authorities ordered the borders shut to civilian refugees, stating that people fleeing on racial grounds alone would not count as political refugees. Federal Councillor Eduard von Steiger defended the policy with the phrase that the lifeboat was full. Later official inquiry found that Switzerland turned away roughly twenty-four thousand refugees, many of whom were sent back toward Nazi-controlled territory and death. politics / society ●●●

23 February 1942 Article VII points against imperial preference 0 cit. The Mutual Aid Agreement setting out the terms of Lend-Lease includes Article VII, a commitment to work toward removing discriminatory trade barriers. American negotiators read this as a move against Britain's system of imperial trade preference, which shielded empire markets from outside competition. The clause makes reducing the closed empire trading bloc part of the price of American aid. diplomacy / economy / politics ●●●

15 May 1943 Dissolution of the Communist International 0 cit. Stalin dissolves the Comintern as a wartime gesture to his Western allies, ending the organization that had directed communist parties worldwide for 24 years. diplomacy / politics ●●●

September 1943 Stalin Restores the Patriarchate 0 cit. During the war Stalin eased persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church and allowed the election of a new patriarch, seeking wartime unity and legitimacy. The church remained closely watched and controlled by the state. politics / religion ●●●

1943 Alfried Krupp gains sole control under the Lex Krupp 0 cit. A special 1943 Nazi decree, the Lex Krupp, let Alfried Krupp take sole ownership of the family firm. It kept the great arms company under a single controlling heir. economy / politics ●●

3 June 1943 Zoot Suit Riots 0 cit. For roughly a week, groups of white US servicemen stationed in Los Angeles attacked Mexican American youths, many wearing zoot suits, stripping and beating them in the streets while local police largely stood by or arrested the victims rather than the attackers. The violence spread to other cities including San Diego and Chicago before military commanders declared Los Angeles off-limits to servicemen. Local press had spent weeks portraying Mexican American youth as violent gang members, coverage historians point to as helping incite the attacks. politics / society / war ●●●

c. 1943 Mass Oathing Begins at Olenguruone 0 cit. To bind their community in resistance, the Olenguruone settlers took a unity oath, and crucially they extended it beyond adult men to women and children, breaking with the traditional Kikuyu practice reserved for elders. This mass oathing, used to enforce solidarity against eviction and government rules, is widely seen by historians as the direct forerunner of the Mau Mau oath that spread a decade later. When the settlers were finally evicted around 1949 and 1950, they carried the oath and its methods back into the crowded reserves. politics / religion / society ●●●

c. 1943 The five-pointed star and the dream of Greater Somalia 0 cit. The idea of uniting all Somali-inhabited lands, British Somaliland, Italian Somaliland, French Djibouti, the Ethiopian Ogaden, and Kenya's Northern Frontier District, grew into the political project known as Greater Somalia. Its symbol became a five-pointed white star, one point for each territory, later placed on the national flag. The dream drove Somali politics for decades and fueled wars with Ethiopia and Kenya. politics / society ●●●

1943 The Somali Youth League and rising nationalism 0 cit. The Somali Youth Club, founded in Mogadishu in 1943 and later renamed the Somali Youth League, became the leading nationalist party pushing for unity and independence. It cut across clan lines in its early rhetoric and campaigned for a single Somali state. The party led the drive toward independence in the 1950s and dominated early politics in the new republic. politics / society ●●

c. 1943 Elijah Masinde and Dini ya Msambwa 0 cit. Elijah Masinde was a Bukusu leader who founded the religious movement Dini ya Msambwa in the early 1940s in western Kenya. The movement mixed worship rooted in Bukusu tradition with open opposition to colonial rule, the kipande pass, and the loss of African land. The British banned it and jailed Masinde repeatedly, deporting him to Lamu in 1948 and once committing him to a mental hospital. After independence he was detained again for years and released in 1978. He died in 1987. politics / religion ●●

c. 1943 Elijah Masinde founds Dini ya Msambwa among the Bukusu 4 cit. Elijah Masinde, a Bukusu former footballer and prophet, founded Dini ya Msambwa, whose name means religion of the ancestors or spirits. The movement rejected Christian missions and British rule and revived traditional Luhya worship. It quickly spread beyond the Bukusu and alarmed the colonial administration. politics / religion ●●

9 October 1944 Percentages agreement 0 cit. Secret understanding between Churchill and Stalin sketching proportional spheres of influence in southeastern Europe, scribbled on a slip of paper. It foreshadowed the Cold War division of the Balkans. diplomacy / politics / war ●●●

July 1944 Bretton Woods Conference 0 cit. Delegates from 44 Allied nations meet in New Hampshire to design the postwar monetary order. The conference pegs currencies to the dollar and creates the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. economy / politics ●●●●

March 1944 Publication of The Road to Serfdom 0 cit. Friedrich Hayek publishes The Road to Serfdom, warning that central planning leads toward tyranny. The book becomes a founding text of the postwar revival of free-market liberalism. economy / politics ●●●

1 July 1944 Bretton Woods Conference sets the postwar monetary order 1 cit. Delegates from forty-four nations agreed to fix exchange rates to the US dollar, which was convertible to gold. The conference also created the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. economy / politics ●●●●●

c. 1944 The US dollar becomes the world's reserve currency 0 cit. Under the Bretton Woods system the dollar became the anchor of global trade and central bank reserves. It kept that role after 1971, giving the United States broad influence over world finance. economy / politics ●●●●

July 1944 The Bretton Woods Agreement 0 cit. Allied nations agreed to a system of fixed exchange rates in which currencies were tied to the US dollar, and the dollar was convertible to gold. The deal also created the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. economy / politics ●●●●●

1 July 1944 to 1944 Bretton Woods makes the dollar the anchor of world finance 0 cit. Delegates from 44 nations created the IMF and the World Bank and pegged currencies to a US dollar convertible to gold, with America holding most of the world's gold reserves. A Bank of England official called it the greatest blow to Britain next to the war. economy / politics ●●●

22 July 1944 Bretton Woods calls for the BIS to be abolished 0 cit. Delegates at the Bretton Woods Conference passed a resolution urging that the BIS be wound up at the earliest possible moment, partly over its wartime record. The recommendation was never carried out and the bank survived. economy / politics ●●●

1944 The GI Bill opens college to millions 0 cit. The 1944 GI Bill paid for veterans to attend college and training after World War II. It fueled a huge expansion of American higher education and the middle class. economy / politics ●●●

1944 to 1946 Founding of the World Bank (IBRD) 0 cit. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development was created at Bretton Woods to rebuild war-torn Europe and later fund development. It made its first loan, to France, in 1947. economy / politics ●●●●●

c. 1944 Weighted voting and the quota system 0 cit. Voting power at both institutions is tied to financial contributions rather than one country one vote, giving the United States an effective veto over major decisions. Supporters call it realistic; critics call it a democratic deficit. economy / politics ●●●●

1944 Britain's 1944 Act creates the 11-plus 0 cit. The Butler Education Act made secondary schooling free and sorted pupils by the 11-plus exam into grammar, technical and secondary modern schools. The tripartite system shaped access for a generation. politics / society ●●●

1944 The US GI Bill expands access to college 0 cit. The GI Bill paid tuition for returning veterans, sending millions to university who could not otherwise afford it. It helped turn US higher education into a mass system. politics / society ●●●