The Correlates of War project estimates this to be the deadliest year in human history in terms of conflict deaths, placing the death toll at 3.49 million. However, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program estimates that the subsequent year, 1942, was the deadliest such year. Death toll estimates for both 1941 and 1942 range from 2.28 to 7.71 million each.[1]
Events
Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.
January 4 – The short subject Elmer's Pet Rabbit is released, marking the second appearance of Bugs Bunny, and also the first to have his name on a title card.
In a BBC radio broadcast from London, Victor de Laveleye asks all Belgians to use the letter "V" as a rallying sign, being the first letter of victoire (victory) in French and of vrijheid (freedom) in Dutch. This is the beginning of the "V campaign" which sees "V" graffities on the walls of Belgium and later all of Europe and introduces the use of the "V sign" for victory and freedom. Winston Churchill adopts the sign soon afterwards, though he sometimes gets it the wrong way around and uses the common insult gesture.[5]
January 27 – WWII: Joseph Grew, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, reports to Washington a rumor overheard at a diplomatic reception, concerning a planned surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
February 9 – Winston Churchill, in a worldwide broadcast, tells the United States to show its support by sending arms to the British: "Give us the tools, and we will finish the job."
Reserve Constable Albert Alexander, a patient at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, England, becomes the first person treated with penicillin intravenously, by Howard Florey's team. He reacts positively, but there is insufficient supply of the drug to reverse his terminal infection. A successful treatment is achieved during May.[8]
February 19–22 – WWII: Three Nights' Blitz over Swansea, South Wales: Over these 3 nights of intensive bombing, which lasts a total of 13 hours and 48 minutes, Swansea's town centre is almost completely obliterated by the 896 high explosive bombs employed by the Luftwaffe; 397 casualties and 230 deaths are reported.
March 5 – Franklin D. Roosevelt, having been President of the United States for 8 years, 1 day, becomes the longest-serving president in American history.
March 11 – WWII: Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, signs the Lend-Lease Act (passed by the Senate on March 8) into law, providing for the U.S. to provide Lend-Lease aid to the Allies.
All German, Italian and Danish ships anchored in United States waters are taken into "protective custody".
A German Lorenz cipher machine operator sends a 4,000-character message twice, allowing British mathematician Bill Tutte to decipher the machine's coding mechanism.[9]
U.S. destroyer USS Niblack, while picking up survivors from a sunken Dutch freighter, drops depth charges on a German U-boat (the first "shot in anger" fired by America against Germany).[10]
April 25 – Franklin D. Roosevelt, at his regular press conference, criticizes Charles Lindbergh by comparing him to the Copperheads of the Civil War period. In response, Lindbergh resigns his commission in the U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve on April 28.
The first Defense Bonds and Defense Savings Stamps go on sale in the United States, to help fund the greatly increased production of military equipment.
Rudolf Hess parachutes into Scotland, claiming to be on a peace mission.
May 11/May 12 – WWII: The Ustaše massacre 260–373 Serb men in a Catholic church in Glina, Croatia, where the men have assembled to be received into the Catholic faith in exchange for their lives.
May 12 – Konrad Zuse presents the Z3, the world's first working programmable, fully automatic computer, in Berlin.
June 1 – WWII: The Battle of Crete ends, as Crete surrenders to invading German forces.
June 4 – Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia are issued by Nazi high-command through OKW. This order (a lesser known precursor to the Commisar Order) explicitly commands that Jews (in addition to Bolshevik partisans and Commisars) be killed. In a sense, this order – in combination with the Commissar Order about to be delivered, and Goring's instruction to Heydrich to look into logistics later in the month, that is mentioned at the beginning of the Wannsee Conference of the following year – inaugurates the European Holocaust of the Jews.
WWII: Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany (with allies) invades the Soviet Union and declares war on it. Winston Churchill promises all possible British assistance to the Soviet Union in a worldwide broadcast: "Any man or state who fights against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state who marches with Hitler is our foe." Italy and Romania declare war on the Soviet Union.
Rapid escalation of the Holocaust in Lithuania: Between now and the end of the year, an estimated 190,000-195,000 out of 210,000 Lithuanian Jews will be massacred, killing an estimated 95% of the nation's Jewish population.
Rapid Vienna beats Schalke 04, in the final of the German Fottballchampionship, after 0:3 with 4:3.
June 29 – WWII: Hitler's second-in-command, ReichsmarshallHermann Göring, is appointed as Hitler's successor in a written decree. The decree will come into effect, should Hitler die in the middle of the war. (The decree becomes void in April 1945, after Göring tries to assume power while Hitler is still alive, leading to Göring's expulsion from the Nazi Party.)
NBC Television begins commercial operation on WNBT, on Channel 1. The world's first legal TV commercial, for Bulova watches, occurs at 2:29 PM over WNBT, before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The 10-second spot displays a picture of a clock superimposed on a map of the United States, accompanied by the voice-over "America runs on Bulova time."[15][16] As a one-off special, the first quiz show called "Uncle Bee" is telecast on WNBT's inaugural broadcast day, followed later the same day by Ralph Edwards hosting the second game show broadcast on U.S. television, Truth or Consequences, as simulcast on radio and TV and sponsored by Ivory Soap. Weekly broadcasts of the show commence in 1956, with Bob Barker.
CBS Television begins commercial operation on New York station WCBW (modern-day WCBS-TV), on Channel 2.
July 3 – WWII: Joseph Stalin, in his first address since the German invasion, calls upon the Soviet people to carry out a "scorched earth" policy of resistance to the bitter end.
WWII: An uprising in Montenegro against the Axis powers starts, the second popular uprising in Europe (the first being the "February strike" of February 25 (above) in the Netherlands).
Clemens August Graf von Galen, Catholic Bishop of Münster in Germany, preaches the first of 3 sermons against Nazi brutality.
WWII: A BBC broadcast by "Colonel Britton" (Douglas Ritchie) calls on the people of occupied Europe to resist the Nazis, under the slogan "V for Victory".
The Tom and Jerry cartoon short The Midnight Snack is released; it is the second appearance for the duo, and the first in which they are officially named.
July 23 – WWII: Italian aircraft damage the British destroyer HMS Fearless which has to be sunk.
In response to the Japanese occupation of French Indochina, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the seizure of all Japanese assets in the United States.
General Douglas MacArthur is named commander of all U.S. forces in the Philippines; the Philippines Army is ordered nationalized by President Roosevelt.
July 29 – The Vichy Regime signs the Protocol Concerning Joint Defense and Joint Military Cooperation with the Empire of Japan, giving the Japanese a total of 8 airfields, allowing them greater troop presence, and the use of the Indochinese financial system, in return for continued French autonomy.
August 21 – In revenge for the execution two days earlier of French Resistance member Samuel Tyszelman, communist activist Pierre Georges (with others) shoots and kills a member of the German military in occupied Paris, initiating a cycle of assassinations and retribution that will claim hundreds of lives.[22]
August 28 – WWII: Soviet evacuation of Tallinn – German troops capture Tallinn, Estonia from the Soviet Union, while attacks on the evacuating Soviet ships leave more than 12,000 dead in one of the bloodiest naval battles of the war. German forces will capture the entire Estonian territory by December 6.
September 14 – The State of Vermont "declares war" on Germany, by defining the United States to be in "armed conflict", in order to extend a wartime bonus to Vermonters in the service.[26]
October 17 – WWII: Destroyer USS Kearny is torpedoed and damaged near Iceland, killing 11 sailors (the first American military casualties of the war, in which the US is at this time neutral).
November 5 – WWII: The United States holds peace talks with Japan.
November 6 – WWII: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin addresses the Soviet Union for only the second time during his three-decade rule (the first time was earlier this year on July 2). He states that 350,000 Soviet troops have been killed in German attacks, but that the Germans have lost 4.5 million soldiers (a gross exaggeration), and that Soviet victory is near.[28][29]
November 7 – WWII: The Soviet hospital ship Armenia is sunk by German aircraft while evacuating refugees, wounded military and the staff of several Crimean hospitals. It is estimated that more than 5,000 die in the sinking.
November 10 – In a speech at the Mansion House, London, Winston Churchill promises "should the United States become involved in war with Japan, the British declaration will follow within the hour".
As the Battle of Moscow begins, temperatures around Moscow drop to −12 °C, and the Soviet Union launches ski troops for the first time, against the freezing German forces near the city.
November 17 – WWII: Joseph Grew, the United States ambassador to Japan, cables to Washington, D.C. a warning, that Japan may strike suddenly and unexpectedly.
November 21 – The live blues radio program King Biscuit Time is broadcast for the first time on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas; it will attain its 17,000th broadcast in 2014 making it the longest-running daily American radio broadcast.
WWII: Germans reach their closest approach to Moscow. They are subsequently frozen by cold weather and stopped by attacks by the Soviets.
A group of young men stop traffic on U.S. Highway 99 south of Yreka, California, handing out fliers proclaiming the establishment of the State of Jefferson.
December 2 – WWII: The code message "Climb Mount Niitaka" is transmitted to the Japanese task force, indicating that negotiations have broken down and that the attack on Pearl Harbor is to be carried out according to plan.
Attack on Pearl Harbor: Aircraft flying from Imperial Japanese Navycarriers launch a surprise attack on the United States fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, thus drawing the United States into World War II. The attack begins at 7:55 a.m. Hawaiian Standard Time, and is announced on radio stations in the U.S. at about 11:26 p.m. PST (19.26 GMT).
WWII: The Battle of Hong Kong begins shortly after 8:00 a.m. (local time), less than 8 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when Japanese forces invade Hong Kong, which is defended by British, Canadian and local troops. The United Kingdom officially declares war on the Empire of Japan.
WWII: The Japanese invade the Shanghai International Settlement, to occupy the British and the American sectors, after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
WWII: The Japanese invasion of the Philippines begins 10 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when Japanese forces invade Luzon and destroy U.S. aircraft on Clark Field.[33]
WWII: The United Kingdom, New Zealand and South Africa declare war on Bulgaria; Hungary declares war on the United States; and Honduras declares war on Germany and Italy.
Twelve days after the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland graduates its "Class of 1942" a semester early, so as to induct the graduating students without delay into the U.S. Navy and/or Marine Corps as officers, for immediate stationing in the war.[35]
December 22 – WWII: The Arcadia Conference opens in Washington, D.C., the first meeting on military strategy between the heads of government of the United Kingdom and the United States, following the latter's entry into the war.
December 23 – WWII: A second Japanese landing attempt on Wake Island is successful, and the American garrison surrenders, after a full night and morning of fighting.
Dutch submarine HNLMS K XVI is the first Allied ship to sink a Japanese warship, sinking the destroyer Sagiri near Sarawak; K XVI is herself torpedoed the following day by Japanese submarine I-66.
December 27 – WWII: British Commandos raid the Norwegian port of Vaagso, causing Hitler to reinforce the garrison and defenses, drawing vital troops away from other areas.
^Playfair, I. S. O.; Flynn, F. C.; Molony, C. J. C.; Toomer, S. E. (2004) [1956]. Butler, J. R. M. (ed.). The Mediterranean and Middle East. History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Military Series. Vol. II: The Germans come to the help of their Ally (1941). Naval & Military Press. pp. 182–183. ISBN1-84574-066-1.
^Evans, A. A.; Gibbons, David (2012). The Illustrated Timeline of World War II. Rosen Publishing. p. 69. ISBN978-1-4488-4795-2.
^"The Jedwabne Tragedy". Polish Academic Information Center, University at Buffalo. 2000. Archived from the original on July 16, 2012. Retrieved July 10, 2012.
^Zhang Jingshu (张静姝) (May 24, 2019). 宋绮云、徐林侠：革命伴侣共谱赞歌 [The Short but Brilliant Eight-Year Life of "Little Radish Head" Song Zhenzhong]. Beijing News (in Chinese). China News Service. Archived from the original on October 15, 2024. Retrieved October 15, 2024.
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