Return to home1943 Jan 2,
The Allies captured Buna in New Guinea.
1943 Jan 3, A US B-17 bomber
was downed over France following a bombing run over a German
submarine base in southern France. John Roten, navigator, was the
only survivor. Roten spent 28 months as a POW.
(SFC, 9/10/01, p.A11)
1943 Jan 5, George Washington
Carver, Educator and scientist, died at age 81 at Tuskegee, Alabama.
Carver was born the son of a slave woman in the early 1860s, went to
college in Iowa and then headed to Alabama in 1896. There, at the
Tuskegee Institute, Carver served as an agricultural chemist,
experimenter, teacher and administrator, working to improve life for
African Americans in the rural South by teaching them better
agricultural skills. One of the farming methods Carver devised,
using peanut and soybean crops to enrich soil depleted by cotton
crops, revolutionized Southern farming. Carver became somewhat of a
benevolent example of the potential of black intellectuals. He was
well-respected by people such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Mahatma Gandhi, Josef Stalin and Thomas Edison, whose offer of a job
for more than $100 a year Carver refused. Carver worked at Tuskegee
until his death.
(AP, 1/5/98)(HNPD, 1/5/99)
1943 Jan 5, The Japanese began
a planned withdrawal from Guadalcanal.
1943 Jan 7, Nicola Tesla
(b.1856), Croatian born inventor and physicist, died In NYC. In 1996
Marc Seifer authored “Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla:
Biography of a Genius."
(SFC, 12/29/96, Z1
p.2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla)(WSJ, 3/7/09, p.W8)
1943 Jan 8, The British handed
Madagascar over to the Free French.
1943 Jan 9, Soviet planes
dropped leaflets on the surrounded Germans in Stalingrad requesting
their surrender with humane terms. The Germans refused.
1943 Jan 10, The submarine USS
Argonaut was lost southeast of New Britain in the Bismarck
Archipelago of Papua New Guinea. One hundred and two officers and
men went down with her, the worst loss of life for an American
submarine in wartime.
1943 Jan 10, Russian offensive
began against German 6th and 4th Armies near Stalingrad.
1943 Jan 11, President Franklin
D. Roosevelt flew to Morocco for a top-secret meeting with British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He had not flown since 1932, when
he traveled from Albany, New York, to Chicago to accept his
nomination at the Democratic national convention. No U.S. president
had previously flown while in office because the Secret Service
regarded flying as a dangerous mode of transport. Air travel was the
only realistic option for the trip to Casablanca because German
submarines lurking in the Atlantic made a surface crossing too
1943 Jan 11, The United States
and Britain signed treaties relinquishing extraterritorial rights in
1943 Jan 11, The Soviet Red
Army encircled Stalingrad.
1943 Jan 12, Frankfurters were
replaced by Victory Sausages, a mix of meat & soy meal.
1943 Jan 12, San Francisco’s
Golden Gate Park Superintendent John McLaren died at age 96. He had
ruled the park for over 5 decades. The 318-acre park between the
Excelsior and Visitacion Valley was later named in his honor.
(SFC, 7/28/97, p.A8)(SFC, 2/7/98, p.A15)(SSFC,
1/7/18, DB p.53)
1943 Jan 12, Soviet forces
raised the siege of Leningrad.
1943 Jan 13, General Leclerc's
Free French forces merged with the British under Montgomery in
1943 Jan 13, The Canadian
corvette Ville de Quebec rammed the German U-224 submarine, which
sank in the Mediterranean Sea with 57 of its crew. German Lt. Wolf
Danckworth was the only survivor. Years later Danckworth established
contact with Canadian sailor Frank Arsenault, who was on the Ville
de Quebec when it rammed the sub, and the two became good friends.
(SFC, 12/25/10, p.C1)
1943 Jan 14, Roosevelt,
Churchill, and de Gaulle met at Casablanca, Morocco, to discuss the
direction of the war. The Casablanca Conference, a pivotal 10-day
meeting during WWII between U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, determined unconditional
surrender would be the only basis of negotiations with the Axis.
Roosevelt and Churchill also pledged maximum aid to the Soviet Union
and China in the war.
(AP, 1/14/98)(HN, 1/14/99)(HNQ, 1/7/00)
1943 Jan 14, Italian occupation
authorities refused to deport any Jews living on their territories
1943 Jan 15, Work was completed
on the Pentagon, headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense in
Arlington, Va. In 2007 Steve Vogel authored “The Pentagon: A
(AP, 1/15/98)(Econ, 6/30/07, p.93)
1943 Jan 16, A state record of
-60F (-51C) was recorded in Island Park Dam, Idaho.
1943 Jan 17, US Tin Can Drive
1943 Jan 18, A wartime ban on
the sale of pre-sliced bread in the United States—aimed at reducing
bakeries’ demand for metal replacement parts—went into effect.
1943 Jan 18, Jews in Warsaw
Ghetto began an uprising against the Nazis.
1943 Jan 18, The Soviets
announced they'd broken the long Nazi siege of Leningrad. It was
another year before the siege was fully lifted.
1943 Jan 19, Janice Joplin
(d.1970), rock singer, was born.
1943 Jan 20, Giacomo Benvenuti
(57), composer, died.
1943 Jan 21, A Nazi daylight
air raid killed 34 in a London school.
1943 Jan 22, Battle of Anzio:
1943 Jan 22, Axis forces pulled
out of Tripoli for Tunisia, and destroyed bases as they left.
1943 Jan 23, Critic Alexander
Woollcott suffered a fatal heart attack during a live broadcast of
the CBS radio program "People’s Platform."
1943 Jan 24, President
Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill concluded a wartime
conference in Casablanca, Morocco.
1943 Jan 24, Hitler ordered
Nazi troops at Stalingrad to fight to death.
1943 Jan 25, The last German
airfield in Stalingrad was captured by the Red Army.
1943 Jan 26, A US War
Department Disposition Form was issued with “Subject: establishment
of a War Department Fixed Radio Station in Africa." It detailed
operational objectives for what was to become the 4th Detachment of
the Second Signal Service Battalion, Asmara, Eritrea. Over time the
US paid Ethiopia more than $360m in military aid as rent for the
eavesdropping installation at Kagnew.
1943 Jan 26, The first OSS
(Office of Strategic Services) agent parachuted behind Japanese
lines in Burma.
1943 Jan 26, Nikolai Vavilov
(b.1887), Soviet botanist, died in prison. In 1929 he had traced the
genealogy of the apple to Kazakhstan.
(SSFC, 5/25/08, Books
1943 Jan 27, Some 50 bombers
struck Wilhelmshaven and Emden in the first all-American air raid
against Germany during World War II.
(AP, 1/27/98)(HN, 1/27/99)
1943 Jan 28, In San Francisco
the price of coffee jumped from five cents to a dime in one chain of
(SSFC, 1/28/18, DB p.50)
1943 Jan 30, Field marshal
Friedrich von Paulus surrendered himself and his staff to Red Army
troops in Stalingrad.
1943 Jan 31, Chile broke
contact with Germany and Japan.
1943 Jan 31, The Battle
of Stalingrad ended as small groups of German soldiers of the Sixth
Army under Gen Friedrich von Paulus surrendered to the victorious
Red Army forces.
(HN, 1/31/99)(MC, 1/31/02)
1943 Jan, Duke Ellington led
the debut of "Black, Brown and Beige," his 44-minute piece for jazz
orchestra at Carnegie Hall in a Russian War Relief effort headed by
Harriet Moore, a communist sympathizer. One vocal piece called "The
Blues" was featured. It was conceived as an opera and the music was
based on a narrative poem he had written about a mythical African
(SFC, 6/25/97, p.E1)(SFC, 7/8/97, p.B3)
1943 Jan, Construction began at
Los Alamos, New Mexico, on a research facility for the Manhattan
Project, the US atomic bomb program.
(ON, 8/09, p.8)
1943 Jan, Rutka Laskier (14)
began a diary in Bedzin, Poland, shortly before she was deported to
Auschwitz. The 60-page memoir ended in April and within a few months
Rutka was dead. Her diary was made public in 2007.
1943 Feb 1, One of America’s
most decorated military units of World War II, the 442d Regimental
Combat Team, made up almost entirely of Japanese-Americans, was
1943 Feb 1, American tanks and
infantry were battered at German positions at Fais pass in North
1943 Feb 2, The remainder of
Nazi forces from the Battle of Stalingrad surrendered in a major
World War II victory for the Soviets. 23 generals, 2,000 officers,
and at least 130,000 German troops surrendered. This was later
considered as the turning point of WW II.
(AP, 2/2/97)(HN, 2/2/99)(WSJ, 3/28/03, p.A1)
1943 Feb 3, The US transport
ship "Dorchester," which was carrying troops to Greenland, sank
after being hit by a torpedo. Four Army chaplains (Rev. Lt. George
L. Fox, a Methodist minister; Rabbi Lt. Alexander D. Goode; Father
Lt. John P. Washington, a Roman Catholic priest; and Rev. Lt. Clark
V. Poling, a Protestant minister from the Dutch Reformed Church)
gave their life jackets to four other men, and went down with the
1943 Feb 3, Finland began talks
with the Soviet Union.
1943 Feb 6, Crooner Frank
Sinatra debuted on radio's "Your Hit Parade."
1943 Feb 6, A Los Angeles jury
acquitted actor Errol Flynn of three counts of statutory rape.
1943 Feb 7, The government
announced that shoe rationing would go into effect in two days,
limiting each purchaser to three pairs for the remainder of the
1943 Feb 8, British General
Wingate led a guerrilla force of "Chindits" behind the Japanese
lines in Burma. Detachment 101’s support of Maj. Gen. Orde Wingate’s
Chindits and Maj. Gen. Frank Merrill’s Marauders was crucial to the
Allied success in Burma and to the eventual victory in Southeast
1943 Feb 8, Red Army recaptured
1943 Feb 9, FDR ordered a
minimal 48 hour work week in war industry.
1943 Feb 9, The World War II
battle of Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific ended with an Allied
victory over Japanese forces.
1943 Feb 9, The Russians took
back Kursk 15 months after it fell to the Nazis.
1943 Feb 11, General Eisenhower
was selected to command the allied armies in Europe.
1943 Feb 11, Transport # 47
departed with French Jews to Nazi Germany.
1943 Feb 13, There was a German
assault on Sidi Bou Zid, Tunisia, as Gen. Eisenhower visited the
1943 Feb 14, A German offensive
was made through the de Faid pass in Tunisia.
1943 Feb 14, Soviets recaptured
1943 Feb 14, David Hilbert
(b.1862), German mathematician, died. He is considered the father of
1943 Feb 15, Women's camp
Tamtui on Ambon (Moluccas) was hit by allied air raid.
1943 Feb 15, The Germans broke
the U.S. lines at the Fanid-Sened Sector in Tunisia.
1943 Feb 16, Withdrawing Africa
Corps reached the Mareth-line in North Africa.
1943 Feb 16, Sign on Munich
facade: "Out with Hitler! Long live freedom!" was posted by the
"White Rose" student group. They were caught on 2/18 and beheaded on
1943 Feb 16, The Red army
1943 Feb 17, Dutch churches
protested to Artur Seyss-Inquart against persecution of Jews.
1943 Feb 18, Augusto Pinochet
Ugarte (Chilean gen., dictator) married Lucia Hiriart.
1943 Feb 18, Munich resistance
group "White Rose" was captured by Nazis.
1943 Feb 18, Rommel took three
towns in Tunisia, North Africa. The intercepted communications of an
American in Cairo provided a secret ear for the Desert Fox.
1943 Feb 19, German tanks under
brig. general Buelowius attacked Kasserine Pass, Tunisia.
1943 Feb 20, German troops of
the Afrika Korps broke through the Kasserine Pass, defeating U.S.
1943 Feb 21, German tanks and
two infantry battalions broke the Allied line and took Kasserine
Pass in North Africa.
1943 Feb 22, The battleship USS
Iowa, the first in the Navy’s 45,000 ton class, was commissioned.
The ship carried Pres. Roosevelt to Tehran in Nov. and was
decommissioned in 1990. Also noted as 1st in the 48,000 ton class.
(SFC, 1/27/98, p.A14)(SFC, 10/13/99, p.A6)
1943 Feb 22, Sophie Scholl
(b.1921), Hans Scholl (24) and Christoph Probst (22), student
members of the Die Weisse Rose (White Rose) resistance, were all
beheaded by a guillotine by executioner Johann Reichhart in Munich's
Stadelheim Prison. Scholl was convicted of high treason after having
been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of
Munich (LMU) with her brother, Hans. As a result, she was executed
by guillotine. Since the 1970s, Scholl has been extensively
commemorated for her anti-Nazi resistance work.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1943 Feb 23, German troops
pulled back through the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia.
1943 Feb 25, George Harrison
(d. Nov 29, 2001) of the Beatles was born.
(SFC, 11/30/01, p.A1)(SFC, 12/4/01, p.A2)
1943 Feb 25, U.S. troops retook
the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia, where they had been defeated five
1943 Feb 26, U.S. Flying
Fortresses and Liberators pounded the Reich docks and U-boat lairs
1943 Feb 26, The German assault
moved to Beja, North Tunisia.
1943 Feb 28, "Porgy & Bess"
opened on Broadway with Anne Brown & Todd Duncan.
1943 Feb 28, In Operation
Gunnerside Norwegian commandos flown in from Britain bombed the Nazi
heavy water plant near Rjukan. The raid was later depicted in the
1965 film "The Heroes of Telemark." The 9 commandos included Claus
Helberg (d.2003), Knut Haukelid (d.1994) and Joachim Ronneberg
(1919-2018). In 2016 Neil Bascomb authored "The Winter Fortress: The
Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb."
(SFC, 3/14/03, p.A27)(ON, 4/07, p.4)(SFC,
1943 Feb 13, The US Marine
Corps began allowing women to enlist as reserves.
1943 Feb, The 442nd Regimental
Combat Team, a Japanese-American fighting unit, was organized at
Fort Shelby, Miss. Tooru Joe Kanazawa (d.2002) later authored "Close
Support, A History of the Cannon Company of the 442nd Regimental
(SFC, 10/22/02, p.A16)
1943 Feb, German women
demonstrated outside a Berlin community center where their Jewish
husbands and children had been rounded up for deportation to
Auschwitz. 1,200 men and children were released a week later and
survived the war. It was the only public protest by Germans against
Nazi persecution of the Jews.
(SFC, 9/10/98, p.C2)
1943 Feb-Nov ‘44, Sweden
received about 12.8 tons of gold from Germany.
(SFC, 1/22/97, p.A9)
1943 Mar 1, The British RAF
conducted strategic bombing raids on all European railway lines.
From 1939 to 1945, R.A.F. pilots and air crews waged war on Germany
from inside Hitler's Reich.
1943 Mar 1, In Amsterdam a
Jewish old age home for disabled was raided.
1943 Mar 2, George Benson,
jazz, blues guitarist (Breezin', This Masquerade), was born.
1943 Mar 2, The battle of the
Bismarck Sea began. US and Australian warplanes were able to inflict
heavy damage on a Japanese convoy.
1943 Mar 2, The center of
Berlin was bombed by the RAF. Some 900 tons of bombs were dropped in
a half hour.
1943 Mar 2, 1st transport of
Jews from Westerbork, Netherlands, to Sobibor concentration camp.
1943 Mar 3, F. Ryerson and Cohn
Claues' "Harriet" premiered in New York NY.
1943 Mar 3, US defeated Japan
in the Battle of Bismarck Sea.
1943 Mar 3, A bomb fleeing
crowd fell into London shelter and 173 died.
1943 Mar 4, Transport Number 50
departed with French Jews to Majdanek and Sobibor.
1943 Mar 5, RAF bombed Essen,
Germany. [see Mar 6]
1943 Mar 5, In desperation due
to war losses, fifteen and sixteen year olds are called up for
military service in the German army.
1943 Mar 5, The Gloster Meteor
first flew. Great Britain emerged from World War II with a decided
head start in jet technology, the only Allied power to have had a
jet fighter operational in squadron strength before the German
surrender on May 8, 1945. On July 21, 1944, the first two production
Meteors arrived at Culmhead and formed the nucleus of No. 616
Squadron, Royal Air Force (RAF). Appropriately, the Meteor’s first
duty was to defend Britain from attacks by German V-1 pulse
jet-powered guided bombs, of which they destroyed 13 by the end of
the war. Meteor IIIs of No. 616 Squadron were committed to
Continental Europe in the last months of the conflict, but they
never got the opportunity to meet the German Me-262A in battle.
1943 Mar 6, British RAF fliers
bombed Essen and the Krupp arms works in the Ruhr, Germany.
1943 Mar 6, Battle at Medenine,
North-Africa: Rommel's assault attack.
1943 Mar 8, Japanese forces
attacked American troops on Hill 700 in Bougainville. The battle
lasted five days.
1943 Mar 8, 335 allied bombers
1943 Mar 9, Bobby Fischer
(d.2008), first American world chess champion (1972-1975), was born.
He later authored “Bobby Fischer’s Games of Chess."
(HN, 3/9/99)(SFC, 9/7/01, p.D5)(SFC, 1/19/08,
1943 Mar 10, Hitler called
Rommel back from Tunisia in North Africa. The intercepted
communications of an American in Cairo provided a secret ear for the
1943 Mar 11, The musical film
“Hello, Frisco, Hello" was released. It starred Alice Faye, John
Payne, Lynn Bari, and Jack Oakie and was directed by H. Bruce
Humberstone. The film tells the story of vaudeville performers in
San Francisco, during the period of the 1915 Panama Pacific
Exposition when Alexander Graham Bell made the first
transcontinental phone call from New York City to San Francisco.
1943 Mar 13, There was a failed
assassination attempt on Hitler during the Smolensk-Rastenburg
1943 Mar 13, Germans closed the
Krakow ghetto in Poland.
1943 Mar 13, Japanese forces
ended their attack on the American troops on Hill 700 in
1943 Mar 14, Aaron Copland’s
"Fanfare for the Common Man" premiered in New York, with George
1943 Mar 14, The Germans
reoccupied Kharkov in the Soviet Union.
1943 Mar 15, In Thessaloniki,
Greece, occupying German forces began founding up the first batch of
Jews in Eleftherias (Freedom) Square. By August 1943, 46,091 Jews
had been deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Of those, 1,950 survived.
1943 Mar 17, The German occupation
authority closed Lithuanian schools of higher education and the
Academy of Education.
1943 Mar 18, American forces
took Gafsa in Tunisia. In the crucible of Operation Torch, the men
of Sub-Task Force Goalpost received their baptism of fire capturing
the Moroccan town of Port Lyautey.
1943 Mar 18, The ships James
Oglethorpe (US) and Terkolei (Neth.), were torpedoed and sank.
1943 Mar 18, The Reich called
off its offensive in Caucasus.
1943 Mar 18, Red Army evacuated
1943 Mar 19, Airship Canadian
Star was torpedoed and sank.
1943 Mar 20, The Allies
attacked Rommel’s forces on the Mareth Line in North Africa.
1943 Mar 20, German U-384 was
bombed and sank.
1943 Mar 21, British 8th army
opened an assault on Mareth line, Tunisia.
1943 Mar 21, An assassination
attempt on Hitler failed.
1943 Mar 22, SS police chief
Rauter threatened to kill half Jewish children.
1943 Mar 23, Germans counter
attacked US lines in Tunisia.
1943 Mar 25, Jimmy Durante and
Garry Moore premiered on radio.
1943 Mar 26, Elsie S. Ott, US
army nurse, became the 1st woman to receive air medal.
1943 Mar 26, Battle of
Komandorski Islands, Pacific Ocean.
1943 Mar 27, US began an
assault on Fondouk-pass, Tunisia.
1943 Mar 28, Sergei
Vasilievitch Rachmaninoff (70), Russian-born composer, died in
Beverly Hills, Calif.
1943 Mar 29, Eric Idle,
comedian, actor (Monty Python), was born in England.
1943 Mar 29, John Major,
British PM (1990-97), was born.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A20)(MC, 3/29/02)
1943 Mar 29, Vangelis,
[Papathanasiou], composer, keyboardist (Chariots of Fire), was born.
1943 Mar 29, World War II meat,
butter and cheese rationing began.
1943 Mar 31, The Rodgers and
Hammerstein musical "Oklahoma!" opened at the St. James Theatre on
Broadway. Celeste Holm sang the show-stopping number “I Cain’t Say
No." Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein hired Agnes de Mille for
the choreography. The original is only on documentary videotape and
the 1954 film was a "bloated mess."
(TMC, 1994, p.1943)(WSJ, 2/5/96, p.A-16)(AP,
3/30/97)(SFC, 7/16/12, p.C4)
1943 Mar 31, US Army Air Force
bombers attacked harbor facilities in the west of Rotterdam. A
combination of strong wind and overcast conditions also caused great
damage to the nearby residential areas, especially in the
Bospolder-Tussendijken District. The death toll rose to 401
casualties and around 16,500 people lost their homes.
1943 Mar, Britain hatched the
Doctor Project, a secret plan to assassinate German Field Marshall
Rommel. It was never executed.
(SFC, 10/27/99, p.C2)
1943 Mar, Bulgarians occupying
Macedonia rounded up and deported 7,148 (7,144) Macedonian Jews from
Skopje, and cities of Bitola and Stip to the Treblinka death
camp in German-occupied Poland. Of a pre-war population of
some 8,000 Jews, only 350 remained after the war.
(Econ, 7/16/11, p.88)(AP, 3/12/18)
1943 Mar-1943 May, Gen'l.
Patton moved his troops across North Africa. North Africa was
secured by the Allies.
(WSJ, 12/8/95, p.A-14)(TMC, 1994, p.1943)
1943 Spring, The 418th Army Air
Forces Band under Glenn Miller began in Durfee Hall at Yale Univ. It
later became known as the Band of the Training Command through a
weekly Army radio series called "I Sustain the Wings."
(WSJ, 10/24/96, p.A16)
1943 Apr 3, In the SF Bay Area
4 men attempted to escape the federal prison on Alcatraz Island.
Harold Brest and Fred Hunter were recaptured. James Boardman and
Floyd Hamilton drowned after being wounded by rifle fire from gun
(SSFC, 4/8/18, DB p.54)
1943 Apr 5, The British 8th
Army attacked the next blocking position of the retreating Axis
forces at Wadi Akarit.
1943 Apr 6, British and
American armies linked up in Africa.
1943 Apr 7, The NFL adopted its
free substitution rule.
1943 Apr 7, US Marine Lt. James
Swett (1920-2009), division leader of Squadron 221, shot down 7
Japanese bombers over the Solomon Islands. He was later awarded the
Medal of Honor for his actions on this day.
(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.B3)
1943 Apr 7, British and
American armies link up between Wadi Akarit and El Guettar in North
Africa, forming a solid line against the German army.
1943 Apr 7, Adolf Hitler and
Benito Mussolini met for an Axis conference in Salzburg.
1943 Apr 7, Lt. Colonel Claus
von Stauffenberg was seriously wounded during allied air raid.
1943 Apr 8, Michael Bennett,
AIDS victim, choreographer (Chorus Line) and theater director, was
born as Michael Bennett DiFiglia.
(NYT, 7/3/87, P.A1)
1943 Apr 8, J.P. Kavanaugh,
racehorse trainer, was born.
1943 Apr 11, Frank Piasecki,
Vertol founder, flew his 1st (single-rotor) craft.
1943 Apr 13, President
Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial. It was designed by John
(AP, 4/13/97)(HN, 4/13/98)(WSJ, 9/21/00, p.A26)
1943 Apr 13, Nazi's discovered
a mass grave of Polish officers near Katyn.
1943 Apr 16, Swiss chemist
Albert Hoffman (1906-2008) felt the first rush of LSD when a tiny
amount of the substance seeped onto his finger during a laboratory
1943 Apr 17, SS lt. General
Jurgen Stoop arrived in Warsaw.
1943 Apr 18, Traveling in a
bomber, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (b.1884), the mastermind
of the attack on Pearl Harbor, was shot down by American P-38
1943 Apr 19, Willy Graf, Kurt
Huber and Alexander Schmorell, German resistance fighters, were
1943 Apr 19, Nazis entered the
Warsaw ghetto, the eve of the Passover holiday. Three days later
they set the ghetto ablaze, turning it into a fiery death trap.
Jewish fighters kept up their struggle for nearly a month before
they were brutally vanquished. Teenager Simcha Rotem (d.2018), aka
Kazik, served as a liaison between the bunkers and took part in the
1943 Apr 19, In Warsaw, Poland,
some 750 young Jews under Mordechai Anielewicz began their 1st urban
uprising against the Nazis. During World War II, tens of thousands
of Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but futile
battle against Nazi forces. SS-Gen Jurgen Stroop led the destruction
of the ghetto of Warsaw: "The Warsaw Ghetto is no more!" he wrote
proudly to Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler. Stroop was hanged on
the site of the Warsaw ghetto after the war. Jacek Zlatka (Jack
Eisner, 1925-2003) smuggled arms for the revolt. Eisner made a
fortune in the import-export business after the war and in 1980
authored the autobiography "The Survivor."
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.T11)(AP, 4/19/97)(HN,
4/19/97)(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.A29)
1943 Apr 19, Swiss chemist
Albert Hoffman, following up on an experiment on April 16,
deliberately ingested .25 milligrams of LSD and soon began to feel
its effects. Hallucinations continued on his bicycle ride home and
lasted for some 6 hours.
(SFC, 5/9/96, p.A-1)(Econ, 5/10/08, p.98)
1943 Apr 19-1943 Apr 20, Lance
Sgt. Haane Manahi (d.1987) of New Zealand performed gallant actions
against overwhelming odds in the bloody battle for Takrouna, a
fortified citadel in Tunisia, North Africa. In 2007 the Maori
trooper was posthumously honored he 64 years after he was denied a
top gallantry award despite a commendation signed by four commanding
1943 Apr 21, President
Roosevelt announced that several Doolittle pilots were executed by
1943 Apr 22, Louise Gluck,
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, was born.
1943 Apr 22, There was German
counter attack in North Tunisia.
1943 Apr 22, RAF shot down 14
German transport planes over Mediterranean Sea.
1943 Apr 23, Herve Villechaize,
actor, (Fantasy Island), was born in France.
1943 Apr 28, German-Italian
forces launched a counter offensive in North-Africa.
1943 Apr 29, Noel Coward's
"Present Laughter," premiered in London.
1943 Apr 29, Internationally
prominent theologian Dietrich Bonhoffer was arrested by Nazis.
1943 Apr 29, Karl Adrian
Wohlfart (68), composer, died.
1943 Apr 30, Pius XII wrote a
letter to Bishop von Preysing of Berlin and referred to the
extermination of the Jews. His concluding thoughts stated:
"Unhappily in the present state of affairs, we can bring no help
other than our prayers."
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.A23)
1943 Apr 30, The British
submarine HMS Seraph dropped ‘the man who never was," a dead man the
British planted with false invasion plans, into the Mediterranean
off the coast of Spain.
1943 Apr 30, Bergen-Belsen,
located near Hanover, formed as a POW camp.
(HNQ, 4/13/00)(MC, 4/30/02)
1943 Apr 30, Dutch struck
against forced labor in Nazi Germany's war industry.
1943 Apr 30, Rene Blum
(b.1878), art critic and impresario, died in Auschwitz. Blum became
director of plays and operettas at Monte Carlo in 1924. In 1931 he
was hired to form the Ballet of the Opera of Monte-Carlo by Prince
Louis II of Monaco. His brother was Leon Blum, the first Jewish
prime minister of France. In 2011 Judith Chazin-Bennahum authored
“Rene Blum and the Ballet Russes: In Search of a Lost Life."
(SSFC, 8/28/11, p.F4)
1943 Apr 30, Etty Hillesum,
Dutch diarist, died in Auschwitz.
1943 Apr 30, Beatrice Potter
Webb (b.1858), British socialist, reformer and writer, died. Her
books included “My Apprenticeship" (1943).
1943 Apr, Magdaleno Sanchez
Duenas, Philippine guerrilla fighter, (1914-2005) assisted in the
escape of 10 US servicemen from the Davao Penal Colony.
(SSFC, 3/6/05, p.A21)
1943 Apr, Irena Sendler
(1910-2008), Polish social worker, and her team of some 20 people
saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October
1940 and April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the
residents or sending them to death camps.
1943 May 1, Food rationing
began in US. [see Mar 29]
1943 May 1, British India SN
Company troop transport in convoy with 23 merchantmen and escorted
by eleven destroyers, was bound for Malta. When some 30 miles north
of Benghazi, the convoy was attacked by German bombers and torpedo
carrying aircraft. On board the Erinpura (Capt. P.V. Cotter) were
1,025 troops. One large bomb exploded in the hold sinking the ship
in a matter of minutes. Forty four crewmembers, three gunners and an
unspecified number of troops were lost. On the same day, near the
Tunisian coast, another troopship (name unknown) was torpedoed and
sank. On board were a number of troops from Basutoland (later
Lesotho) who were serving with the British Eighth Army. In this
tragic sinking, 618 Basutos lost their lives.
1943 May 1, A German plane sank
a boat loaded with Palestinian Jews bound for Malta.
1943 May 1, German forces were
deployed in the following places: Norway (200,000), France
(900,000), Africa (150,000), Balkans (80,000), Finland (180,000),
Eastern Europe (210,000), Caucasus (260,000), Russia (1,900,000).
(WSJ, 5/12/99, p.A23)
1943 May 5, Michael Palin,
actor and screenwriter (Monty Python's Flying Circus), was born.
1943 May 5, Postmaster General
Frank C. Walker invented the Postal Zone System.
1943 May 6, British 1st army
opened an assault on Tunis.
1943 May 7, Peter Carey,
Australian writer (Illywhacker, Oscar and Lucinda), was born.
1943 May 7, The last major
German strongholds in North Africa, Tunis and Bizerte, fell to
1943 May 9, The 5th German
Panzer army surrendered in Tunisia.
1943 May 10, Donovan Leitch,
guitarist, folk singer (Mellow Yellow), was born in Scotland.
1943 May 10, U.S. troops
invaded Attu in the Aleutian Islands to expel the Japanese.
1943 May 10, Andre Bertulot,
Arnaud/Armand Fraiteur and Maurice-Albert Raskin, Belgian resistance
fighters, were hanged.
1943 May 11, During World War
II, American forces landed on Japanese-held Attu island in the
Aleutians; the Americans took the island 19 days later.
1943 May 11, Hermann Goering
division in Tunisia surrendered.
1943 May 12, Axis forces in
Tunisia and all of North Africa surrendered.
(AP, 5/12/97)(HN, 5/12/98)
1943 May 14, Elizabeth Ray,
congressman Wilbur Mills' lover, was born in Marshall, NC.
1943 May 14, Australia’s AHS
Centaur was sunk without warning after it was torpedoed by a
Japanese submarine. Of the 332 people on board, only 64 survived. In
2009 deep-sea searchers found the wreck of the hospital ship off the
city of Brisbane.
1943 May 15, Halifax bombers
1943 May 15, Warsaw ghetto
uprising ended in it's destruction by Nazi-SS troops.
1943 May 16, "Skipping bombs"
were used for the first and only time to breach three massive Ruhr
Valley dams--the Eder, the Mohne and the Sorpe--that supplied water
and hydroelectric power to Germany's vital armament factories. The
bombs were designed to bounce over anti-torpedo nets and explode at
the base of the dams. Despite only two months of training, Royal Air
Force Wing Commander Guy Gibson and his "Dambusters" breached the
Eder and the Mohne dams and damaged the Sorpe. While subsequent
flooding in the Ruhr Valley claimed 1,294 lives, German industrial
production was affected only briefly while the dams were repaired.
1943 May 16, German troops
destroyed the synagogue of Warsaw. Jewish resistance in the Warsaw
ghetto ended after 30 days of fighting.
1943 May 17, The Memphis Belle
took off from England with a wave of 159 B-17s to drop bombs on the
concrete Nazi submarine shelters at Lorient, France. When it landed
unscathed that afternoon, the 10 men aboard had just become one of
the first bomber crews of the war to survive 25 missions at a time
when most weren't making a dozen. In 2018 the restored Memphis Belle
was unveiled at the National Museum of the US Air Force near Dayton,
1943 May 18, In Croatia
Archbishop Stepinac urged Pius XII to take a firm position to hold
on "to its 240,000 converts." Eastern Orthodox practitioners had
converted to Catholicism to escape death camps.
(WSJ, 5/20/99, p.A21)
1943 May 18, Allied bombers
attacked Pantelleria in the Mediterranean Sea.
1943 May 19, In an address to
the U.S. Congress, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill pledged
his country's full support in the war against Japan.
1943 May 19, Billy Sing
(b.1886), credited with being the most successful and feared sniper
in the Gallipoli campaign, died in Australia. The Australian-Chinese
war hero was credited with having killed more than 200 enemy
soldiers. In 2010 a television film, "The Legend of Billy Sing,"
raised the ire of the Australian-Chinese community because it
featured a white actor as Billy Sing.
1943 May 19, Berlin was
declared "Judenrien" (cleansed of Jews).
1943 May 20, French, British
and US held a victory parade in Tunis, Tunisia.
1943 May 22, The 1st US jet
fighter was tested. Lockheed Martin had picked Clarence Johnson, a
Univ. of Michigan graduate (1932) to develop the nation’s 1st jet
fighter. He had already designed the P-38 Lightning. Johnson and his
staff developed a jet prototype, the Shooting Star, in 143 days.
(MC, 5/22/02)(MT, Summer/04, p.7)
1943 May 22, Stalin disbanded
1943 May 23, Thomas Mann began
writing his novel Dr. Faustus.
1943 May 23-24, Some 826 Allied
bombers attacked Dortmund.
1943 May 25, Leslie Uggams,
singer, actress (Leslie Uggams Show, Roots), was born in NYC.
1943 May 25, Wynand C. Malan,
South African lawyer, NP/DP-politician, was born.
1943 May 25, Following the
Trident conference between President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime
Minister Winston Churchill in Washington, DC, the target date of May
1, 1944, was set for the invasion of Europe. It actually occurred on
the sixth of June.
1943 May 25, There was a riot
at Mobile, Al., shipyard over upgrading 12 black workers.
1943 May 26, Jews rioted
against Germans in Amsterdam.
1943 May 26, Edsel Ford,
president (49) of the Ford Motor Company, died.
1943 May 27, French resistance
members under Jean Moulin met secretly in Paris.
1943 May 29, Norman Rockwell’s
portrait of "Rosie the Riveter" appeared on the cover of "The
Saturday Evening Post." Rockwell’s model was Mary Doyle Keefe (19)
of Arlington, Vermont (d.2015). In 2002 the painting sold at auction
(AP, 5/29/97)(SFC, 4/24/15, p.D4)
1943 May 29, Churchill,
Marshall and Eisenhower met in the Confederacy of Algiers.
1943 May 29, Meat and cheese
began to be rationed in US.
1943 May 29, Hermann Hans
Wetzler (72), composer, died.
1943 May 30, American forces
secured the Aleutian island of Attu from the Japanese during World
1943 May 30, Dr. Josef Mengele
arrived at Auschwitz as research assistant to Dr. Otmar Freiherr von
(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.D6)
1943 May 31, Joe Namath, NFL QB
(NY Jets), $400,000 man (1969 Superbowl), was born in PA.
1943 May, German captors took
American POWs Capt. Donald B. Stewart and Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet
Jr. to view mummified corpses of Polish officers massacred in the
Katyn forest. They used coded messages to report on the Soviet
guilt, but it was suppressed by the Roosevelt administration until a
report in 1952. Documents of their coded messages were made public
1943 May, Muddy Waters, the
lead disciple of blues artist Robert Johnson, bought a ticket at the
Clarksdale train station and headed to Chicago.
(NH, 9/96, p.55)
1943 Jun 1, A civilian flight
from Lisbon to London was shot down by the Germans during World War
II, killing all those aboard, including actor Leslie Howard
(b.1893). Howard was killed over the Bay of Biscay, when the British
Overseas plane he was on was shot down by Luftwaffe fighters. His
last on-screen role was that of Spitfire designer R. J. Mitchell in
the 1942 film "The First of the Few" (released in the U.S. as a
trimmed version entitled Spitfire in 1948). Leslie Howard, perhaps
best remembered to modern filmgoers as Ashley Wilkes in "Gone With
The Wind" (1939), was a World War I veteran who was advised to take
up acting as therapy after he was mustered out for shell shock. He
found success throughout the 1930s, but with the outbreak of World
War II, devoted himself to the war effort--directing films, writing
and broadcasting on the radio.
(AP, 6/1/98)(HNQ, 3/23/01)
1943 Jun 2, Charles Haid, actor
(Hill St Blues, Altered States), was born in SF, Ca.
1943 Jun 2, 99th Pursuit
Squadron flew its 1st combat mission over Italy.
1943 Jun 3, United Nations
Relief and Rehabilitation Administration formed.
1943 Jun 4, Race riots took
place in LA.
1943 Jun 4, In Argentina, Gen
Rawson and Col. Juan Peron led the military coup that overthrew
Ramon S. Castillo.
(HN, 6/4/98)(MC, 6/4/02)
1943 Jun 5, German occupiers
arrested Louvain University's chancellor.
1943 Jun 7, Nikki Giovanni,
poet (LHJ Woman of the Year 1973), was born.
1943 Jun 7, Ken Osmond, actor
(Eddie Haskel-Leave it To Beaver), was born.
1943 Jun 9, "Pay-as-you-go"
(withholding) US income tax deductions were authorized. [see Jul 1,
1943 Jun 10, FDR signed a
withholding tax bill into law.
1943 Jun 10, The Allies began
bombing Germany around the clock.
1943 Jun 11, The Italian island
of Pantelleria surrendered after a heavy air bombardment.
1943 Jun 14, The US Supreme
Court, in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, ruled
schoolchildren could not be compelled to salute the flag of the
United States and say the Pledge of Allegiance.
1943 Jun 14, A US Army B-17
took off from Mackay, Australia, and crashed in fog at nearby Bakers
Creek, killing 40 of the 41 servicemen crammed into the bomb bay and
crannies of the aircraft. Wartime censorship restrictions suppressed
news of the crash.
1943 Jun 15, The 8,000-ton
Rosandra, an Italian merchant ship, sank after being torpedoed by a
British submarine a day earlier off Albania's southern coast. 6
people died but 173 were safely evacuated to land. In 2010
underwater archeologists reported the discovery of the ship.
1943 Jun 16, Comedian Charles
Chaplin married his fourth wife, 18-year-old Oona O’Neill, daughter
of playwright Eugene O’Neill, in Carpenteria, Calif. In 1998 Jane
Scovell authored "Oona, Living in the Shadows: A Biography of Oona
(AP, 6/16/98)(SFEC, 12/13/98, BR p.6)
1943 Jun 17, Newt Gingrich,
later Republican Speaker of the House (1995-1998), was born in
(SFC, 11/7/98, p.A4)
1943 Jun 20, Race-related
rioting erupted in Detroit; federal troops were sent in two days
later to quell the violence that resulted in 34 deaths and 600
(AP, 6/20/97)(SSFC, 12/17/00, Par p.5)
1943 Jun 21, The US Supreme
Court held the broad claims of Guglielmo Marconi's patent for
improvements in apparatus for wireless telegraphy to be invalid.
First written for publication by the Antique Wireless Association,
this monograph shows how the nation's high court arrived at its
decision. It provides an answer to the continuing argument regarding
the popular misconception that Marconi invented radio.
1943 Jun 21, Jean "Max" Moulin,
French resistance fighter, was betrayed by fellow Frenchmen and
captured in a massive anti-resistance dragnet. Raymond Aubrac
(1914-2012) was captured along with Jean Moulin, when police raided
a Resistance meeting spot, a doctor's office, near the southeastern
city of Lyon. Lucie Aubrac helped orchestrate her husband's escape
from a Lyon prison following his arrest.
1943 Jun 22, Federal troops put
down race-related rioting in Detroit. 36 hours of rioting claimed 34
lives, 25 of them black. More than 1,800 were arrested for looting
and other incidents, the vast majority black. Thirteen murders
1943 Jun 23, James Levine,
pianist and conductor, was born.
1943 Jun 23, RAF discovered and
bombed Werner von Braun's V1/V2-base in Peenemunde.
1943 Jun 24, Royal Air Force
Bombers hammered Muelheim, Germany, in a drive to cripple the Ruhr
1943 Jun 25, Crematory III at
Birkenau, Poland, was finished.
1943 Jun 25, Arthur
Seyss-Inquart ordered a mass arrest of Dutch physicians.
1943 Jun 29, Germany began
withdrawing U-boats from North Atlantic in anticipation of the
Allied invasion of Europe.
1943 Jun 30, Gen. MacArthur
began his island-hopping Operation Cartwheel.
1943 Jun 30, In Japan all stock
exchanges were merged under the wartime conditions as the Japan
Securities Exchange. This was dissolved after the war.
(WSJ, 3/15/07, p.C1)
1943 Jun, The US Liberty Ship
S.S. Jeremiah O’Brian was launched.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A19)
1943 Jul 1, In the US
"pay-as-you-go" income tax withholding began.
1943 Jul 2, The U.S. Army Air
Corps 99th Fighter Squadron, the first of the all-black Tuskegee
Airmen to see combat, had been based in Africa for four months when
they were assigned to escort 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers on a routine
mission over Sicilian targets. Lieutenant Charles B. Hall of Brazil,
Indiana became the first Tuskegee Airman to score a confirmed kill
when he shot down a German fighter plane. The United States would
not allow black airmen to fight for their country until 1943, when
the first of a contingent trained at Tuskegee, Alabama, were formed
as the 99th Fighter Squadron and shipped out to North Africa. That
unit and the 332nd Fighter Group that followed (which comprised the
99th) would prove their worth in the last two years of World War II.
Besides establishing an outstanding record for not losing a single
bomber they escorted to enemy fighters, several of the Tuskegee
Airmen went on to distinguished postwar careers in the U.S. Air
1943 Jul 4, Geraldo Rivera, TV
talkshow host, was born in New York City. He became known for his
non-conformity in the subjects he approached.
(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)
1943 Jul 4, A Liberator II
aircraft carrying Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski, Poland’s prime minister
and chief army commander, crashed into the sea just 16 seconds after
taking off from Gibraltar. In 2008 Poland began an investigation
into the crash.
1943 Jul 5, US invasion fleet
(96 ships) sailed to Sicily.
1943 Jul 5, The battle of
Kursk, the largest tank battle in history, began as German tanks
attacked the Soviet salient.
1943 Jul 5, In the Solomon
Islands more than 730 of the USS Helena's crew of 900 survived its
sinking during the Battle of Kula Gulf. A group of 165 spent nearly
five days adrift in life rafts, during which some of the injured
died, before the sunburned, dehydrated and emaciated men took
shelter on Japanese occupied Vella Lavella Island. On March 23,
2018, the wreckage of the Helena was found about a half mile (860m)
below the surface of the New Georgia Sound by Paul Allen's R/V
1943 Jul 6, In the 2nd day of
battle at Kursk some 25,000 Germans were killed.
1943 Jul 7, Adolf Hitler made
the V-2 missile program a top priority in armament planning.
1943 Jul 7, In the 3rd day of
battle at Kursk the Germans occupied Dubrova. Erich Hartmann shot 7
Russian aircraft at Kursk.
1943 Jul 8, Faye Wattleton,
women’s rights advocate, was born.
1943 Jul 8, American B-24
bombers struck Japanese-held Wake Island for the first time. An
obscure U.S. Navy fighter did yeoman duty when times were toughest
early in World War II.
1943 Jul 8, US invasion fleet
passed Bizerta, Tunisia.
1943 Jul 8, The 4th day of
battle at Kursk: Gen Model used his last tank reserve.
1943 Jul 8, Jean "Max" Moulin
(b. Jun 20, 1899), French resistance fighter, was executed.
1943 Jul 9, American and
British forces made an amphibious landing on Sicily. The 'man who
never was' pulled off one of the greatest deceptions in military
history--after his death. In April Britain’s Operation Mincemeat had
landed the dead body of an itinerant Welsh laborer, Glyndwr Michael,
disguised as a Major Martin, on the shore of Spain near Huelva.
False papers on the body led the Germans to believe the allies would
attack Greece and Sardinia rather than Sicily. The idea had been
originally devised in 1939 as one of 51 submitted by Lt. Commander
Ian Fleming. Operation Mincemeat was kept secret until 1953, the
same year that “Casino Royale," Fleming’s first James Bond novel was
(ON, 10/10, p.5)
1943 Jul 10, Arthur Ashe, first
black tennis player to win the U.S. Championship and Wimbledon, was
1943 Jul 10, US and British
forces completed their amphibious landing in Sicily in Operation
(AP, 7/10/97)(HN, 7/10/01)(MC, 7/10/02)
1943 Jul 11, US guns at Gela,
Sicily, hurled fire at unseen planes overhead. The result was the
war’s worst friendly fire incident. Twenty C-47 transports with 18
men each were knocked down by allied gunfire. 318 American soldiers
were killed or wounded.
(SSFC, 3/10/19, DB
1943 Jul 11, In Poland the
killing of Poles by Ukrainian nationalists peaked. From
1943-1944 Ukrainian nationalists killed up to 100,000 Poles in Volyn
and eastern Galica, areas then in Poland but now in Ukraine. The
peak of the killings involved Poles being butchered with axes and
1943 Jul 12, The US submarine
Pampanito was christened in New Hampshire. In 1982 the sub opened to
the public at Pier 45 in San Francisco.
(SFC, 9/24/03, p.A23)
1943 Jul 12, Pope Pius XII
received Baron von Weizsacker, the German ambassador.
1943 Jul 12, Russians beat
Nazis in a tank battle at Prochorowka. Some 12,000 died.
1943 Jul 13, Aubrey Grossman,
chairman of the Bay Area Council Against Discrimination reported
that Camp Mather, San Francisco's city-operated vacation spot in the
Sierra, did not accept Negroes or Oriental patronage.
(SSFC, 7/8/18, DB p.50)
1943 Jul 13, Greatest tank
battle in history ended with Russia's defeat of Germany at Kursk.
Almost 6,000 tanks took part and 2,900 were lost by Germany.
1943 Jul 18, The U.S. Navy
airship K-74 was shot down by anti-aircraft fire from a German
1943 Jul 18, There was a
British assault on Catania, Sicily.
1943 Jul 19, More than 150 B-17
and 112 B-24 Allied bombers attacked Rome for the first time.
(AP, 7/19/97)(HN, 7/19/98)
1943 Jul 19, American planes
sank the German U-513 submarine off the coast of southern Brazil. In
2011 researchers from the Vale do Itajai University found the
submarine off the coast of Santa Catarina state.
1943 Jul 21, Tess Gallagher,
American writer, was born.
1943 Jul 21, Edward Herrmann
(d.2014), actor (Day of the Dolphin, Reds), was born in Wash., DC.
1943 Jul 21, Ralph B. Beal,
research director for Radio Corporation of America (RCA) said
television will be ready for every family's use immediately after
the war. Screens 6 to 24 inches wide will be available as the radio
manufacturing industry converts from war to peace production. The
next normal development will be three-dimensional and color TV.
(SSFC, 7/15/18, DB p.54)
1943 Jul 22, The American
Seventh Army forces led by Gen. George S. Patton captured Palermo,
Sicily. Gen Patton moved his troops across Sicily through August.
(TMC, 1994, p.1943)(WSJ, 12/8/95, p.A-14)(AP,
1943 Jul 23, In France Marcel
Langer (b.1903), Polish-born Jew, was guillotined after being
sentenced to death by a Vichy court. He was a member of the
International Brigades and the Toulouse resistance.
1943 Jul 23, Battle of Kursk,
USSR, ended in Nazi defeat. 6,000 tanks took part.
1943 Jul 23, Meijer de Hond,
[Emanuel Querido], rabbi of Sobibor, died.
1943 Jul 23, Emanuel Querido,
publisher (Sobibor), died.
1943 Jul 24, The U.S. submarine
Tinosa fired 15 torpedoes at a lone Japanese merchant ship, but none
1943 Jul 24-1943-Aug 2, The RAF
bombed Hamburg. Firestorms from the bombing left at least 40,000
dead in the 1st 3 days. American B-17 Fortresses flew 252 daylight
sorties in the two days following the first of 4 RAF night raids.
Sir Arthur Harris directed 4 major raids against Hamburg in the
space of ten nights, known as “Operation Gomorrah."
1943 Jul 25, Jim McCarty,
rocker (The Yardbirds-For Your Love), was born.
1943 Jul 25, Janet Margolin,
actress (Take the Money & Run, David & Lisa), was born in
1943 Jul 25, Benito Mussolini
was dismissed as premier of Italy by King Victor Emmanuel III and
placed under arrest. Fascist Grand Council, reeling from the
invasion of Sicily and fearing a subsequent destructive invasion of
the mainland, forced Dictator Benito Mussolini to resign. Mussolini
was later rescued by the Nazis and re-asserted his authority.
(AP, 7/25/97)(HN, 7/25/98)(The National Interest,
1943 Jul 26, In England Mick
[Michael Phillip] Jagger, musician, member of the Rolling Stones,
was born in Dartford, Kent.
(SFEM, 11/9/97, p.9)(HN, 7/26/01)
1943 Jul 26, Otto Skorzeny's
commando group arrived in Rome.
1943 Jul 28, Mike Bloomfield,
blues musician (Analine), was born.
1943 Jul 28, Bill Bradley, U.S.
senator, professional basketball player, was born in Crystal City,
1943 Jul 28, President
Roosevelt announced the end of coffee rationing.
1943 Jul 29, Lt. Robert Scott
(d.1999 at 85) led a platoon on New Georgia in the Central Solomons
to capture a hilltop overlooking the Munda Point airstrip. He found
himself alone and continued fighting with grenades and his rifle to
force an enemy withdrawal. 28 Japanese were found dead from his
attack. He received the Medal of Honor in Oct 1944.
(SFC, 2/12/99, p.A24)
1943 Jul, Lt. Thomas McConnell
of Kansas crashed in his B-24 Liberator in deep fog on Guadalcanal
after a strike against a Japanese air field. He was one of the 3
"Flying McConnell Brothers."
(SFC, 9/6/97, p.A22)
1943 Aug 1, Race-related
rioting erupted in New York City’s Harlem section, resulting in
1943 Aug 1, Over 177 B-24
Liberator bombers attacked the oil fields in Ploesti, Rumania, for a
1943 Aug 2, A Navy patrol
torpedo boat, PT-109, commanded by Lt. John F. Kennedy, sank after
being sheared in two by the Amagiri, a Japanese destroyer, off the
Solomon Islands. Lt. John F. Kennedy, towing an injured sailor, swam
to a small island in the Solomon Islands. The night before, his
boat, PT-109, had been split in half by the destroyer Amagiri.
Kennedy was credited with saving members of the crew. Two members of
the crew were killed in the collision in the Blackett Strait off
Gizo, the main town of western Solomon Islands. An injured Kennedy
and the ship's other survivors clung to the wreckage and swam to a
nearby island, where Aaron Kumana and Biuku Gasa found them. The
pair rowed 35 miles through enemy-held waters to summon a rescue
(AP, 8/2/97)(HN, 8/2/98)(AP, 8/30/07)
1943 Aug 2, The 10-day allied
bombing of Hamburg, Germany, ended.
1943 Aug 2, In Poland at the
Nazi Treblinka concentration camp some 600 prisoners staged an
uprising and fled into the woods. Some 300 inmates managed to
escape. Only 40 survived. Some 900,000 Jews, chiefly from
Poland, were killed from 1941 to 1944 at Treblinka. In 1999 Ian
MacMillan authored "Village of a Million Spirits: A Novel of the
(SFEC, 8/22/99, BR p.5)(AP, 8/2/18)
1943 Aug 3, Gen. George S.
Patton slapped a private at an army hospital in Sicily, accusing him
of cowardice. Patton was later ordered by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
to apologize for this and a second, similar episode.
1943 Aug 5, American forces
took the Munda Point airstrip on New Georgia in the Solomon Islands.
(SFC, 2/12/99, p.A24)
1943 Aug 7, US Major Gen. Lewis
B. Hershey, the National Director of Selective Service, said: "There
are too many middle-class morons in the country, people with mental
diseases who can't pass Army tests."
(SSFC, 8/5/18, DB p.50)
1943 Aug 9, Bertolt Brecht's
"Galileo," premiered in Zurich.
1943 Aug 9, Franz
Jaegerstaetter, an avowed conscientious objector, was executed
outside Berlin for treason after his request to be excused from
regular army service for religious reasons was denied. The married
father of four was posthumously exonerated in 1997 by a Berlin
court. In 2007 he was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church.
1943 Aug 9, Chaim Soutine
(b.1893), Jewish expressionist painter, died in Paris of a
1943 Aug 10, Hitler watched the
lynching of allied pilots.
1943 Aug 11, Richard Strauss'
2nd Horn Concerto premiered.
1943 Aug 12, Actor Clark Gable,
after being assigned to make a training film for aerial gunners,
trained and flew a mission from England with the 351st group over
the Ruhr. 25 airplanes were lost on the mission.
(WSJ, 12/24/96, p.A9)
1943 Aug 13, Harold E. Stearns
(b.1891), American journalist, died. His books included “Liberalism
in America" (1919). He also edited the influential “Civilization in
the United States An Inquiry by Thirty Americans" (1922), the book
that inspired many dissatisfied young Americans to go abroad.
1943 Aug 13, The British bombed
Milan. Elmer Alifano was an injured American held captive in a Milan
hospital during the bombing where he received more injuries and
where a third of the Allied prisoners were killed.
(SFC, 9/29/97, p.A19)
1943 Aug 15, Allies landed on
Kiska in the Aleutians.
1943 Aug 16, Bulgarian czar
Boris III visited Adolf Hitler.
1943 Aug 17, Robert DeNiro,
American actor, was born. He won Oscars for his roles in "The
Godfather Part II" and "Raging Bull."
1943 Aug 17, The Allied
conquest of Sicily was completed as U.S. and British forces entered
Messina. American casualties were later announced as 7,500 dead,
wounded or captured.
(AP internet, 8/17/97)(HN, 8/17/98)(SSFC, 9/2/18,
1943 Aug 17, A mass attack of
376 B-17s attacked the Messerschmitt Bf-109 factory at Regensburg,
Germany. 60 B-17s were shot down. That was a 16 percent loss
rate and meant 600 empty bunks in England.
1943 Aug 18, The Royal Air
Force Bomber Command completed the first major strike against the
German missile development facility at Peenemunde.
1943 Aug 18, Final convoy of
Jews from Salonika, Greece, arrived at Auschwitz.
1943 Aug 18, The Heinkel-111 of
Otto Skorzeny, Waffen SS commander, was shot down at Sardinia.
1943 Aug 18, Hans Jeschonnek,
German air force general, chief-staff, committed suicide.
1943 Aug 18, Shukri Kouatly was
elected president of Syria.
1943 Aug 19, Belgian church
excommunicated Nazi Leon Degrelle.
1943 Aug 22, Soviet troops
1943 Aug 25, U.S. forces
completed the occupation of New Georgia in the Solomon Islands
during World War II. Losing Hill 700 to the Japanese meant defeat
for the American forces on Bougainville. To the men of the 37th
Infantry Division, that was unthinkable.
(AP, 8/25/97)(HN, 8/25/98)
1943 Aug 25, Lt. Andre Devigny
(d.1999 at 82) escaped from a German prison in Lyon, France. He was
sentenced to be executed on Aug 28 for assassinating the head of the
Fascist Italian secret police. He was captured the next day and
escaped again by diving into the Rhone River. In 1957 Robert Bresson
made the film "A Man Escaped" based on his story.
(SFC, 2/19/99, p.E2)
1943 Aug 25, Lord Mountbatten
was appointed Supreme Allied Commander in SE Asia.
1943 Aug 25, Red Army under Gen
Vatutin recaptured Achtyrka.
1943 Aug 26, The United States
recognizes the French Committee of National Liberation.
1943 Aug 28, Denmark declared a
universal strike against Nazi occupiers.
1943 Aug 28, Mussolini was
transferred from La Maddalena Sardinia to Gran Sasso.
1943 Aug 29, Responding to a
clampdown by Nazi occupiers, Denmark managed to scuttle most of its
1943 Aug 30, Robert Crumb, US,
cartoonist (Father Time, Fritz Cat), was born.
1943 Aug 30, Jean Claude Killy,
France, skier (Olympic-3 golds-1968), was born.
1943 Aug, Italy's surrender to
Allied forces weakened Italian hold on Albania; Albanian resistance
fighters overwhelmed five Italian divisions.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1943 Sep 3, The British Eighth
Army invaded Italy, landing at Calabria, during World War II. Italy
signed a secret armistice with the Allies, but it was not announced
until Sep 8.
(AP, 9/3/97)(HN, 9/3/98)
1943 Sep 4, Allied troops
captured Lae-Salamaua, in New Guinea.
1943 Sep 4, British 8th army
landed at Taranto in South Italy.
1943 Sep 6, The United States
asked the Chinese Nationals to join with the Communists to present a
common front to the Japanese.
1943 Sep 6, The "Black Ghost,"
a B-17 bomber, was shot down over occupied France. Its crew survived
13 missions, but anti-aircraft flak and the Luftwaffe's
Messerschmitt and Focke-Wulf fighters claimed the airplane. All 10
crew members survived the war.
1943 Sep 7, Fire in a decrepit
old Gulf Hotel killed 45 in Houston, Texas.
1943 Sep 8, Italy surrendered
to the Allies in WW II.
1943 Sep 9, Allied forces in
operation Avalanche landed at Salerno and Taranto during World War
II. They encountered strong resistance from German troops.
(AP, 9/9/97)(HN, 9/9/98)(MC, 9/9/01)
1943 Sep 10, German troops
occupied Rome and took over the protection of Vatican City.
1943 Sep 11, The Jewish ghettos
of Minsk & Lida in Belorussia were liquidated.
1943 Sep 12, Michael Ondaatje,
Canadian novelist and poet, was born. His work included "The English
1943 Sep 12, German
paratroopers took Benito Mussolini from the hotel where he was being
held by Italian resistance forces. 107 Waffen-SS troops under Otto
Skorzeny (1908-1975) freed Mussolini at Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi
Mountains. Paratroopers in 12 gliders took the Italian Carabinieri
guards by surprise without firing a single shot, and whisked
ex-dictator Mussolini away in a Storch airplane to Rome. The rest of
the commando team escaped by cable car. Skorzeny then flew Mussolini
to meet with Hitler.
(AP, 9/12/97)(SFC, 4/25/97, p.A15)(The National
1943 Sep 13, Chiang Kai-shek
became president of China.
1943 Sep 13, Germans counter
attacked at Salerno.
1943 Sep 13, The Scottish-built
S.S. Terra Nova sank off the Greenland after being damaged by ice.
It had gained fame by taking the explorer Robert Scott and a crew to
the Antarctic in 1910 in an effort to become the first to reach the
South Pole. Her crew were saved by a United States Coast Guard
cutter Southwind. Wreckage of the ship was discovered in 2012.
1943 Sep 14, German troops
abandoned the Salerno front in Italy.
1943 Sep 18, Hitler ordered the
deportation of Danish Jews (unsuccessful).
1943 Sep 21, Bishara al-Khuri
(1890-1964) was elected the first president of modern-day Lebanon.
Lebanon did not become fully independent from French rule until
1946. Khuri had previously been Secretary-General of Mount Lebanon
(a political predecessor to modern Lebanon administered by the
French) as well as its Prime Minister on several separate occasions.
The French held elections to fulfill their earlier promises of
Lebanese independence. The new government promptly passed
legislation to remove French influences in the constitution.
1943 Sep 22, The Destroyer
Keppel sank U-229.
1943 Sep 23, Julio Iglesias De
la Cueva, Spanish singer (To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before…), was
born in Madrid.
1943 Sep 23, Benito Mussolini
formed a rival fascist government in Italy.
1943 Sep 23, In Lithuania the
remaining residents in the Vilnius Ghetto were executed or sent off
to concentration camps by the occupying forces of Nazi Germany.
1943 Sep 24, German forces
executed 117 Italian officers on the Greek island of Cephalonia
(Kefalonia). The massacre became the basis for the 1994 bestseller
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by British writer Louis de Bernieres. On
Oct 18, 2013 an Italian court handed a life sentence in absentia to
former German army corporal Alfred Stork (90) for his role in the
1943 Sep 24, Soviet forces
reconquered Smolensk. [see Sep 25]
1943 Sep 25, The Red Army
retook Smolensk from the Germans who were retreating to the Dnieper
River in the Soviet Union. [see Sep 24]
1943 Sep 26, The Germans placed
an extortion on the Jews of Rome with an order to produce 50 kg of
gold within 2 days or face massive deportations. Pope Pius XII
offered to loan the Jewish community 15 kg of gold with interest and
with repayment due within 4 years after the war. Rome’s Jews and
citizens came up with sufficient gold to make the Pope’s offer
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.A23)
1943 Sep 27, Bing Crosby, the
Andrews Sisters and the Vic Schoen Orchestra recorded "Pistol
Packin’ Mama" and "Jingle Bells" for Decca Records.
1943 Sep 28, J.T. Walsh, actor
(Col. Frank Bach, Dark Skies), was born.
1943 Sep 29, Adolf Hitler’s
book Mein Kampf was published in the United States.
1943 Sep 29, General Dwight D.
Eisenhower and Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio signed an armistice
aboard the British ship Nelson off Malta.
1943 Sep 29, Lech Walesa,
Polish labor leader who founded the Solidarity party and later
became the president of Poland, was born.
1943 Sep 30, The Women’s Army
Auxiliary Corps became the Women’s Army Corps, a regular contingent
of the U.S. Army with the same status as other army service corps.
1943 Sep, The National
Geographic included a map of the Pacific Ocean and the Bay of Bengal
in this issue to help people understand the Pacific War theater.
(NG, 5/95, p.69)
1943 Sep, Pearl Cornioley
(1916-2008), a British agent, parachuted into France as a secret
agent to help arm and organize the Resistance. In 1995 she wrote an
autobiography and in 2006 Royal Air Force officers presented her
with her parachute wings in a ceremony at her Paris retirement home.
1943 Sep, German forces invaded
and occupied Albania.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1943 Sep, Trieste was occupied
by the Germans and held until the end of the war. Many of the city’s
Jews perished at the nearby Risiera di San Sabba Nazi death camp.
(SFC, 2/3/97, p.C3)
1943 Sep, Jeannie Rousseau,
code name Amniarix, collected enough information on V-2 rockets from
German officers in France to send a detailed report to England.
Reginald Jones, chief of Britain's scientific intelligence, included
her text in his book "The Wizard War."
(SFC, 1/2/99, p.A10)
1943 Sep, Pope Pius XII offered
Vatican assets to ransom Jews from the Nazis and in Italy ran an
extensive network of hideouts for escaping Jews.
(WSJ, 4/25/97, p.A18)
1943 Sep - 1943 Oct, About
7,200 Jews, or 95 percent of Denmark's Jewish population, and some
700 of their non-Jewish relatives managed to escape by crossing the
narrow waterway from Gilleleje and other coastal spots to neutral
Sweden in a risky rescue mission. About 500 Jews were arrested in
Nazi raids and deported to concentration camps.
(Econ, 7/10/04, p.46)(AP, 10/11/18)
1943 Oct 1, Allied forces
captured Naples during World War II. British troops in Italy entered
Naples and occupied Foggia airfield.
(HFA, ‘96, p.38)(AP, 10/1/97)(HN, 10/1/98)
1943 Oct 1, Germans attacked
Jews in Denmark.
1943 Oct 4, German occupiers
forbade the flying of kites. Violation carried a 6 month jail
1943 Oct 4, Some 6,600
Moroccans accounted for the bulk of the fighting force that freed
Corsica. In 2013 France honored the Moroccan veterans and fallen
soldiers who freed Corsica.
1943 Oct 6, The Battle at Vella
Lavella was fought in the Solomon Islands.
1943 Oct 6, Himmler ordered the
acceleration of "Final Solution."
1943 Oct 7, Weill's, Perelman's
and Nash's musical "One Touch of Venus," premiered in NYC.
1943 Oct 7, Approximately 100
U.S. prisoners of war remaining on Wake Island were executed by the
1943 Oct 7, Radclyffe Hall
(b.1880), English author of the lesbian classic "The Well of
Loneliness" (1928), died. The book was the subject of an obscenity
trial in Britain which resulted in all copies being ordered
1943 Oct 9, Alexander Fleming
reported in Lancet the 1st successful treatment of streptococcal
meningitis with intramuscular and intrathecal (directly into the
spinal fluid) injections of the just-purified penicillin.
(WSJ, 10/17/02, p.A19)
1943 Oct 9, A Luftwaffe
squadron operating from Rhodes lost several Stukas to allied ships
and aircraft. In 2006 Greek divers raised the wreckage of a Stuka
bomber, believed to be one of the lost planes.
1943 Oct 10, Chiang Kai-shek
took the oath of office as president of China.
1943 Oct 11, The US submarine
Wahoo, Under the command of Dudley "Mush" Morton, was sunk by the
Japanese navy as it returned from its seventh patrol. All 79 crewmen
died. In 2006 Russian divers found the wreckage in the La Perouse
1943 Oct 11, San Francisco
acquired its first Negro policeman. William Glenn (45), former Navy
civil guard, was hired for the duration of the war and for six month
(SSFC, 10/7/18, DB p.46)
1943 Oct 12, The Radio
Corporation of America announced the divestment of the NBC Blue
radio network to businessman Edward J. Noble for $8 million. Noble
first called it just "The Blue Network." By Feb 1945 it was renamed
the American Broadcasting Company.
(NYT, 10/12/1943, P.23)(NYT, 10/17/1943, P. XII)
1943 Oct 12, The U.S. Fifth
Army began an assault crossing of the Volturno River in Italy.
1943 Oct 12, The US bombed
Rabaul, New Britain (S. Pacific, Bismarck Archipelago).
(WUD, 1994 p.962)(MC, 10/12/01)
1943 Oct 13, During World War
II, Italy declared war on Germany, its one-time Axis partner.
(AP, 10/13/97)(HN, 10/13/98)
1943 Oct 14, US 8th Air Force
lost 60 B-17 bombers during assault on Schweinfurt.
1943 Oct 14, In Germany Rev.
Max Josef Metzger was sentenced to death for treason by Roland
Freisler, chief judge of the Nazi’s People’s Court. He had written a
letter to the British government that denounced the Nazis and called
for a German state based on Christian democratic and legal
principles. He was exonerated by a Berlin court in 1997
(SFC, 5/3/97, p.A10)
1943 Oct 14, Some 300 of 600
prisoners escaped from the Nazi’s Sobibor death camp in Poland.
Alexander Pechersky, a Russian officer of Jewish origin, roused his
fellow prisoners to rebellion. The event was later documented in the
book "Escape from Sobibor" by Richard Rashke (1982) and the film of
the same name with Alan Arkin. Josef Vallaster, an Austrian guard,
was among 11 SS officers and 11 Ukrainians killed in the escape.
Most of the escaped prisoners were killed as they fled. Only 50
prisoners survived the war. Vallaster had operated the motor that
funneled gas into Sobibor’s shower rooms. After the uprising at
Sobibor, the Nazis shut it down and leveled it to the ground,
replanting over it to cover their tracks.
(SFC, 7/11/03, p.A19)(SSFC, 2/17/08, p.A8)(AP,
1943 Oct 16, Chicago Mayor
Edward J. Kelly officially opened the city’s new subway system
during a ceremony at the State and Madison street station.
1943 Oct 16, In Italy the Nazi
SS police and Waffen SS began rounding up the Jews of Rome. There
was an anti Jewish riot in Rome as the Jewish quarter was surrounded
by Nazis, and Jews were evacuated to Auschwitz. Pope Pius XII made
no public protest, though he did send some messages of disapproval
through intermediaries. In total, nearly 8,000 Italian Jews died in
concentration camps in World War II.
(WSJ, 10/18/99, p.A46)(AFP, 10/27/18)
1943 Oct 18, US bombing of
Bougainville, Solomon Islands.
1943 Oct 19, Delegates from the
U.S.S.R. met with representatives from the Allied nations of Great
Britain, the U.S., and China, in an attempt to hammer out a greater
consensus on war aims, and to improve the rapidly cooling relations
between the Soviet Union and its allies.
1943 Oct 19, Camille Claudel
(b.1864), assistant, model and mistress to sculptor Auguste Rodin,
died in France.
(www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Camille_Claudel)(Econ, 1/7/06, p.75)
1943 Oct 20, A US B-17 bomber
crashed in the Netherlands near the small town of de Bilt. Of the 10
men on board 5 died and 5 were captured. Robert Surdez, co-pilot,
died in 2004.
(SFC, 3/30/04, p.B1)(SFC, 8/11/04, p.B7)
1943 Oct 22, Catherine Deneuve,
[Dorleac], actress (Repulsion, Hunger), was born in Paris.
1943 Oct 23, The 1st Jewish
transport out of Rome reached Birkenau (Poland) extermination camp.
1943 Oct 24, Anti-Nazi
Clandestine Radio Soldatsender, Calais, began transmitting.
1943 Oct 25, Japanese
forces held an official ceremony was held for the 415-km
Thailand-Burma railroad. The rail was completed Oct 17 at Konkuita,
Thailand. During its construction, approximately 13,000
prisoners of war died and were buried along the “Death Railway." An
estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians also died in the course of the
project, chiefly forced labor brought from Malaya and the Dutch East
Indies, or conscripted in Siam (Thailand) and Burma (Myanmar). The
movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957) was a part of this
effort and is today a big tourist attraction in Thailand.
1943 Oct 28, The German U-220
1943 Oct 29, 3 Allied officers
escaped the German camp Stalag Luft 3.
1943 Oct 30, The
Molotov-Eden-Cordell Hull accord over operations at UN.
1943 Oct 31, Max Reinhardt,
Austrian stage manager (Turandot), died.
1943 Oct, The United Nations
War Crimes Commission UNWCC) was established with a secretariat in
(Econ, 1/29/11, p.84)
1943 Oct, Capt. Austin Shofner
(25) led a group of 10 men who escaped from a Japanese prison camp
in the Philippines, where the survivors of the Bataan Death March
were being held. They told of how some 15,000 prisoners had been
shot or hacked to death during the 3-day march in 1942.
(SFC, 4/25/97, p.A26)
1943 Oct, Germans demolished
the ghetto buildings of Minsk, known as the Yama, or Pit, in an
effort to find Jews in hiding. 2,000 remaining Jews were rounded up
and killed. More than 100,000 Jews were killed there from August
1943 Nov 1, American troops
invaded Bougainville in the Solomon Islands.
1943 Nov 2, The Battle of
Empress Augusta Bay in Bougainville ended in U.S. Navy victory over
1943 Nov 2, Jewish ghetto of
Riga, Latvia, was destroyed.
1943 Nov 3, William Reid (died
2001 at 79), RAF bomber pilot, flew his badly damaged Lancaster
bomber on a bombing mission to a ball-bearing factory in Dusseldorf,
Germany, and managed to return the crippled plane to England.
(SFC, 12/15/01, p.A25)
1943 Nov 3, SS and police units
shot at least 6,000 Jewish inmates of the Trawniki and Dorohucza
1943 Nov 3-1943 Nov 4, In
Poland the 2-day "Operation Harvest" at the Majdanek concentration
camp executed men, women and children. Nazi officer Alfons
Goetzfried later admitted to having personally shot 500 people. Over
42,000 people, mostly Jews, were killed in the operation. In 1999
Alfons Goetzfrid (79) was convicted for assisting in the murders of
17,000 Jews at the camp. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
During the so-called "Mission Harvest Festival" massacres tens of
thousands of Jews in the district of Lublin were shot by Nazi
officers. Among them were members of Erich Steidtmann’s Hamburg
Polizeibataillon 101 company. In 2010 prosecutors reopened an
investigation on Steidtmann’s role in the massacre.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A14)(SFC, 5/21/99, p.D2)(AP,
1943 Nov 5, Sam Shepard,
American playwright and actor, was born.
1943 Nov 6, Michael Schwerner,
civil rights worker, was born. He was murdered in 1964.
1943 Nov 6, Soviet forces
1943 Nov 7, Joni Mitchell,
singer, songwriter, was born as Roberta J. Anderson in Alberta,
(HN, 11/7/00)(MC, 11/7/01)
1943 Nov 7, British troops
launched a limited offensive along the coast of Burma.
1943 Nov 9, Bernhard
Lichtenberg (67), German clergyman and antifascist, died.
1943 Nov 11, In Lebanon the
French voiced their dissent by arresting Bishara al-Khuri and most
of the government. An insurrection, British diplomatic efforts
and one more crisis in 1945 finally left the government restored.
1943 Nov 14, Leonard Bernstein,
the 25-year-old assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic,
made his debut with the orchestra as he filled in for the ailing
Bruno Walter during a nationally broadcast concert.
1943 Nov 14, An American
torpedo was mistakenly fired at the U.S. battleship Iowa, which was
carrying President Roosevelt and his joint chiefs to the Tehran
conference; the torpedo exploded harmlessly in the Iowa's wake.
1943 Nov 15, Film star Olivia
de Havilland met with lawyer Martin Gang and learned that it was
illegal for studio bosses to keep actors locked up with salaried
contracts for over 7 years. She sued and won a California court of
Appeal victory in 1944 against Warner Bros.
(SFC, 10/2/10, p.E8)
1943 Nov 16, One hundred and
forty American bombers flew from British bases to Vemork, Norway, to
destroy the Nazi heavy water facility near Rjukan, where production
had resumed despite a commando raid in February. Only 14 of some 700
bombs hit the plant killing 24 civilians. The bombing did not harm
the basement level where the heavy water was collected and stored.
(ON, 4/07, p.5)
1943 Nov 18, 444 British
bombers attacked Berlin.
1943 Nov 18, U-211 sank in the
1943 Nov 19, U-536 sank in
1943 Nov 20, US Marines began
landing on Tarawa and Makin atolls in the Gilbert Islands,
encountering fierce resistance from Japanese forces but emerging
victorious three days later. The US 2nd marine division invaded the
tiny isle of Betio on Tarawa Atoll in the Gilberts. It was the first
seriously opposed landing experienced by the Americans in WWII.
After 3 days 1,027 US Marine and Navy personnel were killed. Of some
4,800 Japanese and Korean laborers on Betio, 146 survived, including
17 Japanese troops. In 2006 John Wukovits authored “One Square Mile
1943 Nov 20, US Marine
cinematographer Norman Hatch (1921-2017) began filming much of the
76-hour battle for the island of Tarawa. The film was edited and
made into a 20-minute documentary: “With the Marines at Tarawa." In
1945 the film received an Academy Award for best short documentary.
1943 Nov 20, U-538 sank in the
1943 Nov 22, Billie Jean King,
U.S. tennis player and women's rights pioneer, was born.
1943 Nov 22, President
Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Chinese
leader Chiang Kai-shek met in Cairo to discuss measures for
1943 Nov 22, US troops landed
on Abemada, Gilbert Island.
1943 Nov 22, RAF began bombing
1943 Nov 22, Lyricist Lorenz
Hart died in New York at age 48.
1943 Nov 22, The French mandate
over Lebanon ended after 23 years of colonial rule. This became
marked a Lebanon’s Independence Day.
1943 Nov 23, Andrew Goodman
(d.1964), murdered civil rights worker, was born.
1943 Nov 23, During World War
II US forces seized control of the Tarawa and Makin atolls from the
Japanese. Makin Atoll, part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, was
the first central Pacific island to be reconquered by the Allies.
More than 900 US marines and 30 sailors were killed in the battle
(AP, 11/23/97)(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A17)(SFC,
1943 Nov 25, U-600 sank in the
1943 Nov 25, Anti-Fascist
Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ZAVNOBiH) adopted a resolution
declaring Bosnia and Herzegovina an equal community of Serbs,
Muslims and Croats. Bosnia was founded by anti-fascist partisans.
(http://tinyurl.com/hxrp9qt)(Econ, 12/5/15, p.53)
1943 Nov 26, Bruce Paltrow,
U.S. director and producer (d.2002), was born
1943 Nov 26, During World War
II, the HMT Rohna, a British transport ship carrying American
soldiers, was hit by a German missile off Algeria; 1,138 men were
killed, including 1,015 American troops.
1943 Nov 26, Edward H "Butch"
O'Hare, US pilot, lt-comdr (Chicago Airport named for him), died in
1943 Nov 28, President
Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet
leader Josef Stalin met in Tehran, Iran, to map out strategy during
World War II.
(AP, 11/28/97)(DT, 11/28/97)(HN, 11/28/98)
1943 Nov 29, US aircraft
carrier Hornet was launched.
1943 Nov 29, In Yugoslavia
partisan Tito formed a temporary government in Jajce, Bosnia.
1943 Nov 29, U-86 sank in the
1943 Nov, In Germany Michael
Negele joined the Death’s head Battalion of the Waffen-SS. He later
immigrated to the US and withheld information on his wartime
activities. In 1997 a Missouri court acted to strip him of US
(SFC, 9/3/97, p.A3)
1943 Dec 1, President
Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet
leader Josef Stalin concluded their Tehran conference and agreed to
Operation Overlord (D-Day).
1943 Dec 2, "Carmen Jones," a
contemporary reworking of the Bizet opera "Carmen" by Oscar
Hammerstein II with an all-black cast, opened on Broadway.
1943 Dec 2, A US federal judge
ordered officials at the Boilermakers' Union to issue temporary work
permits for 160 Negro employees at Marin ship. The SF Bay Area
employees had been discharged when they refused to join a "Jim Crow"
auxiliary, which gave them no voice in the union.
(SSFC, 12/2/18, DB p.46)
Dec 2, The 1st RSHA (Reichsicherheitshauptamt, the central
SS-department) transport out of Vienna reached Birkenau camp
(Poland). One of the powers of the RSHA was the imposition of
"Protective Custody," which meant the deportation to a concentration
camp without trial or the possibility of appeal for the victims.
1943 Dec 2, Italy’s Bari harbor
was attacked by German bombers. They achieved a complete surprise
bombing shipping and personnel operating in support of the Allied
Italian campaign. 27 cargo and transport ships and a schooner were
sunk. The release of mustard gas from one of the wrecked cargo ships
added to the loss of life.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raid_on_Bari)(Econ, 9/14/13, p.20)
1943 Dec 3, Howard Hanson's 4th
1943 Dec 3, Battle of Monte
Cassino, Italy began.
1943 Dec 8, U.S. carriers sank
two cruisers and down 72 planes in the Marshall Islands.
1943 Dec 9, In the SF Bay Area
gale-strong winds and resulting fires caused damages running into
millions of dollars. In San Francisco 50-74 mph winds invoked a rare
10-1 emergency call ordering all firemen to stand by.
(SSFC, 12/9/18, DB p.50)
1943 Dec 10, Franklin D.
Roosevelt signed a bill that postponed a draft of pre-Pearl Harbor
1943 Dec 10, Allied forces
bombed Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.
1943 Dec 11, John Kerry,
Massachusetts Senator and 2004 Democrat presidential candidate, was
born in Denver, Colorado.
(SSFC, 2/29/04, p.D2)
1943 Dec 11, Donna Mills,
actress (Knots Landing, Incident), was born in Chicago, Illinois.
1943 Dec 11, U.S. Secretary of
State, Cordell Hull, demanded that Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria
withdraw from the war.
1943 Dec 12, The exiled Czech
government signed a treaty with the USSR for postwar cooperation.
1943 Dec 12, The German Army
launched Operation Winter Tempest, the relief of the Sixth Army
trapped in Stalingrad. The attempt to relieve Stalingrad fell short
due to stubborn Soviet resistance and the Germans' indecision within
the besieged city.
1943 Dec 15, Thomas "Fats" Waller (39), US
jazz stride piano artist (Hot Chocolate), died in Kansas City, Mo.
Guitarist Al Casey performed with Waller for 10 years prior to WW
(SFEM, 10/6/96, p.16,18)
1943 Dec 16, Steven Bochco,
producer (Hill St Blues, LA Law, St Elsewhere, NYPD Blue), was born.
1943 Dec 17, The Magnuson Act,
also known as the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943, was signed
into law. The immigration legislation was proposed by US
Representative (later Senator) Warren G. Magnuson of Washington.
1943 Dec 17, U.S. forces
invaded New Britain Island in New Guinea.
1943 Dec 19, William De Vries,
surgeon-inventor (Symbion artificial heart), was born in Brooklyn.
1943 Dec 20, "International"
was no longer USSR National Anthem.
1943 Dec 20, Soviet forces
halted a German army trying to relieve the besieged city of
1943 Dec 22, Beatrix Potter
(b.1866), English author, died. She first told the story of Peter
Rabbit in the form of a "picture letter" to Noel Moore, the son of
Potter's former governess in 1893. A 2nd illustrated letter the same
month later became “The Tale of Jeremy Fisher." The “Tale of Peter
Rabbit" was published in 1901. At her death she bequeathed all her
holdings, 14 farms and 4,000 acres of land, to the National Trust.
1943 Dec 23, The 1st telecast
of a complete opera (Hansel & Gretel) was made from Schenectady,
1943 Dec 23, Gen. Montgomery
was appointed British commandant for D-day.
1943 Dec 24, President
Roosevelt appointed Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower supreme commander of
Allied forces as part of Operation Overlord. Almost everyone had
believed the position would go to American Chief of Staff George C.
(AP, 12/24/97)(HN, 12/24/00)
1943 Dec 26, Count Claus von
Stauffenberg tried in vain to plant a bomb in Hitler’s headquarters.
1943 Dec 26, The 32,000-ton
German battleship Scharnhorst sank off Norway following an Allied
attack led by the British battleship Duke of York. Only 36 of the
1,900 crew survived. Researchers found the wreck in 2000.
(CMW, 1968, p.589)(HN, 12/26/98)(SFC, 10/4/00,
1943 Dec 27, Cokie Roberts,
American political broadcaster for NPR and ABC, was born.
1943 Dec 27, President Franklin
Roosevelt ordered the U.S. Army to take temporary possession of all
railroads in order to prevent a strike by railway workers. The
action was taken under the wartime Labor Disputes Act. The railroads
were returned to private management on January 18, 1944.
1943 Dec 31, John Denver,
singer (Rocky Mt High), was born in NM.
1943 Dec 31, Ben Kingsley,
actor (Gandhi, Betrayal, Maurice), was born in Scarborough, England.
1943 Dec 31, NYC's Times Square
greeted Frank Sinatra at the Paramount Theater.
1943 Tammy Wynette (d.1998 at
55), country singer, was born as Virginia Wynette Pugh on a cotton
farm in Itawamba County. In 1968 she recorded her hit song "Stand by
(SFC, 4/798, p.A7)
1943 Max Ernst created his
painting "Flute of the Angels."
(WSJ, 6/10/99, p.A24)
1943 Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000)
(WSJ, 8/3/01, p.W8)
1943 Pablo Picasso painted
"First Steps," and created his bronze sculpture "Man With a Lamb."
The sculpture represented the death of a friend in a concentration
camp. He also painted "Atelier Window."
(SFEC, 9/20/98, DB p.39)
1943 Jackson Pollock
(1912-1956) created his 500-pound work titled “Mural," a canvas
nearly 8x20 feet. It was made for collector Peggy Guggenheim and
marked a transition from his modestly sized easel paintings to his
drip paintings. Pollock also created this year his work titled “The
(WSJ, 7/30/08, p.D7)(SFC, 10/1/10, p.F4)(SFC,
1943 Diego Rivera painted
Vendedora de Alcatraces and Retrato De La Senora Natasha Gelman.
Frida Kahlo painted "Diego En Mi Pensamiento."
(SFC, 4/14/96, EM, p.18)
1943 American artist Norman
Rockwell painted “Four Freedoms," a series of four oil paintings:
Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and
Freedom from Fear, referring to their mention in President Franklin
D. Roosevelt's January 6, 1941, speech to Congress.
(http://tinyurl.com/y9mt3yy6)(Econ 7/29/17, p.28)
1943 Jean Potter Chelnov
returned to Alaska to research her book "The Flying North," a book
on aviation in Alaska. It was edited by Dashiell Hammett, detective
author then serving in Alaska.
(SFC, 1/8/96, p.A17)
1943 Lillian Hellman wrote her
play: "The Searching Wind."
(WSJ, 2/23/96, p.A-10)
1943 Larry LeSueur (d.2003 at
93), war correspondent, authored "Twelve Months That Changed the
World," based on his 1941-1942 reports from the Russian front. He
was initially hired by Edward R. Murrow in 1939.
(SFC, 2/8/03, p.A1)
1943 US pilot Captain Ted
Lawson authored “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo." Here he told the story
of his bomber crashing just off an island on China’s eastern coast
following the April 1941 Doolittle Raid on Japan. Gunner David
Thatcher 1921-2016) helped save four wounded crewman including Lt.
Lawson. A Hollywood movie based on the book came out in 1944.
(SFC, 6/23/16, p.E5)
1943 Erle Loran (d.1999 at 93)
authored "Cezanne's Composition," an instructional book on 20th
(SFC, 5/24/99, p.C4)
1943 Jerre Mangione (d.1998 at
89) published his first book "Mount Allegro." It was a non-fiction
account of his life as the son of Sicilian immigrants but his
publisher, Houghton Miflin, insisted that it be published as a
(SFC, 9/1/98, p.A20)
1943 Jean-Paul Sartre wrote his
best play "The Flies." It was based on an ancient myth. “Being and
Nothingness," his most famous philosophical treatise, was also
published this year.
(WSJ, 8/12/98, p.A13)
1943 Curt Siodmak authored the
novel "Donovan’s Brain." It was about a disembodied brain with
(SFC, 11/21/00, p.A25)
1943 "The Little Prince" by
Antoine de St. Exupery (d.1944) was published.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR p.12)
1943 William Whyte (d.2000 at
86) authored "Street Corner Society," a study of Italian gangs in
Boston’s North End.
(SFC, 7/20/00, p.C2)
1943 Wendell Wilkie published
his "One World."
1943 Ira Wolfert (d.1997 at 89)
wrote his novel "Tucker’s People." It was made into the 1948 film
"Force of Evil." He also wrote the nonfiction work "Battle for the
(SFC, 11/28/97, p.B8)
1943 The musical "Carmen Jones"
was based on Bizet’s opera "Carmen" in turn based on the novella by
(SFC, 10/24/96, p.D1)(WSJ, 2/5/97, p.A16)
1943 Bartok composed his
"Concerto for Orchestra," one of the great works in the modern
(WSJ, 7/1/03, p.D8)
1943 The ballet "Kratt" (The
Goblin) by Eduard Tubin was first performed in Estonia. Tubin left
Estonia in 1944 and took up residence in Stockholm.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.C8)
1943 Columbia Pictures released
its first color film.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, Par p.4)
1943 Roy Acuff, country music
superstar, invited the governor of Tennessee to a party. Gov.
Prentice Cooper snubbed him saying that he and his awful musicians
were making Tennessee “the hillbilly capital of the United States."
1943 Texan singer Ernest Tubb
began performing for the live radio show, the Grand Ole Opry. He had
an amplified sound heavy on the fiddle and steel guitar.
(Hem., 4/97, p.69)
1943 The music "Rapsodia Negra"
by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona had its premier in Carnegie Hall.
Lecuona was the composer of "Malaguena."
(WSJ, 5/27/99, p.A24)
1943 "Tico Tico" was composed
by Zequinha Abreu.
1943 Sy Oliver composed his
jazz piece "Opus One."
1943 "One Touch of Venus" was
an eccentric opus with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ogden Nash
about Venus coming to life and falling for a New jersey barber. It
made a star of Mary Martin.
(WSJ, 4/15/96, p.A-16)
1943 The NYC Opera was
established by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to bring high culture at low
prices to ordinary New Yorkers. In 2013 the company filed for
(Econ, 10/5/13, p.34)
1943 A UN concert was presented
by the SF CIO and featured Paul Robeson.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, DB p.23)
1943 Francoise Gilot met
Picasso as a 23-year-old art student and became his lover for 10
years and mother of 2 children. She later married Jonas Salk, the
polio vaccine pioneer.
(SFC, 10/5/96, p.E1)
1943 Eugene O'Neill,
playwright, burned most of the plays in his planned cycle "A Tale of
Possessors Self-Dispossessed." Two of the plays survived: "More
Stately Mansions," and "A Touch of the Poet." The Mansions play was
incomplete and had instructions to be burned upon his death, but was
later staged. Eugene O'Neill wrote his last play "A Moon for the
(WSJ, 10/8/97, p.A20)(WSJ, 2/8/00, p.A24)(WSJ,
1943 Rex Applegate (d.1998 at
84) published his book "Kill or Be Killed," a military manual on
(SFC, 7/28/98, p.A20)
1943 David Brinkley began his
career as a correspondent for NBC News in Washington.
(SFC, 10/18/96, C6)
1943 Maxine Reams (d.1997 at
79) became the first female staff photographer for the LA Times.
(SFC, 9/29/97, p.A23)
1943 The American Bar
Association (ABA) opened its ranks to black lawyers
(WSJ, 8/14/02, p.A1)
1943 The All-American Girls
Professional Baseball League began in this year. Teams like the
Racine (Wisconsin) Belles and the Rockford (Illinois) Peaches
participated. In 1992 the movie "A League of Their Own" depicted the
first season of the Peaches.
(Smith., 4/95, p. 44)
1943 Ira Wolfert received a
Pulitzer Prize for his telegraphic reporting on the 1942 sea battle
(SFC, 11/28/97, p.B8)
1943 The US Smith-Connally Act
prohibited labor unions from contributing to federal campaigns.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, p.D9)
1943 Pres. Franklin D.
Roosevelt signed the act that repealed the Chinese exclusion laws
after China became an ally in WW II. Chinese were given the right to
naturalize and a token annual quota of 105 was set.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W39)(SFEC, 2/6/00, Rp.10)
1943 Congress authorized the US
Cadet Nurse Corps under the leadership of Lucile Petry Leone (d.1999
(SFC, 12/6/99, p.B2)
1943 An anonymous letter to FBI
chief Herbert Hoover unmasked Soviet spies. The letter said that
Vassili Zarubin and his wife, Soviet diplomats, were spies. The FBI
did not take action against them but focused on ways to fight
(WSJ, 10/4/96, p.A1)
1943 Lady Bird Johnson
purchased KTBC, a low-powered radio station in Texas. The Federal
Communications Commission, which reviewed all broadcast-license
transfers, was close to being abolished. Congressman Lyndon Johnson
used his political influence in both Congress and the White House to
prevent that from happening. In 1945 the FCC OK'd KTBC's request to
quintuple its power, which cast its signal over 63 counties.
1943 Jacqueline "Jackie"
Cochran convinced the U.S. military that qualified women pilots
could free men for combat duty by performing non-combat missions.
Supported by Eleanor Roosevelt and Army aviation chief General Henry
H. "Hap" Arnold, Cochran's goal was achieved with the formation of
the Women's Air Force Service Pilots (WASPs).
1943 The US began minting steel
pennies in order to save on copper for the war effort.
(SFEC, 9/8/96, Par p.21)
1943 A new $68 million carrier
USS Hornet was commissioned. It was named in honor of the carrier
that was sunk by the Japanese Oct 26, 1942 near Guadalcanal. The new
Hornet was the 8th US Navy ship to take the name.
(SFC, 8/17/98, p.A22)
1943 The new carrier USS
Intrepid was deployed and served as a mainstay of the war against
Japan in the Pacific. By the end of the war it lost 270 crew
members. It was decommissioned in 1974. New York builder Zach Fisher
saved it from the scrap year and by 1982 it was berthed off
Manhattan as the Intrepid Sea Air & Space Museum.
(SSFC, 11/12/06, p.A4)(WSJ, 11/8/08, p.W9)
1943 The US introduced the P-51
(WSJ, 8/14/97, p.A13)
1943 The Hanford nuclear
reservation was constructed in Washington state for the Manhattan
Project. Hanford made plutonium until the 1980s.
(SFC, 4/10/99, p.A7)
1943 The battleship Missouri
was launched. The Iowa class battleship was later made into a
memorial at Pearl Harbor.
(SFC, 9/14/96, p.A16)(SFC, 10/13/99, p.A6)
1943 In the Pacific, the
marines fought their way from Guadalcanal to Tarawa.
(TMC, 1994, p.1943)
1943 The Allies decided on
demanding unconditional surrender and a second front invasion was
led by Eisenhower.
(TMC, 1994, p.1943)
1943 Coast Guard Lt. Carlton
Skinner (d.2004) took command of the weather ship Sea Cloud, the 1st
fully integrated US naval warship.
(SSFC, 8/29/04, p.B7)
1943 The US Kooskia Internment
Camp for people of Japanese ancestry opened in northern Idaho. It
operated until the end of WWII and held more than 250 detainees.
Similar camps included Manzanar in California, Heart Mountain in
Wyoming and Minidoka in Idaho.
(SFC, 7/27/13, p.A7)
1943 Two American oil firms
decided to expand their refinery in Bahrain and hired Bechtel.
Capacity was doubled to 65,000 barrels per day.
(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.A8)
1943 The RP-5A was designed as
a reusable target drone for use by student aerial gunners. It was
flown by remote control and weighed 120 lbs. with a maximum speed of
85 mph. It ran on a 2-cycle, 2-cylinder motor and gasoline.
(FB, 9/12/96, p.B1)
1943 Austrian economist Paul
Rosenstein-Rodan (1902-1985) outlined his “big push" theory. The big
push model, a concept in development economics or welfare economics,
emphasizes the fact that a firm's decision whether to industrialize
or not depends on its expectation of what other firms will do. In
general it said that even the simplest activity requires a network
of other activities and that individual firms cannot organize such a
large network, so the state or some other giant agency must step in.
He emigrated to Britain in 1930, and taught at University College
London and then at London School of Economics until 1947. He then
moved to the World Bank, before moving on to MIT, where he was a
professor from 1953 to 1968.
1943 General Motors invited
Peter Drucker (1909-2005), a young author, to study the company from
the inside. His seminal study of General Motors: “The Concept of the
Corporation" (1946) introduced the idea of decentralization as a
principle of organization, in contrast to the practice of command
and control in business.
1943 The RCA Corp. was forced
to divest one of its two networks, the Blue radio network, and the
American Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) was formed.
(SFC, 12/28/99, p.B3)(SFC, 12/29/99, p.E3)
1943 Willem Kolff invented the
1st dialysis machine in Holland.
(WSJ, 10/2/03, p.A2)
1943 US psychiatrist Leo Kanner
1st described autism. Symptoms included a lack of interest in
(SSFC, 2/2/03, Par p.4)
1943 By this year the Hopi land
had dwindled to 624,000 acres and was surrounded by a
16-million-acre Navajo reservation.
(SFC, 1/3/97, p.A26)
1943 A UN concert was presented
by the SF CIO and featured Paul Robeson.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, DB p.23)
1943 The Main Library of San
Francisco reached full capacity.
(SFC, 4/14/96, EM, p.22)
1943 In San Francisco the
Westside Courts, a public housing project for African Americans,
opened at Bush and Baker streets.
(SFC, 8/6/16, p.C2)
1943 SF’s Fillmore merchants
voted to melt down the 14 cast-iron arches that spanned Fillmore
from Fulton to California streets to support the war effort.
(SFCM, 7/18/04, p.8)
1943 In San Francisco John
Brucato set up a produce market at Duboce and Market for small
farmers in the local area. In 1947 the market was moved to Alemany
and Crescent at the junction of Highway 101 and 280.
(SFC, 1/14/98, Z1 p.8)
1943 In San Francisco three
limited tenure black police officers were hired for the first time
to serve during World War II. Walter Ervin Threadgill (d.1997 at 86)
was one of 3 African Americans to enter the recruiting class.
(SFC, 10/7/97, p.A23)
1943 Paul Fagan, the wealthy
San Francisco businessman, shipped a herd of Hereford cattle to Hana
on the island of Maui, Hawaii. He owned the San Francisco Seals of
the pacific Coast League.
(SFEC, 9/8/96, p.T8)
1943 In California Cesare
Mondavi purchased the Charles Krug winery in Napa Valley and began
making wine with his sons Robert and Peter. Robert Mondavi
(1913-2008) persuaded his parents to buy Charles Krug Winery. Robert
became the salesman and his brother Peter the winemaker.
(USAT, 6/17/98, p.2D)(SFC, 5/17/08, p.A7)
1943 Preston T. Tucker
(1903-1956) of Ypsilanti, Michigan, developed an innovative new
passenger car for postwar America. The Tucker, of which only 51 were
built, boasted disc brakes, pop-out windshields, padded dashboards
and front-passenger crash compartments. It pioneered several
automotive features that would later become standard. Tuckers were
capable of a top speed of 122 mph and originally cost about $2,450.
The last Tucker was manufactured in 1948, shortly before Preston
Tucker faced charges of fraud by the Securities and Exchange
Commission. Tucker successfully fought off the SEC charges and was
at work on an automobile to be built in Brazil, the Carioca, when he
died in 1956.
1943 Richard James (d.1974)
observed a torsion spring balance bounce off a ship’s deck while
working at a Philadelphia shipyard and conceived the idea of a
"slinky" toy for children, named by his wife Betty James (d.2008).
In 1945 they founded James Industries. In 1998 the company was sold
to POOF Products of Michigan.
(IBCC, 10/97, #9)(SSFC, 11/23/08, p.B9)
1943 A US Army exercise used
live ammunition on the wrong beach at Slapton sands near Torquay,
England, and hundreds of people were killed.
(SFEC, 5/11/97, p.T16)
1943 Abraham Maslow, American
behavioral scientist, published an article entitled “A Theory of
Human Motivation," in which he argued that people everywhere are
subject to what he called a “hierarchy of needs."
(Econ, 2/14/09, SR p.7)
1943 Stephen Vincent Benet
(b.1898), novelist and poet, died. His poem "Western Star" won a 2nd
Pulitzer Prize shortly after his death. He authored the story "The
Devil and Daniel Webster."
(SFC, 1/2/98, p.C20)
1943 Marsden Hartley (b.1877),
one of the 1st American modern painters, died.
(SFC, 3/8/01, p.D7)
1943 Oscar Hartzell (68),
former Illinois farmer, died in a prison hospital with assets of 10
cents. At the turn of the century he had sold to some 100,000
Midwesterners pieces of the purported $100 billion estate of Sir
Francis Drake. He was tried and convicted of mail fraud in Sioux
City, Iowa. In 2002 Richard Rayner authored "Drake’s Fortune."
(WSJ, 5/17/02, p.W11)(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.M1)
1943 Gustav Vigeland (b.1869),
Norwegian sculptor, died. His major life's work was the creation of
212 sculptures of 600 figures in an Oslo park named Vigeland Park.
(SSFC, 6/22/03, p.A1)
1943 Laszlo Biro, fled his
native Hungary to Argentina, where he patented his ballpoint pen.
England soon manufactured some 30,000 pens for use by RAF navigators
in unpressurized cockpits, where fountain pens failed.
(SFEC, 5/23/99, p.B7)
1943 A draught occurred in the
outback of Western Australia.
(NH, 2/97, p.12)
1943 In Austria Sister
Restituta Kafka was beheaded by the Nazis for putting up crosses in
a hospital. Pope John Paul II planned to beatify her in 1998.
(SFC, 6/20/98, p.B3)(SFC, 6/22/98, p.A10)
1943 Bangladesh, while still
part of Pakistan, experienced a famine.
(Econ, 11/3/12, p.23)
1943 Brazil adopted a rigid
labor law transplanted from Benito Mussolini’s Italy.
(Econ 7/22/17, p.52)
1943 Gladwyn Jebb (1900-1996),
British diplomat, prepared the early drafts for the proposed UN
(SFC, 10/26/96, p.A20)
1943 Anthony E. Pratt, fire
warden in Leeds, England, conceived the game of "Clue," based on a
pre-war social game called Murder.
(SFEC, 12/1/96, p.C14)
1943 British scientists led by
Tommy Flowers (1905-1998) developed Colossus, the world's first
large electronic valve programmable logic calculator, in order to
break the German communication's code. Colossus is considered by
many to be the world's first digital, programmable electronic
computer. Its existence was only made public in 1989!
1943 Britain’s National Trust
purchased the stone circles of Avebury, Windham Hill and adjoining
(SSFC, 12/24/00, p.T4)
1943 Arthur Osborne, ceramic
designer, died in England. His business, which made plaster-of-Paris
plaques, continued operations under his daughter until 1965. W. H.
Bossons bought the company in 1971, removed the “AO" mark and
operated until 1997.
(SFC, 10/24/07, p.G2)
1943 British air strikes in
Greece hit the railway station and port of Thessaloniki. Hundreds of
local inhabitants died. One bomb that failed to detonate was
discovered in 2017 and was successfully defused following an
evacuation of tens of thousands.
1943 A Vultee BT-13 Valiant
disappeared on a flight from San Antonio, Texas, to Chile. Pilot
Werner Martinez and Sgt. Tomas Ayala were on ill-fated flight, which
crashed in Costa Rica. In 2008 police were led to the crash site
after an anonymous caller reported seeing a local resident carrying
plane parts in the town of San Isidro de El Guarco.
1943 Bulgarian King Boris
Cobourgh-Gotha III died shortly after he yielded to pressure from
Adolph Hitler to ally with Nazi Germany. Prince Simeon (6) acceded
to the thrown and reigned under regencies until 1946 when the
monarchy was abolished.
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A19)
1943 Fitzroy Maclean parachuted
into German-occupied Yugoslavia as Brigadier commanding the British
Military Mission to the Tito partisans. He later wrote his memoir:
"Eastern Approaches" that described his 2-years there.
(SFC, 4/2/99, p.A20)
1943 The French film “Le
Corbeau" was directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
(SFC, 10/31/15, p.E4)
1943 Working with a script by
Jean Cocteau, Jean Delannoy (1908-2008) revisited the Tristan and
Isolde legend in "L'Eternel Retour" (Eternal Return).
1943 In France Sabina Zlatin
(1907-1996) opened a home in Izieu to help Jewish children
threatened by Nazi capture. She managed to smuggle about a 100
children to freedom before being ruthlessly shutdown. [see 4/6/44.]
(SFC, 9/24/96, p.B2)
1943 Germaine Tillion
(1907-2008) was sent to the Nazi camp for women and children in
Ravensbruck, Germany, for her work with France's underground
Resistance network. Later she was the recipient of the Grand Cross
of the Legion of Honor, one of France's highest distinctions.
1943 In France Jacques Cousteau
and Emile Gagnan used a modified gas feeder valve as an oxygen
regulator for the "aqua lung."
(SFC, 6/26/97, p.A7)
1943 In Germany Karlrobert
Kreiten, a piano virtuoso, was executed by the Nazis after a
neighbor denounced him for offhand remarks about Hitler.
(SFC, 11/28/97, p.B8)
1943 Primo Levi (25) was sent
to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. He later authored
"Survival in Auschwitz."
(SFEC, 3/5/00, BR p.8)
1943 Roman Frister (15) was
sent to the Nazi concentration camp at Plaszow. In 1993 Frister
published his biography "The Cap: The Price of Life."
(SFEC, 3/5/00, BR p.8)
1943 In India Brajraj Kshatriya
Birbar Chamaputi Singh Mahapatra (1921-2015) became king of the 26
princely states of Orissa.
(Econ, 12/19/15, p.128)
1943 There was a major famine
in Bengal that left 3 million people dead. As many as three million
people died in India after Japan captured neighboring Burma -- a
major source of rice imports -- and British colonial rulers
stockpiled food for soldiers and war workers.
(SFC, 10/15/98, p.A2)(AFP, 4/9/19)
1943 Iraq declared war against
the Axis after British troops ran military leaders in support of
Hitler out of the country.
(SFEC, 3/15/98, Z1 p.8)
1943 Slave laborers at the
Japanese NKK Corp. went on strike. Kim Kyung Suk (16) of Korea was
hanged from a ceiling by company employees and beaten with wooden
and bamboo swords for leading the strike against the steel giant.
Suk filed suit in 1991 and was awarded $33,900 in compensation in
(SFC, 4/8/99, p.C3)
1943 Lebanese writer Said
Freiha founded the Dar al-Sayyad publishing house.
1943 Lebanon adopted
power-sharing agreement after the country won its independence from
France. Aimed at maintaining a balance between the 18 religious
communities, the agreement called for the president to be a Maronite
Christian, the prime minister to be Sunni Muslim and parliament
speaker a Shiite.
1943 William Tubman was elected
president of Liberia. He promoted foreign investment and local
participation in government.
1943 In Mexico the evangelical
church "Light of the World" began a relationship with the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The cult provided crowds at
political rallies in exchange political leverage.
(SFC, 2/19/98, p.A8,10)
1943 The Lacandon people of
southern Mexico went almost extinct. By 2019 their population had
grown significantly, yet remains small, at approximately 650
speakers of the Lacandon language. Their ancestral home in Chiapas
state is the last pocket of tropical rain forest in North America.
1943 Parcutin Volcano in
central Mexico began a 9-year eruption.
(AM, 3/04, p.50)
1943 Polish lawyer Raphael
Lemkin (1900-1959) coined the word genocide about this time. He
first used the word in print in “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws
of Occupation - Analysis of Government - Proposals for Redress"
(1944), and defined it as "the destruction of a nation or an ethnic
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Lemkin)(Econ., 4/18/15, p.10)
1943 Sergei Mikhalkov (96), an
author favored by Stalin, was commissioned to write the lyrics for
the Soviet and Russian national anthems. His lyrics, co-written with
journalist El Registan and set to music by Alexander Alexandrov,
lauded Stalin who "brought us up on loyalty to the people" and
"inspired us to labor and to heroism."
1943 Russia began producing
palladium in Norilsk.
(WSJ, 3/6/00, p.A1)
1943 In Slovenia Lojze Grozde
(20), a high school student, was captured as the country was
occupied by Italy and Germany. Communist-run antifascist rebels,
known as partisans, reportedly found a Latin prayer book in his
possession and suspected him of collaborating with Italian fascists.
His mutilated body was found a month later in a forest. In 2010
Grozde was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI.
1943 In Sweden the Riksbank
director Ivar Rooth wrote a memorandum that said he and Trade
Minister Hermann Eriksson discussed the risk that the gold Sweden
received from Germany was looted.
(SFC, 1/22/97, p.A9)
1943 Ingvar Kamprad (b.1926) of
Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd, began selling farm implements by mail order
under the name IKEA. The first deliveries were made by milk truck.
The 1st catalog was published in 1951 and the 1st showroom opened in
Almhult in 1953. By 1996 the Swedish firm had grown to $6.5 billion
in sales. In 1999 it had 152 stores in 28 countries.
(WSJ, 9/9/99, p.A24)(SFC, 3/10/00,
1943 In Tunisia Khaled
Abdelwahhab hid a group of Jews on his farm outside Mahdia, saving
them from the Nazi troops occupying the North African nation. In
2007 Abdelwahhab became the first Arab to be nominated for
recognition as "Righteous Among the Nations," an honor bestowed on
non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from Nazi persecution.
1943 Some 35,000 Poles in Lviv,
Ukraine, were massacred by extreme Ukrainian nationalists. Poland
opened investigations around 2001.
(SFC, 6/27/01, p.A12)
1943 Venezuela negotiated the
first 50-50 oil deal with Shell Oil and Standard Oil of New Jersey.
(WSJ, 9/13/99, p.R4)
1943-1944 Some 2,264 Japanese people from 13
Central and South American countries were sent to the US for
internment. In 1998 the US apologized and agreed to pay each of the
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.A1)
1943-1944 The US submarine Seahorse, commanded by
Capt. Slade D. Cutter (d.2005), sank 19 Japanese ships.
(SFC, 6/17/05, p.B5)
1943-1945 "FDR & Stalin: A Not So Grand
Alliance" by Amos Perlmutter covers this period.
(WSJ, 11/19/96, p.A22)
1943-1945 Some 4,800 soldiers of Germany’s Afrika
Corps were held in a POW camp near Hearne, Texas.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.28)
1943-1945 Ho Chi Minh worked for American
intelligence during this time rescuing downed American pilots and
reporting on Japanese troop movements in Vietnam. His story was
later told in the 1998 book: "Our Ho: Fact and Fiction" by Alan
1943-1947 Archibald Wavell (1883-1950), British
Field Marshal, served as the penultimate viceroy of India. In 2009
Adrian Fort authored “Archibald Wavell: The Life and Times of an
1943-1947 Thousands of Italians were killed by
Yugoslav partisans in and around the Istrian peninsula, which had
fallen to Italy after the 1st world war. Mussolini’s fascists had
brutally Italianized the peninsula prior to the arrival of the
(Econ, 8/28/04, p.48)
1943-1948 Little Lulu starred in an animated
cartoon series that later ran on TV. She appeared in comic books
from 1945-1980s and in newspapers from 1950 to 1969. Kleenex
advertisements featured her from 1944-1960.
(SFC, 2/4/98, Z1 p.6)
1943-1949 Chiang Kai-shek (1886?-1975), Chinese
statesman and president of the Republic (1943-1950).
(WUD, 1994, p.254)
1943-1955 Thomas E. Dewey (d.1971), born in
Owosso, Mich., in 1902, served as governor of New York. He also was
a two-time Republican presidential nominee.
(HN, 3/24/01)(AP, 3/24/02)(AH, 12/02, p.4)
1943-1957 The Kalmyks of southern Russia were
banished to Siberia on charges of collaborating with the Nazis. In
their absence their land was overgrazed and turned to desert. In an
attempt to solve the problem the steppe was irrigated with water
from the Volga which brought underlying salt to the surface and
turned some of the land to marsh.
(SFC, 11/6/97, p.D2)
1943-1960 Those born in this period in the US were
considered part of the "baby boomer" generation. In 2001 Joe Queenan
authored ""Balsamic Dreams: A Short But Self-Important History of
the Baby Boomer Generation."
(WSJ, 5/25/01, p.W8)
1943-1965 Members of the Special Operations
Division from Maryland’s Fort Detrick biological weapons program
conducted over 200 tests during this period on the effectiveness of
aerially dispersed pathogens. At least 4 men died during the years
of the project. Some 658,039 animals were killed, including sheep,
ferrets, cats, pigs, white mice and guinea pigs.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A11)(AH, 6/03, p.46)
1943-1986 Building E5625, the “Pilot Plant," at
the US Army Aberdeen Proving Ground was built and used for
experiments and production of agents in chemical and biological
warfare. In 1977 public knowledge of the pathogen experiments caused
(SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A11)
1943-1970 Janis Joplin, American rock singer:
"Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got."
1943-1971 Jim Morrison, American rock singer:
"When you make your peace with authority, you become authority."
1943-1996 Bobby Enriquez (aka the Wild Man of
Mindanao) jazz pianist. He was known for his fast fingerwork and
style of attacking the piano. In the Philippines he was hailed as
the "Ambassador of Jazz."
(SFC, 8/10/96, p.A20)