January 1941

Summary

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The following events occurred in January 1941:

January 1, 1941 (Wednesday) edit

January 2, 1941 (Thursday) edit

January 3, 1941 (Friday) edit

  • The Battle of Bardia began as part of Operation Compass. The Australian 6th Division assaulted the strongly held Italian fortress of Bardia, Libya.
  • The longest raid of the Bristol Blitz began, lasting 12 hours.
  • Éamon de Valera held an urgent session with his cabinet and sent a note of protest to Germany over the bombing of Dublin.[7]
  • The 77th United States Congress began.
  • Martin Bormann promulgated a Nazi decree banning gothic typefaces in all printing and proclaiming roman type as the new standard. The order sought to make Nazi communications more understandable in occupied France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway, where roman type was used.[8]
  • The results of a Gallup poll were published asking Americans, "Do you think our country's future safety depends on England winning this war?" 68% said yes, 26% said no and 6% expressed no opinion.[9]

January 4, 1941 (Saturday) edit

January 5, 1941 (Sunday) edit

January 6, 1941 (Monday) edit

January 7, 1941 (Tuesday) edit

  • Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto presented Minister of the Navy Koshirō Oikawa with his ideas for a war against the United States in a memorandum titled Gumbi ni kansuru shiken (Views on Preparations for War). Yamamato proposed a crippling first strike on American forces in the first few hours of the war, something that could best be accomplished by an air attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor.[12]
  • The New Fourth Army incident occurred in China when 80,000 forces of the Kuomintang attacked the Communist New Fourth Army in Maolin, Anhui Province, ending the co-operation of the two factions to fight the Japanese instead of each other.
  • A special committee of the Canadian government recommended that Japanese Canadians not be allowed to volunteer for the armed forces on the grounds of strong public opinion against them.[12]
  • Born: Iona Brown, violinist and conductor, in Salisbury, England (d. 2004); John E. Walker, chemist and Nobel laureate, in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England

January 8, 1941 (Wednesday) edit

January 9, 1941 (Thursday) edit

  • Hitler held a conference with his generals to discuss plans to attack the Soviet Union. Hitler said that German success in Russia would encourage Japan to attack the United States, thus keeping the Americans too occupied to get involved in the war in Europe.[15]
  • The Avro Lancaster had its first flight.
  • Born: Joan Baez, folk musician and activist, on Staten Island, New York

January 10, 1941 (Friday) edit

  • The British began Operation Excess, a series of supply convoys to Malta, Alexandria and Greece.
  • The British aircraft carrier Illustrious was severely damaged by Stukas as it escorted a convoy to Malta.[16]
  • President Roosevelt submitted H.R. 1776, better known as the Lend-Lease bill, to Congress.[17]
  • The German civil administration in the Netherlands ordered the registration of all Jews in the country.[18]
  • The results of a Gallup poll were published asking Americans, "Which of these two things do you think it is more important for the United States to try to do — to keep out of the war ourselves, or to help England win, even at the risk of getting into the war?" 60% said help England, 40% said keep out. A separate question asked, "If you were asked to vote on the question of the United States entering the war against Germany and Italy, how would you vote — to go into the war, or to stay out of the war?" 88% said stay out, 12% said go in.[9]
  • Died: Frank Bridge, 61, English composer, violinist and conductor; John Lavery, 84, Irish painter; Joe Penner, 36, American comedian (heart failure)

January 11, 1941 (Saturday) edit

January 12, 1941 (Sunday) edit

January 13, 1941 (Monday) edit

January 14, 1941 (Tuesday) edit

  • Romanian Conducător Ion Antonescu met with Hitler at Obersalzberg, where it was agreed that Antonescu would liquidate the Iron Guard.[25]
  • British Commander-in-Chief Middle East Archibald Wavell met Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas and General Alexander Papagos in Athens. Papagos requested nine British divisions plus air support, but Wavell replied that he could only offer two or three. Papagos declined the offer.[6]
  • The British government announced new price controls to thwart food profiteering. Price freezes were announced for more than 20 food items including coffee, rice, biscuits and jelly.[10]
  • Former Belgian Justice Minister Victor de Laveleye suggested in a BBC radio broadcast that Belgians use a V sign as a symbol of resistance, since the French and Flemish words for "victory" both started with the letter V. Within weeks the "V for victory" sign began appearing on walls in Belgium, northern France and Holland.[26]
  • German auxiliary cruiser Pinguin captured 14 ships of a Norwegian whaling fleet in a single operation.
  • In New York City, brothers Anthony and William Esposito held up a man in a Fifth Avenue office building, shot him dead and then led police in a daytime chase through Manhattan. Both men were eventually apprehended, but not before a police officer was slain and a cab driver wounded in the throat. The trial would become one of the most famous insanity defense cases in history.[27]
  • Born: Faye Dunaway, actress, in Bascom, Florida; Milan Kučan, 1st President of Slovenia, in Križevci, Gornji Petrovci, Kingdom of Yugoslavia

January 15, 1941 (Wednesday) edit

January 16, 1941 (Thursday) edit

  • The Germans bombed Malta for the first time, killing 50 people, destroying 200 buildings and damaging the capital city of Valletta.[13] The British aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious was hit and damaged again in Grand Harbour.[30]
  • The British troopship Oropesa was sunk in the Western Approaches by the German submarine U-96.[citation needed]
  • German submarine U-77 was commissioned.[citation needed]
  • US vice admiral Bellinger warns of an assault on Pearl Harbor.[citation needed]

January 17, 1941 (Friday) edit

  • The Battle of Ko Chang was fought in the Gulf of Thailand, resulting in Vichy French victory.[citation needed]
  • The British troopship Almeda Star was sunk north of Rockall by U-96.
  • Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov warned Germany against deploying troops in Bulgaria by stating that the Soviet Union considered Bulgaria a security zone.[31]
  • 23,190 people packed Madison Square Garden to watch Fritzie Zivic successfully defend the world welterweight boxing title against Henry Armstrong. The attendance is an all-time record for any of the different versions of the Garden.
  • Subhash Chandra Bose's arrest and subsequent release set the scene for his escape to Germany, via Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. A few days before his escape, he sought solitude and, on this pretext, avoided meeting British guards and grew a beard. Late night 16 January 1941, the night of his escape, he dressed as a Pathan (brown long coat, a black fez-type coat and broad pyjamas) to avoid being identified. Subhash Chandra Bose escaped from under British surveillance from his Elgin Road house in Calcutta on the night of 17 January 1941, accompanied by his nephew Sisir Kumar Bose, later reaching Gomoh Railway Station (now Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Gomoh Station) in the then state of Bihar (now Jharkhand), India.
  • Born: Manfred Schellscheidt, footballer and coach, in Söllingen, Germany

January 18, 1941 (Saturday) edit

January 19, 1941 (Sunday) edit

January 20, 1941 (Monday) edit

January 21, 1941 (Tuesday) edit

January 22, 1941 (Wednesday) edit

January 23, 1941 (Thursday) edit

  • The Legionnaires' rebellion was put down in Romania.[43]
  • Charles Lindbergh came before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee to oppose the Roosevelt Administration's Lend-Lease bill. Lindbergh testified that he would prefer to see "neither side win" in the war and hoped to see a "negotiated peace," and also expressed his belief that American entry into the war on Britain's side would still not be enough to defeat Germany without some kind of internal collapse.[44]
 
January 23, 1941: Groundbreaking for the NACA’s Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory

January 24, 1941 (Friday) edit

January 25, 1941 (Saturday) edit

  • Panjiayu tragedy: The Imperial Japanese Army conducted a massacre of the Chinese village of Panjiayu, Hebei, in accordance with the orders from General Yasuji Okamura that all Chinese villages suspected of harboring communist guerilla fighters were to be wiped out.[6]
  • William C. Bullitt told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that invasion of the Western Hemisphere by the Axis powers would be almost certain if the British Navy was eliminated and the Panama Canal blockaded before the United States was prepared. Bullitt said that "for our own self-preservation" the United States should ensure that Britain was not defeated.[51]
  • German submarine U-201 was commissioned.[citation needed]

January 26, 1941 (Sunday) edit

January 27, 1941 (Monday) edit

  • A report circulated claiming that the converted troopship RMS Empress of Australia had been torpedoed and was sinking 200 miles off Dakar.[53]
  • Allied shipping docked in the harbor of Tobruk for the first time.[6]
  • A conference on economic co-operation between the countries of South America opened in Montevideo. The conference lasted until February 6.[54]
  • Constitutional Act No. 7 was passed in Vichy France, requiring state secretaries, high dignitaries and high officials to swear allegiance to the Chief of State. Article 3 stated that if any of them should prove "unfaithful to his obligations", the Chief of State was empowered to impose penalties that included loss of political rights and detention in a fortress.[55]
  • Born: Beatrice Tinsley, English-born New Zealand astronomer and cosmologist, in Chester (d. 1981)[56]

January 28, 1941 (Tuesday) edit

  • British naval authorities made a terse announcement maintaining that the Empress of Australia was "safe in port".[57]
  • The British steamer Urla was sunk by the Italian submarine Luigi Torelli 250 miles west of Ireland; all 42 crew survived.[6]

January 29, 1941 (Wednesday) edit

January 30, 1941 (Thursday) edit

January 31, 1941 (Friday) edit

References edit

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  5. ^ Aideen Carroll (2010). Seán Moylan: Rebel Leader. Mercier Press Ltd. p. 243. ISBN 978-1-85635-669-5.
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  13. ^ a b c "1941". MusicAndHistory. Archived from the original on August 28, 2012. Retrieved December 31, 2015.
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