Remembering History by day WW2

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I have always considered this the single overall "Biggest mistake of WW2".

1941 : Germany declares war on the United States


On this day, Adolf Hitler declares war on the United States, bringing America, which had been neutral, into the European conflict.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor surprised even Germany. Although Hitler had made an oral agreement with his Axis partner Japan that Germany would join a war against the United States, he was uncertain as to how the war would be engaged. Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor answered that question. On December 8, Japanese Ambassador Oshima went to German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop to nail the Germans down on a formal declaration of war against America. Von Ribbentrop stalled for time; he knew that Germany was under no obligation to do this under the terms of the Tripartite Pact, which promised help if Japan was attacked, but not if Japan was the aggressor. Von Ribbentrop feared that the addition of another antagonist, the United States, would overwhelm the German war effort.
But Hitler thought otherwise. He was convinced that the United States would soon beat him to the punch and declare war on Germany. The U.S. Navy was already attacking German U-boats, and Hitler despised Roosevelt for his repeated verbal attacks against his Nazi ideology. He also believed that Japan was much stronger than it was, that once it had defeated the United States, it would turn and help Germany defeat Russia. So at 3:30 p.m. (Berlin time) on December 11, the German charge d'affaires in Washington handed American Secretary of State Cordell Hull a copy of the declaration of war.
That very same day, Hitler addressed the Reichstag to defend the declaration. The failure of the New Deal, argued Hitler, was the real cause of the war, as President Roosevelt, supported by plutocrats and Jews, attempted to cover up for the collapse of his economic agenda. "First he incites war, then falsifies the causes, then odiously wraps himself in a cloak of Christian hypocrisy and slowly but surely leads mankind to war," declared Hitler-and the Reichstag leaped to their feet in thunderous applause.

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December 11, 1944 Surprise attack on House of Keeping Axe, 29 prisoners freed

December 11, 1942 Australian/Dutch guerrilla troops evacuated to Timor near Australia

December 11, 1941 Dutch government in London declares war on Italy
December 11, 1941 Germany and Italy declare war on US
December 11, 1941 Japanese attack Wake Island (only failed WW II-landing)
December 11, 1941 Japanese occupy Guam

December 11, 1940 Russian general Zhukov warns of German assault

December 11, 1939 New anti Jewish measurements in Poland, proclaimed

[Peter Clare]

USS REID (December 11, 1944)
American destroyer escorting a supply convoy to Ormoc Bay on the island of Leyte. When off the coast of Limasawa Island, the Reid was sunk by two Japanese suicide aircraft. Of her crew, 104 men died. On November 2, 1996 a commemorative ceremony was held over the site of the sunken vessel. Three of the survivors, who had recently died, had requested that their ashes be scattered on the waters over the wreck.

[jacobtowne]

1941 Spare Tires Outlawed

On this day in 1941, Buick lowered its prices to reflect the absence of spare tires or inner tubes from its new cars. Widespread shortages caused by World War II had led to many quotas and laws designed to conserve America's resources. One of these laws prohibited spare tires on new cars. Rubber, produced overseas, had become almost impossible to get. People didn't mind the spare-tire law too much, though. They were too busy dealing with quotas for gasoline, meat, butter, shoes, and other essentials.

JT

[Peter Clare]

1941 : United States seizes French liner Normandie


On this day, the U.S. Navy takes control of the largest and most luxurious ocean liner on the seas at that time, France's Normandie, while it is docked at New York City. Shortly thereafter, the conversion for U.S. wartime use began.
The Normandie was unique in many ways. It was the first ship built, in 1931, in accordance with the guidelines laid down in the 1929 Convention for Safety of Life at Sea. It was also huge, measuring 1,029 feet long and 119 feet wide. It displaced 85,000 tons of water. It offered passengers seven accommodation classes (including the new "tourist" class, as opposed to the old "third" class, commonly known as "steerage") and 1,975 berths. It took a crew of more than 1,300 to work her. But despite its size, it was also fast: capable of 32.1 knots. The liner was launched in 1932 and made its first transatlantic crossing in 1935. In 1937, it was reconfigured with four-bladed propellers, which meant it could now cross the Atlantic in less than four days.
When France surrendered to the Germans in June 1940, and the puppet Vichy regime was installed, the Normandie was in dock at New York City. Immediately placed in "protective custody" by the Navy, it was clear that the U.S. government was not about to let a ship of such size and speed fall into the hands of the Germans, which it certainly would upon returning to France. In November 1941, Time magazine ran an article stating that in the event of the United States' involvement in the war, the Navy would seize the liner altogether and turn it into an aircraft carrier. It also elaborated on how the design of the ship made such a conversion relatively simple. When the Navy did take control of the ship, shortly after Pearl Harbor, it began the conversion of the liner-but to a troop ship, renamed the USS Lafayette (after the French general who aided the American Colonies in their original quest for independence).
The Lafayette never served its new purpose. On February 9, 1942, the ship caught fire and capsized. Sabotage was originally suspected, but the likely cause was sparks from a welder's torch. Although the ship was finally righted, the massive salvage operation cost $3,750,000--and the fire damage made any hope of employing the vessel impossible. It was scrapped--literally chopped up for scrap metal--in 1946.

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December 12, 1942 German offensive in South Western Stalingrad

December 12, 1941 European reservists on Java mobilizes
December 12, 1941 German occupying army do a house search in Paris looking for Jews
December 12, 1941 Russian 20th army recaptures Soljetsjnogorsk

December 12, 1940 British troops conquer Sidi el-Barrani

[Peter Clare]

ADMIRAL GRAF SPEE (December 13-17, 1939)
The German 16,000 ton battleship, damaged during the Battle of the River Plate off the coast of Uruguay, in which the British cruisers Exeter, Ajax and the New Zealand manned light cruiser Achilles took part, is forced to take refuge in the neutral port of Montevideo where she was granted only a temporary stay. During the battle, 72 British sailors were killed and 36 men killed from the Graf Spee. During her war cruise of 77 days, the Graf Spee had sunk nine merchant ships totalling 50,000 tons. The battleship was scuttled by her crew on the 17th, soon after she left port. The ship was blown up by her own torpedoes which were rigged to explode after her crew had been taken off. Rather than see the ship humiliated in defeat, Hitler had ordered her destruction. Her commander, Captain Hans Langsdorff, who never willingly gave the Nazi salute, committed suicide three days later. (He is buried in the German Cemetery in Buenos Aires) During her short career the Graf Spee had sunk nine ships totalling 50,089 tons. These were the steamships Clement, Newton Beach, Ashlea, Huntsman, Trevanion, Africa Shell, Doric Star, Tairoa, and Streonshalh.

[Peter Clare]

HMS ALDENHAM (December 14, 1944)
British destroyer. After escorting several convoys to the besieged island of Malta, the Aldenham (Cdr. J. G. Farrent) hit a mine in the north-eastern Adriatic and sank with the loss of five officers and 116 ratings.

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1939 : USSR expelled from the League of Nations


On this day, the League of Nations, the international peacekeeping organization formed at the end of World War I, expels the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in response to the Soviets' invasion of Finland on October 30.
Although the League of Nations was more or less the brainchild of President Woodrow Wilson, the United States, which was to have sat on the Executive Council, never joined. Isolationists in the Senate--put off by America's intervention in World War I, which they felt was more of a European civil war than a true world war--prevented American participation. While the League was born with the exalted mission of preventing another "Great War," it proved ineffectual, being unable to protect China from a Japanese invasion or Ethiopia from an Italian one. The League was also useless in reacting to German remilitarization, which was a violation of the Treaty of Versailles, the document that formally set the peace terms for the end of World War I.
Germany and Japan voluntarily withdrew from the League in 1933, and Italy left in 1937. The true imperial designs of the Soviet Union soon became apparent with its occupation of eastern Poland in September of 1939, ostensibly with the intention of protecting Russian "blood brothers," Ukrainians and Byelorussians, who were supposedly menaced by the Poles. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were then terrorized into signing "mutual assistance" pacts, primarily one-sided agreements that gave the USSR air and naval bases in those countries. But the invasion of Finland, where no provocation or pact could credibly be adduced to justify the aggression, resulted in worldwide reaction. President Roosevelt, although an "ally" of the USSR, condemned the invasion, causing the Soviets to withdraw from the New York World's Fair. And finally, the League of Nations, drawing almost its last breath, expelled it.

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RN Cruiser Galatea sunk 30 miles west of Alexandria 14/12/1941 by U-557.