1941 - What happened in 1941 ?

January 1941

Friday 10:

Lend-Lease is introduced into the U.S. Congress.

Sunday 19:

World War II: British troops attack Italian-held Eritrea.

Wednesday 22:

World War II: The United Kingdom captures Tobruk from Nazi forces.

Thursday 23:

Charles Lindbergh testifies before the U.S. Congress and recommends that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler.

Saturday 25:

Pope Pius XII elevates the Apostolic Vicariate of the Hawaiian Islands to the dignity of a diocese. It becomes the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu.

February 1941

Monday 03:

World War II: The Nazis forcibly restore Pierre Laval to office in occupied Vichy, France.

Tuesday 04:

World War II: The United Service Organization (USO) is created to entertain American troops.

Tuesday 11:

First Gold record presented to Glenn Miller for "Chattanooga Choo Choo".

Wednesday 19:

World War II: The Deutsches Afrikakorps, the corps-level headquarters controlling the German Panzer divisions in North Africa, was formed.

March 1941

Tuesday 04:

Britain launches Operation Claymore on the Lofoten Islands, during World War II.

Tuesday 11:

World War II: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act into law, allowing American-built war supplies to be shipped to the Allies on loan.

Monday 17:

In Washington, DC, the National Gallery of Art is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Tuesday 25:

Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers.

Saturday 29:

World War II: British Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy forces intercept those of the Italian Regia Marina off the Peloponnesus coast of Greece in the Battle of Cape Matapan.

April 1941

Thursday 03:

Hungarian and German troops march into Yugoslavia.

Sunday 06:

Germany invades Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Greece.

Sunday 13:

Pact of neutrality between the USSR and Japan is signed

Thursday 17:

World War II: The Kingdom of Yugoslavia surrenders to Germany.

Sunday 27:

World War II: German troops enter Athens.

May 1941

Thursday 01:

Cheerios is introduced as CheeriOats by the General Mills cereal company.

Friday 09:

World War II: The German submarine U-110 is captured by the Royal Navy. On board is the latest Enigma cryptography machine which Allied cryptographers later use to break coded German messages.

Saturday 10:

World War II: Rudolf Hess parachutes into Scotland in order to try and negotiate a peace deal between the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany.

Thursday 15:

Baseball player Joe DiMaggio starts his record-breaking 56-game hitting streak.

Friday 30:

World War II: Germany captures Crete.

June 1941

Sunday 01:

World War II: Battle of Crete ends as Crete capitulates to Germany.

Sunday 08:

World War II: Allies invade Syria and Lebanon.

Sunday 22:

The Lithuanian 1941 independence begins

Monday 23:

Lithuanian Activist Front initiates Lithuanian 1941 independence from the Soviet Union; it lasted only briefly as the Nazis occupied Lithuania a few weeks later.

Tuesday 24:

Government of briefly independent Lithuania conducts its first meeting under prime minister Juozas Ambrazevičius

July 1941

Friday 04:

Mass murder of Polish scientists and writers, committed by Nazi Germans in captured Polish city of Lwów.

Saturday 05:

World War II: German troops reach the Dniepr River.

Sunday 13:

World War II: Montenegrins start the first popular uprising in Europe against the Axis Powers (Crnogorski ustanak).

Sunday 27:

Japanese troops occupy French Indo-China.

Thursday 31:

Holocaust: Under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi official Hermann Göring, orders SS general Reinhard Heydrich to "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question."

August 1941

Friday 01:

The first Jeep is produced.

Thursday 14:

Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt sign the Atlantic Charter of war stating postwar aims

Monday 18:

Adolf Hitler orders a temporary halt to Nazi Germany's systematic euthanasia of mentally ill and handicapped due to protests.

Friday 22:

World War II: German troops reach Leningrad, leading to the siege of Leningrad

Saturday 30:

Siege of Leningrad begins.

September 1941

Monday 08:

World War II: Siege of Leningrad begins. German forces begin a siege against the Soviet Union's second-largest city, Leningrad. Stalin orders the Volga Deutsche deported to Siberia.

Monday 15:

The U.S. Attorney General rules that the Neutrality Act is not violated when U.S. ships carry war materiel to British territories, opening the door for the Lend-Lease Act.

Tuesday 16:

Concerned that Reza Pahlavi the Shah of Persia was about to align his petroleum-rich country with Germany during World War II, the United Kingdom and the USSR occupy Iran and forced him to resign in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Saturday 27:

The SS Patrick Henry is launched becoming the first of more that 2,700 Liberty ships.

Monday 29:

The Babi Yar massacre begins.

October 1941

Thursday 02:

World War II: In Operation Typhoon, Germany begins an all-out offensive against Moscow.

Friday 17:

For the first time in World War II, a German submarine attacks an American ship

Tuesday 21:

World War II: Germans rampage in Yugoslavia, killing thousands of civilians.

Thursday 23:

World War II: Georgy Zhukov assumes command of Red Army efforts to stop the German advance into Russia.

Thursday 30:

World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves US$1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union.

November 1941

Thursday 13:

World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal is torpedoed by U 81, she sinks on November 14.

Saturday 15:

SS chief Heinrich Himmler orders the arrest and deportation to concentration camps of all homosexuals in Germany, with the exception of certain top Nazi officials.

Friday 21:

The radio program King Biscuit Time is broadcast for the first time (it would later become the longest running daily radio broadcast in history and the most famous live blues radio program).

Monday 24:

World War II: The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French.

Wednesday 26:

1941 - World War II: The Hull note ultimatum is delivered to Japan by the United States.

December 1941

Monday 01:

World War II: Mayor of New York City, Fiorello LaGuardia, and the director of the Office of Civilian Defense, sign an order creating the Civil Air Patrol.

Friday 05:

The nonfiction book Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck is published (Steinbeck used knowledge gained writing this book to develop the marine biologist character Doc in Cannery Row).

Sunday 07:

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor officially brings the United States into World War II.

Tuesday 09:

China and Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea declares war on Japan, Germany, and Italy.

Wednesday 10:

Japanese forces land in the Philippines, capture Guam and sink the British ships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse