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An overnight meeting in Berlin

President Emil Hácha had travelled to Berlin on 14 March 1939; the decisive meeting ran past midnight. Hitler told him German troops would enter the Czech lands that morning, and under threats that included the destruction of Prague, Hácha accepted an agreement placing the Czech country in Hitler's hands.

Hácha then ordered Czech authorities not to resist. His foreign minister, František Chvalkovský, signed the Berlin agreement with him.

Six in the morning to Prague Castle by evening

The principal German columns — 17 divisions plus three separate SS regiments were assigned to the operation — crossed the frontier at 6:00 a.m. Mechanized troops reached Prague around 9:00 a.m.

Executive power in the occupied lands passed immediately to a German military administration headed by the army commander-in-chief, Walther von Brauchitsch. Hitler reached occupied Prague Castle that evening.

The occupation was almost, but not entirely, unopposed: Czech soldiers at Místek fought German troops despite the general no-resistance order.

Two other things happened that day

At Khust, the Soim of Carpatho-Ukraine confirmed independence, adopted a republican constitution and elected Avgustyn Voloshyn president — while Hungarian forces were already invading. Hungary's occupation of Transcarpathia was not completed until 18 March.

The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was not created by the troop entry. Hitler's decree formally constituting it followed on 16 March.

Signed at the New Reich Chancellery

Joachim von Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano signed the Pact of Friendship and Alliance in Berlin on 22 May 1939. Hitler and Mussolini did not sign it themselves; their foreign ministers did.

After the signing, Hitler ceremonially handed the treaty to Ciano in the presence of German officials including Hermann Göring. A Library of Congress photograph preserves the moment.

The treaty took effect immediately, for an initial period of ten years.

Seven public articles

The pact required continuous consultation, political and diplomatic support when either party's vital interests were threatened, and immediate military assistance — land, sea and air — if either became involved in war. It was not merely defensive.

Article IV established military and war-economy cooperation with permanent commissions under the foreign ministers. Article V barred either partner from making a separate armistice or peace in a jointly fought war.

The secret supplementary protocol did not carry the core obligations; it concerned the rapid organization of those commissions and cooperation in press, information and propaganda.

The assumption that wasn't in the text

Three-power negotiations with Japan had stalled — Japan wanted an anti-Soviet alignment while Germany and Italy sought leverage against Britain and France — so Ribbentrop proposed an interim bilateral pact.

Mussolini authorized unusually automatic obligations while believing a European conflict could be delayed until about 1943. That expectation was an Italian policy assumption encouraged by German reassurances, not a clause in the signed treaty.

Germany invaded Poland just over three months later.

The date does not hold

No authoritative source consulted corroborates a nationwide closure of the 'last remaining Jewish enterprises' in Germany on 6 July 1939. There is no person, decree, place or immediate result to attach to it.

The German Historical Museum dates the forced closure of businesses owned by Jews from January 1939.

Two nearby measures may explain the error: a Reich law of 6 July 1938 excluding Jews from certain trades and health resorts, and a decree of 4 July 1939 creating the compulsory Reich Association of Jews in Germany, reported publicly around 7 July.

What the record does support

The verifiable nationwide measure was Göring's Regulation for the Elimination of the Jews from the Economic Life of Germany, signed 12 November 1938. It barred Jews from retail stores, mail-order businesses, sales agencies and trades beginning 1 January 1939.

It empowered authorities to close violating businesses, and permitted remaining enterprises to be liquidated or transferred to non-Jewish ownership, subject to official exceptions.

Not closure so much as seizure

'Last remaining' is also too absolute. Aryanization frequently meant forced transfer at a depressed price rather than the shuttering of the firm; coerced sellers sometimes accepted 20 to 30 percent of a business's actual value.

Of roughly 100,000 Jewish-owned businesses in Germany at the beginning of 1933, about two-thirds had already been closed or transferred by 1938.

The July 1939 Reich Association decree segregated and controlled Jewish communal life; it was not the decree that closed Jewish retail businesses.

The surrender at the Jabłonowski Palace

The fighting around Kock ran 2–5 October 1939; 6 October is the date of the negotiated capitulation, which is a separate marker. General Franciszek Kleeberg formally surrendered the Independent Operational Group Polesie to German General Gustav von Wietersheim at the Jabłonowski Palace in Kock.

Polish and German representatives had negotiated terms and a ceasefire overnight. The laying down of arms began at about 10:00 a.m.

Roughly 17,000 Polish troops entered German captivity, including 1,255 officers and four generals.

Not defeated in the field

SGO Polesie was a composite force of regulars, reservists, volunteers, sailors and other regrouped units, facing the German XIV Motorized Corps with its 13th and 29th Motorized Infantry Divisions.

It had not been tactically annihilated. On 5 October it forced elements of the 13th Motorized Division to retreat; what ended the fight was exhausted ammunition, food and medical supplies with no prospect of relief.

Kleeberg concluded further bloodshed would be pointless and took personal responsibility in his final order.

The underground had already started

The surrender ended regular Polish Army operations in the 1939 defensive campaign — conventionally called the September Campaign, despite this October date.

It did not mark the beginning of underground resistance. The Service for Poland's Victory had been founded in besieged Warsaw on 27 September, while Kleeberg's force was still fighting.

Poland's internationally recognized government and armed forces continued abroad, so the capitulation did not legally end the Polish state or its part in the war.

Moved on the 23rd, passed on the 24th

At the All-India Muslim League's open session at Minto Park, Lahore, the Bengal premier A. K. Fazlul Huq formally moved the resolution on 23 March 1940. Choudhury Khaliquzzaman seconded it and other provincial leaders spoke in support.

Debate ran into 24 March, when the session unanimously adopted it. Pakistan commemorates the 23rd, but documentary histories and Banglapedia distinguish the day it was introduced from the day it passed.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah presided over the three-day session, arguing that India's Muslims constituted a nation rather than a minority.

What the text actually said

The resolution rejected the federal scheme of the Government of India Act 1935 and declared that no constitutional plan would be acceptable unless Muslim-majority areas in India's northwestern and eastern zones were grouped into 'independent states,' whose constituent units would be autonomous and sovereign.

It required constitutional safeguards for minorities both inside the proposed units and elsewhere in India — religious, cultural, economic, political and administrative.

It authorized the League Working Committee to prepare a scheme under which the regions would ultimately assume defence, external affairs, communications and customs.

Whose draft, and whose plural

Authorship is contested. Punjab premier Sikandar Hayat Khan said he prepared an original draft that the Working Committee radically altered, removing its provisions for a coordinating centre; Fazlul Huq, Abdullah Haroon and others also made claims, and the record shows substantial committee redrafting.

Newspapers quickly called it the 'Pakistan Resolution' even though the name appears nowhere in the text.

The relationship between plural 'independent states' and their 'autonomous and sovereign' units was left ambiguous; a 1946 League convention used the singular 'state,' sharpening the later dispute over what 1940 had meant.

Denmark: one hour forty-five minutes

Operation Weserübung began before dawn on 9 April 1940, with German land, sea and airborne forces striking Denmark and Norwegian objectives from Oslofjord to Narvik — Oslo, Arendal, Kristiansand, Egersund, Stavanger, Bergen and Trondheim.

German troops crossed the Jutland border at 04:15 while a troopship entered Copenhagen and landed 800 men at the Langelinie quay. Facing an ultimatum and a threat to bomb the capital, King Christian X and the government ordered resistance to end and capitulated at 06:00.

Faulty communications left isolated fighting running until 08:15; documented Danish losses were 13 soldiers and three border gendarmes killed, with 21 soldiers wounded.

Oscarsborg changes the Oslo plan

At Oscarsborg Fortress, Colonel Birger Eriksen's batteries opened fire on the German cruiser Blücher at 04:21. She sank at 06:22.

That delayed the seizure of Oslo long enough for King Haakon VII, the government and members of parliament to escape by train. Germans entered the city later that morning, but the planned surprise capture of the king and government had failed.

Off the Lofoten Islands, HMS Renown opened fire at 04:05 at 18,600 yards on Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, damaging Gneisenau before the German ships withdrew in severe weather.

A coup announced over the radio

Norway's elected government rejected the German demand to submit and left Oslo. That evening Vidkun Quisling used Norwegian radio to announce an unauthorized new government and order resistance to stop — the first attempted coup conducted by broadcast.

By nightfall Germany held Denmark and bridgeheads at Norway's principal ports and airfields. Norway did not capitulate: its constitutional government remained free and ordered continued resistance, and Quisling's self-proclaimed government was displaced within days.

04:05 to 10:30

Martin Bormann's contemporary diary records departure for the airfield at 04:05 on 23 June 1940, a flight to Paris, inspections of Les Invalides, La Madeleine and the Opéra, and a return flight to Hitler's field headquarters at 10:30.

The French institutional history puts the Paris portion at roughly 06:00 to 08:15; a USHMM archival-film description gives about three hours in the city.

This was not a public victory parade. Hitler toured an almost empty occupied city.

Two architects and a sculptor

The party included the sculptor Arno Breker, the architects Albert Speer and Hermann Giesler, senior officers and Nazi officials. They visited or passed the Opéra, Place de la Concorde, Arc de Triomphe, Les Invalides and Napoleon's tomb, the Panthéon, Notre-Dame, the Louvre, Montmartre and Sacré-Cœur.

At the Trocadéro, Hitler posed with Speer and Breker against the Eiffel Tower while Heinrich Hoffmann's photographers and a German newsreel crew recorded the scene. He did not go up the tower — its lift cables had been severed before the occupation.

Why the date was argued about

Participants' postwar memoirs conflict: Breker, Christa Schroeder and Heinz Linge gave 23 June; Giesler gave 24 June; Speer and Nicolaus von Below gave 28 June. French institutional history accordingly lists 23 or 28 June.

The strongest evidence for the 23rd is Bormann's contemporaneous diary, which records the Paris trip under that date; the Deutsches Historisches Museum also dates it there.

The visit produced no military or administrative decision in the city. France had signed the armistice the previous day, though the ceasefire did not take effect until 25 June.

Bastille Day, from London

Winston Churchill delivered the BBC broadcast now titled 'The War of the Unknown Warriors' from London on 14 July 1940. A contemporary recording survives, running about seventeen minutes.

Its first substantial subject was not defiance but the French fleet. Churchill defended Britain's recent action against French warships, arguing that the armistice could have put those ships within Germany's power, and promised not to molest French vessels that stayed away from German- or Italian-controlled ports.

Speaking on France's national day, he predicted a liberated France and said Britain was fighting by itself but not solely for itself.

“We shall ask for none”

On the threatened invasion he declared: 'we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parley; we may show mercy — we shall ask for none.'

He described plans to defend every village, town and city, and gave figures: 1.5 million under arms in the Army, more than a million in the Home Guard, more than 1,000 armed ships under the White Ensign.

He asked listeners to prepare not merely for the coming winter but for 1941 and 1942.

What the broadcast was not

It did not proclaim 'total war' — Churchill promised resistance and a long war, not a new legal or economic state. Nor did it establish his government: the all-party coalition had been formed on 10 May 1940.

The title comes from the closing passage, about service by ordinary people whose names would never be known and whose deeds would never be recorded.

By the following day, overseas newspapers were reproducing his refusal to negotiate and his warning that Britain awaited a German assault without fear.

Called to order at Chicago Stadium

The Democratic Party opened its national convention at Chicago Stadium on 15 July 1940. Democratic National Committee chairman James A. Farley called it to order, and Chicago mayor Edward J. Kelly welcomed the delegates.

Kelly turned his welcoming address into an appeal to draft President Franklin D. Roosevelt for a third term. A two-term presidency was still a political tradition rather than a constitutional limit.

At the evening session, House Speaker William B. Bankhead served as temporary chairman and delivered the keynote.

The famous scenes came later

Alben Barkley's reading of Roosevelt's message and the staged 'We want Roosevelt' demonstration — the disembodied chant often described as a voice from the sewers — belong to 16 July, not opening day. The Congressional Record identifies Barkley as permanent chairman on the 16th.

No presidential nomination occurred on the 15th. On opening day the published program still reserved selection of the nominee for a later session.

When the balloting actually happened

Contemporary accounts assign the presidential balloting to 17 July, the convention's third day, with reports describing Roosevelt as nominated early on 18 July. Either chronology excludes the 15th.

Roosevelt's remotely delivered acceptance came shortly after midnight at the start of 19 July — a separate act from the convention-floor nomination.

By the end of opening day the convention machinery was running and Kelly had publicly advanced the draft campaign, but the party had neither heard Roosevelt's message nor chosen its nominee.

Fischer, not Frank

On 2 October 1940 Ludwig Fischer, governor of the Warsaw District in the German-controlled General Government, issued the order establishing a compulsory 'Jewish residential district' in Warsaw.

Fischer was Hans Frank's subordinate, and it is Frank whose name the listing attaches to the act. The formal instrument was Fischer's: it delineated the prospective Jewish and German districts and started the final forced-relocation process.

Walls had been going up for months. The decisive change was turning an urban district into a compulsory one.

251,000 forced moves

Implementation compelled Jewish residents outside the designated district to move into it, and non-Jewish Polish residents to leave it, over the following weeks: 138,000 Jews in, 113,000 Poles out.

German police closed the crossings and imposed passes on 15–16 November, physically isolating the district from the rest of the city.

Which date counts as 'establishment'

Establishment was a process rather than one agreed date. Fischer signed on 2 October; boundaries were publicized in mid-October, with some accounts citing a 12 or 16 October announcement; USHMM dates the sealing to 15 November and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum to the 16th.

More than 350,000 people were confined when it was sealed, in an area of about 1.3 square miles — 2.4 percent of Warsaw. The population approached 500,000 only later.

The death penalty for leaving without authorization was not in force from the sealing; it came with Hans Frank's separate decree of 15 October 1941.

Sirens at 4:43 p.m.

London's air-raid sirens sounded at 4:43 p.m. on 7 September 1940. Soon afterward a first wave of roughly 400 Heinkel and Dornier bombers reached the city and dropped high-explosive and incendiary bombs.

The Luftwaffe concentrated this daylight attack on docks, warehouses, factories and the homes beside them in east and south London. Imprecise area bombing devastated civilian neighbourhoods along with the intended targets.

This was not the first bomb to fall on London. It was the first mass raid of the sustained Blitz.

The second wave, guided by the first

An all-clear sounded around 6:30 p.m. About ninety minutes later, more than 300 aircraft began a second attack carrying some 300 tonnes of high explosives and landmines.

The fires from the daylight raid helped guide the night bombers in. The attack ran until about 4:30 a.m. on 8 September.

By dawn 430 Londoners were dead and 1,600 injured.

Why the Luftwaffe turned to the city

German intelligence had incorrectly concluded that RAF Fighter Command and the airfields protecting London were near collapse, so Luftwaffe leaders shifted the main weight of the offensive onto London's docks and communications.

The air battle was still very much in progress; major daylight fighting continued, including the attacks of 15 September.

The National Archives and the London Museum describe 57 consecutive nights of bombing beginning on 7 September; the Imperial War Museums date the principal Blitz from that night to 11 May 1941.

A bill, not an act

On 8 February 1941 the U.S. House of Representatives completed debate and passed H.R. 1776, formally titled a bill 'further to promote the defense of the United States.' The roll call was 260 in favour, 165 against.

The listing calls this the passage of the Lend-Lease Act. It was not: the vote cleared the bill from one chamber. Senate approval, agreement on amendments and the president's signature were all still required.

H.R. 1776 became law on 11 March, after the Senate passed it on 8 March.

What the text would allow

The proposed legislation would let the president arrange the manufacture, procurement and transfer of defense articles for governments whose defense he deemed vital to U.S. defense.

Transfers could go by sale, exchange, lease, loan or other disposition, with the president determining satisfactory terms and any direct or indirect benefit to the United States.

Lend-Lease was therefore not a gift: repayment could be in property, in kind, or through another benefit the president found satisfactory.

Why it was on the floor at all

H.R. 1776 reached the floor because Roosevelt wanted authority to supply defense articles without requiring immediate cash payment; the House majority leader, John W. McCormack, had put the text in on 10 January that year.

Britain's dwindling ability to pay cash under the existing arrangements had prompted Churchill's warning that it could not keep buying American supplies indefinitely.

That night, the president still had no Lend-Lease authority.