August 18th, 1939 (FRIDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM:
Placards have been appearing in London with a simple but ambiguous question, 'What price Churchill?' Now The Times prints a letter signed by 375 academics urging the Prime Minister to include Churchill in his cabinet. As the Foreign Office learns that a German attack on Poland is threatened to take place in two weeks' time, Sir Nevile Henderson, the British Ambassador in Berlin, begs Chamberlain to write personally to Hitler.Patrol vessel HMS Pintail is launched.
Light cruiser HMS Kenya laid down. (Daver Shirlaw)
GERMANY:
Donitz despatches his 35 operational U-boats. 18 go to the eastern Atlantic and the
remaining 17 are sent to the Baltic for operations against Poland and possibly Russia too.
U.S.S.R.:
1st Army Group in the Lake Khasan and Khalkin-Gol region of Siberia, under Corps Commander
Georgi Zhukov, report a state of readiness after 57500 tons of supplies have reached them
over dirt roads 465 miles from the Trans-Siberian railhead. There are ready to begin a
counter-offensive against the Japanese.