1932 (TUESDAY)
HUNGARY: Julius Gambas emerges as the new premier of the Hungarian government. An ardent nationalist and revisionist, Gambas will seek to revise Hungary's boundaries through closer cooperation with Fascist Italy.
SWITZERLAND: The League of Nations appoints a commission of inquiry to investigate the situation in Manchuria when the Chinese government appeals to the League under Articles X, XI, and XV of the Covenant. The Lytton Report found that the Japanese had violated Chinese sovereignty in Manchuria by their military action of September 1931 (which was not conducted in self-defense) and that the creation of Manchukuo did not represent a genuine independence movement. Rather than ordering the Japanese to withdraw from Manchuria, the commission recommends a settlement which would recognize Japan's special interests in the region--Manchuria would become an autonomous state under Chinese sovereignty with international advisors and police and recognition of Japan's economic interests.
1933 (WEDNESDAY)
CZECHOSLOVAKIA: The depression and National Socialist agitation spreads swiftly among the three million Sudeten Germans living in Czechoslovakia. Many live in industrial areas and are hit hard by the economic downturn. Konrad Henlein, leader of the Sudete National Socialist Party dissolves the party before the Czechoslovak government can prohibit it. However, the movement soon reemerges as the Sudetendeutsche Partei which has a National Socialist base but is not officially directed at the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.
1938 (TUESDAY)
FRANCE: The Socialists and Communists in France break with the Edouard Daladier government when the Socialists abstain in a vote of confidence on the Munich agreements and the Communists vote against the treaties. This marks the end of Popular Front government and the cabinet turns to the Right for political support.
October 4th, 1939 (WEDNESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Members of the Glamorgan Agricultural Committee met today to voice their anxieties about "gossip and goings-on" between Land Army girls and soldiers billeted around the farms in the area. A strict 9.00 p.m., curfew was urged to keep the girls, aged from 17 to 40, out of mischief during blackout hours. Only Alderman David Davis rose to their defence: "They are good-looking English girls, with the right spirit. Good girls do not need looking after."The U.S. freighter SS Black Hawk, detained by British authorities since 19 September, is released.
GERMANY: The U.S. Naval Attaché in Berlin reports that Grossadmiral Erich Raeder, Commander in Chief of the German Navy, has informed him of a plot wherein the U.S. passenger liner SS Iroquois, that had sailed from Cobh, Eire, with 566 American passengers on 3 October, would be sunk (ostensibly by the British) as she neared the east coast of the United States under "Athenia circumstances" for the apparent purpose of arousing anti-German feeling. Admiral Raeder gives credence to his source in neutral Éire as being "very reliable."
POLAND: Lwow: Nikita Khruschev announces the communisation of eastern Poland.
Kock: The Polish Army makes its last organised stand against the Tenth Army.
NEW ZEALAND: The New Zealand Government announces the formation of a Maori battalion for 2 New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF).
U.S.A.: Baseball!
A barber from Canonsburg, Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh, who had quite a singing voice, recorded "That Old Gang of Mine" with the Ted Weems Orchestra for RCA. That singer was the feature of the Weems band until 1942 when he went solo and became a radio, TV and stage star. The barber was Perry Como.
ATLANTIC OCEAN:
U-23 sinks the SS GLEN FARG.