1933 (SATURDAY)
UNITED STATES: The USN signs a contract with Consolidated Aircraft for the Consolidated Model 28 flying boat designated XP3Y-1; it is later redesignated XPBY-1.
1935 (MONDAY)
JAPAN: The Japanese Foreign Minister, Koki Hirota, announces his Three Point Policy: the establishment of a Japan-China-Manchukuo bloc; the suppression of anti-Japanese activities in China; and the organization of a joint Japanese-Chinese front against Communism. The failure of this policy leads to future Japanese aggression against the Chinese.
1937 (THURSDAY)
SPAIN: The Spanish Republican government moves from Valencia to Barcelona to a more secure base of operations.
1938 (FRIDAY)
GERMANY: Some 15,000 "stateless" Jews are forced to leave their homes throughout Germany and to go, with only one suitcase, to the nearest railway station. They are then taken through the night to the German-Polish border and forced across at gun point. Thousands of Polish Jews are arrested and rushed over the Polish border in retaliation for the Polish exclusion law.
October 28th, 1939 (SATURDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: A He-111 was brought down today by RAF Spitfires east of Dalkeith in south-eastern Scotland - the first German aircraft, of this war, to be shot down over the British Isles. Two of its four man crew survived.Patrol vessel HMS Guillemont commissioned.
AMC HMS Queen of Bermuda commissioned.
U.S. freighter SS Black Tern, detained at Weymouth, England, by British authorities since 11 October, is released.
FRANCE: The BEF is reported to have enough food to feed its nearly 200,000 troops for 46 days.
GERMANY: Berlin: Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfuhrer-SS and Head of the German Police, issues his "Lebensborn" decree, urging single German women to dispense with the "bourgeois custom" of marriage to bear racially pure children. The child is then given to the SS organization which took in charge his "education" and adoption. One of the most horrible sides of the Leben sides of the Leben sides of the Lebensborn policy is the kidnaping of children in the eastern occupied countries. These kidnaping are organized by the SS in order to take by force children who matched the Nazi's racial criteria (blond hair, blue eyes, etc....). In 1946, it is estimated that more than 250,000 are kidnaped and sent by force to Germany but only 25,000 are retrieved after the war and sent back to their families.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Prague: Six months ago, the German Army marched into Prague on the pretext of "restoring order." Today, students in Prague feel the full ferocity of German occupation, the 20th anniversary of their country's birth. Students parading through the city are charged by armoured cars and prisoners are reported to have been tortured by the Gestapo. Street fighting breaks out later in the city centre with Sudeten Germans using pistols, whips and rifle butts against Czech patriots. One student is reported to have been killed by revolver shots, and more than 3,500 people are packing the city prisons. One of the demonstrators shot is Jan Opletal, a medical student. He dies on 11 November and is buried on 15 November. The funeral turns into another anti-Nazi demonstration; as a result, Reichsprotektor Konstantin von Neurath closes all Czech universities and colleges, over 1,000 students are sent into concentration camps, and nine students are executed on 17 November..
Bratislava: Joseph Tiso becomes the first president of Slovakia.
POLAND: Starting with the town of Piotrkow, German authorities begin confining the Jews of Poland to a particular area (ghetto) of each city or town in which they live. Sometimes this area is the already prominently Jewish quarter, butJewish quarter, but often it is a poor or neglected part of the town, away from the center. Jews from the rest of the town are then forced to leave their homes, and to move into this, often much smaller area, in which even the basic amenities are unavailable. In each of these ghetto areas, food and medical supplies are restricted. Intense overcrowding, hunger and disease lead to widespread suffering and death. (Atlas)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-59 sank SS Lynx II and SS St Nidan.
German armored ship Admiral Graf Spee makes a rendezvous with the tanker Altmark near Tristan de Cunha, the remote British island group in the South Atlantic located about 1,508 nautical miles (2 793 kilometers) west-southwest of Cape Town, South Africa. The warship refuels from the auxiliary, and transfers British freighter SS Trevanion's crew to her. SS Trevanion had been sunk on 22 October.