1936 (MONDAY)
AUSTRIA: Representatives of the Rome Protocol States (Austria, Hungary, and Italy) meet in Vienna to discuss European tensions. The conference marks the gradual consolidation of Italian power in the Danube Basin.
1937 (TUESDAY)
CHINA: The Japanese Army captures Shanghai and Kaiyuan (Yang-ku) located about 260 miles (418 kilometers) south of Peking.
1938 (WEDNESDAY)
FRANCE: The French government recognizes the Italian conquest of Ethiopia in an effort to gain Italian support against German expansion.
GERMANY: During the night of 9/10 November, demonstrations against Jews and Jewish property are widespread throughout Germany on November 9/10, 1938. On 12 November, Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) which controlled the SD and Gestapo, reported to the Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, that 101 Jewish Synagogues are burned down and 76 others demolished. Over 815 shops and businesses are destroyed including the huge Margraf department store on Berlin's Unter-den-Linden which is totally ransacked. This orgy of anti-Jewish violence is the result of the assassination of a German Embassy official, Ernst von Rath, in Paris by a 17-year old Polish Jew in an act of protest against the deportation of his parents from Germany. As revenge for this shooting, Goebbels and Heydrich orders "spontaneous demonstrations" of protest against the Jewish citizens of Munich. The order, in the form of a teletyped message to all SS headquarters and
state police stations, lays out the blueprint for the destruction of Jewish homes and businesses. The local police are not to interfere with the rioting storm troopers, and as many Jews as possible are to be arrested with an eye toward deporting them to concentration camps.
Thirty six Jews are killed and around 20,000, in particular the more wealthy Jews, arrested and transported to concentration camps. The cost of shattered glass alone throughout the Reich is estimated at six million marks (US$2.4 million in 1939 dollars and US$33.72 million in 2005 dollars). The whole cost of Kristallnacht (night of glass) has to be paid by the Jews themselves, the Nazis confiscating their insurance money and imposing a collective fine of one billion marks (US$397.5 million in 1939 dollars and US$5.585 billion in 2005 dollars)!
A statement by David Buffum, the American Consul in Leipzig: "The shattering of shop windows, looting of stores and dwellings of Jews took place in the early hours of 10 November 1938, and was hailed in the Nazi press as a "spontaneous wave of righteous indignation throughout Germany, as a result of the cowardly Jewish murder of Third Secretary von Rath in the German Embassy in Paris." So far as a very high percentage of the German populace is concerned, a state of popular indignation that would spontaneously lead to such excesses can be considered non-existent. On the contrary, in viewing the ruins all of the local crowds observed were obviously benumbed over what had happened and aghast over the unprecedented fury of Nazi acts that had been or were taking place with bewildering rapidity." (John Nicholas)
PALESTINE: After analyzing a wide range of partition plans for Palestine, the British Woodhead Commission concludes that none of the plans are practical. As a result, the British government abandons its partition policy and moves to initiate a conference between Arabs and Jews for the future of the mandate. The British also invite Arab participants from other countries who demonstrated solidarity with the Palestinian Arabs.
November 9th, 1939 (THURSDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Light cruiser HMS Newfoundland laid down.
NETHERLANDS: Venlo: Two British agents in Holland who believed that they were in contact with army officers plotting to overthrow Hitler were today kidnapped and carried off into Germany. For the past month Captain Sigismund Payne Best and Major Richard Stevens had been meeting a Major Schaemmle at Venlo, five miles from the German border.
To prove his bona fides Captain Best arranged for a special news item to be broadcast on the BBC German Service. Major Schaemmle then promised to produce the general who was leading the plotters. When Best and Stevens turned up at Venlo this afternoon, they were told the Germans were afraid of venturing too far inside Holland. The British agreed to rendezvous at a cafe a few yards from the German border. There they noticed that the German barrier had been lifted. The next moment their car was hit by machine-gun fire and they were seized by a posse of Germans.
"Major Schaemmle", it turned out, was in fact a RHSA officer, Walther Schellenberg. Immediately after the Munich bomb, Himmler had ordered Schellenberg to kidnap the Britons.
GERMANY: Berlin: The press and radio accuses Britain of organising the Munich beerceller bomb. Extra.U-84 laid down.
POLAND: In a letter to his
parents back home in Köln, a
young soldiers says: ""It's tough out here, and I hope you'll understand if
I'm only able to write to you once every two to four days soon. Today I'm
writing you mainly to ask for some Pervitin ...; Love, Hein." (Henrich
Boell)
Pervitin is a stimulant commonly known as speed today. (Andreas Ulrich, Der Spiegel. May 6, 2005)(Henry Sirotin)
U.S.S.R.: The last round of
negotiations between Finland and USSR ends and no agreement has been
reached. Molotov's ominous parting words are "Because we civilians
can't make any headway, its the turn of the soldiers to have their
say." Despite this the general mood in Finland is that the Soviet bluff
has been called and the worst is now over. Finns just had to stay firm and
the Soviets would back down, and didn't they just do that? The Soviets would
not attack because Finland is a neutral country that would resist any
aggression, no matter from what direction it came. There's simply nothing
the Soviet leaders could be afraid of. And even if Soviet Union attacks, it
wouldn't happen until summer, because the weather isn't favourable to an
attacker before that. So if the Russians attack, there's plenty of time to
prepare. Minister of Foreign Affairs Eljas Erkko and others think that the
field army should be demobilised to save money. Many people who had
voluntarily evacuated the border municipalities are returning.
But not everybody shares this confident mood. Paasikivi is among them, as is the chairman of the defence council Field Marshal Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim. Mannerheim has already in early 1930s been given a written promise by the President of the Republic that in event of war he would became the commander-in-chief. He is well aware that the army he would lead in war is lacking weapons. There's 337 000 men under arms in 9 infantry divisions and various independent battalions. For them there are
-254 518 rifles of varying quality
-4062 LMGs
-2405 HMGs
-4144 SMGs
-about 150 000 hand grenades
-112 37 mm AT-guns
-360 81 mm mortars
-128 artillery pieces of calibres from 75 to 152 mm
-174 various outdated artillery pieces with rigid gun carriages
There's enough ammunition only for rifle-calibre weapons and coastal
artillery. Not all men could even be given a full uniform. But the morale is
high and men are well motivated. They know the country where they would
fight. Also the quality of professional officers is high, but they are few.
The great majority of junior officers are reservists. Mannerhem tries hard
to point out the woeful material condition of the army and get more money to
buy arms. He is considering tendering his resignation if the politicians
won't listen to him.
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA: An alleged Nazi plot by armed blackshirts to sabotage vital industries in Johannesburg and Pretoria is revealed.
U.S.A.: The motion picture "Ninotchka" premiers at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, this romantic comedy stars Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas and Bela Lugosi. The tagline for the film is "Garbo Laughs." The film is nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actress in a Leading Role (Garbo) but does not win any. The members of the American Film Institute have voted this film as Number 40 of the top 100 Greatest American Love Stories and Number 52 of the top 100 Greatest American Comedy films.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: