August 14th, 1941 (THURSDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: London: The German Josef Jakobs is executed by firing squad at the Tower of London.
Destroyer HMS Serapis (later transferred to the Royal Netherlands Navy as the Piet Hein) is laid down.
GERMANY: U-252 is launched. U-583 is commissioned.
POLAND: Auschwitz. Ten Polish prisoners had been condemned to die after a prisoner had escaped. When the ten were selected, one begged and pleaded to be saved for his wife and children. Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan friar and fellow prisoner, had stepped forward and asked to take the place of the family man. The offer was accepted. The ten were marched off to a starvation bunker. As one by one they died, Fr. Maximilian comforted them. The last survivor of the ten, Fr. Maximilian was executed by lethal injection on August 14. The man he died to save was present in St. Peter's Square in 1982 when Fr. Maximilian was proclaimed St. Maximilian Kolbe. (Jim Gallen)
U.S.S.R.: Evacuation of the Russian Black Sea naval base at Nikolayev begins tonight. During the next three nights 13 ships under construction will be towed away. 11 remaining ships, including 1 battleship, will be blown up along with other supplies.
U.S.A.: While returning to the US from the Atlantic Charter Conference, US President Franklin D Roosevelt, in USS Augusta (CA-31), watches flight operations conducted by the F2A Buffaloes and SOC Seagulls of Scouting Squadron Two Hundred One (VS-201) in aircraft escort vessel USS Long Island (AVG-1), the first "jeep" aircraft carrier. During the afternoon, USS Augusta reaches Blue Hill Bay, Maine, where he re-embarks in the presidential yacht, USS Potomac (AG-25).
Washington: Roosevelt returns after five days of talks with
Churchill on the USS Augusta and battleship HMS Prince of Wales in Placentia
Bay, Newfoundland.
British deputy Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, has broadcast the terms of a
joint Anglo-American declaration of common principles.
The United States and Britain declare that they seek no territorial gains from the war. They say they hope that all nations will co-operate economically after the war, and they look forward to a lasting peace and the end of the use of force. Roosevelt feels that the entry of the USSR into the war makes it desirable that the western democracies should spell out their creeds. To British relief he did not insist on denouncing protectionism or empires.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-126 sinks SS Sud in Convoy HG-70.