October 22nd, 1941 (TUESDAY)
FRANCE: Bordeaux: 100 more hostages are taken and a curfew is imposed following the assassination of another German officer.
GERMANY: U-406 commissioned.
U.S.S.R.: Odessa: A massive delayed-action Soviet bomb blows up General Ioan Glogojanu, the commander of the Romanian 10th Infantry Division, and the first city commandant appointed to occupied Odessa, and 51 of his staff (Sixteen officers - twelve being Royal Romanian Army officers and four German Kriegsmarine officers - were killed, together with thirty-five soldiers and nine civilian officials (including a pair of interpreters in German service). As the building chosen for Romanian headquarters was situated near the former NKVD building, the likelihood of its having been boobytrapped had been brought up several times (even Antonescu admitted to having received at least two such warnings) but no action was taken. The explosion was devastating indeed, the blast throwing glass and debris across several city blocks.
Enraged Romanian leader Ion Antonescu ordered reprisals. Two hundred hostages were to be shot for every officer killed and one hundred for every soldier. Originally these were to be Communists, but in Romanian eyes Jews were essentially the same thing. Executions took place in Odessa and the outlying districts -- hangings, head shots, machinegunnings en-masse, and other methods as struck the fancy of individual military commanders. The reprisals quickly got out of hand, and became an orgy of killing and mutilation directed mainly against the city's Jewish population. Elements of the German "Einsatzgruppe D" execution commando - which had been given free rein to "cleanse" the areas occupied by Romanian forces, and had already shot some five to six thousand Jews and Communists in Bessarabia, also participated in this prolonged massacre. Totals of victims executed in reprisal actions range from between nineteen and twenty-three thousand according to official Romanian accounts all the way up to forty-one thousand when the outlying districts are included. There were for the most part Romanian actions. Victims of the local SS Einsatzgruppe were in addition to these horrifying excesses. (Michael F. Yaklich and Greg Kelley)(122 and 123)
In the Ukraine, the Germans post a notice is posted in Kiev informing the citizens that 100 hostages will be shot for every act of sabotage.
ETHIOPIA: With British success in Libya cutting off the airborne reinforcement route, the Regia Aeronautica is put on strict fuel rationing. (Mike Yared)(284)
JAPAN: The Japanese Foreign Office sends messages to Japanese embassies in Singapore, Federated Malay States, and Batavia, Netherlands East Indies, inquiring about the air forces in both locations.
TERRITORY OF HAWAII: Final flight of 26 B-17's under LTC Eugene Eubank arrive in Hawaii.
U.S.A.:
Submarine USS Trigger launched.
Destroyer USS Bristol commissioned.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: An aircraft dropped two bombs on U-203 in the North Atlantic; the boat survived but suffered some damage.
U-68 sank SS Darkdale.