February 16th, 1943 (TUESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Anti-Fascist Italian PoWs open Radio Risorgi [Resurge], broadcasting for resistance to Mussolini.
Frigate HMS Nith commissioned.
Minelayer HMS Apollo launched.
VICHY FRANCE: The deeply unpopular Service Obligatoire du Travail[Compulsory Labour Service] is introduced; all people aged 20-23 must do it for two years.
GERMANY: Mildred Fish Harnack was beheaded in Plötzensee Prison, Berlin, the only American woman to be executed for treason in World War II.
Born in Milwaukee, USA on September 16, 1902, daughter of merchant W.C. Fish. In 1926, she married Arvid Harnack whom she met while studying literature at Wisconsin University. In 1929 she and her husband moved to Germany where she taught American literature history at the University of Berlin. In Berlin, she became friends with Martha Dodd and through this friendship, she and her husband were often invited to receptions at the American Embassy where she met many influential Germans.
When the war started, Arvid and Mildred supported the resistance movement against the Nazi regime through their friendship with Harro Schulze-Boysen and the spy ring the Nazis dubbed 'The Red Orchestra'.
On September 7, 1942, she was arrested in Priel and taken to Gestapo headquarters at No.8, Prinz- Albrecht- Strasse.
At her trial on December 15-19, 1942, she was sentenced to six years in prison for 'helping to prepare high treason and espionage'.
On December 21, Hitler reversed the sentence and at her second trial on January13/16,1943, she was given the ultimate penalty, death. By September, 1943, all fifty one members of the 'Red Orchestra' had died, two by suicide, eight by hanging and forty-one beheaded by guillotine. (Denis Peck)
U-1228 laid down.
U.S.S.R.: Russia completes the capture of Kharkov.
German Baron Wolfram von Richthofen is promoted to Field Marshal. (Glenn A. Steinberg)
NORTH AFRICA: Medenine falls to the British 8th Army.
SOUTH PACIFIC: The US submarine Amberjack (SS-219), commanded by John A. Bole, Jr., is sunk by Japanese surface craft and aircraft bombs-off Rabaul All hands are lost. (Joe Sauder)
CANADA: Tug HMCS Glenmont laid down Owen Sound, Ontario.
U.S.A.: Destroyer escort USS Charles Lawrence launched.