Year
1943 by topic Subject By country Lists of leaders Birth and death categories Establishments and disestablishments categories Works category
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1943 (MCMXLIII )was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar , the 1943rd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 943rd year of the 2nd millennium , the 43rd year of the 20th century , and the 4th year of the 1940s decade.
Events
Below, events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.
January
January 1 – WWII: The Soviet Union announces that 22 German divisions have been encircled at Stalingrad , with 175,000 killed and 137,650 captured.
January 4
January 11 – The United States and United Kingdom revise previously unequal treaty relationships with the Republic of China .
January 11 – Italian-American anarchist Carlo Tresca is assassinated in New York City.
January 13 – Anti-Nazi protests in Sofia result in 200 arrests, and 36 executions.
January 14 – 24 – WWII: Casablanca Conference : Franklin D. Roosevelt , President of the United States; Winston Churchill , Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; and Generals Charles de Gaulle and Henri Giraud of the Free French forces meet secretly at the Anfa Hotel in Casablanca , Morocco , to plan the Allied European strategy for the next stage of the war.
January 15
January 16 – Iraq declares war on the Axis powers .
January 18
January 21 : WWII: Pan Am Flight 1104 : Pan Am Martin M-130 flying boat crashes about 7 mi (11 km) southwest of Ukiah, California . All 10 passengers and 9 crew aboard are killed, including Admiral Robert H. English (at this time COMSUBPAC ).
January 22
January 23
January 27 – WWII: 50 bombers mount the first all American air raid against Germany: Wilhelmshaven is the target.
January 29
January 29 –30 – WWII: Battle of Rennell Island – The Imperial Japanese Navy resists the United States Navy's attempt to interrupt the withdrawal of Japanese forces from Guadalcanal , in the last major naval battle of the Guadalcanal Campaign .
January 29 –31 – WWII: Battle of Wau – Australian forces, with United States support, resist a Japanese advance in the New Guinea campaign .
February
February 2 – WWII: In Russia, the Battle of Stalingrad comes to an end, with the surrender of the German 6th Army .
February 3 – WWII: The Four Chaplains of the U.S. Army are among those drowned when their ship, Dorchester , is struck by a German torpedo in the North Atlantic.
February 5 – Lt. General Frank M. Andrews is selected to command the U.S. armies in Europe, while General Dwight D. Eisenhower is assigned command in North Africa. Andrews will serve only 3 months, before dying in an airplane crash.
February 6 – WWII: RCN corvette HMCS Louisburg is bombed and sunk off Oran , Algeria by Italian aircraft.
February 7 – WWII:
North Atlantic convoy SC 118 is attacked by U-boats , who sink 8 ships.[1]
In the United States, it is announced that shoe rationing will go into effect in two days.
February 9 – WWII:
February 10 – March 3 – Mohandas Gandhi (under arrest by forces of the British Raj in Pune as a member of the Quit India Movement ) keeps a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment.
February 14 – WWII: Rostov-on-Don in Russia is liberated.
February 14 –17 – WWII: Battle of Sidi Bou Zid : In the Tunisia Campaign , German Panzer divisions commanded by Hans-Jürgen von Arnim are victorious over the United States Army.
February 16 – WWII: The Soviet Union reconquers Kharkov , but is later driven out in the Third Battle of Kharkov .
February 18
February 19 –24 – WWII: Battle of Kasserine Pass : German General Erwin Rommel 's Afrika Korps and other Axis forces launch an offensive against Allied defenses in Tunisia ; it is the United States' first major battle defeat of the war. On February 22, an Anglo-American force halts the German advance near Thala , forcing the Germans to retreat, US bombers harass the retreating Panzers.
February 20
February 21 – WWII: North Atlantic convoy ON 166 is attacked by U-boats , who sink eleven ships.[5]
February 22
February 23 –24 – Cavan Orphanage Fire : 35 girls and a cook from St Joseph's Orphanage , an industrial school at Cavan , Ireland, are killed in a fire in their dormitories. A subsequent inquiry absolves the Poor Clares of blame.
February 27 – Smith Mine disaster : An explosion at Smith Mine #3 in Bearcreek, Montana , United States kills 74 coal miners.
February 28 – Operation Gunnerside : 6 Norwegians, led by Joachim Rønneberg , successfully attack the heavy water plant at Vemork .
March
March – Exiled French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 's self-illustrated children's novella , The Little Prince , is published in New York City , the all-time best-selling book originating in French.
March –December – History of computing hardware : British prototype Mark I Colossus computer is constructed (the world's first totally electronic programmable computing device) to assist in cryptanalysis of German signals at Bletchley Park .[6]
March 1 – Heinz Guderian becomes Inspector-General of the Armoured Troops for the German Army .
March 1 –2 – WWII: Koriukivka massacre – 6,700 inhabitants of Koriukivka are murdered in the Ukraine , by a German SS unit.
March 2 – WWII: Battle of the Bismarck Sea – United States and Australian forces sink Japanese convoy ships, then strafe survivors in the water.[7]
March 3 – 173 people are killed in a crush, while trying to enter an air-raid shelter at Bethnal Green, London .
March 4 – The 15th Academy Awards ceremony is held in Los Angeles. Mrs. Miniver wins the Best Picture Award.
March 4 –6 – WWII: Battle of Fardykambos – Greek partisans and armed civilians force the surrender of an Italian army battalion.
March 5 – The Gloster Meteor , the first Allied jet fighter , makes its first flight, in England.
March 9 – 10 – WWII: North Atlantic convoy SC 121 is attacked by U-boats sinking seven ships.[8]
March 9 – Şükrü Saracoğlu forms the new government of Turkey (14th government; Şükrü Saracoğlu had served twice as a prime minister).
March 10 – Banco Bradesco is founded in Marília , São Paulo , Brazil.
March 12 – WWII: Italian occupation of Greece : The Italian occupying forces abandon the town of Karditsa to the partisans. On the same day, an Italian motorized column razes the village of Tsaritsani , burning 360 of its 600 houses, and shooting 40 civilians.
March 13 – The Holocaust : Nazi German forces liquidate the Jews of the Kraków Ghetto , in Occupied Poland .
March 14 – WWII: British submarine HMS Thunderbolt is sunk off Sicily by an Italian corvette , the second time this vessel has been lost with all hands.[9] [10]
March 15 – WWII:
March 16 – 19 – WWII: 22 ships from Convoys HX 229/SC 122 and one U-boat are sunk, in the largest North Atlantic U-boat "wolfpack " attack of the war.
March 17 (Saint Patrick's Day ) – Éamon de Valera , Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland , makes the speech "The Ireland That We Dreamed Of ", commonly called the "comely maidens" speech, in Dublin Castle .
March 22 – WWII: Khatyn massacre – The entire population of Khatyn , Belarus is burnt alive by German occupation forces.
March 23 – The drugs Vicodin and Lortab are first produced in Germany.
March 26 – WWII: Battle of the Komandorski Islands : In the Aleutian Islands , the battle begins when United States Navy forces intercept Japanese troops attempting to reinforce a garrison at Kiska .
March 27 – WWII: British Royal Navy escort carrier HMS Dasher (D37) is destroyed by an accidental explosion in the Firth of Clyde , killing 379 of the crew of 528.
March 28 – In Italy a ship full of weapons and ammunition explodes in the port of Naples , killing 600.
March 31 – Rodgers and Hammerstein 's Oklahoma! opens on Broadway , heralds a new era in "integrated" stage musicals, becomes an instantaneous stage classic, and goes on to be Broadway's longest-running musical up to that time (1948).
April
May
June
June (late) – The Holocaust : The last trainload of Jewish prisoners is moved from Bełżec extermination camp in Occupied Poland (for gassing at Sobibór ), and for the remainder of the year the Nazis make efforts to obliterate the site.[13] [14]
June 1 – BOAC Flight 777 , a DC-3 with registration G-AGBB (formerly KLM PH-ALI, Ibis ), on a scheduled passenger flight, is shot down over the Bay of Biscay by 8 German Junkers Ju 88s ; all 17 persons aboard perish, including actor Leslie Howard . There is speculation that the downing is an attempt to kill the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom , Winston Churchill , as the Germans may have had wrong information he was aboard.
June 3 – The Zoot Suit Riots erupt between military personnel and Mexican-American youths in East Los Angeles.[15]
June 4 – A military coup d'état in Argentina ousts Ramón Castillo .
June 8 – WWII: Japanese battleship Mutsu is destroyed by an accidental magazine explosion, in Hashirajima anchorage.
June 8 –9 – WWII: Battle of Porta : The Royal Italian Army is defeated by the Greek People's Liberation Army .
June 20 – 23 – The Detroit race riot of 1943 in the United States kills 34 people (25 African Americans, 9 whites), wounds hundreds more, and damages and destroys property worth millions.[16]
June 21 – WWII: British saboteurs blow up the strategically significant railway viaduct at Asopos , Greece.
June 22 – WWII: The U.S. Army 45th Infantry Division lands in North Africa, prior to training at Arzew , French Morocco.
June 30 – The United States Civilian Conservation Corps is abolished.
July
Wladyslaw Sikorski, Polish military and political leader of the Polish government in exile during World War 2
July 1 – The United States Women's Army Corps (WAC) is converted to full status.
July 4 – 1943 Gibraltar B-24 crash : The aircraft carrying General Władysław Sikorski , Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile , crashes, killing him and 15 others, leading to a lasting controversy over the circumstances .
July 5 – WWII:
July 6 – WWII: Americans and Japanese fight the Battle of Kula Gulf off Kolombangara .
July 10
July 11 – WWII:
July 12 – WWII: Main engagement of the Battle of Prokhorovka – The Wehrmacht and the Red Army fight to a draw, in one of the largest tank battles in military history .
July 19 – WWII: Rome is bombed by the Allies , for the first time in the war.
July 24 – WWII: Operation Gomorrha : British and Canadian aeroplanes bomb Hamburg by night; American planes bomb the city by day. By the end of the operation in November, 9,000 tons of explosives will have killed more than 42,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.
August
August 1 – Operation Tidal Wave : 177 B-24 Liberator bombers from the U.S. Army Air Force bomb oil refineries at Ploiești, Romania .
August 2 – WWII: John F. Kennedy 's PT boat PT-109 is run down by Japanese destroyer destroyer Amagiri .
August 4 – WWII: The aircraft carrier USS Intrepid (CV-11) is launched at Newport News, Virginia .
August 5 – WWII:
August 6 – WWII: Battle of Vella Gulf : Americans defeat a Japanese convoy off Kolombangara , as the U.S. Army drives the Japanese out of Munda airfield on New Georgia .
August 14 – WWII: Rome is declared an open city by the Italian government, with Italy offering to demilitarize the capital, in return for an Allied agreement not to bomb the city further.[17]
August 14 – The Quadrant Conference begins in Quebec City ; Canadian Prime Minister MacKenzie King meets with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt .
August 17 – WWII:
August 21 – Australian federal election, 1943 : John Curtin 's Labor Government defeats the Country /UAP Coalition , led by former Prime Minister Arthur Fadden . Labor achieves its greatest ever electoral result, including winning every seat (except one) outside of the eastern states. Notably, this election marked the first time that a woman has been elected to both the Senate and the House of Representatives . Fadden will step down from the Opposition leadership, handing it over to Robert Menzies , who woill go on to dissolve the UAP, and form the Liberal Party shortly after.
August 23 – WWII: The Battle of Kursk ends, with a strategic defeat for the German forces.
August 24 – WWII: – Heinrich Himmler is named Reichminister of the Interior in Germany.
August 26 – WWII: Louis, Lord Mountbatten is named Supreme Allied Commander for Southeast Asia.
August 28 – WWII: King Boris III of Bulgaria dies under suspicious circumstances; his 6-year-old son, Simeon II , ascends to the throne.
August 29 – WWII: Occupation of Denmark – Germany dissolves the Danish government, after it refuses to deal with a wave of strikes and disturbances to the satisfaction of the German authorities.
September
September 3 – WWII: Allied invasion of Italy
September 5 – WWII: The 503rd Parachute Regiment (under American General Douglas MacArthur ) lands and occupies Nadzab, just east of the port city of Lae , in northeastern Papua New Guinea .
September 7 – Gulf Hotel fire : A fire at the Gulf Hotel in Houston, Texas kills 55.
September 8
September 9 – Bertolt Brecht 's play Life of Galileo (German : Leben des Galilei ) receives its first theatrical production, at the Schauspielhaus Zürich .
September 12 – WWII: Gran Sasso raid – German paratroopers rescue Mussolini from imprisonment, in Unternehmen Eiche ("Operation Oak").
September 16 – WWII: Salerno Mutiny : Soldiers of the British Army 's X Corps refuse postings to new units.
September 17 – WWII: Villefranche-de-Rouergue Mutiny – A group of pro-Partisan soldiers, led by Ferid Džanić and others within the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian) , training in Occupied France , rise against Nazi German troops in the Division; the revolt is rapidly suppressed.
September 21 –26 – WWII: Massacre of the Acqui Division – German soldiers of the 1st Mountain Division (Wehrmacht) kill over 5,100 Italian military internees resisting disarmament on the Greek island of Cephalonia .
September 22 –October 2 – WWII: Landing at Scarlet Beach on the Huon Peninsula of New Guinea by Allied forces, the first time Australian troops have made an opposed amphibious landing since the Gallipoli Campaign of 1915 .
September 23 – WWII: The Italian Social Republic ("Republic of Salò") is founded in northern Italy, as a puppet state of Nazi Germany .
September 27 – WWII: Four days of Naples begins: a popular uprising drives German occupying forces from the city.
October
October 1 – WWII: United States forces enter liberated Naples .
October 3 – WWII: Nazi Wehrmacht forces commit the Lyngiades massacre in northwest Greece, as an arbitrary reprisal.
October 6 – WWII: Americans and Japanese fight the naval Battle of Vella Lavella .
October 7 – WWII: The Naples post-office bombing kills 100.
October 10
October 13 – WWII: The new government of Italy sides with the Allies , and declares war on Germany.
October 14
October 16 – The Holocaust: Raid of the Ghetto of Rome – Over a thousand Jews are rounded up in Rome by the Gestapo ; only 16 will survive their deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp. The public silence of Pope Pius XII on the raid becomes a matter of historical controversy.
October 17 – WWII:
October 18 – Chiang Kai-shek takes the oath of office, as Chairman of the National Government of China .
October 19 – WWII: Allied aircraft sink the German-controlled cargo ship MS Sinfra in the Mediterranean, killing over 2,000 people, mostly Italian military internees .
October 20 –28 – WWII: Italian Campaign – Battle of Ortona : Canadian infantry defeat elite German paratroops.
October 21 – Lucie Aubrac and others in her French Resistance cell liberate Raymond Aubrac from Gestapo imprisonment.
October 22 – WWII: The British Royal Air Force delivers a highly destructive airstrike on the German industrial and population center of Kassel ; at least 10,000 are killed and 150,000 are made homeless. See Bombing of Kassel in World War II .
October 24 – WWII: British Royal Navy destroyer HMS Eclipse (H08) is sunk by a mine in the Aegean Sea , with the loss of 119 of the ship's company and 134 troops.[19]
October 28 – Alleged date of the Philadelphia Experiment , in which the destroyer escort USS Eldridge (DE-173) was supposed to be rendered invisible to human observers for a brief period.
October 30
November
The first
Lebanese flag hand drawn and signed by the deputies of the Lebanese parliament, November 11, 1943. The
French Mandate ends and
Lebanon gains independence in November 1943.
November 1 – WWII: Operation Goodtime : United States Marines land on Bougainville Island in the Solomon Islands .
November 2 – WWII:
November 3 – The Holocaust : Operation Harvest Festival - The largest single day massacre of Jews in the entire war takes place, when over 43,000 Jews are shot-gunned to death by the SS .
November 5 WWII: First Bombing of the Vatican : Four bombs are dropped on the neutral Vatican City ; the aircraft responsible is never certainly identified.
An agreement for the foundation of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration is signed by 44 countries in the White House , Washington, D.C.
November 10 – The Lübeck martyrs , four men of religion, are executed for supposedly treasonable views.
November 14 – Leonard Bernstein , substituting at the last minute for ailing principal conductor Bruno Walter , directs the New York Philharmonic in its regular Sunday afternoon broadcast concert, over CBS Radio. The event receives front-page coverage in The New York Times the following day.
November 15 – Porajmos : German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies and "part-Gypsies" be put "on the same level as Jews and placed in Nazi concentration camps ."
November 16
November 18 – WWII: Battle of Berlin – The British Royal Air Force opens its bombing campaign against Berlin with 440 planes, causing only light damage and killing 131. The RAF loses 9 aircraft and 53 aviators.
November 19 – The Holocaust : Inmates of Janowska concentration camp , near Lwów (at this time in German-occupied Poland ), stage a failed uprising, after which the SS liquidates the camp, resulting in at least 6,000 deaths.
November 20 – WWII: Battle of Tarawa : United States Marines land on Tarawa and Makin atolls in the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati from 1979 ), and take heavy fire from Japanese shore guns.
November 22 –26 – WWII: Cairo Conference ("Sextant") – President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt , Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill and Chairman of the National Government of China Chiang Kai-shek meet at Cairo , Egypt, to discuss ways to defeat Japan in the Pacific War .
November 22 – Lebanon gains independence, upon the ending of the French Mandate .
November 23 – The Deutsches Opernhaus on Bismarckstraße, in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg , is destroyed in an air raid (it is reopened in 1961 , as the Deutsche Oper Berlin ).
November 25 – WWII: Americans and Japanese fight the naval Battle of Cape St. George , between Buka and New Ireland .
November 26 – WWII: British troopship HMT Rohna is sunk off the north African coast by a Luftwaffe Henschel Hs 293 radio controlled glide bomb , killing 1,015.[20] [21]
November 28 – WWII: Tehran Conference : U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt , British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin meet in Tehran , to discuss war strategy. On November 30 , they establish an agreement concerning a planned June 1944 invasion of Europe, codenamed Operation Overlord .
November 29 – The second session of AVNOJ , the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia , is held in Jajce , Bosnia and Herzegovina , to determine the post-war ordering of the country.
December
December 2 – WWII: Bari chemical warfare disaster : A surprise Luftwaffe air raid on Bari , Italy sinks 28 Allied ships in the harbor, including the American Liberty ship SS John Harvey , releasing its secret cargo of mustard gas bombs, inflating the number of casualties.[22]
December 3
December 4
December 7 – Chiara Lubich starts the humanitarian Focolare Movement in Trento , Italy.
December 13 – WWII: Massacre of Kalavryta : The occupying 117th Jäger Division (Wehrmacht) machine-guns all adult males from Kalavryta , Greece, subsequently burning the town.
December 15 – WWII: American and Australian forces began the Battle of Arawe as a diversion, before a larger landing at Cape Gloucester on New Britain , in Papua New Guinea.
December 20 – A military coup is staged in Bolivia .
December 24 – WWII: U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes Supreme Allied Commander Europe . He establishes the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in London.
December 30 – Subhas Chandra Bose sets up a pro-Japanese Indian government at Port Blair , India.
Date unknown
Other Languages
беларуская (тарашкевіца):
1943
srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски:
1943