This Year in History:
1943
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On January 12, 1943, Soviet troops create a breach in the German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted for a year and a half. The Soviet forces punched a hole in the siege, which ruptured the German encirclement and allowed for more supplies to come in along Lake Ladoga. Upon invading the Soviet Union in […]
On January 14, 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the first president to travel on official business by airplane. Crossing the Atlantic by air, Roosevelt flew in a Boeing 314 Flying Boat dubbed the Dixie Clipper to a World War II strategy meeting with Winston Churchill at Casablanca in North Africa. With German U-boats taking a […]
German Gen. Friedrich Paulus, commander in chief of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad, urgently requests permission from Adolf Hitler to surrender his position there, but Hitler refuses. The Battle of Stalingrad began in the summer of 1942, as German forces assaulted the city, a major industrial center and a prized strategic coup. But despite […]
8th Air Force bombers, dispatched from their bases in England, fly the first American bombing raid against the Germans, targeting the Wilhelmshaven port. Of 64 planes participating in the raid, 53 reached their target and managed to shoot down 22 German planes—and lost only three planes in return. The 8th Air Force was activated in […]
On January 27, 1943, future President Ronald Reagan, an Army Air Corps first lieutenant during World War II, is on an active-duty assignment with the Army’s First Motion Picture Unit. Technically, Reagan was a unit public relations officer, however Warner Brothers Studios and the American Army Air Corps had tapped him the previous year to […]
The last German troops in the Soviet city of Stalingrad surrender to the Red Army, ending one of the pivotal battles of World War II. On June 22, 1941, despite the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, Nazi Germany launched a massive invasion against the USSR. Aided by its greatly superior air force, the […]
Wary of his growing antiwar attitude, Benito Mussolini removes Count Galeazzo Ciano, his son-in-law, as head of Italy’s foreign ministry and takes over the duty himself. The removal is part of a widespread dismissal of Il Duce’s cabinet. Ciano had been loyal to the fascist cause since its inception, having taking part in the march […]
On February 8, 1943, Japanese troops evacuate Guadalcanal, leaving the island in Allied possession after a prolonged campaign. The American victory paved the way for other Allied wins in the Solomon Islands. Guadalcanal is the largest of the Solomons, a group of 992 islands and atolls, 147 of which are inhabited, in the South Pacific […]
On this day, German General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps launch an offensive against an Allied defensive line in Tunisia, North Africa. The Kasserine Pass was the site of the United States’ first major battle defeat of the war. General Erwin Rommel was dispatched to North Africa in February 1941, along with the new […]
Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, the leaders of the German youth group Weisse Rose (White Rose), are arrested by the Gestapo for opposing the Nazi regime. The White Rose was composed of university (mostly medical) students who spoke out against Adolf Hitler and his regime. The founder, Hans Scholl, was a former member of […]
On March 2, 1943, the Battle of the Bismarck Sea begins when U.S. and Australian land-based planes launch an offensive against a convoy of Japanese ships in the western Pacific. One day earlier, U.S. reconnaissance planes spotted 16 Japanese ships en route to Lae and Salamaua in New Guinea. The Japanese were attempting to maintain […]
On March 21, 1943, the second military conspiracy plan to assassinate Hitler in a week fails. Back in the summer of 1941, Maj. Gen. Henning von Tresckow, a member of Gen. Fedor von Bock’s Army Group Center, was the leader of one of many conspiracies against Adolf Hitler. Along with his staff officer, Lt. Fabian […]
Oklahoma! opens on Broadway on March 31, 1943. In spite of a less-than-promising lead-up, it would go on to set a Broadway record of 2,212 performances before finally closing five years later. The financial risk of mounting a Broadway musical is so great that few productions ever make it to the Great White Way without […]
LSD the hallucinogenic is discovered, Lenin returns to Russia during the Russian Revolution, Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones release their first album, and Wayne Gretzky retires from hockey in This Day in History video. The date is April 16th. Vladimir Lenin, a Russian revolutionary, is famous for initiating what many call the October Revolution.
In Basel, Switzerland, Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist working at the Sandoz pharmaceutical research laboratory, accidentally consumes LSD-25, a synthetic drug he had created in 1938 as part of his research into the medicinal value of lysergic acid compounds. After taking the drug, formally known as lysergic acid diethylamide, Dr. Hofmann was disturbed by unusual […]
In Warsaw, Poland, Nazi forces attempting to clear out the city’s Jewish ghetto are met by gunfire from Jewish resistance fighters, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins. Shortly after the German occupation of Poland began, the Nazis forced the city’s Jewish citizens into a “ghetto” surrounded by barbwire and armed SS guards. The Warsaw ghetto […]
In Poland, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising comes to an end as Nazi soldiers gain control of Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto, blowing up the last remaining synagogue and beginning the mass deportation of the ghetto’s remaining dwellers to the Treblinka extermination camp. Shortly after the German occupation of Poland began, the Nazis forced the city’s Jewish citizens […]
On May 17, 1943, the crew of the Memphis Belle, one of a group of American bombers based in Britain, becomes one of the first B-17 crews to complete 25 missions over Europe and return to the United States. The Memphis Belle performed its 25th and last mission, in a bombing raid against Lorient, a German […]
On May 19, 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt plot the cross-Channel landing that would become D-Day—May 1, 1944. That date will prove a bit premature, as bad weather becomes a factor. Addressing a joint session of Congress, Churchill warned that the real danger at present was the “dragging-out of […]
On May 27, 1943, a B-24 carrying U.S. airman and former Olympic runner Louis Zamperini crashes into the Pacific Ocean. After surviving the crash, Zamperini floated on a raft in shark-infested waters for more than a month before being picked up by the Japanese and spending the next two years in a series of brutal […]
