WW2 Events
January 19, 1941
// British troops attack Italian-held Eritrea.
January 21, 1941
// Australian and British forces attack Tobruk, Libya.
January 22, 1941
// British troops capture Tobruk from the Italians.
February 11, 1941
// British forces advance into Italian Somaliland.
February 12, 1941
// Erwin Rommel arrives in Tripoli.
February 14, 1941
// First units of German Afrika Korps arrive in North Africa.
February 22, 1941
// 430 Jewish hostages are deported from Amsterdam after a Dutch Nazi is killed by Jews.
March 01, 1941
// Bulgaria signs the Tripartite Pact.
// Himmler makes his first visit to Auschwitz, during which he orders Kommandant Höss to begin massive expansion to Birkenau that would hold 100,000 prisoners.
March 07, 1941
// British forces arrive in Greece.
// German Jews ordered into forced labour.
March 11, 1941
// President Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act into law.
March 26, 1941
// The German Army High Command gives approval to RSHA and Heydrich on the tasks of SS murder squads (Einsatzgruppen) in occupied Poland.
March 27, 1941
// Japanese spy Takeo Yoshikawa arrives in Honolulu, Hawaii and begins to study the USA fleet at Pearl Harbor.
» Article with more detail.
// Battle of Cape Matapan begins.
// A coup in Yugoslavia overthrows the pro-Axis government.
March 29, 1941
// A 'Commissariat' for Jewish Affairs is set up in Vichy France.
April 03, 1941
// Pro-Axis regime set up in Iraq.
April 06, 1941
// Nazis invade Greece and Yugoslavia.
April 14, 1941
// Rommel attacks Tobruk.
April 17, 1941
// Yugoslavia surrenders to the Nazis.
April 27, 1941
// Greece capitulates
// German troops enter Athens.
May 01, 1941
// German attack on Tobruk is repulsed.
May 09, 1941
// The German submarine U-110 is captured by the British Royal Navy. On board was the latest Enigma cryptography.
May 10, 1941
// Heavy German bombing of London.
// Rudolph Hess flies to Scotland.
// British bomb Hamburg.
May 14, 1941
// 3,600 French Jews arrested in Paris.
May 15, 1941
// Operation Brevity begins (the British counter-attack in Egypt).
May 20, 1941
// Germany launches airborne invasion of Crete.
May 21, 1941
// 950 miles off the coast of Brazil, the freighter SS Robin Moor becomes the first american ship sunk by a U-boat.
May 24, 1941
// In the North Atlantic, the Bismarck sinks the HMS Hood.
May 26, 1941
// In the North Atlantic, Fairey Swordfish aircraft from the carrier HMS Ark Royal fatally cripple the German battleship Bismarck in torpedo attack.
May 27, 1941
// President Roosevelt proclaims an "unlimited national emergency".
// German battleship Bismarck is sunk in North Atlantic.
June 01, 1941
// Allies evacuate Crete.
June 02, 1941
// Vichy publishes anti-Semitic legislation based on German laws. Jews banned from public office.
June 04, 1941
// Pro-Allied government installed in Iraq.
June 08, 1941
// Allies invade Syria and Lebanon.
June 09, 1941
// Finland initiate mobilization and put some units under German command.
June 14, 1941
// United States freezes German and Italian assets.
// Mass deportations by Soviet Union authorities take place in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
June 22, 1941
// Operation Barbarossa begins.
June 28, 1941
// German troops capture Minsk.
June 29, 1941
// Romanian troops conduct a pogrom against Jews in the town of Jassy, killing 10,000.
July 03, 1941
// Stalin calls for a scorched earth policy.
July 04, 1941
// Mass murder of Polish scientists and writers, committed by German troops in captured Soviet city of Lvov.
July 05, 1941
// German troops reach the Dnieper River.
July 07, 1941
// American forces land in Iceland to forestall an invasion by the Nazis.
July 10, 1941
// Germans cross the River Dnieper in the Ukraine.
July 12, 1941
// Mutual Assistance agreement between British and Soviets.
July 13, 1941
// Montenegro starts the first popular uprising in Europe against the Axis Powers.
July 14, 1941
// British occupy Syria.
July 21, 1941
// In occupied Poland near Lublin, Majdanek concentration camp becomes operational.
July 26, 1941
// Seizure of all Japanese assets in the USA.
// 3,800 Jews killed during a pogrom by Lithuanians in Kovno.
July 31, 1941
// Goering instructs Heydrich to prepare for Final Solution.
August 01, 1941
// United States announces an oil embargo against aggressor states.
August 18, 1941
// Hitler orders a temporary halt to systematic euthanasia of mentally ill and handicapped due to protests.
September 01, 1941
// German Jews ordered to wear yellow stars.
September 06, 1941
// The Vilna Ghetto is established containing 40,000 Jews.
September 08, 1941
// Siege of Leningrad begins.
September 17, 1941
// Beginning of general deportation of German Jews.
September 19, 1941
// Nazis occupy Kiev.
September 27, 1941
// 23,000 Jews killed at Kamenets-Podolsk, in the Ukraine.
September 29, 1941
// Nazis kill 33.771 Jews in Kiev.
October 02, 1941
// Operation "Taifun" (typhoon) begins: german advance on Moscow.
October 16, 1941
// Germans take Odessa.
October 23, 1941
// Nazis forbid emigration of Jews from the Reich.
October 24, 1941
// Germans take Kharkov.
October 30, 1941
// Germans arrive in Sevastopol.
// Roosevelt approves US$1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union.
November 12, 1941
// Temperatures around Moscow drop to -12 °C and the Soviet Union launches ski troops for the first time against the freezing German forces near the city.
November 13, 1941
// British aircraft carrier Ark Royal is sunk off Gibraltar by a U-boat.
November 19, 1941
// The Times newspaper's report on Occupied Europe estimates that 82,000 Poles have been shot or hanged since Poland's occupation by the Germans.
November 20, 1941
// Germans occupy Rostov.
November 24, 1941
// Theresienstadt Ghetto is established near Prague.
// The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French.
November 27, 1941
// Soviet troops retake Rostov.
// Germans reach their closest approach to Moscow.
November 30, 1941
// Near Riga, a mass shooting of Latvian and German Jews.
December 05, 1941
// German attack on Moscow is abandoned.
December 06, 1941
// Soviet Army launches a major counter-offensive around Moscow.
December 08, 1941
// China officially declares war on Japan.
// Chelmno extermination camp becomes operational.
// Germany declares war on the United States.
December 16, 1941
// Rommel begins a retreat to El Agheila in North Africa.
December 19, 1941
// Hitler becomes Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the German Army.
December 25, 1941
// British and Canadians are defeated by the Japanese at Hong Kong.
December 27, 1941
// Churchill addresses a session of the U.S. Congress.
December 28, 1941
// Operation Anthropoid begins.