August 1940

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1940
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The following events occurred in August 1940:

August 1, 1940 (Thursday)

August 2, 1940 (Friday)

August 3, 1940 (Saturday)

August 4, 1940 (Sunday)

  • Operation Hurry ended in British success.
  • American General John J. Pershing gave a nationwide radio broadcast urging that aid be sent to Britain. "It is not hysterical to insist that democracy and liberty are threatened," Pershing said. "Democracy and liberty have been overthrown on the continent of Europe. Only the British are left to defend democracy and liberty in Europe. By sending help to the British we can still hope with confidence to keep the war on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where the enemies of liberty, if possible, should be defeated."[7] That same day, Charles Lindbergh appeared at a pro-isolationism rally in Chicago and said that "if our own military forces are strong, no foreign nation can invade us and if we do not interfere with their affairs none will desire to."[8]

August 5, 1940 (Monday)

August 6, 1940 (Tuesday)

  • The Italians captured Odweina in British Somaliland.[6]
  • The American ambassador to Belgium John Cudahy said that the food situation in Belgium and northern France was desperate and suggested that the Nazis seemed to be expecting outside aid to solve the food shortage for them.[9] This comment would be controversial for touching on the issue of the British blockade.[10]

August 7, 1940 (Wednesday)

August 8, 1940 (Thursday)

August 9, 1940 (Friday)

  • German military commander Alfred Jodl issued a directive titled Aufbau Ost ("Reconstruction East"), ordering that transport and supply facilities be improved in the east so the logistics would be in place for an attack on the Soviet Union in 1941.[15]
  • The first air raid of the Birmingham Blitz took place when a single aircraft bombed Erdington.
  • Sumner Welles read a formal statement at a press conference calling John Cudahy's recent remarks "in violation of standing instructions of the Department of State" and said that they were "not to be construed as representing the views of this government." The statement went on to say that the incident "illustrates once again the importance which must be attributed by American representatives abroad to the Department's instructions to refrain at this critical time from making public statements other than those made in accordance with instructions of the Department of State."[16]
  • The adventure film Captain Caution starring Victor Mature, Bruce Cabot and Alan Ladd was released.

August 10, 1940 (Saturday)

August 11, 1940 (Sunday)

August 12, 1940 (Monday)

August 13, 1940 (Tuesday)

August 14, 1940 (Wednesday)

August 15, 1940 (Thursday)

August 16, 1940 (Friday)

August 17, 1940 (Saturday)

  • Adolf Hitler ordered a total blockade of Britain as a means of weakening the island prior to Operation Sea Lion.[27]
  • Canada and the United States signed the Ogdensburg Agreement, establishing the Permanent Joint Board on Defense.
  • Wendell Willkie made a speech in his hometown of Elwood, Indiana formally accepting the Republican nomination for president. Willkie promised to return "to those same American principles that overcame German autocracy once before, both in business and in war, to out-distance Hitler in any contest he chooses in 1940 or after." Willkie said that the reason for France's defeat was because that country had become "absorbed in unfruitful political adventures and flimsy economy theories," drawing a parallel to the Roosevelt Administration.[28]

August 18, 1940 (Sunday)

August 19, 1940 (Monday)

  • The weather in Britain from this day through August 23 was wet with plenty of low cloud, causing a drop in the frequency of air raids. British ground crews took advantage of the lull in the fighting to repair damaged planes and airfields while Hermann Göring fumed at the loss of time.[29]
  • Italian troops captured Berbera.[6]
  • German submarine U-104 was commissioned.
  • Gallup published the results of a poll asking Americans whether they approved of a proposal to sell 50 old destroyer ships to England. 62% approved of the idea, 38% disapproved.[30]
  • Born: Jill St. John, actress, in Los Angeles, California

August 20, 1940 (Tuesday)

August 21, 1940 (Wednesday)

August 22, 1940 (Thursday)

August 23, 1940 (Friday)

August 24, 1940 (Saturday)

  • Portsmouth suffered the most casualties sustained in a single raid up to this point in the Battle of Britain. Over 100 were killed and 300 injured.[36]
  • The Luftwaffe dropped bombs on the financial heart of London and Oxford Street in the West End, probably unintentionally as the German bomber pilots had likely made a navigational error and did not know they were over the city. Winston Churchill was outraged at what he perceived to be a deliberate attack and ordered the RAF to bomb Berlin in retaliation.[37][20][21]
  • The German battleship Bismarck was commissioned into service.
  • A team of pathologists at Oxford University including Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley published laboratory results in The Lancet describing methods for the production of penicillin and the effects of its chemotherapeutic action on lab mice.[38][39]
  • Died: Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, 80, German technician and inventor

August 25, 1940 (Sunday)

  • The RAF bombed Berlin for the first time in the war. Damage was slight and nobody was killed, but it came as a loss of face for Hermann Göring, who had boasted that Berlin would never be bombed.[37] Hitler authorized the bombing of London in retaliation.[21]
  • Born: José van Dam, bass-baritone, in Brussels, Belgium

August 26, 1940 (Monday)

  • The French colony of Chad joined the Free French side and declared war on Germany and Italy.[6][40]
  • The Luftwaffe bombed the village of Wexford on the east coast of Ireland, killing three women. Ireland protested to Germany over the incident.[41][6]
  • No. 1 Fighter Squadron RCAF became the first Royal Canadian Air Force unit to engage enemy planes in battle when it encountered German bombers over southern England.[42]

August 27, 1940 (Tuesday)

August 28, 1940 (Wednesday)

August 29, 1940 (Thursday)

August 30, 1940 (Friday)

  • The Second Vienna Award was rendered.
  • Vichy France announced that it would allow 6,000 Japanese troops to be stationed in Indochina and use ports, airfields and railroads for military purposes. However, the French government attempted to delay the implementation of this plan for as long as possible.[6]
  • German submarine U-93 was commissioned.
  • Died: J. J. Thomson, 83, English physicist and Nobel laureate

August 31, 1940 (Saturday)

References

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  2. McClain, James L. Japan: A Modern History. W. W. Norton & Company, 2001. p. 494. ISBN 0-393-04156-5
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  11. Coppieters, Bruno. "Legitimate Authority." Moral Constraints on War: Principles and Cases, Second Edition. Ed. Bruno Coppieters and Nick Fotion. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008. p. 59-60. ISBN 9780739129913.
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  27. Davis, Frank. WolfPack: The German Submarine War in the Atlantic, 1939-1940." The War Against Hitler: Military Strategy in the West. Ed. Albert A. Nofi. Da Capo Press, 1995. p. 54. ISBN 9780938289494.
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