Chiang Kai-Shek, left, with wife Soon Mei-ling and U.S. Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell seen here in 1942. Chiang became president of nationalist China in 1943. Wikimedia Commons.
By: Phil Kohn. Dedicated to the memory of his father, GM3 Walter Kohn, U.S. Navy Armed Guard, USNR, and all men and women who have answered the country’s call in time of need. Phil can be contacted at ww2remembered@yahoo.com.
On October 15, 1943, German troops surround Rome’s Jewish Quarter, and begin rounding up residents for deportation to Auschwitz. The Germans capture over a thousand people, but some 4,000 Jews find shelter in homes, convents and monasteries, and another 477 are taken in by the Vatican.
In Ukraine on October 16, Red Army units continue to strengthen and expand their Dniepr River bridgeheads and attack fiercely defended German positions. At Mormugao, Goa, (neutral) Portuguese India, the Swedish ocean liner MS Gripsholm, carrying 1,500 Japanese citizens trapped in the U.S. at the outbreak of the war, docks next to the Japanese liner Teia Maru, carrying 1,503 American, British and French citizens who had been similarly trapped in Japan. The ships exchange passengers for repatriation to their respective homelands.
Two Royal Air Force B-24 Liberator heavy bombers on marine patrol on October 17 sink two German submarines (U-540 and U-631) off the coast of Cape Farewell, Greenland. Off the coast of Japan east of Yokohama, the German auxiliary cruiser Michel — the Kriegsmarine’s last operating merchant raider — is torpedoed and sunk by the submarine USS Tarpon. Michel had sunk 17 Allied ships during its 19-month cruise.
Chiang Kai-shek takes the oath of office as President of China on October 18. The first trainload of Italian Jews is sent off to Auschwitz. Four provinces of Japanese-occupied British Malaya are transferred by the Japanese to the Kingdom of Thailand. (They are returned to British Malaya after the war.)
The German War Office on October 19 issues an order for the manufacture of 12,000 V-2 rockets. In the U.S., streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis and other infectious bacterial diseases, is isolated by Albert Schatz, a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The first British-German exchange of POWs takes place at Göteborg, Sweden, under the supervision of the Swedish Red Cross.
Beginning on October 20, representatives of the main Allied nations attend the Second Moscow Conference, in the Soviet Union. The conferees agree on security for post-war China, punishment for war criminals, and the establishment of advisory councils to consider the fate of Italy and Europe as a whole. In London, representatives of 17 Allied nations establish the United Nations War Crimes Commission.
From London, Adm. John Cunningham on October 21 is appointed Commander, British Naval Forces in the Mediterranean replacing Adm. Andrew Cunningham (no relation), who becomes First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff of the Royal Navy. Britain’s Royal Air Force conducts a major air raid on the German industrial and population center of Kassel. From Singapore, the Provisional Government of Azad Hind (“Free India”) is declared. Azad Hind will exist in Japanese-held areas of India, with pro-Axis activist Subhas Chandra Bose as president.
