A few days before their hope of entering Palestine was blasted by the British order deporting them to Cyprus, Jewish illegal immigrants line the rail, of a ship in Haifa Harbor on August 8, 1946. (AP Photo)
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 the eve of Yom Kippur and one month before U.S. mid-term elections, President Truman on October 4, 1946, publicly endorses the immediate immigration of over 100,000 Jews into Palestine. British Prime Minister Clement Attlee is furious over the American president’s sudden announcement and predicts that it will only inflame further violence in the region as leaders of Arab nations will feel betrayed. In the U.S., Truman’s political opponents condemn the pronouncement as “a clumsy bid to attract Jewish voters.”
Acquitted Nuremberg defendants Hjalmar Schacht and Hans Fritzsche are released by U.S. military authorities on October 5. The third acquitted defendant, Franz von Papen, remains imprisoned at his own request. (Von Papen is likely trying to elude German authorities who are waiting to arrest him and bring him to trial in a de-Nazification court. Schacht and Fritzsche were both arrested almost immediately after their release.) Sen. Robert A. Taft, a Republican from Ohio, condemns the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials as “an outrage against justice,” labeling the tribunals as victor’s justice under ex post facto laws that use court proceedings as vengeance against the defeated. “About this whole judgment there is the spirit of vengeance, and vengeance is seldom justice.” Taft’s comments are soundly condemned by both Republicans and Democrats.
As part of the Zionist Jewish Agency’s “11 Points in the Negev” program, which aims to establish a Jewish presence in the Negev Desert ahead of an anticipated partition of Palestine, 11 Jewish settlements are established literally overnight in the Negev Desert on October 6.
Truce negotiations between Dutch and Indonesian leaders begin on October 7 in Batavia (present-day Jakarta), chaired by the British. In Tokyo, the House of Representatives of Japan approves, by a vote of 342-5, the Constitution of Japan (1947). The document, which will go into effect on May 3, 1947, renounces war and guarantees the fundamental human rights of the people.
On October 8, four of those who murdered Jewish children in April 1945 at the Bullenhuser Damm school, close by the Neuengamme concentration camp, near Hamburg, Germany, are hanged. As British troops approached the camp, the children — who had been used in “medical experiments” at Neuengamme — along with four caretakers and six Soviet prisoners were taken from the camp to the school and murdered to cover up the atrocities that had been committed.
Procter and Gamble’s Tide detergent is introduced to the U.S. market on October 9. The first electric blankets go on sale, for $39.50, in Petersburg, Virginia. (The devices, called “warming pads” or “heated quilts,” only become named “electric blankets” in the 1950s.)
Muslims in Noakhali, East Bengal, British India, turn against Hindus on October 10. They begin a terror campaign of murder, rape and forced conversions to Islam along with looting and arson of Hindu homes and establishments that will last about a week. An estimated 5,000 die in the violence. Sixteen of the 19 Nazis convicted at Nuremberg on September 30 ask for clemency. Their appeals are denied by the Allied Control Council in Berlin. An American V-2 rocket reaches an altitude of 100 miles over the White Sands Missile Base in New Mexico and sends back an impressive amount of information about the sun.
In Yugoslavia, Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac of Zagreb, Croatia, has been tried, convicted and, on October 11, is sentenced to 16 years in prison for collaborating with the German-allied Ustaše, and his property is seized. Ustaše members Erik Lisak and Pavle Gulin are sentenced to death, nine priests and one other person are given prison terms. The trial is denounced by the Roman Catholic Church. In the U.S., Army Maj. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, director of the Selective Service, announces the end of the military draft. Inductions are canceled for persons scheduled to report to their draft boards on or after October 16, 1946.
The Iranian government announces on October 12 that the rebellion in Fars Province is ending. U.S. Army Gen. Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, whose war duties were primarily in the China-India-Burma Theater, dies in San Francisco, California, after surgery for stomach cancer. The West Point graduate was 63 years old.
The French electorate on October 13 approves a constitution for the Fourth French Republic. It specifically enshrines the equality of women and men “in all areas.” At the same time, Dahomey, Niger, and Guinea — all in Africa — are made French overseas territories. Reversing its previous stance, the Muslim League joins the interim government of India. Five Muslim members are added to the twelve-member Executive Committee.
A preliminary truce and a temporary cease-fire are agreed to on October 14 by Dutch and Indonesian forces in Linggadjati, in the East Indies. Negotiators begin to work out which islands will comprise the Republic of Indonesia and which will remain as part of the Netherlands East Indies under the Dutch crown. The goal is that the two entities will co-exist. With the U.S. in the grip of a meat shortage, President Truman reluctantly eliminates all price controls. With no price ceiling imposed by the Office of Price Administration, meat prices double, but production increases, easing the shortage.
The 21-nation Paris Peace Conference ends on October 15. Draft treaties with Germany’s European allies are finalized, as are payment of war reparations, territorial adjustments and modifications to certain international borders. There is no resolution on the Trieste dispute (whether the port city will belong to Italy or Yugoslavia); as a result, the Yugoslav delegation boycotts the last session. At Nuremberg, Germany, Hermann Göring ingests cyanide and dies instantly, hours before he is to be executed. Afterwards, authorities state that Göring had smuggled the poison capsule in when he arrived at Nuremberg and successfully kept it hidden by moving it around in his cell or on his person. However, in 2005, Herbert Lee Stivers, one of the U.S. soldiers guarding Göring, admitted that he may have been duped by a German girlfriend into passing a fountain pen containing “medicine” for the “very sick” Göring that actually held the poison. Researchers are torn between the two stories — both plausible — since Göring left a letter saying that none of the guards was to blame for not finding the vial, which Göring says was hidden in a jar of hair cream when he arrived.
Ten of the twelve leading figures in the Nazi government that were convicted on September 30 are executed by hanging in Nuremberg on October 16 for crimes against humanity. The eleventh, Hermann Göring, killed himself yesterday, and the twelfth, Martin Bormann, has not yet been found (his remains are finally discovered in 1972). The hangings are badly botched — most Nazis slowly strangle to death. Their bodies are incinerated near Munich and the ashes are scattered over the River Isar. In the U.S., Gordon “Gordie” Howe makes his National Hockey League debut with the Detroit Red Wings. He will play pro hockey in five decades (1946-1980).
In the U.S., the Office of Price Administration on October 17 removes all price controls on coffee.
