The City of New York invited the United Nations to house its headquarters in 1946.
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.
The City of New York on October 18, 1946, formally invites the United Nations to make its permanent home there. When the world organization agrees, the city offers the use of some of the 1939-1940 World’s Fair buildings in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens as the UN’s temporary headquarters.
Dismantling of the U.S. Strategic Services Unit begins on October 19. Formed after the dissolution of the wartime Office of Strategic Services, the SSU will be folded into the newly created National Intelligence Authority, which has the responsibility of overseeing the Central Intelligence Group (later becoming the CIA).
In the first Berlin municipal elections since the war, Social Democrats on October 20 receive almost 50% of the vote. The Soviet-sponsored Socialist Unity Party polls only 19%. In San Juan, PIP, the Puerto Rican Independence Party (Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño) is founded, with the aim of creating a “free, independent and democratic republic” separate from the U.S.
Jawaharlal Nehru and two of his party are injured on October 21 when Muslims attack their car near Peshawar, in northwestern British India. A British Royal Navy vessel intercepts a Jewish refugee ship with 819 aboard and tows it to Haifa. The passengers are transferred to internment camps in Cyprus. President Juan Perón of Argentina outlines his five-year plan for industrialization and development. Nationalist Chinese president Chiang Kai-shek makes his first visit to the island of Taiwan.
On October 22, two British destroyers — HMS Saumarez and HMS Volage — are heavily damaged (one beyond repair) by mines while steaming through the Corfu Channel that separates the Greek island of Corfu and Albania. In the blasts, 44 British seamen are killed, and 42 are injured. After determining Albanian guilt, Great Britain breaks off relations with the Balkan nation. (The mines were German, but new, and were likely laid by the Yugoslavs at Albania’s direction.) Subsequently, the United Nations and the International Court of Justice condemn Albania for placing the mines and not warning the British about them. In Soviet-occupied Germany, Soviet authorities round up 400 German engineers and technicians critical to the Soviet space program and deport them and their families to the U.S.S.R. for service there.
The United Nations General Assembly meets in New York City for the first time, on October 23, continuing a session that had been started in London. U.S. President Harry Truman officially re-opens the session, being held in an auditorium of the former New York City Pavilion from the 1939-1940 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens. The U.S. government lifts all price controls on food and beverages except for rice, sugar, syrups and molasses. Kurt Daluege, the Nazi SS officer who ordered the Lidice massacre on June 9, 1942, is hanged in Prague, Czechoslovakia. In the massacre, all the residents of the Czech village were killed, and the buildings razed, in retaliation for the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich five days earlier.
British Lt. Col. Richard Webb detains reporters on October 24 when they try to witness a roundup of Jews in Jerusalem. Acquitted Nuremberg defendant Franz von Papen finally leaves prison. The Netherlands and Indonesia sign a cease-fire agreement. A camera on board a V-2 rocket launched from White Sands, New Mexico, takes the first photograph of earth from space (actually, 65 miles up).
In Nuremberg, Germany, on October 25, 1946, indictments are handed down against 20 Nazi physicians, two administrators and an attorney for war crimes, including euthanasia murder, human experimentation and medical torture. In response to Muslim atrocities against Hindus in East Bengal earlier in the month, Hindus in Bihar state demonstrate and riot, attacking Muslim families. Over the next week, the death toll will be officially reported as 4,580. Unofficial sources place the number at 10,000 or more.
Continued sectarian violence rages across India on October 26. In Calcutta, 27 people are killed, while attacks on Hindus by Muslims in eastern Bengal cause 250 deaths. Otto Thierack, Reich Minister of Justice from 1942-1945, commits suicide by ingesting poison while in pre-trial captivity.
The Ubangi-Shari colony, French Equatorial Africa, French Somaliland, Chad, the Comoros, French settlements in Oceania, Madagascar, French Sudan, Mauritania, New Caledonia, St. Pierre & Miquelon, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire are all made overseas territories of France on October 27. Georgi Dimitrov’s “Fatherland Front” — a coalition of communist political parties — wins handily in Bulgarian elections with 78% of the vote. Dimitrov becomes the first communist prime minister of Bulgaria. For the first time in its history, Venezuela conducts voting by secret ballot. It is also the first election in which every citizen 18 years or older is eligible to vote without restrictions.
Reacting to persecution of leftist and communist citizens by the conservative government and the more than 150 anti-communist groups in the country, the Greek Communist Party and its allies on October 28 create the Democratic Army of Greece. Commanded by Markos Vafeiadis, the 13,000-member guerrilla force seeks to place the Communist Party of Greece into power, thus reigniting the Greek Civil War.
A train carrying Mohandas K. Gandhi is attacked and stoned in Aligarh, northern India, on October 29. Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov surprises the UN General Assembly by calling for universal disarmament and the banning of all nuclear weapons. He hints that the U.S. may not be the only possessor of an atomic bomb. In Washington, D.C., U.S. Army Air Forces Maj. Gen. Lauris Norstad, Director of Plans and Operations for the War Department, tells President Truman that the only way the U.S. could prevent the U.S.S.R. from invading Western Europe would be by an airborne attack against 17 Soviet cities with atomic weapons. (At the time, the U.S. has only nine atomic bombs in its arsenal.)
The U.S., the U.K., the Netherlands and France on October 30 establish the Caribbean Commission — to be headquartered in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago — to address and improve common economic and social issues in the region.
On October 31, two people are injured and part of the British embassy in Rome is destroyed by two bombs planted by operatives of Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary organization in Mandatory Palestine. The attack — to protest the British policy of limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine — is the first on European soil. The nascent Indonesian government launches the Indonesian rupiah as its currency and encourages its citizens to use the money in place of the Netherlands Indies gulden as a symbol of independence. An earlier attempt to launch the rupiah was foiled when Dutch colonial authorities seized the printing plant and confiscated the original press run of the currency.
