Trygve Lie, first secretary-general of the United Nations.
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 constituent assembly in Hungary proclaims the establishment of the Republic of Hungary on February 1, 1946, and names Zoltán Tildy as its president. Trygve Lie, a Norwegian socialist, becomes the first Secretary-General of the United Nations. Syria and the U.S.S.R. secretly sign an agreement for Soviet military advisors to come to Syria. In Philadelphia, a press conference is held at the University of Pennsylvania to announce the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC), considered to be the first electronic, digital computer. The machine occupies an entire 30- x 60-foot room, weighs 30 tons and uses more than 18,000 vacuum tubes to perform functions such as counting to 5,000 in one second. Costing $450,000, ENIAC was designed by the U.S. Army during World War II to make artillery calculations. ENIAC’s development paves the way for modern computer technology.
Southern Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands are incorporated into the U.S.S.R. on February 2; they had formerly belonged to Japan. In the Middle East, a one-day strike ordered by the Arab Higher Committee to protest Jewish immigration paralyzes Palestine.
In Riga, Latvia, on February 3, former General der Waffen-SS und Polizei Friedrich Jeckeln and five of his staff officers are hung in public. Jeckeln had been the SS commander of the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union. At his war-crimes trial he took responsibility for overseeing the deaths of over 250,000 people, mostly Jewish. The U.S.S.R. and Lebanon sign a pact allowing Soviet military advisors to come into that Middle Eastern nation.
Ferenc Nagy becomes prime minister of Hungary on February 4, succeeding Zoltán Tildy, who was elected president on February 1. The United States and the United Kingdom say they will recognize the Romanian government of Petru Groza provided it holds free elections. National weather forecasts return to newspapers in the U.S. after an absence of four years. The printing of weather maps was discontinued on December 15, 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbor to avoid helping any planned enemy attacks.
On February 5, the British government announces a nationwide return to dark bread due to a shortage of wheat for making white bread. Allowable rations of cooking fat will be cut, but the milk ration will be raised. The Yugoslav government announces that Field Marshal Milan Nedić, the nation’s prime minister from August 1941 to October 1944 during the German occupation, has killed himself by jumping out a window of the Belgrade prison where he was being held on charges of treason. Suspicions are that he was probably killed there yesterday by Yugoslav authorities.
The British government announces on February 6 that Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, the white ruler of Sarawak (on Borneo) and known as “the White Rajah,” will cede his state to the United Kingdom as a British Crown Colony. Sarawak has been under British protection since 1842. Established as an independent state from a series of land concessions acquired by Brooke’s grandfather from the Sultan of Brunei, Sarawak was recognized as an independent entity by the U.S. in 1850, and by the U.K. in 1864.
The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. on February 7 agree to transportation, mail and radio communication between their two occupation zones in Korea. French military forces conduct a large-scale assault to recover Bến Tre Province in France’s Indochina colony. The province, in the Mekong River Delta in the south, has been held by the Viet Minh since August 1945. The French quickly regain control of the province, but guerrilla activity continues.
On February 8, the United Nations establishes its Commission on Human Rights. In Portugal, Premier António de Oliveira Salazar bans opposition parties. Kim Il-Sung, leader of the northern branch of the Korean Communist Party, is elected chairman of the Interim People’s Committee in the Soviet-occupied portion of Korea.
In Moscow, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin on February 9 announces the new five-year plan for the U.S.S.R., calling for production boosts of 50 percent. In the same address, he states that another war is “inevitable” because of the “capitalist development of the world economy,” and that the Soviet Union would need to concentrate on national defense in advance of a war with the Western nations. Some historians believe that Stalin’s statement marks the beginning of the “Cold War” between capitalism and communism.
Hubertus van Mook, Acting Governor-General of the Netherlands East Indies, on February 10 proposes to Indonesian leaders in Batavia (Jakarta) a plan that offers the choice of either independence or remaining within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with Dutch citizenship, commonwealth status and internal autonomy. In Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh state, in northern India, 100,000 people protest a 50% cut in wheat rations. U.S. Navy Commodore Ben Wyatt, military governor of the Marshall Islands, meets with a delegation representing the 167 residents of Bikini Atoll and asks if they will agree to be relocated temporarily (with Navy help), so that atomic bomb testing can take place there “for the good of mankind and to end all wars.” The Bikinians convene, and after some discussion, their leader tells Wyatt that they will leave their homes in the belief that “everything is in the hands of God.”
In Manila, the Philippines, Lt. Gen. Masaharu Homma on February 11 is convicted of ordering the Bataan Death March in 1942. He is sentenced to death. In India, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, leader of the All-India Muslim League, promises revolution if the country is not divided. The Yalta Agreement — dealing primarily with the post-war reorganization of Germany and Europe — is released simultaneously in Washington, D.C., London and Moscow one year to the day after its signing by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin.
The DuMont Television Network on February 12 makes the first network telecast, transmitting Lincoln’s Birthday celebrations from WTTG, its station in Washington, D.C., to WABD, its New York affiliate. In advance of presidential elections in Argentina, the U.S. State Department publishes a 121-page “blue book” that provides evidence that Argentina — and presidential candidate Juan Perón — gave aid to Nazi Germany during the war.
On February 13, Harold Ickes, U.S. Secretary of the Interior since 1933, resigns in protest when President Truman says that Ickes could have been “wrong” in testimony before a U.S. Senate committee about Truman’s nominee for Undersecretary of the Navy, Edwin W. Pauley, Sr. Ickes had testified that Pauley, a wealthy oil executive and influential Democrat, while treasurer of the Democratic National Committee had suggested to Ickes that $300,000 in campaign donations could be raised if the Interior Department withdrew from its conflict with the state of California for oil-rich offshore land. Ickes writes to Truman: “I cannot stay on when you, in effect, have expressed a lack of confidence in me.” The resignation winds up scuttling Pauley’s appointment.
In the U.K., Royal Assent is granted on February 14 for the nationalization of the Bank of England. Former Albanian prime minister Maliq Bushati and regents Anton Harapi and Lef Nosi are executed in Tirana as war criminals.
