Louis Réard puts the finishing touches on a model wearing a bikini in 1946, the year he invented the bathing suit, named after the atoll where an atom blast took place.
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 “bikini” bathing suit makes its debut on July 5, 1946, at a Paris fashion show. Created by former civil engineer Louis Réard, the skimpy two-piece outfit is named for the July 1 American atom-bomb test on Bikini Atoll. Réard hopes that his design will have a similarly explosive effect on observers. According to New York Times columnist William Safire, the swimsuit causes more debate, concern and condemnation than does the atomic bomb itself. With inflation in Hungary continuing to spiral out of control (prices are doubling roughly every 15 hours), the national bank in Budapest issues a 100-quintillion-pengő note. (That’s a 1 with 20 zeroes after it.)
On July 6, by agreement of the U.K. and the U.S.S.R., 2,250,000 civilian war refugees cross the lines between the British and Soviet occupation zones of Germany (in both directions) trying to reach their homes. A conference on the future of French Indochina begins at Fontainebleau, near Paris. Hundreds of Italian, Croatian and Slovene demonstrators in Trieste throw rocks and stones at Allied military police in protest of a Four-Power decision to internationalize the city, located where Italy, Croatia and Slovenia converge. (Each segment of the mob wants the city to be allocated to their country.)
The All-India Congress Party, meeting in Bombay, on July 7 approves Viscount Wavell’s long-range “Breakdown Plan” for independence. Wavell, the Viceroy of India, proposed the phased withdrawal of the British and the avoidance of partition with the continuance of India as a single geographic entity, accommodating both Hindus and Muslims in government. The Muslim League, however, continues to support its agenda of an entirely separate homeland made up of Muslim-majority Indian provinces. Italian-born, naturalized-American Frances Xavier Cabrini becomes the first U.S. citizen to be canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. She was the founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, who serve the sick, the poor and children in 67 missionary facilities around the world. In China, the Communist Party of China issues a statement critical of the United States policy toward China. (Three groups had been fighting in China: the Chinese Nationalist Army under Chiang Kai-shek against the Communist forces under Mao Tse-tung, and both of them against the Japanese. When Japan surrendered, there were some 630,000 Japanese and Korean military and civilian personnel in China who needed repatriation. Since the Nationalist government wasn’t capable of doing this, President Truman sent 50,000 U.S. Marines to China to accept the Japanese surrender, help repatriate the Japanese and Koreans and assist the Nationalist forces reclaim the territory that had been occupied by the Japanese. The marines are not to take sides between the Chinese factions and are only allowed to engage in combat if fired upon first.)
The Soviet military government in Austria on July 8 begins deporting from its occupation zone some 54,000 Germans who had moved into the country after the Anschluß (the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938).
Arthur Greiser, former Gauleiter (leader of a regional branch of the Nazi Party) of the Province of Warthegau, is tried by the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland and sentenced to death for war crimes. (Warthegau was in the western part of Occupied Poland.) Greiser’s defense that he was only following orders does not hold up.
The hyperinflation occurring in Hungary reaches its worst level on July 10, with the inflation rate peaking at 328.46% per day. The cause is a combination of a high demand from the U.S.S.R. for war reparations, the plundering of Hungarian industries by the Soviets and the holding of much of Hungary’s gold reserves in the U.S. (U.S. troops had captured a train carrying much of Hungary’s gold, treasures and looted items being evacuated to Germany from Budapest in May 1945.)
A military court in Kielce, Poland, on July 11 sentences nine people to death and three to imprisonment for their parts in the anti-Jewish pogrom of July 4 in that city. At the “Big Four” meeting in Paris of the four powers occupying Germany, U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes proposes the economic merger of the occupation zones. (The U.K. and U.S. zones merge on July 27, 1946, as the “United Economic Area.” The French zone joins in 1949 and the three areas become collectively known as “West Germany” later that year.)
On July 12, 1946, the Paris peace conference of “Big Four” foreign ministers adjourns. The National Coal Board (British Coal) is formed to run coal operations in the U.K. when the industry is nationalized on 1 January 1947. Hungary enacts economic reform, retiring its worthless currency, the pengő, replacing it with the forint, which will become legal tender on August 1. The exchange rate between the currencies will be: 1 forint equals 400 octillion (400 plus 29 zeroes) pengő.
Seven U.S. Marines are ambushed and taken captive on July 13 by Chinese Communist forces in Hebei Province, on the coast of northern China.
On July 14, the nine people sentenced to death for their roles in the July 4 pogrom in Kielce, Poland, are executed. The child-rearing manual The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by American pediatrician Benjamin Spock is published and becomes an immediate bestseller.
North Borneo becomes a Crown Colony of the United Kingdom on July 15 as the British North Borneo Company transfers its rights to the territory to the British Crown. In Yugoslavia, Chetnik leader Dragoljub “Draža” Mihailović and 23 others are found guilty of treason after a brief trial in Belgrade by the authorities of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. Ten, including Mihailović, are sentenced to death, the rest are given prison terms of up to 20 years. A five-month investigation by two Canadian Supreme Court justices produces a 700-page report detailing several spy networks operating out of the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, Canada’s capital.
In Germany on July 16, a U.S. military court at Dachau sentences 43 members of the Waffen-SS to death for the murder of 362 American prisoners of war and 111 Belgian civilians in the vicinity of Malmedy, Belgium, between December 16, 1944, and January 13, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge. The court also convicts 33 others, who receive sentences varying from 10 years to life in prison.
On July 17, Dragoljub Mihailović and nine others are executed by firing squad in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Mihailović, the leader of Serbian royalist guerrilla fighters known as Chetniks, and his associates were convicted of high treason and war crimes, and collaboration with the Nazis. Despite their connection with the Nazis, Mihailović’s fighters — in an attempt to curry favor with the Allies — had rescued and sheltered from the Nazis almost 500 Allied airmen shot down over the Balkans. They arranged with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to have them flown out by the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force in 1944 under the auspices of “Operation Halyard.” (Playing both sides against each other, the Chetniks also returned shot-down German airmen to the Luftwaffe.)
The British House of Commons on July 18 votes 305-182 to implement bread rationing in the United Kingdom due to low wheat reserves.
