The hit song of 1942 is Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, sung by Bing Crosby in the movie Holiday Inn. Crosby first sang the song on Christmas Day, 1941 on an NBC radio show. But the song took off in late 1942, and it’s credited as the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide.
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Christmas in Norway, 1952
From Arne and the Christmas Star, a story of Norway by Alta Halverson Seymour. Illustrated by Frank Nicholas. Wilcox and Follett Company, 1952.
Arne knew there would be stacks of flatbrod, hard and crisp and round, each piece larger than a plate. Besta baked these right on top of her well-scrubbed cookstove. There would be heart-shaped waffles, and lefse and bakelse and rosettes and all kinds of good coffeecakes. His mouth watered at the thought. If a boy hung around the kitchen at the right times, he was sure to come in for a good many samples, especially broken bits.
He knew there would also be a final scouring of the house just before Christmas, that the windows and the copper flowerpots on the window sills would be gleaming. The geraniums and begoneas would be coaxed into bloom for Christmas. And of course the womenfolk would be busy planning and preparing food to last through the Christmas season.
1942: Events and Inventions
February 15, 1942. British-controlled Singapore falls to the Japanese advance down the Malayan Peninsula. The Allies now have no dry-dock port between Durban, South Africa and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
January, 1942. Gutzon Borglum completes the carving of four presidents on Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota.
February 1, 1942. Vidkun Quisling becomes Minister-President of Norway, a reward for his cooperation with the German occupation of his country. Quisling agrees to enlist Norwegians to help in the German war effort, and and Hitler promises the restoration of Norwegian independence as so as the war is won. As the war continues, quisling becomes a synonym for traitor among the Allies and the Norwegian resistance.
March 17, 1942. General MacArthur leaves the Philippines after the Japanese almost annihilate U.S. forces in the islands, but he promises, “I shall return!” Listen to a brief (five minute) story of MacArthur’s life. Bataan surrenders on April 9th, and Corregidor surrenders to the Japanese on May 6th.
April, 1942. The first T-shirts are manufactured for sailors serving in the U.S. navy.
June 6, 1942. The Japanese suffer their first major naval defeat in a battle off Midway Island in the Pacific. Some call this battle the turning point of the war in the Pacific.
July 23, 1942. A forced labor and death camp at Treblinka in Poland, built by the Germans as part of their “final solution to the Jewish problem”, opens for the purpose of exterminating all Jews in Poland and Eastern Europe.
August 19, 1942. Several thousand Allied soldiers, mostly Canadians, lose their lives in an Allied attempt at landing in northern France in the German-held port of Dieppe. The raid by the Allies is a complete failure, except as a demonstration of the difficulty that the Allies will have in re-taking Europe from the Germans.
August 23, 1942. The German Sixth Army launches an attack on the Russian city of Stalingrad. The ensuing battle is called the Battle of Stalingrad. It is the largest battle on the Eastern Front an done of the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare, killing perhaps as many as two million civilians and soldiers. The Russians are determined not to retreat beyond the Volga River in spite of the German bombing that has reduced the city to rubble. “Not a step back!†and “There is no land behind the Volga!” are the Russian slogans.
November 4, 1942. British General Montgomery and his Eighth Army halt the German Afrika Corps at El Alamein outside Cairo, Egypt. German General Erwin Rommel was absent on sick leave when the battle broke out.
November 8, 1942. Operation Torch, the Allied push to take over French North Africa, begins as American General Eisenhower leads the Allied landings in Morocco and Algeria.
1941: Events and Inventions
February 12, 1941. General Erwin Rommel arrives in North Africa (Tripoli, Libya) with German troops to reinforce the Italians who have suffered a series of defeats by the British.
April, 1941. Greece and Yugoslavia surrender to the German army invading their countries. British troops stationed in Greece retreat to Crete and North Africa. Yugoslavian Communist Joseph Broz Tito vows to continue fighting Hitler and his Nazis to the end.
May, 1941. The Blitz, heavy German bombing of London and other British cities, comes to an end as Hitler turns his attention to Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.
May 19, 1941. Italian Fascist troops surrender to the British in Ethiopia, and Emperor Haile Selassie has returned to the throne of Ethiopia after having been forced into exile by the Fascists.
June 30, 1941. The Germans invade the Soviet Union, breaking their non-aggression pact with Stalin.
August, 1941. Churchill and FDR meet aboard the American cruiser Augusta and issue a joint declaration later known as the Atlantic Charter. The agreement brings the United States one step closer to war in alliance with Britain.
September, 1941. All Jews in Germany over the age of six are required to wear the Star of David in public as a “mark of shame.”
September, 1941. 21-year old Mohammed Reza Pahlevi is the new Shah of Iran. He promises to be a “completely constitutional monarch.”
November, 1941. The Russian winter slows the German advance into Russia and towards Moscow. The German Blitzkrieg may be frozen in place.
December 7, 1941. A day which will live in infamy. Japanese aircraft attack the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Eight U.S. battleships are sunk or disabled and more than 2400 people are killed. Following the attack the U.S. and Britain both declare war on Japan. Italy and Germany declare war on the U.S., and President Roosevelt returns the favor.
1940: Events and Inventions
April 9, 1940. Germany invades Denmark and Norway, claiming that the invasion is purely defensive.
May 10, 1940. German forces invade Holland and Belgium with their Blitzkrieg or “lightning war”. Both countries have no choice but to surrender. The Germans continue on to France.
May 10, 1940. Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain, following Neville Chamberlain’s resignation. On May 13, Churchill makes a famous speech in which he tells the House of Commons and the British people:
I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal.
June 4, 1940. British forces trapped in France flee from Dunkirk. Under constant German bombardment, warships of the Royal Navy and hundreds of smaller vessels manned by volunteers from the coastal villages of Britain rescue nearly 300,000 British, French, and Belgian soldiers from the beaches and ferry them to safety in England.
June 10, 1940. Mussolini announces that Italy will join forces with Germany; Roosevelt calls the announcement a stab in the back.
The ending to another famous Churchill speech, delivered to the House of Commons on June 18, 1940:
June 22, 1940. The French surrender to the German Blitzkrieg invasion. German troops entered Paris on June 14th, and now Hitler demands that the French sign an armistice in the same railroad car in which the Germans surrendered to the Allies in November 1918.
July 10, 1940. French Marshall Henri Petain establishes a fascist and authoritarian government answering to the Nazis in Vichy, France. France is no longer a republic.
July-September, 1940. The Battle of Britain. The German Luftwaffe sends 1000 planes daily to bomb British ports, shipping, RAF bases, and British radar installations. The Royal Air Force effectively counters the German raids in the air with the help of warnings from the British radar system. Churchill says of the Battle of Britain and the brave RAF pilots, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
August 21, 1941. Exiled Bolshevik Leon Trotsky is assassinated with an ice pick by Ramon Mercader in Mexico City.
September 24-27, 1940. Japanese aircraft from aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin attack French positions on the coast of French Indochina (Vietnam and Cambodia). The United States, Britain, and the Dutch government in exile respond to Japanese expansionism by placing an oil, iron ore, and steel embargo on Japan.
September 27, 1940. The Tripartite Pact is signed in Berlin, Germany, establishing the Axis Powers of World War II. The pact was signed by representatives of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. The three nations agree to a ten-year alliance. Later, other countries sign the pact, including Hungary, Rumania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Croatia, and Thailand.
October-November, 1940. Seventy people are dying every day, mainly from starvation, in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland. Occupying Nazi troops continue to herd all Jewish Poles into the 1.3 square mile area; eventually over 400,000 Jews will be contained in the Warsaw ghetto. The Nazis close the Warsaw Ghetto to the outside world on November 16, 1940 by building a wall topped with barbed wire, and deploying armed guards. Leon Uris’s novel Mila 18 tells the story (in fiction)of the Warsaw Ghetto and its inhabitants and their resistance to the Nazi persecution.
1940: Books and Literature
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel:
John Steinbeck for The Grapes of Wrath.
Published in 1940:
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway.
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler.
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.
Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss.
Over my Dead Body and Where There’s a Will by Rex Stout.
Sad Cypress and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie.
Native Son by Richard Wright.
The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis.
Set in 1940:
The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico. Semicolon review here.
Against the Wind by Brock and Bodie Thoene. Reviewed by Beth at Weavings.
Blackout by Connie Willis. Partially set in 1940. Semicolon review here.
While We Still Live by Helen MacInnes. Sheila Matthews, a young Englishwoman is visiting in Warsaw when the Nazis invade. She stays and joins the Polish underground to fight against the German occupation.
The Winds of War by Herman Wouk.
Atonement by Ian McEwen. Semicolon review here.
1939: Events and Inventions
January 26, 1939. Franco’s Spanish Nationalist troops, aided by Italy, take Barcelona.
January 28, 1939. German physicists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman find a way to bombard uranium atoms with neutrons until the atoms split, releasing huge amounts of energy in the process. Hahn calls the discovery “nuclear fission”. It may be possible to use the energy produced by this process to make a bomb that will have immense destructive power.
March, 1939. Swiss company Nestle launches a new product in the United Kingdom, instant coffee.
March 15, 1939. Hitler enters Prague, Czechoslovakia as the German army takes over the remainder of the country.
August 23, 1939. Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin sign a non-aggression pact and agree to divide Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, eastern Poland and Bessarabia (today Moldova), and the northeast province of Romania are to go to the Soviet Union; Lithuania and western Poland are to belong to Germany.
September 1, 1939. Germany invades Poland. Norway, Finland, Sweden, Spain and Ireland declare their neutrality. Later in September U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt announces that the U.S. will also remain neutral in the war.
September 3, 1939. The United Kingdom, France, New Zealand and Australia declare war on Germany.
September 17, 1939. The Soviet Union invades Poland and then occupies eastern Polish territories.
September 28-29, 1939. Poland surrenders to Germany.
October 11, 1939. Manhattan Project. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt is presented a letter signed by Albert Einstein, urging the United States to rapidly develop the atomic bomb.
November 30, 1939. Soviet forces of over a million troops attack Finland and reach the Mannerheim Line, starting the war with Finland.
1939: Movies
1939 was the Year of Great Movies. In fact, motion picture historians and fans often call 1939 “the greatest year in the history of Hollywood.”
August: The Wizard of Oz premiers at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, California. The movie, based on L. Frank Baum’s book, stars Judy Garland as Dorothy. The film studio MGM almost deleted Ms. Garland’s famous song, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from the movie because they thought it was too long and that it was degrading for her to be singing in a barnyard. The song went on to win many awards, including an Academy Award for Best Song in 1939.
October: Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, starring my favorite actor, Jimmy Stewart, premiers in Washington, D.C. The movie tells the story of a young man from the midwest who accidentally gets appointed to the U.S. Senate. There he comes into conflict with a bunch of cynical and crooked politicians, and he heroically sustains a filibuster (back when a filibuster was real) in the Senate to fight for the cause of honesty and the rule of law.
December: Gone with the Wind premiers in Atlanta, Georgia, of course. What a movie! If you’ve never watched Gone With the Wind, you’ve missed about the best movie Hollywood ever made. Gone With the Wind won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The music in this video of clips from the movie is called Tara’s Theme.
Other films of 1939: Ninotchka with Greta Garbo, Dark Victory starring Bette Davis, Stagecoach, directed by Jon Ford and starring John Wayne, Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.
1939: Arts and Entertainment
First, take a look at this series of color photographs taken from 1939-1940. “These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations.”
Now, listen to my playlist of music from the 1930’s on Spotify..
Finally, take a look at these paintings by American artist Grandma Moses who was discovered as an artist in 1938-1940 when she was almost 80 years old.
1938: Arts and Entertainment
In 1938 Kate Smith sings Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” and makes the song a classic expression of American patriotism.
Also in 1938, a young Mary Martin captivates theatergoers with her rendition of “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” in Cole Porter’s Leave It to Me. In the 1946 movie, Night and Day, Mary Martin reprised the song playing herself in the movie with Cary Grant as Cole Porter.
Top Hits of 1938:
“A Gypsy Told Me” by Ted Weems And His Orchestra With Perry Como
“A-Tisket, A-Tasket” by Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb
“Begin the Beguine” by Artie Shaw
“Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” by The Andrews Sisters
“Cry, Baby, Cry” by Larry Clinton
“Don’t Be That Way” by Benny Goodman
“I’ve Got a Pocketful of Dreams” by Bing Crosby
“Music, Maestro, Please” by Tommy Dorsey
“My Reverie” by Larry Clinton
“Roll ‘Em Pete’ by Big Joe Turner And Pete Johnson
“Thanks for the Memory” recorded by Bob Hope And Shirley Ross
“Ti-Pi-Tin” by Horace Heidt
“Walking In The Kings Highway” by The Carter Family