1941 Events (Military/Political)

Some notable events, 1941

January 2nd: John Reed has his first Yuletide address as Premier. He encourages the listening audience to keep the fight on, encouraging recycling, conservation, and maintaining their lives under rations.

January 8th: The Patriae Society, founded by White exiles Adlai Stevenson and Dean Acheson in Canada, is formed to muster up support for the UASR war effort amongst the White American community. The idea, as indicated by their name (invoking the phrase Non sibi sed patriae, or “Not for self, but for country”) is to support the American nation in their time of need as opposed to the Communist government. The effort is inspired by Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich’s efforts to do the same for the White Russian communities.

January 15th: Jerry Sakagawa, a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, is attacked by a mysterious assailant. While he survives, his case highlights the recent rise of attacks against Japanese Americans on the West Coast.

January 18th : Adrien Arcand is ousted from Premiership by his party, Parti conservateur du Québec , in the runup to the Quebec general election in August. While having done his part as a whip in beating Quebec into line with federal policies, his abrasive and increasingly delusional policy attempts (such as suggesting to mass deport “those communist Jews” into Hudson Bay) made him too much of a liability to continue to support. His successor, the renegade Liberal Paul Gouin, commits the Quebec Conservatives to defending the fundamentals of French Canadian life - farm, family, and faith - from American subversion through a historic alliance with the central government. With him goes significant segments of the once-formidable Liberal patronage machine, securing Conservative dominance.

February 3rd: A young German student in London is arrested for threats made to Commonwealth Workers’ Party General Secretary Rajani Palme Dutt. These include racially charged threats.

February 10th: The Silver Legion, a pro-fascist paramilitary group in Americuba, stages a protest in front of the office of Senator Clare Boothe over her criticisms of Hitler. She is evacuated as the protests start to get violent.

February 23rd: At the University of California, Berkeley, a new element is isolated from bombardment of uranium by a team of physicists led by Glenn T. Seabourg. Given the previous newly discovered element, Neptunium, was named for the 8th planet in the solar system, the new element is named for the 9th, Plutonium.

February 28th : Karl Yoneda, a member of the California Central Committee, is harassed by a pair of volunteer militia members, demanding to see his “papers”. After a scuffle, the confusion is cleared up, but Yoneda is shaken by the incident and mulls putting his name forward for a higher office.

March 1st: The Daehan Republic is formally established, based out of Seoul. Though nominally an independent republic, it is in practice, a collaborationist client regime dominated by Imperial Japan, a fact seized on by leftist and liberal critics, mainly Korean independence activists.

March 5th: Rajani Palme Dutt and Subhas Chandra Bose make a joint statement declaring that intervening on behalf of the USSR was a “moral imperative”.

March 10th: Charles Coughlin denounces the “so-called” Patriae movement in a radio address, claiming that it is an “Operation Trust” style trap set up by StateSec. In a surprising move, Douglas MacArthur distances himself from Coughlin’s words, noting there is no evidence for this. Adlai Stevenson denies the accusation.

March 18th: Special Naval Landing Forces of the IJN begin an amphibious landing operation in Guangdong. Supported by fires from the battleship Kii and a squadron of destroyers, the SNLF establishes a beachhead in the city of Chaozhou. In spite of fierce counterattacks from the NRA’s 11th Group Army, the support from naval airpower and Formosa-based IJA bombers allow the beachead to endure.

March 24th: A fire breaks out in a grocery store in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo. It is soon determined to be arson, and a local is arrested. She confesses, admitting “deep paranoia” after witnessing Japanese war crimes in China.

April 2nd: Grand Wizard of the Sons of the Confederacy Bull Connor arrives in Juarez, Mexico, under an assumed name. He hopes to escape the heightened security protocol following the Birch assassination attempt and the declaration of war. At the same time, he also begins plotting attacks to be relayed to followers in the South. 25 year old Shelby Foote is the one who conveys these messages to the various branches, becoming Connor’s confidante in the process.

April 4th: Sidelined from the leadership of the SS-Silberne Legion (now incorporated into the Waffen-SS), William Dudley Pelley and Virgil Effinger meet with Herman Göring and Henry Ford over the possibility of starting an “American colony” somewhere in the occupied Soviet Union, as the seat of a new “American exile government”. “A new Fordlandia”, Pelley deliberately describes it to Ford.

April 6th: Frank Gustavson*, a NSF Silver Legion Senator, tries to impeach Bernard Baruch over “foreign influence”. The bill gains little traction, but Coughlin tries to aggressively promote it. This prompts MacArthur in private to consider if Coughlin’s preoccupation with Baruch’s alleged “foreign funders” has something to do with the disturbing number of Germans he seems to engage with….

April 10th: 5 members of the monarchist group Action française are arrested for plotting to kidnap French Prime Minister Leon Blum. The organization denies direct involvement, but criticizes Blum as well.

April 12th: Clement Attlee, the head of the Labour Party, Oswald Mosley of the New Party, Archibald Sinclair of the Liberal Party, and Winston Churchill begin a series of meetings to work out the feasibility of a no-confidence vote.

April 15th: King Edward and Wallis travel to Havana, where they meet with Douglas MacArthur. King Edward also appears for an interview on Ezra Pound’s radio show, reiterating his opposition to intervening in Europe. The two also imply that Jews were behind the push for intervention.

April 18th: The ANZPAC (Australia-New Zealand-Philippines Army Corps) concludes its yearly set of war games and exercises with a desperate air to them, as reports of increasing agitation by Pan-Asian Nationalists reach the ears of Entente Command in the Pacific. It seems inevitable that a confrontation with Japanese and Thai supported movements will befall the South Pacific.

April 20th: The California section of the WCPA denounces in the strongest possible terms the attacks on Japanese Americans, making it clear that the war in China is against the “oppressive Japanese government,” not the “oppressed Japanese people”. Karl Yoneda, himself the victim of one of these attacks, is a frontrunner as head of the Party in the California SR.

April 29th: White American exiles in Britain and France are surprised to hear a BBC broadcast by former Governor of Mississippi and convicted White war criminal Theodore Bilbo, from his infirmary room at Alcatraz. He encourages listeners to set aside their animus towards communism and support their country and the USSR against the “scourge of Nazism”. The broadcast is one of many by the Patriae Society.

May 1st: The London May Day parade is violently disrupted by members of the NSFL, and even some Cuban Silver Legionnaires, leaving dozens hospitalized. King Edward is silent, while figures like Clement Attlee and even Lord Halifax denounce the far-right activists.

May 3rd: Manuel L. Quezon and Sergio Osmena are both re-elected as President and Vice-President, respectively, in a landslide in the Philippine Commonwealth presidential election to start their second six-year term. Both candidates ran on a slogan of continuing economic growth, social reform and international neutrality. Revolutionary general Emilio Aguinaldo also ran as President and finished a distant second in the election, with the support of the Party of the Masses.

May 5th: Hitler approves Pelley and Effinger’s American colony idea, and the two work for location scouting (settling on Belarus), and building a city of fellow American Nazis (Joe Kennedy, Jr. rejects the offer to join).

May 15th: The Californian Central Executive Council confirms Karl Yoneda as Premier of the Central Committee, replacing previous leader Harry Bridges (who moves into the California Presidium instead).

May 16th: British authorities in colonial Nigeria announce a wave of new major mining projects as part of a major effort to accelerate economic development in the region.

May 18th: Oswald Mosley of the British New Party makes a surprise address to the British people, denouncing the Conservative government as blind to the threat of “the brutal hooliganism of the regimes of Germany, Italy, Japan, Brazil, and others” to European civilisation and the empire as a whole. Once a Fascist darling, Mosley channels populist rhetoric and energy to portray himself as a man who longs for a unified European civilisation with “plenty for all, and peace forever.” He also confidently declares that “these men of dictatorships will lose this war, for it is a war against humanity.” Concluding with his statement that “What remains to be seen is whether Britons will wake up and ensure that we play our part, and in doing so ensure a world that will not only see Britannia rule the waves for a thousand years hence, but where she can be part of building a new; peaceful world greater than anything that has come before.”

May 19th: The Viet Minh, an alliance of the Indochinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Party, forms in the city of Pac Bo under the tutelage of American trained Ho Chi Minh.

May 21st: The West Russian Strategic Offensive Operation “Bagration” (Zapadnorusskaya nastupatel’naya operatsiya «Bagration») commences. Two million Soviet and American soldiers began attacks into German positions, with the main efforts concentrated at Vitebsk and Gomel.

May 24th: General of the Army Mikhail Kirponos orders the beginning of the Ukrainian Strategic Offensive Operation “Potemkin” (Ukrainskaya nastupatel’naya operatsiya «Potyomkin»), starting with a breakout from the Kiev salient.

May 30th: The Separate Mechanized Army’s penetration into the German rear is stopped just north of the Byelorussian town of Pleshchenitsy. The operation has reached its culminating point, but with victory so tantalizingly close Stalin orders the weight of effort be continued across the front.

June 6th: The First Panzer Army counterattacks the exposed flank of the American tankists in concert with Luftwaffe tactical aviation, inflicting heavy losses.

June 7th: The IJA’s 21st Army breaks out of the Chaozhou beachhead. Five crack infantry divisions, supported by two tank brigades of the Type 1 Chi-Ho mediums, overrun the the first lines of defense.

June 10th: As the Central Front’s main line of resistance collapses, the American 82nd Airborne Division and the Soviet 41st Rifle Corps are encircled at Vitebsk.

June 14th: Flushed with new arrivals, Army Group Centre begins Fall Apostel , starting with massed aerial and panzer attacks on the greatly weakened Soviet defensive lines on the approaches to Smolensk and Bryansk. German/Italian forces in Army Group South join in a supporting attack.

June 15th: Border skirmishes between Turkey and the Soviet Union peter out with no results other than a few shelled border villages. Mandatory Kurdistan (having transferred from American to British authority following the revolution) remains on high alert, unaware of the secret pact between Turkey and Iraq in case of war between Turkey and Britain to carve up the Near East between Turkey, Iraq, and Italy. Higher echelons of the Turkish military and government agree that a reevaluation of Turkey’s strategic priorities is necessary.

June 16th: Kirponos requests to end his offensive and withdraw back to favorable defensive positions. Over the objections of the Joint-Staff mission and Marshal Frunze, the request is denied for three critical days.

June 19th: The Italian 1st Mechanized Army seizes the city of Kherson and intact road and rail bridges across the Dnieper. The Soviet 26th Army is pinned to the coast south of Mykolaiv, with Rumanian infantry advancing relentlessly against them.

June 20th: Small-time South African newspaper publisher and Nazi sympathizer Hendrik Verwoerd leads an all-Afrikaans pro-neutrality protest in Cape Town, only for multi-racial counter-protesters led by Moses Kotane of the South African Communist Party to show up. The resulting brawl leads to 15 arrests, and 25 injuries. Verwoerd, for his part, is put under state surveillance for this incident.

June 21st: Sweden declares war on the Vladivostok Compact, citing violations of neutrality, barbaric conduct by the communists and an imminent threat of Bolshevik uprising in Sweden supported by VOSCOM agents. Sweden’s declaration of war is but a mere formality, as Swedish troops had already moved to take positions a short distance from their Finnish allies.

June 22nd: A tense stand-off at the Bering Sea between American and Japanese warships takes place, with Japanese naval commanders demanding to inspect the escorted American ships for possible shipments to the “illegitimate bandit government of Chongqing”. Though warning shots are fired, conflict is avoided for the time being as the American ships detour and stop in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky under Soviet escort.

June 24th: Soviet sabotage operations on the dams of the Dnieper slow but do not stop German/Italian exploitation operations south of Kiev. Axis troops are on the “Left Bank” of the Dnieper both north and south of Kiev.

June 26th: T.E. Lawrence declares his support for a war against Nazi Germany in a front page editorial in The Manchester Guardian, prompting outcry from some former supporters for “supporting communism”.

June 30th: Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich makes a surprise speech to the Patriae Society, speaking of their common goals and desire to support their home countries “even if they’ve lost their way.”

July 4th: Stalin orders the abandonment of the “fortress city” of Kiev.

July 6th: The city of Miami issues a general alert following a bold attack by a U-Boat wolfpack emerging from neutral Venezuela ,which leads to the loss of six merchant ships off the Floridan coast. The Union government issues a formal protest against Venezuela, who denies knowledge of harboring any U-Boats.

July 7th: In Nazi occupied Belarus, the Free American State, the brainchild of Silberne Legion founders William Dudley Pelley and Virgil Effinger is formally incorporated in Maly Trostenets. A small town is constructed by slave labor to resemble a midwestern American town.

July 9th: Eldorado City is established on the northern shores of Lake Athabasca. Owned by a federal crown corporation controlled mostly by the UK with British soldiers stationed, it forms the main source of material needed for a special project that might help turn back the red flood or the Nazi-Japanese menace.

July 11th: The Third Panzer Army and the Sixth Panzer Army meet at Pryluky, trapping the bulk of the Southwest Front in Kiev.

July 14th: At the request of President MacArthur, the NBI begins an investigation into possible foreign influence within his government, particularly the pro-Nazi members of his cabinet. Vice-President Coughlin’s ties to the notorious Silver Legion and the possible influence of German agents on his pro-Nazi stances are scrutinized.

July 15th: The 101st Airborne Division is ordered to fight to the death to halt the breakthrough of the Fourth Panzer Army at Pskov.

July 18th: The Battle of the Perekop Isthmus begins, as the Rumanian Fourth Army, supported by the Italian 2nd Alpine Division Tridentina attempts to force the isthmus. The Axis forces take heavy casualties and are unable to make headway against the 51st Army.

July 21st: The Izmir Conference, a meeting to assess the possibility of the Republic of Turkey joining the war against the ComIntern and becoming a signatory of the Stahlpakt, convenes. In attendance are Zeki Velidi Togan, Nihâl Atsız, and Rıza Nur, the erstwhile leaders of the Turanist movement and the Republic. Also attending are Count Galeazzo Ciano, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and representatives from the militaries and foreign ministries of all three nations.

July 28th: A week of audacious attacks by the Kriegsmarine before the American shoreline itself concludes with the so called “Battle of Manhattan” as a wolfpack of long range U-Boats braves the waters just off the coast of New York to attack ships making use of the port.and lay naval mines to cause as much havoc as possible. While one of the submarines is sunk, the others slip away after having caused significant loss of life and material destruction.

July 29th: The Izmir Conference comes to a close. It is decided that a Turkish push through the Caucasus is currently untenable, and the army will wait to push north until more resources and territory can be conquered from the south, most likely in a war with Britain, France, or both. How this will happen is left undetermined.

August 3rd: A fight between two Pioneers in Washington SR makes news, because one Pioneer was accusing another of spying because of his Japanese heritage.

August 5th - Brazilian and Paraguayan forces start a combined land and naval blockade of Buenos Aires, in an attempt to cut off any possible form of retreat for the Argentine forces under General Cortes. The naval and land battles are a fierce battle of attrition, as the Argentine forces are forced to fight to the bitter end to hopefully evacuate the civilians, along with as many of the Chilean and Mexican forces as feasibly possible.

August 6th: The Battle of the Syvash: the German Eleventh Army attempts to outflank entrenched Soviet positions by crossing the “Syvash” lagoons and marshlands.

August 6th: The Brazilian Organization of Homosexuals, a group of Uranian and Sapphic refugees based in Lima, releases an official statement encouraging “able-bodied” members to join the military struggle against the Integralist state alongside Peruvian and other socialist American forces.

August 10th: The Patriae Society airs another broadcast by a well-known dissident, this time Barry Goldwater, writer of the best-selling Conscience of a Freedom Fighter , again from Alcatraz, urging Whites to support the American war effort against “the even worse enemy of Hitler”.

August 15th: King Edward visits a boys secondary school in Belfast, and gives a speech against intervention (in the guise of discussing “the future these young men face”). Edward claims that four forces are behind the push for intervention: “a growing constituency of pro-war politicians”, naming Winston Churchill (whose “American blood has impaired his judgment”), Oswald Mosley, Clement Attlee, and Hugh Dalton; the Communist International and the American secret police; war profiteers; and “pro-interventionist cabal of persons of Jewish origins who run our motion picture, radio, and newspaper industries”. These comments cause enough of a firestorm to be denounced in Parliament and even by American foreign secretary Robert Minor.

August 20th: Nelson Rockefeller, a scion of the Rockefeller family, oil executive and Patriae Society member, shocks many by leaving his London home, arriving in DeLeon-Debs and offering his services for the war effort. He’s assigned to the diplomatic corps.

August 23rd: Civilians from occupied zones of the Baltics and the East-Slavic countries begin to be starved en masse in a deliberate policy of extermination as part of Nazi policies to increase food supply at home and to clear out subhumans from desired territory. While elements of the Hunger Plan were present before, this is no mere sporadic policy of crop seizure, but active efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide.

August 26th: Erich Koch is inaugurated as the Reichskommissar of Ukraine, an assignment he will take to with brutality virtually unmatched even by the low standards of the Nazis, proclaiming the Slavs to be unworthy of education and closing down all educational facilities in his region of influence.

August 28th: Former US Supreme Court Associate Justice turned Chief Justice of the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal Louis Brandeis dies at age 84, following a heart attack. There is a period of mourning for the late justice and his contribution to revolutionary American law. The Presidium begins vetting replacements for the seat.

August 29th: On pressure from Buckingham Palace, King Edward walks back some of his more inflammatory statements, claiming he has “deep respect for the Jewish race” and “understanding of their plight”, but even then, claims that reports of Nazi war crimes and Jewish persecution are “exaggerations at most.”

September 1st - Operation Five-Finger begins in an attempt to drive the Axis further back in a series of heavy hitting counter attacks on all fronts. An attempt to relieve the beleaguered city of Buenos Aires is made with Mexican and American support as Marshal Lau Sing Kee; one of the first Asian Americans to hold such a high rank; plans to open a corridor wide enough to allow for full evacuation of the city by the end of the year. The Third Division of the Guarda Verde, two divisions of the regular Brazilian Army, one of the Paraguayan Army, and three Greenshirt divisions oppose Sing Kee’s force of Mexicans, Americans, and a single Soviet mechanized division intended to be a show of solidarity with the Union’s southern allies.

September 3rd: Mohandas Gandhi, Jawharlal Nehru, and several other Congress leaders begin negotiations with elements of the Labour Party, led by Stafford Cripps. Whilst the option of dominionization remains open, the talks are paused due to Gandhi and Nehru’s insistence on complete independence, though Nehru at least remains open to further negotiations in the future.

September 4th: Unternehmen Walküre (Operation Valkyrie) begins with four Panzer armies leading Army Group Centre in an assault on Moscow.

September 5th: The last major Senussi independence activists to evade capture are cornered at the border with French Chad and are executed the same day after a kangaroo court trial.

September 10th : Recently promoted Marshal Sing Kee’s American Southern Cone Expeditionary Force fights its first major battle as the majority force at the outskirts of Junin to see off General Dutra’s attempt at cutting off crucial supply lines to the forces in the platine region. Brazilian infiltration tactics are used in tandem with shock trooper assaults in an attempt to worm their way through weaker points in the American lines in two weeks of intense fighting that sees American forces pushed back to their rear most defensive lines before Dutra’s forces begin to run out of steam in the face of artillery inferiority. However, with Dutra’s superior numbers, counter-attacks are deemed impossible for the time being.

September 13th: The Warner Bros lot in Havana is bombed. Whilst there are no injuries or deaths, a letter is found declaring a strike against the “Jewish siren song of film.”

September 14th: The Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung is forced to get armed guards following an attempted bombing by the German-American Bund (which ended with the bomber losing the bomb in the sewers and having to be rescued).

September 15th: Dean Acheson of the Patriae Society addresses the British Parliament on the need to stop Hitler before he consumes Europe “and who knows what else.” Whilst the speech itself is received positively in the chambers, Acheson is attacked outside by a fellow White exile and former member of the fascist George Washington Brigade. Acheson is saved by the Foot Guards.

September 24th: A hurricane hits East Matagorda Bay, Texas. Whilst there are no fatalities thanks to wartime protocols, the damage is still extensive.

September 27th: Marshal Frunze orders the abandonment of the Bryansk-Rzhev defensive line as the defence of both flanks becomes untenable. The Red Army continues to scorch the earth in retreat, falling back in good order screened by armor and air power to join with reserves in the final defensive belts from Tula to Kalinin.

October 1st: The destroyer escort Matushenko (DE-41) is launched from Novorossiysk on the Black Sea. The new design bypasses Turkish control of the Bosporus and Dardanelles since the remilitarization, and was delivered as a pre-fab knock-down kit for local assembly. It and prefab “Liberty Ships” will allow the VMF to continue to contest the Black Sea, protect capital ship assets, and secure the supply lines to the Crimea.

October 4th: IJA forces from Guangdong link up with forces advancing south from Shanghai, consolidating the Japanese/Reorganised National Government position on the coastline.

October 7th: Jean Monnet, a French financier and diplomat, approaches Winston Churchill (through assistant Desmond Mortion) about the growing call for intervention in both countries. The two begin to discuss the idea of a “Union” between the Republic of France and Great Britain (should they enter the war together) to better coordinate resources and unite the armies of the two countries to better combat Nazi Germany.

October 8th: A directive is sent by NBI director William Donovan to United States (Americuban) branches, discouraging the recruitment or advancement of members of the Silver Legion and former members of the George Washington Brigade in the Armed Forces.

October 10th: The Stahlpakt invasion of Norway begins.

October 13th: Following the Warner Bros bombing, a tip-off leads to the raid of the estate of mining heiress (and Silver Legion associate) Jessie Murphy in connection to the attack. It’s revealed that she doesn’t exist (really an alias for William Dudley Pelley), and that Abwehr officer Kurt Jahnke has been using the mansion, a small spy ring he operates that has connections to the Silver Legion members in the NSF. Jahnke is arrested and agrees to turn state’s witness in exchange for extradition to Germany.

October 15th: With major operations on hold due to the intensity of the autumnal rains in the Soviet Union, German and Italian tank commanders and generals compile a report on the progress of the war that includes a damning condemnation of “mismatched parts and mechanical difficulties” in many vehicles serving on the front, pushing for more standardized vehicular equipment. This is used by Ford as ammunition to secure funding for his Entwicklung series of Standardpanzers meant to standardize German vehicular production.

October 20th : As Franco-German relations continue to deteriorate, France opts to sign a non-aggression pact with VOSCOM-aligned Liberia in an attempt to clarify its geopolitical intentions in West Africa.

October 25: Norwegian forces surrender to the Swedes. Norway is to be annexed into the Kingdom of Sweden, providing a manpower, industrial, and resource pool for further Swedish campaigns in the east.

October 28th: During a test flight, one of the Gloster Meteor prototypes experiences a mechanical failure, though it is able to be landed with only minor injuries to the pilot. Further examination reveals a slew of mechanical and structural faults, which prompts both planes to be grounded until further notice. With Britain’s entrance into the war becoming an increasing possibility, the jet programme gets delayed as more immediate concerns take precedence, though that gives those involved enough time to make design changes where needed.

November 3rd: Douglas Chandler, the Senator from Illinois (in exile) and member of the Silver Legion, is arrested when Jahnke identifies him and confesses to having had contact with a member of the SD over the past year, who paid and encouraged him to spread pro-Nazi sentiment. He lists other Silver Legion members who have had contacts with German agents.

November 15th: The Central Executive Council approves Carol Weiss King, a longtime Party lawyer and co-founder of the International Labor Defense Council, as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal.

November 30th: Oswald Mosley endorses the idea of a “Union” with France, during a joint meeting of pro-war Conservative, Labour, and New Party officials, as well as representatives of the Blum government. Mosley, Monnet and diplomat Robert Vansittart begin ironing out the details of this union.

December 6th: Clement Attlee and Oswald Mosley announce their intention to pass legislation to send aid to the Soviet Union and the United Republics. This announcement causes great controversy.

December 7th: Winston Churchill and his parliamentary supporters announce they will not support the Government’s revised defence budget bill unless it removes the country’s neutrality with regard to the ongoing Nazi-Soviet War, and authorise the sale of critical resources Vladivostok Compact signatories currently blocked by law. This is seen on both sides as a prelude to British entry in the war, and the government responds by making the bill a motion of confidence.

December 9th: At a rally in Wales, William Joyce calls for Oswald Mosley and Winston Churchill to be hanged as the “worst kind of traitors”. He calls the so-called “Soviet Aid Amendment”, “a bill backed by International Jewry”.

December 12th: French Prime Minister Leon Blum announces that France will begin mobilization in response to increasing German military presence in the Rhineland.

December 15th: Ezra Pound is questioned by the NBI over his pro-isolationist statements. He denies any Nazi funding, and he is ultimately cleared of direct involvement with the suspected Nazi spying in the Silver Legion. In his next broadcast, he makes a careful statement about “preventing foreign governments from making decisions for the United States government.”

December 17th: Marshal Philippe Pétain begins organizing his “military vote of no-confidence” against Blum and his mobilization order with anti-war factions in the French Army. He also begins contact with representatives of the German and Italian governments.

December 20th: The Detroit-Willys General Purpose Vehicle, better known as the Jeep, starts making its way to the Chinese, Soviet, and South American theaters. Design changes would continue to be implemented until mid 1942.

December 21st: Stalin, having chosen to go to the front lines to boost morale, is killed by stray artillery fire during the Battle of Moscow. Whether it was accidental or intentional would become a point of contention in later years. Vyacheslav Molotov and Andrei Zhdanov would succeed Stalin as General Secretary of the Communist Party and Premier of the Soviet Union respectively.

December 23rd: The Turkish government receives a cryptic telegram from Berlin that they “will likely have a southern opportunity within 3 months”. It is corroborated by a similarly terse missive from Rome, speaking of “a possibility arising in the south in the near future”.

December 24th: In a Christmas Eve address to followers, with the tide slowly shifting towards intervention, William Joyce declares that “the time has come for more decisive action to be taken” to ensure that Britain remains “on the right side of history”.

December 28th: The United States (Americuban) Army arrests 15 Congressmen and 3 Senators, all Silver Legion members, for treason due to their contact with German agents. At least three had significant ties to Vice President Coughlin and one had introduced an agent to him, irretrievably tying Coughlin to the incident. Ambassador to Britain Joe Kennedy is also stated to have had ties to at least one of the senators, and had met one of the agents through that senator.

December 29th: Hendrik Verwoerd is arrested for accepting funds from a German agent.

December 31st: Five hours before the New Year, saboteurs associated with the German-American Bund attempt to sabotage the Altoona Locomotive Works in Altoona, Pennsylvania, using a series of time bombs. They are caught and apprehended before their plot could be carried out in full, though the works had to be evacuated while the bombs were disarmed and disposed of. *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation