1943
The Jewish Antifascist Committee (JAC) moves to Moscow and quickly becomes one of the most important centers of Jewish culture and Yiddish literature. The JAC broadcast pro-Soviet propaganda to foreign audiences several times a week, telling them of the absence of anti-Semitism and of the great anti-Nazi efforts being made by the Soviet military.
1943
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) stages its first sit-in in a Chicago restaurant.
1943
President Roosevelt appoints Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., as
under secretary of state and charges him with the task of reorganizing the U.S.
State Department.
1943
Robert Oppenheimer establishes the Los Alamos laboratory to
build the U.S. atomic bomb.
1943
Ezra Pound is indicted and charged with treason for his support
of Mussolini and the Fascist system of government.
1943
American war correspondent Ernie Pyle publishes "Here Is
Your War," a collection of his front-line dispatches that are popular with
both soldiers and civilians alike.
1943
In Lebanon the National Pact, establishes a dominant political role for the Christians (Phalange Party or Phalangists), especially the Maronites, in the central government.
1943 January
The Russians begin the bombardment of Stalingrad with 7,000 pieces of artillery and a devastating air assault.
1943 January
More than 10,000 Jews from Holland, Belgium, Berlin, and Theresienstadt are deported to Auschwitz. The last Dutch transport in January contains 869 invalids and children; all are gassed on arrival (Atlas)
1943 January 2
Marshal Antonescu meets with Hitler and reconciles their differences concerning the Romanian failures and the disaster at Stalingrad.
1943 January 3
A Jewish resistance group in Czestochowa kills 25 Germans. The SS shoots 250 old people and children in reprisal. (Atlas)
1943 January 12
Churchill leaves for Casablanca where he and Roosevelt will plan the invasion of the European continent. Churchill believes it is essential for them to alleviate the pressure on the Soviets in 1943 with an attack on Sicily and then a cross-Channel invasion.
1943 January 14
Roosevelt and Churchill meet for the Conference at Casablanca, on the Moroccan coast. Stalin, claiming that he had been promised a European second front by the spring of 1942, refuses to attend. General de Gaulle is invited to meet with and hopefully accept the authority of General Giraud in North Africa. News of the Conference will be kept secret until an official press conference on January 24.
1943 January 18
The German siege of Leningrad is broken by the Russians.
1943 January 18
Professor C. Schneider places his first requests
for the killing of patients at his research ward in Wiesloch before the Reich
Commission for the Registration of Severe Disorders in Childhood. (Science)
1943 January 18
The Jewish underground in Warsaw resists a new wave
of deportations. In four days, 6,000 Jews are deported and 1,000 killed in the
streets. So fierce is the Jewish resistance and street fighting that deportations are suspended until April 19. (Atlas)
1943 January 19
Mihai Antonescu, Romanian Foreign Minister, asks Mussolini to take the lead of a Latin League and to start negotiations with the Allies.
1943 January 24
An Allied press conference announces the results of the Conference at Casablana. The press, wrote Churchill, could hardly believe their eyes and then their ears when they heard that the Conference had been meeting for two weeks. Roosevelt and Churchill have agreed to continue convoys to Russia, send support to American forces in China, begin plans for a June landing in Sicily, and build up large numbers of American forces in Britain. They also announce (against Churchill's better judgment) that "Unconditional Surrender" is the only term which they will accept to end the war. This decision will later bring criticism for unduly prolonging the hostilities. (Churchill Center)
1943 January 24
The possibility of a public statement from the Vatican moves German Foreign Secretary Joachim von Ribbentrop to wire von Weizsacker, "Should the Vatican either politically or propagandistically oppose Germany, it should be made unmistakably clear that worsening of relations between Germany and the Vatican would not at all have an adverse effect on Germany alone. On the contrary, the German government would have sufficient effective propaganda material as well as retaliatory measures at its disposal to counteract each attempted move by the Vatican."
1943 January 30
Special speeches are made in Berlin by Goebbels and Goering marking the 10th anniversary of Hitler's regime. To break up the celebration, the RAF makes its first daylight bombing raid on Berlin using a group of Mosquito bombers timed to disrupt the festivities.
1943 January 30
Hitler promotes General Paulus to Field Marshal, almost exactly at the same moment that Russian forces locate Paulus' Headquarters in southern Stalingrad and begin to surround it.
1943 January 31
Field Marshal von Paulus surrenders himself and the southern pocket of Germans in Stalingrad. General Strecker's group continues to hold out. Paulus was the first German Field Marshal in history to surrender his army to an enemy without commiting suicide.
1943 February
Churchill returns to Cairo via Cyprus where he again meets with the Fourth Hussars, of which he is Colonel in Chief. In Cairo he learns of the German surrender at Stalingrad.
1943 February
Goebbels makes an impassioned speech preaching for what he calls "total war."
1943 February
Han Bernd Gisevius, German vice-consul in Zurich
and a senior Abwehr (military intelligence) agent, makes contact with Allen
Dulles through Gero von Gaevernitz, a naturalized American citizen who has
become Dulles right-hand man and chief advisor on German politics. Gisevius
cautions Dulles that the American legation's codes are not secure, thereby
earning Dulles's gratitude. Gisevius and his Abwehr associate Eduard Waetjen
continue to supply Dulles with information until the end of the war. (Silence)
