January 1943

January 1, 1943 (Friday)

• The Soviet Union announced that 22 German divisions in Stalingrad had been encircled by the Red Army, and that 175,000 of the enemy had been killed and 137,650 captured.
• The Battle of Gjorm began between Albanian Resistance fighters and Italian forces.
• The Georgia Bulldogs defeated the UCLA Bruins, 9–0, in the Rose Bowl before a crowd of 93,000 as the postseason college football game returned to Pasadena, California. Georgia had been ranked #2 in the final Associated Press poll, while #1 Ohio State did not play in a bowl game.
• Born: Don Novello, American comedian known for the character "Father Guido Sarducci" on Saturday Night Live, and as Lazlo Toth in The Lazlo Letters; in Lorain, Ohio
• Disney released anti Nazi and Axis propaganda short animated movie of Der Fuehrer's Face featured by Donald Duck which later won Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film

  January 2, 1943 (Saturday)

• In the Battle of Buna–Gona, American and Australian forces, under the command of U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger, were able to capture the New Guinea beachhead at Buna from the Japanese, after the Australian Army had captured Gona on December 9. The Allied victory left only one remaining Japanese stronghold on New Guinea, Sanananda, which would fall two weeks later. General Douglas MacArthur had given Eichelberger the order to "Take Buna, or don't come back alive", which one biographer would describe later as "the absolute nadir of generalship."
• The Battle of Gjorm ended in decisive victory for the Albanian Resistance fighters.
• Born: Barış Manço, Turkish singer and television personality

  January 3, 1943 (Sunday)

• The new Italian cruiser Ulpio Traiano was sunk in Palermo harbor by a British manned torpedo.
• The 20-room Hollywood mansion of Bing Crosby was destroyed by fire after a short circuit caused a blaze to break out while the family was taking down its Christmas tree.
• The U.S. Selective Service System warned that it would begin prosecuting draft dodgers beginning on February 1. On that date, new rules would require "all men in the 18 to 45 age groups who for six months or more have been subject to registration would have to carry their classification and registration cards with them at all times.
• Born: General Nirmal Chander Vij, Chief of the Army Staff 2003-2005, in Jammu

  January 4, 1943 (Monday)

• General Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister of Japan, determining that the Allies' Guadalcanal Campaign was overcoming Japanese defense, ordered Japan's forces to evacuate Guadalcanal by the end of February. General Hitoshi Imamura would oversee the withdrawal of 10,000 troops from the island in the Solomons chain, abandoning the stronghold to the United States.
• A group of 300 men of the Jewish Fighting Organization tried to launch an uprising in the Częstochowa Ghetto, located in the Polish city of Częstochowa. The attempt was unsuccessful, and as punishment, the Nazi German occupiers shot 250 children and old people the next day. The remaining occupants would be shipped out to concentration camps by June.
• Born: Doris Kearns Goodwin, American writer, historian, and presidential biographer, in Rockville Centre, New York
• Died: Jerzy Iwanow-Szajnowicz, 31, Greek-Polish athlete and saboteur

  January 5, 1943 (Tuesday)

• The first use of a VT fuze in combat was carried out by the USS Helena, which shot down a Japanese dive bomber with the new type of shell. The "variable time" name was deliberately misleading, to conceal the actual reason that the shell would explode right as it approached its target. Rather than containing a timer, each weapon had a radar that would trigger a detonation as soon as signals indicated that it was within 60 feet of its target.
• At the port of Rabaul on the southwest Pacific Ocean island of New Britain, American bombers under the command of U.S. Army Brigadier General Kenneth Walker scored direct hits on eight Japanese merchant ships and two destroyers. General Walker was killed during the raid when his plane was brought down by Japanese anti-aircraft fire.
• U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard ordered manufacturers to reserve 30% of all butter produced, to be used for the U.S. Armed Forces, the first time.
• Died:
• *George Washington Carver, 78, African-American inventor and botanist Carver had suffered complications from injuries sustained when he had fallen down a flight of stairs.
• *Caroline O'Day, 73, U.S. Representative for New York since 1935

  January 6, 1943 (Wednesday)

• German Grand Admiral Erich Raeder tendered his resignation after a stormy meeting with Adolf Hitler.
• The German submarine U-164 was sunk off Pernambuco, Brazil by an American Consolidated PBY Catalina.
• The United States Office of Price Administration banned pleasure driving in 17 states in the Eastern U.S., beginning at noon on Thursday, and lowered the limit of fuel oil that could be used by "schools, churches, stores theaters and other non-residential establishments".
• A fire at the bowling alley in the Southside Beverly Recreation Hall in Chicago killed six people and left 35 hospitalized. The flames quickly moved across bowling lanes that had flammable shellac on them.
• Born: Terry Venables, English football manager
• Died: A. Lawrence Lowell, 86, former President of Harvard University, who had "presided during the years of its greatest expansion".

  January 7, 1943 (Thursday)

• U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the annual State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress, revealing that there were seven million men in the armed services, of which 1.5 million were overseas. and stated that "I am confident that though the fighting will be tough, when the final Allied assault is made, the last vestige of Axis power will be driven from the south shores of the Mediterranean." Roosevelt said also that the bombing of Germany and Italy would continue to increase during 1943, adding, "Yes- the Nazis and Fascists have asked for it- and they are going to get it."
• The musical Something for the Boys, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, began a successful run on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre. It ran for one year, with 422 performances, and then had another successful run on London's West End at the Coliseum Theatre in 1944.
• Born: Sadako Sasaki, Japanese atomic bomb sickness victim. She would survive the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, uninjured, despite being only slightly more than a mile from the blast. After her diagnosis with leukemia in 1954, she attracted the nation's attention with her mission to fold origami paper cranes as a symbol of peace, and a monument would be erected to her in 1958 as a symbol of innocent victims of war.
• Died:
• *Nikola Tesla, 86, Serbian-American engineer and inventor. Tesla spent his declining years in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel. Due to Tesla's pre-war claims he had invented a "death ray", the United States government removed his files and research notes two days after his death to see whether there was any security risk but the investigator in charge stated they "did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results."
• *Dr. George Washington Crile, 78, co-founder of the Cleveland Clinic and surgeon who had performed the first direct blood transfusion.

  January 8, 1943 (Friday)

• With Germany's Sixth Army completely encircled in the Battle of Stalingrad, the Soviet Red Army commander, General Konstantin Rokossovsky, sent an ultimatum to the German commander, General Friedrich Paulus. Rokossovsky gave Paulus until 10:00 the next morning to surrender; if the Germans gave up, Rokossovsky said, they would be provided food and medical assistance. If 10:00 arrived without a surrender, the final attack would begin and the Germans would be destroyed. General Paulus was able to contact Adolf Hitler by radio, but Hitler refused the option to accept the terms. Paulus, who had been skeptical of the Soviet offer, let the ultimatum expire with no reply, and the attack would begin on Sunday.
• Died: Richard Hillary, 23, Battle of Britain Spitfire pilot, author of The Last Enemy; after crashing in England during a training flight

  January 9, 1943 (Saturday)

• Heinrich Himmler, the commander of the German SS, made a personal visit to the Warsaw Ghetto and was furious to discover that there were 40,000 Jews still residing there, despite his orders of July 19 and October 9, 1942, to clear the area before the end of the year. Himmler ordered SS Colonel Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg to liquidate the ghetto by February 15.
• Soviet Jews in the Khmelnytskyi Oblast of the Ukrainian SSR were forcibly removed by Nazi German forces from Ostropol, Krasyliv, Hrytsiv and Syniava, taken to Starokostiantyniv, and shot.
• The prototype of the Constellation airplane, which would be used as a passenger airliner during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, made its first flight, with the testing of the Lockheed C-69 Constellation transport plane.
• Born: Freddie Starr, English comedian and singer, in Liverpool.
• Died: R. G. Collingwood, 53, British philosopher

  January 10, 1943 (Sunday)

• Operation Ring, the final Soviet assault on the German 6th Army in Stalingrad, began at 8:05 a.m. local time under the command of General Konstantin Rokossovsky. On the city's western side, the Soviet 65th Army advanced from the west, supported by the Soviet 21st Army and 24th Army from the left and right, respectively. The Soviet 66th Army advanced from the north and the Soviet 57th Army and 64th Army from the south. A total of 210,000 soldiers and some 7,000 guns and mortars were committed to the offensive.
• Mustafa Kruja was removed from his office of Prime Minister of Albania by the Italian viceroy, Francesco Jacomini di San Savino, because Kruja was unable to maintain order during the Italian occupation.
• The America First Party was established in Detroit by isolationist crusader Gerald L. K. Smith.
• American submarine USS Argonaut was depth charged, shelled and sunk south of the Bismarck Archipelago by Japanese destroyers.
• Japanese destroyer Okikaze was torpedoed and sunk off Katsuura, Chiba by the submarine USS Trigger.
• Born: Jim Croce, American singer-songwriter