WWII On This Day: October 1

Danish Jewish refugees arrive in Sweden on 6 October 1943 after crossing from occupied Denmark. Unknown photographer · Public domain Source

October 1, 1943 The Holocaust: Timeline and Evidence

The planned deportation of Denmark's Jews largely fails

German police began the planned arrest action against Danish Jews after advance warning had allowed most families to go into hiding. Danish resistance members, fishermen, police officers and other civilians helped people reach the coast and cross to neutral Sweden. More than 7,000 Danish Jews and several hundred non-Jewish relatives escaped. About 470 Jews were deported to Theresienstadt. The episode was exceptional in occupied Europe because a broad rescue effort prevented the intended mass deportation.

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A converted cable ship laying pipeline across the English Channel, 1944. — Pipeline laying in the Channel, 1944 ·

October 1, 1943 · 12:00 Operation PLUTO

The trunk network reaches the south coast

The Government Pipelines and Storage System was expanded from west-coast ports and storage areas through junctions including Epsom to Dungeness and the Isle of Wight. Pumping stations and control installations were disguised as houses, garages and industrial buildings.

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Allied landing craft off the Île d'Or at Le Dramont, Camel Beach, during the landing in Provence, August 1944. — Landing craft off the Île d'Or at Le Dramont, Camel sector, August 1944 · Public domain · Source

October 1, 1944 Operation Dragoon

Blanchiment

From October the French command began withdrawing African and North African units from the front line and replacing them with white FFI volunteers, a process recorded in the French army's own documents as blanchiment, the whitening. The stated reasons were the coming winter and the need to absorb the Resistance into a regular army. The effect was that many of the men who had landed in Provence and taken Marseille were removed before the crossing of the Rhine, and were later excluded from the pension settlements granted to metropolitan veterans.

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OSS officers with Draža Mihailović at Pranjani on 6 September 1944 during Operation Halyard. — Unknown photographer · Pranjani, 6 September 1944 · Public domain (PD-Yugoslavia)

October 1, 1944 Operation Halyard

Halyard becomes a moving rescue mission

The team and Chetnik headquarters moved north from Koceljeva, crossed the Drina into Bosnia and continued through the Sava valley toward Trebava and Ozren. The movement reflected the collapse of a stable Chetnik-held base in Serbia as Partisan and Soviet operations transformed the military situation. Nick Lalich's post-mission map traces this route toward the Doboj area and then farther south near Sarajevo. The map on this page follows that documented sequence without pretending the surviving report gives a survey-quality track.

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A destitute mother and child on a Calcutta pavement during the Bengal famine of 1943-44. — Kalyani Bhattacharyee and Manoj Sarbadhikar / Bengal Speaks, Servants of Bengal Society · Public domain

October 1, 1944 World War II Famines

Typhoons and flooding deepen northern Vietnam's food crisis

A poor spring harvest left northern Vietnam vulnerable. From August to October 1944, successive typhoons, exceptional rainfall and flooding damaged large areas of paddy in the Red River Delta and badly affected the crucial late-year rice crop. The north could normally draw rice from surplus areas farther south, but wartime rail and coastal movement were badly disrupted. Japanese military demands, French colonial procurement and Allied attacks directed at Japanese logistics all added pressure to a transport system increasingly unable to correct the regional shortage.

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