30-Oct-39: Soviet Union Formally Annexes Polish Territory; Germans Sign Repatriation Treaty With Latvia; U-56 Fails to Sink HMS Nelson; First War Picture Premieres in London
Today is 30-Oct-1939, the 30th day of World War II; there are 2,133 days left in the conflict.
In a formal declaration, the Soviet Union formally annexes the Polish territories it occupied in September pursuant to the Non-Aggression Pact with Germany.
The Germans sign a treaty with Latvia for the evacuation of ethnic Germans from Lativian lands in the Baltic area.
The Kriegsmarine Unterseeboot U-56 spots the British battleship HMS Nelson, flagship of the Home Fleet, west of the Orkney Islands off Scotland. The two torpedoes hit the battleship, but fail to explode and the Nelson escapes serious damage.
The first motion picture produced during wartime and concerning the conflict, The Lion Has Wings, premieres in London. Showing with the film is a newsreel reporting on a Royal Air Force attack on ships of the German Kriegsmarine.
Finally, a British government “White Paper” details Germany’s brutal treatment of political dissidents and Jews and details the Reich’s system of Konzentrationslagers (concentration camps).