21-Nov-39: German Magnetic Mines Continue to Wreak Havoc on British Shipping, Chamberlain Announces Retaliatory Measures; With German Help, Slovaks Reclaim Territory Seized by Poles
Today is 21-Nov-1939, the 52nd day of World War II; there are 2,111 days left in the conflict.
German magnetic mines dropped by the Luftwaffe in British territorial waters continue to make up the bulk of the war news. A brand-new British cruiser, HMS Belfast is badly damaged by one of the mines in the Scottish Firth of Forth; the destroyer Gypsy is sunk in the North Sea; and the Japanese passenger ship Terukuni Maru is sunk in the Thames Estuary. Meanwhile, German Kriegsmarine battle cruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst begin a new naval cruise aimed at sinking enemy ships.
In response to the wave of German naval successes, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain makes a public pronouncement that German merchant ships will be seized by the Royal Navy as compensation; at the same time, all goods being shipped to Germany through British ports are now confiscated, rather than just being temporarily halted.
In Bratislava, Slovakia, the Germans and Slovaks ink a treaty formally giving Slovakia 225 square miles of territory seized from the former Poland. The two allies claim that Poland had illegally seized that land from the former Czechoslovakia in the course of three annexations in 1920, 1924 and 1938.