31-Oct-39: Epic Royal Navy Hunt for Graf Spee Gets Underway; Mussolini Shuffles Italian Cabinet; Molotov Has Harsh Words for Britain, France and Finland
Today is 31-Oct-1939, the 31st day of World War II; there are 2,132 days left in the conflict.
One of the first epic and famous episodes of the war begins as the British Royal Navy begins its global hunt for the German Kriegsmarine’s pocket battleship Graf Spee. The Royal Navy assigns four battleships, 14 cruisers and five aircraft carriers to the hunt.
The Germans order the death penalty for any Poles in the occupied territories who “disobey German authority.” Trials are to be conducted in Shutzstaffel (SS) courts.
Italian Prime Minister and Il Duce Benito Mussolini reorganizes his cabinet in order to replace pro-German ministers with more neutral ones. Affected by the change are six ministries and several secretariats. Mussolini also has Achille Starace resign as secretary of the Italian Fascist Party. Mussolini’s son-in-law, Count Gian Galeazzo Ciano is retained as Italy’s foreign minister and Dino Grandi, a British ally, retains the Ministry of Justice post.
Journalists abroad write that Mussolini has a policy of occasional shakeups in the cabinet and assert that the changes (from a German alignment to an Allied alignment) are not to be construed as a change in foreign policy.
Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov addresses the Supreme Soviet for a second time in a week; he criticizes Britain and France for continuing the war but offers nothing more than moral support to Germany, stressing that recently concluded agreements provide for Soviet neutrality if the Germans go to war.
After taking a more aggressive tone towards the Finns in a Supreme Soviet speech earlier in the week, Molotov reports that three further rounds of border revision discussions with Finland will begin shortly. Among Soviet demands: Strategic territory in the Karelian Isthmus, the Hango naval base and Petsamo, a year-round ice-free port in the Arctic Ocean. The Finns will be given certain Soviet border territory as compensation.