21-Sep-39: Romanian Prime Minister Assassinated; Deportation of Jews in Occupied Poland Begins; Roosevelt Urges Repeal of Neutrality Act Prohibition of Arms Sales
Today is 21-Sept-1939, the 21st day of World War II; there are 2,172 days left in the conflict.
In Bucharest, the Iron Guard, a Romanian Fascist paramilitary group, murders Armand Calinescu, the prime minister by blocking Calinescu’s car with a wooden cart and then shooting him and his guards.
After the assassination, the Iron Guard assassins then take over a radio station and announce over the air that “the death sentence on Calinescu has been executed.” According to the Iron Guard, the act is punishment for the government’s acceptance of Polish military and civilian refugees who are streaming over the border from the fighting in their country.
A large crowd gathers at the spot of the assassination as the Iron Guards involved are overpowered and shot to death by the police. Their bodies lie on the spot for 24 hours and are viewed by the crowd.
Meanwhile in Poland, the German Wehrmacht begins to step up its artillery and aerial bombing of strategic places in the capital Warsaw, which continues to hold out with remnants of the army and armed civilians.
In the parts of the country already captured, German occupation officials begin to take over and implement plans for the reshaping of the former Poland.
SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, who is head of the German Sicherheitspolizei (SIPO – Security Police), which includes the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo – Secret State Police) and the Kriminalpolizei (KRIPO – Criminal Police), begins to implement the provisions of what became known as the “Heydrich Plan.” Among the provisions of the plan implemented at first was the forced deportation of 600,000 Jews from Danzig and western Poland to specially set aside ghetto districts in several central Polish cities.
In the west, there is little action to speak of; Radio Luxemburg ceases operation and the British government, looking to justify its actions leading up to the war, publishes the “Blue Book,” which contains declassified prewar diplomatic documents. Officially, the book is entitled, “The British War Blue Book: Documents Concerning German-Polish Relations and the Outbreak of Hostilities Between Great Britain and Germany on September 3, 1939. Presented by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to Parliament by Command of His Majesty (King George VI).” (Contents of the Blue Book can be read «here».)
Across the Atlantic in Washington DC, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addresses a specially called joint session of the Congress in order to urge the repeal of Neutrality Act provisions which forbid arms sales to countries which are at war. The Neutrality Act had been passed in 1935 as a result of populist anger against “merchants of death, bankers and munitions makers. Some Americans blamed those entities for entangling the United States in World War I.
States the President:
“Our acts must be guided by one single hard-headed thought — keeping America out of this war.” [Allowing arms to be sold on a cash-and-carry basis would be] “better calculated than any other means to keep us out of war. … [However,] destiny first made us, with our sister nations in this hemisphere, joint heirs of European culture. Fate seems now to compel us to assume the task of helping to maintain in the Western World a citadel wherein that civilization may be kept alive.”
The revisions to the 1935 Neutrality Act are designed to allow the sale of U.S. arms to warring nations on a “cash and carry” basis; the provision will be signed into law in November after a protracted Congressional debate. The revision will actually lead to Great Britain buying war materials for cash, as long as they are transported across the Atlantic on non-American ships.
American newspapers make note of the speech and also unveil allegations that German National Socialst leaders, including Minister of Propaganda and Enlightenment Dr. Joseph Goebbels and party secretary Rudolf Hess, have accumulated foreign investments in excess of $12 million (US). This is hotly denied in Germany.