On this day in 1941, Crete fell to the Germans in the conclusion of a unique nearly all airborne invasion. As we've noted elsewhere, the high casualty rate caused the Germans to abandon largescale airborne operations, while its impressive success emphasized airborne operations to the Allies which would later mount gigantic ones.
You can read more about that here:
Today in World War II History—June 1, 1941
On the same day, Nazi Germany banned all Catholic publications.
The Nazi regime was anti Christian in general and had long range plans to force the introduction of a new paganistic German religion to replace the Christian faith. It was slow to try to force much upon Germans Christians, however, prior to the war as it was clear that Catholics would stoutly oppose it and, to their surprise, Lutherans did as well. It slowly suppressed Christianity inside of Germany as time went on, with this being a major action against Catholicism. Outside of Germany, where it was not restrained, it acted much more harshly, particularly in Poland where it violently suppressed the Catholic Church.
This follows an overall pattern that's rarely noted. In its violent hostility to all religions, it was generally harsher outside of Germany than inside of it, although it was uniformly hostile everywhere.
In contrast, the Second World War saw a pretty open appeal to Christianity in the Allied nations. This would continue on into the Cold War to a degree.
Mass violence against Jews broke out in Baghdad resulting in a large, but undetermined, number of Jewish deaths. This took place after the collapse of the Iraqi fascist regime but before the prior regime and the British could restore order. Jews were the victims of an odd belief that they had somehow helped the British defeat the Iraqi fascists.
The British government imposed clothes rationing in the UK on this day in 1941. It would continue until March, 1949. The long continuance of rationing would help bring down the Labour government that year.
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