Sunday, July 4, 2021

Friday July 4, 1941. Independence Day

It would be the last peacetime Independence Day in the US until 1946.

Vale Oregon held a large Independence Day celebration that year.





















Vale is a small town in Eastern Oregon with a population of less than 2,000 people.  In 1941 it had about 700 fewer people than it does now.  It's the county seat, and the county presently has about 30,000 residents.  It had about 20,000 then.  The population of the county and the town have actually decreased slightly over the past decade.

I wonder if they still have a big 4th of July celebration.  They do have a rodeo.

In another rural location, Hot Springs County Wyoming, a museum opened.


That museum, of course, would be in Thermopolis.

Franklin Roosevelt delivered a speech in which he warned that the country couldn't survive as an oasis of democracy in a desert of dictatorship.

In the United Kingdom, the British Communist Party, formerly against the war, decided it was for it.

Communist parties all over the globe had opposed their nations entering the war against Germany right up until Operation Barbarossa.  They changed their minds at that point virtually overnight, making it fairly clear that they danced to the tune Moscow was calling.

In Yugoslavia Communist leader Tito called for a revolt against German occupation.

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