Reza Shah, the Shah of Iran, his country invaded and occupied by the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union in their interests, and what they deemed, ultimately correctly, the greater interests of humanity resigned in favor of his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
A victim, essentially, of World War Two.
The Shah had lived in an Iran that was marked by the post Communist variant of the Great Game. Following the Russian Revolution, the British had intervened, unfortunately unsuccessfully, in the Russian Civil War through Iran, and in turn the early Soviet Union occupied parts of the country. Things had declined to such a state that the Red Army was making plans to advance on Tehran in January 1921, which caused the British commander in the country to elevate Reza, a half Georgian Persian Cossack commander, who soon used that elevation to effect a coup, although he held the position of minister of war in the new administration.
By 1925 he was in a position to overthrow that government, with the intent to create a republic on the new Turkish model. Upon obtaining control of the country, however, he was dissuaded from that, to history's regret, by both the British and local Muslim clerics. He curiously ruled thereafter in a Napoleonic fashion, being a liberalizing dictator. He was a supporter of women's rights within the country.
An autocratic ruler who had come to power through the British and the Persian military, he could not endure the humiliating defeat by the British Army and the Red Army, and on this day resigned. He lived the rest of his life in exile, dying in South Africa in 1944. His son would rule, of course, until Iran's Islamic Revolution.
On the same day, Iran broke diplomatic relations with Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy and Romania, all nations within German control, or within its orbit.
The Germans decreed that they'd murder 50 to 100 Communists as a reprisal for every German shot on occupied territory
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