Gen. Henning von Tresckow attempted to assassinate Adolph Hitler in an aspect of "Operation Spark" in which he handed a bomb disguised as a gift of liquor to a staff officer boarding an airplane with the German dictator. The bomb, which would have killed all on board had it exploded, failed to go off. The fuse, a British time pencil, failed to detonate.
The plan was not a fully formed one, unlike the July 20, 1944, plot. The thought was simply that with German losing the war, Hitler's death would spark a coup d'état. This attempt is the only one depicted in the movie Valkyrie prior to the July 44 attempt.
The plot was one of several that this circle of German officers would attempt, but it was the first.
The Germans removed the final 10,000 Jewish residents of Kraków.
The Saturday Evening Post had the last of its four freedom illustrations appear in the magazine, the four taken from a speech by Theodore Roosevelt. This one was "freedom from fear".
The illustration featured a (middle-aged?) couple tucking their children into bed. It's likely the least well liked of the four illustrations, but it is full of interesting details.
The two children are being tucked into the same bed, for one thing, something that the viewers would not have thought odd even in a middle class home of the era. The young children are, moreover, a boy and a girl, which would also not have risen to odd comments at the time. The father is still wearing a tie, even though we'd presume this is early evening. The newspaper he's holding notes what the world had to fear, at the time. Viewers today would probably put the male image in his 50s and the female adult in her 40s, but chances are pretty good that Rockwell was portraying a woman in her 30s and a male around 40.
The bedroom, given the angle of the background, is likely an attic bedroom.
It'd be worth asking how we've done with the four freedoms over the years. Perhaps we can do that in another tread, but in regard to freedom from fear, fear is still with us, and indeed we live in an era of record angst.
The accompanying article was written by Stephen Vincent Benét.
The Canadian Pacific Ocean liner RMS Empress of Canada was sunk by the Italian submarine Leonardo da Vinci in the South Atlantic, 1,400 of 1,800 passengers survived, with 392 being lost, half of which, ironically, were Italian POWs.
On the same day, the Canadian corvette sank the U-163 in the Atlantic.
Finland signed a trade agreement with Nazi Germany.
Japanese troops ended their assault on Hill 700 on Bouganville.
J. P. Morgan, Jr. died at age 75 in Boca Raton.
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