I’m continuing my WWII Timeline series with a look at April – June 1939 in this post.
A Timeline of WWII, Spring 1939
April 1, 1939
General Francisco Franco declared the Spanish Civil War officially over.
April 3, 1939
The Nazis complete their war plan for the invasion of Poland. It is scheduled to be implemented on September 1.
April 7–15, 1939
Fascist Italy invaded and annexed Albania.
April 11, 1939
Hungary withdrew from the League of Nations.
April 13, 1939
France and Britain pledged to support Greece and Romania in the event of an attack.
April 19, 1939
After Slovakia proclaimed its independence in March 1939 under the protection of Nazi Germany, it passed its own version of the Nuremberg Laws, with first restrictions excluding Jews from the military and government positions.
April 28, 1939
Poland negotiated an alliance with Britain when Hitler announced he would no longer honor the nonaggression pact of 1934 between Germany and Poland.
April 30, 1939
Jews lost their rights as tenants and were relocated into communal Jewish houses.
May 1939
A German ship named the St. Louis, with 930 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany aboard, set sail from Hamburg on May 13 heading to Havana, Cuba. Instead of regular visas, the Cuban director general had granted all passengers landing certificates. During the voyage, the pro-fascist government of Cuba invalidated the landing certificates and when the St. Louis arrived in Havana on May 27, only twenty-two (22) of the 930 passengers were allowed to enter Cuba.
Then-Cuban President Federico Laredo Bru forced the ship to leave Havana with more than 900 Jews remaining on board. The United States also refused entry to the Jews aboard the St. Louis and on June 6, the ship returned to Europe.
On the St. Louis’s return to Europe, Great Britain took in 287 of the refugees, Belgium took in 214, France took in 224, and the Netherlands took in 181. As the Nazis invaded Western Europe, the refugees to Belgium, France, and the Netherlands became victims of the Nazi’s Final Solution.
May 3, 1939
Persecution of Hungarian Jews began with a series of laws restricting their civil liberties.
May 17, 1939
Germany offered a nonaggression pact to Norway, Sweden, and Finland, but it was rejected.
May 22, 1939
Representatives of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler signed the ‘Pact of Steel’ treaty with Mussolini’s foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano of Italy.
May 27, 1939
In a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Cordell Hull, US Secretary of State, advised them to end the arms embargo provision of the US Neutrality Act.
May 31, 1939
Germany signed a nonaggression pact with Denmark.
Sources:
This series of posts is based on a compilation of timelines from:
The History Place:
The National WWII Museum Interactive Timeline
Antisemitic Legislation 1933 – 1939
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
World War II Chronicle by the Editors of Publications International, Ltd.
Most recent post from the series:
© Cindy Farrar Bryan and The Arrowhead Club, 2019
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