SAN DIEGO, at year’s end, almost 26,000 men are in uniform.

AS 1939 OPENS...

Worldwide depression with full employment only in Germany.

Sartre: “impossible that Hitler’s’s intending to start a war. It’s a bluff.”

Hitler came to power in 1933. Since 1935 Jews in Germany have been stripped of property and basic civil rights. By 1937 129,000 — 25 percent of Germany’s Jewish population — have fled. In March 1938, the Nazis took over Austria. Again, Jews — including Sigmund Freud — leave.

Shirley Temple is US’s most popular star.

Between 1933 and July 1938, the US had admitted 27,000 German Jews. The US has an annual quota for German nationals of 25,000. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) has stated that he has no intention of increasing that number.

US has largest number of vehicles — 30 million.

In the US, FDR, near the end of his second term, readies himself to run in 1940 for a third. The majority of Americans want nothing to do with war in Europe.

“Charlie Chaplin plans to start work on his next picture (an all-talkie).... Title: The Dictator."

Star search continues for part of Scarlett O’Hara in the film version of Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 blockbuster novel Gone with the Wind. Shirley Temple is US’s most popular star.

September 1938, CBS newsman William Shirer, from Munich reports

MISSING TYPE

State of the Union message: FDR shifts emphasis from domestic to international situation.

Pertinent Statistics

UNITED STATES POPULATION

Total: 127 million. 72.3 million are urban dwellers; 54.8 million are rural residents.

“ ‘Scar-face Al Capone... left ‘The Rock’ — Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay — and now is confined on Terminal Island at Los Angeles Harbor.”

In 1938, 67,895 immigrant aliens are admitted to US. 19,736 of that number are “Hebrew”; in 1939, number jumps to 43,450 (out of 82,998 total). In 1939, 826 “Spanish-Americans” enter US as immigrant aliens.

Of 1,484,811 criminal offenses in US, 24,402 are crimes against persons.

Virginia Woolf, in diary: “Spanish war is being won yesterday today tomorrow by Franco.”

EDUCATION

In US 4.2 million over ten years of age are illiterate; of that number, 1.5 million are Negro and 1.3 million are foreign-born whites.

W.H. Auden: "Earth, receive an honoured guest:/William Yeats is laid to rest."

Of 74 million persons over 25, 6.4 million are Negro, 10 million are foreign-born whites. Of that 74 million, 3.4 million have attended college for four or more years. 80,842 of that number are Negro. 252,000 are foreign-born whites.

Freud, per Virginia Woolf: “A screwed up shrunk very old man: with a monkey’s light eyes.”

7.3 million over 25 have completed one to four years of grade school. Two million of that number are Negro. 1.7 million are foreign-born whites.

At Paris party, James Joyce announces completion of Finnegans Wake.

The Crisis education survey reports total of 3467 Negro college graduates, 2890 of whom were trained in Negro colleges.

Infant Deaths Per 1000 live births: • Chile 243 • Mexico 131 • Germany 63 • US 54 • Netherlands 38

Ernest Hemingway: “I slept good and sound every night in Spain through the whole war."

TRANSPORTATION

43.8 million motor vehicles are in operation worldwide — an increase of 36.8% over preceding decade. US has largest number of vehicles — 30 million in operation. England and France each have some 2 million motor vehicles in operation; Germany, 1.8 million; Canada, 1.3 million.

US has 3 million miles of highways, both improved and unimproved.

New York Times, re Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin: “He limits himself too much to the frothy scum of Berlin society.”

“This Year PLYMOUTH’S The Car — ‘Roadking’ models start at $645 — 114-inch wheelbase; coil springs of special Amola steel; all-silent Auto-Mesh Transmission...” Commercial airlines fly 90 million miles during 1939, against 81 million in 1938. Passenger airline traffic increased from 1.3 million in 1938 to better than 2 million in 1939. Greater increase in passengers than in miles flown permits airlines to operate planes with closer to capacity loads, giving industry as a whole first profitable year in its history. In 1939 airlines make operating profit of $991,311 against a loss of $1.7 million in 1938.

John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. SD Union:"It is as controversial a novel as he has written."

ENTERTAINMENT

Movie box-office annual receipts average $25 per family, highest ever. Ten most popular radio programs:

Gladys, Elvis, Vernon Presley. Elvis Presley’s father Vernon is charged with forgery in Parchman, Mississippi.

1. Chase & Sanborn Hour
2. Jack Benny
3. Lux Radio Theatre
4. Kraft Music Hall (with Bing Crosby)
5. Fibber McGee & Co.
6. Major Bowes
7. Pepsodent Program (with Bob Hope)
8. Kate Smith Hour
9. Fitch Bandwagon
10. Kay Kyser

At 0445 hours, on pretext that Polish attacked first, Germany launches Blitzkrieg.

Of evening network programs, 40 percent are variety shows, 17 percent dramas, 11 percent tests and contests, 4 percent news, 9 percent music only (popular), 2 percent music only (classical).

Fifty percent say, “Radio is most reliable news source.” Seventeen percent say, “Newspapers most reliable news source.”

Hitler justifies Polish invasion. Orders Jews off streets by 8 p.m.

1930, Reader’s Digest circulation was 250,000. This year circulation hits 8 million.

ECONOMY

9.4 million unemployed.

Premier Chamberlain: “I have to tell you now ... that this country is at war with Germany.... Now may God bless you all."

In 1929, mean average weekly income was $28.55; in 1939 it has fallen to $27.04.

Mean average weekly income for women is $17.02; for unskilled men, $22.82; for skilled and semi-skilled males, $30.53.

Delivered to FDR FDR: physicist Albert Einstein’s August 2 letter re uranium and possibility of setting up nuclear chain reactions in large mass of uranium.

A female’s average hourly wage is 47 cents; a skilled male’s, 80 cents.

• One-pound can pork & beans 5 cents • One dozen eggs 33 cents

• One pound butter 34 cents • One pound round steak 36 cents • One pound bacon 34 cents • One pound coffee 22 cents • One quart milk, delivered 12 cents • One pound bananas 6 cents • One pound sugar 5 cents • Pepsi-Cola, 12 ounces 5 cents • Scotch, one-fifth $3.29

• New York Times, daily 3 cents

Negro contralto Marian Anderson, by invitation from Mrs. FDR — Eleanor Roosevelt — performs at Lincoln Memorial.

January

1 - US GALLUP POLL: 58 percent believe US will enter war against Germany during next year.

ATLANTIC, “I Married a Jew,” by Anonymous: “My husband’s father and mother are Jews. My parents are both what Mr. Hitler would be pleased to call Aryan’ Germans. I am an American-born girl.” Anonymous notes her mother’s objections to her “mixed marriage”: Jews, her mother told her, “are sensual, aggressive, ostentatious, cunning — that is a heritage they can never overcome. They accomplish things in business because they are shrewder than Christians and never hesitate to seize an unfair advantage. They accomplish things in science — yes, but mostly windy theories like those of Einstein and Freud. Jewish painters like Picasso and Modigliani are clever but never great. Jews in the theater — well, you have seen what they have done to Hollywood. The moving pictures are full of sex and sensuality and cater solely to the Jews’ god, money....”

Eileen Jackson in San Diego Union's Tete-a-Tete: "By our comments on the tea dance you can gather that we heartily recommend that form of party."

2 — TIME, Letter to the Editor: “[R]eports of German ‘pogroms’ have a sickeningly familiar ring.”

TIME, Cinema: “Charlie Chaplin plans to start work on his next picture (an all-talkie).... Title: The Dictator. In Germany the Hamburger Fremdenblatt charged Chaplin had been ‘commissioned’ to make the film... as ‘propaganda against a State with which the United States is at peace.’ ”

From San Diego Union

ROSE BOWL: USC topples Duke, 7-3; Cotton Bowl: St. Mary’s triumphs over Texas Tech, 20-13; Sugar Bowl: Texas Christian vanquishes Carnegie Tech, 15-7; Orange Bowl: Tennessee sacks Oklahoma, 17-0.

From San Diego Union

SAN DIEGO UNION, “Many Gay Groups Gather for Dinner Dance: College men and girls, home for the holidays from northern universities, flocked in gay parties to the opening of the Plata Real, U.S. Grant hotel, this weekend. Sorority and fraternity pins were in evidence as these members of the young set enjoyed the pleasant informality of meeting friends from everywhere in this setting.”

3 — US, 76th Congress convenes.

4 - STATE OF THE UNION message: FDR shifts emphasis from domestic to international situation.

NEW YORK TIMES, Furnished Rooms Wanted: “German-Jew wishes 1-3 rooms, between 50th-112th.”

SAN DIEGO UNION: “North Island Air Expansion.... Planned: Construction of a 400-foot graving dock at the Destroyer base, capable of docking two 1500-ton destroyers simultaneously, and a huge expansion program at naval Air station, including hangars to accommodate entire squadrons of 25-ton bombers, are part of the navy’s 1939 development program, it was disclosed yesterday.”

5 — FDR submits 1939-40 budget. $9 billion budget includes requests for $1.3 billion for defense. $3.3 billion deficit expected.

6 - NEW YORK CITY, Plaza Hotel, Persian Room: Eddy Duchin’s orchestra, songs by Morton Downey.

SAN DIEGO UNION, “Hatchet Slayer Guilty; Faces Gas Execution: First death-penalty verdict to be returned in San Diego county since California adopted the lethal gas chamber for execution of condemned prisoners, was given yesterday by Judge Gordon Thompson’s court by a jury which had tried James J. Cordova, 29, Works Progress administration worker accused of the hatchet murders of his two sons, William, 3, and Richard, 1.”

7 — CALIFORNIA’S governor pardons Tom Mooney, convicted for participation in 1916 San Francisco Preparedness Day bombing. Mooney served 22 years in prison.

Upton Sinclair, re Mooney pardon: “We EPICS (End Poverty in California) demand release of a million prisoners of starvation in California.”

8 — CHINESE re-take Hangchow, held by Japanese since late 1937.

LOS ANGELES TIMES: “ ‘Scar-face Al Capone... left ‘The Rock’ — Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay — and now is confined on Terminal Island at Los Angeles Harbor.”

BIRTHDAY: Elvis Presley, 4.

9 — BERLIN, Hitler dedicates new Reich chancellery.

BIRTHDAY: Richard Nixon, 26.

SAN DIEGO, city workers begin move into new $2 million civic center, under construction since 1936.

10 — US Ambassador to UK, Joseph P. Kennedy, warns Congress: “war imminent.”

11 - AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS SURVEY: New York City (with 28 percent Jewish population) newspapers’ employment agency ads specifying “Christians only need apply” now more common than at any time since the War. To combat discrimination, many Jewish female job seekers wear crosses. New York Telephone Company explaining why company employs few Jews: Jewish girls cannot operate equipment “because their arms are too short.”

13 - HOLLYWOOD, Vivien Leigh wins role of Gone with the Wind's Scarlett O’Hara.

15 - SPANISH CIVIL WAR: Franco’s troops push toward Barcelona.

BIRTHDAY: Martin Luther King, Jr., 10.

17 — LONDON, Virginia Woolf, in diary: “Spanish war is being won yesterday today tomorrow by Franco.”

18 — ATLANTA, Roman Catholic cathedral dedicated. Among invited guests: Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard. According to Wizard, who at behest of Bishop of Savannah-Atlanta diocese, speaks briefly, Klan in post-World War days was anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic group, which in recent years subordinated racial and religious matters to program opposing “Communism and CIO.”

19 — CBS correspondent William L. Shirer, in diary: “Franco, with his Germans and Italians, is at the gates of Barcelona.”

22 - NEW YORK TIMES, “Static-Less Radio System Tested in New York’s Air”: “For reception in New York, powerful ultra-short waves are sprayed into space from 400-foot tower at Alpine, high on the New Jersey palisades.” New system described by its inventor, Edwin Armstrong, as “frequency modulation” — FM.

24 — V. WOOLF: “Franco at the gate of Barcelona.”

25 — SPAIN, Loyalist government flees as Franco’s troops surround Barcelona.

26 - WASHINGTON, D.C., physicists Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi confer on process of fission by which free uranium neutron may be produced capable of initiating “chain reaction.”

28 - LONDON, Virginia Woolf, husband Leonard, visit Freud, who hands VW a narcissus. Re Nazi Germany, Freud tells Woolfs: “A generation before the poison will be worked out.”

VW, in diary, re Freud: “A screwed up shrunk very old man: with a monkey’s light eyes.”

SAN DIEGO, Rockwell Field, site of some of the army’s greatest triumphs, passes into navy hands.

BIRTHDAY: Jackson Pollock, 27.

29 — DEAD: William Butler Yeats, 73.

W.H. Auden:

• Earth, receive an honoured guest:
• William Yeats is laid to rest.
• Let the Irish vessel lie
• Emptied of its poetry.

30 - BERLIN, Hitler: “If international-finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed once more in plunging the nations into another world war, the consequences will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

Noting that other nations, including the US, refuse to take in significant numbers of Jews, Hitler declares, “It is a shameful example to observe today how the entire democratic world dissolves in tears of pity but then, in spite of its obvious duty to help, closes its heart to the poor, tortured people.”

US Supreme Court in Tennessee Electric Power Company versus Tennessee VaHey Authority upholds constitutionality of TVA’s competition with private utility companies.

31 — FREUD, in Chronik: “pains in bones.” (82-year-old Freud suffers from cancer of the jaw.)

V. WOOLF: “Thought of the refugees from Barcelona walking 40 miles, one with a baby in a parcel.”

February

2 — BIRTHDAY: James Joyce, 57. At Paris party, Joyce announces completion of book that for 16 years he’s spoken of as “Work in Progress.” Title: Finnegans Wake.

3 — US House of Representatives extends Dies Un-American Activities Committee for one year.

4 - JERSEY CITY, Our Lady of Sorrows Church, 24-year-old Frank Sinatra marries Nancy Barbato.

5 — US Deb of the Year Brenda Frazier’s mother: “There is no problem to being the mother of a popular deb. It is the mothers of the others I’m sorry for. It must be awful to be the mother of a flop!”

BIRTHDAY: William Burroughs, 25.

6 — SPAIN, Franco demands Loyalists’ surrender.

KEY WEST, Ernest Hemingway writes to mother-in-law: “I slept good and sound every night in Spain through the whole war and I was hungry, really hungry, at least every other day for five months last winter but never felt better. So I guess one’s conscience is a strange thing and not controlled either by a sense of security, nor danger of death, nor one’s stomach.”

BIRTHDAY: Babe Ruth, “Sultan of Swat,” 44; Ronald Reagan, 28.

7 - KEY WEST, Hemingway, letter: “There’s only one thing to do with a war and that is win it.”

8 - JERSEY CITY, Frank and Nancy Sinatra move into $42-per-month, three-room apartment. Nancy makes $25 per week as secretary, Frank earns $25 per week as singing waiter.

9 — PARIS, published, this month 33-year-old Jean-Paul Sartre’s Le Mur: “To run away from existence is still to exist.”

10 - DEAD: Pope Pius XI.

11 - THE NEW YORKER, re Raymond Chandler’s Big Sleep: “Pretty terrifying story of a degeneracy in southern California by an author who almost makes Dashiell Hammett seem as innocuous as Winnie-the-Pooh.”

12 — LONDON, Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees discloses Nazi plan for systematic emigration of Germany’s Jews.

NEW YORK TIMES, re The Big Sleep: “The language used is often vile — at times so filthy that the publishers have been compelled to resort to the dash, a device seldom employed in these unsqueamish days. As a study in depravity, the story is excellent.”

14 — NEW MASSES, Hemingway: “As long as all our dead live in the Spanish earth, and they will live as long as the earth lives, no system of tyranny ever will prevail in Spain.”

16 - BIRTHDAY: Sonny Bono, 4.

17 - AT THE MOVIES: You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, starring W.C. Fields.

18 - SAN FRANCISCO, 1939’s first World’s Fair — Golden Gate Exposition — opens on Treasure Island. Fair’s theme: “Recreation: Man’s Gift from a Machine Age.” 200,000 attend on first day. Fair’s hit: Sally Rand’s “Nude Ranch,” with “rancherettes” in G-string, bandana, ten-gallon hat, boots, gun belt and holster.

BIRTHDAY: Yoko Ono, 4.

19 - RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA, Raymond Chandler, letter: “I do not want to write depraved books... but my fiction was learned in a rough school.”

20 — LONDON, Freud, letter to Arnold Zweig: “Since my operation in September [1938], I have been suffering from pains in the jaw which are growing stronger.”

NEW YORK CITY, Madison Square Garden, giant figure of George Washington draped on either side with swastikas, 22,000 brown-shirted German-American Bund members sing “Star-Spangled Banner,” exchange Sieg Heils, denounce FDR — “Franklin D. Rosenfeld.” Bund calls for union “with all Americans defending Aryan culture in order that the dictatorship of a small, racially and ethically alien Jewish-international minority, to which the mind of the entire nation is rapidly being subjected, may be broken.” Meeting precipitates riot.

BIRTHDAY: Roy Cohn, 12.

21 — Old friend writes to Freud: “[H]ow glad we must be that you have escaped a nation regressed to the sadistic father!”

BIRTHDAY: THE NEW YORKER, 14.

23 - ACADEMY AWARDS: Best Picture: You Can’t Take It with You; Best Actor: Spencer Tracy, Boys Town; Best Actress: Bette Davis, Jezebel.

26 — LONDON, British government announces to Arab-Jewish Conference here that it will resign mandate over Palestine, set up independent state.

27 — US Supreme Court rules sit-down strike illegal.

HOBOKEN, Frank Sinatra’s mother Dolly arraigned in Hudson Special Sessions Court for performing “illegal operation” (abortion). Pleads non vult.

BIRTHDAY: Ralph Nader, 5.

March

1 - GALLUP POLL: Asked, “In case war breaks out, should US sell food supplies to Britain and France?” 76 percent answer, “Yes.” Asked, “Should we sell them airplanes and other war materials?” 52 percent answer, “Yes.”

2 — ROME, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli elected pope; selects title of Pius XII.

3 - AT THE MOVIES: Grand Illusion; Yes, My Darling Daughter; John Ford’s Stagecoach.

4 — BERLIN, this month government decree puts unemployed Jews in forced-labor gangs.

7 — INDIA, Gandhi ends four-day fast in protest against British rule.

10 — MOSCOW, Stalin, opening 18th Communist Party Congress, accuses democracies of provoking Soviet-German war.

11 - V. WOOLF, 57: “Why am I so old, so ugly, so — & can’t write.”

12 - ALGER REPUBLICAIN, Albert Camus, re Sartre’s Le Mur: “A great writer always brings with him his world and his sermon.”

BIRTHDAY: Jack Kerouac, 17. At his birthday party, Jack’s girlfriend, Mary Carney, angers him by playing kissing games with other boys.

14 — GERMANY, breaking promises made last year at Munich, invades Czechoslovakia.

BERKELEY, physicist E.O. Lawrence, letter: “Everything is moving along well here. The [60-inch] medical cyclotron is nearing completion.”

BIRTHDAY: Albert Einstein, 60.

15 — HITLER enters Prague with German troops.

BIRTHDAY: Jimmy Lee Swag-gart, 4.

16 - CZECHOSLOVAKIA placed under German “protection.”

17 — US condemns German occupation of Czechoslovakia as “wanton lawlessness.”

19 - NEW YORK TIMES, re Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin: “He limits himself too much to the frothy scum of Berlin society.”

24 - MANCHESTER GUARDIAN, Klaus Mann reviews Goodbye to Berlin: “Isherwood makes outpourings of the Nazi fanatics seem not only mean but pygmy.”

BIRTHDAY: Wilhelm Reich, 41; Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 20.

25 - KEY WEST, Hemingway, letter to editor: “[W]orking steadily every day found I had fifteen thousand words done ... and that it was a novel [For Whom the Bell Tolls]. So I am going to write on that until it is finished.”

29 — SPAIN, after 32 months’ fighting, Loyalists surrender, ending Spanish Civil War.

LONDON, over tea, Hugh Walpole gives V. Woolf “full account of his sexual life.... He only loves men who dont love men.” Walpole tells VW “of the Baths at the Elephant & Castle. How the men go there: saw Ld C naked: saw Ld B in the act with a boy.... Copulation removes barriers. Class barriers fade.”

GENEVA, CBS’s Shirer: “Franco’s butchery will be terrible.”

30 — ARGENTINA charges that Germany tries to seize Patagonia.

V. WOOLF, diary, re Hugh Walpole: He can’t use facts of his “rich life” for his novels. “They are therefore about lives he hasnt lived wh. explains their badness.”

31 - BRITAIN and FRANCE agree to support Poland if Germany invades it.

SAN DIEGO, powerhouse 12,000-volt switch short circuits, causes blaze, killing two powerhouse workers, cutting power to city homes and businesses.

April

1 — US recognizes Franco’s government.

BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer: “Hitler very bellicose today.”

GALLUP POLL: Asked, “In case war breaks out, should US sell food supplies to Britain and France?” 82 percent answer “Yes.” Asked, “Should we sell them airplanes and other war materials?” 66 percent answer, “Yes.”

2 — BORN: Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr.

5 — SAN DIEGO, one dozen city men answer war department call for all ex-army men under 36 to join enlisted reserves. Men to be sworn in tomorrow in ceremonies in U.S. Grant Hotel. With upsurge of war in Europe and increasing activity of Japanese in Asia, the declining fortunes of Consolidated Aircraft take an upturn when company signs contracts totaling $7.5 million with army and navy.

7 — ALBANIA, Italy invades.

SAN DIEGO UNION, “Coronado Eastertide Offers Sunday Parade and Gay Dinner Dance.”

9 - EASTER SUNDAY

WASHINGTON, D.C., barred by Daughters of American Revolution (DAR) from singing in DAR-owned Constitution Hall, Negro contralto Marian Anderson, by invitation from Mrs. FDR — Eleanor Roosevelt — performs at Lincoln Memorial.

NEW YORK, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen deplores possibility of alliance between democracies and USSR to oppose Nazis: “When the democracies of the world summon to their aid an anti-God nation to help them combat an anti-religious nation, thoughtful men must ask themselves: ‘If the democracies summon red devils to fight brown devils, how can we be sure that democracy is on tfee side of the angels and fighting the battle of God?’ ”

“EASTER PARADE,” women’s hats have one attribute in common — noseward tilt obscuring at least one eye.

RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA, Raymond Chandler writes fellow detective-story writer: “If you come to the Coast to live, you should look at La Jolla.... It has a few writers, but not too many, no Bohemian atmosphere (but they will let you take a drink).... La Jolla has that intangible air of good breeding, which one imagines may still exist in New England, but which certainly does not exist anymore in or around Los Angeles.”

SAN DIEGO, Easter sunrise services held at Mt. Helix, La Cresta, Mt. Soledad, the Organ Pavilion at Balboa Park, and Ford Bowl in Balboa Park.

11 — V. WOOLF, diary: “Maynard [economist John Maynard Keynes], even Maynard, cant find much thats hopeful now that Italy has nipped off Albania save that theres a unity of hatred.”

12 - ON BROADWAY: Robert Sherwood’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois starring Raymond Massey; Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing; Lillian Heilman’s Little Foxes, starring Tallulah Bankhead; Mamba’s Daughters (THE NEW YORKER: “Mother Love among the colored folk”); Philip Barry’s Philadelphia Story, starring Katharine Hepburn; Tobacco Road (in sixth year on Great White Way); Pins and Needles (THE NEW YORKER: “A revue put on by garment workers which contains some of the best music and general wit in town. Second year”).

13 - V. WOOLF: “We live on macaroni.”

15 — FDR in notes to Hitler and Mussolini, requests ten-year guarantee for peace for Europe and Middle East in return for US cooperation in talks on world trade and armaments.

16 - SAN DIEGO UNION, “News and Views of Books,” Max Muller: “You may as well get ready right now for a duration test on hearing about John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. It is as controversial a novel as he has written ... and there will be a hexagon of sides about it for argument.”

BIRTHDAY: Charles Chaplin, 50.

17 - ITALIAN and GERMAN newspapers denounce FDR’s request for peace as “insolent.”

20 — ROME, Mussolini calls FDR’s peace plea “absurd.”

BIRTHDAY: Hitler, 50. Berlin celebrates with massive parade.

LA MESA, Fletcher Hills named site of 200-man Civilian Conservation Corps camp.

21 - THE SPECTATOR: “Providence was in an ironical mood when, fifty years ago this week, it was ordained that Charles Chaplin and Adolf Hitler should make their entry into the world within four days of each other.... Each in his own way has expressed the ideas, sentiments, aspirations of the millions of struggling citizens ground between the upper and the lower millstone of society.... Each has mirrored the same reality — the predicament of the ‘little man’ in modern society. Each is a distorting mirror, the one for good, the other for untold evil. In Chaplin the little man is a clown, timid, incompetent, infinitely resourceful yet bewildered by a world that has no place for him.... He is a heroic figure, but heroic only in the patience and resource with which he receives the blows that fall upon his bowler.... But in Herr Hitler the angel has become a devil. The soleless boots have become Reitstieffeln; the shapeless trousers, riding breeches; the cane, a riding crop; the bowler, a forage cap. The Tramp has become a storm trooper; only the moustache is the same.”

SAN DIEGO UNION, “Goldfish gulping, that odd gastronomic feat recently added informally to many college curriculums, reached a local high school yesterday.”

23 - BIRTHDAY: Shirley Temple, 11. (No. 1 box-office star “Little Miss Curlytop” believes she’s only ten. Her mother lied to Shirley and to 20th Century-Fox about Shirley’s age.) Her 1939 movies: The Little Princess, Susannah of the Mounties.

BIRTHDAY: Roy Orbison, 3.

24 — BOSTON’S Bishop Francis Joseph Spellman named New York Archbishop.

28 — HITLER rejects FDR’s peace plan.

V. WOOLF notes: everyone reads Hitler’s speech — “even newspaper sellers, a great proof of interest.”

29 — CAHIER, Camus: “At war. People who argue about the amount of danger at each front. ‘Mine was the most dangerous.’ When everything has been made vile and sordid, they still try to establish an order of merit. That is how they survive.”

30 - NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR — “The World of Tomorrow” — opens in Flushing Meadows, Queens. General Motors Futurama exhibit features prophesy that by 1960, all US traffic problems will be solved.

NEW YORK CITY, first television receivers go on sale.

May

1 - MIAMI, FLORIDA, KKK rides through Negro section, sets afire 25 crosses, hands out pamphlets warning: “Niggers stay away from the polls.”

2 - PARCHMAN, MISSISSIPPI, this month, Alan Lomax records inmate Akka White singing “Sic ’em Dogs Down.” Also in Parchman, charged with forgery, Elvis Presley’s father Vernon.

BIRTHDAY: Bing Crosby, 35.

3 — MOSCOW, Stalin dismisses foreign secretary, the Jewish Maxim Litvinov, replaces him with non-Jewish V.M. Molotov.

4 — JAPANESE invasion of China, last two days of Japanese air raids on Chungking estimated to have killed 3000 to 10,000.

6 - THE NEW YORKER, re Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: “A god, talking in his sleep, might have written it.”

7 - AUSTRIA, Nazi Adolf Eichmann has in past year supervised expelling of 100,000 Jews. In this month’s census, 113,824 Jews remain in Austria, most in Vienna.

8 — US, Nicaragua’s president Anastasio Somoza addresses Congress, declares that interocean canal across Nicaragua would strengthen North American defenses.

10 - BIRTHDAY: Fats Domino, 10.

15 - AT THE MOVIES: Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

16 - ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, first food stamp plan goes into effect. Stamps permit relief recipients to receive free surplus commodities.

17 - QUEBEC, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth arrive to begin Canadian and US tours.

LONDON, British government publishes White Paper for settlement of Palestine problem; it provides for limiting Jewish immigration to 75,000 until April 1944, establishes population ratio of approximately two Arabs to one Jew; state would become independent in ten years.

NEW YORK CITY, in first televised baseball game, Princeton defeats Columbia.

18 - JERUSALEM and TEL AVIV, Jews riot in protest against White Paper on Palestine.

19 - BIRTHDAY: Malcolm Little, 14.

20 - THE NEW YORKER, re Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust: “[A] book about Hollywood that has all the fascination of a nice bit of phosphorescent decay.”

21 — BOOKS, Alfred Kazin re Finnegans Wake: “We begin to feel that his very freedom to say anything has become a compulsion to say nothing.”

22 - GERMANY and ITALY sign “Pact of Steel,” ten-year military treaty.

KANSAS CITY “Boss” Thomas J. Pendergast pleads guilty to income-tax evasion, sentenced to 15 months in prison.

25 - BIRTHDAY: Miles Davis, 13.

27 - SATURDAY EVENING POST, “Star-Spangled Fascists”: “The geographical center of Nazism in the US is Yorkville section of New York City, largely populated by Germans. At die comer of 85th Street and Third Avenue is the headquarters of the German-American Bund.... Bund is organized by posts throughout the nation.... Its uniformed strong-arm storm troopers probably number between 8000 and 10,000.... Bund publishes... four newspapers — which it advertises as ‘free of Jewish domination’ — in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles.”

29 - V. WOOLF, diary: “What a dream life is to be sure.... I sometimes feel its been an illusion — gone so fast, lived so quickly; & nothing to show for it, save these little books.”

31 - WASHINGTON, D.C., before Dies Un-American Activities Committee, it is asserted that Communist revolution is about to break out in US, suggested that army be mobilized to drive out “Reds.”

June

I - WASHINGTON, D.C., before Dies Un-American Activities Committee, it is suggested that US members of “world Jewry” be deprived of civil rights.

BIRTHDAY: Norma Jeane Baker, 13; Pat Boone, 5.

ATLANTIC, re Finnegans Wake: “one of the latter-day abstract fictions in which the writing is not so much about something as that something itself.”

BRITAIN has banned Jewish immigration to Palestine for next six months. Palestine’s borders well guarded. Today, off Jaffa’s coast, 900 Czech and Austrian Jews captured, interned.

3 - BIRTHDAY: Allen Ginsberg, 13.

8 - WASHINGTON, D.C., King George VI and Queen Elizabeth arrive. At White House, Negro Marian Anderson sings spirituals, “Songbird of the South” Kate Smith sings “When the Moon Comes over the Mountain.”

II - HYDE PARK, NEW YORK, FDR fetes queen and king. Menu: hot dogs, beer, cold ham, turkey, baked beans, gingerbread.

12 - BIRTHDAY: George Bush, 15.

13 - MILWAUKEE, CIO strikers riot at Allis-Chalmers plant; 13 injured.

17 — BERLIN, Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels (known to German refugees in US as “Wotan’s Mickey Mouse”) says Danzig’s union with Germany is “inevitable.”

28 - WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMP Joe Louis knocks out Tony Galento in fourth round of championship fight.

30 — US, fiscal year ends with public debt at new high of $40.4 billion. Emergency Relief Appropriation Act provides $1.5 billion for WPA, but wage is reduced and limit of 18 consecutive months’ work imposed.

BALTIMORE, Sinatra makes first appearance with Harry James and the Music Makers. James signs Sinatra to two-year contract. Pay, $75 per week. (James: “He’d sung only eight bars when I felt hairs on the back of my neck rising.”)

July

I — ENGLAND, since November 1938, 80,000 Jews have taken refuge here.

3 - WASHINGTON, D.C., CBS’s Shirer: “Little awareness here or in New York of European crisis.... [Congress] insists on maintaining embargo on arms as if it were immaterial to this Republic who wins a war between western democracies and the Axis.”

4 - INDEPENDENCE DAY

YANKEE STADIUM, Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day. Says Gehrig, recently diagnosed as suffering amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: “You’ve been reading about my tough breaks for weeks now. But today I think I’m the luckiest man alive.”

LONG ISLAND, at German-American Bund’s Camp Siegfrid, Independence Day celebrations open with storm troopers’ parade.

5 — WPA workers begin protest strike against Congressional order for 130-hour work month. Columnist “Bugs” Baer calls strike “mutiny on the bounty.”

7 - WIMBLEDON, US’s Bobby Riggs wins all-England men’s singles tennis championship.

CHINA, Premier Chiang Kai-shek, on second anniversary of Chinese-Japanese war, predicts Chinese victory within year.

10 — MINNEAPOLIS, policeman killed in riot during WPA walkout.

II - NEW YORK CITY, American League all-star baseball team defeats National League team, 30-1.

V. WOOLF: “Over all hangs war of course. A kind of perceptible but anonymous friction. Dantzig. The Poles vibrating in my room.”

12 — WPA dismisses strikers for failure to report to work.

14 — US, wishing to sell arms to England and France, FDR asks Congress to modify 1935 US Neutrality Act, which forbids munitions sales to any nation engaged in war.

FDR, re WPA strike: “You cannot strike against the government.”

MINNEAPOLIS, one killed in riot during WPA workers strike.

15 - THE NEW YORKER, “Dinner, Supper, and Dancing: Waldorf Astoria, Park at 49 (EL5-3000) — The vast Starlight Roof has Guy Lombardo’s orchestra and, during the supper hour, Xavier Cugat’s rumba band.”

18 — US Congress refuses to revise Neutrality Act.

19 - AT THE MOVIES: Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever, starring Mickey Rooney.

21 - BIRTHDAY: Hemingway, 40.

26 — PRAGUE, Adolf Eichmann demands 70,000 of 120,000 Czech Jews leave country within year.

LONDON, British admit that in past two months, British patrols off Palestine have captured 3,507 Jewish immigrants.

31 - CLEVELAND, United Automobile Strikers clash with police; 46 injured.

August

1 — US, 9.5 million unemployed.

2 — FDR signs Hatch Act, forbidding federal civil service employees from taking part actively in political campaigns for office.

PRINCETON, Albert Einstein writes to FDR: “Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard ... leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy.”

4 - AT THE MOVIES: The Old Maid, starring Bette Davis.

10 - BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer: “Whereas all the rest of the world considers that peace is about to be broken by Germany ... here in Germany, in the world local newspapers create, the very reverse is being maintained.”

11 - CZECHOSLOVAKIA, Jews ordered to leave provinces, go to Prague.

US, Moe L. Annenberg, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and of horse-racing “tip sheets,” indicted for alleged evasion of $3.2 million in income taxes.

16 — HONG KONG, Japanese advance.

17 - NEW YORK CITY, Capitol Theatre, The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, debuts.

22 - OBERSALZBURG, Hitler addresses High Command: “Our opponents are little worms. I saw them in Munich.... I shall provide the propagandistic pretext for launching the war, no matter whether it is credible. The victor is not asked afterwards whether or not he has told the truth. What matters in beginning and waging the war is not righteousness but victory. Close your hearts to pity. Proceed brutally.”

KERN COUNTY, California’s Associated Farmers (union-busting organization formed in 1934) urge ban of Grapes of Wrath. Farmers want state-wide ban in schools and libraries of Steinbeck’s novel, already banned as “obscene” by several public libraries.

23 - BONNEVILLE SALT FLATS, British driver sets world auto speed record — 368.85 miles per hour.

BIG BEAR LAKE, CALIFORNIA, Raymond Chandler, letter: “The effort to keep my mind off the war has reduced me to the mental age of seven.”

24 — USSR and GERMANY sign ten-year nonaggression pact.

BERLIN, Hitler — overjoyed by pact’s signing — beats walls with fists, then holds lengthy conference with Goering, Goebbels, military chiefs.

BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer: “Hitler’s amazing move popular among the masses.... There will be no long front against Russia to hold this time.” PARIS, city dwellers urged to leave immediately unless presence is indispensable.

NEW YORK TIMES: “GERMANY AND RUSSIA SIGN 10-YEAR NON-AGGRESSION PACT”

25 - LONDON, Poland and Britain sign five-year military alliance.

GERMANY, government severs communications between Berlin and European capitals.

V. WOOLF: “One touch on the switch & we shall be at war.”

26 — GERMANY, food, clothing, coal rationed. Jews get food cards, but no clothing cards.

27 — LONDON, Freud, Chronik: “War panic.”

BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer: “Hot and sultry.... News of rationing has come as a heavy blow to the [German] people.”

28 - FRENCH-GERMAN frontier closed; Netherlands mobilizes; Switzerland and Belgium call up more troops.

V. WOOLF: “on this possibly last night of peace. Will the 9 o’clock bulletin end it all? ... [T]he strain. Like waiting a doctors verdict.”

29 — ITALY, Food rationed. Rome blacked out.

FDR repeats: Congressional failure to modify 1935 US Neutrality Act encourages Hitler to provoke war.

BIRTHDAY: Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, 19. “Bird” this year leaves Kansas City, moves to New York.

30 - BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer: “The sands are running fast tonight.”

V. WOOLF, diary: “Not at war yet.”

31 — LONDON, women and children evacuated. British fleet, army, air force placed on war footing.

PARIS, Sartre: “impossible that Hitler’s’s intending to start a war. It’s a bluff.”

NEW YORK CITY, Loew’s State Theatre: columnist Ed Sullivan heads new vaudeville show opening this week.

September

1 - GERMANY INVADES POLAND. At 0445 hours, on pretext that Polish attacked first, Germany launches Blitzkrieg — “lightning war.” Hitler has said aim in Poland is “elimination of living forces, not arrival at a certain line. Destruction of Poland shall be primary objective.” German armies commit atrocities against Poles, massacre Jews.

BERLIN, Hitler justifies Polish invasion. Orders Jews off streets by 8 p.m. Orders “euthanization” of “feebleminded” and “incurably insane.”

BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer: “a flagrant... act of aggression. But Hitler... califs] it a ‘counter-attack’.... [C]afes, restaurants, and beer-halls ... packed.”

V. WOOLF: “War is on us this morning. Hitler has taken Dantzig: has attacked — or is attacking — Poland.”

W. H. Auden:

• “I sit in one of the dives
• On Fifty-second Street ...
• the clever hopes expire
• Of a low dishonest decade....”
• Hunger allows no choice
• To the citizen or the police;
• We must love one another or die.”

CAHIER, Camus: “In the streetcar... ‘If you give Hitler your little finger, the next thing you’ll be doing is taking your trousers down....’ ”

2 - POLISH CORRIDOR, German army advances.

PARIS, Sartre called into army, assigned to meteorological unit. On train to camp reads Kafka’s Der Prozess (The Trial).

3 - V. WOOLF, 10 a.m.: “This is I suppose certainly the last hour of peace.”

11 a.m., Britain declares war on Germany. Premier Chamberlain: “I have to tell you now ... that this country is at war with Germany.... Now may God bless you all.... For it is evil things we shall be fighting against — brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression, and persecution.”

FRANCE enters war six hours later.

OFF HEBRIDES ISLANDS, British liner Athenia torpedoed by German submarine; 28 Americans die.

BILSKO, POLAND. GERMANS occupy. 2000 Jews rounded up, beaten. Some hung up by hands, sloshed with boiling water. Rubber pipes put into Jews’ mouths, water pumped in. Stomachs swell and burst.

FDR, in evening Radio “fireside chat”: “For four long years, a succession of actual wars and constant crises have shaken the entire world and have threatened in each case to bring on the gigantic conflict which is today unhappily a fact....

“This nation will remain a neutral nation, but I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well.... Even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind or close his conscience....”

4 — BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer: “censorship of everything I say.”

US travel to Europe limited to “imperative necessity.”

NEW YORK TIMES: “BRITISH LINER ATHENIA TORPEDOED, SUNK; 1,400 PASSENGERS ABOARD, 292 AMERICANS; ALL EXCEPT A FEW ARE REPORTED SAVED.... Ship Bound for Canada Carried Some Children Among Americans.... President’s Aide Notes Liner Had Refugees, Not Munitions.”

5 — US makes unofficial proclamation of neutrality in European war.

NEW YORK CITY, stocks rise 1 to 27 points in heavy trading.

6 — GERMANY occupies Cracow.

V. WOOLF: “Our first air raid warning.”

7 — GERMAN army drives toward Lodz, Poznan, Warsaw.

CAHIER, Camus: “We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves.... The reign of beasts has begun.”

NEAR SAN DIEGO, navy plane hits radio tower, six die.

BIRTHDAY: “Grandma” (Mary Ellen Robertson) Moses, 79. This summer art collector discovered, in Hoosick, New York, drugstore window, four canvases by Grandma Moses, who, when arthritis set in a year ago, making embroidery impossible, took up painting — on threshing canvas with paints ordered from Sears’ catalogue.

8 - BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer: “Heard Ed [Murrow] broadcasting from London tonight.”

FDR declares state of limited emergency, giving him powers to act quicldy in European war.

NEW YORK CITY, Jack Kerouac, with football scholarship, enters Horace Mann Prep School.

9 — GERMAN army encircles Warsaw.

10 - BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer, diary: “Tannhauser and Madame Butterfly playing at the Opera.... 200 football matches played in Germany today.”

11 — V. WOOLF: “Poland being conquered, & then — we shall be attended to.”

12 — ENGLAND, after three-year exile, Duke and Duchess of Windsor return. -

14 — SARTRE, in letter from army camp where he mixes, unhappily, with other soldiers: “I am now cured of socialism, if I needed to be cured of it.”

From PENNSYLVANIA STATE COLLEGE, poet Theodore Roethke writes to poet Louise Bogan: “I have a new pair of shoes and a new coat and a new air of respectability, in consequence. A bit like Babar the Elephant. Do you know Babar? He is wonderful. Ferdinand the Bull is pretty good, too.”

15 — US, isolationist Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh broadcasts appeal to Americans not to enter European war.

16 — GERMANY issues ultimatum to Warsaw: Surrender or suffer unrestricted bombardment.

BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer, diary: “Every German I’ve met today liked Colonel Lindbergh’s broadcast.”

CHINA, Japanese offensive renewed.

17 — USSR invades Poland from east. Says Molotov: Poland has “suffered bankruptcy”; Russia must protect “brother Ukrainians and brother Byelo-Russians.”

NEW YORK TIMES: “SOVIET TROOPS MARCHED INTO POLAND AT 11 P.M.; NAZIS DEMAND WARSAW GIVE UP OR BE SHELLED.”

BIRTHDAY: Hank Williams, 16.

18 - NEAR DANZIG, CBS’s Shirer: “the sickening sweet smell of dead horses and the sweeter smell of dead men. Here ... a whole division of Polish calvary charged against... German tanks....”

19 — GERMAN troops mass on Belgian border.

POLAND, 2 million Polish Jews pass into German hands. Hitler orders Poland’s Jews into reservations along Polish rail-lines. 600,000 of Germany’s Jews also to be deported to these ghettos.

20 - BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer: “I have still to find a German, even among those who don’t like the regime, who sees anything wrong in German destruction of Poland.”

21 — BERLIN, at secret meeting, “first steps in the final solution,” concentration of all Jews in Poland, outlined.

LONDON, Freud takes physician’s hand, says: “You remember our ‘contract’ not to leave me in the lurch when the time had come? Now it is nothing but torture and makes no sense.” Physician injects Freud with morphine. Freud sleeps. Twelve hours later, when Freud exhibits restlessness, physician gives second injection.

22 — BRITAIN suspends elections until war’s end.

PARIS, although France has been Poland’s ally since 1921, pledging to take Poland’s part as soon as Germans invade, France does not want war, today ceases military effort on Poland’s behalf.

LONDON, Freud slips into coma.

23 — BERLIN, Poland’s conquest complete.

V. WOOLF: “Meanwhile Poland has been gobbled up.... Civilization has shrunk. The Amenities are wilting. There’s no petrol today.”

DEAD: Freud, 83, at 3 a.m.

W. H. Auden: “In Memory of Sigmund Freud”

• To us he is no more a person
• Now but a whole climate of opinion.

24 — WARSAW burning, 1000 civilians dead after 24-hour bombardment.

26 - NORTH SEA, Nazi planes attack British fleet.

27 — WARSAW surrenders.

28 - GERMANY and US£R sign treaty dividing Poland between them.

GANDHI demands India be given independence at European war’s end.

30 - MOTION PICTURE HERALD lists ten stars whose pictures drew greatest number of patrons to theaters in year since September 1938, showing Shirley Temple dropped from first place:

1. Mickey Rooney
2. Tyrone Power
3. Spencer Tracy
4. Clark Gable
5. Shirley Temple
6. Bette Davis
7. Alice Faye
8. Errol Flynn
9. James Cagney
10. Sonja Henie

October

1 — LONDON, Winston Churchill: “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

SAN DIEGO, tuna fishing industry estimates that for first time, local tuna catch exceeds 100 million pounds.

2 — US refuses to recognize USSR and Germany’s partition of Poland.

3 - PANAMA CITY, Inter-American Conference issues Declaration of Panama, establishing safety zones in Western Hemisphere seas. Belligerent powers warned to refrain from naval activities in these zones.

4 — BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer, diary: “Nachtausgabe's editorial, argu[es] that America is not nearly so anxious to join the war ‘as are Herr Roosevelt and his Jewish camarilla.’ ”

6 — BERLIN, Hitler asks for “unconditionally guaranteed peace”; declares, “This statement will have been my last.” Repeats demand for colonies’ return; says new Polish state will be set up to solve Jewish and German minorities “problems.”

PARIS, Premier Daladier: “We must go on with the war.”

V. WOOLF: “[T]here’s the war: or rather the non-war. Nothing happens. All is held up. Nightly we are served out with a few facts, or a childstory of the adventures of a submarine. Hitler is said to make peace terms today.”

7 - LONDON, published: T.S. Eliot’s Book of Practical Cats.

BILLBOARD: “Vocalist Frank Sinatra handles the torchy ballads in a pleasing way in good voice. Only blemish is that he touches the songs with a little too much pash, which is not all convincing.”

8 — GERMANY makes Western Poland part of German Reich.

BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer, diary: “Now the night and the shrieks and barbarism.”

WORLD SERIES: Yankees, led by Joe DiMaggio, defeat Cincinnati Reds in four straight games (2-1, 4-0, 7-3, 7-4).

9 - GERMANS order 550,000 of 650,000 Jews living in annexed Polish provinces plus all Poles “not fit for assimilation” moved into reservations. Jews from the Reich, Austria now being transported to Lublin reservation.

10 - HORACE MANN QUARTERLY publishes Jack Kerouac’s “The Brothers.”

11 - DELIVERED TO FDR: physicist Albert Einstein’s August 2 letter re uranium and possibility of setting up nuclear chain reactions in large mass of uranium.

12 — LONDON, Chamberlain rejects Hitler’s peace proposals: “No reliance can be placed upon promises of present German government.”

13 — US, in second broadcast on neutrality, isolationist Colonel Lindbergh advocates former President Herbert Hoover’s plan of selling only defensive arms to belligerents; says US should “demand the freedom of this continent and its surrounding islands from the dictates of European powers”; criticizes Canada for entering war.

14 - THE NEW YORKER, “Dinner, Supper, and Dancing: Plaza, 5 Ave. at 58 (PL3-1740) - Eddy Duchin and his orchestra are in the Persian Room.... Formal dress required. ... Waldorf Astoria, Park at 49 (EL5-3000) - Benny Goodman’s talented boys play solid swing in the staid Empire Room.”

16 — BERKELEY, physicist E.O. Lawrence, in letter: “[The outbreak of war] affected us so much that work in the laboratory was almost brought to a halt. Now we are resuming almost normal activities.”

17 — BERLIN, Hitler orders army to treat occupied Polish territory as “advanced glacis” for future invasion of USSR.

BIG BEAR LAKE, Raymond Chandler writes to a friend: “I’m sick of California and the kind of people it breeds. Of course I like La Jolla, but La Jolla is only a sort of escape from reality. It’s not typical.... My wife ... agrees with me that the percentage of phonies in the population [of California] is increasing. No doubt in years, or centuries to come, this will be the center of civilization.... I distrust Jews, although I admit that the really nice Jew is probably the salt of the earth.”

18 — AUSTRIA, Jews, ordered to Lublin Reserve by Adolf Eichmann, receive letter: “By order of the authorities, a large transport of Jews fit to work, up to 50 years of age, will go to Poland. You have been chosen.... Should you disobey this summons... you will have to face the consequences.”

FDR issues proclamation closing US offshore waters and all US ports to submarines of all belligerents.

BORN: Lee Harvey Oswald.

20 — AUSTRIA, first shipment of Jews leaves for Poland.

21 — NORTH SEA, Nazi planes attack British convoy.

US, Advisory Committee on Uranium meets to consider Atomic bomb. Committee’s existence not made public. FDR provides $6000 for uranium research.

22 - WILMINGTON, DELAWARE, DuPont company: women’s full-fashioned hosiery made of nylon yam will for first time go on sale here this week. Price of 45-gauge hose, per pair: $1.15.

V. WOOLF, diary: “You never escape the war in London.... Very few buses. Tubes closed. No children.... Everyone humped with a gas mask.”

24 — US, minimum wage in interstate industry raised to 30 cents per hour.

WILMINGTON, DuPont company: all 4000 pairs of women’s nylon hosiery offered for sale here sold in two days. Number is several times normal daily sale of silk stockings for this area.

26 — FDR, radio address: “A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air.”

Private Sartre, in diary: “We find ourselves in a condition that implies a great deal of irrationality, and it is not by masking it that we will suppress it.”

BIRTHDAY: Sylvia Plath, 7.

27 - BIRTHDAY: Dylan Thomas, 25.

29 — USSR troops enter Latvia, occupy military and naval posts.

BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer, diary: In Germany, among best-selling novels is Gone with the Wind, translated as Vom Winde Verweht — “literally From the Wind Blown About.”

30 — LONDON, Nazi concentration camps’ horrors described in British White Paper.

31 — MOSCOW, Prime Minister Molotov accuses Allies of prolonging war, defends USSR invasion of Poland, deplores “experience of Versailles,” berates US for intervening in Finnish negotiations and for supporting repeal of arms embargo.

NEW YORK CITY, 1939 World’s Fair closes. 25 million paid admissions recorded.

November

4 — WARSAW, Nazis formulate plans for Warsaw ghetto.

US, Congress, in joint resolution, repeals Neutrality Act. FDR signs new act, which permits belligerents to buy armaments in US providing they pay cash and use their ships for transportation.

5 — FRANCE, Simone de Beauvoir, in journal: “Sartre ... thinks that there won’t be any real fighting, that this modern war will be without slaughter, just as modem painting has no subject, modem music no melody, and modem physics no solid matter.”

BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer, diary: “Hitler eats a simple lunch, usually a vegetable stew or a vegetable omelet. He is of course a vegetarian, teetotaler, and non-smoker.... He stays up late and sleeps badly, which I fear is the world’s misfortune.”

8 — MUNICH, Hitler, on anniversary of abortive 1923 Nazi putsch, castigates England. Twelve minutes after Hitler leaves hall, time-bomb explosion rocks hall, killing 8, injuring 60.

ON BROADWAY, debut, Life with Father.

9 - NOBEL PRIZE: E.O. Lawrence, 38, physics. For cyclotron. In Berkeley, radiation lab staff takes Lawrence to Dibiasi’s Italian Restaurant in Richmond, where Lawrence’s favorite “dago red” is served.

V. WOOLF, diary: “ [L]ast night... we listened to the ravings, the strangled hysterical sobbing swearing ranting of Hider at the Beer Hall. The offer of mediation — Holland & Belgium — is the fat on the fire.”

10 - NEW YORK TIMES: “Nigger, a brown mongrel dog that adopted Engine Company 203 in Brooklyn ten years ago, was run over by a hit-and-run driver last night.”

11 - NEW YORK CITY, Horace Mann Prep School plays Garden City High School, wins 27-0. Back Jack Kerouac, tackling, knocks opponent unconscious.

14 — BOSTON, Admiral Byrd’s expedition leaves for Antarctica.

15 — POLAND’S railroad and its 40,000 employees placed at disposal of Nazi Jewish “resettlement” plan, which intends to “cleanup, once and for all,” Jews in Poland. All Jews must wear Jewish star, their property is confiscated, movement restricted, they are conscripted into forced labor.

10 — BERLIN, ten-hour work day without additional pay decreed.

THE NEW YORKER, re Henry Miller’s Cosmological Eye: “Those who have an affection for vanguard writers and are not afraid of a little sewerage should look up Mr. Miller...

19 — LONDON, German mine warfare charged after five merchant ships go down off England’s coast.

BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer, diary: “Governor-General of occupied Poland, today decreed that Jewish ghetto in Warsaw henceforth must be shut off from the rest of the capital by barricades and placed under sharp police control. He says Jews are ‘carriers of diseases and germs.’ An American friend back from Warsaw tonight tells me the Nazi policy is simply to exterminate the Polish Jews. They are being herded into eastern Poland and forced to live in unheated shacks.... Several thousand Jews from the Reich have also be^n sent to eastern Poland to die, he says.”

21 - LUXEMBURGER WORT: “Up to November 10, about 45,000 Jewish men, women and children... have been sent to the [Lublin] reservation.... There is compulsory labor service for men up to 70 years and for women up to 55.”

22 - LOWELL SUN: “Horace Mann Hero [Jack Kerouac] Home for Short Visit.”

23 - THANKSGIVING

WARM SPRINGS, FDR, surrounded by fellow polio victims at Warm Springs Foundation, carves turkey.

WAR’S FIRST NAVAL BATTLE: British merchant ship sunk by Germans off Iceland.

LONDON, dropping of mines by German sea planes in Thames estuary confirmed.

BERLIN, Hitler tells German generals: “All hope for compromise is childish.... It is not a single problem that is at stake, but whether the nation is to be or not to be.”

24 - SUN VALLEY, Hemingway to ex-wife: “writing every day on this novel [For Whom the Bell Tolls]. It is over 100,000 words now.... Decided to write as good and big a novel as I can rather than put off to when older which, the way things go what with war and all, could be an epoch that might never come.”

26 — SAN DIEGO, reformist Scripps-Howard newspaper, the Sun, purchased by Colonel Copley’s San Diego Evening Tribune.

BIRTHDAY: Tina Turner, 1.

27 — AUSTRIA, in past month, 1600 Jews sent to Lublin. Several thousand others stripped of possessions, incarcerated.

V. WOOLF, diary: “A long war its to be.”

28 - DETROIT, Chrysler CIO workers end strike after 54 days.

ON BROADWAY, Key Largo debuts.

30 — USSR invades Finland. Seizes Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.

SAN DIEGO, city’s population estimated at 181,303, an increase of 33,306 since 1930. County population is estimated at 270,000.

NEW YORK TIMES: “RUSSIANS START THEIR INVASION OF FINLAND; PLANES DROP BOMBS ON AIRFIELD AT HELSINKI; WAR STARTS AS US MOVE FOR PEACE IS MADE.”

BIRTHDAY: Winston Churchill, 65.

December

1 — BERLIN, this month government cuts Jewish food rations, restricts Jews to limited shopping hours. Following Hitler’s September order for euthanization of incurably insane, gas chamber has been set up in Brandenburg, and Hitler’s physician witnesses a test killing of four insane men. Gas chamber is called “shower room” and victims, taken in groups of 20 or 30, are told they are to have a shower. They are then sealed in, and doctor on duty gasses them. Five other killing centers are to be equipped.

FDR denounces USSR invasion of Finland as wanton and lawless.

SAN DIEGO UNION, “Negro Group Elects Officers: T.M. Brinson has been elected president of the San Diego branch, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.... The officers will be in- ° stalled at Bethel Baptist church, Twenty-ninth and Clay Ave.”

THE FORUM, Carey McWilliams: “The reader... can get a better understanding of the economic and social implications of large-scale corporate farming in California from The Grapes of Wrath than from all of the ‘official’ apologetics... written by henchmen of the Associated Farmers.”

2 — V. WOOLF, diary: “Planes very active. Russia attacking Finland. Nothing happens in England. Theres no reason anywhere. Brutes merely rampant.... Its like being in a temporary shelter with a violent storm raging outside.”

3 - SAN DIEGO UNION, “Tete-a-Tete with Eileen Jackson — Tea Dances Introduced This Season — Something new this Yuletide season as Mrs. Ralph Kline’s yellow poinsettias and yet as old-fashioned as a fragrant green unsilvered Christmas tree is the tea dance. This thrilling prospect appears on the calendar for the first time since we can remember. And unfortunately for us dancing elders it isn’t there for our pleasure. The innovation, or rather the return of an old favorite, is celebrated only for the sub debbies and collegiates.... The first tea dance in recent social history will be given two days before Christmas, Dec. 23, at El Cortez hotel.... The second tea dance of this Yule season will be given [Dec. 25] at... Casa de Manana hotel, La Jolla.... By our comments on the tea dance you can gather that we heartily recommend that form of party.... [W]e want our approval to be emphatic enough to encourage not only the teens and early 20s in the departure but to inspire some of our contemporaries to add that pleasure to their own stereotyped — and sometimes stuffy — program. Yours for sunset waltzing!”

4 — BOOKS, Babette Deutsch re The Cosmological Eye: “The author of some half a dozen books, all of them published in France, Miller has met with hostility if not anathema in his native land.... [T]he present volume ... is the first to issue from an American press [New Directions].... There is not much music in this book. But if we are ever again to hear a song that will rise above the bellowings of the dictators, the shrieks of the injured and the refined susurrations of the damned, Henry Miller will be among those who have helped to unleash that music.”

8 — SUN VALLEY, Hemingway writes to editor re Spanish Civil War: “[I]f you have a war you have to win it. If you lose you lose everything and your ideology won’t save you.”

9 — V. WOOLF, diary: “blackout driving for the first time. Like fog driving, one cant see people. All the cars have small red eyes. The margins of the road are lost.”

10 — LODZ, Provincial Governor decrees: “[S]ince the immediate evacuation of 320,000 Jews is impossible they will be concentrated in an exactly delimited section.... The creation of the ghetto is, of course, only a transition measure. I shall determine at what time and with what means the ghetto — and thereby also the city of Lodz — will be cleansed of Jews. In the end, at any rate, we must burn out this bubonic plague.”

11 — US, Supreme Court outlaws use of wiretapping evidence obtained without warrant.

12 - NEW YORK TIMES: NBC’s mobile television unit will “reproduce the events and personalities of a Broadway premiere” for first time, next Tuesday, at Capitol Theatre opening of Gone with the Wind. The “electric cameras will start grinding out the show preceding screen performances at 8 p.m., when stars of stage, screen and radio and other personalities begin to arrive. A field station of two television-equipped motor trucks will be established directly across the street from the theatre to relay the scenes to the main transmitter atop the Empire State Building for rebroadcast across the metropolitan area. Television set owners will be able to pick up the images by setting their dials on ‘5.’ ”

DEAD: Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., 66, Santa Monica.

13 - BERLIN, CBS’s Shirer, diary: “Christmas trees are in and being snapped up. No matter how tough or rough or pagan a German may be, he has a childish passion for Christmas trees.”

PRIVATE SARTRE, in letter: “Since my mobilization I have often thought about Kafka; he would have liked this war, it would have been a good subject for him. He would have shown a man, named Gregory K., stubbornly looking for war everywhere, feeling its threat everywhere, and yet never finding it. A suspended war, like some of the sentences in The Trial.”

14 - NEW YORK TIMES: “BRITISH DEFEAT NAZI RAIDER IN ALL-DAY FIGHT; SHE RUNS TO MONTEVIDEO WITH 36 DEAD, 60 HURT; U-BOAT SUNK, REICH CRUISER HIT IN NORTH SEA.”

15 — ATLANTA, Gone with the Wind opens. For premiere, city recreates antebellum atmosphere. Bus and street car conductors, elevator operators, waitresses, doormen, and other downtown employees wear Confederate uniforms and costumes. Buildings are decorated with false fronts representing 1860s Atlanta.

18 - BRITISH and GERMAN planes battle in air over Helgioland Bight; Berlin claims 34 British ships shot down, two German planes lost; London places own losses at 7, Nazis’ at 12.

USSR completes occupation of Finnish corridor.

20 - NEW YORK CITY, Daily Worker movie critic Howard Rushmore quits Worker and Communist Party after being asked to change favorable review of Gone with the Wind to “blistering” critique.

21 - BIRTHDAY: Stalin, 60.

22 - FINLAND, third week of USSR invasion. USSR casualties: 30,000.

23 — LONDON, first Canadian troops arrive — 7500 men.

25 - CHRISTMAS

Nazi Ambassador to Italy, in diary: “absolutely shameless actions in Poland ... shooting of hundreds of innocent Jews was the order of the day.”

26 — CHICAGO, Frank Sinatra leaves Harry James’s band, is hired by “Sentimental Gentleman of Swing” Tommy Dorsey. James, noting that Sinatra’s wife Nancy is “expecting” and that couple needs the larger salary ($125 per week) Dorsey can provide, dissolves two-year contract with handshake.

EL CENTRO, postmaster reports El Centro post office had largest Christmas volume of business in its history. 10,006 sacks of parcel post were sent out during December, 300 more than a year ago.

27 — US, in year’s last week, automobile output totals 117,705 vehicles, compared with 118,405 the previous week and 92,800 a year ago.

28 - MASON, MICHIGAN, Negro Malcolm Little in theater filled with whites late this month sees Gone with the Wind. When Butterfly McQueen, playing Scarlett O’Hara’s mammy, goes into her act, 14-year-old Malcolm feels “like crawling under the rug.”

30 - SAN DIEGO UNION: “Remodeling of St. Joseph’s Cathedral, Third ave. and Beech st. into a Mission style structure... is planned, the Most Rev. Charles F. Buddy, bishop of the San Diego Catholic diocese, has just notified the diocese.”

THE NATION, Heywood Broun: “For truth there is no deadline.”

31 - BERLIN, Hitler: “I tried up to the last minute to keep peace with England. But the Jewish and reactionary warmongers waited for this minute to carry out their plans to destroy Germany.... United within the country, economically prepared and militarily armed to the highest degree, we enter this most decisive year in German history.”

At year’s end estimate is that 250,000 Jews have died in Nazi-occupied Poland through shootings, starvation, or disease.

31,216 Jews fell in defense of Poland; 61,000 were taken prisoner.

78,000 Jews left Germany in past year, reducing number to 213,000, less than half 1933 count. Seventy-four percent of remaining Jews are over 40.

Austria, 55,000 Jews remain of a community that numbered 185,000 at year’s beginning.

SAN DIEGO, at year’s end, almost 26,000 men are in uniform. Local navy and marine installations — the naval hospital, naval training station, destroyer base, naval fuel depot, naval supply depot and the radio station, the Marine Corps base — occupy 634 buildings on 4000 acres. Development programs estimated to cost $29 million are under construction or contracted for imminent construction.

NEW YORK CITY, at the Waldorf-Astoria’s Empire Room, Benny Goodman and his band; at the Commodore Hotel, Sammy Kaye’s orchestra; at the Cotton Club, Louis Armstrong. On 51st St., in Kelly’s Stable, Billie Holiday, preparing to welcome in the ’40s, pins on her gardenia corsage.