10.4.2005
IT HAPPENED TODAY OCT 1 TO 15

October 1
1938 Hitler Occupies the Sudetenland
German forces enter Czechoslovakia and seize control of the Sudetenland, thus changing its frontier for the first time since the twelfth century. Two days before, Britain and France signed the Munich Pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in an attempt to avoid war over Czechoslovakia. After British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned to England from the Munich negotiations, he declared that there would be "peace in our time." However, peace lasts less than a year--in September of 1939, Nazi Germany invades Poland, igniting World War II in Europe.
October 2
1944 Warsaw Revolt Ends
The sixty-three-day Warsaw revolt against Nazi occupation is finally crushed by German forces, at the cost of a quarter of a million Polish lives. On August 1, an advance Soviet armored column under General Konstantin Rokossovski reached the Vistula River along the eastern suburb of Warsaw, prompting Poles in the city to launch a major uprising against the Nazi occupation. The revolt was spearheaded by Polish General Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, who was the commander of the Home Army, an underground resistance group made up of some 40,000 badly supplied soldiers. In addition to accelerating the liberation of Warsaw, the Home Army, which had ties with the Polish government-in-exile in London and was anti-Communist in its ideology, hoped to gain at least partial control of Warsaw before the Soviets arrived. Although the Poles in Warsaw won early gains, and Soviet liberation of the city was inevitable, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ordered his authorities to crush the uprising at all cost. The elite Nazi SS directed the German defense force, which included the Kaminiski Brigade of Russian prisoners and the Dirlewanger Brigade of German convicts. In brutal street fighting, the Poles were gradually overcome by the superior German weaponry. As the rebels were suppressed, the Nazis deliberately razed large portions of the city and massacred large numbers of civilians. Meanwhile, the Red Army gained several bridgeheads across the Vistula River, but made no efforts to aid the rebels in Warsaw. The British and Americans asked the Soviets to allow them to drop much-need supplies to the Home Army, and the Soviets agreed; although they explained that they were too busy re-supplying their own units to offer assistance themselves. Only a fraction of the supplies from the West ever reached the parts of Warsaw controlled by the Home Army, and the rebels and the city's citizens soon ran out of medical supplies, food, and eventually water. Finally, on October 2, the surviving rebels, including Bor-Komorowski, surrendered. During the sixty-three-day ordeal, three-fourths of the Home Army had perished along with 200,000 civilians. As a testament to the savagery of the fighting, the Germans had also suffered high casualties: 10,000 killed, 9,000 wounded, and 7,000 missing. Over the next few months, German demolition squads destroyed what buildings remained intact in Warsaw, and all of its great treasures were looted or burned. The Red Army remained dormant outside of Warsaw until January of 1945, when the final Soviet offensive against Germany commenced. Warsaw, a city in ruins, was liberated on January 17.
October 3
1952 Britain Successfully Tests A-Bomb
Britain successfully tests its first atomic bomb off Trimouille Island, near Monte Bello Island off of the northwest coast of Australia. The British nuclear development program began immediately following World War II, with British physicist William G. Penney as the program head. Penney had contributed to the U.S. development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico, during the war. The twenty-five kiloton plutonium implosion bomb, detonated in the hull of the HMS Plym, makes Britain the world's third nuclear power after the United States and the Soviet Union.
October 4
1992 Mozambican Civil War Ends
The Mozambique government signs a cease-fire with leaders of the Mozambican National Resistance (MNR), ending a sixteen-year civil war. In 1974, Portugal granted independence to Mozambique after failing in a taxing ten-year effort to suppress guerrilla activity by the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), a Communist group. Shortly after Portugal's departure, FRELIMO seized power as the country's only political party, setting off a bloody civil war with the MNR, who were supported by the ruling minority government of South Africa. In 1989, President Chissano abandoned the Marxist-Leninist character of his government, and adopted democratic reforms that made negotiations for peace with the MNR possible.
October 5
1877 Chief Joseph Surrenders
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians surrenders to U.S. General Nelson A. Miles in the Bear Paw mountains of Montana, declaring: "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." Earlier in the year, the U.S. government broke a land treaty with the Nez Perce Indians, forcing the group out of their homeland in Wallowa Valley in the Northwest for relocation in Idaho. In the midst of their journey, Chief Joseph learned that three young Nez Perce warriors, enraged at the loss of their homeland, had massacred a band of white settlers. Fearing retaliation by the U.S. Army, the chief began one of the greatest retreats in American military history. For over three months, Chief Joseph led less than 300 Nez Perce Indians toward the Canadian border, covering a distance of over 1,000 miles as the Nez Perce outmaneuvered and battled over 2,000 pursuing U.S. soldiers. Finally, only forty miles short of his Canadian goal, Chief Joseph is cornered by the U.S. Army, and his people are forcibly relocated.
October 6
1973 Yom Kippur War Begins
Hoping to win back territory lost to Israel during the third Arab-Israeli war, Egyptian and Syrian forces launch a surprise attack against Israel on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. Egyptian troops sweep deep down into the Sinai, while Syria struggles to throw Israel out of the Golan Heights. Israel eventually reverses the initial Arab gains, but suffers heavy losses before a cease-fire takes effect two weeks later. On October 17, Western support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War leads eleven Arab oil-producing nations, with the support of OPEC, to begin a crippling oil embargo against the U.S., Great Britain, and several other nations.
October 7
1950 Allies Cross the 38th Parallel
In response to North Korea's invasion of South Korea, U.S.-led U.N. forces cross the 38th parallel into the North, ignoring China's threat to enter the war if the allied force failed to honor the 1945 division of Korea. Over the next eight weeks, invading U.N. forces crush the North Korean opposition as they push to the Yula River and Manchurian border. However, at the end of November, true to their threat, several hundred thousand Chinese Communist troops pour over the border into North Korea in an overwhelming show of force, and U.N. troops begin a desperate retreat out of North Korea, at a cost of tens of thousands of Americans killed, wounded, or missing in action. Chinese forces overrun South Korea, and by the beginning of 1951 have captured Seoul, the capital of South Korea. U.S.-led forces under General Douglas MacArthur recapture Seoul by March, and by mid-1951 have pushed as far north as the 38th parallel, reestablishing the 1945 division of Korea that still exists today, despite the three bloody years of the Korean War.
October 8
1915 The Battle of Loos Concludes
During World War I, the Battle of Loos, part of the Allies' Artois Offensive, ends with virtually no land gains for either side, but with a loss of over one hundred thousand French, British, and German lives. The first wave of British soldiers to attack the German line made surprising advances toward Loos, catching off guard the pessimistic Allied command who failed to follow the advance with adequate supplies. Lacking supplies, the British were ordered to halt, giving the Germans time to launch a counterattack that forced the British into a bloody retreat back along the road they had come. After reorganizing their forces, the Allies attempted another push toward Loos, but the German line was fully entrenched by this point, and little progress was made. During this stage of the battle, the British used poisonous gas as a weapon for the first time, answering Germany's employment of the deadly weapon six months earlier at the Battle of Ypres. But Britain's first use of gas proved less than successful--discharged on a windless day, the gas hung over no-man's land for a few minutes, before drifting back into the British trenches where soldiers struggled to don their poorly constructed gas masks as the German batteries opened up on them.
October 9
1914 German Forces Capture Antwerp
During World War I, German forces capture Antwerp, Belgium, crushing the resistance of over 100,000 Belgian troops. Germany invaded Belgium as part of its Schlieffen Plan, violating Belgian neutrality and a seventy-five-year-old treaty with Britain in an ill-fated attempt to defeat France within eight weeks. The Belgian invasion, though successful, is generally regarded as one of the Schlieffen Plan's major flaws--increased British intervention on the side of France followed the invasion, stalling the Schlieffen offensive and initiating four bloody years of stalemate along the Western front.

October 10
1845 Birth of the U.S. Naval Academy
The United States Naval Academy opens in Annapolis, Maryland, with fifty midshipmen students and seven professors. Known as the Naval School until 1850, the curriculum includes mathematics and navigation, gunnery and steam, chemistry, English, natural philosophy, and French. The Naval School officially becomes the U.S. Naval Academy in 1850, and a new curriculum goes into effect requiring midshipmen to study at the Academy for four years and to train aboard ships each summer--the basic format that remains at the academy to this day.

October 11
1899 The Boer War Begins in South Africa
The South African Boer War begins between the British Empire and Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State. Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers of southern Africa. At the end of the Napoleonic wars, Britain took possession of the Dutch Cape colony, sparking resistance from the independence-minded Boers, who resented the Anglicization of South Africa and Britain's anti-slavery policies. In 1833--the year that slavery was abolished in the British Empire--the Boers began an exodus into African tribal territory, where they founded the republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The two new republics lived peaceably with their British neighbors until 1867, when the discovery of diamonds and gold in the region made conflict between the Boer states and Britain inevitable. Following declarations of independence from the Boer states during the 1880s, minor fighting with Britain ensued before the outbreak of full-scale war in 1899. By mid-June of 1900, British forces had captured most major Boers cities and formally annexed their territories, but the Boers launched a guerrilla war that frustrated the British occupiers. Beginning in 1901, the British began a strategy of systematically searching out and destroying these guerilla units, while herding the families of the Boer soldiers into concentration camps. By 1902, the British had crushed the Boer resistance and on May 31, 1902, the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed in Pretoria, ending hostilities in the South African Boer War. In 1910, the Union of South Africa was created within the British Empire, comprising the two Boer republics and the old Cape and Natal colonies.
October 12
1915 British Nurse Executed during World War I
British nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad in Brussels for helping Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium during World War I. The fifty-year-old Cavell first entered the nursing profession in 1885, and in 1907 became the matron of the Berkendael Institute in Brussels. Following the German invasion of neutral Belgium, Cavell sheltered British, French, and Belgian soldiers at the Institute, before helping them to escape to Holland. In August 1915, Cavell and several others were arrested and tried by a court-martial. Cavell made a full confession and was sentenced to death on the October 7. Despite the efforts of representatives from neutral governments such as the U.S. and Spain, German authorities carry out the sentences. Cavell subsequently becomes an idealized hero of the Allied press, and is honored with a statue in St. Martin's Place, just off London's Trafalagar Square.
October 13
1943 Italy Declares War on Germany
Just one month after the unconditional surrender of the Italian army to invading Allied forces, Italy declares war on its former Axis partner Germany. Since the beginning of the war, the Italian Resistance visibly opposed Italy's Fascist regime and its cooperation with Nazi Germany, organizing mountain guerilla units, workers' strikes, and industrial sabotages. The Resistance gained momentum after a government coup toppled Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, and during the Allied liberation, soldiers of the Resistance provided invaluable aid to Allied troops.
October 14
1944 Athens Liberated by Allies
During World War II, Athens, the capital of Greece, is liberated the day after the Second British Parachute Brigade descended on the city. Eleven days before a British task force commanded by Admiral T. H. Trowbridge made the first Allied landfall at Patras, liberating the city of Corinth and surrounding areas with the assistance of British air support and the National Democratic Greek Army (EDES). Greece had been in Axis hands since German and Italian forces defeated tough Greek opposition in 1941, prompting the establishment of two underground Greek resistance groups--the EDES and the Committee of the People's Army (ELAS). After Britain completed its liberation of Greece in early November, the communist ELAS turns its guns on the liberators, capturing a large portion of Athens and Piraeus before two British squadrons arrive from the Italian front and suppress the Communist uprising.
October 15
1946 Goering Commits Suicide
Hermann Goering, founder of the Gestapo and chief of the German air force, committed suicide by poison on the eve of his scheduled execution for war crimes during World War II. Goering was sentenced to death along with eleven other high-ranking Nazi officials by the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremburg