Timeline December 1941

Events in December 1941 17

• 1856 – 1941 Christian Sinding (1856-1941) Died 3 December 1941, aged 85 Christian Sinding was a Norwegian composer best known for the piano piece Rustle of Spring. He died in Oslo.
• 1941 Operation Typhoon The German offensive against Moscow Army Group Centre launched its drive on Moscow and won huge encirclement battles at Vyazma and Bryansk. The advance stalled in winter weather just short of the capital, and on 5 December the Red Army counterattacked and drove the Germans back.
• 1941 Operation Crusader British Eighth Army relieves Tobruk The British Eighth Army launched an offensive in the Western Desert, and after costly tank battles it relieved Tobruk. Rommel was forced back to El Agheila.
• 1941 Rumbula massacre About 25,000 Jews shot in a forest near Riga German Einsatzgruppe A and Latvian auxiliaries marched the Jews of the Riga ghetto to Rumbula forest and shot them over two days. Around 25,000 people were killed.
• 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor Japan brings USA into the war Japan launched a surprise attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941, killing 2,403 Americans and destroying 19 ships. President Roosevelt called it "a date which will live in infamy".
• 1941 Battle of Hong Kong The British colony falls to Japan on Christmas Day Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong hours after Pearl Harbor, took the New Territories and Kowloon, and then landed on Hong Kong Island. The British governor surrendered on 25 December, remembered in Hong Kong as "Black Christmas".
• 1941 Battle of Wake Island US Marines repel the first Japanese landing The American garrison on Wake Island beat off a Japanese landing on 11 December, sinking two destroyers. A larger second assault forced the island's surrender on 23 December.
• 1941 Chełmno extermination camp begins operations The first Nazi camp to kill with poison gas At Chełmno in occupied Poland, the SS began murdering Jews in gas vans. It was the first stationary Nazi extermination site, and at least 150,000 people were killed there.
• 1941 Japanese invasion of Malaya Landings at Kota Bharu open the Pacific War Japanese troops landed at Kota Bharu in northern Malaya and in southern Thailand, shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The campaign ended with the fall of Singapore in February 1942.
• 1941 Japanese invasion of the Philippines begins Air strikes destroy US planes at Clark Field Japanese aircraft struck American air bases in the Philippines hours after Pearl Harbor and destroyed much of the Far East Air Force on the ground. Landings on Luzon followed, and on 22 December the main invasion force came ashore at Lingayen Gulf.
• 1941 USA declares war on Japan Congress votes the day after Pearl Harbor The United States declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. Germany and Italy declared war on the US three days later, bringing America fully into the conflict.
• 1941 United States declares war on Japan Roosevelt's "day of infamy" speech The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan, calling 7 December "a date which will live in infamy". Congress approved the declaration within the hour, with a single dissenting vote.
• 1941 Sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse Japanese aircraft sink two British capital ships Japanese land-based bombers sank the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse off the coast of Malaya. It was the first time capital ships under way at sea had been sunk by air power alone.
• 1941 Germany and Italy declare war on the United States The European and Pacific wars merge Hitler declared war on the United States in a speech to the Reichstag, and Mussolini did the same that day. Congress answered with its own declarations, and the United States entered the war in Europe.
• 1941 Germany declares war on USA Hitler brings America into the European war Germany and Italy declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor. Hitler's decision is considered one of his greatest strategic blunders.
• 1941 Huaraz glacial flood A glacial lake outburst devastates a Peruvian city A glacial lake in the Cordillera Blanca burst its moraine dam and sent a flood of water and debris into Huaraz. Thousands were killed and a third of the city was destroyed.
• 1941 Hitler takes personal command of the German Army Brauchitsch dismissed after the Moscow failure After the reverse before Moscow, Hitler dismissed Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch and named himself commander-in-chief of the army. From then on he ran operations on the Eastern Front directly.