A contingent of American Marines is surprised in China after the attack on Pearl Harbor and attempts to leave the country, which is occupied by the Japanese; the Marines are in possession of the bones of the Peking Man (Sinanthropus pekinensis) discovered by Canadian Davidson Black at Dragon Bone Hill in China; they are intercepted by the Japanese and imprisoned; the bones are left by the roadside by the Japanese and never found again; no more remains of the Peking Man will be found.

Moscow. Operation Typhoon. The Germans lost half a million men attempting to capture Moscow. It was the Wehrmacht’s first defeat.

Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, which had been attacked by Japan a few days earlier

Far East. The Japanese sink the only two large British Royal Navy ships available in the entire theater of war: the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. On February 15, Singapore also falls to the Japanese. Australia can no longer be defended by Britain.

United States. The Senate approves President Roosevelt’s request for a declaration of war on Japan, 82 to 0. The House approves the motion 388 to 1 (Montana Republican pacifist Jeannette Rankin).

First successful test of a remote-controlled aircraft for military purposes

4:00 p.m.: Secretary of State Hull receives the Japanese declaration of war

8:40 a.m.: Second and final wave of the Japanese attack: the USS Shaw and USS Sotoyomo are sunk, and the Nevada scuttles itself to avoid blocking access to the port. A total of 12 American ships and 5 Japanese submarines are sunk, resulting in 2,395 American and 64 Japanese casualties, and 164 American and 29 Japanese aircraft destroyed. Within a few months, all the sunken American ships, except the Arizona, the Oklahoma, and the training ship Utah, are recovered and actively participate in the war in the Pacific.

8:10 a.m.: The USS Arizona is hit by three 1,800-pound bombs, the Santa Barbara explodes on her bow, sinking within eight minutes, killing 1,177 soldiers; the USS Oklahoma, hit by 12 torpedoes and 12 550-pound bombs, capsizes, trapping more than 400 soldiers in her hull; the USS California and USS West Virginia are sunk by nine torpedoes and three 1,800-pound bombs; the training ship USS Utah also sinks.

7:57 a.m.: The first Japanese planes are mistaken for an American exercise; then Commander Logan Ramsey broadcasts in clear: “AIR RAID, PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NOT AN EXERCISE!”—the message that jolted the United States from its long slumber.

7:55 a.m.: The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor begins.

7:53 a.m.: Mitsuo Fuchida, commander of the air attack on Pearl Harbor, shouts from his plane: “Tora! Tora! Tora!” (Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!): the surprise was complete!

7:15 a.m.: The second wave takes off for Pearl Harbor.

7:03 a.m.: The destroyer Ward sinks an unidentified submarine sighted at 3:57 a.m. (The submarine was later recovered on August 29, 2002.)

7:02 a.m.: The Opana mobile radar station, just before it shuts down, detects at least 50 aircraft. It’s thought to be a malfunction, but Private Joseph Lockard insists on calling the information center, where Lieutenant Kermit Tyler answers. Tyler thinks he’s sighted several B-17s expected from California (because Lockard hadn’t told him how many planes had been spotted); no one from the Army notified the Navy of the sighting, not even after the attack.

An all-American dispute between the SigInt (Signal Intelligence) services of the US Army and the US Navy had led, as early as September 1940, to the (paradoxical and inefficient) division of roles as follows: on even-numbered days, the SIS (Signal Intelligence Service of the Army) decrypted Japanese diplomatic messages, while the OP-20-G (of the Navy) did so on odd-numbered days. On December 6th, SIS intercepted a message from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in Washington, communicating the rejection of American terms for resolving the diplomatic crisis. The message was intercepted by the US Navy but sent to SIS for decryption. However, since it was a Saturday, SIS’s civilian translators left their posts at noon. Therefore, the intercepted messages were sent back to the US Navy. Precious hours were lost, and by the time the messages were finally decrypted, Pearl Harbor had already been attacked.

On Winston Churchill’s orders, and after the USSR entered the war as an ally, the Bletchley Park units that decrypted Soviet codes were closed. However, Poles working for the British were still asked to continue intercepting Soviet traffic and attempting to decrypt it. Bletchley Park resumed heavy interception of Soviet traffic in the summer of 1942, already anticipating the coming Cold War.

The aircraft carrier Lexington and the heavy cruisers Chicago, Portland, Astoria, and their escorting destroyers were sailing from Pearl Harbor for Midway, the Indianapolis and Minneapolis had sailed a few hours earlier, the Saratoga was on the west coast, the Enterprise at Wake.

Zhukov orders the counteroffensive that for the first time pushes the Wehrmacht back, at the gates of Moscow

Moscow. Stalin meets with Polish General Sikorski, head of the Polish government-in-exile. Sikorski convinces Stalin to free all Polish prisoners in the Gulags to contribute to the Allied war effort. They will form the Second Polish Army Corps. After thousands of kilometers of marching on foot and being transported by cargo ships across the Caspian Sea, they will receive training from the British in Iran, before moving first to Palestine and then Egypt, and finally fighting in Italy. Ultimately, they will not be able to return to Sovietized Poland, and almost all of them will end up in Great Britain, with some in the United States, Italy, and so on. During the meeting with Sikorski, when Stalin asks why he hasn’t heard from thousands of Polish officers, not even from the Gulags, Stalin (who had them all shot at Katyn and in the Gulags) replies that they may have escaped to Manchuria. Polish General Anders (who would later lead the Second Army Corps) had the courage to object: “It is impossible that everyone fled to Manchuria without ever trying to communicate with Poland.”

Libya. Battle of Bir and Gobi. The British attacked seven times, supported by RAF bombers, and were repelled seven times. Tanks twice penetrated the Axis defenses but were then neutralized. The British suffered over 300 deaths and hundreds of prisoners, while the Italians suffered around a hundred casualties. Among the Italian volunteers were also battalions of boys between the ages of 16 and 18 who had enlisted the previous year.

Libya. Three motorized battalions of Indian Gurkhas and Scottish Camerons and an artillery unit with a squadron of Valentine tanks are the spearhead of the British advance, forming the southern branch of the pincer movement to close around Tobruk (where the Australians are still holding out). It is the beginning of the Battle of Bir e Gobi.

The Wehrmacht is at the gates of Moscow

Some Wehrmacht tanks arrive 23 kilometers from the center of Moscow: they scan the outskirts through binoculars. A patrol arrives at the terminus of a tram leading to Red Square.

Civil War in Greece – Nearly 1 million Greeks emigrate to the USA, Canada, Australia

At the war council meeting, Roosevelt observed that “we will probably be attacked next Monday” because the Japanese were known to attack without warning. The question was where they had attacked (the Philippines and Singapore were being considered); it was hoped that the Japanese would open hostilities so that there would no longer be any doubt as to who the aggressors were; the Japanese, moreover, had no need of American encouragement.

The aircraft carrier Ark Royal (from which the planes that sank the Bismarck took off) and the battleship Barhaim were sunk by torpedoes from Nazi U-boats.

The aircraft carrier Akagi (2,000 men, 26,900 tons) sails from Sasebo (north of Nagasaki) and off Kagoshima (south of Nagasaki) gathers her aircraft for the mission to Pearl Harbor.

Bletchley Park, England. Turing, Welchman, Alexander, and Milner-Barry sign a letter to Winston Churchill requesting greater resources to build and test the “bombes,” the electromechanical machines used to crack the Nazi Enigma code. Churchill promptly responds to General Ismay, requesting the matter be given the utmost priority and to be kept informed when it is completed.

Yamamoto reports to Emperor Hiroito his bold plan for a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

Japan. Japanese counterintelligence services arrest Russian spy Richard Sorge. Sorge had managed to warn Stalin in advance (to Stalin’s disbelief) of the German invasion of the USSR and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, rather than Siberia as feared. Sorge was hanged on November 7.

The Japanese army, while not interrupting negotiations, decides that there is no hope: war is inevitable.

Roosevelt faces microphones after the German underwater attack on the American destroyer Greer off Iceland.

The Forschungsantalt unit, led by the young engineer Kurt E. Vetterlein, successfully and continuously decrypts all transatlantic conversations between Churchill and Roosevelt, as well as those with Canada. This all happens from the basement of an unsuspecting cottage on the Dutch moors in Noordwijk.

Lawrence tries to bring Oppenheimer into the bomb project, but fears the military will not like him because of his activities with the Communist Party.

Yugoslavia. Construction of the Jasenovac concentration camp. It will be run by the Croatian Ustasha, collaborators of the Axis powers. Approximately 100,000 people will perish there, including 45,000-52,000 Serbs, 15,000-20,000 Gypsies (this figure, however, is the most controversial and difficult to verify), between 12,000 and 20,000 Jews, and between 5,000 and 12,000 Croats and Bosniaks.

Roosevelt orders an embargo on high-octane gasoline and crude oil to Japan.

To stop the sinking of American convoys in the Atlantic, it was decided to transfer from Pearl Harbor the battleships Missouri, Idaho, New Mexico, the aircraft carrier Yorktown, 4 cruisers, 17 destroyers, 3 tankers, etc.: even before launching the attack, Yamamoto lost a quarter of his potential targets.

Finland. The Winter War with the Soviets ended only a year ago, and now planes bearing the red star are bombing Finnish cities again. Finland and the Soviet Union are back at war for the third time in less than a quarter of a century. It’s the Continuation War. Finland mobilizes one-sixth (!) of its population to serve in the army (that’s as if the United States raised an army of 55 million soldiers!). All Finns, men and women, between the ages of 15 and 64 are forced to work in the military industry or serve at the front. The Finns (co-belligerents with the Nazis, not allies) quickly retake Karelia. Under pressure from Stalin, Great Britain also declares war on Finland, but its only belligerent action is an attempted bombing of Turku, but RAF planes drop their bomb load in the Baltic Sea.

The Wehrmacht sent 3.3 million soldiers to Russia; by the end of 1943 there had been 3 million losses in prisoners, dead and wounded.

A German U-Boat, U-203, chases the American warship USS Texas for 140 miles between Greenland and Iceland, repeatedly attempting to line up and fire torpedoes at it. This is just one of a series of near-misses between the Germans and the Americans during a period when the two countries are formally not at war.

Samarkand, USSR. Professor Gerasimov, sent from Moscow, and his assistants open Tamerlane’s tomb. They do so at night to avoid the reaction of the people, who fear great disaster if the great conqueror’s sleep is disturbed. The next day, Nazi Germany invades the USSR. Examining the skeleton, they find signs of two serious wounds to the leg and arm.

Hayla Sellase Ethiopian president

The Bismark is sunk in the North Atlantic; the Royal Navy has to fire 2876 cannon shots against the Bismark crippled the day before by the RAF: the German casualties will be 2100, only 104 survivors are rescued by the British

A flock of Swordfish (old wood and canvas biplanes) taking off from the Ark Royal torpedoed the rudder and guidance system of the Bismark, paralyzing her.

Hitler issues Directive No. 30: a plan to support the Arab liberation movement.

Hitler sacrifices the 7th Parachute Division in an attempted air assault on Crete

11,000 DC-3s are built in the USA and 2,000 under license in the USSR.

The great Russian mathematician Nikolai Kolmogorov discovered that, in the context of turbulence, the rotation speed of a vortex is proportional to the cube root of its diameter. This has cosmological consequences: after the first 300,000 years, the speed of sound decreases significantly, and some vortices begin to spin supersonically. This creates shock waves and irregular regions where the matter that will form galaxies can accumulate.

The first radio map of the sky is completed

First use of radar to observe local weather

Rudolph Hess (unbeknownst to the German General Staff) parachuted into the residence of the Duke of Hamilton in Scotland to negotiate peace; that same day, London was heavily bombed and Hess was taken prisoner. At the Nuremberg trials, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and committed suicide at the age of 93, on August 17, 1987, the founding date of the Thule Society (based on esotericism, magic, talismans, and astrology, the first nucleus of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party), the most terrifying and fascinating organization of evil in history.

Enigma and related documents are captured aboard U110 by HMS Bradley and HMS Aubretia

The Axis armies, after Yugoslavia, poured into Greece, the British resisted for a long time but then took refuge in the ports of southern Greece.

United States. The number of televisions in the nation is 7,000, of which 5,000 are in New York alone. This number will rise to 44,000 in 1947, 940,000 in 1949, and a staggering 20 million in 1953.

Belgrade is methodically bombarded by the Luftwaffe with orthogonal trajectories. Civilians are machine-gunned in the streets, and by the end of the day, 25,000 people are dead and countless wounded.

Endicott, New York. IBM builds the Mark I to the specifications of Harvard PhD student Howard Aiken. It takes 6 seconds to perform a multiplication. It uses levers driven by electric motors instead of relays.