23:10GMT
23:10GMT
Neutrality now has to be explained in public
STOCKHOLM Four governments explained their position on the war in public today.
The day in dispatches
Filed through the day, as it happened
22:15GMT
22:15GMT
Britain reports revolt in Bohemia and Berlin denies it
STOCKHOLM The British Ministry of Information said yesterday that it had learned of a serious revolt in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. German authorities today denied there was any trouble and offered to let foreign newspapermen travel there and see for themselves.
21:30GMT
21:30GMT
Daladier says France will fight on until peace has a lasting basis
PARIS France will not abandon the fight it took up to help Poland, the French premier, Édouard Daladier, said in a broadcast to the nation this evening.
21:00GMT
21:00GMT
What cash and carry would mean for American ships and crews
WASHINGTON The proposal the President put to Congress this afternoon would change who can buy American weapons and how those weapons leave the country.
20:15GMT
20:15GMT
Roosevelt asks Congress to repeal the arms embargo
WASHINGTON President Roosevelt asked Congress this afternoon to repeal the arms embargo provisions of the Neutrality Act. He told a joint session of the Senate and House that repeal and a return to international law are the crux of the issue facing the country.
19:00GMT
19:00GMT
Nine ships free to sail from New York after war-risk pay strike ends
NEW YORK Nine vessels held in the port of New York by a seamen's strike over war-risk pay are free to sail, after union members approved a settlement last night.
18:30GMT
18:30GMT
Tribunals to review 'enemy alien' status of Germans and Austrians in Britain
LONDON Tribunals will review the cases of German and Austrian nationals in Britain, the Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson, told the Commons this afternoon.
17:45GMT
17:45GMT
Britain has placed more than £70 million in war orders since war began
LONDON Britain's Ministry of Supply has placed orders exceeding £70,000,000 since hostilities began, the minister, Leslie Burgin, told the Commons this afternoon. The figure covers 18 days.
17:30GMT
17:30GMT
Goebbels says Germany will respect Belgian and Dutch neutrality
BERLIN Germany does not intend to violate the neutrality of Belgium or the Netherlands, Joseph Goebbels, the German propaganda minister, told foreign correspondents in Berlin today. Asked about Luxembourg, he said it could be included.
17:05GMT
17:05GMT
Halifax says Britain was unable to give Poland direct help
LONDON Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, told the House of Lords this afternoon that it has been a major tragedy to watch Polish resistance overborne without Britain being able to give direct assistance.
16:00GMT
16:00GMT
Romania decides to intern the Polish government
BUCHAREST Romania has decided to intern President Ignacy Mościcki, Foreign Minister Józef Beck and other senior Polish officials who crossed the frontier this week, according to authoritative sources in Bucharest.
15:30GMT
15:30GMT
Berlin's prisoner count for the Vistula bend reaches 170,000 in three days
Berlin has given three figures in three days for the number of Polish prisoners taken in the same battle west of Warsaw. On Tuesday the number was 50,000 and the battle was described as over. On Wednesday it was 105,000. Today's communiqué says 170,000, and says the count is still rising.
14:45GMT
14:45GMT
French communiqué reports German artillery fire near the Blies
PARIS The Western Front was generally calm apart from enemy artillery fire in several sectors and local patrol contact, according to the French official communiqué issued this morning.
14:30GMT
14:30GMT
Gunmen announce killing of Romania's prime minister on state radio
BUCHAREST The men who shot Armand Călinescu commandeered a car after the killing, drove to the Romanian state radio station and went on the air.
14:10GMT
14:10GMT
Japan's ambassador says Soviet truce is no step towards a pact with Moscow
WASHINGTON Japan's settlement with the Soviet Union should not be read as the beginning of a non-aggression pact or of any closer alignment between Tokyo and Moscow, the Japanese ambassador to Washington, Kensuke Horinouchi, said today.
13:35GMT
13:35GMT
Romanian prime minister Armand Călinescu shot dead in Bucharest
BUCHAREST Armand Călinescu, the Prime Minister of Romania, was shot dead in his car in a Bucharest street this afternoon.
13:20GMT
13:20GMT
Berlin claims 170,000 prisoners in the Vistula bend battle
The German High Command says 170,000 prisoners had been taken in the battle in the Vistula bend by Wednesday afternoon, and that the number is still rising. Its daily communiqué, issued in Berlin on Thursday through DNB, the official German news agency, names Warsaw, Modlin, Góra Kalwaria and the Hel peninsula as still resisting. It also reports Polish surrenders near Zamość and Tomaszów, more captured guns, tanks and material, and 3 balloons and 8 aircraft shot down in the west.
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
Official text
This is the official text of the German High Command, issued through the state news agency DNB. Its figures are Berlin's own and cannot be checked from London.
German High Command communiqué, issued in Berlin through DNB, 21 September 1939
11:20GMT
11:20GMT
Another 31 men reported saved from Courageous
LONDON A further 31 survivors from the aircraft carrier Courageous have been reported saved, a day after the Admiralty issued a list of survivors that it described as final.
09:35GMT
09:35GMT
A Warsaw journalist describes writing as bombs fall outside his window
STOCKHOLM A first-person account written from inside besieged Warsaw appears on the second page of Thursday's Robotnik, a copy of which has reached Stockholm.
07:50GMT
07:50GMT
Warsaw paper says General Sosnkowski is defending Lwów
WARSAW General Kazimierz Sosnkowski has taken one of the leading commands at the front and is defending Lwów, the main city of south-eastern Poland, the Warsaw daily Robotnik reports this morning.
06:25GMT
06:25GMT
04:40GMT
04:40GMT
Warsaw radio goes off the air mid-broadcast after explosions
WARSAW Warsaw radio went off the air early this morning. Listeners abroad heard several explosions through the microphone before the transmission stopped.
01:15GMT
01:15GMT
Warsaw radio still broadcasting after midnight
WARSAW Warsaw radio was still on the air shortly after midnight, according to foreign monitoring services that have been listening for the station since the bombardment of the city began.
Where things stood at the start of the day
- Warsaw
- The perimeter is holding. The water mains are destroyed. The city's radio has been silent since early today.
- The Vistula bend
- Berlin says the pocket is all but finished and puts the prisoner total at 170,000, counted to the afternoon of the 20th and still rising. The figure is a German claim and cannot be checked from London.
- Lwów
- Contested, and the two accounts do not meet. Robotnik of Warsaw says General Sosnkowski is defending the city. Berlin's list of places still resisting does not mention it.
- Still resisting, per Berlin
- Warsaw, Modlin, Góra Kalwaria to the south-east of Warsaw, and the Hel peninsula.
- Western front
- Generally calm. The French report enemy artillery about the Blies in the Saar and patrol contact. Berlin claims three observation balloons and eight aircraft shot down.
- At sea
- The Courageous count is still moving. 682 were listed as saved and called final; a later report adds 31 more. No one has said who issued it.
Background
The movement the murdered premier spent his career suppressing
The Iron Guard is a Romanian ultranationalist movement, violently antisemitic, organised in part as a paramilitary force and in part as a political party. It grew out of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, founded in 1927 by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, and took the name Iron Guard in 1930. Its members are usually called legionaries.
The movement mixes Orthodox religious imagery with street violence, and it has killed before. In December 1933 legionaries shot the Prime Minister, Ion Duca, at Sinaia railway station, days after he banned the organisation.
King Carol II dissolved the political parties and took direct rule in February 1938. The Guard was suppressed and Codreanu was arrested and sentenced to ten years. In November 1938 Codreanu and 13 other legionaries were shot by their guards. The official account is that they were killed while attempting to escape. Many Romanians do not accept it.
Background
What the Neutrality Acts actually do
The Neutrality Acts are a set of American laws passed in 1935, 1936 and 1937, written after a Senate inquiry into the arms trade concluded that weapons sales had helped draw the United States into the last war. They are designed to keep the country out of the next one by removing the commercial reasons it might be pulled in.
Three things happen automatically once the President declares that a war exists. American arms, ammunition and implements of war may not be sold to any country fighting in it. Americans may not lend money to those countries. Americans may not travel on their ships.