The concentration camp Majdanek in Lublin, Poland, begins operation. This camp would be said to be a sixth extermination camp; more recent evidence suggests however that it was mostly for forced labour with the occasional killing when the Operation Reinhard (Aktion Reinhard, named after Reinhard Heydrich, an architect of the Holocaust) extermination camps - Belzec, Sobibór and Treblinka - would not suffice.

Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, OKW) orders that of the German military hostages, those who would be executed in retaliation of partisan attacks would be important because well known victims would have more power in keeping the victim's nations in check.

Adolf Hitler, at the Berlin Sportpalast, announces that Germany has 2,500,000 Soviet prisoners of war, destroyed and captured 22,000 guns, destroyed and captured 18,000 tanks, destroyed 14,500 aircraft and since 1939 Germany has been expanded by an area of four times as large as Britain; this would be beneficial to Germany's Lebensraum - living space, settler colonialism. Hitler emphasised that the Soviet Union was broken and would never rise to power.

After a British Walrus reconnaissance aircraft from cruiser HMS Kenya spots German supply ship Klara 300 miles northeast of the Azores Islands, the HMS Kenya closes in and sinks Klara. With the German U-129 nearby HMS Kenya doesn't rescue the survivors but the U-129 does so the next day.

Dutch submarine O.21 sinks Vichy French ship Oued Yquem off the coast of Sardinia, Italy.

Mahatma Gandhi urges his followers to resist British rule in India.

432 males, 1,115 females and 436 children, all Jewish, are killed in Vilnius, Lithuania; totalling 1,983 this was reported later in the Jager Report issued on 1 December that year.

The US Navy is awarded a contract to build Dock No. 4 and a 20 thousand kilowatt bomb-proof power plant at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, Oahu, Hawaii.

British anti-submarine trawler HMS Lady Shirley forces German U-111 to the surface with depth charges west 225 miles from Tenerife, Canary Islands. After brief exchange of gunfire, U-111 is scuttled; 8 Germans were killed and 44 captured while the HMS Lady Shirley lost one. Meanwhile, north of Bardia, Libya by 30 miles, British anti-submarine trawler HMS Whippet is sunk by German bombing.

British submarine HMS Talisman sinks French ship Theophile Gautier in a convoy to the Greek mainland from Crete.

Australian Prime Minister John Curtin, elected 8 days prior, announces the Australian garrison in Tobruk, Libya would be immediately withdrawn. Winston Churchill complains in a childish fit of rage to Beaverbrook 'We are at war with almost every country including Australia!'

Because of the United States of America and Japan's relationship rapidly deteriorating, Japanese ocean liner Tatsuta Maru departs Yokohama, Japan for the United States with American nationals wishing to return to the United States.

Soviet troops set off explosives in Southern Ukraine to destroy port facilities and defensive structures at Odessa, preparing for the imminent evacuation of 35,000 Soviet troops to Sevastopol, Russia (from Odessa).

Hans Frank, Governor-General of the Generalgouvernement of occupied Poland, issues that any Jews - and anybody knowingly sheltering them - leaving the Warsaw ghetto would risk being executed.

German U-97 attacks a small Allied convoy west of Alexandria, Egypt by 50 miles at 0325 hours, sinking Greek ship Samos; (with 31 deaths and 3 survivors) and British tanker Pass of Balmaha (killing all 20 aboard).

American USS Kearny, escorting Allied convoy SC-48, is damaged by a torpedo from German U-568 off Iceland, killing 11. U-432 and U-558 each sink three freighters in the same convoy.

Harold Stark informs Commander-in-chief of the US Naval Fleet Husband E. Kimmel that his personal opinion is he expected Japan to take some form of action in the near future but he didn't think an attack on Pearl Harbor very likely. Kimmel had written to Chief of Naval Operations in February that he thought it actually was a possibility. Of course, Kimmel was correct; he would shortly thereafter lose his position, be demoted to two-star rear admiral and have an early retirement.

Soviet General Fedyuninsky launches an attack in northern Russia, south of Lake Ladoga with 70,000 troops and 97 tanks attempting to break through the Siege of Leningrad. German troops move to attack the rail and road junction at Tikhvin 120km to the east in order to strengthen the siege.

Germany stages a reprisal in the Yugoslavian town of Kragujevac - executing 2,324 Serbian men and boys including 300 who were herded out of the First Boys High School the day before - for a partisan attack killing ten Germans and wounding 26. Hitler had already decreed that for every German soldier killed in partisan attacks 100 civilians would be executed and for every wounded German 50 would be executed. The numbers didn't add up here but the Nazis did always want to outperform and outdo others by a large degree.

France and the United Kingdom conclude a Treaty of Mutual Assistance with Turkey.

German U-552 attacks Allied convoy HX-156 west of Iceland by 725 miles at 0834 hours; American destroyer USS Reuben James is sunk (100 killed and 45 survive). The USS Reuben James was the first American warship lost in the Atlantic Ocean in the war.

It is announced that Royal Air Force aircraft operating from Malta destroyed 76,500 tonnes of enemy shipping in the Mediterranean Sea.

To alleviate shortages in labour, Adolf Hitler agrees that Soviet prisoners of war could be used as long as they are away from the Home population.