World War II As It Happened
A MaritimeQuest Daily Event Special Presentation
Wednesday, September 20, 1939
Day 20

September 20, 1939: Front page of the Birmingham Gazette, Birmingham, England.
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September 20, 1939: Front page of the Press and Journal, Aberdeen, Scotland.
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Note the report in column 4: "Goebbels Mystery Deepens"
(A total fabrication, Propaganda Minister Goebbels was quite active and did not die until he and his wife Magda killed their six children and then committed suicide in the Führer bunker in Berlin on May 1, 1945.)


September 20, 1939: Front page of The Telegraph, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
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September 20, 1939: Front page of the Daily Telegraph, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
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Note the report in column 6: "Dr. Goebbels Thought Dead"
(A parallel to today's recent stories about North Korean dictator Jong-un Kim being dead. Neither story was true.)


September 20, 1939: Front page of The Melbourne Herald, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
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September 20, 1939: Front page of The Lethbridge Herald, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.
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September 20, 1939: Front page of the Daily Capital News, Jefferson City, Missouri.
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September 20, 1939: Front page of the East Liverpool Review, East Liverpool, Ohio.
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September 20, 1939: Front page of the Freeport Journal-Standard, Freeport, Illinois.
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September 20, 1939: Front page of The Lowell Sun, Lowell, Massachusetts.
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Note the report in column 7: "Highest Nazi Leaders Have Planted Huge Fortunes Abroad"
(This report clearly got under the skin of Nazi Propaganda Minister Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels. Dr. Goebbels gave a response to this story which was published on Sept. 23rd. H. R. Knickerbocker was well known as an anti-Nazi journalist and had even been expelled from Nazi Germany in December of 1930. If this report was correct or not I don't know, but Goebbels obviously believed that it created a threat to members of the Nazi government. I attempted to learn what Goebbels thought privately about Knickerbocker, but the pages from his personal diary from May 21 to Oct. 8, 1939 were never found. Knickerbocker's name is not indexed as being mentioned in any of Goebbels' later diary entries.)
[Goebbels' reply in German appears in the Hamburger Neueste Zeitung for Sept. 25, 1939.]


September 20, 1939: Front page of The Abilene Reporter-News, Abilene, Texas.
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September 20, 1939: Front page of the Briesetal-Bote, Birkenwerder, Germany.
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1. Entschlossene Oerteidigung deutscher Interessen.
(Resolute defense of German interests.)
2. Danzig umjubelt den Befreier.
(Danzig cheers the liberators.)



   
Page published Sept. 20, 2020