* 1941 – World War II: Nazi Germany launches Operation 25 ( the invasion of Kingdom of Yugoslavia ) and Operation Marita ( the invasion of Greece ).

* 1941 – Tallinn, the Capital of Estonia is occupied by Nazi Germany following an occupation by the Soviet Union.

* 1941 – World War II: The Kingdom of Yugoslavia surrenders to Germany.

* 1941 – World War II: The Battle of Smolensk concludes with Germany capturing about 300, 000 Soviet Red Army prisoners.

In response to suspected biological warfare development in Nazi Germany, the U. S., U. K., and Canada initiated a biological warfare development program in 1941 that resulted in the weaponization of anthrax, brucellosis, and botulism toxin.

Relations further deteriorated when, in January 1948, the U. S. State Department also published a collection of documents titled Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939 – 1941: Documents from the Archives of The German Foreign Office, which contained documents recovered from the Foreign Office of Nazi Germany revealing Soviet conversations with Germany regarding the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, including its secret protocol dividing eastern Europe, the 1939 German-Soviet Commercial Agreement, and discussions of the Soviet Union potentially becoming the fourth Axis Power.

The Serbian-Croatian Cvetković-Maček government that came to power, distanced Yugoslavia's former allies of France and the United Kingdom, and moved closer to Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in the period of 1935 – 1941.

In 1941, Cuba declared war on Italy, Germany, and Japan.

However, Japan reacted by an attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and the United States was at war with Japan, Germany, and Italy.

* 1941 – World War II: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, following the Americans ' declaration of war on Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

* 1941 – World War II: The Republic of China, Cuba, Guatemala, the Republic of Korea, and the Philippine Commonwealth, declare war on Germany and Japan.

Finland and Nazi Germany were " co-belligerents " against Soviet Union during Continuation War ( 1941 – 44 ), but a separate peace with Soviet Union led to the Finnish-German Lapland War ( 1944 – 45 ).

In March 1941, Roosevelt, with Congressional approval, provided Lend-Lease aid to the countries fighting against Nazi Germany with Britain.

With very strong national support, he made war on Japan and Germany after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, calling it a " date which will live in infamy ".

Finland's foreign politics before this deal had been varied: independence from Imperial Russia with support of Imperial Germany in 1917 ; participation in the Russian Civil War ( without official declaration of war ) alongside the Triple Entente 1918 – 1920 ; a non-ratified alliance with Poland in 1922 ; association with the neutralist and democratic Scandinavian countries in the 1930s ended by the Winter War ( 1939 ); and finally in 1940, a rapprochement with Nazi Germany, the only power able to protect Finland against the expansionist Soviet Union, leading to the Continuation War in 1941.

In addition, thousands of political prisoners throughout Germany — and from 1941, throughout the occupied territories under the Night and Fog Decree — simply disappeared while in Gestapo custody.

Meanwhile, Japan ( allied to Germany and Italy since September 1940 ) attacked the British in Southeast Asia and the United States in Hawaii on 7 December 1941 ; Germany then completed its over-extension by declaring war on the United States.

Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 – weeks behind schedule – but swept forward until it reached the gates of Moscow.

The Albanian communists supported the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, and did not participate in the antifascist struggle until Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

Germany violated the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941, opening the bloodiest theatre of war in history, the Eastern Front.

In an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on 13 April 1941, Stalin oversaw the signing of a neutrality pact with Axis power Japan.

* 1941 – Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.

* 1944 – World War II: the Soviet Union invades East Karelia and the previously Finnish part of Karelia, occupied by Finland since 1941.

** Nazi Germany invades Poland, Denmark, Norway, Benelux, and the French Third Republic from 1939 to 1941.

** Soviet Union invades Poland, Finland, occupies Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Romanian region of Bessarabia from 1939 to 1941.

Hitler is infuriated and invades Sweden, which surrenders on May 12, 1941.

A veteran diplomat with an extraordinary knowledge of Russian language, history and literature, Kennan recalls how, at the time of Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, he penned a private note to a State Department official, expressing the hope that `` never would we associate ourselves with Russian purposes in the areas of eastern Europe beyond her own boundaries ''.

Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, involved a number of breakthroughs and encirclements by motorized forces.

Shortly after the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, Trumbo and his publisher decided to suspend reprinting of Johnny Got His Gun until the end of the war.

* 1941 – World War II: The United Kingdom declares war on Finland in support of the Soviet Union during the Continuation War.

* 1941 – World War II: In the Battle of Moscow Georgy Zhukov launches a massive Soviet counter-attack against the German army, with the biggest offensive launched against Army Group Centre.

Conquest's calculations excluded camp deaths before 1936 and after 1950, executions from 1939 – 1953, the vast deportation of the people of captive nations into the camps and their deaths 1939 – 1953, the massive deportation within the Soviet Union of minorities 1941 – 1944 and their deaths, and those the Soviet Red Army and secret police executed throughout Eastern Europe after their conquest during 1944 – 1945.

Bartov wrote that German film-makers liked to show the heroic last stand of the 6th Army at Stalingrad, but none has so far showed the 6th Army's massive co-operation with the Einsatzgruppen in murdering Soviet Jews in 1941.

In 1941 the Axis campaign spread to the Soviet Union after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa.

In 1941, however, the German invasion of the Soviet Union failed, and after the United States entered the war, Britain became the base for massive Anglo-American bombings of German cities.

On 21 June 1941, the day before invasion of the Soviet Union, Himmler commissioned the preparation of the Generalplan Ost ( General Plan for the East ); the plan was finalised in July 1942.

In March 1941, Hitler addressed his army leaders, detailing his intention to smash the Soviet Empire and destroy the Bolshevik intelligentsia and leadership.

In addition, 2. 8 million Soviet prisoners of war died of starvation, mistreatment, or executions in just eight months of 1941 – 42.

As the Germans were pushed back from Moscow in December 1941, signalling that the invasion of the Soviet Union had failed, Hitler and other Nazi officials realised that mass deportations to the east would no longer be possible.

Iran barely maintained its independence throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, being carved up into spheres of influence, invaded in 1917 and 1941, occupied between 1941 – 1946, subjected to Soviet attempts to create a separate Azerbaijan socialist republic in 1946, and having its government overthrown in 1921 and again in 1953.

Edmund Rüdiger Stoiber ( born 28 September 1941 ) is a German politician, former minister-president of the state of Bavaria and former chairman of the Christian Social Union ( CSU ).

In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech ( technically the 1941 State of the Union address ), he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people " everywhere in the world " ought to enjoy:

That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb .— Franklin D. Roosevelt, excerpted from the State of the Union Address to the Congress, January 6, 1941

* 1943 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms in support of United States President Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms.

Other leading films included Mr. Deeds Goes to Town ( 1936 ), Lost Horizon ( 1937 ), You Can't Take It With You ( 1938 ), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ( 1939 ), Meet John Doe ( 1941 ), Arsenic and Old Lace ( 1944 ), It's a Wonderful Life ( 1946 ) and State of the Union ( 1948 ).

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (; born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, ; 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953 ) was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 until his death in 5 March 1953.

During the early morning of 22 June 1941, Adolf Hitler broke the pact by implementing Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Soviet held territories and the Soviet Union that began the war on the Eastern Front.