With 60 percent of France's production tied up by strikes, a thirty-three hour filibuster waged by the Communists to prevent a vote in the National Assembly on Prime Minister Robert Schuman's anti-strike bill came to a head at 11 p.m. when Communist Deputy Raoul Calas disobeyed an order to leave the tribune and other Communists massed around him to prevent his ejection. The sit-down strike finally ended at 6 a.m. the next morning when the Communists got up and marched out just as forty Republican Guards entered the chamber to eject them by force.[1]
16 were killed and about 30 injured in a train derailment in Arras, France. Authorities reported that the disaster was an act of sabotage and accused communists of being responsible in the midst of the country's ongoing labor strife.[5]
The Judges' Trial ended in Nuremberg. 10 of the 15 German jurists and lawyers on trial were found guilty of Nazi war crimes and given prison sentences of varying lengths, including life for four of them.
The Egyptian government banned public demonstrations in Cairo after police clashed with 15,000 marchers protesting against the partition of Palestine.[7]
A drastic new anti-strike law went into effect in France, raising the maximum penalty for sabotage from six months to ten years in jail, and providing five year sentences for anyone convicted of using fraud or violence to disrupt freedom of work. That night the Interior Ministry reported that nearly 1,000 arrests had been made.[9]
Died:Tristan Bernard, 81, French playwright, novelist, journalist and lawyer; Nicholas Murray Butler, 85, American philosopher, diplomat, Nobel laureate and 12th president of Columbia University; Charles McGuinness, 54, Irish adventurer, author and sailor
The US Supreme Court decided Patton v. Mississippi, ordering a new trial for Eddie Patton, an African-American on death row in Mississippi. The 9–0 decision found that blacks had been excluded from the jury that convicted Patton of killing a white man.[10][11]
Nations of the Arab League meeting in Cairo promised "immediate measures" to help Palestinian Arabs resist partition.[12]
Royal Netherlands East Indies Army forces committed the Rawagede massacre in West Java, killing an estimated 431 civilian men in the village of Rawagede because the inhabitants would not tell where the Indonesian independence fighter Lukas Kustario was hiding.
Labour leaders in Rome called for a general strike to begin at midnight after the government did not respond to an ultimatum containing various demands from the Communist-controlled Chamber of Labour.[14]
An estimated 500,000 workers participated in Rome's general strike. The Interior Ministry announced that 100 arrests had been made during clashes with Communists trying to keep workers from their jobs.[15]
Britain announced that it would end its mandate over Palestine on May 15.[3]
A reshuffle of the Bulgarian cabinet gave 13 of 23 ministerial posts to communists.[12]
InJerusalem, members of the Jewish underground killed six more Arabs and threw grenades at the office of the newspaper of the exiled Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini.[16]
After a second day of violence in Rome in which 200 policemen clashed with 3,000 strikers, the Communist-led general strike ended at midnight, 48 hours after it began. The strikers and the government both claimed success.[17][18]
Italy became the first of the defeated Axis countries to regain its sovereignty following a military occupation when the last American troops withdrew from the country in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Peace with Italy.[19]
The Soviet government announced plans to fight inflation by issuing new currency and abolishing food rationing by December 16.[10]
Died:Stanley Baldwin, 80, British Conservative politician and three-time prime minister of the United Kingdom; Edward Higgins, 83, 3rd General of the Salvation Army
President Truman asked Congress to approve a $17 billion four-year European recovery program in time to put it into effect by April 1 as part of the fight against "selfish totalitarian aggression."[23]
Italy was hit with a new wave of labor strife when 300,000 workers in flour mills and food-processing factories went on strike.[24]
On the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Cheka, newspaper editorials told Russian citizens that a foreign intelligence campaign had persisted for 40 years and that they should be on constant alert against "imperialist" threats.[25]
Arab People's Army leader Fawzi al-Qawuqji stated the Arab plan to gain military control of Palestine and set up an all-Arab state.[3]
The first postwar elections of deputies to local Soviets was held in the Soviet Socialist Republics of Russia, Ukraine, Moldavia, Armenia and Karelia, with the Communist Party running unopposed.[22]
The Italian food workers' strike was called off after less than 48 hours when the workers won a promise of increased wages and severance pay.[26]
Sentencing was handed down in the Flick Trial. German industrialist Friedrich Flick was found guilty of war crimes by the US military court at Nuremberg and sentenced to seven years in prison from the time of his arrest in August 1945.[10] Two other defendants received shorter sentences and the remaining three were acquitted.
President Truman signed a bill providing $522 million in stopgap relief for France, Italy and Austria, $18 million for China and $340 million for US occupational expenses.[10]
Acting on the advice of his three-man Amnesty Board, President Truman granted pardons to 1,523 men convicted during the war of violating the Selective Service Act. All but three had already finished serving their prison sentences.[28]
Speaking in his own defense at his war crimes trial in Tokyo, former Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo claimed that war was justified in 1941 because pressure from the United States and Britain had maneuvered Japan into firing the first shot "in self-defense." Tojo accepted responsibility for Japan's defeat but denied any "legal or criminal" responsibility.[30]
Henry A. Wallace announced that he intended to run as a third-party candidate for president in 1948, pledging a "positive peace program of abundance and security, not scarcity and war."[10]
The High Command Trial, the last of the twelve Nuremberg Trials, began. Thirteen German generals and one admiral stood accused of having participated in Nazi atrocities.
The Balad al-Shaykh massacre was perpetrated during the night of December 31—January 1. The Palmach, an arm of the Haganah, attacked the Palestinian Arab village of Balad al-Sheikh in retaliation for the Haifa Oil Refinery massacre. 17 were reported killed and 33 injured.
^ abLeonard, Thomas M. (1977). Day By Day: The Forties. New York: Facts On File, Inc. p. 745. ISBN0-87196-375-2.
^"15,000 Riot in Cairo Against Partition". The New York Times: 14. December 5, 1947.
^Edelman, Rob. "Burt Shotton." The Team that Forever Changed Baseball and America: The 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers. Ed. Lyle Spatz. Society for American Baseball Research, 2012. p. 76-77.
