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http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/26.htm

January 26th, 1940

UNITED KINGDOM: British officials acknowledge that of a total of 734,883 children reported to have been evacuated from London since the beginning of the war, 316,192 have returned to their homes by January 8th. (Jack McKillop)

Corvette HMS Marigold laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)

SS Durham Castle struck a mine laid by U-57 on 22 January off Cromarty and sank. The ship was in tow for Scapa Flow for use as an accommodation ship. (Dave Shirlaw)

FRANCE: Paul Ferdonnet, the “Radio Traitor,” a German sympathizer broadcasting in French from Stuttgart, Germany, is tried in absentia by a French military tribunal. (Jack McKillop)

GERMANY: U-331 laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)

POLAND: Jews are forbidden by the German authorities to travel on the public railways.

Western POLAND: The resettlement of ethnic Germans from Wohlhynien (western Ukraine) and eastern Galicia into the territories of the Reich, agreed during negotiations with the USSR, has been completed. The “migrants” come from what used to be eastern Poland, which has been under Soviet occupation since September. The resettlement has been pushed on with all haste since 20 December, with ethnic German groups covering 40 miles a day in temperatures as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit. German-Soviet agreements late last year mean that some 205,000 ethnic Germans can leave the Soviet “sphere of interest” for the Reich. Many are earmarked by the Reich’s Agency for the Organisation of Space to displace Poles in the General Government area (occupied western Poland), regarded by the Nazis as part of the Reich’s new Lebensraum. Just over 100,000 families from southern Germany are also expected to resettle in the occupation zone.

LINE ISLANDS: The minesweeper USS Quail (AM-15) arrives at Palmyra Island with the first construction party to begin building a naval air station there. (Jack McKillop)

U.S.A.: The motion picture “The Fighting 69th” is released. Directed by William Keighley, this war movie about the 165th Infantry Regiment (former New York 69th Regiment) in World War I stars James Cagney, Pat O’Brien, George Brent, Jeffrey Lynn, Alan Hale, Frank McHugh and Dennis Morgan. (Jack McKillop)

The American-Japanese Treaty of Navigation and Commerce is allowed to lapse because the US government refuses to negotiate in protest against Japanese aggression in China. (Jack McKillop)