What happened in 1932

43 events　World 1, Japan 3, North America 9, Europe 14, USSR / Russia 1, Asia 7, Middle East 1, Latin America 4, Oceania 3

Open 1932 in the app (filters, ranges and links) →

Highlights of 1932

World1

  • May 6Paul Gorguloff shoots French president Paul Doumer in Paris; Doumer dies the next day.

Japan3

  • Jan 9Sakuradamon Incident: Korean nationalist Lee Bong-chang fails in his effort to assassinate Emperor Hirohito of Japan. The Kuomintang's official newspaper runs an editorial expressing regret that the attempt failed, which is used by the Japanese as a pretext to attack Shanghai later in the month.
  • Feb 9League of Blood Incident: Junnosuke Inoue, prominent Japanese businessman, banker and former governor of the Bank of Japan is assassinated by the right-wing extremist group the League of Blood.
  • May 15May 15 Incident, an attempted military coup in which Japanese prime minister Tsuyoshi Inukai is assassinated by naval officers. Japanese troops leave Shanghai.

North America9

  • Feb 4The 1932 Winter Olympics open in Lake Placid, New York.
  • Mar 1Lindbergh kidnapping: Charles Lindbergh Jr., the infant son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, is kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey. On May 12 he is found dead just a few miles away.
  • Mar 14George Eastman, founder of Kodak, commits suicide in Rochester, New York.
  • Mar 22Tarzan the Ape Man premieres in New York City, first of the classic film series starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan.
  • May 25Goofy makes his appearance in the Disney animated short Mickey's Revue.
  • Jul 30Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees, the first animated cartoon to be presented in full Technicolor, premieres in Los Angeles. It releases in theaters, along with the film version of Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude (starring Norma Shearer and Clark Gable); Flowers and Trees goes on to win the first Academy Award for Best Animated Short.
  • Jul 30The 1932 Summer Olympics open in Los Angeles.
  • Aug 1Forrest Mars produces the first Mars bar in his Slough factory in the UK.
  • Nov 81932 United States presidential election: Democratic governor of New York Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover in a landslide victory, having promised a New Deal and repeal of Prohibition.

Europe14

  • Feb 25Adolf Hitler obtains German citizenship by naturalization, opening the opportunity for him to run in the 1932 German presidential election.
  • Feb 27The Mäntsälä rebellion occurs in Finland.
  • Mar 2The Mäntsälä rebellion ends in failure; Finnish democracy prevails. The Lapua Movement is condemned by conservative Finnish president Pehr Evind Svinhufvud in a radio speech.
  • Apr 111932 German presidential election: Paul von Hindenburg is re-elected as Reichspräsident, defeating Hitler.
  • Jun 16Lausanne conference opens to discuss reparations, which Germany had not paid since the Hoover Moratorium of June 1931.
  • Jul 17Altona Bloody Sunday: In Altona, Germany, a bloody clash with heavy police involvement occurs when Nazi marchers enter a working class area with many communist supporters; 18 are killed.
  • Jul 20The Preußenschlag in Germany. The political coup gives Franz von Papen control of Prussia, the most powerful state in Germany, and is a major blow to German democracy.
  • Aug 6The first Venice Film Festival is held.
  • Aug 9Potempa Murder of 1932: In the eastern town of Potempa, five Nazi "Brownshirts" break into the house of Konrad Pietrzuch, a Communist miner, and proceed to castrate and beat him to death in front of his mother.
  • Aug 22Potempa murder: The five SA men involved in the torture and murder of Konrad Pietrzuch are quickly convicted and sentenced to death under the new law introduced by the Papen government. The Potempa case becomes a cause célèbre in Germany, where some maintain the death sentences are appropriate given the brutality of the torture and murder, whilst Nazis demonstrate for amnesty for the "Potempa five" on the grounds they are patriotic heroes, justified in killing the Communist Pietrzuch, and should not be executed. Hitler sends a telegram congratulating the five and they are released from jail in 1933 after he becomes Chancellor of Germany.
  • Sep 9The italic=no (Parliament) of the Second Spanish Republic approves the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia which grants full autonomy for Catalonia for the first time in modern history.
  • OctHergé's Tintin in America (Tintin en Amérique) concludes serial publication and is issued in book format (in black and white) in Belgium.
  • Dec 19BBC World Service begins broadcasting as the BBC Empire Service using a shortwave radio facility at its Daventry transmitting station in England.
  • SPAR, the global retail brand, is founded in Zegwaart, Netherlands.

USSR / Russia1

  • Sep 22Soviet famine of 1932–33 begins; millions starve to death as a result of forced collectivization and as part of the government's effort to break rural resistance to its policies. The Soviet regime denies the famine and allows the deaths.

Asia7

  • Jan 28January 28 incident: Conflict between Japan and China in Shanghai.
  • Feb 18Japan declares Manchukuo (Japanese name for Manchuria) formally independent from China.
  • Mar 1Japan installs Puyi as puppet emperor of Manchukuo.
  • Apr 29Korean pro-independence paramilitary Yun Bong-gil detonates a bomb at a gathering of Japanese government and military officials in Shanghai's Hongkou Park, killing General Yoshinori Shirakawa and injuring Mamoru Shigemitsu and Vice Admiral Kichisaburō Nomura.
  • Jun 24After a relatively bloodless military rebellion, Siam becomes a constitutional monarchy.
  • Sep 17Start of the Han–Liu War over Shandong.
  • Oct 15Tata Airlines (later to become Air India) makes its first flight.

Middle East1

  • Oct 3Iraq becomes an independent kingdom under Faisal, ending the British mandate.

Latin America4

  • Jan 22The 1932 Salvadoran peasant uprising begins; it is suppressed by the government of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez.
  • Jul 9The Constitutionalist Revolution starts in Brazil with the uprising of the state of São Paulo.
  • Sep 9Beginning of the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia because of delimitation problems and others.
  • Sep 17A speech by Laureano Gómez leads to the escalation of the Leticia Incident between Colombia and Peru.

Oceania3

  • Mar 19The Sydney Harbour Bridge opens in Australia.
  • Nov 2The Emu War, a nuisance wildlife management military operation, begins in Australia.
  • Dec 10The Emu War in Australia ends in failure.