Forward German HQ in Poland · September 24, 1939 On this date in 1939 in Poland, Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering prepared to send hundreds of aircraft to blitz Warsaw in the first major city attack of World War II, while German armored forces prepared for a ground assault on the Polish capital. At 8 a.m. the…
Berlin, Germany · September 23, 1934 On this date in 1934 Ludwig Mueller, a crew-cut former naval chaplain, was installed as the new Reich Bishop in a gaudy spectacle at the swastika-bedecked Berlin Cathedral. The year before, German chancellor Adolf Hitler had proposed, as part of an administrative overhaul of the German Evangelical (Lutheran) Church,…
Vichy, France · September 22, 1940 As early as June 1940, after French resistance to the German conquest of France crumbled, Japan made overtures to French authorities for permission to station troops in French Indochina (now Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) and for their warships to take up naval stations off northern Indochinese ports. On this…
London, England · September 21, 1944 On this date in 1944 some 147 of 154 dispatched B‑17 Flying Fortresses bombed the synthetic oil plant at Ludwigshafen, an industrial city on the Rhine River in west-central Germany. The sortie was one of seven (for a total of more than 1,400 B‑17s) that unloaded high-explosive and incendiary bombs on…
Berlin, Germany · September 20, 1940 On this date in 1940 the chief of the German high command, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, announced that Wehrmacht troops were being dispatched to Romania “in case a war with Soviet Russia is forced upon us.” The next month German troops entered the country ostensibly to train and rebuild…
Brest-Litovsk, Occupied Eastern Poland · September 19, 1939 Adolf Hitler’s armies stormed over Poland’s border on September 1, 1939, in what became known as the first blitzkrieg—“lightning war.” Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin hastened to claim his share of the spoils under the terms of a secret protocol in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed in Moscow the month before,…
Mukden, Manchuria · September 18, 1931 The political and economic consequences of the collapse of produce prices in the Twenties and the onset of the Great Depression in Japan were marked by an unemployment rate of 25 percent in 1931, factory idleness at 50 percent, exports down by two-thirds, malnourishment in farming settlements, and high tariff barriers…
Berlin, Germany · September 17, 1940 In November 1939, some two months after Germany had invaded Poland, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, head of the Kriegsmarine, instructed a subordinate to draw up a paper on “the possibility of troop landings in England.” The study paper set out four prerequisites. The next month the Wehrmacht (German armed…
Copenhagen, Occupied Denmark · September 16, 1943 On April 9, 1940, Germany invaded Denmark, overrunning the tiny country in less than a day. The Danish government and king remained in place, collaborating as little as possible with the enemy. In an effort to create a “model protectorate” out of Denmark, the occupation authorities initially interfered…
Berlin, Germany · September 15, 1940 On this date in 1940 Adolf Hitler wrote a letter to Gen. Francisco Franco, the Caudillo of Spain, asking for naval bases for Germany in the Spanish Canary Islands and other places. Franco replied one week later, demanding enormous stockpiles of weapons, supplies, and part of French North Africa…