Xanten, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany · March 23, 1945 In the aftermath of Operation Market Garden, the inventive but failed September 1944 thrust into Germany, came Operation Plunder, another offensive conceived by British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. It kicked off on this date in 1945 when the first set of 300,000 U.S., British, and Canadian troops crossed…
Oppenheim, Germany · March 22, 1945 On this date in 1945, one day before the British 21st Army Group under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery was due to launch Operation Plunder, the long-awaited northern offensive across the Rhine River at Rees and Wesel in North Rhine-Westphalia, Gen. George S. Patton sneaked a division of his U.S….
Berlin, Germany · March 21, 1943 Adolf Hitler was the target of assassins on at least 30 occasions. On this date in 1943 in Berlin, German army officers made the second of two attempts in March to kill Hitler with a bomb. The week before, two staff officers had planted a bomb aboard Hitler’s private plane….
Japanese Naval Base, Truk Lagoon, South Pacific · March 20, 1943 Although Japanese submarines attacked far fewer ships than the Allies or Germany did, they were involved in a dozen or so documented atrocities against crew survivors. On this date in 1943 Rear Admiral Takero Kouta, commander of the First Submarine Group at the large…
Chanute Field, Rantoul, Illinois · March 19, 1941 Pressed on one side by black news media and civil rights groups demanding that pilot training be opened up to African Americans and on the other by an upcoming re-election, President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 authorized the creation of a segregated flight school and an all-black…
Brenner Pass, Austria · March 18, 1940 On this date in 1940 on the Austro-Italian border, German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian strongman Benito Mussolini met for their fifth face-to-face meeting. Hitler had requested the summit in order to force Il Duce (Italian, “the leader”) to take sides within the framework of the so-called Pact…
Aboard the HMS Walker in the North Atlantic · March 17, 1941 On this date in 1941 U-99, skippered by Otto Kretschmer, one of Germany’s most famous U‑boat commanders, had just fired the last of her torpedoes when she was spotted by a British destroyer southeast of Iceland. By this time Kretschmer, on his eighth patrol,…
Auburn, Massachusetts · March 16, 1926 On this date in 1926 in Auburn, Massachusetts, Dr. Robert Goddard (1882–1945) conducted his first successful rocket flight. His liquid-propellant rocket rose 41 ft, traveled 184 ft, and burned no more than 3 seconds, but it proved the concept of rocket flight worked. Goddard, who received limited support for his research and…
Prague, Czechoslovakia · March 15, 1939 From the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in November 1918 a half-dozen new states emerged. Among them were Austria and Czechoslovakia. When Austria was incorporated into Adolf Hitler’s Greater German Reich in March 1938, Czechoslovakia found itself inside a German pincer. On October 1, 1938, following the Munich Agreement signed…
Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands · March 14, 1945 On this date in 1945 the U.S. flag was raised over the 10‑sq‑mile island of Iwo Jima in a formal flag-raising ceremony. The battle for the barren Japanese-held island lying some 760 miles southeast of Tokyo was the most bitterly contested of the war. Its capture was a…
