Berlin, Germany · March 3, 1945 Round-the-clock bombing operations against Germany began on March 3, 1944, with a U.S. 800‑plane daylight raid that dropped 2,000 tons of bombs on Berlin. On this date in 1945 American bombers mounted a daylight raid on Berlin that left 3,000 people dead and 100,000 homeless. Luftwaffe bombers retaliated, attacking Britain for the first…
Rome, Italy · March 2, 1939 On this date in 1939 in Vatican City, Roman Catholic Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli was elected pope on his sixty-third birthday. His coronation took place ten days later. Pacelli took the name Pius XII. Pius’ actions during the Holocaust are controversial. Critics have accused him of everything from anti-Semitism to colluding…
Berlin, Germany · March 1, 1935 On this date in 1935 Adolf Hitler appointed World War I air ace (last commander of the famous “Red Baron” Richthofen Fighter Squadron) Hermann Goering to the position of Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief. Goering held the post until the final days of the Third Reich. A faithful Nazi from the earliest days…
Berlin, Germany · February 28, 1933 On this date in 1933, with the Reichstag (German parliament building) still smoldering following the fire set by 24-year-old Dutch Communist Marinus van der Lubbe the day before, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler persuaded 87-year-old President Paul von Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Edict. The emergency decree suspended key…
London, England · February 27, 1942 Under the cover of darkness on this date in 1942, over 100 British paratroopers kicked off Operation Biting when they parachuted into Nazi-occupied Normandy close to a German radar station in the tiny village of La Poterie-Cap-d’Antifer, 12 miles north of the large French harbor of Le Havre. A number of…
Munich, Germany · February 26, 1932 On this date in 1932 in Germany, Austrian-born Adolf Hitler was granted German citizenship. A decade earlier the Austrian was the unlikely leader of a fringe Populist-nationalist movement, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. In November 1923 he led a “beer-hall putsch” in the Bavarian capital, Munich, hoping to…
Berlin, Germany · February 25, 1941 The first flight of the German prototype Me 321 Gigant (“Giant”) took place on this date in 1941. The previous October German aircraft maker Messerschmitt had been given just 14 days to submit a proposal for a large-capacity troop- and cargo-carrying glider. The prototype glider’s maiden flight encouraged Messerschmitt to enlarge…
Tokyo, Japan · February 24, 1945 The first appearance over Japan in June 1944 of the massive four-engine B‑29 bomber—with its service ceiling of 33,000 ft, an operational range of over 3,200 nautical miles, and a maximum takeoff weight of 133,500 lb—meant that the enemy’s home islands were squarely in the crosshairs of the war’s deadliest delivery system….
Santa Barbara, California · February 23, 1942 Japanese submarines initiated the first shore bombardments of the war with an attack on the U.S. Navy base at Johnston Island in the Pacific in mid-December 1941, just days after Japanese carrier-based planes had destroyed, in their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, one half of the United…
Munich, Germany · February 22, 1943 On this date in 1943 siblings Sophie (age 21) and Hans Scholl (24) and their friend Christoph Probst (24), members of the underground White Rose (Weiße Rose) resistance circle, were charged with sedition for writing, printing, and distributing anti-Nazi leaflets and “tried” by “Hitler’s Hanging Judge,” the notorious Nazi…
