Salzburg, Austria · February 11, 1938 On this date in 1938 Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg arrived in Salzburg for a quick trip over the German border to confer with Adolf Hitler at his Bavarian Alps residence, the Berghof. An Austrian native, Hitler had been granted German citizenship in 1932. The following January the Nazi Party…
Ulithi Atoll, Western Pacific · February 10, 1945 On this date in 1945 Task Force 58 under Vice Adm. Marc “Pete” Mitscher steamed out of its anchorage at Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands, 1,700 miles south of the main Japanese island of Honshū. Except for the Coral Sea standoff (May 4–8, 1942), Mitscher had been engaged in every…
Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands · February 9, 1943 On this date in 1943 Guadalcanal, the largest of the nearly one thousand islands in the Solomons, was declared secure. U.S. Marines had landed on the previously obscure island beginning on August 7, 1942, in the first major offensive by Allied forces against Japan. Operation Watchtower, as the air-sea-land…
Singapore Island, British Malaya · February 8, 1942 On this night and the next day in 1942 in British Malaya (today’s Malaysia) Japanese forces surged over and soon pushed the British-led defenders back to the edges of the 220‑sq. mile island of Singapore (the “Gibraltar of the East”), nearly 600 miles from the initial Japanese landing site….
Oslo, Occupied Norway · February 7, 1942 On this date in 1942 in German-occupied Norway, Minister President Vidkun Quisling abolished the Norwegian constitution and established a dictatorship one year after ascending to the presidency. Quisling had been a reserve officer in the Norwegian Army and served as the Norwegian Minister of Defense from 1931 to…
Berlin, Germany · February 6, 1941 During the German invasion of France in 1940, an ambitious general named Erwin Rommel distinguished himself as the “lead from the front” commander of the 7th Panzer Division. His armored formation was nicknamed the “Ghost Division” owing to its rapid thrusts and independence. Adolf Hitler had more than a…
Stockholm, Sweden · February 5, 1945 Within five months from the start of the German conquest of Norway in April 1940 the first Norwegian political prisoners were deported to Germany. Two years later, in September 1943, the first deportations of Danish prisoners and Jews to Germany began after German civil and military authorities assumed direct…
Berlin, Germany · February 4, 1937 On this date in 1937, in a bold, sweeping decree, Adolf Hitler assumed command of the entire German armed forces, or Wehrmacht. He abolished the Reichskriegsministerium (Ministry of War), in the act liquidating the traditional power of the army general staff as the ultimate controller and director of Germany’s…
Manila, Philippines · February 3, 1945 On this date in 1945, 35,000 soldiers of the U.S. Sixth Army under Lt. Gen. Walter Krueger, supported by 3,000 Filipino guerrillas, began entering Manila, capital of the Philippines, and soon liberated nearly 6,000 Allied and Filipino prisoners. Some of them, like the 64 U.S. Army nurses, were taken captive in 1942…
Washington, D.C. · February 2, 1945 The Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) was the supreme military staff for the western Allies during World War II. CCS members were drawn from the British Chiefs of Staff Committee and the American Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and typically met in Washington, D.C. On occasion Soviet military officers attended….
