Near Holtzwihr, Colmar Area, Northeastern France · January 26, 1945 On this date in 1945 U.S. Army Second Lt. Audie Murphy, age 20, commanded an infantry company when it came under attack from 200 German infantrymen and a half-dozen Mark VI Tiger tanks on the outskirts of Holtzwihr (now part of Porte-du-Ried), a village near Colmar on the…
Bastogne, Belgium · January 25, 1945 On this date in 1945, in the thickly forested Belgian Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge (referring to the German-induced bulge in Allied lines) effectively ended. The largest, most costly land battle fought by American soldiers in World War II marked in many ways the U.S. Army’s finest performance. Besides…
South West Pacific Area HQ, Brisbane, Australia · January 24, 1944 On this date in 1944 an advance party of the 93rd Infantry Division landed on the Pacific Island of Guadalcanal, the first African American (“colored” was the term used at the time) infantry unit to see action in World War II. Reactivated on May 15, 1942,…
Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia · January 23, 1942 On this date in 1942, over a month after Pearl Harbor, 20,000 Japanese Marines quickly overran the Australian garrison at Rabaul, New Britain, the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago (labeled “Niu Briten” on map below). Rabaul’s capture was important because of its proximity to the Caroline…
Washington, D.C. · January 22, 1944 On this date in 1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9417, which created the War Refugee Board (WRB). The president said that “it was urgent that action be taken at once to forestall the plan of the Nazis to exterminate all the Jews and other persecuted minorities…
London, England · January 21, 1943 Arguably one of Germany’s greatest assets early in World War II was the Enigma machine. It could encrypt and decrypt sensitive diplomatic and military messages in billions of ways (actually 10 to the 23rd power). The location of U‑boats in the Atlantic, supply convoys, and the orders of battle were…
Munich, Germany · January 20, 1929 On this date in 1929 failed German chicken farmer Heinrich Himmler became Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler. The SS in his title referred to Schutzstaffel, meaning “Protection Squad.” Informally known by its initials, the SS was created after National Socialist (Nazi) party leader Adolf Hitler, himself a Viennese vagrant, set about…
Fuehrer HQ on the Obersalzberg, Germany · January 19, 1941 On this date in 1941 Adolf Hitler and Italian leader Benito Mussolini began 2 days of crisis talks at the Berghof, Hitler’s palatial Alpine residence whose enormous sliding window afforded magnificent views of nearby Berchtesgaden and, in the distance, Salzburg, Austria. High on the agenda was…
Berlin, Germany · January 18, 1944 On this date in 1944 Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz approached his commander in chief, Adolf Hitler, with a design for a new midget submarine, much larger than the one‑man Biber (Beaver) sub that was in the prototype stage. The Hecht (Pike) was a three‑man midget based on a British…
Warsaw, Liberated Poland · January 17, 1945 On this date in 1945 Warsaw fell to Soviet and Polish Communist forces as the Nazis beat a hasty retreat from the ruins of Poland’s capital. In moving against the retreating Wehrmacht (German armed forces), the Soviets liberated 800 Jews in Częstochowa and 870 Jews in Łódź, Poland. Ten…