This is where the Daily Chronicles are posted
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Moscow, Soviet Union · August 19, 1939 On this date in 1939 Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov presented to Adolf Hitler’s Moscow ambassador a draft of a nonaggression pact between the two powers. The draft contained essentially everything the German serial aggressor could have wished for because it opened the gates for crushing neighboring Poland…
Quebec, Canada · August 18, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Quebec, Canada, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, along with their Combined Chiefs of Staff, set to work planning Operation Overlord, the 1944 invasion of German-occupied France. At this first of two Quebec conferences,…
London, England · August 17, 1943 In mid-June 1943 a Royal Air Force reconnaissance mission flew over the top-secret Peenemuende Army Research Center and V‑2 rocket launch site on the German Baltic coast. Images confirmed the presence of long-range ballistic missiles at the site. A month later British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered an attack at…
Marseille, France · August 16, 1944 On this date in 1944, two-and-one-half months after the Allies had landed in northern France (Operation Overlord) and one day after thousands of servicemen from the U.S. Seventh and French First armies had landed by air and sea on the French Riviera (Operation Dragoon), Adolf Hitler reversed himself and…
London, England · August 15, 1940 Although the Battle of Britain (July 10 to October 31, 1940) had intensified days earlier, the Luftwaffe’s air attacks had been launched in poor weather and mostly limited to the south of England. However, on this date in 1940 the Luftwaffe sent five waves of fighters, dive bombers, and…
Washington, D.C. · August 14, 1982 Some 44,000 Native Americans served in the U.S. military during World War II. There were one-and-a-half times more Native American volunteers than draftees; indeed, Native American participation in the war per capita exceeded any other group. Native Americans served in all theaters, but predominately in the Pacific. No group of…
Shanghai, China · August 13, 1937 The Battle of Shanghai began on this date in 1937. It was the first major battle of World War II (the European conflict erupted two years later), and it eventually involved nearly one million combatants. When hostilities broke out, Gen. Hajime Sugiyama, minister of war in the Imperial Japanese Army…
Tokyo, Japan · August 12, 1945 In 1945 the endgame in Europe was to take Berlin, the epicenter of Nazi resistance, which the Red Army did in the last week of April. On May 7 and 8, 1945, Adolf Hitler’s heir, Adm. Karl Doenitz, surrendered Nazi Germany unconditionally to the Allies. The endgame in the Pacific War…
Salzburg, Austria · August 11, 1939 On this date in 1939 near Salzburg, Austria, Adolf Hitler’s foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop told Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, about Hitler’s decision “to set Europe on fire.” “We want war,” Ribbentrop said to Ciano, though he omitted saying that Hitler had just signed the…
Paris, Occupied France · August 10, 1944 Beginning on August 2, 1944, almost two months after the initial D-Day landings in Normandy, France, more than 14,000 personnel and equipment from Gen. Philippe Leclerc’s Free French 2nd Armored Division landed on Utah Beach. Leclerc juggled three roles: He was a subordinate divisional commander in an American army, he…
