This is where the Daily Chronicles are posted
SHAEF HQ, Versailles, France • March 10, 1945 On this date in 1945 three sets of battles fought during the final stages of the European war ended in Allied victories and marked the beginning of the Allied invasion of Nazi Germany. The Battle of the Reichswald (German, Imperial Forest), known also as Operation Veritable, was…
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 1,400‑man 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…
Kaohsiung, Japanese-Occupied Taiwan • January 9, 1945 World War II in Asia began with Japan’s conquest of Northeast China in 1931. Rogue elements of the Kuantung Army (Japan’s army in China) created an incident on a Japanese-owned railline near Mukden (now Shenyang) and used it as an excuse for military operations in the rest of Manchuria….
London, England • December 29, 1940 On this date in 1940, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt appealed to the nation in a radio “fireside chat” to support his proposal to strengthen the U.S. military in light of developments in Europe, the German Luftwaffe delivered a massive attack on London. Almost 3,000 civilians were killed in the…
Southwest of Stalingrad, Soviet Union • December 23, 1941 On this date in 1942 the German Wehrmacht (armed forces) ended Operation Winter Storm (German, Unternehmen Wintergewitter), the 11‑day attempt by German Army Group Don, a new formation commanded by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, to break the Soviet envelopment of Gen. Friedrich Paulus’ German Sixth…
Mindoro Island, Philippines • December 15, 1944 On October 17, 1944, the naval, air, and land forces of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area, began their assault on the Japanese-held Philippine island of Leyte. Three days later MacArthur and his staff, accompanied by Philippine president Sergio Osmeña, waded onto Palo Beach (Red Beach),…
Berlin, Germany • December 11, 1941 On this date in 1941 in Berlin, Adolf Hitler, Chancellor and Fuehrer of Nazi Germany, addressed a toothless Reichstag (German parliament), its members eager to hear him declare war on America. Hitler did this four days after air and naval units of the Imperial Japanese Navy had ambushed the…
Berlin, Germany • December 1, 1939 On this date, December 1, 1939, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer (senior group leader) Gottlob Berger opened the first Waffen‑SS Recruiting Office within the SS Main Office, which he had headed since 1938. The SS (short for Schutzstaffel, meaning protection squad) was the Nazi Party’s private paramilitary organization, originally a small squad of…
Toulon Harbor, French Mediterranean • November 27, 1942 Between November 10 and 12, 1942, Germany and Italy engaged in a joint operation (German, Unternehmen Anton, or Case Anton) to occupy Marshal Philippe Pétain’s Vichy France, the French Riviera, and the French Mediterranean island of Corsica. These 3 areas comprised the so-called “Free Zone,” which was an…
Alexandria, Egypt • November 11, 1940 Italian Army operations in North Africa, based in Libya, required a supply line from the Italian mainland. The British Army’s North African Campaign, based in Egypt, suffered from supply difficulties in the Mediterranean Theater due to the proximity of Italy’s Regia Marina naval base at Taranto on the Italian…