Berlin, Germany • December 1, 1936 On April 20, 1930 (Adolf Hitler’s 41st birthday), the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Maedel, abbreviated BDM) was founded in Germany. It was the female wing of Hitler’s Nazi Party youth organization, the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend, abbreviated HJ), whose origins dated to 1922 under several different names. Recruitment…
Riga, German-Occupied Latvia • November 30, 1941 On November 25 and 29, 1941, Einsatzgruppe 3 (Special Task Group 3), one of many SS (short for Schutzstaffel) mobile death squads operating behind German front lines, murdered5,000 “Reich Jews,” that is, German- and Austrian-born Jews. These men, women, and children had arrived in the Baltic ghetto at Kaunas, Lithuania’s second…
Berlin, Germany • November 29, 1939 On this date in 1939, nearly 3 months after the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) overran neighboring Poland, launching World War II in Europe, German dictator Adolf Hitler issued Fuehrer Directive Number 9, the first of 2 directives on measures his country would have to take to render the British economy and infrastructure…
Tehran, Iran • November 28, 1943 On November 27, 1943, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt left Cairo for Tehran, Iran’s capital. The Egyptian capital had hosted 2 Western leaders, Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese Nationalist leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. The Cairo Conference, codenamed Sextant, was a feeder conference to a weightier one…
Peleliu, Palau Islands, Western Pacific Ocean • November 27, 1944 On this date in 1944, after 74 grueling days Peleliu was declared secure, although isolated pockets of Japanese resistance took many more days to exterminate. The battle for the island, ironically codenamed Operation Stalemate II, turned out to be the costliest amphibious operation in U.S. history:…
Hitokappu Bay, Kurile Islands, Northern Japan • November 26, 1941 For several months the airmen of Japan’s First Naval Air Fleet had trained for an attack on the main base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Squadrons of naval planes flew low over the city of Kagoshima on…
Makin Atoll, Gilbert Islands, West-Central Pacific Ocean • November 25, 1943 Makin Atoll (or Makin Island) is one of 16 coral atolls in the Pacific’s Gilbert Islands chain and lies on the Equator halfway between Hawaii and Australia. The capture of the atoll with its excellent seaplane base, air base, and communications center by 6,470 heavily armored…
Cairo, Egypt • November 24, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Egypt, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (leader of a sometimes forgotten ally) continued their series of talks during their Cairo Conference (November 23–27, 1943). Churchill and his party had hoped to establish a…
Tarawa, Gilbert Islands • November 23, 1943 On this date in 1943 the first U.S. offensive in the Central Pacific region was declared won after 76 hours of fierce fighting. The 4,800 Japanese defenders (soldiers, marines, and Japanese and Korean construction workers) on Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands were well-supplied and well-prepared, and they…
Nanking, China • November 22, 1937 On this date in 1937 in Nanking (today’s Nanjing), China’s capital at the time, 15 foreign businessmen, missionaries, and journalists under the leadership of German national and Nazi Party member John Rabe organized the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. The mission of the committee was to shelter Chinese…