Anzio, Italy · February 16, 1944 On this date in 1944, a day after the historic Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino was bombed by Allied aircraft, the Germans launched their long-delayed counterattack on the Allied-held beachhead at Anzio, 35 miles south of the Italian capital, Rome. Just the month before, on January 22, American and British units…
Cassino, Italy · February 15, 1944 On this date in 1944 Gen. Harold Alexander, commander-in-chief of all Allied forces in the Mediterranean Theater, ordered the aerial bombing of the historic Benedictine abbey towering over the town of Cassino on the banks of the Rapido (Gari) River in Italy. Earlier in January British, American, and French troops…
Budapest, Hungary · February 14, 1945 On December 29, 1944, Soviet and Romanian troops (Romania was now a Soviet ally) began laying siege to Budapest, the capital of Adolf Hitler’s vassal state of Hungary. Budapest, split in two by the River Danube, was a city of over 800,000 resi¬dents and refugees, including well over 100,000…
Dresden, Germany · February 13, 1945 On this night in 1945, Shrove (or Fat) Tuesday, and over the next day, Ash Wednesday, some 1,300 British and American bombers appeared over largely untouched Dresden in eastern Germany. A city of 642,000 (1939) swelled by 300,000 refugees fleeing from fighting on the Eastern Front, Dresden was the ancient capital…
Berlin, Germany · February 12, 1945 On this date in 1945 German women were called up for service in the Volkssturm (national militia). Adolf Hitler was playing his final card in World War II by mobilizing practically every German civilian for an apocalyptic defense of the Third Reich, a 20th-century Wagnerian Goertterdaemmerung. Nazi themes of death,…
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…
