Kaeng Khoi Tha, Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand • October 25, 1943 The Burma-Thailand Railway was inaugurated on this date in 1943 near the Konkoita forced labor camp about 11 miles/18 km south of the Burmese border. The opening of the new rail line was declared a holiday by Japanese authorities. The festivities celebrated the meeting of the northern and…
Montoire, Occupied France • October 24, 1940 After failing the day before to convince Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to bring his country into the war on the Axis side, Adolf Hitler met with 84‑year-old Maréchal (Marshal) Philippe Pétain, respected French military leader (“Victor of Verdun”) and now head of state (chef de l’État Français), and…
El Alamein, Northwestern Egypt • October 23, 1942 In 1942 El Alamein was a mean little railway station roughly 275 miles/440 km east of the Libyan-Egyptian border. The First Battle of El Alamein was fought there between July 1 and 27, 1942, by a mixed German-Italian army under newly minted Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in command of Panzer Army…
Belgrade, Yugoslavia • October 22, 1944 By late March 1941 Yugoslavia, a multiethnic nation of 15.5 million people in Central and Southeast Europe, was surrounded on all sides by Axis-aligned nations with the exception of Greece to its south. Romania and Hungary had joined Yugoslavia’s neighbor to the west, Italy, in the Tripartite Pact in…
Wolf’s Lair HQ, East Prussia, Germany • October 21, 1944 On this date in 1944 Adolf Hitler summoned SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer (Lt. Gen.) Otto Skorzeny to Fuehrer headquarters deep in the East Prussian wilderniss near Rastenberg (present-day Kętrzyn, Poland). The scar-faced 6‑ft, 4‑in/193‑centimeter Skorzeny had made a name for himself participating in a derring-do operation that succeeded in rescuing…
Leyte Island, the Philippines • October 20, 1944 On the same day (Japanese time) the forces of Imperial Japan struck Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in a surprise assault on U.S. military installations, they struck the American territory of the Philippines. On May 6, 1942, Japan swept the last American garrison from the archipelago by capturing Corregidor Island,…
Moscow, Soviet Union • October 19, 1941 On this date in 1941, the day the official “state of siege” was declared in the Soviet capital of Moscow, Red Army forces from the Soviet Far East and Siberia began arriving on the Russian Front. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was convinced that evacuating most of his troops…
Berlin, Germany • October 18, 1940 On this date in 1940 German aircraft maker Messerschmitt was given just 14 days to submit to the Luftwaffe a proposal for a large-capacity troop- and cargo-carrying glider. A prototype heavy-lift glider flew February 25, 1941, pulled by several 4‑engine Junkers Ju 90s. The prototype glider’s maiden flight encouraged…
Budapest, Occupied Hungary • October 17, 1944 On this date in 1944 Adm. Miklós (Nicholas) Horthy, regent of the Kingdom of Hungary since 1920, left his native country as a prisoner of Nazi Germany. Horthy had angered Adolf Hitler after the latter had received confidential reports that the 76‑year-old Hungarian head of state was secretly…
East Prussia, Germany • October 16, 1944 In the summer of 1944 Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany was knocked off balance by one-two punches delivered almost simultaneously by the Western Allies’ invasion of Northwestern France, codenamed Operation Overlord (June–August 1944), and the Soviet Union’s offensive, Operation Bagration (June–August 1944), which began with the reconquest of Belorussia…
