Cassino, Italy • February 15, 1944 On this date in 1944 British Gen. Sir Harold Alexander, the highly decorated commander in chief of all Allied forces in the Mediterranean Theater, ordered the aerial bombing of the historic Benedictine abbey towering majestically over the town of Cassino on the banks of the Rapido (Gari) River in…
Malina Casino s’impose comme une plateforme incontournable pour les amateurs de jeux en ligne désireux de combiner divertissement et gains potentiels. Que vous soyez un joueur novice ou expérimenté, la malina casino app offre un accès simple et rapide à une vaste sélection de jeux populaires, optimisés pour tous les appareils. Découvrez dans cet article…
Budapest, Hungary • February 14, 1945 On December 29, 1944, Soviet and Romanian troops (Romania had broken from the Axis and 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 residents and…
Dresden, Germany • February 13, 1945 On this night in 1945, Fat (or Shrove) 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, 120 miles/310 kilometers south…
Off Cherbourg Coast, Occupied France • February 12, 1942 At dawn on February 12, 1942, a Kriegsmarine (German Navy) battle fleet rounded the Cherbourg peninsula in German-occupied Normandy. Bolting from the port of Brest in neighboring Brittany late the previous night, twin sister battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, together with heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and supporting vessels,…
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 above Berchtesgaden, the Berghof. An Austrian native who had served as a lance corporal in the Bavarian Army in…
Ulithi Atoll, Western Pacific • February 10, 1945 On this date in 1945 Task Force 58 under Vice Adm. Marc “Pete” Mitscher, assigned to U.S. Adm. Raymond Spruance’s Fifth Fleet, steamed out of its anchorage at Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands, 1,700 miles/2,736 kilometers south of the main Japanese island of Honshū. Except for the Coral Sea…
Tokyo, Japan • February 9, 1942 On December 8, 1941, the U.S. Congress declared war on the Empire of Japan in response to the massive Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. That same December day and the next the governments of Great Britain, Canada, China, and Australia declared war…
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/566‑sq-kilometer island of Singapore (the “Gibraltar of the East”), nearly 600 miles/966 kilometers from the initial Japanese landing sites. Singapore’s…
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 1 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 1933….