Dachau, Germany • April 29, 1945 On a gray last Sunday in April 1945, 10 miles/16 kilometers north of Munich, Bavaria’s capital, U.S. soldiers of the 42nd Infantry Division, nicknamed the “Rainbow Division,” the 45th “Thunderbird” Infantry Division, and the 27th Tank Battalion were overwhelmed by the horror they saw as they closed in on Dachau concentration…
Slapton Sands, Devon Coast, Southwest England • April 28, 1944 Shortly after midnight on this date in 1944 German torpedo boats (S‑boats, short for Schnell [Fast] boats) on a routine patrol out of Cherbourg in occupied France suddenly found themselves in the middle of Operation (or Exercise) Tiger, codenamed T‑4. Operation Tiger consisted of a convoy…
Berlin, Germany • April 27, 1942 At least since the 1925 publication of Adolf Hitler’s political screed, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), National Socialists, or Nazis for short, were openly discussing various colonization schemes for Central and Eastern Europe. Nazis were sure that more Lebensraum (living space) for a population of 62 million people was needed if…
SWPA HQ, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia • April 26, 1943 By January 1943, as the 6-month campaign for Guadalcanal in the Southwest Pacific Solomon Islands was winding down (the Japanese abandoned the island on February 7), it became clear that the Allies lacked sufficient resources to swiftly dislodge the Japanese from heavily fortified Rabaul, 650 miles/1,046 kilometers to the west….
Kure Navy Yard, Hiroshima Bay, Japan • April 25, 1943 Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the architect of his country’s December 7, 1941, attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, envisioned a different fleet of Japanese aircraft and ships for a second round of…
Luebeck, Northern Germany • April 24, 1945 Reichsfuehrer-SS, Reich Minister of the Interior, Gestapo chief, and Adolf Hitler-devotee Heinrich Himmler began making clumsy attempts to secure a separate peace treaty with the Western Allies as German defenders of the Reich capital—ground zero of Nazi resistance—failed to push the Red Army back across the Spree River,…
Berlin, Germany • April 23, 1945 On this date in 1945, with most land communications and electrical power lines down, Adolf Hitler broadcast on Greater German Radio the order to save his beleaguered capital. The order called for Wehrmacht forces opposing the Americans at the Elbe River to withdraw and move north to rescue Berlin,…
Ploen, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany • April 22, 1945 By the start of April 1945 most large German cities were rubbish heaps. Cityscapes were characterized by great rows of apartment blocks with their brick or stone facades ripped open. Church spires and factory chimneys poked into grimy skies, their walls and roofs collapsed. These scenes of civilian…
German 12th Army HQ, Larissa, Greece • April 21, 1941 After their prime minister’s suicide 3 days earlier representatives of the leaderless Greek government signed a document of capitulation at the headquarters of the German 12th Army at Larissa in Central Greece on this date in 1941. Fourteen Greek divisions laid down their arms. An armistice…
Berlin, Germany • April 20, 1945 On this date in 1945 a stooped, haggard, yellowish gray- and jowly-faced Adolf Hitler celebrated his 56th birthday in the safety of his underground command bunker 50 feet/15 meters beneath Berlin’s battered Old Reich Chancellery. Unlike previous birthdays marked by much ceremony and fuss, this one was all gloom and doom…
