SHAEF HQ, Reims, France • March 11, 1945 The hard-fought victories of the Western Allies between October 1944 and the Rhine River crossings in March 1945 held out the promise of an imminent end to the war in Europe. Seven Allied armies were advancing north, east, and south into the German heartland against bitter albeit…
Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. • March 10, 2010 On this date in 2010, 300 surviving members of the all-volunteer Women Airforce Service Pilots accepted Congressional Gold Medals in a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. Six-and-a-half decades after the end of World War II, the first women to fly American military aircraft were officially recognized for their…
Tokyo, Japan • March 9, 1945 Apart from Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s April 1942 raid on the Japanese capital, Tokyo, early air raids on Japan focused on military and industrial targets with disappointing results. So, U.S. Army Air Forces Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, a veteran of the Eighth Air Forces’ horrific air campaign over Nazi Germany, filled…
Munich, Germany • March 8, 1922 Adolf Hitler was just over a decade away from being appointed chancellor of Germany when he announced his intention on this date in 1922 of forming a youth wing for his Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), or Nazi Party, of which he was party leader. At first the Nazi youth…
Remagen, Germany • March 7, 1945 By March 1945 the German Wehrmacht (armed forces) was reeling from horrendous personnel and equipment losses incurred during the Battle of the Bulge (December 16, 1944, to January 25, 1945) in the Ardennes Forest, which lay mostly in Belgium and Luxembourg. The military momentum now clearly favored the Western Allies as…
London, England • March 6, 1941 By January 1941 the Allies had lost 1,300 merchant vessels, almost half of them to German U‑boats. Following the enslavement of 120 million people in 7 Western and Eastern European countries by Nazi Germany in 1940, the British were reduced to fighting Adolf Hitler’s military juggernaut alone. In alarm they watched the…
Moscow, Soviet Union • March 5, 1940 In a proposal written on this date in 1940 to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and other members of the Soviet Politburo, Lavrentiy Beria, who was the unsavory head of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the Soviet secret police, advocated executing all members of the Polish Officer…
Central Burma • March 4, 1945 The British Fourteenth Army was a multinational force that took part in the Burma Campaign (January 1942 to July 1945). Units were drawn from the British Army and the Indian Army, with significant contributions from Ghurkha and West and East African regiments. The Fourteenth Army has often been referred…
Manila, Philippines • March 3, 1945 On this date the monthlong Battle of Manila ended when U.S. and Filipino forces captured Manila’s Finance Building. It was the last set of government offices in the Philippine capital still occupied by a scrum of Japanese sailors and soldiers serving under the fanatical ex-Rear Adm. Sanji Iwabuchi, a…
Bismarck Sea, Southwestern Pacific Ocean • March 2, 1943 The Battle of Midway (June 4–7, 1942) was America’s first strategic victory against the Japanese Navy and a devastating defeat for the warlords ruling that Asian nation. Lost were 4 of the 6 Japanese aircraft carriers (the bulk of the Japanese carrier fleet) that had taken part in…
