SHAEF HQ, Versailles, France • January 29, 1945 On this date in 1945 Allied armies in Western Europe returned to the offensive after having shut down Nazi Germany’s Operation Nordwind (German, Unternehmen Nordwind) 4 days earlier. Nordwind was the last major German offensive of World War II on the Western Front. It began on the last day…
Near Bad Orb, Germany • December 26, 1944 On the first day in December 1939, 4 months since the outbreak of war in Europe, the German Wehrmacht (military) established a prisoner of war camp, Mannschafts-Stammlager IX B, outside Bad Orb, roughly 30 miles/48 km northeast of Frankfurt am Main in the state of Hessen. Over the course of the…
101st Airborne Command Post, Bastogne, Belgium • December 25, 1944 On Christmas Eve 1944 in the German-besieged Eastern Belgian town of Bastogne (population 3,500), soldiers of the armorless U.S. 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagles” Division, elements of the 9th and 10th Armored Divisions, and several combat engineer and field artillery battalions received rations of brandy and listened…
Huertgen, Germany • November 16, 1944 On September 19, 1944, elements of Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges’ First U.S. Army entered the 10‑mile/16‑kilometer-wide, 20‑mile/16‑kilometer-long Huertgen Forest (Hürtgenwald) southeast of Aachen. The ancient capital of Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne and a northern node on Germany’s “dragons’ teeth” defensive Westwall (known to the Allies as the 390‑mile/628‑kilometer-long Siegfried…
Schmidt, Huertgen Forest, Germany • November 2, 1944 On September 19, 1944, elements of Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges’ First U.S. Army entered the 10‑mile/16‑km-wide, 20‑mile/32‑km-long Huertgen Forest (German, Hürtgenwald) southeast of the ancient city Aachen, the first major and westernmost city in Nazi Germany to have fallen to the Anglo-American-Canadian armies. Before the outbreak of World…
Berlin, Germany • September 26, 1944 On this date in 1944 the German news agency announced the surrender of 600 British troops in a small village west of Arnhem in the Netherlands. For days the lightly armed men of the British 1st Airborne “Red Devil” Division had held the northern end of a key bridge…
Wolf’s Lair, Rastenburg, East Prussia, Germany • September 16, 1944 On this date in September 1944, at his forward headquarters in East Prussia, Adolf Hitler laid out his demands for a surprise counteroffensive on the Western Front that came to be known as the Ardennes Offensive, or Battle of the Bulge. September’s date is notable because…
Dachau, Germany • July 16, 1946 On this date in 1946, at the former Nazi concentration camp in Dachau about 20 miles northwest of the Bavarian capital of Munich, a U.S. military tribunal convicted all 73 men on trial in the Malmedy Massacre case; 43 were sentenced to death by hanging and the rest were given long…
Adlerhorst Forward HQ, Central Hessen, Germany • December 16, 1944 “It is essential to deprive the enemy of his belief that victory is certain,” Adolf Hitler told his generals on December 12, 1944, at his rural Adlerhorst (Eagle’s Nest) headquarters near Bad Nauheim, Germany, the camouflaged western command outpost Architect of the Reich Albert Speer (pronounced “spare”)…
Near Bad Orb, Hessen • December 1, 1939 On this date in 1939, 4 months since the outbreak of war in Europe, the German Wehrmacht (military) established a prisoner of war camp, Mannschafts-Stammlager IX B, outside Bad Orb, roughly 30 miles/48 km northeast of Frankfurt am Main. Over the course of the war Stalag IX B—Stalag being a…