London, England • December 19, 1939 On the afternoon of August 23, 1939, Adolf Hitler’s foreign secretary Joachim von Ribbentrop appeared in Moscow’s Kremlin fortress to sign off on the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. The 10‑year pact, also known by the twin surnames of Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Ribbentrop, was the necessary…
Berlin, Germany • December 13, 1940 Italy had long had an interest in the neighboring Balkans, which lay to the country’s east across the Adriatic Sea. In June 1917 Italian soldiers briefly seized portions of central and southern Albania, declaring them a protectorate. Italian Fascism, which was rooted in Italian nationalism, urged Italians to reestablish…
Moscow, Soviet Union • December 6, 1941 Three weeks after launching Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941 with the express goal of “crush[ing] Soviet Russia in a quick campaign” (Fuehrer Directive 21, December 18, 1940), the Germans and their Axis partners had indeed reached close enough to Moscow to fly sorties and bomb the Soviet…
Chicago, Illinois • December 4, 1941 Early in July 1941, just 4 months after the U.S. Congress had enacted the Lend-Lease Program that began assisting Great Britain and China in their defense against the aggressor states of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt requested his Secretaries of War and the Navy…
Riga, German-Occupied Latvia • November 30, 1941 On November 25 and 29, 1941, Einsatzgruppe 3 (Special Task Group 3), one of many SS (short for Schutzstaffel) mobile death squads operating behind German front lines, murdered5,000 “Reich Jews,” that is, German- and Austrian-born Jews. These men, women, and children had arrived in the Baltic ghetto at Kaunas, Lithuania’s second…
Berlin, Germany • November 29, 1939 On this date in 1939, nearly 3 months after the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) overran neighboring Poland, launching World War II in Europe, German dictator Adolf Hitler issued Fuehrer Directive Number 9, the first of 2 directives on measures his country would have to take to render the British economy and infrastructure…
London, England • November 6, 1940 On this date in 1940 a 2-engine German Heinkel He 111 bomber was shot down and sank in the shallows off Southern England. A waterlogged X‑Geraet (“X‑device”) was recovered. The X‑Geraet played a role in the Battle of the Beams, a period early in the war when German bombers were…
Rome, Italy • October 28, 1940 In early October 1940 Romanian strongman Gen. Ion Antonescu gave Adolf Hitler permission for the German Wehrmacht (armed forces) to occupy his country. Hitler’s Axis partner Benito Mussolini was caught off guard by the news, and the Italian public reacted negatively. For years the Italian dictator and his countrymen…
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…