Berlin, Germany · October 18, 1940 On this date in 1940 German aircraft maker Messerschmitt was given just 14 days to submit a proposal for a large-capacity troop- and cargo-carrying glider. A prototype heavy-lift glider flew February 25, 1941, pulled by several four-engine Junkers Ju 90s. The prototype glider’s maiden flight encouraged Messerschmitt to enlarge the cockpit to…
Moscow, Soviet Union · October 15, 1941 On June 22, 1941, the day Hitler sprang his surprise attack on the Soviet Union, he reportedly confided to some of his intimates: “I feel as if I have opened a door into a dark, unseen room—without knowing what lies behind the door.” His gloomy premonitions soon gave…
Brenner Pass, Italy · October 4, 1940 On this date in 1940, at a border crossing between Germany and Italy, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler met for the seventh time. (The two would meet seventeen times.) The Brenner Pass meeting of the two dictators followed on the heels of their June 18 meeting in Munich, which…
Berlin, Germany · September 17, 1940 In November 1939, some two months after Germany had invaded Poland, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, head of the Kriegsmarine, instructed a subordinate to draw up a paper on “the possibility of troop landings in England.” The study paper set out four prerequisites. The next month the Wehrmacht (German armed…
Berlin, Germany · August 24, 1941 On this date in 1941 Adolf Hitler cancelled the Aktion T‑4 euthanasia program that he had personally put in place in September 1939. Normally Hitler had a policy of not issuing written instructions for policies relating to what would later be called crimes against humanity, but he made an exception…
Wolf’s Lair, Fuehrer HQ, East Prussia · August 23, 1941 On this date in 1941 at his concealed East Prussian “Fuehrer Headquarters” in the Rastenburg swamps, Adolf Hitler made a decision that doomed Operation Barbarossa—his planned liquidation of the Soviet Union. Barbarossa had been launched two months earlier, on June 22. But after three weeks of…
Obersalzberg, Bavaria, Germany · August 22, 1939 Adolf Hitler’s foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was just about to affix his signature to the German-Soviet non-aggression pact (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), when, on this date in 1939, the Fuehrer summoned the commanders of his various armed forces and other officers to the Berghof, his Bavarian retreat on…
London, England · August 15, 1940 Although the Battle of Britain (July 10 to October 31, 1940) had intensified days earlier, the Luftwaffe’s air attacks had been launched in poor weather and mostly limited to the south of England. However, on this date in 1940 the Luftwaffe sent five waves of fighters, dive bombers, and…
On the Eastern Front · July 27, 1941 On this date in 1941, five weeks after the launch of Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany’s surprise attack on the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler paid a visit to the headquarters of Army Group North. Army Group North had begun its first attack on Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg)—the Soviet…
London, England · July 10, 1940 On this date in 1940, less than one month after France’s capitulation to Nazi Germany and just 10 days after the Germans had seized the Channel islands of Jersey and Guernsey off the Brittany coast, Luftwaffe aircraft based in France began a relentless aerial campaign targeting the lone European…
