Rome, Italy · October 8, 1941 Two months before Great Britain joined the United States in declaring war on Japan, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini used this date in 1941 to blast the Japanese for not carrying their weight in the Tripartite Pact, a political, economic, and military agreement that Italy, Germany, and Japan had signed…
London, England · September 3, 1939 Addressing a national audience by radio, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain intoned the following words: “This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland,…
London, England and Paris, France · September 2, 1939 Shortly after British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Premier Édouard Daladier confirmed for themselves the German invasion of Poland on September 1, the two leaders gave the order for general mobilization and evacuation of children and mothers from their main cities. Both leaders also prepared to…
Berlin, Germany · August 29, 1939 Adolf Hitler ordered the German invasion of Poland to begin on August 26, 1939. Troops, panzer tanks, and aircraft had been lining up near Poland’s western border since mid-August. Though planned since late March 1939, the invasion was bound to rile Poland’s eastern neighbor, the Soviet Union. That concern was…
London, England; Paris, France; Warsaw, Poland · August 28, 1939 Public opinion in Europe had shifted from dread of war and a longing for peace evident in the Czech Sudeten crisis of September 1938 to a fatalistic acceptance that war was now unavoidable. British and French politicians were more confident that they could take their…
Berlin, Germany; Warsaw, Poland; and London, England · August 27, 1939 On this date in 1939, one day after Adolf Hitler aborted his plan to invade his eastern neighbor, Poland, German mobilization continued. Between August 25 and 31, a further 21 infantry divisions and 2 motorized divisions were in place along the German-Polish frontier. No reserve units were…
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 Great Britain’s Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey off France’s Brittany coast, Luftwaffe aircraft based in France began a relentless aerial campaign targeting the lone European…
London, England · June 13, 1944 Beginning on this date in 1944 in London, one week after the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy, France (Operation Overlord), the Germans unleashed their pilotless flying “retaliation weapon,” Vergeltungswaffe‑1, on England. Only one of ten V‑1 flying bombs launched that day caused any casualties—eight civilians killed when a V‑1…
London, England · January 12, 1940 On this date in 1940 the German Luftwaffe conducted its first bombing raid on London, the British capital, 4 months after assaulting the Polish capital, Warsaw, at the start of World War II in Europe. Five months later, on May 10, the Royal Air Force retaliated with its first strategic bombing raid…
Berlin, Germany · January 5, 1939 On this date in 1939, 8 months before the armed forces of Nazi Germany surged over Polish borders to launch World War II in Europe, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler told Poland’s visiting Foreign Minister Józef Beck that Germany would guarantee his country’s frontiers were a “final settlement” reached over the status…