London, England · December 19, 1939 The Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union broke out on November 30, 1939, 2‑1/2 months after Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin had partitioned Poland between themselves. The French and British governments strongly desired to aid the Finns with volunteers and war materiel. The only possible route for such aid…
Berlin, Germany · November 29, 1939 On this date in 1939, nearly three months after the German Wehrmacht overran neighboring Poland, launching World War II in Europe, German dictator Adolf Hitler issued Fuehrer Directive Number 9, the first of two directives on measures his country would have to take to render the British economy and infrastructure incapable…
Coventry, England · November 14, 1940 On this date in 1940 the first firestorm of the war was inflicted on Coventry, England, a city of 200,000 people, during the German Blitz against that country. German “pathfinder” bombers flying along radio-direction beams targeted the medieval cathedral city and industrial-munitions center in the English Midlands. Nearly 450 bombers rained…
London, England · November 6, 1940 On this date in 1940 a German Heinkel 111 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 equipped with…
Rome, Italy · October 8, 1941 Two months before Great Britain joined the United States in declaring war on Japan, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini chose to use 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…
London, England · October 1, 1938 The storm clouds of war in Europe seemed to have parted on this date in 1938 in London, one day after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had returned from his triumph in Munich. Three visits to Germany had been required to part the clouds: the first to Berchtesgaden in the…
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, a…
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…
Berlin, Germany · August 29, 1939 Adolf Hitler ordered the German invasion of Poland to begin on August 26, 1939. Troops, panzers, 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…