Beirut, Lebanon · July 12, 1941 During their advance on the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in June 1941, the British shot down a Luftwaffe aircraft flown in support of the pro-German Iraqi government of Rashid Ali el‑Ghalani. (El-Ghalani had led a nationalist coup that unseated a pro-British regime weeks before and was understood to be…
London, England · June 25, 1940 Under the threat of imminent invasion from Nazi Germany, the British government on this date in 1940 began interning all suspect aliens living in the United Kingdom. Some 300,000 Germans, Austrians, and Italians, including Jewish refugees from the Nazis, were placed behind barbed wire in England (racetracks and unfinished housing…
London, England · June 24, 1942 On this date in 1942 Maj. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived in London, England, to assume administrative and operational command of the European Theater of Operations, United States Army. Set up 16 days earlier, ETOUSA directed U.S. ground, air, and service operations north of Italy and the Mediterranean coast. When…
London, England · June 18, 1940 Four days after the fall of Paris to German invaders, Charles de Gaulle, a tall (6 ft, 4 in), young (49), relatively unknown French general who had escaped to England on June 17, 1940, addressed the French people in a radio broadcast from London on this date in 1940. In a celebrated…
Malta, Central Mediterranean · June 11, 1940 On this date in 1940, one day after Italy entered World War II on the side of Axis partner Nazi Germany, the Italian Royal Air Force opened a nearly nonstop series of air raids on the Mediterranean island of Malta. Lying 50 miles off the Sicilian coast and 200 miles north…
London, England · June 2, 1944 In June 1943 in Algeria, North Africa, the Free French founded the French Committee of National Liberation. Much political maneuvering was needed to merge the Free French, whose nucleus consisted of Frenchmen who had escaped German capture at Dunkirk (May 26 to June 4, 1940), with politicians and armed forces from…
Berlin, Germany · May 28, 1938 On this date in 1938 Adolf Hitler informed his senior military commanders of his plans to march into neighboring Czechoslovakia and erase that country from the map. No serious objections were raised by those who heard Hitler ring the death knell for Czechoslovakia and for the European order that…
London, England · May 19, 1940 Following Britain and France’s declaration of war on Germany on September 3, 1939, neither of the Allies committed to launching a significant land offensive against Adolf Hitler’s Germany as punishment for the invasion of its eastern neighbor, Poland. The most the British were prepared to do was deploy a 315,000‑man…
London, England · May 13, 1940 As Adolf Hitler’s armies raced across Europe, seemingly unstoppable, gobbling up country after country for Nazi Germany, and (God forbid) perhaps Britain herself, Winston Churchill on this date in 1940 succeeded a war-weary Neville Chamberlain as prime minister. After a lukewarm reception from fellow Members of Parliament, Churchill uttered…
London, England · May 9, 1941 As war loomed in Europe, British codebreakers based at Bletchley Park outside London worked feverishly to unravel the Enigma cipher machine, which the Germans used to encrypt their most secret communications. The Enigma had a number of differently wired scrambler rotors that operators changed and shuffled through billions of…