Washington, D.C. · December 24, 1941 On this grim date, Christmas Eve 1941, a tiny piece of Vichy France—the Atlantic islets of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, whose granite outcroppings lay just 12 miles off the Newfoundland coast adjacent to Canada—fell to the forces of Free France. It was the first French territory to be liberated in…
Washington, D.C. · December 22, 1941 On this date in 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and their respective chiefs of staff assembled in Washington, D.C., for their first strategic conference as combatants-in-arms. The First Washington Conference, codenamed Arcadia, was the second face-to-face meeting (there would be nine in all) between…
Montevideo, Uruguay · December 15, 1939 In the first months of World War II only Great Britain’s Royal Navy, under the leadership of 65-year-old First Lord of the Admiralty (in May 1940, Prime Minister) Winston Churchill, prosecuted the war against Nazi Germany with energy. After U‑boats had sunk the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous and the…
Aboard HMS Duke of York · December 12, 1941 On this date in 1941 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, fearing that the immediate impact of Japan’s attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii would be a retreat into an “America-comes-first” posture, boarded the battleship HMS Duke of York for an Atlantic…
Berlin, Germany · December 11, 1941 On this date in 1941 in Berlin, Adolf Hitler, Chancellor and Fuehrer of Nazi Germany, addressed a toothless Reichstag (German parliament), its members eager to hear him declare war on America. Hitler did this four days after the Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii,…
Washington, D.C. · December 8, 1941 At 12:30 p.m. on this date in 1941, standing before a joint session of the U.S. Congress and a world listening by radio, the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, laid several typewritten sheets on the speaker’s podium. The day before, the president had calmly and…
Cairo, Egypt · November 24, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Egypt, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek continued their series of talks during their Cairo Conference (November 23–27, 1943). Churchill and his party had hoped to establish a way to deal with Soviet leader…
El Alamein, Egypt · November 2, 1942 On this date in 1942 in Northern Egypt, Gen. Erwin Rommel (aka “Desert Fox”), brilliant commander of the German Afrika Korps, signaled to Adolf Hitler that he and his men would have to retreat after the British Eight Army, led by Lt. Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery, decisively bested them…
Belgrade, Yugoslavia · October 22, 1944 On April 6, 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded from all sides by the Axis powers, primarily by Germany but also by Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria. The invasion lasted little more than ten days, ending with the unconditional surrender of the Yugoslav Army on April 17 and the flight of King…
Kragujevac, Serbia, Yugoslavia · October 21, 1941 From Europe, to Africa, and to the Far East, regular Axis troops and specialized killing squads (Einsatzgruppen) murdered millions of unarmed civilians. These mass murders often targeted ethnic or political groups. Sometimes they were committed in retaliation for acts of resistance, whether or not the victims were actually…
