Muerwik, near Flensburg, Northern Germany · May 23, 1945 On this date in 1945, twenty-three days after Adolf Hitler’s suicide under the rubble of the Reich capital, Berlin, and sixteen days after emissaries from Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz’s government agreed to the unconditional surrender of all German military forces, a British liaison officer went to…
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…
Reims, France · May 7, 1945 Five days after the suicide of Adolf Hitler on April 30, 1945, Adm. Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, an emissary from Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, arrived in Reims, France, headquarters of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force. Friedeburg was tasked with opening surrender negotiations on behalf of Doenitz, head of the…
Berlin, Germany · May 1, 1945 At 4 a.m. on this date in 1945 in Berlin, the new Chief of German Army General Staff Gen. Hans Krebs was shown into the tactical headquarters of Lt. Gen. Vasily Chuikov, commander of the Soviet Eighth Guards Army, near Tempelhof airport. Krebs was part of the inner sanctum…
Luebeck, Northern Germany · April 24, 1945 Reichsfuehrer-SS, Gestapo chief, and Adolf Hitler-devotee Heinrich Himmler began making clumsy attempts to secure a separate peace treaty with the Allies as the defenders of the Reich capital—ground zero of Nazi resistance—failed to push the Red Army back across the Spree River, the last physical barrier to the…
Berlin, Germany · April 20, 1945 On this date in 1945, a stooped, jowly-faced Adolf Hitler celebrated his 56th birthday in his command bunker under Berlin’s Old Reich Chancellery. Unlike previous birthdays marked by much ceremony and fuss, this one was all gloom and doom due to the Wehrmacht’s failure to halt the Soviet advance…
Aboard the HMS Walker in the North Atlantic · March 17, 1941 On this date in 1941 U-99, skippered by Otto Kretschmer, one of Germany’s most famous U‑boat commanders, had just fired the last of her torpedoes when she was spotted by a British destroyer southeast of Iceland. By this time Kretschmer, on his eighth patrol,…
SHAEF HQ, Reims, France · February 21, 1945 On this date in 1945 U.S. fighter-bombers attacked the Berghof, Adolf Hitler’s Alpine retreat on the Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden on the Bavarian-Austrian border. The Berghof served as an outpost of Hitler’s Berlin chancellery, making it an obvious target. Further north, in a less symbolic move, more than…
Berlin, Germany • January 18, 1944 On this date in 1944 Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz approached his commander in chief, Adolf Hitler, with a design for a new midget submarine, much larger than the one‑man Biber (Beaver) sub that was in the prototype stage. The Hecht (Pike) was a three‑man midget based on a British…
Berlin, Germany • January 18, 1944 On this date in 1944 Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz approached his commander in chief, Adolf Hitler, with a design for a new midget submarine, much larger than the one‑man Biber (Beaver) sub that was in the prototype stage. The Hecht (Pike) was a three‑man midget based on a British…