Salerno, Italy · September 9, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Italy, the Allies from their strongholds in North Africa and Sicily invaded the Italian mainland at Salerno south of Naples (Operation Avalanche), with diversionary landings at Calabria (Operation Baytown, September 3, 1943), which lay on the “toe” of the Italian Peninsula, and Taranto (Operation…
On an English Beach · September 7, 1943 On this date in 1943, on a popular beach near a seaside village in southwestern England, the British military not so secretly tested a giant rocket-propelled, explosive-laden contraption called the Panjandrum, known also as The Great Panjandrum. The highly experimental vehicle, consisting of a pair of 10‑ft‑high steel…
Bucharest, Romania · September 5, 1940 In the wake of Romania’s swift territorial concessions of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union, the northwestern part of Transylvania to Hungary, and the southern part of Dobruja to Bulgaria (see map below), 47‑year‑old King Carol II abdicated in favor of his 19‑year‑old son, Michael (Mihai), but not…
Antwerp, Belgium · September 4, 1944 Almost three months after D-Day British troops, assisted by members of the Belgium resistance, entered Antwerp on this date in 1944. Opening the Belgian port, whose 10 square miles of docks, 20 miles of waterfront, and 600 cranes were 80 miles from open sea on the Scheldt River, was meant to solve 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…
Warsaw, Poland · September 1, 1939 World War II in Europe began on this date in 1939 in Danzig (present-day Gdańsk), Poland, when the German training ship Schleswig-Holstein bombarded the Polish naval base in Danzig harbor. After a fierce day-long fight, Danzig fell and was annexed by the Reich the next day. Meanwhile, Hermann Goering’s…
Berlin, Germany · August 31, 1939 On August 22, 1939, Adolf Hitler told his generals he would concoct a story to justify his planned aggression against neighboring Poland. The plan was for Nazi SS operatives to dress in Polish uniforms, attack a German customs post and a German radio transmitter station in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia…
London, England · August 17, 1943 In mid-June 1943 a Royal Air Force reconnaissance mission flew over the top-secret Peenemuende Army Research Center and V‑2 rocket launch site on the German Baltic coast. Images confirmed the presence of long-range ballistic missiles at the site. A month later British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered an attack at…
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 the Channel islands of Jersey and Guernsey off the Brittany coast, Luftwaffe aircraft based in France began a relentless aerial campaign targeting the lone European…
Near Kursk, Russia · July 5, 1943 On this date in 1943 Germans and Soviets unleashed the largest tank battle in history, the Battle of Kursk. Following the surrender of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad (January 31, 1943), Soviet advances during the first months of 1943 pushed deep into German-held territory to recapture the Ukrainian…
