Cassino, Italy · February 15, 1944 On this date in 1944 Gen. Harold Alexander, commander-in-chief of all Allied forces in the Mediterranean Theater, ordered the aerial bombing of the historic Benedictine abbey towering over the town of Cassino on the banks of the Rapido (Gari) River in Italy. Earlier in January British, American, and French…
Berlin, Germany · January 29, 1929 On this date in 1929 Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (German, Im Westen Nichts Neues) debuted in book form after being serialized in a German newspaper in late 1928. In the story Remarque, who was a conscript during the First World War, described the German…
Berlin, Germany · January 16, 1945 On this date in 1945 Adolf Hitler moved his entourage into the Fuehrerbunker under the Old Reich Chancellery in Berlin, where he lived and directed the last months of the war in Europe. The “Leader’s bunker”—a maze of living quarters, conference rooms, offices, and utilities spreading 2 stories deep…
Stalingrad, Soviet Union · January 10, 1943 On this date in 1943 the Soviets launched Operation Ring, their name for the action that tightened the noose around the 250,000-plus soldiers of the German Sixth Army trapped in Stalingrad (now Volgograd). Operation Ring had been preceded by Operation Uranus (November 19–23, 1942), a one-million-man-plus Soviet offensive targeting…
Berlin, Germany · December 25, 1941 On this date in 1941 Japanese citizens celebrated the 15th anniversary of the succession to the Imperial Throne of Emperor Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Shōwa), according to tradition the 124th direct descendant of Jimmu, the legendary first ruler of the Empire of the Rising Sun. Festive toasts invoked the Imperial…
Berlin, Germany · December 11, 1941 On this date in 1941 in Berlin, Adolf Hitler addressed a toothless Reichstag eager to hear him declare war on America. Hitler did this four days after the Japanese attack on the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, without technically being forced or even obligated by treaty to…
Nuremberg, Germany · November 21, 1945 On this date in 1945 in Germany, the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg Trials) of Nazi leaders got down to business in the city where Adolf Hitler had staged his 1930s showy party rallies. The legal basis for the trials was established by the London Charter, issued on August 8, 1945,…
Stalingrad, Soviet Union · November 19, 1942 On this date in 1942 the Soviets kicked off Operation Uranus, Phase I of the Red Army’s encirclement of Gen. Friedrich Paulus’ Sixth Army (the single largest German troop formation), as well as the German Fourth Panzer Army and the Third and Fourth Romanian armies at Stalingrad (today’s Volgograd)….
Posen, Occupied Poland · October 6, 1943 On this date in 1943 in occupied Posen (Poznań), Poland, Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, stunned an assembly of Nazi Party big-wigs when he stated that he intended to convert all factories producing for the German civilian market to war production. Having discussed…
Berlin, Germany · June 9, 1942 On this date in 1942, with the full leadership of the Third Reich in attendance, Nazi “martyr” Reinhard Heydrich was eulogized in one of the most elaborate funerals ever staged in Berlin. (Heydrich had been added by Adolf Hitler to the “honorary list of the Fallen of the Nazi…