Berlin, Germany • March 1, 1935 On this date in 1935 Adolf Hitler appointed World War I air ace Hermann Goering, last commander of the famous “Red Baron” Richthofen Fighter Squadron, to the position of Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief. Goering held the post until the final days of the Third Reich. A faithful Nazi from the earliest days…
Berlin, Germany • August 7, 1944 On July 20, 1944, Col. Claus von Stauffenberg left a bomb in his briefcase in a conference room at the East Prussia headquarters of Adolf Hitler, the Wolf’s Lair (Wolfsschanze), before excusing himself to take a call in the telephone exchange hut. In the conference room were Hitler and…
Salzburg, Austria • April 8, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Salzburg, Austria, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met for the first time since the collapse of the Axis defense of Stalingrad at the end of January. Ignoring Mussolini’s trial balloon about negotiating a ceasefire with the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, Hitler remained convinced…
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Occupied Poland • October 30, 1944 On this date in 1944 in Poland, the last murders by poison gas took place at the Nazis’ largest and arguably most infamous death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau (Polish, Oświęcim), one of eight camps used for mass murder during World War II. (Six were in what is today Poland, one in…
Luebeck, Northern Germany • April 24, 1945 Reichsfuehrer-SS, Reich Minister of the Interior, Gestapo chief, and Adolf Hitler-devotee Heinrich Himmler began making clumsy attempts to secure a separate peace treaty with the Western Allies as German defenders of the Reich capital—ground zero of Nazi resistance—failed to push the Red Army east back across the Spree…
Berlin, Germany • December 1, 1939 From a small cadre of fanatical thugs assigned to protect Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler at political meetings in the 1920s, the Schutzstaffel (“Protection Squad”), or SS, grew into one of the most notorious organizations in history, with many responsibilities. Under SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, it ran the Reich Security…
Berlin, Germany • April 11, 1934 On this date in 1934 German Chancellor Adolf Hitler secretly met with German War Minister Gen. Werner von Blomberg, the unofficial representative of the officer corps of the Reichswehr (German armed forces), and reached an agreement that sealed the fate of the post-World War I Weimar Republic. Behind titular President…
The Berghof, Bavaria, Germany • July 11, 1944 Adolf Hitler had been the target of four assassination attempts before he became head of state in January 1933 and perhaps two dozen afterwards. On this date in 1944 Lt. Col. Claus von Stauffenberg arrived at the Berghof on the Obersalzberg, Hitler’s Bavarian retreat near Berchtesgaden, carrying a…
Berlin, Germany · December 1, 1939 From a small cadre of fanatical thugs assigned to protect Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler at political meetings in the 1920s, the Schutzstaffel (“Protection Squad”), or SS, grew into one of the most notorious organizations in history, with many responsibilities. Under SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, it ran the Reich Security…
Nuremberg, Germany · November 21, 1945 On this date in 1945 in occupied Germany the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg Trials) of Nazi leaders got down to business in the Bavarian city where Adolf Hitler had staged his 1930s showy Nazi Party rallies. The legal basis for the trials was established by the London Charter, issued…