Chicago, Illinois · December 4, 1941 Early in July 1941, four months after the U.S. Congress had enacted the Lend-Lease Program that began assisting Great Britain and China in their defense against the aggressor states of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked his Secretaries of War and the Navy…
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…
Munich, Germany · November 10, 1942 On this date in 1942, just 2 days after Allied landings in Vichy-held Morocco and Algeria (Operation Torch), Italian dictator Benito Mussolini sent his son-in-law, foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano, to Munich in his stead to speak with Adolf Hitler. Mussolini had wanted to meet the Fuehrer in Salzburg, in the…
Tunis, Tunisia · November 9, 1942 On this date in 1942, one day after the largest amphibious invasion force in history to that time landed Allied troops on the Algerian and Moroccan coasts, German troops, tanks, and aircraft started pouring into neighboring Tunisia from bases in Italy. Operation Torch, under the command of Gen. Dwight…
Stalingrad, Soviet Union · November 1, 1942 By one German count, over five million Red Army soldiers had been taken prisoner since Adolf Hitler unleashed Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union begun 16 months earlier. As for the number of Soviet service personnel killed and disabled, there was only a rough estimate, but clearly…
Montoire, German-Occupied France · October 24, 1940 After failing the day before to convince Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to bring his country into the war on the Axis side, Adolf Hitler met with 84‑year-old Marshal Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval, head of state (chef de l’État Français) and deputy leader of Vichy France, respectively, on…
Hendaye, France · October 23, 1940 In late November 1939, shortly after the start of World War II, the nominally neutral but fascist Spanish government of Generalissimo Francisco Franco ratified a pact with Germany in which Spain promised “more than favorable” neutrality. On this date, October 23, 1940, in Hendaye, a town on the Franco-Spanish…
Moscow, Soviet Union · October 15, 1941 On June 22, 1941, the day Adolf Hitler sprang his surprise attack on the Soviet Union, he reportedly confided to some of his intimates: “I feel as if I have opened a door into a dark, unseen room—without knowing what lies behind the door.” His gloomy premonitions soon…
Berlin, Germany · October 14, 1933 On this date in 1933 German Chancellor Adolf Hitler announced that his country was pulling out of the League of Nations, where it had been a member since 1926. Hitler, who had been in office less that nine months, had recently asked the League for “equality of status”—meaning he…
Wolf’s Lair, Fuehrer HQ, East Prussia · October 10, 1944 Shortly after the July 1944 attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life, an adjutant of the Chief of the General Staff of the Army remarked that the 55-year-old Hitler had the “posture of an old man.” On September 24, 1944, Dr. Theodor Morell, the Fuehrer’s loyal, long-serving physician,…
