Berlin, Germany • December 13, 1940 Italy had long had an interest in the neighboring Balkans, which lay to the country’s east across the Adriatic Sea. In June 1917 Italian soldiers briefly seized portions of central and southern Albania, declaring them a protectorate. Italian Fascism, which was rooted in Italian nationalism, urged Italians to reestablish…
Adlerhorst Forward HQ, Central Hessen, Germany • December 12, 1944 “It is essential to deprive the enemy of his belief that victory is certain,” Adolf Hitler told his generals on this date, December 12, 1944, at his rural Adlerhorst (Eagle’s Nest) headquarters near Bad Nauheim, Germany, the camouflaged western command outpost that Architect of the Reich…
Tokyo, Japan • December 9, 1940 On September 27, 1940, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, or Axis Pact as it was also known. The Pact was an outgrowth of the “Rome-Berlin Axis” celebrated by the Italo-German “Pact of Steel,” which Adolf Hitler’s foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Benito…
Chicago, Illinois • December 4, 1941 Early in July 1941, just 4 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 requested his Secretaries of War and the Navy…
Berlin, Germany • December 1, 1936 On April 20, 1930 (Adolf Hitler’s 41st birthday), the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Maedel, abbreviated BDM) was founded in Germany. It was the female wing of Hitler’s Nazi Party youth organization, the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend, abbreviated HJ), whose origins dated to 1922 under several different names. Recruitment…
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 (leader of a sometimes forgotten ally) continued their series of talks during their Cairo Conference (November 23–27, 1943). Churchill and his party had hoped to establish a…
Munich, Germany • November 10, 1942 On this date in 1942, just 2 days after Allied landings in Vichy French-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…
New York City, New York • October 30, 1939 On this date in the Manhattan borough of New York City hundreds of American Nazis paraded in front of the headquarters of the German American Bund (Amerikadeutscher Bund; Bund, pronounced “bunt,” means “alliance” in English). Among German speakers, Bund members, and fascist supporters the organization was…
Rome, Italy • October 28, 1940 In early October 1940 Romanian strongman Gen. Ion Antonescu gave Adolf Hitler permission for the German Wehrmacht (armed forces) to occupy his country. Hitler’s Axis partner Benito Mussolini was caught off guard by the news, and the Italian public reacted negatively. For years the Italian dictator and his countrymen…
Montoire, 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 Maréchal (Marshal) Philippe Pétain, respected French military leader (“Victor of Verdun”) and now head of state (chef de l’État Français), and…