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,…
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…
Brenner Pass, Italy · October 4, 1940 On this date in 1940, at a border crossing between Germany and Italy, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler met for the seventh time. (The two would meet seventeen times.) The Brenner Pass meeting of the two dictators followed on the heels of their June 18 meeting in Munich, which…
Rome, Italy · October 3, 1935 On this date in 1935 Benito Mussolini’s Italy invaded the northeast African Kingdom of Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) without a declaration of war, and for doing so the League of Nations instructed its member states to impose limited economic sanctions on Italy. (Neither the U.S. nor Germany were members of…
London, England · October 1, 1938 The storm clouds of war in Europe seemed to have parted on this date in 1938 in London, one day after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had returned from his triumph in Munich. Three visits to Germany had been required to part the clouds: the first to Berchtesgaden in the…
Munich, Germany · September 25, 1937 On this date in 1937 Italian strongman Benito Mussolini paid his first visit to Germany, meeting Adolf Hitler in the Fuehrer’s private residence in Munich. During the visit Mussolini made Hitler an honorary corporal of the Italian Fascist militia, while Hitler conferred the Iron Cross of Greater Germany on…
Berlin, Germany · September 17, 1940 In November 1939, some two months after Germany had invaded Poland, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, head of the Kriegsmarine, instructed a subordinate to draw up a paper on “the possibility of troop landings in England.” The study paper set out four prerequisites. The next month the Wehrmacht (German armed…
Berlin, Germany · September 15, 1940 On this date in 1940 Adolf Hitler wrote a letter to Gen. Francisco Franco, the Caudillo of Spain, asking for naval bases for Germany in the Spanish Canary Islands and other places. Franco replied one week later, demanding enormous stockpiles of weapons, supplies, and part of French North Africa…
Berlin, Germany · September 14, 1930 On this date in 1930 German voters went to the polls to elect a new Reichstag, and the results were shocking. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP) was the ninth and smallest of Germany’s political parties, with but twelve members in the national parliament….
