Paris, Occupied France · June 14, 1940 On this date in 1940 German troops marched into Paris, forcing the French government to move to Tours, then to Bordeaux, where it set up an impromptu headquarters. In a futile plea to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the French government under Prime Minister Paul Reynaud implored the…
London, England · June 13, 1944 Beginning on this date in 1944 in London, one week after the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy, France (Operation Overlord), the Germans unleashed their pilotless flying “retaliation weapon,” Vergeltungswaffe‑1, on England. Only one of ten V‑1 flying bombs launched that day caused any casualties—eight civilians killed when a V‑1…
Rome, Italy · June 10, 1940 On March 18, 1940, at the Brenner Pass on the Italian-Austrian border, Adolf Hitler and Italian strongman Benito Mussolini met face to face. Hitler had requested the summit in order to force the Duce (Italian, “leader”) to take sides within the framework of the German-Italian Pact of Steel, signed by…
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…
Berlin, Germany · May 28, 1938 On this date in 1938 Adolf Hitler informed his senior military commanders of his plans to march into neighboring Czechoslovakia and erase that country from the map. No serious objections were raised by those who heard Hitler ring the death knell for Czechoslovakia and for the European order that…
Paris, Occupied France · May 27, 1942 On May 10, 1940, Adolf Hitler, having ended Poland’s existence in September 1939, turned his wrath on the democracies in the West. The Netherlands and Belgium capitulated to his war machine in May. Representatives of Marshal Philippe Pétain, who had recently been named premier of the French Third…
Muerwik, near Flensburg, Northern Germany · May 23, 1945 On this date in 1945, twenty-three days after Adolf Hitler’s suicide under the rubble of the Reich capital, Berlin, and sixteen days after emissaries from Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz’s government agreed to the unconditional surrender of all German military forces, a British liaison officer went to…
Berlin, Germany · May 22, 1939 On this date in 1939 Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy signed the “Pact of Steel,” which tied the two dictatorships in a ten-year military alliance and stipulated that neither side could make peace without the other’s consent. Ominously dubbed the “Pact of Blood” in the planning stage, the alliance…
Rotterdam, Netherlands · May 14, 1940 On this date in 1940 in Holland, the German Luftwaffe bombed Rotterdam’s medieval city center, killing nearly 1,000 people and leaving 85,000 homeless. Rather than endure more bombings—leaflets dropped on Utrecht indicated it was next Dutch city in German crosshairs—the Dutch army surrendered the next day. The German offensive against the…
London, England · May 13, 1940 As Adolf Hitler’s armies raced across Europe, seemingly unstoppable, gobbling up country after country for Nazi Germany, and (God forbid) perhaps Britain herself, Winston Churchill on this date in 1940 succeeded a war-weary Neville Chamberlain as prime minister. After a lukewarm reception from fellow Members of Parliament, Churchill uttered…
