On an English Beach • September 7, 1943 On this date in 1943, on a popular beach near a seaside village in Southwest England, the British military not so secretly tested a giant rocket-propelled, explosive-laden contraption called the Panjandrum, known also as The Great Panjandrum. The highly experimental vehicle consisted of a pair of 10‑ft./3‑m-high…
London, England • September 3, 1939 Addressing a national audience by radio on this date in 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain intoned the following words: “This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to…
London, England and Paris, France • September 2, 1939 Shortly after British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Premier Édouard Daladier confirmed for themselves the German invasion of Poland on September 1, the 2 leaders gave the order for general mobilization and evacuation of hundreds of thousands of children and mothers, tens of thousands of hospital patients,…
Berlin, Germany • August 31, 1939 On August 22, 1939, in a meeting at his Bavarian mountaintop retreat, the Berghof, Adolf Hitler told his generals he would fabricate “a propagandistic reason” to justify his planned aggression against neighboring Poland. The plan was for Nazi Party Schutzstaffel (SS) operatives to dress in Polish uniforms, attack a…
Warsaw, Poland • August 30, 1939 After his sudden decision on Friday, August 25, 1939, to cancel his invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler ordered preparations for a second planned invasion of his neighbor to the east. From the Army’s Quartermaster General he learned that the earliest date on which mobilization could be completed was Thursday,…
London, England; Paris, France; Warsaw, Poland • August 28, 1939 Public opinion in Europe had shifted from dread of war and a longing for peace evident in the Czech Sudeten crisis of September 1938 to a fatalistic acceptance that war over Poland was now unavoidable. In Germany even Adolf Hitler’s political opponents assumed that if the…
Berlin, Germany; Warsaw, Poland; and London, England • August 27, 1939 On this date in 1939, just a day after Adolf Hitler aborted his plan to invade his eastern neighbor, Poland, German mobilization continued. Between August 25 and 31, a further 21 infantry divisions and 2 motorized divisions were in place along the German-Polish frontier. No reserve units were…
Berlin, Germany • August 24, 1941 On this date in 1941 Adolf Hitler cancelled the Aktion T-4 euthanasia program that he had personally put in place in September 1939. Normally Hitler had a policy of not issuing written instructions for policies relating to what would later be called crimes against humanity, but he made an…
Moscow, Soviet Union • August 23, 1939 At least since April 1939 Adolf Hitler was determined to end the existence of Poland, a country of just over 35 million people lying on Germany’s eastern border. But conquering that nation was fraught with danger because Poland shared a border with the Soviet Union, Hitler’s long-time bogeyman. The…
Obersalzberg, Bavaria, Germany • August 22, 1939 Adolf Hitler’s foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was just about to affix his signature to the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (aka Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) in Moscow, when, on this date, August 22, 1939, the Fuehrer summoned the commanders of his various armed forces and other officers to the Berghof, his palatial Bavarian…
