Fallersleben (Wolfsburg), Lower Saxony • May 26, 1938 On this date in 1938 near Fallersleben in the German state of Lower Saxony, Chancellor Adolf Hitler and Nazi dignitaries laid the foundation stone for the KdF-Wagen car factory. The state-owned factory was placed under the umbrella of the Nazi Party’s German Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, or…
Muerwik, near Flensburg, Northern Germany • May 23, 1945 Twenty-three days after German dictator Adolf Hitler had committed suicide under the rubble of his Reich capital, and sixteen days after military emissaries from Reich President Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz’s government agreed to the unconditional surrender of all German armed forces, a telephone call reached the admiral’s…
Berlin, Germany • May 22, 1939 On this date in 1939 Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy signed the “Pact of Steel” (German, Stahlpakt; Italian, Patto d’Acciaio). The pack, known formally as the “Pact of Friendship and Alliance,” tied the 2 dictatorships in a 10‑year military and political alliance and stipulated, among other things, that neither…
Crete, Eastern Mediterranean • May 20, 1941 With the start of marathon German operations against the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, a month away, Adolf Hitler needed to ensure that his oil supplies in and around Ploiești, Romania, where he had sent a German “military mission,” would not come under Allied bomber attack from stationary…
London, England • May 19, 1940 Following Britain and France’s declaration of war on Germany on September 3, 1939, neither of the Allies committed to launching a significant land offensive against Adolf Hitler’s Germany as punishment for the invasion of its eastern neighbor, Poland, which was in a treaty relationship with the two Western powers. 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 succeeded a war-weary Neville Chamberlain as British prime minister on May 10, 1940. Chamberlain had appointed Churchill to be First Lord of the Admiralty, a…
Sedan, France • May 12, 1940 Great Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939, on account of Germany’s aggression against its eastern neighbor Poland 2 days earlier. Both nations honored their guarantee to protect Poland’s borders in the event of a German invasion. Ten days into May 1940 Germany attacked neutral Belgium…
Berlin-Karlshorst, Germany • May 8, 1945 Five days after the suicide of Adolf Hitler in Berlin on April 30, 1945, Adm. Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, an emissary from Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, arrived in the French cathedral town of Reims, headquarters of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force. For the second time in less…
Warsaw, Poland • May 5, 1939 In 1923 Poland’s Baltic neighbor to the north, Lithuania, unlawfully annexed Memel Territory (now Klaipėda Region in present-day Lithuania) that had been, up to 1918, part of Prussia under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Like the Danzig enclave in Poland and the former Territory of the Saar Basin that had briefly been…
Rome, Italy • May 3, 1938 On this date in 1938 Adolf Hitler began a 6‑day Italian state visit to Rome, Naples, and Florence in a display of Axis solidarity. The choreographed visit featured a parade by the Italian armed forces (demonstrating to German reviewers a lack of modern equipment), a review of the Italian…
