Nuremberg, Germany • September 10, 1935 On date in 1935 the Nazis convened their annual Party congress in Nuremberg completely fixated on the charismatic savior-figure Adolf Hitler, Germany’s chancellor since January 1933. The 1935 “Rally of Freedom” (Reichsparteitag der Freiheit) touted Hitler’s wildly popular reintegration of the Saar region into the German Reich (from 1920…
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…
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…
Berlin, Germany • July 31, 1941 On this date in 1941 Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering formally empowered SS‑Gruppenfuehrer (German, Group Leader) Reinhard Heydrich to undertake “preparations in organizational, technical and material respects for the complete solution to the Jewish question in the German area of influence in Europe.” At this time neither Goering, nor his boss…
Vichy, France • July 11, 1940 On July 10, 1940, the French National Assembly meeting in the municipal opera house in Vichy, France, a small resort town 200 miles/322 kilometers south of German-occupied Paris, ceded its power and authority to Premier Philippe Pétain, the 84‑year-old Maréchal of France and World War I hero. On this date, 1 day later, Marshal…
Budapest, Occupied Hungary • July 9, 1944 On this date in 1944 Raoul Wallenberg, a 31-year-old bachelor from a distinguished Swedish family, arrived in Budapest, capital of Nazi-occupied Hungary. With diplomatic accreditation from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Sweden was a neutral nation), Wallenberg had been secretly recruited by the recently created (January 22, 1944)…
Auschwitz, German-Occupied Poland • June 14, 1940 On this date in German-occupied Poland 728 male political prisoners, Catholic priests, and Jews left Tarnów’s train station for Auschwitz concentration camp (Konzentrationslager Auschwitz), 80 miles/129 kilometers away. It was the first mass transport of prisoners to Auschwitz (Polish name, Oświęcim) since the camp was opened for business on April 27, 1940,…
SHAEF HQ, Versailles, France • May 2, 1945 On this date in 1945, a rain-sodden but peaceful day in Berlin, the battle for the war-ravaged Reich capital ended when General of the Artillery Helmuth Weidling surrendered his garrison to Soviet Lt. Gen. Vasily Chuikov, whose Eighth Guards Army was part of Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s First Belorussian…
Dachau, Germany • April 29, 1945 On a gray last Sunday in April 1945, 10 miles/16 kilometers north of Munich, Bavaria’s capital, U.S. soldiers of the 42nd Infantry Division, nicknamed the “Rainbow Division,” the 45th “Thunderbird” Infantry Division, and the 27th Tank Battalion were overwhelmed by the horror they saw as they closed in on Dachau concentration…
German 12th Army HQ, Larissa, Greece • April 21, 1941 After their prime minister’s suicide 3 days earlier representatives of the leaderless Greek government signed a document of capitulation at the headquarters of the German 12th Army at Larissa in Central Greece on this date in 1941. Fourteen Greek divisions laid down their arms. An armistice…