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…
Cassino, Italy • May 18, 1944 On February 15, 1944, British Gen. Harold Alexander, commander-in-chief of all Allied armies in Italy, ordered the aerial bombing of the ancient Benedictine abbey towering over the pastoral town of Cassino on the banks of the Rapido (or Gari) River in Italy. Earlier in January, British, American, and French…
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…
Chanute Field, Rantoul, Illinois • March 19, 1941 Pressed on one side by Black news media and civil rights groups demanding that pilot training be opened up to African Americans and on the other by an upcoming re-election, President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 authorized the creation of a segregated flight school and an all-Black…
Berlin, Germany • May 12, 1941 On this date in 1941, two days after Deputy Reich Fuehrer Rudolf Hess had embarked on his historic “peace mission” to England (see story below), Adolf Hitler finally confirmed June 22 as the start date for Operation Barbarossa (Unternehmen Barbarossa), the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Moving toward the…
Berlin, Germany • January 18, 1942 On this date in 1942 Axis partners Germany, Italy, and Japan renewed their military and economic alliance just one and a half years into their 10‑year convention. The Tripartite Pact had come into being on September 27, 1940, when the foreign ministers of the 3 nations met in Berlin. Originally a…
With Maj. Gen. Mark Clark in Italy • May 25, 1944 In 1943–1944 the centerpiece of German defenses in Italy was the Gustav Line, whose most famous bastion was centered on the historic Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino. Thousands of German soldiers and conscripted Italian civilians worked hard to strengthen the line, 65 miles north of the…
Monte Cassino, Italy • April 17, 1944 On this date in 1944, 52,000 soldiers of the untested Polish II Corps under Maj. Gen. Wladyslaw Anders quietly moved into position under the cover of darkness and smokescreen. The Polish II Corps, part of Gen. Oliver Leese’s British Eighth Army, relieved the exhausted New Zealand II Corps, which since…
Salzburg, Austria • April 8, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Salzburg, Austria, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met for the first time since the collapse of the Axis defense of Stalingrad at the end of January. Ignoring Mussolini’s trial balloon about negotiating a ceasefire with the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, Hitler remained convinced…
Alexandria, Egypt • November 11, 1940 Italian Army operations in North Africa, based in Libya, required a supply line from the Italian mainland. The British Army’s North African Campaign, based in Egypt, suffered from supply difficulties in the Mediterranean Theater due to the proximity of Italy’s Regia Marina naval base at Taranto on the Italian…