Lisbon, Portugal · July 21, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Lisbon, delegates of Italian King Victor Emmanuel III met with the head of neutral Portugal to explore strategies for extracting Italy from the war. The Crown had begun searching for an exit as early as late 1942. After Allied landings in Axis-occupied North Africa in…
Berlin, Germany · July 19, 1940 Military operations between France and the Axis powers, that is, Germany and Italy, ended on June 25, 1940. Three and a half weeks later, on this date in 1940 in Berlin, victorious Wehrmacht troops marched through the Brandenburg Gate for the first time since Kaiser Wilhelm I’s victory over…
Kursk, Soviet Union · July 13, 1943 On this date in 1943 Operation Citadel (Zitadelle), Adolf Hitler’s gambit to retake Kursk, an important Soviet rail hub south of Moscow, and straighten the German line on the Eastern Front failed with devastating losses on both sides, but especially to German strategic armored reserves. A day earlier…
Berlin, Germany · June 29, 1934 Late on this date in 1934 German Chancellor Adolf Hitler unleashed an extraordinary murder spree known as the Night of the Long Knives (Nacht der Langen Messer). President Paul von Hindenburg’s doctors had leaked the news that the 86-year-old German war hero had only months to live. Hitler feared…
Cairo, Egypt · June 21, 1942 After a disorderly retreat by the British Eighth Army into Egypt following Erwin Rommel’s breakthrough of the Gazala line in mid-June, the Desert Fox stormed the Mediterranean fortress and harbor of Tobruk in Eastern Libya on this date in 1942. The newly minted German field marshal seized huge quantities…
Munich, Germany · June 17, 1940 On this date in 1940 Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, drawing on provisions of the secret protocol in the August 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact with his Nazi ally, ordered an attack on the Baltic state of Latvia. (The 1939 protocol had already returned dividends to the two conspirator…
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…
Malta, Central Mediterranean · June 11, 1940 On this date in 1940, one day after Italy entered World War II on the side of Axis partner Nazi Germany, the Italian Royal Air Force opened a nearly nonstop series of air raids on the Mediterranean island of Malta. Lying 50 miles off the Sicilian coast and 200 miles north…
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 · 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…