Berlin, Germany · March 29, 1945 By 1945 everything was falling apart for the Nazi regime. Most of the conquered areas in the Soviet Union and Western Europe had been recaptured from the Germans. The Wehrmacht’s last gambit in the west, the Ardennes Offensive, better known as the Battle of the Bulge (mid-December 1944 to…
Berlin, Germany · February 4, 1937 On this date in 1937, in a bold, sweeping decree, Adolf Hitler assumed command of the entire German armed forces, or Wehrmacht. He abolished the Reichskriegsministerium (Ministry of War), in the act liquidating the traditional power of the army general staff as the ultimate controller and director of Germany’s…
Stalingrad, Soviet Union · January 31, 1943 On this date in 1943 Red Army staff officers arrived at German Sixth Army headquarters in Stalingrad (present-day Volgograd) to discuss surrender terms for an invading enemy now bereft of ammunition, food, and effective command. Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus’ defensive perimeter had shrunk to 300 yards/256 meters when he surrendered…
Warsaw, Liberated Poland · January 17, 1945 On this date in 1945 Warsaw fell to Soviet and Polish Communist forces as the Nazis beat a hasty retreat from the ruins of Poland’s capital. In moving against the retreating Wehrmacht (German armed forces), the Soviets liberated 800 Jews in Częstochowa and 870 Jews in Łódź, Poland. Ten…
Casablanca, Morocco, North Africa · January 14, 1943 This date in 1943 saw the start of the 10‑day Casablanca Conference at a seaside resort in Morocco between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and their Combined Chiefs of Staff. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had been invited to the summit but reportedly…
Washington, D.C. and London, England · December 17, 1942 In remarks he made to senior Nazis at a conference in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on January 22, 1942, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Main Office and head of the German secret police apparatus, spoke of “practical experience” that was being collected “in…
Berlin, Germany · December 1, 1939 From a small cadre of fanatical thugs assigned to protect Adolf Hitler at political meetings in the 1920s, the Schutzstaffel (“protection squad”), or SS, grew into one of the most notorious organizations in history, with many responsibilities. Under Reinhard Heydrich, it ran the Reich Security Main Office (Reichsicherheitshauptamt) with…
Nuremberg, Germany · November 21, 1945 On this date in 1945 in Germany, the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg Trials) of Nazi leaders got down to business in the city where Adolf Hitler had staged his 1930s showy party rallies. The legal basis for the trials was established by the London Charter, issued on August 8, 1945,…
Kragujevac, Serbia, Yugoslavia · October 21, 1941 From Europe, to Africa, to the Far East, regular Axis troops, as well as specialized killing squads (Einsatzgruppen), murdered millions of unarmed civilians. These mass murders often targeted ethnic or political groups. Sometimes they were committed in retaliation for acts of resistance, whether or not the victims were…
Wolf’s Lair, Fuehrer HQ, East Prussia · October 10, 1944 Shortly after the July 1944 attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life, an adjutant of the Chief of the General Staff of the Army remarked that the 55-year-old Hitler had the “posture of an old man.” On September 24, 1944, Dr. Theodor Morell, the Fuehrer’s loyal, long-serving physician,…