Paris, France · November 7, 1938 On this date in 1938, 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan, an unemployed German-born Polish Jew living illegally in Paris, France, fatally wounded Ernst vom Rath, Third Secretary at the German embassy. He shot Rath, he told authorities, out “of love for my parents and for my people.” His was an act…
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Occupied Poland · October 30, 1944 On this date in 1944 in Poland, the last murders by poison gas took place at the Nazis’ largest and arguably most infamous death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau (Polish, Oświęcim), one of eight camps used for mass murder during World War II. (Six were in what is today’s Poland, one…
Berlin, Germany · October 26, 1939 On this date in 1939 in Poland, 56 days after Germany invaded that country, Dr. Hans Frank, Germany’s chief jurist and one of the most vicious products of Nazism, was appointed Governor-General of the General Government—that half of Nazi-occupied Poland not directly incorporated into the Reich. It included much…
Hendaye, France · October 23, 1940 In late November 1939, shortly after the start of World War II, the nominally neutral but fascist government of Generalissimo Francisco Franco ratified a pact with Germany in which Spain promised “more than favorable” neutrality. On this date in 1940 in Hendaye, a town on the Franco-Spanish border, Adolf Hitler…
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…
Washington, D.C. · October 17, 1941 Starting on September 1, 1941, two years into the Battle of the Atlantic, U.S. warships began escorting convoys of Britain-bound merchantmen from the North American coast. Convoys departed from Newfoundland off the coast of Canada and ended in the mid-Atlantic at Iceland. Four days after initiating the escort service,…
Moscow, Soviet Union · October 15, 1941 On June 22, 1941, the day Hitler sprang his surprise attack on the Soviet Union, he reportedly confided to some of his intimates: “I feel as if I have opened a door into a dark, unseen room—without knowing what lies behind the door.” His gloomy premonitions soon gave…
Berlin, Germany · October 14, 1933 On this date in 1933 German chancellor Adolf Hitler announced that his country was pulling out of the League of Nations, where it had been a member since 1926. Hitler, who had been in office less that nine months, had recently asked the League for “equality of status”—meaning he…
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,…
Posen, Occupied Poland · October 6, 1943 On this date in 1943 in occupied Posen (Poznań), Poland, Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, stunned an assembly of Nazi Party big-wigs when he stated that he intended to convert all factories producing for the German civilian market to war production. Having discussed…
