Stalingrad, Soviet Union • November 19, 1942 On this date in 1942 the Soviets kicked off Operation Uranus, Phase I of the Red Army’s encirclement of Gen. Friedrich Paulus’ Sixth Army (the single-largest German troop formation), as well as the German Fourth Panzer Army and the Third and Fourth Romanian armies at Stalingrad (today’s Volgograd)….
Huertgen, Germany • November 16, 1944 On September 19, 1944, elements of Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges’ First U.S. Army entered the 10‑mile/16‑kilometer-wide, 20‑mile/16‑kilometer-long Huertgen Forest (Hürtgenwald) southeast of Aachen. The ancient capital of Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne and a northern node on Germany’s “dragons’ teeth” defensive Westwall (known to the Allies as the 390‑mile/628‑kilometer-long Siegfried…
Schmidt, Huertgen Forest, Germany • November 2, 1944 On September 19, 1944, elements of Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges’ First U.S. Army entered the 10‑mile/16‑km-wide, 20‑mile/32‑km-long Huertgen Forest (German, Hürtgenwald) southeast of the ancient city Aachen, the first major and westernmost city in Nazi Germany to have fallen to the Anglo-American-Canadian armies. Before the outbreak of World…
Rome, Italy • October 28, 1940 In early October 1940 Romanian strongman Gen. Ion Antonescu gave Adolf Hitler permission for the German Wehrmacht (armed forces) to occupy his country. Hitler’s Axis partner Benito Mussolini was caught off guard by the news, and the Italian public reacted negatively. For years the Italian dictator and his countrymen…
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 of…
Berlin, Germany • October 18, 1940 On this date in 1940 German aircraft maker Messerschmitt was given just 14 days to submit to the Luftwaffe a proposal for a large-capacity troop- and cargo-carrying glider. A prototype heavy-lift glider flew February 25, 1941, pulled by several 4‑engine Junkers Ju 90s. The prototype glider’s maiden flight encouraged…
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, noted…
Posen, Western Occupied Poland • October 6, 1943 Despite Adolf Hitler’s Germany being engaged in a European and, after December 11, 1941, a global war, the Nazi leader (Fuehrer) had not directed his country’s full industrial might toward total war as had the leaders of his enemy states—the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union….
Brenner Pass, Italy • October 4, 1940 On this date in 1940, at a border crossing between Germany and Italy, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler met for the 7th time. (The duo would meet 17 times.) The Brenner Pass meeting of the 2 Axis Pact dictators followed on the heels of their June 18, 1940, meeting in Munich, which…
Rome, Italy • October 3, 1935 On this date in 1935 Benito Mussolini’s Italy invaded the Northeast African Kingdom of Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) without a declaration of war, and for doing so the League of Nations (forerunner to today’s United Nations) instructed its member states to impose limited economic sanctions on Italy. (Neither the U.S….