Rome, Italy · May 3, 1938 On this date in 1938 Adolf Hitler began a six-day Italian state visit to Rome, Naples, and Florence in a display of Axis solidarity, which included a parade by the Italian armed forces (demonstrating to German reviewers a lack of modern equipment) and a review of the Italian navy…
SHAEF HQ, Versailles, France · May 2, 1945 On this date in 1945, a rain-sodden but peaceful day in Berlin, the battle for the war-ravaged Reich capital ended when General of the Artillery Helmuth Weidling surrendered his garrison to Soviet Lt. Gen. Vasily Chuikov. The Soviets claimed to have taken 480,000 POWs, captured 1,500 tanks and self-propelled…
Berlin, Germany · May 1, 1945 At 4 a.m. on this date in 1945 in Berlin, the new Chief of German Army General Staff Gen. Hans Krebs was shown into the tactical headquarters of Lt. Gen. Vasily Chuikov, commander of the Soviet Eighth Guards Army, near Tempelhof airport. Krebs was part of the inner sanctum…
Berlin, Germany · April 30, 1945 On this date in 1945 Adolf Hitler, to all the world the face of unspeakable evil, shot himself in the right temple after he and Eva Braun had poisoned themselves by ingesting cyanide. The Fuehrer’s psychotic desire for an apocalyptic end for Germany—a Wagnerian Götterdämmerung—was nearly completed by his…
Narvik, Norway · April 29, 1940 Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital, and Oslo, Norway’s capital, succumbed to German invaders on April 9, 1940, the first day of Operation Weseruebung. Though planning for Weseruebung had begun the previous December, Adolf Hitler did not order full speed ahead until British warships entered the territorial waters of neutral Norway in February 1940…
Dongo near Lake Como, Northern Italy · April 27, 1945 On this date in 1945, with the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) in Italy in full retreat—indeed, their commanders had signed surrender documents on this date—Italian strongman Benito Mussolini was en route to a safe haven in Switzerland. The Duce was wearing a German noncommissioned officers…
Berlin, Germany · April 25, 1945 In the same month World War II began in Europe, September 1939, the German Army Weapons Agency (Heereswaffenamt, or HWA) placed all programs associated with the nation’s nascent nuclear energy project under its authority. The weapons program eventually expanded into three main efforts: setting up a nuclear reactor, producing…
Luebeck, Northern Germany · April 24, 1945 Reichsfuehrer-SS, Gestapo chief, and Adolf Hitler-devotee Heinrich Himmler began making clumsy attempts to secure a separate peace treaty with the Allies as the defenders of the Reich capital—ground zero of Nazi resistance—failed to push the Red Army back across the Spree River, the last physical barrier to the…
Berlin, Germany · April 23, 1945 On this date in 1945, with most land communications and electrical power lines down, Adolf Hitler broadcast on Greater German Radio the order to save his capital. The order called for Wehr¬macht forces opposing the Americans at the Elbe River to withdraw and move north to rescue Berlin, now…
German 12th Army HQ, Larissa, Greece · April 21, 1941 On this date in 1941 representatives of the Greek government, leaderless after Prime Minister Alexandros Koryzis committed suicide three days earlier, signed a document of capitulation at the headquarters of the German 12th Army at Larissa. Fourteen Greek divisions laid down their arms. The news…
