Auburn, Massachusetts · March 16, 1926 On this date in 1926 in Auburn, Massachusetts, Dr. Robert Goddard (1882–1945) conducted his first successful rocket flight. His liquid-propellant rocket rose 41 ft, traveled 184 ft, and burned no more than 3 seconds, but it proved the concept of rocket flight worked. Goddard, who received limited support for his research and…
U-852 in Mid-Atlantic Ocean · March 13, 1944 On this date in 1944 German U‑boat 852, skippered by 28‑year‑old Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, torpedoed the British-chartered Greek freighter SS Peleus as it steamed from Freetown, Sierra Leone, to Buenos Aires, Argentina. After the Peleus sank, U‑852 patrolled the large debris field for five hours. Crew members used…
Moscow, Soviet Union · March 5, 1940 In a proposal written on this date in 1940 to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and other members of the Soviet Politburo, Lavrentiy Beria, who was the head of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the Soviet secret police, advocated executing all members of the Polish Officer Corps who…
Hsinking (Changchun), Manchukuo · February 18, 1932 The Meiji Restoration of Imperial rule in 1868 resulted in the downfall of Japan’s powerful military commanders, the shoguns, and the Japanese samurai warrior class. Partly as a concession to the samurai, the Japanese government embarked on an aggressive foreign policy in Manchuria in northeastern China and on the…
Budapest, Hungary · February 14, 1945 On December 29, 1944, Soviet and Romanian troops (Romania was now a Soviet ally) began laying siege to Budapest, the capital of Adolf Hitler’s vassal state of Hungary. Budapest, split in two by the River Danube, was a city of over 800,000 resi¬dents and refugees, including well over 100,000…
Singapore Island, British Malaya · February 8, 1942 On this night and the next day in 1942 in British Malaya (today’s Malaysia) Japanese forces surged over and soon pushed the British-led defenders back to the edges of the 220‑sq. mile island of Singapore (the “Gibraltar of the East”), nearly 600 miles from the initial Japanese landing site….
Stockholm, Sweden · February 5, 1945 Within five months from the start of the German conquest of Norway in April 1940 the first Norwegian political prisoners were deported to Germany. Two years later, in September 1943, the first deportations of Danish prisoners and Jews to Germany began after German civil and military authorities assumed direct…
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…
Manila, Philippines · February 3, 1945 On this date in 1945, 35,000 soldiers of the U.S. Sixth Army under Lt. Gen. Walter Krueger, supported by 3,000 Filipino guerrillas, began entering Manila, capital of the Philippines, and soon liberated nearly 6,000 Allied and Filipino prisoners. Some of them, like the 64 U.S. Army nurses, were taken captive in 1942…
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 when he surrendered…